HOW THE STARS WERE BORN 

Part 2

Morrison climbed down from his rooftop bivouac and out to Venice beach one day and sang a poem to his ex-UCLA classmate, Ray Manzarek, who said: “Let’s start a rock band and make a million dollars.” Jim liked the idea. But the Doors’ demo tapes were soon rejected by every producer in LA. Finally, Electra paid them a pittance and Morrison, on acid, broke on thru to the other side at the Whiskey: he became an overnight sensation with the performance of his fuck-the-mother / kill-the-father anthem, The End.

Garcia was struggling with a jug band until he saw Hard Days Night and switched to rock. On seeing the Dead perform for the first time, the group’s future patron, Stanley Owsley, the biggest acid cooker in the U.S., predicted that they would be “bigger than the Beatles.” Soon after, when Warners offered a contract, Jerry declared: “I don’t need anything… I’ve got instruments, I know I can eat. We’re not sacrificing any of ourselves to do business.” Twenty-five years later, he and the Dead had become the 39^th largest corporation in California. When another royalty check arrived at the office, Jerry would moan: “Oh no, not more money!”

The Can’t Buy Me Love / You Never Give Me Your Money Beatles – whom Garcia and all the others tried to top -- got their start in Hamburg playing Prellied-out six-hour sets for wasted German sailors whom they later rolled for spare change in the back alleys. Their boyish charm and playfulness notwithstanding, the Beatles were known for their ruthless ambition, and Lennon later called his group, “the biggest bastards on earth.” 

They sought to dethrone the biggest and most unlikely star – the shy mama’s boy from Mississippi, the King himself. Elvis refused to give audience to the British upstarts on their first conquest of America, telling his Svengali manager, the Colonel: “Hell, I don’t wanna meet them sonsabitches.” 

On their second invasion, Elvis finally desisted. After the summit of the superstars, Lennon, deflated, said of his former hero, the King: “It was like meeting Engelbert Humperdinck.”