Interview with Michael Paris-Fontana

‘We all became one, and we heard this music in our minds.’

 Wednesday, 6 July 2016

It’s a chilly day in Bangalore, though not as chilly for someone who spends winters in Delhi. I can survive easily with a half-sleeve t-shirt. But not without an umbrella- for it’s raining heavily. It is a nasty day to have left my umbrella at home which I usually carry around all the time.

But it’s not going to be a bad day because I am slated to meet Michael Paris-Fontana. The meeting is a silver lining on the cloud and I am really, really excited as I have visualized this meeting for months in advance. For many of you reading this (somewhat paraphrased) transcript of the interview, Fontana’s name might not ring a bell for you. So here’s the background:

Fontana playing a recorder in 1971, Holland

  Fontana was the saxophonist and the flautist in the Sixties’ psychedelic jazz-rock group Sweet Smoke. Their debut album Just a Poke (EMI, 1970) reached cult status in Europe but was not released in North America because of issues with the record label. This is strange as Sweet Smoke was a US group. After recording their debut album, but without waiting for its release, the group undertook a road trip to India via Kabul and Pakistan.

The Just a Poke (1970) album cover made by Jan Fijnheer

  Fontana fell in love with India- Indian philosophy, Indian classical music, Indian women- the very first time he came here with the group. He kept coming here time and again, married an Indian woman and has now completely settled in Bengaluru. I wait here at a coffee shop so that I can ask him the long questionnaire I have prepared for him covering all the puzzles and questions I have on the Sixties and Seventies.

But before I can ask him all of that, we have our usual niceties: ‘How are you’. ‘What are you doing these days’, ‘What are you up to in Bangalore’ and so on. I tell him I am just finished a Masters in Ancient Indian History. That triggers him off. We embark on a two-hour long (albeit brainstorming) discussion on Indian philosophy and the concept of consciousness before we can talk about the Sixties and Sweet Smoke.

For this reason, the interview has been divided into two parts.

(I did not use recording for the first part and started recording only in the second. For the former, I have largely relied on my notes in shorthand. I have followed the standard formatting of an interview: Fontana’s sentences are in normal font and mine in bold.

All footnotes have been added by me and were not a part of the original conversation. I did so for people not familiar with the Sixties)

Part 1 On Indian history, philosophy and consciousness

So what d’you do?

Umm… I just finished my Masters in Ancient History

Was the history you were taught largely Ancient Indian history?

Yeah, in fact, all of it!

Did you study about the Aryan Invasion?

I am familiar with it, though I didn’t study it in that much detail. It’s just a hoax marketed by Marxist historians. No evidence! (I then talk about the counterarguments against the Invasion theory gleaned from history books)

What?!? Marxists?

Yes, Marxists!

You mean Marxists? M-A-R-X-I-S-T-S?

Precisely!

Oh, I thought the theory was [propounded] by the colonial historians. Y’know, Max Mueller, the Sanskrit scholar was hired by the English government to discredit the Puranas, Vedas etc. They wanted to show you folks that you were invaded. So if you came from Scandinavia a couple of thousand years ago, then it was fair enough for them to invade you today.

So, it was they who debunked everything in the Puranas as simply myth. None of it was to be believed, etc. But he couldn’t help feeling admiration after reading the Vedas. Yet, since he was on the payroll of the English government, he had to portray it as a work that was created by a few imbeciles. Y’know, a few imbeciles got together and said ‘hey, let’s cook up a story!’

If you read the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, you’ll find the first references to flying saucers, Rama existing eighteen million years ago. By the way, d’you know that first flight was not by the Wright Brothers but by a man in Bombay? But you’ve always been taught it was the Wright Brothers.

The Bombay chap’s flight lasted only a few seconds…

But, surely that (the Ramayana and Mahabharata thing) is mythological!

Well, the Wright Brothers’ flight too lasted a few seconds. And how can you say [that] about the Indian Epics?

Because there’s no evidence!

Is there any evidence that it is false?

The fact that there is no evidence for it is evidence against it! Eighteen million years ago, we were making stone tools!

How do you know? Palaces or any building structures do not survive beyond three to four thousand years!

Their descriptions of flying saucers are so vivid and not found in the literature of any region at that time. Weapons more powerful than nuclear ones. It cannot just be imaginary!

Your colonial masters fooled you into believing that everything written in those scriptures is rubbish. You read the Puranas, written at different times in different areas and they all talk of the same cosmological set-up. How were they so accurate about the cosmos? Did they have telescopes? If they had such advanced knowledge, then isn’t it plausible that they also had these [so-called] modern technologies? They give such accurate durations for their yugas, they say that it is going to last exactly 4.32 million years, and that a hundred years is only one-tenth of a year in the life of Brahma…

Also, according to Indian philosophy, time is cyclical, not linear. It is plausible that there existed civilization and it got destroyed and then rose again and the same thing will keep going on and on. Or maybe, their concept of civilization was different from ours and they did not believe in constructing buildings.

Well, those things about the Pushpak Vimana can be debated. But what we cannot debate is evolution! Science has proven it time and again! Eighteen million years back life on earth were still evolving.

So, since you are a science person like most of my friends are, then from where did we come from?

From unicellular organisms!

And from where did that come from?

I don’t know! I’ll have to study biology for that. Science has loopholes which it admits and tries to plug by new research.

See, I am not trying to convince you. I am merely challenging you! And it is only scientific. All I am trying to say is that don’t rubbish anything- especially your culture- blindly without examining. You can reach the same conclusions you have reached today, but don’t reject anything without examining it.

Is it not unscientific to not study and examine anything because it is inconvenient?

Yeah… so unicellular organisms came from water and air?

And where did the water and air come from? Evolution or the theory of survival of the fittest does not explain that. Indian philosophy miraculously does as it believes that time is cyclical.

[Moreover], evolution does not explain consciousness- the fact that we are conscious beings and are aware of our existence. You never say ‘this body wants coffee’ or ‘this body, which is I, is giving me problems.’ You always say: ‘I want coffee’, or ‘my body is giving me problems’. It is because you are aware of being in possession of your body. Even when you dream, you see yourself even as you yourself are sleeping. That is consciousness, even though it is not you!

How can you write-off consciousness from a possible theory of mankind and animals and everything? How else did that unicellular organism know that it needed such-and-such physical form to survive and live better?

But consciousness must be having a scientific explanation. Neurons! They travel throughout our body to give and take messages from our brain.

As for unicellular organisms, they did not know. Climatic changes and genetic mutation automatically weeded out ones that were unsuitable and pushed forth the rest. We can have accurate estimates of climatic changes from fossil records and geological contexts.

Alright, fine, I accept all the reconstructions of climate etc. But how did that climate come from?

And, you mean to say memory is fitted only into a certain corner of the brain. So when you want to recall something, you send instructions to neuron number 4, 12, 962 to go to that section of the brain, block number A, Room 92 to fetch such-and-such information?

Yes! Neurons are automatically trained to perform this task.

As for climate change, it was a result of chemical and physical changes.

