Oakland Tribune Wednesday May 24, 1967
Band Cools Off Draft Protesters
BERKELEY--Draft protesters appearing at a noontime rally at the University of California campus yesterday more than met their match in the big sound of rock 'n' roll music.In fact, it really wasn't much of a contest.
Country Joe and the Fish, a Berkeley rock band, snared a crowd of 2,000 on the Lower Plaza, while Resistance To the Draft, a group from the U.C. Medical Center in San Francisco, mustered a scant 25 listeners.
Making matters worse for the protestors, the band played so loudly you couldn't hear the speeches.
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| Electric Music For The Mind And Body by Country Joe & The Fish, released by Vanguard Records in May 1967. The concert shots were from The Barn in Scotts Valley, with the Magic Theater light show in the background |
May 23, 1967 Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley, CA: Country Joe and The Fish (Tuesday) free concert
A Wire Service story about Country Joe & The Fish's performance in UC Berkeley's Lower Sproul was picked up by a number of daily papers. The Oakland Tribune headline said “Band Cools Off Draft Protesters.” The Long Beach Independent-Press-Telegram (May 24, 1967) gleefully reported “Folk-rock music outdrew an anti-war rally on the Berkeley campus by about 40 to 1.”
Most of the protests at UC Berkeley, an almost daily occurrence in the 1960s, took place in Sproul Plaza, at the center of campus. A newly constructed area just below Sproul, known as Lower Sproul Plaza, had a variety of student services including the Bear’s Lair Café and other amenities. Lower Sproul would have been fairly new in May 1967.
Even when I attended Berkeley in the later 1970s, it was common for the University to encourage loud noontime rock concerts in Lower Sproul, and it was widely believed (with some justification) that this was to discourage protests in Sproul Plaza itself, since they would largely be drowned out. The Country Joe & The Fish appearances may be one of the first instances of a Lower Sproul concerts defusing a protest in Upper Sproul.
The Berkeley rock universe in 1967 was pretty different than most places. It bore some relationship to the nearby San Francisco rock scene, but it was still its own animal. Playing for free was an essential part of success, not just to establish credibility but to make new, paying fans. In that respect, free concerts in Berkeley were a forerunner of the conventions of making music on the internet 40 years later. This post will take a narrow, rather than broad, look at Country Joe & The Fish's May 23, 1967 performance on Lower Sproul Plaza, and how it illustrated the larger issues surrounding live music in Berkeley.
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| Ron Reister photo of Dr King speaking on May 17, 1967. This is Sproul Plaza ("Upper Sproul"). The Student Union is in the background. Pauley Ballroom is on the second floor, rear and to the right. Lower Sproul is behind and below it, but not visible |
Sproul Plaza vs Lower Sproul
Articles and histories of protest at the University of California at Berkeley always mention Sproul Plaza. Sproul Plaza is the paved, central area of the UC Campus, built in the 1950s as a pavilion-like entrance to the classroom areas of the University. Sproul Plaza, named for former Chancellor Robert Gordon Sproul (1930-52), is right in front the administration building, Sproul Hall. Sproul Hall is on Bowditch Street, abutting the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues. Telegraph Avenue extends Southwards, away from campus. It is the "main drag" of campus life, with pizza, record stores, espresso joints, clothing shops and all the other essentials of a large state University.
Berkeley's Free Speech Movement had reached a crisis in Fall 1964, and all the action centered around Sproul Plaza. One of the principal issues was whether UC students had the right to use Sproul Plaza to assemble and protest. The University tried to ban speakers in Sproul Plaza, but it didn't go well. Sproul Plaza got in the National news, and the plaza became a regular venue for protest. The University, by objecting to the Free Speech Movement, accelerated the very phenomenon they were trying to stop. Sproul Plaza became a destination. When Martin Luther King, Jr spoke at UC, he spoke in Sproul Plaza, the fulcrum of the Free Speech Movement.
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| The Saturday, May 22, 1965 SF Chronicle ran a photo of Lower Sproul, with the smug caption "At least one co-ed slept in Lower Sproul Plaza during speeches." They reported that crowds between 20 and 7,000 heard the speeches (crowds varied as classes started and ended) |
If you actually attend or work at UC Berkeley, however, "Sproul" has a broader meaning. The main plaza, where Mario Savio and Dr King spoke, is known as "Sproul Plaza" or sometimes "Upper Sproul." Down a staircase to the West of Sproul Plaza is an entirely different pavilion, known as "Lower Sproul." Lower Sproul is surrounded on four sides by huge concrete sixties buildings: the cafe (the Golden Bear), the student union building (now the MLK building), Eshlemann Hall (holding student offices) backing on to Bowditch, and Zellerbach Auditorium (the 2000-seat hall on the West side of Lower Sproul). In general UC usage, "Sproul" encompasses both the upper and lower Sproul, as in "we can meet at Sproul after class."
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| An August 2009 photo of The Bear's Lair, just below Pauley Ballroom on the 2nd floor. The photo is taken from the back of Lower Sproul, near the cafe (Zellerbach is behind the camera to the right) |
Lower Sproul was put together in the mid-sixties. Zellerbach Auditorium was the last piece, opening in 1968. In 1967, the area that is now Zellerbach was a mostly grass softball field. Still, Pauley Ballroom, which was on the second floor of the Student Union building, and The Bear's Lair, the coffee shop/beer joint below it, had been functioning since the early 60s. But I think that Lower Sproul only became a "place" in about 1965, and was built up the next few years.
