 We want to welcome you, Eric Levin, second-generation San Francisco and musician. Welcome to the Haydash very oral history. I'd love to know a little bit about your beginning, where you were born, where you lived, your parents' full names. Do you have any brothers and sisters? I was born in San Francisco, and my sister, Ronella, lives in, there's a national now living, she's a country musician, and we came from a musical family in San Francisco here, and my mother was the piano teacher in our neighborhood here in San Francisco. We had four pianos in my house when I was young, and they started my violin when I was three years old, and I sang Italian opera in the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House when I was eight years old. I was the youngest boy in the San Francisco Boys' Choir at that time, singing it in the opera house. What was your mother's name? Ellen Kahn Levin, and she was a writer, and she wrote for the Scandinavian newspapers, she wrote an article. And then my sister was taken out of junior high school, because she was teaching piano as well. I mean, she would leave school junior high early to come home and have piano pupils, and then I started playing cello when I was eight years old, and then we traveled to Europe. My sister wanted piano scholarship to study piano in Finland, and I played cello, and she played piano and I played cello, and we performed for 800 people here on Venice Avenue. They hit her or something now, I don't know. Sure. How old were you then? I was eight or nine when we performed. Amazing. So no stage fright for you? I was wondering if, so you lived in San Francisco, and your parents lived in San Francisco, you were born in San Francisco, and what schools did you go to? We went to Florida Junior High School, and then Hillcrest Primary School, that's in the neighborhood, University Mound neighborhood over there, and then they bussed us over to Galileo High School, and then I went to San Francisco City College, and then to San Francisco State College, which was called at the time, San Francisco State University, I believe, and then we went to Indiana University, me and my sister, because it had the best music department in the country, so that's where we went there, and then I left there to go meet Bob Dylan in Woodstock, my junior year of college. Did you see Whitewood Stock? Yeah, I was backstage at Woodstock. Exactly. So you got a little muddy. I have a Woodstock story, I will save it. So that was about in the sixties, and so you were on the west coast, and then you came back to San Francisco. Right, we came back from New York City and Woodstock, I was staying in Woodstock, and then our friend Charlie Hitchings, Charlie Bouda, he was staying at Millbrook, as you were, and then we were all living in, we went to Big Sur, and my friend Patrick Kilroy, who got a record on Electra Records, and I did sound for him here in San Francisco, to committee in other places, and then we were all living in that house, trying to find out how to be rock and roll musicians, and that's when I met him. Our paths crossed, three days in San Francisco, and well, you know, music attracts music, you know. So we'd go to a pawn shop down in Third and Howard, it was a tough neighborhood, back then a skid roll, and I bought my first Stratocaster, and my first La Fender Amp, and we started learning that. Being rock and roll stars. Right, in a remote town, and all of a sudden... Snake skin boots, and... That came in second. Going to the, you know, go to the Avalon, and the Fillmore, and Winterland. Right, we heard it. It was like a time of rejecting the lifestyles of our parents, and society's values, and the time of experimenting with marijuana, and mind-expanding drugs like mescaline, peyote, and LSD, and these... And then there's a time of freedom, and the music was kind of an expression of this freedom, and as we got our minds blown with the drugs, it helped us to reject these other values of like war, and money, and conventionality, and that's... Tradition that didn't work. We were hanging around the University of California, the campus there, and the drummers, they were playing on hand drums, and dressing... We were dressing outlandishly, and with outrageous clothing. It was like an expression of rejecting their values of dress, and their beliefs. Or individuality. Self-individual expression. I'll do a little snippet. I would love to hear you play. Before you start, I'd love to ask you your first real memory of coming down H Street, because you were in San Francisco, but in the sixties, coming down H Street, and the spirit of the time. Well, as people were taking LSD, you could see the physical change in people's dress, and their hairstyles, and you could see it on Telegraph Avenue, and Berkeley, and on Haydash, very, you know, people were playing guitars, and their hairs were longer, and they were wearing t-shirts, and suits or anything, so you could visually see it as it was unfolding. Okay. What's the name of your song? I don't know who wrote this one. I think James Stowell or Crilly Jim wrote the words for this one. And I may have co-written it with him, and it was hard to remember who was doing what back there. It's a little snippet, you know, and part of that was about that, you know, the newspapers brought us down, and the news of the war brought us down, and, you know, we were ready to go to another planet, you know, but we created our own planet here in Haydashbury. We believed that we could end war forever. We believed that the music was going to change the world, and we believed this, and that's what was going on. You still feel this way? Or do you feel we're continuing and we're handing the baton? No, now I believe differently. Now I believe that we must continue the good fight towards having the world at peace, but there are, I don't want to use the word evil, but there are people who are less spiritually evolved who are running the government, and their motivation is after, you know, controlling oil and money, and they'll do whatever they have to do, and if blood has to be spilled to get that oil, that's what's going on, and I don't think we can, I think we can influence that. But then I believe that we were going to prevail, that it was going to be the end of wars forever, there will be no more wars on the planet, and now this hasn't, we haven't reached that point yet, but I mean, I still feel that the good fight is going on as much as it was in the 60s. There's many of the same feeling with many people who are doing this oral project, so that feeling is still alive. I am, I want to take you back to a time in the 60s, and H Street or Golden Gate Park on a sunny day, see someone watching this tape on New Dears from now who had no experience of it, and can only read a book or look at a picture, would love to have some of your insight of an evening when the street was closed, if you were over there, or anything that brings to mind, anything at all, that is part of this spirit that you're talking about in your song. Give the future, which will be seen as they see this, a visual picture through your words. Share some evening, share some rehearsal, share