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But the Avalon faced a bigger challenge at home. The Blumenfeld movie theater chain wanted to use the building the Avalon occupied. Suddenly Helms was hit with a barrage of challenges to his dance-hall permits. Neighbors said the patrons were pissing on the street -- they had apparently forgotten that the Van Ness strip was a hangout for winos and bums long before the Avalon opened.
The Avalon found a little support. Some employees and friends circulated petitions. Bill Graham himself stepped forward to say that the Avalon was a well-run hall. (He, after all, had permits of his own.) Helms was ecstatic when Mayor Joe Alioto offered his backing. Then he was saddened to discover that Alioto was the lawyer for a theater chain competing with the Blumenfeld family.
After about 2 1/2 years of weekend concerts, the Avalon crowd was beginning to evaporate. Now, Graham was paying acts more money, and attracting bigger talent. Sometimes Helms couldn't pay the guarantees he promised to bands. The permit situation only worsened.
Finally, there was a break. Someone (Helms still won't say who) made Helms' attorney an offer. For a $5,000 bribe, a well-placed attorney with good connections could score all of Helms' permits. It wasn't even considered. "Number 1, I didn't have the five grand," says Helms. "Number 2, on principle I would have never done that."
The beautiful posters at the Avalon changed from full-color to black-and-white. By December of 1968, the Avalon was dead.
"I think Bill would love to have thought that he had done it, but I don't think Chet needed any help," says Herbie Herbert, a band manager and Helms' contemporary.
"Where did all these hippies come from?" Craig Lucken wanted to know as he looked out across the sea of unwashed bodies piling up in the Greek Theater. There were 8,500 in the venue, now, after Charles Manson, after the anti-drug propaganda, after a wave of nihilistic punk had washed across Berkeley and San Francisco fashion in the summer of 1978. The Family Dog was back.
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and Barry Melton -- the Fish of Country Joe & the Fish -- urged Helms to try promoting again, even though a decade had passed since the death of the Avalon. It was an easy sell -- nostalgia was surging through Helms' veins. "The wounds had healed," he says.
With milk crates and a few phones, Helms converted a laundromat on Potrero Hill into command central. The name of the event -- Tribal Stomp -- referred to the first show Helms produced at the Fillmore. (At the beginning of the dance concert trend, it was popular to give every show a title, e.g., "A Tribute to Dr. Strange" or "Trips Festival"; Tribal Stomp combined tribelike cliques and the slang term for dancing.) Almost immediately, Helms' open-door policy attracted loads of washed-up hippies. Patrisha Vestey, whom Helms hired to run the office, remembers that ashtrays were crowded with roaches, and Helms paid all his bills from a roll of cash.
Vestey was amazed that Helms' name was such a secret password into the world of rock 'n' roll. All she had to do was say she worked for Chet Helms, and people were dying to talk. They listened, too. On Helms' request, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band reunited. Big Brother & the Holding Company hadn't played in 10 years -- but found each other onstage. Country Joe & the Fish got back together. Even Allen Ginsberg, who initially told Vestey he wouldn't participate in any sort of canned nostalgia, agreed to show up.
Helms was still a master of publicity. He'd feed items one at a time to KSAN DJs to build anticipation slowly. As the date got close, Helms decided that video and audio offered the best chance for the production to recoup costs. Woodstock was a perfect model: Its organizers turned a free concert into big money with the film and recordings.
Pete Slauson had recently finished making promotional videos for Donna Summer and Boston. The week before the show, Slauson told Helms that he and his partner would shoot the event. Slauson arranged for the necessary releases and found an investor to pitch in enough cash to rent equipment and buy tape.
Everyone involved was a nervous wreck before the show, but advance ticket sales were strong. And on production night, the theater filled up like something out of a time-release movie. The show itself, beginning with an invocation set by several poets, ran incredibly smoothly. Boots Hughston, a guy Helms knew as a musician in the Avalon days, managed the stage. Helms played MC, his lazy, conversational speaking style perfect for the event. The party backstage seemed almost as big as the one in front. Ginsberg stayed until the end of the show. Helms literally shed tears of joy.
"It was a very important show," says Hughston. "It reunited the families. Everybody didn't feel bad about being hippies. We are what we are, which is people that love Earth and love mankind, all at the same time. Kind people. It gave us a sense of pride."
For Helms, the show seemed an enormous vindication. "I'd taken so much flak for not being a success in the way that the public viewed success," says Helms. "It was really one of those high and holy events when you felt a connection to the universe and to other people and to being."
It took several days for everyone to come down. Helms and the crew celebrated the show at a great party. They watched Slauson's raw footage.
Finally, reality sunk in. The event had looked hugely successful, but Helms' accountants had screwed up. Basically, Helms recouped his expenses.
