Fresh Garbage
How the West Coast band’s sharply differing musical tastes helped create “a bit of musical Frankenstein-ism that we somehow pulled off”
“We were all still in the afterglow of the Summer Of Love,” says Jay Ferguson, recalling the early days of Spirit, “before things started getting a bit dark. LA was still a great band incubator, clubs were thriving and music was about passion and not yet about the money.”
One product of the countercultural currents close to Spirit’s Topanga Canyon base was “Fresh Garbage”. The opening track on the group’s self-titled debut, lyrically it’s an acerbic, sly protest against environmental destruction, sparked by finding the rubbish abandoned by previous tenants of their house. “The environment was a relatively new issue and definitely on everyone’s minds,” says Ferguson. “Mine included.”
There was also a unique musical element to Spirit: the push and pull between the rock and folk instincts of Ferguson, bassist Mark Andes and guitarist Randy California, who had been mentored by Hendrix, and the jazz chops of keyboardist John Locke and drummer ed “Cass” Cassidy, the latter California’s stepfather and already in his forties when the band began.
“It took a while for Jay and Mark to get into the jazz groove,” says Barry Hansen, who shared the group’s Topanga digs, but is now better known as the DJ Dr Demento. “As they wrote and played tunes, Cass would want to play it a certain way and Mark would want to play it a different way. So they would argue in that living room, but they would usually come to a resolution.”
“We didn’t fit the mould,” says Andes, “and that’s what makes Spirit so wonderful in retrospect. At the time we were just playing what we really felt.”
Bizarrely passed over as a single in favour of the orchestral “Mechanical World”, “Fresh Garbage” still cast a powerful spell. Indeed, after Led Zeppelin supported Spirit on tour in 1969, they began to jam the song’s groovy, seasick riff live.
“It’s wonderful that we’re talking about ‘Fresh Garbage’ now,” says Andes, “as this is the 50th anniversary of its release. When I hear the first album, it still sounds fresh, it has an energy. We didn’t take ourselves very seriously – at that time, anyway.” TOM PINNOCK
JAY FERGUSON: By early 1967, the band was gaining momentum. We made a decision to do what other bands, especially the San Francisco bands, were trying: living communally. We found a large Spanish house that had seen better days.
MARK ANDES: Topanga was wonderful. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, but Topanga was always very bohemian and eclectic, a lot of hipsters, way before hippies too. We would go up there in the ’50s and visit friends, and it was always a special place. All the canyons were – Laurel Canyon, Coldwater Canyon, they all had eclectic residents. We had the Yellow House, which is what we called it, and it was close to the town centre in Topanga. Jay Ferguson, John Locke, myself and Barry Hansen all lived there.
BARRY HANSEN: The Yellow House had been built, I think, by somebody probably with a fair amount of money sometime in the 1930s or ’40s. The living room was fairly grand, and I think it was designed as a summer house because it wasn’t really well insulated or heated. It was really cold in the winter. It was near the main road in Topanga – in fact we could hear the traffic from the house. It was right next to the Topanga Creek which flows into the Pacific. Before we all moved in, it was kind of a hippie crashpad and John Locke lived there. He was the one who got the idea, “Hey, I could throw out these other people who are deadbeats and don’t
“There was no limit on our influences – whatever we imagined, we would play” MarK aNDES
pay the rent, and we could move the band into this house…”
FErGUSON: Just before we moved in, the hippie tribe that had been living there moved out, and threw everything they couldn’t take with them into a pile in the driveway. Everything, from fishbones to diapers to furniture, and it was enormous. A midden, if you will. So there it was: Fresh. Garbage.
HaNSEN: In Topanga we have to pay for private garbage collection, and the hippies had not paid, so the garbage was piled up. aNDES: Places like the Topanga Corral [venue] were real important proving grounds for a lot of bands – we’d all play there and showcase our new material. I played with Canned Heat at the Corral at its original location at the very top of Topanga, and then they moved it.
FErGUSON: It was raucous – a crowd of hippies, cowboys and occasional celebrities. And great burgers.
aNDES: I think Spirit’s mix of styles was just a natural evolution of who we were. What I love about Spirit is there was no filter on our influences – whatever we imagined we would put out there and play. We had the Ash Grove [venue], a big sounding board. ed Pearl, Randy’s uncle, owned it. I think it was a Monday night, they were usually closed, but he opened it up and put a few staff members on just to open the doors and serve wine and beer and coffees. And we started just playing there, and through word of mouth we ended up having a line at the door. Topanga then was a place where a lot of the hippies were starting to come together. We all felt a sense of community. We wrote songs like “The Great Canyon Fire In General” – there was this big fire there, threatening our little community, so Jay wrote that song.
HaNSEN: The Yellow House’s big living room was memorialised in the song “Topanga Windows” [ from Spirit’s 1968
debut], because they’d be in that living room and there was plenty of room for the band’s equipment. They’d set up and play, and in the summer they’d open the windows and you could hear the music from the main road and from that little shopping centre. So Spirit practising was something Topanga heard for a while, it was part of the landscape. They really woodshedded there, and developed all of the music for the first album and much of the second album in that living room.
aNDES: I think “Fresh Garbage” came a little later. We did the first initial demos
[with Hansen], but “Fresh Garbage” was maybe not even written by then.
