In 1969, mescaline was $1.60 wholesale and Bill Guardino has the newspaper to prove it.
Thanks to Guardino’s new hardback volume of San Jose rock flyers, South Bay Flashback, we get an unprecedented glimpse into the rock scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s, in a town that never got any respect.
Guardino, now 70, has been collecting flyers ever since those days. South Bay Flashback gives us only a small sampling of the volume he’s amassed over the years.
Even today, most people at least know about “The Summer of Love” and all that unfolded in San Francisco, even if they weren’t even alive back then. But Guardino’s collection clearly shows the vibrancy of that same era in San Jose.
We get to see poster artwork—bold, trippy, surreal and colorful—that characterized many shows: The Doors at the Continental Ballroom in Santa Clara. Cream at the San Jose Civic. The Chocolate Watchband at the Bold Knight in Sunnyvale. All-day rock festivals at the County Fairgrounds featuring Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and more. Forgotten clubs like Alfie’s on Almaden Road. Steve Miller, CCR, Santana and Buffalo Springfield all played regular shows. Fritz, featuring Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, gigged all the time.
“There weren’t as many distractions,” Guardino said. “And I think people just really enjoyed being with each other, experiencing the music and the visual vibrations that were coming out, coming our way.”
Like all countercultures, the era was impermanent. It arrived and disappeared.
“It still lingers on through today, and that’s one of the reasons I started collecting back then,” Guardino said. “I knew it was going to come and go, and I just had some kind of a foresight that made me really focus on accumulation. And I loved it.”
Guardino still loves it. He now has more than 250,000 pieces filling his home in the hills outside Gilroy.
When flipping through South Bay Flashback and looking at all the colorful psychedelic flyers, newspaper ads, ticket stubs and more, one immediately realizes the only institution still left from those days is Paramount Imports.
“I was probably 12, 13, riding a Stingray bicycle, coming from the Cupertino area, just to go look at the black light room, which was just amazing,” Guardino said. “And to collect the latest Fillmore or Avalon Ballroom handbills or anything I could get my hands on. I was fascinated with the art, fascinated with the bands I was learning about at the time, and that was the only place you could really go to that had significant visual art and sound.”
The scene wasn’t just about music. Underground newspapers were prominent in those days, so much that Guardino devoted a whole chapter to them.
In the late ’60s, the landscape of downtown San Jose included several bookstores, record shops, hippie jewelers, folk music coffeehouses and comic stores, most of which was near San Jose State. Underground newspapers like the San Jose Red Eye, the San Jose Maverick and Sedition were everywhere.
In particular, the Red Eye featured The Dope Column, listing drug prices, the various effects and even warnings. A column published Sept. 26, 1969, featured the following info: Mescaline was $1.60 wholesale, but retailed for $1.75 to $2.50. The grass market was all messed up. Panama Red was dribbling in from the city. There were reports of chemically treated weed making people sick. Reds were everywhere. Readers were advised to “stay off glue, gasoline and all that other horseshit.” The column included phone numbers for the San Jose Peace Center, Planned Parenthood, the Grape Boycott, Drug Crisis Intervention and the radio station KSJO.
“[The newspapers] just corresponded with everything that I was collecting at the time,” Guardino said. “And I just figured, at that time, that these will be part of the San Jose history I was accumulating through the flyers from my high school.”
After 55 years collecting, Guardino finally met up with a lifelong friend, the local writer Brian Conroy, who helped him assemble the book. The two had known each other since kindergarten.
“We were altar boys together,” Guardino said.
Later this year, History San Jose is planning to exhibit an entire show of Guardino’s collection. Stay tuned.
Gary, I have long enjoyed your work, and I am thrilled that you wrote about my brother Bill’s lifelong collection of posters, newspapers and other visual reminders of the music and art scene of the ’60’s and ’70’s. Thank you!