It was a time of loud Harley’s, fast women and wearing tough like a favorite pair of Levies.
“Let’s go to the Hell’s Angels dance at the Avalon Ballroom,” Ben said. “Airplane’s playing.”
Any excuse to fly along the freeway on my dream machine, a custom chopped 56′ Harley panhead.
In San Francisco, we found ourselves at the end of a line of maybe a thousand Harley’s tightly parked, back wheel against the curb, both sides of the street for seven city blocks.
We locked our machines and made the seven-block power strut toward the Avalon Ballroom where I noticed a line of bloodied bikers sitting slumped against a wall. Angel
We carefully walked past the line when two Hells Angel line backers pushed through the front doors dragging a lump of bloodied flesh in leathers past us like a sack of grain.
Trying to ignore the obvious, we pushed through the front doors and into a scene so violently dangerous, we instantly backed against a wall while our tough guy persona turned and quietly waited outside.
The small foyer led to a wide stairwell, then climbed a flight to a tattered carpet landing. The stairs turned, then disappeared to the main floor where Jefferson Airplane was playing.
As we paid our five dollars, a bloodied biker was carelessly tossed over the rails and dropped six feet to the landing. The same pair of bikers we’d seen outside, laughed, climbed the stairs, grabbed him by the neck of his leathers and drug him out the front door. A moment later another body flew over the balcony. We were still standing backs against the wall, worry on our face.
When there was a break in the action, Ben and I scampered up the stairs and glued our butts to another wall next to a line of white-faced concert goers. While we all nudged our way toward the concert, three groups of drunken bikers stood separated in the hall until one drunken biker wobbled over to the Hells Angel faction and picked a fight. The entire group piled on him with fists flying, then carelessly tossed him over the rail. It was their kind of fun.
With studied smiles and butts against the wall, Ben and I inched our way out of that room and into the music hall. Once we stepped through the door, the biker tension disappeared and three hundred music goers listened to Jefferson Airplane. When they finished, the room roared. The next act was Janice Joplin an unknown blues singer who belted out a set that left me standing slack jawed. I heard live recordings were made of that night.
Late into the night, long before the party was over, Ben and I slipped past the drunken bikers to the relative safety of the outside, reconnected with our tough guys and drove home.
It wasn’t long after that evening that Janice went by the way of other great entertainers of her time. She died living fast in a period of overindulgence with dangerous drugs.
I survived, but looking back, I don’t know how.