That is ridiculous! So I s’pose you believe in the Big Bang Theory: that suddenly there was a collision and an explosion?

Yes I do.

So tell me, how did all that come about? How did all that collide and everything?

By accident. At a precise point, a calculable accident.

You mean to say we are all here by accident? We are here getting nourished by a Sun by accident, which too happens to be there by accident?

Yes, it was an accident where everything fell into place!

I am sure there’s a God, something large beyond our intellect. He was responsible for creation.

I don’t believe in God!

I have studied meditation with so many swamis and have experienced an inner glow. How can one debunk that, and the results of meditation so many people have experienced? It was not just being united wit oneself, being at peace with oneself, but truly experiencing something higher – God – beyond our ability to understand. Let alone meditation, even when I was tripping on acid I saw and felt things that were just beyond me and simply out of this world!

But then do you think the meditative experiences of yogis and Swami Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda were untrue? Paramhansa clearly said he ‘talked with God.’ Were they just hallucinating?

Most possibly yes.

Then what about Einstein? You respect Einstein?

Oh yes, he was one of the greatest scientific minds of the twentieth century!

Einstein himself said that he did none of the work he did. It was all inspiration by God. He repeatedly invoked God in his statements, see?

You consider yourself smarter than Vivekananda or Einstein? Vivekananda summoned so much knowledge we cannot even master. Einstein is inarguably the father of Quantum Physics which is also slowly moving towards Ancient Indian philosophy.

Anyway, I am not saying that a youngster cannot be smarter than an adult. Of course he can be. In fact, this brings me to the concept of rebirth: I have seen two-year old kids playing violin and speaking languages from a far away land that they or their parents could never have possibly visited. Scientists have documented such cases. How can you ignore them? Is that not reality?

If you believe in the theory of evolution, then how will you explain cases like these? You don’t believe in rebirth of souls, right?

I don’t…

Then how do you explain this phenomenon?

We can only explain if we consider soul as a factor in evolution and we accept rebirth. How do you explain that if you accept evolution.

I don’t find it contradictory to the theory of evolution. The soul kept on transporting itself from one body to another.

Hahaha, see, now you are saying exactly what Indian philosophy says: the soul keeps occupying higher and higher physical forms. I don’t use the word ‘Hindu’ philosophy because the word came much later, but anyway… What I want to say is that evolution completely writes off consciousness and souls that make us what we are!

So you realize, the conflict between science and religion is essentially a conflict between science and Christianity. The bullshit that God made the word in fifteen days and ‘cos he was getting’ bored.

Western philosophy is only going to bring you misery. Maybe it will bring you money. But that will only make you more depressed. You will realize this as you grow older and death comes nearer. We will all die.

See, you are smiling. Because you are young and for you the age of sixty is too far in the future. But b’lieve me, time flies like this! When you start nearing your end, you will realize that if you stick with Western thought, you will become more and more depressed. You will start thinking what it all was for. But Indian philosophy gives you a bigger picture. As you near your end, you will see yourself as a part of a larger [scheme of] things and will be happy.

This is what was happening in the Sixties. The wars, the instructions our parents gave, the Old-World-Order did not make any sense! That was what Western philosophy had led to! Hence the disgruntlement amongst the hippies and beatniks.

Part 2 The Psychedelic Sixties and Sweet Smoke

So you listen to Pink Floyd, eh? (looking at my Pink Floyd t-shirt [1] ) So you wish you were born in the Sixties instead of now?

Oh yes, of course! Well, the Forties, not the Sixties. So that I was twenty-something by the time Sixties came.

You play something? You sing?

No I don’t sing. But I study classical guitar.

You wanna play rock music?

Umm… I don’t have an electric guitar. I am more into (playing) fingerstyle acoustic. Y’know, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia and so on.

I met John in Chennai. I think it must have been 1974. He came to my hotel room in Chennai… I was in India at that time studying Carnatic and Hindustani music. That’s how he met L Shankar and Zakir. Zakir was not famous then, still starting out as a youngster. I saw Zakir too, but I never saw the both of them together.

That was how Shakti was formed. It still continued till the Nineties, Mandolin Srinivasa et al.

Oh, that! It was re-formed with a separate line-up called ‘Remember Shakti’.

Oh, so you know all these names. I like the reformed group more.

I like the first one more. It’s more acoustic and earthy. Remember Shakti is too electronic.

Too electronic, eh? But I feel that the latter one is closer to Carnatic music, don’t you think?

Yeah maybe… I am eager to know more about the Sixties… Your experience?

In the Sixties, the world was changing. You know, we started experimenting with drugs. Jay, the drummer, was one year older to us. So we used to live with our parents and he lived alone. So we all used to hang out at his place. I participated in many live-ins[2] in Central Park, New York. We were all high and there was a notice that all the hippies will come together at a designated time at a designated spot. So all of us, completely high, would come running from different directions towards that designated spot for a mass hug. I don’t know the person next to me, but I can look at him and say ‘hey, I know from your eyes, you’re going through the same experiences… you’re feeling the same things… seeing the same things in your mind!’

[There was the] twinkle in our eyes. The hair! At that time, the long hair really meant something. [If] somebody had long hair, he was a ‘head’. ‘Pothead’ came much later, we used a more generic term ‘head’. A ‘head’ was different from ‘straight’ person. They mostly smoked but took something to feed their head. (Hums the words ‘Feed Your Head’ from Jefferson Airplane’s iconic Sixties anthem ‘White Rabbit’ [3], and I sing along with him). I’m sure beatniks before us had their own terminology. I’m not sure they smoked but it wasn’t until the hippies that smoke became available so easily.

In America, after smoke got introduced in the Twenties and Thirties, they kind-of banned it and spoke bad about it and publicized this thing called ‘Reefer Madness’[4]. They created some propaganda movies…

But anyway, I think you can relate, at that time, everything was new. All of a sudden, the skies opened up, and the Gods were pouring intoxicating wine on us. It was like a Renaissance. All of a sudden, colors were meaningful. Music! It went beyond what it was.

I mean The Beatles were there at first, but they were playing songs like (singing) ‘I Want to be Your Man’… It was nice music and all but all of a sudden from ’65 the music changes. You listen to The Beatles and say ‘something’s happening to my mind!’

Yeah, Rubber Soul, Revolver…

And all of a sudden, The Grateful Dead, The Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane- they were all playing music to play your head. They knew how to do it, because it was happening to them too!

But it wasn’t until 1967 when Sgt Pepper’s [Lonely Hearts Club Band; (Parlophone, 1967)] came out. I was with some friends. We would all trip together and my friends surprised us. This was the second year we were tripping at his (the friend who was a year older and had a house of his own) house and he said ‘wait a second I’d be right back’ and he went outside and came home and he puts this record on: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I didn’t know about it. [All I knew] was that the Beatles were coming out with an album but I didn’t know the date. I didn’t even know what the name was gonna be. Cos in those days it wasn’t so publicized unlike now. When an album wasn’t out in those days nobody heard it! There were no leaks, like now as soon as you record it it’s out!

