I lost my virginity at age 15 in San Antonio at the Japanese Sunken Gardens in
Brackenridge Park on March 7, 1970, after a Jefferson Airplane concert. The
next morning, a solar eclipse occurred; my boyfriend and I dreamily watched the
cabs of the park’s skyride glide across the dishwater sky as we lay smoking pot
in a tiny half-cave at the base of its southern wall, about 150 yards from the
Sunken Gardens Amphitheatre.
Just the year before, in the heady, (post-post-Summer of Love) summer of 1969,
I’d spent every Sunday going to the outdoor shows at that amphitheatre. These
Sunday afternoon concerts were attended by San Antonio’s small but burgeoning
hippie counterculture – privileged white kids from the suburban Northside,
working-class Hispanics from the Westside, lower-middle-class whites from the
Southside, occasional Black Panthers (in 1969 it was exceptionally cool to be a
black hippie, kind of like being a black punk today), bikers attracted to the
free-loving hippie girls, and an ever-changing influx of draftees from San
Antonio’s five military bases being groomed to fight in Vietnam.
Despite the occasional foray to taunt the longhairs by pickup trucks full of
“shitkickers,” as the redneck element was most commonly called, Sunday concerts
at the Gardens were largely a ritual gathering of LSD-tripping, pot-smoking
hippies and anyone else who wanted in on the fun – as was being done at
Volunteer Park in Seattle, Golden Gate in San Francisco, Lee Park in Dallas,
Central Park in New York, and Anywhere, U.S.A. – with lots of tourists coming
to stare at the spectacle. San Antonio’s establishment was not alone in its
distaste for the counterculture; harassment, rousting, and arrest by the police
were regular concert activities.
The concerts started in the late afternoon; I can remember Shiva’s Headband
playing, swaying as the sun set behind the rainbow-attired, swirly-eyed
audience. I was enchanted by the contrast of their loopy Texacid rock being
performed against the neo-classical stage setting of the amphitheatre as the
clouds took on the rich, golden-apricot tones of a Maxfield Parrish painting.
The Greek columns that flanked the stage formed an oddly familiar setting, as
if we were a kind of Grecian Golden Age of Aquarius, week after week, with
psychedelic rock as modern Greek choruses.
There was a specific spot at the top of the hillside seating area – on the
far right as you faced the stage – that I would seek out when I knew the acid
was peaking. At that spot, the sound from the stage bounced off the rock wall
at the back of the theatre and clashed in a sort of aural wind shear. Often, I
would gravitate toward The Spot, not just when the acid was kicking in, but if
the mushrooms were just too trippy, or when the music would simply command it.
The effect was deafening and struck the deepest part of my soul. Close my eyes
for the ultimate rush. Up would rise the moon, like magic, smiling its crooked
grin at all of us dancing in its cosmic light. Like heaven.
And heaven I believed it was. My friends and I reveled in the teenage
innocence that allowed us to believe that peace and love – whatever those vague
concepts entailed – could change the world. We really believed it, and
rock & roll was such a powerful medium for this message that rock concerts
seemed to become as much a vehicle for the exchange of these well-meaning but
half-baked notions as it was for the performance of music. My girlfriends and I
did the suburban teenage thing, cruising the streets of San Antonio as Arthur
Brown bellowed he was the God of Hellfire, the Velvet Underground gave a nod to
heroin, or the 13th Floor Elevators levitated us via eight-track players. There
was a beauty to the cruising-in-the-car ritual but mostly it was just a prelude
to the concert.
These Sunken Gardens shows were acid-drenched, Texas-flavored versions of the
San Francisco hippie-era concerts, and they’re where I was baptized by the
spirit of live rock & roll. Those shows changed my life, bearing out my
parents’ worst fears of rock & roll and drugs. So when I decided to add sex
to the equation, I chose a scene of epiphany. Right there in that park, rock
& roll freed me from the boundaries in which I had been raised – why
shouldn’t I give back something equally personal? The park was also next to
Trinity University, where my dad was then a professor in the English
Department. A later boyfriend thought that more significant to choice of
location than my theory of the rock & roll epiphany. But in my teenage
logic, where I did it the first time was as important as actually doing
it. That primal act binds me to the very grounds of the Sunken Gardens and its
amphitheatre.
