Written for my 1976 B.A. Portfolio for Antioch.

1. Describe the learning setting. Include where it took place, the role of other persons who were involved with you, and any materials and methods employed which assisted your learning.

From the time I dropped out of Stanford in 1965 until I came back to Los Angeles in 1972 my sole means of support was playing drums in rock bands. Loosely stated I played in seven bands in seven towns in seven years. The first band, the Vipers, was formed at Stanford in 1965. Besides myself, the members included Warren Phillips, vocals, rhythm guitar and songwriter; Stanley Muther, lead guitar; and Patrick Thomas, bass and vocals. I played the drums and sang on a couple of songs. We were strongly influenced by the Beatles’ movie “A Hard Day’s Night.” Our repertoire was about one-third Beatles, one-third Rolling Stones, and one-third originals by Warren Phillips. We played at the first dance Bill Graham ever held in the Fillmore auditorium, the first outdoor benefit against the Viet-Nam war in Golden Gate Park, and for the first light show, created by Roy Seburn, for Ken Kesey’s Acid Test.

The band broke up and in 1966 reformed in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, as the Blue House Basement. Stanley still played lead, and Warren still played rhythm and sang and wrote. All the other members were new, including the drummer. I spent the year in forest communes down the peninsula, trying to find some drums so I could play with a group called the Manbeavil Sneak Music Band. That never happened and I only played once that year, when the Blue House was breaking up and I sat in on drums one time.

In 1967 I got a call from Warren saying he had found two super musicians from Idaho and was starting a new band. I moved up to San Francisco and joined Mount Rushmore. Mike Bolan and Tom Dotzler, both from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, played lead guitar, and keyboards and saxophone. We needed a bass player and I remembered that Danny Wai, who had been living in my commune, had a bass and was looking for a band. We called up Danny and he became the fifth member of Mount Rushmore. It was our most successful band, as we played at the Fillmore, the Family Dog, the Straight Theatre, the park almost every week of the so-called “Summer of Love,” and on top of Mount Tamalpais twice, including once at a concert that attracted 40,000 people.

The Idahoans brought in a new bass player and after a while they became unhappy with Tom, Warren, and me. They split off and started a new Mount Rushmore. Tom and Warren joined a band already well established in our area, the Phoenix. I went out to the woods again, this time to visit John Dufford, who had originally introduced me to LSD. He had just received a brochure from the new Tassajara Zen Center. I called them to find out what I had to do to go there. They said I would need about a hundred dollars to pay rent for three months.

A minute later I got a call from Joe Tate of a band called Salvation asking if I would like to go down to Los Angeles and play drums on their second album. I would be able to earn about a hundred and fifty dollars. This was perfect. When I got there I found the cook for the band had lived at Tassajara, and now in fact is one of their ordained monks. But most of the people in Salvation were methedrine addicts, and I began to feel trapped there. I “ran away” back to San Francisco and went walking over to the Phoenix house to see if they wanted a second drummer. I met Tom Hart, the drummer for the Phoenix, in the street, and he said he had been thinking of the same thing. We moved to Berkeley and started practicing with two drummers.

I played with the Phoenix the whole year of 1969. After a few personnel changes the band consisted of the familiar line-up of Warren Phillips, Stan Muther, Tom Dotzler, and myself. We played around San Francisco and at rock concerts in Seattle and San Diego.

At this time we played at a club in Palo Alto, and Pat Thomas, the only member of the original Vipers who was not with us, came to listen and asked if he could play bass with us. We invited him to join and after a series of talks we decided to change the name of the band to the Potter’s Wheel and move to the country.

Tom Hart had introduced me to Steve Gaskin, San Francisco acid guru. I started following his teachings, and after a while all the rest of the band was involved too. By the middle of 1969 we were meeting every Thursday afternoon with Gaskin’s four-marriage at their apartment on Pine Street. So in addition to being a communal band, we were sharing experiences with another extended family on what this form of living was like. Warren’s wife Sandra, who had been with him since before the Vipers, and Stanley’s future wife Rebecca, also came, as did Tom’s girlfriend Mindy. I didn’t bring a girl to these Thursday meetings.

By the time we moved to Santa Cruz in 1970 our lyrics and style had been very much affected by these meetings with Gaskin. Most of the lyrics were about “spiritual” topics, at a point somewhere between Jesus, Buddha, and acid. Soon Sandra, Rebecca, and Tom’s future wife Wendy were members of the band. When Gaskin’s caravan left for Tennessee to buy a farm I quit the band, sold my drums, and hopped aboard. The rest of the band scattered over the west coast.

At the Farm I started a new little acoustic band, with none of the people from the old bands, yet at the Farm. But by the time I had left, in December of 1971, Tom Dotzler was playing and singing in the band, and Patrick Thomas had just arrived with his new fiddle. Both of Warren’s brothers were living on the Farm, too, by the way. The band was about to get into the recording business in Nashville, but I had finally tired of the whole music business and left for California to look for a Zen teacher.

2. Describe your participation and responsibilities in this setting.

Musically my participation was pretty consistent throughout the whole time. We were playing electric rock and roll and I was the drummer. We weren’t into very much rhythmic experimentation, so my main function the whole time was just to keep a steady beat and provide enough punctuation to keep it rhythmically interesting. Vocally, I did a couple of solos in the Vipers but never sang after that, as we usually had to memorize parts. I was the only one who couldn’t read music and memorize my part.

