In search of a great Woodstock band, Dylan and riding with Van Morrison
1969, I was 18 about two months. My brother Tony Brown had moved to Woodstock that June with his band, The Montgomeries.
1969, I was 18 about two months. My brother Tony Brown had moved to Woodstock that June with his band, The Montgomeries. I'd just gotten back from this crazy cross-country trip to California which ended in a car crash (pretty bad one, car totalled but no one badly hurt in Arizona). They told me they'd met this Van Morrison guy at some festival in Woodstock — the real Woodstock festival as opposed to the one at Bethel. Astral Weeks was out and Van was working on Moondance. Of course we all knew who he was more from Brown Eyed Girl than anything.
Anyway, Van was real into them and they were doing the band living altogether in a house in the country thing, trying to get noticed and they were.
Van would come over and play with them and was trying to produce them in their living room. Somewhere someone has a tape of The Montgomeries more or less produced by Van, with him playing drums.
Van was the stereotypical Irish drinker. BIG DRINKER. He would finish a 5th of Whiskey all by himself and send someone out for more. He's real short, maybe even shorter than Bob Dylan and they would call him the dwarf behind his back.
Van lived on Ohayo Mt. Rd which is on the outskirts of Woodstock down the roaf from Bob. His wife (Janet Planet) later wrote that he lived on that road because Bob lived on that road.
I would borrow a car and go cruising by where I knew Bob lived. You couldn't see the house from the road, the driveway wasn't marked — just a long dirt driveway and a big barren field and woods hiding where he lived. You never saw him, but his presence dominated Woodstock. Occasionally you'd see other guys from The Band driving around. Garth in his Mercedes, Rick in a maroon '54 Continental, the kind with the wheel cover on the trunk, and a porthole window on the sides in the back just like an early T-bird.
The guy's in the my brother's band would tell me that just about every week you'd see another Band car wrecked down at the gas station. You never saw Robbie Robertson. One time I was in the Bearsville General Store/Post Office buying smokes and I was going out as he was coming in. It being the country, there was just one door and his vibe was intense — totally "I know you know who I am and you're not gonna say anything." I didn't, but I did notice the car he was driving. An old blue Ford Station Wagon that I'm pretty goddamn sure was the famous Ford Station wagon that Dylan drove across the country in on his '64 tour.
Anyway, cut to Halloween weekend, '69. I'm up there visiting, had probably just arrived and it's the day before Halloween and Van calls up and says he's doing a concert with The Band the next day in Boston at the Boston Symphony Hall (which is like the equivalent of Avery Fisher or Carnegie but real old like the Philly Academy of Music). He says that two people can come along.
By this time I'd met Van a few times. I still don't know how the hell it happened, but I ended up being one of the two along with the group’s lead singer Dave Gershen.
So the next day me and The Montgomeries' lead singer, Dave Gershen pile into Van's sax player Jack Schroer's rather large '64 Olds, along with the flute player Colin Tilton and drive to Boston. Dave Gershen had spent the previous night prepping me. Some of the guys in the band would be like walking on eggs around him sometimes especially if he’d been drinking. They were sort of terrified of Van the way people who work for Dylan are terrified of him. Like Bob, Van has a tendency to erupt. But what did I know? I was 18, and we had at the very least a 250 to 300 mile ride ahead of us. So I'm asking him what he thinks of Johnny Cash. "Fuck Johnny Cash." "Fuck Dylan too." (Of course the real truth was like everyone else he idolized Dylan.)
We finally get to Boston — my first time there, park somewhere near the hall, and before the car is parked, Van is saying, "Where's the package (liquor) store, where's the package store?" We get out of the car and start walking around looking for a store. Now Van has this extremely thick Belfast accent, and at first it's hard to understand what he says. It's hard to describe on paper, but it's like if he says the name Dave, he pronounces it "def." So we're walking down the street, and it's twilight and starting to get dark and halloween and this guy comes down the street in a bear costume and Van leaps about 7 feet sideways.
We finally get to the hall, and Van goes into his dressing room and proceeds to get completely crocked — and they're doing two shows, like a 7:30 one and a later show at 10 or 10:30. His band is pretty much the Moondance band, except there's no guitarist at this show. The Band are there by this point and they keep popping in and out of the dressing room. Me and Dave are being very quiet and pretty much pretending we're not there. Robbie is wearing white loafers. Van finishes his set and me and Dave go watch The Band.
Meanwhile Van is in his dressing room with some groupie getting insanely drunk. Even though Van lived in Cambridge, Mass., before moving to Woodstock, the audience barely knew who he was. By the 2nd show, Van was totally ripped. The audience is pretty much freaking. The only song they know is “Brown Eyed Girl.” He ends the show singing "Cypress Avenue" lying down on the stage of the Boston Symphony.
After the show, he says the Band is having a party at the Boston Sheraton, so we go over there. Maria Muldaur and some other people from the Boston folk community are there, along with Band road manager Jon Taplin who I used to listen to on the radio back in New Jersey — he had a folk show from the Princeton Station, and worked part time for Albert Grossman even then as road manager for the Kweskin Jug Band.