something, that something that can emboss in your memory is a great time. Well, I mean, I remember times when, you know, there was maybe 10 or 12 people of our friends that we all would be in a big circle, hugging each other, feeling this love and expressing it communally like that. I think the mind expand in drugs sometimes helped us feel that love, but also there was a feeling of oneness and love amongst the people there, and later when I lived on a commune in Santa Cruz, we would all hold hands in a big circle before we would eat every evening, so there was a kind of, we had a utopian vision. I know when a lot of people left the hate, they wanted to move back to the land and grow their own food and get back to nature. But you'd feel it most during concerts, like when the Jury Garcia and the Grateful Dead, they were all playing here on, they shut off Hate Street, right before the end of the beginning of the park there at Stanion, they set up their stage on the back of a truck, and as they would play, people would... Streets would fill up, people would come from everywhere. Streets were closed, no cars. No cars, you could see the expression of freedom in the way people were dancing and hugging each other and holding each other. You could feel the love actually there. And the Diggers was a group, a utopian group in the 1800s, I think, I'm not sure of the time period there in England where they had an utopian vision of moving back to the land and living in communes, and so the Diggers took their name and they were the people, when I came to the hate, I was sweeping the street because this was our home, the hate. And we were getting, there was a lot of empty apartments around the hate and we would go there and clean them up so that when people came for the summer of love that they would have a clean place to stay here. And I had no money and the Diggers would play with my rock band all day and then I'd go down to the panhandle and be able to have something to eat because the Diggers were providing free food for the artists and musicians in the late 60s here in the Hate Ashbury. Yep. Okay, I'm going to play another little thing then. Also, this was something I wrote. And... What are some of the people that you interacted with that you played with? I recorded with Jerry Garcia in the Pacific High Recording Studio and I remember it was David Russick, Flash, or England David, or Crazy David, and Jerry Garcia, Captain Trips and myself. I was singing and I was playing fiddle and mandolin on that session and truly Jim Stullero was... had written those songs for that session. He's a big guy. He'd pay for everything. And Jerry Garcia played pedal steel. What song did you play? Okay, I'll play that song from that session then. Okay. And pedal steel over this and it was about the time that Crosby and Nash, those guys, had to play pedal on their record. I'd love to hear it when you were playing it. That was a nice surprise. See, the real story was never told. The last song I'd do, the media reported to the public, but they never knew what it was like. The magic was so intense. The magic was so powerful that it cannot be described in words. Maybe in music, but I think it was stronger than that. It was intense magic and you had to be here and we can document all we want, and we can be there. And I know Way to Big says, if you remember, you weren't there. Well, I remember and I was there. No, it was intense magic. You never had to worry about what to eat. It came. You never had to worry about your clothes. They came. They only took care of each other. Right. And the diggers, all you need is love in action. They cared for people. They were cared for people. I'm feeding them. All you need is love in action. That kind of stuff, what they were. And so, I've talked about a lot of this stuff here. I do have this one other song that I want to do that kind of expresses some of the things that I'm talking about here. I didn't want to forget to mention you got married. What's your wife's name? I think she's musical as well. Holly Harmon and her stepfather, Art Cloak, he created Gumby and Pokey. And now we have Levin Winery we own. We're a certified organic vineyard and we make olive oil and wine. So you hit the earth. Right. The idea was when I took the Santos Pure LSD and I experienced the oneness that we were reading about in books like Doors of Perception by all those other things. We actually experienced the oneness and then after you've done that there's no way you can dump poisons into the soil. So now I'm on the good fight of protecting the soil, the air and the water in my organic farming practices in my olive oil and wine making. So we talked about it and now you're actually doing it. That's wonderful. I have a question before you play the song. I want to tune my guitar. Go on. If if the world the world coming from a place that we all were in the 60s if the world took your advice what would you tell the world? And say this tape is going to be seen in 100 years, which it will. If the world would take your advice and it would make a difference what you said what would you tell them? I would say that we have to be kind to everyone we meet and never hurt any human being on this planet because this paradise is here on earth and I believe and not after we die but I believe this is paradise and by being kind to everyone that we meet on this planet there would be no wars it just won't exist. That was wonderful. It just captures it all. It captures it all. Beautiful. I don't know whether you were prepared to play any more songs. I would love to hear another one. I would love to hear your memory, your documentation historically. We're over in the straight theater. You ever walk in and there's a picture of it behind you. We played there our band and it was pretty wild. We took our clothes off there and Ralph Gleason from the music critic for the Chronicle he was there and Dino Valenti sat in with us that night and he said it was like taking a nose dive into a meat grinder I mean we had three bass players it was pretty wild mad music. Not the only one I'm sure of that. But anyway it was we played and people danced and it was wild. And all these people appeared out of nowhere to carry our equipment we were living in Schrader and Schrader and between Hayd and Waller We were playing in our studio there I mean Dave Brown used to come by the jam from Santana and we had our Oregon player Al Rose and David Russick and Curly Jim we were there playing and all these people appeared and they just took our equipment they picked it up and they brought it down the street straight there everything was spontaneous out of the blue straight there I would love for you to finish with a song and something that anything of your choice some words this is a little different all in C here we're waiting we're waiting it's a privilege to have you it's obvious that you're giving them a gift the spirit you have that contributed to that period in that time I'm sure it's touched the Bay Area and the world and we want to thank you for being here and we will be inviting you back again thank you it's an honor to be part of this our pleasure thank you so much Eric