“The term (hippie) has been miss-stereotyped. It’s become much different than how people used and meant it back then. It was not a cool thing to be called.” The original meaning has been lost over time blanketed over by general use. “I remember the first time I ever saw that word in print. There was a story in the Dayton Daily News, about what they referred to as a clan, (not the KKK). It was a bunch of kids with long hair that hung out downtown on the courthouse steps.” They smoked weed and people were outraged by these dirty, long haired hippies hanging around downtown. “Back then, if you had long hair, you hung together because many times I had people trying to kick my ass. I wound up in fights all the time.”
Mick got to know the local kids playing in Tonto’s Headband playing at places they hung out. “I was playing at the Alley Door in the basement of the big church on First Street.” The Alley Door was a giant room, around back on the lower level. Tonto’s Headband were regulars playing for the longhaired kids. “We referred to ourselves as ‘heads’ or ‘long hairs.’ I was a little older so I used the term ‘bohemian.’ People that turned me on to that scene were from the old beatnik scene.”
“I was a rock kid, totally enthralled in Top 40. I was introduced to The Lemon Tree coffee house on Wayne Ave.” The Art Theatre was where Family Video is now and where all the foreign films like Fellini and Bergman were shown. The coffee house had an old fashioned brass expresso machine, with a big brass eagle on top. Montgomery went there often performing solo on stage for the first time. “I learned to get over stage fright having my voice go up half an octave from nerves.”
Week after week he sat and watched the touring folk singers learning what they did and borrowing a few things. They had a “hootenanny” every Sunday for all the locals to play. This was pre-Tonto’s Headband. When they started, they were gonna take the scene and add rock n’ roll and psychedelic to it. “There’s no question it had to do with us experimenting with psychedelic substances,” Montgomery quips.
“I remember the first time I got a message that someone we knew got killed in Vietnam. It was a guy from Middletown, who played guitar and jammed at the house.” He was so paranoid last time I saw him, he had real long hair, a hell of a guitar player and a good singer. We got word eight months later he had been killed in action.” That was the first time it hit so close to home.
That’s what was going on before Montgomery left Wright State for California. Next week Montgomery talks about experiencing San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district and returning to WS a more experienced, focused artist.