Exactly 10 years after the Gardens shows, in April 1979, punk was running
rampant. Its emergence in my life was as profound as the psychedelia that
inspired my first experiences what seemed like all those years ago. And 10
years after leaving the Velvet Underground, John Cale was taking his place as
one of punk’s godfathers with his Sabotage tour. I had met Cale in
Austin at the Armadillo show, where his paranoid military consciousness and
crackpot conspiracy theories collided onstage in a mangle of punk rhythms,
skewing my focus of the new sound I was in love with. Cale and I flirted
outrageously backstage but I snubbed him; three days later, however, I drove to
San Antonio to see him play – at the Sunken Gardens amphitheatre.
Now, here I was, ten years later, at age 25 – a whole fucking decade, for
Chrissake – born again at the scene of lost innocence and a rock & roll
renaissance, watching a ragtag army of New York punks prophesy the dark and
druggy but riveting and intelligent visions of one of rock’s bonafide geniuses.
I smiled: the black leather and torn t-shirts of Cale’s band were as much an
anomaly among the majestic, Grecian columns as the hippies’ tie-dyed attire had
been.
That soft April Sunday brought back memories with every ruffle of the
afternoon wind; I walked slowly, deliberately, toward The Spot and stood,
hearing the musical direction of my future performed in front of me. Cale and
the band were placating Velvet lovers with “Waiting for My Man,” and the
familiar feel of sound ricocheted off the back wall and slammed my head from
both sides. A journal entry dated April 24, 1979 reads: I was reeling from
the memories that flooded back, and the implication of being here ten years
after with no less than John Cale. Could I have imagined 10 years before, a
mere high-schooler driving around listening to the Velvet Underground jones
during “Waiting for My Man” that I would be here, now?… I was flush with
lust, yes, for the estimable Mr. Cale, but also lust for the renewal of faith
in rock & roll performance. Once again, it was musical epiphany that would
forever transform what I listened to and how I heard it, back in the same place
it all started. (I busted this rejuvenated cherry by fucking John Cale
backstage after his performance, mere steps from the very spot I lost it the
first time. It was shamelessly gratifying.)
A few weeks ago I drove with a Gen X-type writer-friend to see White Zombie
with Babes in Toyland and The Melvins play the Sunken Gardens amphitheatre on a
hot and dusty June night. It had been 16 years since the 1979 Cale show, only
the second time I’d been there since the hippie days of 1969. Now, I knew White
Zombie from their “More Human Than Human” video on MTV and, though unimpressed,
I went because I am still a true believer in live rock & roll. And I have
also managed to find a place for rock & roll in my life’s work, so that, 25
years later, the God of Hellfire Arthur Brown calls me at work , I’ve booked
the 13th Floor Elevators’ Roky Erickson for the Austin Music Awards, and Velvet
Underground reunion survivor John Cale and I see each other occasionally.
The idea of seeing White Zombie play wasn’t as appealing as simply the idea of
returning to the point of origin. That awkwardly termed genre called
alternative rock beckons to me as deeply as punk did 16 years ago or
psychedelia did 25 years ago or the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did for the
very first time for me more than 30 years ago; now I’m in it for the live
experience. What I wasn’t prepared for was the power of memory combined with
the sensory overload of White Zombie’s stage show, complete with pyrotechnics
and Mother Nature’s grand, full moon. White Zombie stormed that stage with the
same visceral passion that existed first for me in 1969 and then in the 1979
shows, like doing it all over again for the first time. I was age 15 then 25
then 41 and 25 again or whatever, and reveled in every second of it. I
recognized “More Human Than Human” but couldn’t distinguish “Welcome to Planet
Motherfucker” from “Black Sunshine,” and it didn’t matter. White Zombie weren’t
the message, just the medium. Except that all of a sudden they became the
medium again, rock & roll in its purest form: alive and raging.
In one of those rare moments when you recognize life as a vehicle you are
actually capable of successfully steering into the direction of your own
choosing, I navigated myself up the hillside, to the upper right side, to The
Spot where the sound clashed, and stopped. “This I remember,” I told my friend.
He shrugged and turned to watch the band; it wasn’t his experience. I turned to
look at the audience – equal parts retro tie-dye and retro punk gear – as
“Thunderkiss ’65” split down the sides of my head, half from White Zombie
roaring onstage and half the echo of rock & roll memories so profound they
transcended time. 25 years ago, I gave up my virginity in the shadow of that
amphitheatre because of those emotions. 25 years later, I got another kind of
innocence back.
This article appears in August 18 • 1995 and August 18 • 1995 (Cover).