He had a great show and was cool to listen to Because he'd always have inside dope on Bob. Anyway, Rick Danko is the only one who shows up. Again me and Dave are just watching. Someone offered Rick some coke and he turned it down saying it hurt his nose (in a few years that would change). He and Van start talking. He says to Van, "Van, we have to get together back in Woodstock. We sure could party good together Van. Van, you ever play chess or checkers?"
Van didn't say much about the chess or checkers, but at some point said to
him (jokingly) "Shut up you fucking German."
At some preposterous time like 4:30 in the morning or something, we started back to Woodstock, Rick saying, "Van why didn't you tell me you didn't have a room, man?" So we're on the Mass Pike and the flute player is sitting in the shotgun seat in the front puking out the window, and me Van and Dave are in the backseat with me in the middle and the whole way back, Van is talking about the groupie back at the show, saying, "I should've fucked her right there, should've fucked her right there on the fucking table." 250 miles of "Should've fucked her right there."
Finally we get to the last toll booth on the NY State Thruway and even I had to dig in my pocket for change to pay the toll. I should've known right there not to go into the music business.
One winter’s night in my brother’s kitchen on the outskirts of Woodstock in a boro known as Shady, with one Belfast Cowboy we played poker for nickels and dimes in my brother's kitchen. Anyway, all of us (including him despite living on the same road as a certain songwriter from Minnesota) had no money. Van's method of playing poker was pretending (at least I think he was pretending) that he didn't know how to play. He'd pull out a full house or 3 of a kind and say in an even thicker brogue asked, “Is this sumthin’?” Needless to say, “the fucker won.
I got to know him pretty good and there was a time from '69 till “Tupelo Honey” (when he moved to California) that I could go to any Van show I wanted. If he came to Philly, I would go down to wherever the venue was, around soundcheck time and just walk in. The whole key to that kind of scene is acting like you're supposed to be there. For whatever reason, Van seemed to like me which astonished everyone else in The Montgomeries.
One time he played Philly at the last night of the original Electric Factory which was the major rock club here in Philly. It was the last night of the Factory and it was raining and leaking in. They had umbrellas on stage. Some people who were at the show invited Van to their house for a party. They lived in this real working class part of Philly. (This was around the time of Street Choir.)
Van went, and I got there ahead of him. They had all his albums out on display. I told them to put them away 'cause he doesn't like that kind of thing. I searched their record collection which sucked for something cool that he'd like. The funkiest thing they had was Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits, so I put that on.
It was this totally lame scene and he actually did show up. He didn't know where he was staying. "I think I'm at the Holiday Inn." So I call the Holiday Inn for him and confirm it. He asked me if I wanted to be his road manager. I told him I'd think about it.
For years I wondered if I should've done it, but his drummer at the time and and and off for years, Daoud Shaar now lives here — Daoud played with the Montgomeries briefly and had a little studio in Philly and mastered my album —I told him about that night which he remembered. He said I was right not to do it. A lot of the guy's in Van's band were junkies (Van wasn't), and he said, "All you would've been doing is scoring dope, and trying to get chicks for the band."
The last time I saw him to talk to him was at his show here at the Academy of Music right after St. Dominic's Preview came out. By then, he was living in California, but he still remembered me, and wanted to know how everyone was doing.
But after that he started playing much larger venues and I couldn't get back any more, it was just too much trouble. The last time I tried was during the Wavelength tour, where he was known to be in a fairly crazy state of mind, he walked off-stage at his NYC show.
Actually he did play here once in-between, but it was at the Spectrum (huge hockey arena) right after Veedon Fleece and I knew there was no way I’d be able to get back stage ‘cause Spectrum security were nasty fucks. He played the Tower during the Wavelength tour (Tower’s kind of like the Beacon). I sent a note backstage telling
him who I was, and a road manager or something came out and said, "Van
remembers you, but he's not seeing any one."
Van had this crazy, weird sense of humor and actually was fairly playful. But you never knew what he was gonna come up with. He'd say stuff like, “Fuck this rock and roll shit, I wanna open up a Fish and Chips store." At one point he hired a tutor to teach him history.
One time I was alone at my brother's house and he and Janet Planet showed up. Van was learning how to drive and had his learner's permit, so they drove me into town in their automatic shift VW Beetle. I don't know if he ever got a license, but I'm probably one of the only people in the world who can say they've been driven somewhere by Van Morrison.
When Bob played MSG with him in '98 my friend Seth Kulick and I went up and stopped at my brother's beforehand. My brother was talking about Woodstock and music. He said the thing you have to understand about Woodstock is everyone wanted
to be Dylan. Every songwriter wanted to be Dylan. Even Van, especially Van.
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This is the first time I’ve read your postings. I’m the same age as you and was 19 in 1969 on West Coast , different people. Similar scene. Loved the story. Keeping it real. Laughed out loud. Like my granddaughter tells me”You should write a book. I’d read it!”
Love the story, those are some rich memories, I've always been a big big fan of Van, but I could never align the stories with his talent. His music belies his behavior for sure.