Woodstock-Generation Secrets Most People Seem to Have Forgotten
In 1978 new owners, including a Lambda Sigma Deltan, opened the building at 14th and Peachtree as “For Heads Only”, a hair stylist for males and females. They also mixed and sold a line of hair care products. A back stairway was shut off to create a secret room behind a wall, with attached table and vase as disguise, that was a door.
The first outdoor skating rental for Piedmont Park, Skate Escape, was in a back room. A clothes designer also had a store.
The basement remained The Catacombs, a hush-hush after-after-hours club on weekends and after major concerts. Other nights it was rented and the swinging bed might be the center of an orgy room. Or The Fupped Ducks or someone else might have rented it for a party.
In a strange historic note the last band to take the stage at the Catacombs was The Red Spacenecks consisting of Fred Holloway, Steve MacMahon, Richard West and Patrick Edmondson. They played their sons such as “Hitched my Saddle to a UFO”, “The Doubleknit Life” and “If the creeks don’t rise”
The Catacombs was a coffeehouse/performance space/club/hangout created by Mother David in 1967 for the growing community of what came to be called hippies centered about 14th and Peachtree. Read what the Atlanta Gazette had to say about the club.
Darryl Rhoades was the drummer in the house band Celestial Voluptous Banana. Here is what he had to say on the subject.
In the 1980s Darryl Rhoades band The Hahavishnu Orchestra portrayed the hippie house band in a movie about Atlanta hippies, “Summer of Love”. For the movie the basement of what was now For Heads Only was repainted in black and dayglo colors to match photos and memories.
On the quiet it became an after-hours club and began attracting major Atlanta artists stopping in to jam.
Robin Feld founded the 12th Gate as a Methodist Church folk coffeehouse. You will never hear bad of her. Joe Roman became the 12th gate co-management. Since it was church related, it was acceptable to parents as a destination during the folk music craze of the the late 60s.
Another person important to the 12Th Gate was Ursula Alexander. RIP Ursula. Her executor contacted the Strip Project about taking possession of items related to her time at the 12th Gate and beyond. Check the link on her name to locate her pictures coming soon.
Seal Place article on the 12th Gate.
Seal Place has made a list of the acts that played the 12th Gate.
Here is a photo of Robin by Carter Tomassi
The Twelfth Gate had opened a free clinic on 15th Street, then opened the 14th Gate in the space for a variety of community services.
Piedmont Park was Atlanta’s hippies’ social center. Everyone gathered to glory in nature and each other. It was a rare joy to see so many others in tune with your feelings. People traveled from hundreds of miles for the weekly peaceful gathering of the tribes.
Several large concerts were held here, as well as a police riot.
It was a given that the weekend had bands and people gathering in the park.
Read the bands that played for the community – Billy Joe Royal, Joe South, Allman Brothers, Hampton Grease Band, Jackie Wilson, Boz Scaggs, Mother Earth and more – $1 a day!
Bell-Bottoms still came from navy surplus or friends in the navy.
From The Great Speckled Bird June 28, 1971 pg. 2
NO MORE MUSIC
After July Fourth there won’t be anymore music in Piedmont Park. Steve Cole, who has been handling the music ever since the early beginnings, gave us his reasons.
First, he feels that people now come to “the Park only to do drugs, especially killer smack, and to socialize. Second, he believes there is no interest in good or different types of music—rather, people just want to hear loud, “heavy” rock. Steve was also very discouraged because there are so many people that the Park loses any of its natural advantages as a musical setting.
We spoke of how the Park had lost the community atmosphere that existed in ’69 and ’70. The strength of that time was the good interrelationships between the bands and their audience, along with the feeling that we were a community celebrating, and as was necessary in September ’69, fighting for, its culture. But things are different now. Bands play mostly for exposure or because it is one of the few chances for other musicians to hear them. Dope use has become twisted into “kicks” or escape, from its original vision as a tool for new consciousness or heightening musical awareness.
The changes have brought their karma. July Fourth The Day the Music Stops!
—moe