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| A flyer for the San Jose Be-In, at a practice field across from Kelly Park (at 10th and Alma) on May 14, 1967. Bands included Country Joe & The Fish. |
Folksingers were a common site at protests, so they were common in Sproul Plaza. Joan Baez, already a popular recording star, sang on the steps of Sproul Plaza in 1964. If there was a microphone and a speaker for speeches, a folksinger with a guitar could make an appearance too. Rock music was a different thing. Rock bands have multiple amplifiers, they need good power sources, and then the microphones needed to have amplification as well. During the infamous Sproul Plaza "Teach-In" on October 15, 1965, Joe McDonald had played solo in the morning at Lower Sproul. In the afternoon, on Upper Sproul, an ur-version of Country Joe & The Fish played, but the band played acoustic, "jug-band" style.
The Grateful Dead had initiated the practice of playing for free in the park, to publicize a paying gig in the evening. They began doing this in Vancouver (on August 5, 1966), but had brought the practice back to San Francisco. 1966, the Dead had regularly played at Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park, and at "The Panhandle," a grassy area in the Haight-Ashbury (between Oak and Fell) that adjoined the Park. Country Joe & The Fish may, in fact, have been the first electric band to play the Panhandle in August, 1966.
Bands in Berkeley started playing for free in the main City Park, which the hippies called Provo Park (actually it was named Constitution Park). It was unsanctioned, but the city couldn't really stop them. Bands also played for free in Upper and Lower Sproul Plaza, often as part of a protest or rally. There were rallies and protests every week in Sproul, sometimes every day, so there were plenty of opportunities. If someone brought a generator, an electric band could plug in and play a little bit. It was how Berkeley bands got known. It wasn't cynical, since every band member was opposed to the Vietnam War or in favor of civil rights, so they were supporting righteous causes when they played.
The Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967 was an attempt to merge Berkeley politics with Fillmore music. It made free concerts A Thing, but those concerts drowned out--sometimes literally--efforts to organize political action. Hippies loved the idea of afternoon music for free in sunny California, but they didn't really want to hear a speech about The War. There had been Be-Ins up and down the West Coast. Country Joe & The Fish had performed at one in Vancouver (March 26) and one in San Jose (May 14).
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| The back cover of Electric Music For The Mind And Body, the May 1967 Vanguard Records debut of Country Joe & The Fish |
Electric Music For The Mind And Body-Country Joe & The Fish (Vanguard Records May 1967)
Country Joe & The Fish had "gone electric" in early 1966. The band played any and every venue in Berkeley, since they were about the first rock band anyway. They had also self-released a self-produced EP, sold at Moe's Books on Telegraph Avenue, so they were the first Berkeley band to record, too. They were also the first Berkeley band to play The Matrix, then first to play the Avalon and the first to play The Fillmore. It goes without saying that they were popular in Berkeley. As recently as February 1967 Country Joe & The Fish had played Lower Sproul.
By May 23, however, things had changed. Vanguard Records had signed Country Joe & The Fish in December 1966, and the band had spent January 1967 recording. In early May, Vanguard released the band's debut album, Electric Music For The Mind And Body. The album was one of the first albums released by a band from the Fillmore/Avalon scene, and it was an instant psychedelic classic. The song "Not So Sweet, Martha Lorraine" was being played on Top 40 radio. The world's first underground FM rock radio station, KMPX-fm, was live 24/7 in the Bay Area. KMPX (106.9) was the first station to broadcast album tracks. Electric Music For The Mind And Body was one of those albums.
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| The Los Angeles Times published a picture of fans dancing to the New Delhi River Band in Lower Sproul on June 4, 1967. The caption smugly notes "Free Speech Movement has to switched to dance movement on Sproul Plaza." Incidentally, this is the only known photo of the New Delhi River Band in concert. |
On May 23, 2,000 or more rock fans had shown up to see Country Joe & The Fish in Lower Sproul. The band probably had the foresight to bring a few more amps than they had in the past, so they were probably louder than before. The net result? A rally encouraging UC students to resist the draft was drowned out. The conservative Oakland Tribune, which hated all the hippies anyway, crowed about it (above). To some it seemed just desserts, long-haired hippies foiling a protest by other long-haired hippies. Country Joe & The Fish would not play another free concert in Lower Sproul. Whether or not Joe and Barry thought they'd been tricked into undermining a protest that they agreed with, the band was suddenly too large to play a free concert on campus anyway.
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| The Runaways were opening for Quicksilver at Keystone Berkeley on April 30, 1976. They played Lower Sproul Plaza that afternoon. They were the first professional band I saw that was my own age. |
Aftermath
I arrived at UC Berkeley as a freshman in Fall 1975. There were concerts in Lower Sproul on more Fridays than not. Over my four years, I saw lots of great bands at noon, on my way to class. Among them were Merl Saunders' Aunt Monk, The Runaways, Talking Heads, the B-52s, Elvin Bishop and many others. When I arrived, my older sister, a senior at the time, assured me that the administration liked free concerts in Lower Sproul because they drowned out any protests in Sproul Plaza. Was that really a nefarious policy? Was there a secret committee (akin to the Dwinelle Hall Space Committee--those who know, know) noting the upcoming rallies, and checking the Keystone Berkeley schedule to see if the Runaways were available that day?
Probably not. Sproul Hall had its own agenda, certainly, but the idea that there was a master plan that wasn't budget related seems unlikely. Now, I'm sure there were some members of Administration who didn't object to the conflict, but at the same time there were probably faculty who objected to the loud rock music more than the protests. Around 1978, I was watching a pretty good band in Lower Sproul--a Nevada County band called Carrie Nation, kinda sounded like the Allman Brothers--and organizers of a rally in Sproul took over the stage and remonstrated with the students to come upstairs and join their rally. The band was friendly, but the crowd wasn't interested. I'm surprised it didn't happen more often, but by 1978 live rock music was ascendant at lunchtime in Lower Sproul Plaza.
For the Berkeley, Oakland and East Bay Rock History Navigation Tracker, see here
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