It wasn’t out yet so nobody knew what it was like. And before that we’d had Rubber Soul. But Rubber Soul was only slightly psychedelic.  It was just starting to bend the music a little bit. Sgt Pepper’s was ‘WOW!’ a different world!

So Sgt Pepper’s was a completely new chapter in that age. It’s a little hard for me to imagine in retrospect…

For everybody! For everybody! Not just for The Beatles. We had groups… I don’t know when Jefferson Airplane took off [5] or Grateful Dead but in terms of the real psychedelic but Sgt Pepper’s was the real psychedelic. As far as an album was concerned, it was the first thematic album.

What d’you think of The Who? They were also psychedelic!

Oh I love The Who, they were doing great things too! But it’s more ‘musical’… I mean yeah ’twas all psychedelic. The Who were playing with your mind too. But The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s was concentrated. It was: ‘THIS-IS-YOUR-MIND-ON-A-TRIP!’

So here we are sitting at my friend’s place having no idea what he is putting on. He didn’t even tell us! So we’re tripping, this is the peak of the trip, and he puts on Sgt Pepper’s and I was like: ‘This is The Beatles, but what the hell are The Beatles doing inside my mind! It’s me talking to myself through The Beatles. How is this even possible?’ Whatever they were singing, it was exactly what my soul was singing at that second. (He hums the opening stanza of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’: ‘Picture yourself on a boat on a river/ With tangerine trees and marmalade skies) I felt being pulled on a boat (does rowing action with his hands) and seeing what John Lennon was seeing, this girl with kaleidoscope eyes. It was so intense; it was like they got inside my mind and were talking to me. When they played ‘Within You, Without You’, then I was going into deep meditation.

So this was the album that brought everything together. Now, music has changed forever. Now, Indian music has become part of our music too [6]. In other words, it all became tied: East and West met.

But what about Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin?

Yeah, but through Sgt Pepper’s, through George Harrison’s one song ‘Within You, Without You’…

‘Norwegian Wood’?

‘Norwegian Wood’ was just starting experimenting with sitar. But this was heavy duty stuff and the meaning… we saw inside us. He was giving us a spiritual experience. That was when East started meeting West.

(Since he was emphasizing on the lyrics) D’you think the experience would have been the same for somebody who did not know English?

Well, yes! I can only say… because I listened to Carnatic music. Unlike Hindustani, Carnatic is based on sahitya – ‘words’ – mostly Telugu words. [One] can listen to North Indian music without mostly knowing anything. But I used to listen to Carnatic music nevertheless so I would have to say ‘yes’ to it.

So much psychedelic stuff came out. But there was nothing like Sgt Pepper’s even after that.

Are you kidding me?

No, there were great songs. But you gotta realize: the first time is it. That was the first thematic album for a rock group. What was there before Sgt Pepper’s? People put songs together and [made an album].

…See you gotta realize one thing: all groups played in person. When they went into the studio, they knew they can create something more than [when they played] when in person. But The Beatles stopped playing live very early on. No other group would say ‘we can’t play live anymore.’ No matter what they did when they went into a studio, they were still largely influenced by [what] they played in person. That’s what came out: the jamming, the feedback from the audience. I’m sure Pink Floyd, when they went into a studio, they would create wonderful things. But The Beatles stopped playing live way before that. Their only concentration on their creativity had to do with ‘the studio’. Rubber Soul certainly hinted at a theme album. But Sgt Pepper’s…

Now when I say a theme-album or a concept album, I am really putting two aspects together. Number one: what was the concept they were saying? The fact that the concept was: ‘Hey, everybody! This is Nineteen Sixty-Seven, we’re all expanding our minds! And here we are The Beatles from ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ and look what we’ve become!’ The Beatles were always hip, but they were never like heady music. They were like pop songs, fantastic musical things but up to – let’s say – Rubber Soul it was basically just chords and songs. They weren’t trying to go anywhere with their music.

Now, all of a sudden, they were trying to take you over. And not trying, they did it! Through their concept, they knew they hit upon something. You’ve got three things: the concept album, the fact that it is a tripping concept album – they’re definitely talking and playing mind expansion, there’s no doubt about it – and number three, they’re hooking into the day and age. Music becomes really meaningful when it is making a statement about what day and age it is now. When it’s hitting for the first time, it’s a reflection of what’s going on.

In 1967, there was this whole thing that people from all over the world: people in Europe, people in The States, once we started tripping, once we started smoking, ’twas like ‘wow! we’re connected with so many people. We’re all connected!’ Before that, what did we have in common? The Beach Boys Singing beach songs in California. There was nothing connecting everybody. All of a sudden, The Beatles came and said: ‘This is Nineteen Sixty-Seven. Something new is happening now. And that newness, that psychedelic-ness has to do with the fact that we are all now one!’ We can change the world through what we are, with what we think. Music is powerful! In other words, listen to Sgt Pepper’s, and everything changed overnight. How was that possible? Strength of the music! There were things in their music that things never stay the same, you know what I am talking about, right?

Hereupon, it was exactly what was meant to be at that time! The Beatles were it: it was as if God chose The Beatles to give us this message.  Ev’rything’s different now: ‘Put down the guns, you don’t have to go and fight the wars, you don’t have to listen to your parents, you can think freely for yourself, you know more that they do. The older generation that has been conditioning you till now is wrong! Give it all up, become hippies.’ This was a celebration that everybody was ready to do. And they proved it by Sgt Pepper’s saying ‘this is real now’ because everybody was feeling that way about Sgt Pepper’s. It wasn’t just me, it wasn’t just him. People listened to Sgt Pepper’s and they said (raises his hands) ‘Saaaargent Peppuuuurrrs! What does it mean, it’s doing something to me’ and The Beatles discovered that. It was like Einstein discovered The Theory of Relativity; The Beatles all-of-a-sudden discovered the Theory of Psychedelic Music speaking to everybody.

I mean, really, were they the first people to discover this ‘Theory’?

It’s never that it’s discovered by a person. What really happened here was it was really all of us combined. The Beatles were the spokesmen for it. It came through them first on such a grand scale.

I could only guess. Being a musician I’d feeling sometimes, when I played in my group Sweet Smoke, I’m not playing anymore. I feel that the bass player’s the legs, the guitarist Marvin [Kaminowitz], he’s the hands and I’m the head. We felt part of one organism. I would do this, he would do that and it would make him do that. It really was mind-blowing. We became one.

You were the saxophonist

…And the flautist. What I mean to say is that we had the feeling of becoming one. Similar feelings we all got… such was the message of Sgt Pepper’s that ‘the mind is expansive. We are about to show you this world.’ Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds – and you’re gonna see things you’re listening to if you’re stoned.

And what if you did not know English? Would you have still seen the same things they wanted you to see?

