California Jam Story - PART ONE - by: allen pamplin
Hello, my name is allen pamplin,
The California Jam - on April 6th, 1974, was a large concert event held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario California. It was my first professional rock and roll concert I had ever been to. I was 15 years old at this time, in ninth grade going to Nobel Junior High in Northridge California. Prior to the concert, I didn't know anything about the event, or even knew I was going until 3:00 pm Friday April 5th, 1974. That's about 19 hours before the concert started. I don't remember why I didn't know anything about the concert. I found out later that all my friends knew about the event before it took place. Possibly one reason I didn't know about the event is I may have been too focused on my girlfriend at the time, a real beauty name Laura Roelke. Also, I was a real Pot-Head in those days, and a slight recluse in my black light room. I listened to old beat-up eight track tapes of Sabbath and Floyd while I painted with fluorescent enamel paints on my bedroom walls. Maybe these attributes had something to do with me not knowing about the concert until the last moments.
I remember walking home with Laura from school on that Friday. When Laura and I reached my house I see my brother Karey loading up the family Country Squire station wagon. He looks me and yells, "Come on Allen, we're going to the California Jam!" I remember getting excited about it, and my girlfriend saying, "You better not f**k around with anyone there". Hell, she even knew about the California Jam. Laura continued to walk home (as if she had a stick up her ass) and said, "Have a good Time". As I walked up the driveway I thought, "What the hell is the California Jam?"
Karey and I made ourselves ready to go, and hooked-up with a couple of his friends; Bill Haymore and Dave "what's-his-face". I knew Bill, he was my brother's friend. Bill was a 6’5” tall black brother with one of those big "Mod Squad" hairdos. His height and hairdo would later serve to help keep our group together at the concert. I just met Dave what's-his-face, he's Bill's friend. I found out that night Dave is a concert pianist. Before we left for the Jam we met up at Dave’s home, Bill had Dave play one of his compositions on his piano for us. I wish I could remember Dave's last name, he was an outstanding piano player. Then just before we headed for the concert Bill made a comment I'll never forget. He uttered something to the effect that someone is going to get killed at the show. I thought to myself, "People die at these things?" I remember all three of them discussing what bands were going to play, the size of the show with 200,000 people being there, and someone is going to get killed at the concert. As we headed out I remember thinking, "Killed? Why the f**k did I agree to go to this f**king show?" By the time we started traveling down the road, I thought of seeing Sabbath there at the concert. I think that's when I decided seeing Black Sabbath was worth getting killed for.
I don't remember much about the drive. We drove to Ontario from San Fernando Valley in separate vehicles. My brother Karey and I drove in a Ford Country Squire, and Bill and Dave in a Van. I'm amazed we managed to stay together during the drive. We arrived at the speedway parking-lot (west end) at about 10:00 or 11:00 pm. I don't remember it being that difficult to park, plenty of body traffic here and there at the time. Later I understand it was impossible to park in either of the two speedway parking lots because of inadequate parking-personnel. Both the east and west parking lots turned into a huge cluster-f**k. But at 10:00 pm or earlier you could still get a parking spot, even though there were thousands of cars and bodies already there. I would estimate about a quarter of the entire audience was there in the speedway parking-lots the night before. I wouldn't say we were exactly an audience at that point. We appeared to be more like a mob of lost travelers that migrated to this remote party in the middle of nowhere.
The parking lot with cars and people everywhere was a scene to behold. I've been to a lot of San Fernando Valley parties in those days, but nothing quite compared to this partying chaos. I'm with my group in the west parking lot and everything I'm seeing here, I assumed, is going on at the east parking lot of the speedway just one mile down the road on the opposite end of the speedway. Talk about a Friday night party in the early seventies! Each parking lot is approximately a 175 acres of dirt-grass field with the potential parking of about 25,000 cars.
