Free White Bicycles by Joe Boyd Page A

we set about recruiting our ‘folk-rock super-group’. We started with Jerry Yester, a pleasant red-haired Californian with one good LP under his belt who could play electric bass, and the former Even Dozen Jug Band harmonica star John Sebastian. After adding Joe Butler, a drummer Yester and Sebastian knew, the final piece of the puzzle was Zal Yanovsky, a voluble Canadian who wrote, sang and played lead guitar. In a McDougal Street bar, I gave them a pep talk about what was happening in England. They looked dubious, but agreed to start rehearsing. After the meeting, Yanovsky and I eyed each other curiously. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere…?’ Out of context, it took a minute – he had grown a Beatle mop-top – but then it came back to me.
    In the summer of 1962, Warwick, Geoff and I had gone to Chicago on a blues expedition. We travelled back around the top of Lakes Michigan and Huron and, fuelled by a bottle of my mother’s diet pills, drove straight through to Toronto. With nowhere to stay and almost no money, we put in a collect call to the well-travelled Tom Rush to find out about possible crash pads.
    He gave us the address of Ian and Sylvia Tyson, a popular Canadian duo. Their place was dark, but the downstairs half of the duplex was buzzing with a party full of freaks. Geoff decided that Warwick and I were too square to lead the assault. ‘You guys have no idea how to mumble,’ he said, so we lurked in the shadows as he rang the doorbell, then conducted most of the ensuing conversation talking at his own left shoulder.
    ‘Yeah, man, like, you dig… Chicago, you dig… ahhh, no sleep… place to crash, you dig?’ all minimally articulated and barely audible. It worked. We were shown to a basement room filled with chrome and naugahide furniture pilfered from all-night laundromats. Our host spotted our new Big Joe Williams LP and insisted on hearing it. We were cross-examined about the Chicago blues scene and Club 47. By dawn, the Dexedrines had worn off and we were starving. Zal (for it was he) led us out into neighbouring streets where we confiscated freshly delivered bread, doughnuts and milk from front steps. The next day he took us to Yonge Street and taught us to play snooker. A few days later, when we had barely enough cash left for the two tanks of gas needed to get back to New Jersey, we popped some more pills and headed home. I thought Zal was just a hospitable freak; he never let on he was a musician.
    The plan was that once they got some original material together, Paul would sign the group to Elektra, finance getting them on the road and transform them into stars. As Paul’s sidekick, I had his assurance that he would figure out a suitable reward. I never doubted he would deliver.
    Yester and Butler’s interest soon waned. Rehearsals would peter out into Sebastian, Rothchild and I getting high, listening to the latest English imports and fantasizing about having a Top Forty hit. Capitol Records had signed Fred Neil and Richie Havens was making a record for MGM. The big boys were moving into the scene and we were getting left behind.
    I was still working for George. I liked the idea of being involved in the Newport Festivals the following summer, to say nothing of having a regular pay check, and I wanted to sell packages like the Blues and Gospel Caravan to colleges and concert halls. A bookers’ convention was taking place in La Crosse, Wisconsin, early in January, and George decided I should go. I would stop in Chicago, visit Muddy to get him on board and try to get the idea off the ground. It was made clear to me that without some bookings my job was unlikely to last through the spring.
    A couple of nights before my departure (by Greyhound bus – George’s budgets were always tight) I took a seat at the Kettle of Fish on McDougal Street for the New York debut of Son House, the latest blues legend to emerge from the mists of history. I joined a table that included Sam Charters, a hero