Very good question. I guess… yeah…

Because I have seen that instrumental oriented groups like Pink Floyd and Deep Purple were more famous in non-English speaking countries like Japan, France, Germany

The Beatles were more word oriented, that’s what you’re saying… Hmm but what I said was that The Beatles was just the start. I didn’t say they became the epitome… they were not jazz musicians. They always dealt with songs. There was never a jam. The Beatles never jammed. [This is] because they stopped playing live. And at that time, their only performances were in the studio. They weren’t a jamming band. Grateful Dead is a jamming band. So whatever they (The Beatles) have to create has to be crafted.

[Note] the difference when you see comedians improvising and scripted-comedy at its best. Improvisation takes a whack at it. It may or may not work, you may be tuned into it. The Beatles stopped playing in person so they had to get satisfied with what they were creating in the studio. They kept makin’ it finer and finer.

Then they started doing drugs. It was Bob Dylan was the first one who turned them on for a smoke.

Okay!

You didn’t know that, did you? He came for one of their concerts in England… It was in the dressing room afterwards, the first day he met them. And he said ‘I’ll put out some pot now’, and they said ‘we never did it.’ Bob Dylan couldn’t believe it: ‘C’mon!’ – ‘Nom we’ve never smoked [up] before.’

They used to take some ‘ups’ or ‘speed’ – some pills when you want to stay up, you want to study. Like a stimulating hit to stay up. When they were playing in Germany, they wanted to rehearse out they took some speeds and when you smoke some cigarettes with speed you get high but that’s a different kind of high. So they never smoked pot.

Bob Dylan couldn’t believe it ‘You’re The Beatles! You’re playing all this!’ This was before Rubber Soul. They got high the first time, right before the concert. Paul McCartney started asking somebody to write down whatever he said because he thought everything he said was just a stroke of genius. Ringo was laughing, Lennon was beside himself. Then they started smoking before all the concerts. In the movie A Hard Day’s Night, they were wreaked throughout the movie, okay? After that they started going more into the psychedelic thing, they started tripping that was their joyous time.

By the time Sgt Pepper’s came out, Lennon-McCartney developed a taste for having the absolute best on their albums. In fact, when George Harrison came to them and said he wrote this song ‘Within You, Without You’, they made him go back three times before they accepted it. They were very strict; they couldn’t let just anything go on their albums. John and Paul said ‘we’re kings, we determine which songs get on our albums’ and everybody had to follow this. They were the main Beatles, Ringo and George were like second-grade citizens. They were all close friends, but it were the ‘Lennon-McCartney’ songs that made it. John and Paul were a little egotistic about it.

I get it. Even when I look at their liner notes, the songs are all credited to ‘Lennon-McCartney’

The story was, they legitimately started writing together. Y’know, two people sitting over a guitar. John would play something, and then Paul would give him the bridge etc. Because they wrote together, they signed a special contract that said all their songs are going to be considered [having been] written by ‘Lennon-McCartney’. That’s the agreement they had. At some point, they stopped writing together. But because of the agreement, they kept it as ‘Lennon-McCartney’ even though they didn’t write it together. Or maybe somebody wrote the words and the other guy wrote the music. They drifted away… they weren’t all Lennon-McCartney songs but they still had to say that.

They still worked together, in crafting the songs and arranging them. They gave one song to Ringo, and then when George stated writing too they gave him the chance to put one song on an album. But they were very strict – it’d gotta be nothing but great. When they booked a studio, it wasn’t like they came in the morning. They owned the studio! They booked it for two weeks straight or a month straight. They’d be recording an album, anytime they wanted it: day and night.

When George first came (with ‘Within You, Without You’), John and Paul were doing something. They didn’t like it too much, they said ‘go back’. Then George got the tabla player, changed the arrangement a little bit. He came and they said ‘okay, not bad… go back.’ He did some more [re]arranging and then came, I think, 1 o’clock in the morning and said ‘this is what I got.’ They listened to it and they said ‘awright, let’s go in for it.’ ‘Within You, Without You’, amazing! They flipped out themselves, John and Paul, over it. They couldn’t believe how great was it. They only kept telling him ‘go back, go back’, but that was so amazing, that song. I don’t know if you like it…

Yeah I love it!

It just says so much.

But Harrison is so well respected, even among The Beatles?

Oh yes, yes, of course! But at that point, he had to prove himself. After that he started writing really good songs like ‘My Guitar Gently Weeps’. I’m sure he wrote so many songs that they did not let him put on their albums.

When you listen to it, (‘Within You, Without You), that was the final thing. [They] were not only showing you what this day and age is gonna be like, not only are we taking you there for the first time, not only are we showing you we’re all connected. We’re also showing you that ‘look at the magic of Indian music! It’s all one! We’re gonna put it together now for you: music is music – and look how deep Indian music is.’

They had ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ too experimenting with Indian music and psychedelia, but when you heard ‘Within You, Without You’ was totally crafted and polished. Indian music in a rock song? It was a part of the whole theme, the whole theme was that we’re connected. We are one being.

When I listened to ‘Within You, Without You’ with my eyes closed, and my friend did, our minds were blown out. There was no more difference. When we were listening, I wasn’t any different from Marvin, Marvin wasn’t different from Jay [Dorfman]. We all became one, and we heard this music in our minds. And especially when the Indian music part came on, it was like ‘wow!’ It’s taking Western music to a whole new height. Of course, now you have Shakti, so many crossovers…

Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew.

Did you get into [John] Coltrane?

Of course. ‘Afro Blues’?

‘Afro Blues’, yes. What about Om? He did a record called Om.

I saw Coltrane play in person. Amazing. Coltrane was to jazz what The Beatles were to rock. But still people haven’t really understood [him], it’s a little difficult to understand the depth of Coltrane. But he got famous because of it.

Coltrane was doing this much before The Beatles!

Oh, this all was before The Beatles. But Coltrane, by the time he got to be a Hindu – he became a devout Hindu, even through his music – he gave up all his drugs… by the way, all these people were heavy heroin addicts.

Coltrane came off all of this and he used to play just spiritual music. He was always playing to God. And all his later recordings had to do with Hindu philosophy. He recorded the song Om, you gotta hear it. He took ‘Om’ and he made it a jazz mantra.

But you gotta realize one thing: jazz is one thing, only a small amount of people were listening to it, compared to rock. Rock [and] The Beatles, because of the name they had, played to everybody! That was the big difference. No matter was jazz was doing, people were not listening that much to jazz. I mean, I did, a lot of people did, but the main thing was rock.

Especially after Elvis Presley and the Fifties and the Sixties, people were mostly listening to rock. Jazz was the youth music in the Twenties and Thirties.

Yeah yeah, but then a lot of people got into jazz again. Y’know, jazz-rock. Sweet Smoke was jazz-rock.

There was such a large audience waiting for something to happen. People were already turned on, but they had never heard Sgt Pepper’s. So here you have millions of young people, all ready experiencing the new Renaissance, waiting for the spark: the spark that is going to unite us and let us know that this-is-legitimate.

