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Michelle was seventeen, fresh out of Hollywood High and up in San Francisco running with the folkie crowd.
Out at the Hungry i, havin' a good time one night she sees this tall guy up on stage. John was six-foot five.
And she decides to have a fling. She flung at him and knocked him arse over tea kettle. So, John left his
wife and kids and married Michelle and, from then on, John had a constant source of inspiration . See,
she was always running off and he was always writing songs about it. She was so young she didn't know what
was in store for her or how far it could go, but she sure wanted to find out. Still does.
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Michelle arrived just in time for the race riot in Jackson, Mississippi. It's 1963. Martin Luther King on
the march. Huge rallies in Washington. This is serious stuff and, when we get to Jackson, they want us to
play a segregated hall . Glen Yarbrough, the headliner, says: "I'm not playing a segregated hall", and John,
not wishing to be left behind, says: "I've got a better idea! Let's go play the black agricultural college.
For free !" Before the concert is even over, it's on the news ! This mob gathers - with baseball bats. We've
practically got to fight our way out of town !
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Skid marks out of Jackson. 500 Miles
We were headed for the last stop on
the tour. The driver wanted to top off the diesel tanks so we pull into this gas station. Something was wrong.
The guys outside were real quiet and everything was still. They were listening to the news on the radio.
John Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. And he was dead.
The Kennedy assassination seemed to shatter everything. All the groups started falling apart.
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The Halifax Three banged away for a few months, finally ending up in LA stranded at The Colonial West Motor Hotel on
Sunset Boulevard. No job. So, The Colonials from Halifax break up at The Colonial in Hollywood and that was that.
I started a duo with The Halifax Three's most recent accompanist, a totally insane guitar player from Toronto
by the name of Zalman Yanovsky. We kicked around, playing anything that would make us a buck and ended as two
thirds of a surf band in a college beer bar in Washington, DC. I played bass. Finally, we got run out of Washington.
So, we're back at The Albert Hotel again - broke.
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Cass, hearing of
our plight, talks her manager into hiring us. See, by now The Big Three was down to Cass and a guy named
Jim Hendricks - no, not Jimi Hendrix - Jim - James Hendricks. He and Cass were married - but not romantically
involved. Married-but-not-romantically... See, shortly after Kennedy's death President Johnson decided to save the world from communism by sending a lot of American kids to some place called Vietnam. Cass was Jim's draft exemption.
So The Big Three was going to be Jim, Zal and me - a bevy of cute boys surrounding the star. Flat rock.
And as it turned out the surf band experience didn't hurt either, because The Beatles had landed.
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