turned off his PA and recording equipment, so angry was he at the machinations of the Warners rep in robbing Stoneground of the chance to perform and the exposure that might have followed.


An LP of musical highlights from the tour did come out on Warner Brothers Records, but only in America. The sleeve notes announced that the whole experience had been undertaken as a “cosmic dash into middle America” and having seen the film and read the book – yes there was a book published about the whole trip as well – that phrase does just about sum the whole thing up.


Stoneground are represented twice on the soundtrack album. Once as themselves, performing a fiery version of Dylan’s ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry’, plus a solo song by Sal, the essential ‘Dreambo’.


about a thing babe, leave it to me,’ Tom would say. ‘You’ve done great’. ‘What have we done?’ was my question to myself.


“With each week that passed from then on we only played together at each free concert. No rehearsals. None of us were getting paid. It was only when we arrived in England and were taken to somewhere in Kent where a big tent was set up for us to play in, that we played our first paying gig, headlined by Pink Floyd. I can remember playing at The Roundhouse in London. It’s the concert where the picture on the back of the first album cover comes from. The photograph was taken just after Luther had vomited. He was sick in his hands then he just wiped his mouth with his sleeve and continued to sing ‘Have you seen my baby’.”


John Blakeley remembers an early gig where Stoneground played a free festival in Hyde


case of so far so good as everything we had done so far had been going down increasingly well. The band were hot and audiences loved us.


“When we went to Trident Studios in London it seemed like we were trying to squeeze King Kong into a Coke bottle. All we had experienced was outdoors playing. Trident was a red light sign, a cautionary example of what happens to a new band. I don’t recall exactly how it happened but very soon after arriving in England we needed a new bass player and were lucky enough to get Pete Sears for the job. Tom Donohue introduced him to us. Pete is one of the very few gentlemen in music that I have had the good luck to meet up with. So he became the second bass player to work with us.” Pete Sears, remembers it this way: “At Tom Donohue’s request, I joined on bass and keyboards. Prior to this, I had been playing


Diedre La Porte


The resulting movie turned out to be something of a disappointment for all involved. Despite the effort put into promoting it by Warner Brothers and the fact that Martin Scorsese was an associate producer, something failed to click with the movie-going public. Any dream of thousands of fans flocking to the cinemas like they had for the film of Woodstock were not to come true.


“Any normal sort of teenage combo might have become enraged by something like Freddie Weintraub’s The Medicine Ball Caravan ad campaign, where Warners stoops to hiring fake hippies to get out there on the psychedelic bus and promote this groovy movie, then sends them to one of its concerts (like the one we played at Pauley Pavilion) to pass out crappy little leaflets,” laughs Valentino. “Some old ordinary group might get pissed off at stuff like that, but we just sit round and say how lucky we are. After all, it could be worse... we could still be with MGM.”


England


“When Tom told me that we were going to make a record and maybe do it in London, I thought he was kidding,” states Valentino with a wry tone. “What were we going to record? When can we rehearse? ‘Don’t worry


Annie Sampson


Park. “We opened for The Animals and it was our first time playing with these huge stacks of amps. When we were in England, we recorded some sessions for BBC Radio. This happened on a few occasions and they were remarkable recordings I thought, as they were done on three or four track machines. I would really like to hear those sessions again, as they caught the sound and energy of the band really well.”


Not everything was going so wonderfully for the band though. Despite winning over audiences without the benefit of an album in the shops, Stoneground inadvertently fell foul of a few bands. John Blakeley recalls; “When we got to England, we met up with Rod Stewart and The Faces, possibly through the Pete Sears connection although I really don’t remember for sure, who made fun of us which was fine, but trashed an elevator in the hotel we were staying in and blamed it on us which was not fine.”


The First Album


“All of that history and much more besides went into the making of Stoneground,” explains Valentino. “We had a good time when we played together and that’s what gave us our confidence. I was game for recording with the band–we were ready. John was too, I think. As regards the rest of them, it was a


John Blakeley


with Leigh Stephens of Blue Cheer. We spent most of our time jamming and hanging out with friends and musicians at the Whale rehearsal rooms in Santa Monica. Mick Waller flew over from England to help us get a band called Silver Meter together. After rehearsing for a few months we moved north and spent two weeks in a small shack with no electricity, in the mountains of Big Sur. We then moved north to San Francisco where the band was managed by Tom. We recorded an album and did a few tours, but it was a short-lived band, even though we played well live. I had gone back to Britain to work on the Gasoline Alley LP by Rod Stewart and bumped into Tom who suggested that I join Stoneground. He told me that they were a travelling hippy band connected with The Hog Farm and Wavy Gravy. I ended up staying with them for a tour of Europe, some British shows and then went back to America with them to play a New Years Eve show with The New Riders Of The Purple Sage and The Grateful Dead in San Francisco.”


Tim Barnes, lead guitarist, also remembers that show. In an interview with www.Rock&Roll.com he said, “We played New Year’s Eve with The Grateful Dead and New Riders Of The Purple Sage at Winterland. We had gotten back from our


41


Photos courtesy of Brian Godula


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