Rockers jam in honor of ‘Keystone Freddie’
The topless bar did not work for Freddie Herrera, even though his labor cost was low, with his wife doing the dancing. So he took up the offer of a local blues singer to try music for just one night a week at the Keystone Korner in North Beach.
That singer was Nick Gravenites of the Electric Flag, and he brought in Mike Bloomfield. Then came Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia. That was the end of topless dancers at the Keystone Korner and the beginning of “Keystone Freddie,” a beloved concert promoter who never set out to be one. The Keystone Korner led to the Keystone Berkeley, the Keystone Palo Alto and the Stone SF on Broadway, and that family of nightclubs kept a lot of musicians working from the late 1960s through the early ’90s.
Herrera died quietly of liver and kidney failure in late March at a hospital in Mountain View at age 84. But the performers couldn’t allow a quiet end for the man who always provided the best sound system in Bay Area rock. So Sunday afternoon they gathered at the Great American Music Hall to send him off loudly into the night, with the musicians playing for free to honor a nonmusician who always made sure they got paid.
“Back in the day, everybody felt like we were part of the Keystone family,” said Greg Kihn, who has been touring all summer with Rick Springfield and gave up a rare Sunday off to bring his entire band in from Dublin. “Freddie was a rock ’n’ roll supporter who just wanted to make music come into everybody’s life.”
Also on Sunday’s bill were Elvin Bishop, Roy Rogers, and members of Sly and the Family Stone, Earthquake, the Rubinoos, and Psychotic Pineapple. About 375 musicians and rock management and production types came in from as far as Thailand, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey. By 5 p.m. the ornate hall at O’Farrell and Polk was packed downstairs and upstairs, with Herrera ever smiling in a slideshow above the stage.
“Freddie was an honest man, which is rare in this business,” said Gravenites, 80, who came from Occidental on Sunday and got up onstage with his walking stick to testify on behalf of Herrera. “I never saw him cheat anybody.”
No other promoter, not even Bill Graham, could offer what Herrera and his partner, Bobby Corona, did, which was a booking to play three towns in three nights, building an audience in each.
For a local band just making its name, the Keystone could be the difference between life and death. But the Keystone was also crucial to a lot of national touring acts that could not get the attention of Graham, who controlled the largest venues — the Cow Palace and Winterland.
“We did Tom Petty first time around. We did George Thorogood and Stevie Ray Vaughan when nobody knew who these guys were,” said Robbie Snuggs, former general manager of the Keystone. “Freddie knew he would make no money on them, but he would give them a date. He had to support these guys while they were on the road.”
Fred Valentine Herrera was born on Valentine’s Day 1935, and he always lived up to his middle name.
“Freddie had a good heart,” said Kihn, who once celebrated Valentine’s Day by playing all three clubs in one night, a 90minute set at each. “He really helped a lot of the bands that needed gigs and were hanging on by their toenails. I’m sure he loaned money, but we never talked about it.”
The first Keystone, at the corner of Vallejo Street and Emery Lane in North Beach, was already a bar when Herrera bought it in 1969. He renamed it Keystone Korner because of its proximity to the police station across the alley, a knockoff on “Keystone Cops.”
The shortlived topless bar act cost Herrera his marriage, and he often slept in back, rooming with Elvin Bishop. But the original lasted only three years before Herrera sold it to another operator who gave Keystone Korner better fame as a jazz club. Herrera had by then moved on to an old club with brick walls called the New Monk on University Avenue in Berkeley.
As a performing venue, the Keystone Berkeley had its limitations; a capacity of 435 was one of them. The left side of the stage featured a structural pole that performers adapted to their stage acts. But the sound system was unparalleled in the club world. The monitors were custommade, which met the approval of Jerry Garcia, who played as many as four or five nights a month at the Keystone Berkeley.
When the sound system was stolen, and there was no time to find the old system or build a new one because the Keystone Berkeley was open seven nights a week, the Grateful Dead sent over their own system as a replacement, Snuggs said.
In 1977, Herrera added a second club, taking over a Purity grocery store on California Avenue to create the Keystone Palo Alto. The Jerry Garcia Band opened it, followed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Ramones. The Palo Alto location was at the far end of the commercial strip by the train station, and it earned country fame as the home of the Fat Fry, a Monday night event hosted by KFATFM in Gilroy. Larry Hosford, the Salinas troubadour, was a regular headliner.
“Nobody left but the derelicts and unemployed,” Hosford liked to announce before starting his second set, around 11 p.m. on a Monday. After Palo Alto, Herrera returned to San Francisco to open the Stone on Broadway, as the third and final corner of his triangle.
“We had three nightclubs. We would outbook even Bill Graham,” said David Cray, Keystone’s longtime general manager. “If a band played three nights, Freddie would get them more money and expose them to more.”
For a short time there was even a fourth Keystone, in Stockton. The Keystone booked heavy metal. It booked thrash metal. The Godfather of Funk James Brown played the Stone.
“Freddie was the best at booking the blues,” Cray said. “Whenever he would have a blues show, John Lee Hooker would come down.”
One by one, the Keystone empire started to crumble: first Berkeley, in 1984, then Palo Alto, in 1986. Last to go was the Stone, which folded in 1990, becoming Centerfolds, a strip club.
Herrera went into real estate and out of show business, and his name faded into obscurity. But Sunday night it was on the marquee at the Great American Music Hall: “Keystone Freddie We Love You.”
“Freddie was the same person to everybody he met,” said Roger Clark of the Goosebumps, who was leaning against the bar listening to the Rubinoos. “He was not a typical club owner. Just one of the guys.” Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF Instagram: sfchronicle_art