I am going back to my memories now. I am remembering the feeling I had, we were waiting for something. Grateful Dead was there, they had started to do it but they didn’t do it yet. No one was doing it totally. We were all feeling it. We had be-ins, we had experiences together, we were dancing to The Grateful Dead… but what I mean to say is that we could sense something, we were all waiting for the musical messiah, so to speak. When Sgt Pepper’s came out, that was it. That was the thing that took everybody together and created a whole new type of album, a whole new type of music. But more importantly, it had to show one thing: that billions of people were turned on, listening to the same music and feel inspired in a similar way. I don’t say that everyone’s experience [can’t] be different but the feel that this could take us over and reveal something to us.

What did it reveal? I can’t even put it in words but it had to do something with the fact that it there was collective consciousness. Why is this important? Because this is why you like the Sixties and the Seventies. It is reminding you that you are part of a collective consciousness, part of the Sixties. You start identifying yourself with it. You see things in a different way now. It’s a little hard to see [that way] in this day and age but this is when it first happened. This is what we were feeling, we’re connected in some way, this is great! We’re kindred spirits.

And then Woodstock happened.

Were you there at Woodstock (round eyed)?

No, at that time Sweet Smoke had [its] first long time job[7] in the Virgin Island and in St Thomas, Puerto Rico. We were out of the country for three months. Y’know, like The Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany… we were out of the country at that time.

I would have gone, obviously, I would have gone.

Were you there at any of these iconic Sixties’ hangouts? Haight-Ashbury, Fillmore West, Monterey Pop, Isle of Wight?

I was in Fillmore East. I’d never gone to California at that time.

By 1969, we had moved to Europe. When Woodstock happened, we were playing our first gigs in St Thomas in Puerto Rico. What happened is that we had auditioned for a job in The Village. We had played a couple of jobs in New York, now we were getting better, we wanted to play more together. So we went to Grenich Village (in New York) to audition.

Grenich Village was where the Beatniks first started and the whole ‘scene’ happened. If you were around in the Sixties, and you were a head you would go to the Village. That’s where all the music was, that’s where Bob Dylan started. Grenich Village was the place. It’s like an extremely hip-neighborhood in New York. The Beatniks first started making small coffee-houses, clubs; then the folk-music scene converged on the Village. I don’t know if you would’ve heard of Richie Havens

I have heard Richie Havens. ‘Freedom’, ‘Motherless Child’…

I used to see Richie Havens every weekend at the Village. He [Havens] was right next to me. He used to have a group called The Loving Spoonfuls. (sings ‘Do You Believe in Magic’) These were songs before Sgt Pepper’s. Anyway, all of this was in the Village. The Village was the place where all of these heads used to go. They had ‘head’ shops… They had a Grenich Park there that was our ‘scene’: the East and the West Village. Tremendous place, so many clubs, head shops, we used to go there on the weekends, get high and hang out there.

So what’s the Sweet Smoke story?

In the Café Wha? (in Grenich Village), which was the place where Jimi Hendrix kind-of started out, to try out. It’s a club, that’s where our bass player used to play. So he contacted the owner of the Café Wha? and we set up an audition. We were for people; we had to play for free. He asked us to play only one song. So we played a long song. Actually we played the first version of ‘Silly Sally’ from Just a Poke. We were just amazing that day. Ev’rybody there couldn’t believe it, it was a new type of music. The people loved us.

The manager, instead of giving us a job in Café Wha?, which is what we wanted, gave us jobs in Puerto Rico. He said that he books groups for clubs in Puerto Rico and wants us to go there. So then, for three months we’d be playing there – five days a week, six days a week. This was the first time we were going out of the country, leave our homes to play together. But we had to drop out of college, that was the first time we went against our parents.

They didn’t want us to go. But we went and played. That’s when we became very tight, that was the first time we played on a trip. It was great.

We came back from St Thomas, and we wanted to continue this. I had an idea: ‘look, if The Beatles and all of these groups had come from England, why can’t we go there?’

So you were going to reverse the British Invasion [8]?

And it worked!

When we came to Europe, we felt we were not good enough to be a concert group.  We were still a club group. But because we were a group from New York, with American accents, people were turning on to American groups. Remember, all of these American groups were staying on in America: Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix… the whole ‘scene’.

Canned Heat, Paul Butterflies Blues Band…

Yeah, Paul Butterflies Blues Band… And Europeans heard about them. But we were the first American group to go and live in Europe. So we went to Germany, we formed a commune, and we started playing in one or two clubs. But the feeling was that we were coming from America so it might help us.

And it did. They threw us on to the concert floor right away. My manager started getting some jobs. First we said ‘no’ we’ll play first at some clubs. Y’know, musicians don’t want to get too ahead of themselves, so first let get good and then we’ll become a concert group.

That’s what we thought we’ll do. But my manager got us a job as a concert and we said ‘let’s go for it.’ We got up on stage as a concert group and all of a sudden we were a concert group! We had no problems, they loved us, everything we were doing, we were jamming… no matter what we did they loved us. So from that day on, we never had to play in clubs anymore we just played in concerts.

Holland was great at that time. My manager was Dutch, so he started booking us in the Dutch clubs. They were still concerts in a club, really. It wasn’t a club actually, it was a pravadia[9]. [There] were two sets, starting at 9 o’clock. People would come in, they’d introduce us… In Amsterdam, there were big stages; there were – maybe – hundreds of people.

Left An unknown Italian print of the album Right Michael Paris’s inset in the album

That happened right away, we were very lucky, we didn’t even know what we were doing half-the-time. Didn’t make a difference- we were from America, we were playing psychedelic music and we were good enough to adjust. We never thought we were great or anything but truthfully speaking we were some of the best musicians in our neighborhood. We clicked from the word ‘go!’ For some reason whenever we started playing, people liked it. We could have thought it was shit, people liked it. We couldn’t do anything bad, even if we thought it sucked. And many a times, we did think it sucked. Didn’t make a difference, people loved it. So, that helps (laughs)! You get up on stage thinking you’re terrible but you can’t be terrible because there’s something about us that soon as we start playing, it sounds good. And it’s psychedelia, and my guitarist is going bananas and I am going bananas and the drummer is going bananas.

At the end we’d invite everybody on stage and give ‘em some percussion and go bananas. So this is what are aim was, if I am at the last concert we’re gonna do the Final Jam…

And actually we were the first group that did rap, believe it or not. I was the rapper. There was no rap before us. So what happened was, we were jamming. A lot of times, the way jams form: we’re on stage, we’re high, the drummer starts to beat, bass player comes in, my guitarist starts playing some chords, the lead guitarist catches on, he plays lead, we start playing a riff together. (Sings) ta-da-tada-da-ta-tada-tada. Then we use that to go forward, we just fit upon it.

Another group that sounds very similar to Sweet Smoke, at least for me, is Rare Earth

What? Rare Earth? Around the same time?

Yeah, the Sixties! You’ve hear their ‘Get Ready’?

Sounds vaguely familiar… haha, you know a lot more than me about this (laughs)!

(I try singing their ‘Get Ready/Cos here I come!’ in order to ignite his memory) I have its vinyl!

Oh so you know all these songs, eh? Rare Earth sounds vaguely familiar. Where were they from? Maybe England?

