 I'd like to introduce you to Herman Eberrich, a local keyboard player born and raised in San Francisco. So, Herman, where were you in the 60s? Where was I? Exactly five blocks that way after high school. Which is that way? The Panhandle of San Francisco came there every weekend and enjoyed myself through the sounds and sights of 1965, that's when I graduated from high school. It was a great time. I wish time froze almost at that time. Hey, tell us a little more about yourself. Sure. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, I used to when I got out of high school I went to the California Hall, which had a lot of dances every Friday and Saturday night, met my wife at the time, Lonnie, and we would go to the Fillmore every Friday and have an apple up at the top of the stairs and pay a dollar to get in and see the best musical acts ever on the universe, you know, everything from Jimi Hendrix, this is the winterland of course also, Jimi Hendrix, Paul, actually the reason I'm in the music business is because of Paul Butterfield blues band, because I'd go up the stairs one night and I felt these chills all up and down the back of my spine, I had training as a child, you know, a little classical, but I never had that expression moment. That's when I knew. When I saw the Paul Butterfield blues band on that stage, just playing that great music and I just knew I want to be there sometime in my life and believe it or not, and about five, six years ago with the Cyclops blues band, I got on the same stage of the Fillmore auditorium and played the same song that I heard when I walked up the stairs when I was 18 years old and was called The Killing Floor. I remember that. Yeah, The Killing Floor and there I am on stage, prophesizing my own place to be and that was the magic of the 60s. Beautiful. Yeah. Tell me more about your experience in the Haydash Burry. Well, gosh, experience is the key word and there was plenty of it, I'm telling you. There was sandwood, tie-dye, patchouli oil, there was scents in the air, there was a cultural phenomena happening, a crusader of good feelings, of good thoughts, you know, save the world, peace, love and happiness and all those wonderful ideas that just coalesced right there in the panhandle and everywhere else we wanted to see the bands play because it was an expression of truth and purity. What about the BN? What about the BN? I went to the BN, it was a little too crowded for me, but I enjoyed going to the BN and all those things where you just saw people coming together to say human beings are better than what has always happened in the world, you know, festivals, plagues, wars, fame, all the garbage. So there was better ways of presenting oneself as a human being and that was the BN. Right. Were you here for the death of the hippie? The death in the nineteen-sixty-eight-sixty-eight-or-sixty-nine, nineteen-seventies, I think that was sixty-eight-or-sixty-nine actually. Yeah. And they had the coffin going down the street and to the far- Meaning that the flowered children, all of that was vanishing species that no longer existed. Exactly what we know isn't true. You can count that on a nineteen-sixty-three-cannadia session in nineteen-sixty-eight Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, of course, things got a little gloomy and all of the profiteers came in with the drugs, you know, made their money on the site and things got bad. The idealism was gone, but not the spirit. Right. Because I still got it. Me too. I also hear you dabble in other things besides playing music. Well, I do. I don't know. I'm pretty much consumed by music because I grew up with Gregorica Slystone's family drummer. Right. And I've been, you know, him and I had done production with Lee Oscar from the group War and that was many years ago, but music's a hard one to kick because basically that was the half-ingredient of the renaissance of the era we're talking about. Exactly. And so it's been always a hard one for me to kick and I've always loved it. And so as to other things, right now I'm just taking my mother's art. She was a ceramics art teacher and taking her paintings and making them. You know, I'm doing other art things, but basically there's nothing much to do except write poetry, which I have one of. Beautiful. In my best pocket. May I? You may. May I read this? I'll put this a while back about this era. Let me see how, you know, this is somebody else's poem. Okay. How did that get in my pocket? Okay, here it is. Okay. This is called Blowing in the Wind, obviously related to a great Polish song right here himself. Summer of Love. We were blowing in the wind, long hair, black lamp, incense, patchouli oil, dayglobe paints, tie-dye shirts, love beads and weed drilling your nostrils with THC, free bands in the panhandle, love ends, be ends and sit ends. We were changing all the time. We were blowing in the wind. Mind-altering, sugar cubes laced with purple-osly