Caravane d'amour

They say that if you can remember the circumstances of this period of hippie history then you weren't really there, but I was one of the subjects of this film and I'll do my best to recall a few things about the project. It was a post-Woodstock attempt by SF underground radio visionary Tom Donahue, some some cigar and/or pot smokin' execs at Warner Pictures and an award winning French documentary director, Francois Reichenbach, to create a traveling mini-Woodstock festival (peace, love, drugs, sex, yoga, more drugs, more sex and lots of rock and roll) that would showcase recording artists that were signed to Warner Bros. Records at the time. The organizers assembled an appropriate entourage of colorful counter culture characters from Haight Ashbury, Los Angeles, Boulder and New York. They fabricated twelve huge tie-died teepees, loaded them up on a tractor trailer, decorated a small fleet of old school buses with hippie art and slogans, and set out across the country with a portable concert stage, an industrial strength electrical generator, a full blown concert lighting rig and the Grateful Dead's sound system and crew. No script. Lots of "petty cash". Lots of psychedelics. Lots of jammin', skinnydipping, and of course lots of "free love." What a ride! All of which was captured on film by Reichenbach and his documentary team (who were all more than happy to get in on the free love action).

The footage was cut together in Paris by award winning French editor Gerard Patris and presented to the American execs. who thought it was much too "poetic", and promptly confiscated the footage (amist much yelling and arm waving) and brought in Martin Scorsese, who had been involved with the Woodstock documentary, to totally recut the film with a more commercial bent. Scorsese's cut focused primarily on the music and some political activism that flared up here and there, but the film, as released, missed the heart of the experience and the magic that happened every day of the Caravan's journey.

I was sad to learn recently that Milan Melvin, one of the Caravan's ringleaders, passed away in 2000. I heard Francois Reichenbach is also no longer with us. I would love to compare notes with any other survivors of the The Medicine Ball Caravan.

I was there in Boulder as member of the notorious STP family. The comments made of us are really funny considering they were all made up stories just to shock people. That's what we did. Near the end of the Boulder segment is one member of the Family pretending to shot at the camera with his finger. That was an STP member named DEPUTY DAWG because he carried a cap pistol. About a month after that was taken he was found shot to death in the mountains, two bullets in the back of his head. 27 years later the sheriff of Nederland Co. confessed to the murder. They let him return to the nursing home to die. Wish they had caught him back in'72 tried convicted and executed. But justice is seldom served to those who deserve it.

I was given tickets to the premiere of this movie in 1971 in NYC.

I had made the tie-dyes that were used as background for the titles and on some of the movie posters. I got paid by the the agency that was hired to do them, but did not receive any credit. Our little tie dye outfit was called Orgasmic Enterprises and I was told that name was too risqué for the titles. Instead they used the name of the store where they had first seen my work in Huntington, Long Island - Sunshine and Co.

In any case, no sour grapes.... but the movie was truly awful and just sought to capitalize on the Woodstock generation's penchant for rock and roll and getting naked.

The best part was when they were panning through the crowd at a BB King concert in the New Mexico desert and I saw two of my best friends (Vinnie & Phil) in the crowd!

Haven't seen the film, but I was there at the concert at Antioch College in the summer of 1970. What I remember mostly was Van Morrison, David Peel being chased by some guy with a knife in front of the student union, and a large plastic trash can full of jello and dry ice! Quite an introduction to college life!

As I recall, the summer of '70 was the season of Woodstock wannabe festivals. The Goose Lake Festival in Jackson, Michigan comes to mind(lots of hard drugs, no show bands, and hostility from the locals) - thought a film was made of this. Also Isle of Wight, various others. The other one I went to that year was the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Not a rock festival, but lots of good music including Fairport OCnvention in their prime!