Communally my responsibility also focused around the drumming. As long as we were working steadily we had enough money to pay the rent and buy food. So it was my responsibility, along with everybody else in the band, to play well and turn on the audiences so we would be in demand for work. Also, we all took turns cooking or baking bread or doing housework or lugging equipment around. To the extent that we all shared the work and lived together in one house we were like a big family with all grownups and no children.

Another function that I performed was in trying to help Warren write his songs. I was interested in the creative aspects, and although I didn’t play a melodic instrument, I liked to be with him while he was writing and provide words and rhythmic ideas. Also, once a song was sketched out we would meet as a group and my function would be to sketch in the rhythmic structure, and fill in the rhythmic breaks.

3. Describe new skills and/or knowledge derived from this learning activity which contribute to your Degree Plan.

Before joining the band I had taken lessons in Los Angeles from Alan Goodman, Art Anton, and Philly Joe Jones. Once we had the band together I was always listening to other bands, live and recorded, to keep up with or anticipate the other drummers. One of the main skills I acquired while playing with the band was learning how to play with a bass player. In our bands the bass and drums provided the rhythmic backbone of the music. This would involve practice sessions with just the bass player and myself to find patterns that linked together effectively.

Another primary skill was to learn to hear the chord changes and make appropriate subtle rhythmic changes to bring out the changes in tonality. A lot of the learning was in the field of performing and stage presence. Part of the appeal of our band was a sort of frenzied excitement on stage which I learned to cultivate over the years by storing up energy and then using the performance for total catharsis. For the whole year of 1967 I would break a drum head or find my hands bleeding practically every time we played. I always would throw my sticks out into the audience after a performance. With long bushy hair and body wildly gyrating the whole time, it was quite a visual performance, as well as sound.

4. Self-Assessment: Evaluate this learning activity. Mention such things as the quality of the experience itself and its personal significance to you.

For the first few years I thought this was what I would be doing for the rest of my life. Then in 1969 I noticed that the flashier among my contemporaries were dying, very young. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, were only the most visible, but it seemed to be a growing trend amongst the people who had adopted the flamboyant style which was for me the most fun about the whole business. So there were definite limits. I could keep playing music but I would have to approach it in a less flamboyant manner. It was time to get away from the music business and try to develop another way of taking care of myself. As I said at the time, everybody that we knew was either dead, or becoming millionaires, or meditating. I decided to meditate. We had gone along for seven years as a third bill band and never really established ourselves in recording or any consistent good jobs. There was clearly no future for us, and I began to see that our casual approach was not sufficiently competitive or business-like for us to ever make it financially worthwhile. We were getting tired. Also, we had all been together for so long that we were hanging onto each other for security, stultifying each other’s growth. I don’t regret the exciting view I got of America in the sixties, most of it seen from behind a drum set on a stage, but those times are gone and it is time for me to be doing something else. The dream of the rock star is in the past.

5. Describe the methods of evaluation and feedback used during the learning experience itself.

Maybe the best feedback was that year after year it became harder to pay the rent and buy groceries. The audiences were decidedly less excited after 1967, at the peak of the acid-rock craze.

6. Describe the material products of this learning experience, if any.

Tapes of all the bands, posters from concerts.

7. List the form of testimony and evaluation that you will include in your portfolio as demonstrable evidence of learning. Please attach these.

Evaluation written by Warren B. Phillips, Jr.

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Central Staff Advisor’s comments:

I have only recently begun to see the rock drummer – transformed – in Ed!

Central Staff Advisor’s signature______________Tom Robischon 3/17/76

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Evaluator: Warren B. Phillips

1. Brief self-description: your relationship with the student relative to this learning experience; professional and /or academic qualifications. You may attach a resume.

I lived and worked with Edward Levin for about four years during which he was the drummer for three rock music groups for which I was a songwriter, singer, and instrumentalist and arranger. I am a member of ASCAP and the national Fed. Of Musicians. I am a graduate of Stanford University and currently work for the Department of Education in the state of Hawaii. I was in a unique position to observe the development of Edward’s drumming, and am very aware of the state of the art, although I’m not a drummer myself.

2. Describe the student’s learning in this experience. Mention observable growth, skill development, information mastery, aesthetic sensibility, or other evidence of acquired learning. Use the back of this sheet if necessary.

Edward’s “Rock Drumming” grew from the early stage, where he would “mimic” or copy the drum part from a recording of a popular group, and evolved into an innovative, improvisational style which responded to the conditions at public performance. He learned to function as a kind of “director” with the other musicians looking to him for cues – as well as tempo. Technically, his playing became more forceful and stronger. He mastered the double bass drum and had the ability to create tympanic-like effects – this required great independence and coordination. His awareness of and rapport with the bass player also improved markedly over the years. This created a tightness or pulse in the lower frequency range. Edward developed a great ability to communicate with other musicians. He helped a great deal in practice sessions where we created and refined our arrangements. He was able to “sit in” with any group. He also learned to play “to” the audience, and became very good at dramatic non-verbal forms of communication other than music. Partly due to a vast stage and loud volume conditions there were many times when he could not be heard by the members of the band, and the music held together by virtue of his gestures. He became very dynamic and learned to control the loudness and softness of the entire ensemble.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this activity and experience, in relation to Edward’s degree plan, is what he learned about relating to other people. He had to deal with not only other band members, but with managers, promoters, booking agents and a lot of “weirdoes,” “freaks,” and hecklers which anyone who gets in front of an audience (especially for entertainment purposes) meets. He displayed compassion, tact, and an ability to handle the “vibes” and not “lose his cool.”