Chester Leo Helms

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Chester Leo "Chet" Helms (born August 2, 1942 in Santa Maria , California - † June 25, 2005 in San Francisco , California) was a California concert promoter and hippie activist. Helms was the manager of the band Big Brother and the Holding Company and discovered Janis Joplin , whom he introduced to each other.

Live and act

Childhood and youth

Chester Leo Helms was the oldest of three brothers. When Chet was nine years old, the father died and the family moved from the west coast to Texas. There he matriculated to study at the University of Texas at Austin , but dropped out in 1962 and hitchhiked westwards under the impression of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road and finally ended up in San Francisco, California.

When Helms stayed in his southern home again in 1963, he heard the then unknown folk and blues singer Janis Joplin . He persuaded her to hitchhike to San Francisco with him. Janis Joplin soon returned to Texas because he was not successful in the local coffee house scene.

Family Dog

In Haight-Ashbury , Chet Helms quickly caught up with the burgeoning hippie scene. Together with the artist Alton Kelley , the later Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully and other friends, a loose hippie and artist commune was founded. Since everyone had a dog, the commune was named Family Dog . They lived together like the Merry Pranksters in a garage at 1090 Page Street . Family Dog also included The Charlatans , the first band of the emerging psychedelic rock . They quickly shared a common interest in LSD , which was still legal at the time.

Family Dog and The Charlatans had a momentous experience at a performance in the Red Dog Saloon in the former gold rush town of Virginia City , Nevada, in the summer of 1965. The intoxicated hipsters present danced freely to the equally freely improvised music of the Charlatans - up to now, dancing had meant a rigid sequence of defined steps in the context of short pop songs. Family Dog wanted to repeat this psychedelic performance experience in San Francisco.

On October 16, 1965, Family Dog rented a union hall, Longshoremen's Hall on Fisherman's Wharf. Under the title A Tribute to Dr. Strange , Family Dog hosted an experimental rock party that featured the band Jefferson Airplane . Around 400 to 500 people attended the event. In January 1966, the Trips Festival initiated by the Merry Pranksters also took place in Longshoremen's Hall . This multi-day event was also extremely well attended.

Avalon Ballroom

Following these two successful rock events, Chet Helms - initially alternating with Bill Graham - organized weekly concerts in the Fillmore Auditorium . To this end, Helms founded the event company Family Dog Productions in February 1966 . When the collaboration between the two organizers Graham and Helms became problematic, Helms broke away from the Fillmore Auditorium and rented the Avalon Ballroom in April 1966 , where Big Brother and the Holding Company became the house band.

Chet Helms remembered the powerful voice of his Texan friend Janis Joplin and persuaded her to come to San Francisco again. Joplin, who was considering joining the band 13th Floor Elevators in Texas , followed the phone call and rehearsed with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and in June 1966 they performed together at the Avalon Ballroom. At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the band of Chet Helms became popular and Big Brother and the Holding Company made their breakthrough with the mass audience there.

The bands that performed at the Avalon Ballroom included Big Brother and the Holding Company as well as other local bands such as the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish , Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape , The Great Society , 13th Floor Elevators, Blue Cheer , Vanilla Fudge , Paul Butterfield Blues Band , Steppenwolf , Electric Flag , Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service , but also The Byrds , Buffalo Springfield and The Doors from Los Angeles.

To publicize their events, Chet Helms and Family Dog Productions collaborated with a group of poster artists who created extraordinary posters for the psychedelic concerts. These included Rick Griffin , Stanley Mouse , Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, known as "The San Francisco 5". Your Avalon posters are now expensive collector's items.

The two concert promoters, Bill Graham and Chet Helm, had different corporate philosophies. While Graham was considered the more enterprising and profit-oriented entrepreneur, Chet Helms was more interested in hippie ideals and liked to let friends and acquaintances go to concerts for free. Ray Manzarek , the organist for the Doors who performed in both houses, wrote in his autobiography: “Chet was the exact opposite of Bill. Chet was the good one. The nice guy. ”The competitive situation intensified when Bill Graham took over the Winterland Ballroom and the Carousel Ballroom (henceforth the Fillmore West ) in 1968 .

When Helms lost his license for the Avalon Ballroom in late 1968, he went to Ocean Beach, where he held other Family Dog concerts on the Great Highway; the place became known as the "Family Dog on the Great Highway".

Later years

In the early 1970s he retired from the concert business and managed an art gallery and worked as a photographer . He died of a stroke . With him one of the great personalities of the hippie era died. After his death, his urn was buried in the San Francisco Columbarium .

literature

  • Bill Graham & Robert Greenfield: Bill Graham Presents: A Life Between Rock & Roll , Frankfurt am Main 1996, Two Thousand One , ISBN 978-3-86150-156-5 .
  • Carlos Santana : The Sound of the World. Mein Leben , Munich 2015, pp. 146–150, ISBN 978-3868835618 .
  • Tom Wolfe : The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The legendary journey of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters , Munich 2009, p. 478, ISBN 978-3-641-02480-2 .
  • Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain: Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond , New York 1992, pp. 142-144, ISBN 978-0-8021-3062-4 .
  • Wayne Glausser: Cultural encyclopedia of LSD. McFarland & Company, Jefferson NC 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Colin Devenish: Promoter Chet Helms Dies In: Rolling Stone .com of June 27, 2005. (English)
  2. ↑ Family Dog: Chet Helms (1942-2005) . (English)
  3. ↑ Dave Laing: Obituary: Chester Helms - Promoter of Janis Joplin In: The Guardian of June 27, 2005. (English)
  4. ↑ Tom Wolfe : Der Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test , Munich 2009, p. 478.
  5. ↑ Sheila Weller: Suddenly That Summer In: Vanity Fair from June 14, 2012 (English)
  6. ↑ Dave Laing: Obituary: Chester Helms - Promoter of Janis Joplin In: The Guardian of June 27, 2005. (English)
  7. ↑ Ray Manzarek: Die Doors, Jim Morrison and I , Wechsra / Wrogen 1999, ISBN 978-3-85445-165-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Helms, Chester Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helms, Chet (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American concert promoter and manager of Big Brother & the Holding Company
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Maria , California , United States
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 2005
Place of death San Francisco , California, United States