I don’t remember… yeah, Motown! They were from Motown!

Oh, we were not in Motown. Motown was very different, it wasn’t psychedelic at all. Motown was good, just gooood rhythm ‘n’ blues. Really good stuff, but it wasn’t the ‘scene’. All hippies weren’t listening to it, but it was catching on.

But Rare Earth had good psychedelic music

Oh yes, after a while…

‘Get Ready’ occupies one whole side of an LP. It starts with a saxophone riff, then some country music, then a beast of a drum solo, and then the same saxophone riff…

Oh really, like Sweet Smoke! That’s what we did with Just a Poke. We did even longer jams…

And how did the group come about in the first place?

All the members of Sweet Smoke knew each other from school. We were in rival groups. I was in a group called The Electrons and The Sunday Funnies. But by 1966, by the time the Sixties’ revolution came by, all our groups had broken. We became friends when we realized we all smoked: ‘Jay… Jay got long hair! You smoke, Jay?’ – ‘Yeah!’ We knew each other from school anyway…

And one day, we jammed just for the hell of it. We had no intention of forming a group. That’s It (a group) was formed by itself. That was the first day of Sweet Smoke. Before we were Sweet Smoke, we were listening to Sgt Pepper’s.

That is how it was at all the concerts: the bass player was the legs, the guitarist was the arms, the drummer was the belly, and I was the head. We were all parts of one individual and moving together.

So, how was the first LP recorded?

Actually we were signed by EMI[10].

EMI Harvest?

No, actually it was with EMI in Germany. When we started playing in Germany, a lot of people came around us. We had a friend, a German girl (named Rosie), [who] worked for EMI. She asked us if we were ready to do an LP, we said ‘no’. We were not ready to do an LP, we were still being careful. We didn’t feel we had a statement to put on vinyl.

Then she tricked us. She said, ‘let me do a small recording of you and I’ll get you jobs with that’. To that we agreed. She took a recording of some our songs, she took it to her bosses in EMI, and they wanted to sign us. Next thing she comes back with a contract! Then it’s very hard to say ‘no!’ First we said we’re not doing it, we were perfectionists, very strict. But then she comes back with a contract, we thought ‘let’s do it already.’

That’s when we went into the studio to trip. We decided for our first LP to trip. We dropped acid and played for nine hours straight. [Unfortunately,] the EMI studio was broken. They kept trying to put their act together, but not even a single note of what we played got recorded.

We have never played as good our entire lives! And we thought that we liked it because we were trippin’ on acid. The people in the production room also told us that stuff was good, as good as The Doors.

Since the studio did not work, we recorded it on our own. EMI took it, and for the first ten years, we got ten-times the amount of royalties because it was on our own. It so happened, that we recorded the LP, and we were getting ready to take a year off and go to India. Before it came out, we took time-off.

Can you spot Fontana in the quilted jacket in the center of the above picture?

That was the first time we came to India. Those were the days, there was no email. We had to write letters… yeah, we were in touch with some people from Germany but I didn’t go online and see how the Sweet Smoke record was doing. Here we were in India studying meditation, yoga, completely cut-off. And I didn’t wanna know about the album, we were in our own world absorbing everything, having a great time.

So what happened when it was time for us to go back, my drummer went back to Germany a little before us to meet his girlfriend. Without knowing anything he walks into a record store and sees the Just a Poke album cover plastered all over the front. Because in Germany it became a big hit right away! He sees it all over, couldn’t believe it, we got some letters when we were leaving India saying ‘it looks like your record is taking off’, we didn’t believe it!

Then by the time we all came back, Just a Poke was a hit! In Germany, in Holland, it was like I couldn’t believe it! I was like ‘how did this happen’, you know? Because for some reason it has the sound on it, that was very catchy, especially ‘Silly Sally’.

With the echoing on the saxophone in the end…

…And the phasing on the drums. That was Conrad Plank’s idea – the engineer. Nobody used phasing before. That’s why the drums sounded so weird and psychedelic.

In Holland, Just a Poke became a super hit right away – it was so new and original. It was voted ‘The Best Album to Get High By’ in 1971. That’s a great honor you know. It was a cult hit, not like all over the world, only in England, France, Germany, Holland. In those countries it became a super hit.

So, for example, EMI signed us. They’d show the record to their sister company in Holland and ask [them] if [they] want to take this on. It was a slow process, not like today when it gets released everywhere. At first it was Germany, then Holland, then France… it took off! It was shocking to us! It’s just two long songs.

What we really wanted, what we played on acid, didn’t get recorded. Truthfully speaking, the day it got mixed, we never heard it afterwards. It didn’t get pressed right away. After we finished mixing it, they played it for us once. That’s it! They didn’t give us a copy to take home, like a CD or a DVD. They don’t say ‘we’re uploading an MP3 version for you to listen to it.’ It’s nothing. Nothing! We didn’t hear it at all until it got pressed!

Just like a photograph in those days. You had to go to a studio to get it developed.

But you can go to a studio, they’ll give you the photograph the next day or the day after. In case of a record, you had to wait till they pressed, released it, distribute it. Two months minimum. So we went to India.

What I mean to say is that even we didn’t absorb what kind of sound it was. When we play it, it’s a one way experience; when we listen to it on a record, it’s a different thing to me. Now, it’s like a different sound, I didn’t hear that sound. When I am playing it on a saxophone, I get to hear myself on a speaker – it’s a live concert sound. [Whereas] this is an LP sound.

We couldn’t even record it ourselves. I mean you could, but to get it done professionally, to get all these tracks, all these sound effects, you had to get signed by a company. Nobody had recording studios in their basements or in their garages like they do now.

So we got out, never heard it. Never heard it, until a-year-and-a-half later! And when I heard it the first time, I went like ‘whaaat-the-fuck?’ how does it even sound that way?

All of a sudden we hear ‘wow! this is a new sound.’ We felt it was a new sound. But how does everybody else think? But when you see people are buying it, you realize (almost choking): ‘We clicked! We did it!’

After that we got many more concerts. They booked us all in Holland. We were flying high, touring all around, we got a tour in France. We were also hired to perform for Princess Grace Kelly’s daughter Stephanie’s sixteenth birthday – Sweet Sixteen – it didn’t happen because the French mafia fucked us up. Stories, stories, stories… so many stories.

This was my life, and we went around touring. In France, they’d go crazy for us. Like I said, we were the first rockers. By the end of the concert, we got this jam together called ‘The Final Jam’; it was done spontaneously one night, then we did it every night, we made it l’il better, you know we rehearsed little bit. What we’d do is we’d ask people from the audience to come on stage, give them small percussion instruments and they would play with us! It gave them a great feeling of being together with us. And we’d go crazy in that last song.

Sometimes after the concert, if it was a small enough place in Holland, as we were packing up, we would start playing. Some Dutch people would come up, some musicians, and we’d do stuff we’d never did before. One time, we started playing on our hands-drum, and one Dutch guy started screaming, going ‘aaa-a-aaa-a’. And then I started screaming, and it became music. The screaming became music. We were very much that way, the Dutch people loved us.