I started to walk around the parking lot and check the place out before the speedway gates opened up. It was a little overwhelming walking between poorly lit rows of cars, along with people in the thousands wondering around. It looked more like field-party with drugs everywhere. You could buy drugs from almost anyone there and use it right out in the open. I can see drug deals going on all over the parking-lot with people partying out of cars, trucks and side doors of vans. Some vehicles had "drugs for sale" signs posted on their vehicles. Imagine the biggest street party that you have ever been to in the 70's, and multiply that by 1000. No kidding, at least a thousand.
When I reached the first bon fire... and I'm not talking about some small campfire. When I say bon fire, I mean BON FIRE! This bon fire, (one of many that night), had at least a couple of trees in it. I later found out there were a bunch of railroad ties in the field that stoners and hippies were gathering to set-up these bon fires there that night. I became more relaxed when I joined the first circle of fifty or so people around the fire smoking pot, waiting for the speedway to open. Seemed like a bunch of friendly mellow people, excited and wanting to have a good time. You're huffing and puffing and passing it along, and then you move-on to see what else is going on. I remember some guy who looked like a homeless Jesus coming up to me with his hand out. I thought to myself, "Sh*t… here we go, my first religious lecture of the night". Instead, he asked me for a dime. I thought, "What the f**k? A dime?" Bill Haymore said, "Multiply a dime by 200,000 people". Our homeless Jesus probably had more money than anyone there.
Some time during our parking lot adventure, my brother Karey scored a couple of hits of mescaline for two bucks a piece. They turned out to be some green spice s**t in gel-caps, nothing happened. Good thing I'm sure, otherwise I probably wouldn't be writing this little story. I remember thinking, "Whoa man, we're gonna be trippin". An hour goes by and we check with each other on the effects, "Anything?". "Uh, I think so, not sure". Nothing happened, and your left wondering what the hell that green s**t in the capsules is.
The gates opened around 1:00 am, and everyone started migrating toward the entrance. Hell, who knew were that was? It was dark and all you did was be a cow and follow the person in front of you; and god only knows what state-of-mind they're in. Somehow we were in a tunnel under the track and into the infield of the speedway. There was no line and the open gate. A guy looked at my ticket, tore it, and in I go into this big well-lit open infield.
From far away I could see the rainbow on the stage. That was the first thing I remember focusing on as I walked across the vast open field. I was amazed, in a dream-like state in all that space. My brother kept saying, "Come on, we got to catch up with those guys!" Dave and Bill were already about fifty feet ahead of us. They were in the mix of people who are sparsely laid out on blankets. We quicken or pace to catch-up, but our pace quickly slowed due to the thickening of the crowd as we got closer to the stage. Now I have to watch my step as we work our way toward Bill and Dave in-between thinner spaces. I'm constantly shifting my attention between looking down so I don't step on anyone, and looking up for Bill and Dave. Karey and I had to stop from time to time and look to see where the hell they were. You could very easily lose someone in this crowd. Bill's height and Mod Squad hairdo was our only beacon that helped us find them at all. Bill and Dave were so far ahead of us that there was no way for us to spot them, except for Bill's big black brother fro.
This is our make-or-break point on how we were going to spend the rest of the day at the Jam, up front with our friends or back here separated. We just said, "F**k it!" and started walking on blankets and over people. Sometimes stepped on people’s hands too, and headed straight for them.
We finally caught up with them behind the mixing tower that is slightly left of center stage. Now the decision from here is to go right or left of the tower. We went left, and around in front of the mixing tower, and up next to the fence at the press enclosure. The fence had brown canvas tied to it that obscured some of the view near the stage. We stood and looked around and said, "Yeah, this looks good", and sat down. It's now about 2:00 am with the stage in front, the camera crane to the right, and the mixing tower behind us with a s**tload of people all around relaxing, partying and waiting for the show to begin. This is where I held my ground for the entire concert, twenty-one hours before my next p**s break.
It is still dark, but the stage and infield area are well lit. The stage rainbow stood bright from the ambient lights. As I looked around I noticed cameras with ABC & TAV logos on them. (I later found out TAV stands for Trans-American Video, and this is where ABC rented some of the stage cameras). This is also when I learned the show might be recorded for television because I knew nothing about this concert before the last 12 hours. I was pretty excited to be there, and thought I could be in some of the shots during the concert. I started to feel more comfortable being there, everyone working on the show appeared to know what they were doing. I think it was at this point I had more confidence of not getting killed here at the speedway; they definitely had my support of that.
