Returning to the Scene of the Crime

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  Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

(Ann Arbor, Wednesday, December 20, 2006)-I hadn't intended to come to  Michigan at all on this trip to the States. My plan was to fly from Amsterdam to New York City, hook up with Dr. Dorothy for the holidays and rent a car for my daughter Sunny so she and my granddaughter could drive out from Detroit to join us.

Then I got a wire from Lee Berry at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor that they were screening the U.S. vs. John Lennon film in mid-to-late December and wondered if I was planning to be in the area so I could make an appearance.

I probably said all this before, but the short of it is that I was able to change my ticket, fly into Detroit, make the screening and then drive with my daughter and little B to the East Coast to meet Dorothy and go visit my sister Kathy in New Haven.

But my Wednesday in Ann Arbor was even more fulfilling than simply returning to the scene of the crime to see the movie of the events that resulted from that night in 1971 when John Lennon & Yoko Ono and a gang of wildly assorted characters came to Ann Arbor to try to get me out of prison-and they DID!

After I was released from prison on December 13, 1971 and returned to Ann Arbor to live and work with my people there, just about my happiest association during that period was with the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, which I served as Creative Director and Co-Producer (with Peter Andrews) for the years 1972-1973-1974. .

My partnership with Peter Andrews ended early in 1975 and I moved from Ann Arbor back to Detroit to live and work there until 1991, when I relocated to New Orleans. In 1992 a group of Ann Arborites revived the Blues & Jazz Festival, at first under Peter Andrews' direction, and they mounted the event each September for about 10 years to minimal response from the music-loving public in southeastern Michigan, drawing daily crowds of 1,200-2,000 people and consistently losing money on the event.

There were a couple of scandals along the way as well, like when one of the Board members doubled as the primary ticket sales outlet and failed to turn in promptly the proceeds from ticket sales one year, or like when it became apparent that the non-profit sponsoring organization hadn't perfected its application for 501(c)(3) status and was significantly behind in making its required filings with the government.

I've always felt terrible that the organizers excluded me from the proceedings while using the concept, title, logo, and other aspects of the event which I had helped to create and making such a bad showing of themselves in terms of attendance and community support. I thought it was in extremely bad taste for them to refuse to include me in some way in their deliberations and productions, especially since any fool could see that they needed all the help they could get to make the thing work like the original events (we drew 12,000 people in 1972 and 15,000 in 1973).

Like so many things in this life, though, if you live long enough a lotta things end up coming back around, and when I was in Michigan in August I got a call one day from Peter Andrews, who said he'd just been appointed to bring the Festival back to life and he wanted to re-form our original working partnership and do it the way we did it then-with the important exception that there would be no flying by the seat of the pants with respect to funding this time around. He would seek sponsors and raise the necessary production and promotional monies before committing to anything in terms of bookings and ticket sales.

We had a couple of meetings around Labor Day weekend and then corresponded all fall while I was in Amsterdam, and I took advantage of my unexpected trip to Ann Arbor to meet with Peter and my dear friend & attorney, Bob Baldori, to get a progress report and make additional plans for the future. One of the collateral benefits of our association and the revival of the Festival in 2007 is that we will make a serious effort to get the music from the 1972-73-74 festivals into release, and we held another meeting this Wednesday with Dr. Francis Bluoin, director of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan where my archives-including the original master tapes from the three 1970s festivals-now repose. The Bentley Library will be an important collaborator in our project and has promised full cooperation.

I'm not really in a position to say any more about the AABJF project at this juncture except that things look good so far and I'll keep you posted on our progress. This is a big double thrill for me because not only do I have the opportunity to help re-create a fantastic musical and cultural event in Ann Arbor as in the beloved days of yore, but the big hole in my heart that's festered around this issue since 1992 is in the process of healing up at last, and I'm feeling much better about it already.

That night I sat in the theatre and watched the Lennon movie again-I'd seen it at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam on November 27th and spoken with the audience afterward, but this was a whole different thing. This was Ann Arbor, where the shit actually went down, and there were definitely people in the crowd who had been at Crisler Arena on December 10, 1971 when John Lennon's subversive nature was discovered by the forces of American law and ordure. The question-and-answer session after the screening was just about the best, the most intelligent and most rewarding Q-and-A exchange I've ever enjoyed, and it was with great reluctance that it had to come to an end so the next screening could proceed.

The theatre people put me up in the sumptuous surroundings of the Campus Inn for the night, and I had the next afternoon off to spend with my dear friends Jeffrey and Jamie Strouss, starting with our obligatory trip to Crazy Jim's Blimpyburger for traditional hamburger treats-"Cheaper than Food!" I caught the train back to Detroit for a night at my daughter's house and dinner with Sunny and Celia, which was just about as great an experience as one could ask for. And since that's my next post, I'm outta here....


-New York City
January 2, 2007



 

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