HaNSEN: It was one of the last songs they wrote before recording the album. It was later in that summer or the fall that I first heard it. It was not something that I heard them practise a lot. Although it’s a Jay Ferguson song it’s really rather jazzy, because John Locke plays the solo, so that would have been after Jay settled into the idea of writing songs for Spirit, rather than the simpler songs that he’d write for
[earlier group] the Red Roosters, or the band that Jay and Mark had while Randy was in New York, called Western Union.
FErGUSON: It was pretty close to the final version when I presented it to the group. Of course, the solo section was improvised. I was trying to incorporate the different musical styles in my writing – Randy with folk and blues, John and Cass with jazz, Mark and myself with British invasion stuff and rock. A bit of musical Frankenstein-ism that we somehow pulled off.
aNDES: Jay brought the basic song, and as a group we arranged the solo section and decided to change the time signature from the 4/4 to the 3/4. I’m sure John Locke and Randy had a lot of input about the jazz feel of that solo. But Jay really had that
“Oh yes, we used to extend ‘Fresh Garbage’ live. Some versions went on for 10–15 minutes” jay FErGUSON
initial riff, he wrote it, and he told me that it was inspired by Hugh Masekela, that real dissonant melody and funky way that riff was played. I don’t recall discussing the lyrics, but our concerns about the environment were all there. “Look beneath your lid some morning/See those things you didn’t quite consume/The world’s a
can for your fresh garbage…” I mean, Jay was writing some really good stuff then. We had this wonderful manager, Ann Applequist, and we went around and shopped ourselves with Ann representing us, but nobody was interested. I can’t recall why we were rejected – probably because it was a weird [musical] mix, and with Cass and his shaved head. I mean, he was in his forties then.
HaNSEN: I wanted to produce their album, and there was a small record company who were interested in having me work for them, so the head came to hear the band and he was impressed and wanted to sign them. But before anything happened, Lou Adler came into the picture, and to my considerable distress they decided to go with him. In retrospect, I cannot blame them one bit! It was first class all the way.
aNDES: We were playing the Whisky and Lou Adler’s nephew, Marshall Blonstein, saw us. Ann brought him down, and he said, “This is gonna be good.” He talked to Lou and that’s how Lou came on board.
FErGUSON: Lou was perceptive and efficient. He did not try to dominate things, but definitely had the end product in mind, hence the classical overdubbing. It was recorded on eight-track, and that was considered a major development. It took two weeks! Recording back then was no-nonsense – things went fast. aNDES: It was very much live recording, and you can tell by the track – you can hear Randy shouting, so everyone was cutting at the same time. We didn’t cut the vocals live, we did them as overdubs, but the basic tracks were everybody playing at the same time. And then he would contact Marty Paich, the arranger for the orchestra parts and strings. Lou’s signature thing was he had to have a flute on every record! Studios were kind of clinical then, not much ambience or atmosphere. But they knew what they were doing, that’s for sure. For our first single, Lou had the idea, “Oh, we’ll just send [the album] out to radio stations and we’ll say what they play.” FErGUSON: A DJ in Miami played “Mechanical World” at, like, two in the morning – I can only imagine who was listening – and the phones went off the hook. He never stopped playing it, word got back to Lou Adler, and that was the single.
aNDES: It’s crazy “Fresh Garbage” wasn’t a single. We never got airplay on a national level; it was spotty, regional, and Lou and his organisation didn’t market or promote us in the most efficient way – we wound up being this highly influential but not commercially successful band.
FErGUSON: Oh yes, we used to extend “Fresh Garbage” live. It was the era of the extended solo, and we never passed an opportunity to go there. Some versions went on for 10–15 minutes. Every member got to throw in.
HaNSEN: Spirit got more polished when they began to tour regularly. “Elijah” gradually became the main vehicle for the extended freeform improvisation, [but] “Fresh Garbage” was always pretty much improvised – it would be John playing his solo, then the others would join in near the end. Then Mark would kick off the opening riff again, and they’d go back to the top. aNDES: [When Spirit toured with Led Zeppelin as support] I never heard them jamming on it, but I did hear a live recording later. Yeah, we played five or six shows with those guys. FErGUSON: Even I was wondering why we weren’t opening for them! I heard their version of “Fresh Garbage” later, on cassettes recorded from mixing boards at the shows. Blew my mind. HaNSEN: I moved out of the Yellow House about the time they were recording Clear, and the other members had all got their own places, so the house was turned over to Cass. Spirit continued to use the living room for practising, maybe a little into ’69, but after they signed with Ode they had other places to practise. There was always tension, but at least until [1970’s] The Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus, the tensions were always resolved. aNDES: Spirit had this very distinctive, not exactly commercially viable sound, but that’s probably why we didn’t really achieve that big success. FErGUSON: “Fresh Garbage” does seem to hold up, probably because it’s not like anything else – it is its own quirky self.