As the night went on all you can really do is look around and "People Watch", and talk with your friends. I think I was impressed with the speaker towers the most. They looked so tall standing there and being that close to them. I couldn't just look at them, I had to look "up" at them. The stage rainbow was just as memorable and beautiful to look at. All you can do is wait for the sunrise; people watch; listen to emcee Don Branker talk to us at times in the night, and hope for a doobie to come your way during the next few hours.
Still dark around 4:30am, you could slightly feel some impatience start to swell with all of us so closely standing around and looking at each other. We started to put our attention on what was going on behind the canvas covered fence in front of us. I watched at least a dozen people cut holes in the canvas, tearing around the links with their fingers to widen the opening. People wanted to see what was going on, some kind of visual update with the show. The canvas started to look like Swiss cheese in some areas. I remember looking through the holes from a distance, but I couldn't see much. The cutting came to an abrupt stop for a moment when I saw four 18 inch wooden dowels thrown over the fence into the crowd. Still to this day, I don't know what the purpose of that was. I speculated it was to divert attention from the fence, or maybe to let people know they didn't appreciate the hole cutting in the canvas. A short time later the hole cutting continued, with a few retaliating kicks coming from the other side of the fence. The cutting stopped apparently after enough canvas holes were cut, and as the sky began to light up.
At 5:00am as the skies began to light, sound man Jim Gamble pumped the first musical sounds through the 54,000 watt Tycobrahe PA sound system. It was the original 2001 Space Odyssey track. The sound system was spectacular, the best I ever heard. You wouldn't believe how loud it could get and remain so clean. It was nice to hear any music after the long wait through the night. From that point on it was recorded music until the first act, still over four hours away. I still remember the Steely Dan song; "Rikki Don't Lose That Number". They must have played that song a hundred times throughout the day. It sounded fantastic; you could hear every detail in the music.
Meanwhile we would talk about the acts on the show. We didn't know which one would come on first. No one had a program that listed the activities of the day. It felt like one long free for all intermission between the parking lot spectacle and the first act. I think at this point all you could really do was make the best of it, and people did. I just "people watched" and smoked pot. Bill Haymore had all the pot, and real stingy about it too. Probably a good thing I guess, because that conservatism helped our "smoke" last throughout the day. If it was my bag of w**d I probably would have smoked it all before the first act. That's just how I was in those days. If I had some w**d I wanted to smoke it all, and right f**king now; especially if it was someone else's bag of s**t. I couldn't help it in those days; life for me was just too much fun in 1974.
As I sat and watched, I remember pathways would form. People always seemed to be on the move throughout the early morning. You would have body traffic next to you for a while, and then suddenly the path would change, then go in other directions. Sometimes the body traffic would change because someone would stop dead in their tracks on the path. They either stopped and smoked pot with someone, or looked at something and began to space-out on it with that all too familiar distant stare. I remember this one guy who did that, he was moving along and then stopped to do his freak show. People in both directions changed the path-flow just to get around this guy. He just stood there in a crouched position, wearing a red faded bandana with dirty Levi pants and coat. He looked like a burned-out leftover from the sixties; you know, old and drug scared. His hands were clinched with nothing in them. His eyes glazed, with a bearded smile that seemed to be for no one in particular.
Occasionally his head would slowly pan to the left, and then to the right. He looked like he had been at a thousand of these shows in the same clothes. He stood slightly crouched, his body slowly bobbing up and down with his hands clinched. He looked lost if you know what I mean, but never the less appeared to be very much at home. I told my brother to check this dude out. Karey with widen eyes said, "Whoa, what's his problem”? In his body position and slowly bobbing up and down I replied, "I think he's dancing". You would see stoners like this all through the night and early morning. Finally at 9:45am we heard the words from emcee Don Branker, "We are ready".
(END OF PART ONE)... allen pamplin