making stained glass windows in your mind, spelling out Lucy in the sky with diamonds all the time. The church of all mankind was forming. Sometimes I feel like going back in time to turn on, tune in, drop out. We were changing all the time. We were blowing in the wind. One last verse. Unchained and free in love, we shook the world and the world shook us. Two Kennedys, one Martin Luther King and a partridge in a pear tree. That was a little side. Thousands and thousands of brothers and sisters marching for peace for those who would never march again. It was a crime against the Bobby Soxers and the cool dudes with their pompadour and 57 Chevy's that drove to the levee. And most of all, to their children, their flower children of peace, love and happiness. And brother, have you got a place I can crash? We were changing all the time. We were blowing in the wind. We were hip to the trip of the light show trip at the Fillmore Auditorium. See you in the next world. Don't be late. Excuse me while I kiss the sky. And when you get there, light my fire, light my fire. And you know I want to take you higher and higher. All we need is love. Beautiful. You should put this to music. Well, that's true. I've done a lot of stuff in poetry and put it to music, but that one kind of stands alone. But anyway, it kind of sums up the feeling and the ambience of those times. It was really wonderful. And I thank everything in the spiritual universe that had happened to me. And I was there. It was really great. And we thank you, Herman. Thank you. And any last words before we end this? Well, like I said, if I was able to invent a time machine, I think all children up today should experience the good side of what we're talking about and how it really was in terms of its feeling amongst each other, how expressive we were, how we dressed almost like nature, flowers in the hair, day glow paints, patchouli oil, and all those tie dye colors that expressed everything that's in nature. It was really quite peaceful and loving, caring, and great. That's about it. That don't wrap it up. I don't know what to... But anyway, that was what I got up. And they should be able to, if I had a time machine, go back and experience it. I'm curious if you have any opinion of the artwork of the time. I think the posters... You couldn't read them. What about the community of people and the community of the music family during the 60s? And what was happening here, in your opinion, in the Haydash Berry? There was not really happening. It was little bits happening all over the world, but nothing like what was exploding here. What I can see out of it and describe is the fact that it was a tribal emergence. It was an emergence of, you know how our ancestral types, our art types go back all the way to the primitive times and you see villages and little tribes and stuff like that. And they had their little ceremonies and they had their little rituals and they had their spiritual moments. Well, basically it was an emergence in modern times of a tribal situation, of a tribal feeling amongst people, of a brethren, of a feeling of community, of hope, of everlasting peace. It was a flower, it was a bud that turned into a flower, exactly, of those times. And it was really actually going away from technology, going away from the way things are mechanically. It was going more to the soul, more to the heart, more to the reality of what is inside of human beings on the good side. And that means just, it was a great party. It was a great feeling, it was a great unplanned plan, if you know what I mean. Exactly. It was a great unplanned plan. It really had merit. It had great substance. And too bad it's in pockets now all over the world, but it still exists. And the San Francisco explosion was really grandiose. It was magnified by press, media, and it spread all over. And at that time it was the way to go. And it was just going back to huts and villages and campfires and singalongs. It was really quite simple and profound at the same time. How do you feel about the young people that gather and run to the hate today? Well, they don't know. They don't know what they're running to. See, we kind of knew what we were doing. We kind of knew we wanted to go there for the feeling of camaraderie and togetherness and dance and meet. Men meet, women meet. At that time we were all young and vibrant. So it was a great place to meet people and start stories, share stories, share ideas, keep the idealism going. I don't think that's where it's at today in the youth. They don't have that opportunity because they're so infused with these televisions and games. And there's too much technology and computerization in their world to make them understand the grassroots of what I'm talking about. Does that make sense? Makes sense to me. Well, thank you so very much. And thank you, and you look wonderful for somebody who graduated in 1965. Well, hey, don't spread it around.