What they did usually, is that they have you warm up, before anyone would come in. We had our own mixing, so it was my friend who was doing the mixing so they wanted to get a balance on the instruments. With nobody in there, we would play a little so they could get a balance. Sometimes, since we’d already smoked, we would get so much into the warm-up sound-check we started jamming! This all was fun: we started our sound-checks with jams! So when the people at the gate heard it sometimes, they would open up the doors even though we were not ready. So we would be here playing in a concert in Holland, and all of a sudden we’re sound-checking! But we’re into it and it’s all sounding good… and at the same time, Dutch people are coming in… at that time, at small clubs, there stage is this high (pointing towards the barely three-feet bench on which I am sitting, gets up and moves back a little to show where the supposed audience was). In Holland, it was all feedback. They’d come up to us and start dancing. Just hearing them, they gave us feedback; they pulled the music out of us.

That’s why we never really liked to play in big places. It is in the small places that you feel the audience. We had many concerts starting that way. We started jamming, they’d come in and they loved it and we made a song from it. We didn’t stawwp! We just kept playing, and then after the jam finally ended, then they would introduce us. This is the kind of group we were: we didn’t really care for formalities. We had regular songs too. This is for years.

In France, they went the wildest. French hippies were the craziest. My God! We sold a lot of albums in France. A lot! So we were like a cult-group, like the film Spinal Tap [11]. Our manager was our friend, we were never that much into money stupidly, we could’ve gone much higher. We stuck with a manager who didn’t really know how to get us jobs… he got us some jobs in England where we were supposed to play for Captain Beefheart.

Oh, Frank Zappa!

That’s right, but Frank Zappa had moved on by that time. By the way, Frank Zappa was one of the guys I saw at The Village before he became famous. I used to see The Mothers of Invention at a small club every weekend. You know how amazing Frank Zappa was. (Almost heaving) Just incredible! I saw all of these groups up close.

Michael Fontana with his group in Holland; 1971

So, we played this circuit and we were happy. The truth is, we could have gone much further. But we were very idealistic. We did not let the record company influence us. We said: ‘we’re more interested in music than money.’ We kept our manager but he was not very good at breaking past this ‘cult-status’, past this circuit of Germany, France [and] Holland. So at some point, we wanted to become more well-known. He couldn’t do it.

***

While in Europe, our long concerts were recorded across venues by two different people. I traced one of them down in US.  [I] brought those tapes to India. Then somebody [in New Delhi] told me that he’s got a few tapes of Pt Bhimsen Joshi. When you’re young, you don’t value your work. So I foolishly went to that man and recorded Pt Joshi’s performance over my tape. And that recording to Sweet Smoke got erased.

The person in US (from whom Fontana originally got those tapes) told me his house got robbed so those tapes are no longer with him. But some recordings of those concerts are with a guy in Germany. I finally traced the German chap. He told me his girlfriend broke up with him and refuses to hand back those tapes to him now. But he told me that one Dutch man came to him and took those tapes. So that means there’s an unknown Dutch guy who still has those tapes…

Why did the group break up?

We took a year off and went to India. Even though I came back, the group was successful and we recorded the second LP (Darkness to Light), which didn’t do as good as the first LP but which we liked better, they didn’t give us enough time. They made us record that pretty much right away. So we came back from India, we took a keyboard player who was my bass player’s brother, we got more into rock-jazz. But EMI didn’t give us much time to develop the songs.

Sweet Smoke’s second album Darkness to Light ; 1973

Then we went on the road, we took the songs, we developed it. We never got to record our music when it reached its best. When it reached its best, it was really, really amazing.

The reason the group broke up – believe it or not – is that after my first year in India, I was so much in love with India I was dying to get back (with a quiver in his voice). India in the Seventies, that was me, I fell in love with it! I didn’t say I wanted to break the group. We came back, we played; but my passion was always to come back to India. I was like a mad-man. Even now I am like a mad-man. You take me away too long I’ll go crazy. If the Indian government says I can’t stay, I’ll go crazy. Because of that I got itchy and I couldn’t wait.

I said I want to go back to India. We talked about breaking up: we knew we didn’t have to but we still split up, the guitarist wanted to go to school. Basically, if I want to be truthful, we didn’t know how good we’ve had it. Look, here we are, living our lives, supporting ourselves. By this point that I went to India, I had made enough money in royalties [that it] supported me in India for the next five years. I still get royalties now, for Just a Poke, though not as much. Most of them are free downloads now. But I was in India for five years living in India like a king off my record royalties. I didn’t know how much I am going to get. I didn’t realize it was going to be so much. But we were making a living. We didn’t know how lucky we were: we dropped out of college, became musicians, were a successful group making a living out of one hit record and we could make more if we want.

Fontana (with the harmonium) with Sweet Smoke in India; circa 1970/1971

Very nonchalantly we said, okay we’ll break up maybe we’ll get together later on. We never realized: once we give up this life, it’s very difficult to get back together. We never realized we’d go, get married, have children, have to work in companies and never again have that freedom – I have that freedom, now I came back to India – but we never realized what we were giving up. We took it for granted, we thought that our whole life was always gonna be the Sweet-Smoke-Way-of-Life.

Marvin had a girlfriend, Jay had a girlfriend. They went back to The States. Obviously you have to start working once you get married. I went back to India once Sweet Smoke broke up.

But there are many musicians who got married too?

Yes, many musicians get married. What I am saying is: life in a commune, free, supporting yourself… but we broke the group up, and they went back to the States and started living. I went back to India.We never realized the difficulty would be to get the group back together. People became least interested. Marvin tried to lead a group… but people were working in jobs. Our guitarist Marvin was amazing, was probably the best musician in the group. But he couldn’t successfully form a group. He wasn’t a group leader. I was the group leader. I and the bass player could bring a group together, hold them together, give them a vision, go towards that vision. I am not boasting about that but I had that ability. I had a vision, I had the saxophone, I brought Sweet Smoke into a new realm.

I was a workaholic. I drove them. I made them rehearse a lot. They hated me for that, I mean, not really, but I am just saying. They were in Europe, they’d be contend with fooling around and rehearse a little bit. I said: ‘No, back!’ I made them rehearse. You don’t get good unless you rehearse. I was a practice freak with my saxophone…

Anyway, Marvin, an amazing guitarist, he went back to America he couldn’t find a group to shine with. The bass player, he went to the Berkeley College of Music. They went to a music school. The drummer couldn’t find a group: he wasn’t a great drummer by his own, he was just a good Sweet Smoke drummer. He wasn’t really, really good in terms of ‘he could make any group rock.’ But he was very creative, even now he plays! But he never really practiced a lot to get the chops. The bass player went to school, but [one] can’t form a group by just being a bass player. So then they would live in different places.

When I came back to The States, I started playing guitar and making music. I always tried to get the group back together. Never worked. Just couldn’t get back together.

