Mazzeo
Recordings:
Last Waltz /Ducks (Malibu, Santa Cruz Neil Young, The Band)
West Coast Experimental Pop Band (mid 60's Cross Country Psychedelic Rock Tour)
Broken Arrow Ranch (Neil Young Ranch in Santa Cruz Mountains)
Cross Town Bus (Boston Psychedelic Night Club)
Transcriptions Excerpts below
Last Waltz Ducks
It was '75. Moved to Malibu. The Band was just down the road from where we were.
they had bought Elvis Presley's old place, Rancho Shangri la. Actually Presley
owned it, Johnny Carson owned it after Presley. All these famous people owned
this Rancho Shangri la and it was a really big old house on top of a hill and it had a
little corral down on the bottom when you first went in the road there's a little horse corral there, where they filmed Mr Ed.
So I was talking about Rancho Shangrilla. And Neil and i were living down the road
at Broadbeach road on a street called Sea Leaval Drive. It was this old Cape Cod
cottage, right on the beach at the end of Sea Level Drive so there was no one on right
side of us except sand dunes. Except down on the right side of us, about a quarter
mile, was Carol King and then next to her was Cheech, from Cheech and Chong.
On the beach in Malibu. It was a really cool house. Neill saw it when he was
recording the Zuma album. It wasnt' called Zuma in those days but he dreams of
making this album and it was actually up on BirdView Drive right above Zuma Beach
and he'd go down and he saw this house, right? And it's just this Cape Cod, just
romantic little Cape Cod cottage right at the end of the road all covered in red
Bouganvilla. it was two lots. The first lot was just a brick patio area so we had this
big social area and then this cute little two-bedroom Cape Cod cottage that
Catherine Ross lived in. So he started asking around the neighbors, who is it?
whoose there? He goes, "Oh ah Catherine lives there." He goes, "I wonder if she
would ever sell it?" He said, "Oh, no,no. She'd never sell, no way."
Turned out she didn't own it. She was just leasing. So Neil told his lawyers about it
in LA, big powerful lawyers, they checked. they found the property owner and they
said, "They have a client who is interested in your house." And he just low-balled this
really ridiculous price, when you consider $285,000 for it. This was like 1974-75. The
guy must have lived in Kansas or something. He said, "Yeah, sure!" he could have
probably bought it for sixty grand, and he said, "Yeah, sure, no problem." So Neil
bought it.
West Coast Experimental Pop Band
When I got out of the coastguard and stayed once again with Margo at her place at the time we were hiding Ken Kesey in her house.
I got out in August of '66, from the coastguard. I bought a 1949 Packard for $100 as I got off the coastguard base and there was a car lot with a '49 Packard. It just didn't have any brakes. It made it over the bay bridge pretty good. I got to Margo's and she was up on top of Alpine Terrace, way on top of this hill with this little streak of giss fifteen blocks down to Market street in San Francisco, down on DuBois street.
So I park up there and I park it over and the next day, Kesey's there. I got this really cool flat there? with a kingsize bed and a swimming pool. She was like my sister at that point, I'd been living with her since 1963. My whole four years in the coastguard I was living with her and three other $1,000-a-night call girls. I was their little sailor-artist-love toy and everynight I'd think, "Wow! I wonder what all the other sailors are doing tonight."
So the second day it's parked up on the hill and no problem. Next day I hop in and I think I'll go down to Fishman's Wharf or something, I go to the street, I turn right, down Dubois, straight on down, start to go down--big heavy car--no brakes. Zero brakes. and it has a transmission but you could either push these buttons or use this weird shift. Packard had weird kind shifting devise where you could automatic or stick. It got caught between that and neutral.
So I'm going down this hill in a three-ton vehicle, seventeen blocks and there's stop signs and crosstraffic and all kinds of shit, and I couldn't jump out of the car. It weighed so much I knew it would kill somebody--be out of control. Going down seventeen to twenty blocks straight on down this hill. A cable car would have a hard time getting up and down of it. So I just had to ride it out. I screamed the worst swear words I possibly could out of the top of my lungs and rode it and steered it. And somehow, I made it through every intersection without hitting anybody.
Broken Arrow Ranch
He he he bought the ranch and he and his his roadie from South America, came up to kinda get settled into the ranch. And they're driving up Skyline Boulevard and they see these two really cute hippie girls, and they pull over. Neil's got one of his old cars you know what I mean because he'd been doing pretty good he'd have some hits in '69 and '70 and the first song he ever had that made him a million dollars was a song called Broken Arrow. So he called the ranch Broken Arrow Ranch. And, so he picked they pick up these two hippie girls and and Neil goes, hi.
I'm Neil Young. I just bought a place down the road. You know, girls wanna come on down and see the place. And they said, oh, hi, Neil. He said, see, you just moved into the neighborhood.
And they said, yeah. I said, well, have you met Sandy Castle yet? And he goes, Sandy Castle? I changed my name to Sandy Castle. And so it's a commune, you know, McCracken became Mossy Grotto, and I became Sandy Castle.
Right? And we're building this artist retreat. I don't know why we did it, but when we left Boston to head to to head out to up to the property to the the sawmill, just as, we're getting out of town, Matt just looks over at me and goes, boss. Boss and Bossy Grotto. Bossy Grotto is six hours there.
