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This is an excerpt from a somewhat longer story of those times.
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Strawberry Fields Forever
Let me take you down
‘cause I’m going to
Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
-John Lennon, Strawberry Fields 1966
In August of 1970, we heard about a Canadian rock festival called
Strawberry Fields. It was to be held in Moncton, New Brunswick. Rumor
had it that one of the organizers was none other than Dr. Winston O
Boogie himself, John Lennon. Scheduled to appear were:
Procol Harum
Mountain
Jethro Tull
Jose Feliciano
Ten Years After
Sly and the Family Stone
Grand Funk Railroad
Alice Cooper (must be some female folk singer, eh?)
This could make up for missing Woodstock, just about a year earlier. By
this time the "Asbury Street People" were fully organized and we were
not about to miss this one. I will attempt a listing of those who were
there, in no particular order:
Anne Furlong
Keith S.
Curtis W.
Brian "Captain America" P.
Gary "Koko" C.
Billy G.
Katie F.
Nancy F.
Freddie S.
Twiggy
We set out hitchhiking in small groups on Tuesday or Wednesday, to give
us plenty of time to get there for the start on Friday. My traveling
companion for this trip was Keith S. from good old First Baptist
Church. We were all supposed to meet at Lake George, spend the night,
and head out again for Moncton, but Keith and I got a good ride that
went way past Lake George. We figured that we would probably get there
kinda early, but that was OK with us. What we did not know was that the
festival had been moved from Moncton to Mosport, Ontario, about 800
miles west!
The ear infection that I had picked up at Powder Ridge was in full
bloom by now. I remember waking up in a ditch by the side of the road
somewhere in Maine, shivering with a raging fever, and not believing
how cold it was in August. We were almost to the Canadian border in
Maine when some guy in a blue pickup truck (Stephen King, maybe?)
picked us up and told us about the festival being moved. We decided
that before we could hitch another 800 miles, we had to do something
about my ear infection. Someone told us that the nearest hospital was
in Quebec City, so that’s where we headed off to. In Quebec I got a
shot of penicillin and some eardrops for free. God bless socialized
medicine!
After Quebec City we headed west towards Mosport Racetrack near
Toronto. I had a raging fever and was sleeping a lot, so Keith was
doing most of the hitching with me lying on the shoulder of the road.
Must have been quite a sight! I woke up once on the side of a busy
highway near Montreal and found that we had company, a hooker on the
run from the Mafia who had gotten dropped off on the same ramp as us.
We finally arrived at the festival on Saturday afternoon (so much for
being early) and snuck in though a well used break in the fence. The
first person from Asbury Park that we met there was Anne. We were
playing Frisbee while "Strawberry Fields Forever" was playing over the
stage sound system. Curtis was traveling with Anne, but Frisbee was a
little too physical for his condition, and I’m not sure he was even
with us. Anne filled us in on who was there, the acts we had missed the
previous night, (Jethro Tull, Mountain…) and how they had found out
about the change of venue when they regrouped in Lake George. We set
about finding some refreshments for the nights festivities. I think
what I wound up with was Psilocybin and LSD, but do you ever really
know?
The performers for the night were Jose Feliciano, Procol Harum, and Alice Cooper.
I think that the Psilocybin was just about kicking in when Feliciano
took the stage, and I am sure that I was peaking when he launched into
an amazing version of "Hey Jude". I was lying on my back, watching the
stars. It seemed that the sky was an immense multidimensional
polyhedron with a different colored star at each vertex. I thought back
to the other times I had listened to that song, the night before high
school started, Menlo Park, and my first psychedelic Romilar
experience. I took stock of my situation, in this beautiful place with
Anne at my side, and I decided that "Yes indeed, Mr. McCartney, I
remembered to let her under my skin, and we are beginning to make it
better."
At this point I think that Anne, Brian P., and I were the only one’s
left awake from our group, since there were some folks selling sleeping
pills as Psychedelics (wonder where the Kilpatricks were). We were
waking people up to point out high points of the show, but they would
be up for a song or two, and then fall back to sleep.
Procol Harum were next, and they were great. "Whiskey Train" rocked,
and they finished with "A Salty Dog". That was one of my favorite songs
at the time, and I think that Anne may have first developed a taste for
those guys after hearing it under those conditions.
Next up was Alice Cooper.
Definitely not a female folk singer.
After the peacefulness of Jose Feliciano and Procol Harum, Alice Cooper
was a shock to all systems. He was a crazed, demonic presence on the
stage. He was doing things with screen doors and rubber chickens, and
the sound was phenomenal!! We watched him raise the dead with "Black
Juju", and then came "Fields of Regret".
The main part of the crowd was in a valley with the campers spread out
over the hills on either side. We were watching from the hill on stage
right, about a quarter of the way back. The valley was full of smoke
from campfires, cigarettes, etc., and the lighting guys were having a
great time with it. At one point during the song they turned the entire
valley a deep crimson red, and with all of the people dancing, it
looked like a vision of the inner circle of Hell, complete with bodies
writhing in the Lake of Fire.
All in all, a pretty intense religious experience (give me that old time religion).