Then, it wasn’t until much later that we started having reunions. Now, to this day, we get together and it’s great. I mean, I don’t play sax anymore so I just contribute with my singing and with percussion.

It was only after a while we had our first reunion in 2000, and that is a lawwng time. Even then, people were all over the place. One guy is in California, one guy is in Boston, one guy is in Pennsylvania, I was in New York, Jay was in New Jersey. When we had our first reunion, the music was okay. But the second reunion, there was something, we could still play together. After not having played together for years, we could still play!

Why did leave playing the saxophone?

Well, first of all, I came to India after the group broke up; my dream was to study Indian classical music on flute. So I sold my saxophone, I didn’t have my saxophone with me. It was a mistake, but I felt I couldn’t concentrate on classical music if I had the saxophone with me.

Also, saxophone’s not a guitar. I take it into a room and I am practicing, everybody hears it! Saxophone, in those days, wasn’t something you could easily take, not like the guitar. Like I can take the guitar to my room and start practicing. With the saxophone, I am practicing, everybody’s hearing it. I was too self-conscious. It takes a lot out of you.

I wanted to forget Western music and go into Indian music. Could’ve been a mistake. Then later on when I tried to pick up the saxophone, it was too much of a wind thing for me. I was a practice-freak. So when I tried picking it up again, I couldn’t do it slow. I immediately went into six-hours practice. I immediately had to wake up in the morning: practice-practice-practice-practice-practice. I gave myself headaches. I couldn’t say ‘let me do it slowly.’ So I gave it up.

I still try to keep in touch with all of them. Marvin is full-time working.

Pardon me, but what is he working at?

Now he is a web developer. Creates websites and all of that.

What? A web developer from a musician?

He didn’t become that right away. But he had to make a living! He was married, he had a child. So he became a salesman, [then] he started doing this, started doing that. Then when personal computers came, he started playing around with it a little. He stuck with it. Now he is in my profession. I was an IT developer. But I was a professional, I worked for companies, mainframes, then I got into PCs. But I got into it professionally as a web developer – full-fledged in IT. He was trying to do it on his own.

So you went to IT school?

Yes, I went to IT school. I came back to India at the end of 1979. [In] 1980 I went to the first courses they had at NYU [12] in computer programming. Those days it were the mainframes [13]. It took you a day to put one program in.

So you must’ve been 25 at that time? You did an undergraduate degree at that age?

No I was 30 or 31. We dropped out of college, remember? This was a special Diploma course. One year, two semesters. Then they give you a certificate.

In those days, it was very new and you look for your first job. There weren’t as many programmers, so I could easily get a job. I was good at it. I didn’t think I’d be good, I was afraid to go back to school at that point. But to my surprise, Americans got dumber.

They make you take a test. I passed the aptitude test to my surprise, I went to school scared shit. All young people, I thought I’m never gonna do this – I was the best in my class. Because I read, I read, I read; and I learnt how to do it on my own, and I became very good at it very quickly.

So I was able to get my first job, and then I was always a technical person. I rose up, I got a good job. In those days, programmers were in demand.

They’re still very much in demand!

Not like then!

Oh, really? I thought programmers are very much in demand now. Everybody is an IT guy.

Yes, they’re all doing computer science. There’re more people. But at that time, there weren’t these classes at schools. Now, there are so many more programmers. Indians are getting outsourced… but the employees are still calling the shots.

In those days, it was a privilege. They didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. They expected you to finish the job but the bosses weren’t that bossy, they gave you raises. At the peak of my work, I was coming in 10 o’clock, leaving at 4:30. Two hour lunch, I used to get stoned during lunch time listening to groups. I was in the Wall Street area. Now, you have to work as a fucking arsehole.

Coming back to Sweet Smoke: your album got a cult status in England, Germany, France, Holland. How was the response in our home country, the USA?

In USA, it wasn’t even released. In those days, it wasn’t like the internet that it gets released everywhere. The sister company of EMI in America was Capitol records. And they just passed on it. By the time we came back, we didn’t push it. It wasn’t like today.

Now, I looked online, and I saw the full Just a Poke album on YouTube! Two million hits. Can you believe it, two million?!? And it is monetized. There are commercials. We didn’t put it on, someone else put it on. How much is he making from it? If he is getting ten-cents-a-hit, he is making two-hundred-thousand dollars. Even if he is getting one-cent-a-hit, he is making two thousand dollars. And that’s a lotta money! In those days, we did not have the internet, we didn’t push it. We never made a concerted effort to get it on radio, to get it pushed in The States. We were very easy-going, free-going. Back then, it wasn’t promoted at all. It was all just because of the sound on the album. Just read the reviews and comments on YouTube – my god, two million hits – people really liked it after all these years, and really thought it was good! It makes me so proud.

I don’t mind if someone downloads it for free. The more people get to listen to it, the better. But if somebody else makes money out of it, that is unacceptable. And I saw the commercials: they are location specific. I was getting commercials (yes, interrupting the music) about properties in Bangalore. So they take your IP Address and send you fine-tuned commercials.

By the way, I got to know about Sweet Smoke through Storm Thogerson’s book The Greatest Album Covers of All Time

Oh yeah. On one occasion, I walked into a Barnes and Noble bookstore and I saw this massive book with my band’s album cover covering the complete back of the book. It made me so proud…

I am still doing the same thing, still making music and so on. So that’s what I wanted to tell you, it’s a good life!

(And he laughs for one final time before his wife comes to pick him up. But before he leaves, he gives me his autograph on my copy of Thogerson’s book: on the page where his Just a Poke’s album-cover was printed. He signs it: ‘To Ritvik, Keep it Alive!’)

Yeah, keep it alive! That’s the gist of it all!

Ritvik is a music lover living in New Delhi. Feel free to drop a feedback at ritvikc@outlook.com

[1] All bracketed italicized text is by me

[2] ‘Live-in’ was a phenomenon that started in US where beatniks and hippies gathered together for a few hours to a few days and there was a lot of music and fun and… harmony

[3] From Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow (RCA Victor)

[4] Reefer Madness was a hoax disease that was propagated by the media tycoon William Randolph Hearst to illegalize marijuana. He did this primarily because there were newspapers that used hemp paper. After the illegalization of hemp or marijuana, these newspapers were forced to switch to paper manufactured by timber. Hearst profited immensely from this as he had invested in the timber business.

[5] No pun intended I suppose. Because Jefferson Airplane’s first album was titled Jefferson Airplane Takes Off.

[6] George Harrison used sitar and tabla on ‘Within You, Without You’

[7] ‘Jobs’ is musician-speak for gigs.

[8] The British Invasion is a popular name given to the phenomenon in the Sixties when all British rock groups – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Byrds, The Animals – became dead famous in the USA. So much, that some of them were banned from performing in The States!

[9] Pravadias were coffee houses in Netherlands with enough space for concerts: some big, some small.

[10] English Music Industry

[11] The definitive music-movie from that era. Fontana simply told me that I gotta watch it!

[12] New York University

[13] Mainframes were ancestors of the modern personal computers