That's that's that's my name now, Mossy Grotto. And I went, oh. And then I thought about Castle Beach here in Santa Cruz, which is where Seabright Beach is, but it used there used to be an old castle down there. You know, remember the old castle? They were selling hot dogs out there and shit.
Well, in my senior year, the place was empty. In 1962, they had emptied it out because the state took it over and they were gonna they bulldozed it down. But for six months in my senior year of high school, it was empty. And so all me and my surfer buddies, we broke into it, and that was where we would crash and sleep when the surf was good. It was like our first beach house.
And so when he said, I just thought of the sand all the sand on the floor in that old castle where I've been to the, you know, and I was Sandy, Sandy Castle. So that's how that happened. So Neil, they said, come on. You gotta meet Sandy. You know?
There's the oh, this is great. There's this whole commune. You know? Right? So they came up and and Neil came over and, you know, said, hi.
I'm your new neighbor. You know? Neil. I said, yeah, Neil. I said, I did a light show for you guys at the arc, you know, a couple years ago in '6 in '66.
He goes, you're at the arc? I said, yeah. I did. I I did the light show. And he goes, goes, wow.
You know? I never met Neil because he he wasn't talking to too many people in those days. Steven and Neil and Dewey, like, were the three big guys in the band and and and Bruce and, Bruce and, Dewey, the drummer. Bruce Bruce was a bass player. And, but the drummer and the bass player and I with the ark we smoked a lot of pot and had a really good time and became friends with them.
But Stephen was like up on this high horse you know and Richie was you know the other high horse singers you know, they were out in the front. And apparently, they the the arc was the first place that Buffalo Springfield played when they left LA. They were playing they were real popular with the whiskey. They were doing good. And Steven said, let's go up to San Francisco and see how we do outside of LA, you know, and start playing up there.
So that they came up, but Graham couldn't get him in there for about three days. So for the first three days, they just hung out at the ark all the time and and Moby Grape was just starting. And Moby Grape was doing five part harmonies. Five guys in the band, and they were all singing and doing these incredible harmony things. Buffalo Springfield, Neil, they had told Neil down in LA that Steven goes, I'm the guitar player.
You know? He goes, I'm the guitar player, and your voice sounds like shit. So, Dewey so, so, what's his name? Richie. Richie Fury.
Cross Town Bus
And I'm, you know, I'm headed back to California. And he goes, well, you know, Frank just got us this theater for the whole summer in New in Greenwich Village. To me, Greenwich Village was like the holy grail of Yeah. Being wanting to be a beatnik, you know, and stuff. He said, yes.
We're all staying at the Chelsea Hotel. He was I got my wife and kids, but we we got enough room. We'll fix you up at the place in the living room. You know, come on and hang out with us, You know? And, hang out in in Greenwich Village.
So I, you know, it was only $70 to catch a plane to New York and, you know, a hundred and 30. Yeah. That was a so I said, cool. And, I went to New York and hung out and moved in with those guys. And I was I lived with them for about, just almost not quite maybe a month, maybe five or six weeks.
Not not a really long time. But it was fun every night. We we played, you know, they played all night long. They got up at ten in the morning and rehearsed from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon every single day, seven days a week. That's dedication.
Zappa was a control master. You know, you could literally raise one finger and the band knew what to do. You know what I mean? He had it everywhere. On his music and how how it was produced.
He had two drummers, Jimmy Carl Black and Billy Mundy. So he had two different two different drummers. And, So he had two different two different drummers and, and a pretty big size band. So I went there and hung out, and Zappan did all these crazy things. He'd go down to the down to the fisherman, wharf section in New York and buy a basket full of live lobsters.
And then he'd take this basket of live lobsters up on stage with him. And, while he's doing his his show, at at some party, just, like, pull out the basket and pull out a live lobster and literally rip it apart and throw it at the audience. You know, you know, this is kind of a day sort of a lot of people in the audience are on acid and stuff, you know. It's just like, woah. Lodge to pieces, finance.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they they actually showed up with with, like, ponchos and stuff because they knew they were gonna get something thrown at them from from Zappas when the word got out. You know? So we had good fun like that.
But Paul Butterfield hung out a bunch, and he and I became really good pals. And then, watching the show at at night, you know, some clubs and stuff. And, he was intrigued with me because I had the, you know, like, this first psychedelic light show in the Midwest. And, he knew these three kids these three guys in Boston, wealthy kids of wealthy successful people. They wanted to build a psychedelic night club in Boston.
And, he said he goes, oh, yeah. I know these guys. You'd be perfect. They're looking for somebody like you. You know?
Psychedelic nightclub. And, so he got it. He he made the introductions. I got the gig, and New York up to Boston and checked in with those guys. They got me a place.
And I met James McCracken who later on became a really good, close partner of mine. What was he? He was doing posters. He was doing posters? For the club.
Like art posters? Yeah. Art posters. Yeah. The club posters.
Okay. And then, also, while we're building the club, my friend Jimmy Phillips here from Santa Cruz, he does the blue hand and all that stuff, and he did all this late skateboard barfing guts. Sorry. Yeah. Well, Phillips and I, we'd surfed in high school together at Pleasure Point in all around Santa Cruz.
