A Ticket to Ride

It was a beautiful day Sunday. After breakfast, during which I read the sad news of poet Allen Ginsberg’s death, I made my way to Calamigos Ranch in Malibu where about 5,000 bikers were expected for a noon barbecue and a concert by Robby Krieger of the Doors.

The fourth annual Lorenzo Lamas Ride for Life, a motorcycle-ride fund-raiser, started in Glendale that morning. The event’s proceeds benefit the World Children’s Transplant Fund, an organization founded by Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker that’s working to establish pediatric organ transplantation centers for children all around the world.

Lamas, star of the syndicated TV show “Renegade” and son of famed Hollywood leading man Fernando Lamas and actress Arlene Dahl, started his annual fund-raiser in 1993 after meeting Kroeker.

The day couldn’t have been better for a bikers picnic--clear skies, warm sun, cool breezes. Bikers from all over were there to lend their support, particularly evident were representatives from those famous biker strongholds of West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. For the most part, this was a group of pretty people.

Honorary grand marshal Peter Fonda, the original Easy Rider himself, walked among the crowd looking much healthier than he ever looked in any of his movies. Larry Hagman, of “Dallas” and “I Dream of Jeannie” fame and the son of Broadway legend Mary Martin, was also there.

Completely surrounded by a large crowd of leather-clad people of various sizes were Lamas and his wife, Shauna Sand, who dutifully signed their autographs to anything put in front of them. All for a worthy cause.

Ginsberg’s death brought to mind that this is the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love--1967, the year the Doors first burst upon the national consciousness. Not only is Ginsberg credited with creating the term “flower power,” but he and other Beat writers of the ‘50s gave birth to certain revolutionary ideas that reached their culmination in the summer in 1967. I got to the picnic just as Krieger’s new band started playing.

By this time, the bikers, who had finished a long ride and had their fill of barbecue, were looking pretty laid back and satisfied with themselves. The band played a few rock-jazz-fusion-type things and then got into more rock stuff--mostly Doors tunes. The band played unevenly--sometimes struggling and other times hitting a groove and riding it for all it was worth.

At one point, Krieger suggested that the crowd sing along with “Alabama Song.” Krieger’s attempt at encouraging audience participation was half-hearted and the choice of a song from the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill opera “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” seemed an odd choice for a sing-along. Few audience members responded. The crowd did seem to wake up when longtime L.A. club fave Top Jimmy, looking somewhat like the ghost of Jack Kerouac, came up to close the first set with a spirited version of “Roadhouse Blues.”

Besides Krieger, the band included his son, Waylon Krieger, on guitar, and Dale Alexander on drums, T. Lavitz on keyboards and Berry Oakley Jr. on bass. When they came back from the break, it was more Doors--including “Five to One,” “Break On Through” and “Back Door Man.”

In keeping with that infidelity theme, Oakley, the son of the Allman Brothers bassist, sang the classic hit “One Way Out.” Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer sat in on keyboards for a few songs along with his son, Aaron. Thinking about it, this was certainly a day for sons--Lamas, Fonda, Hagman, Krieger, Oakley and Emerson.

The concert wrapped up at about 3 p.m. and I stopped by a record store on my way home and bought a Doors CD. The music sounded even better than I remembered.

Later, I drove out to Borders Books in Glendale to hear New York singer-songwriter Lori Carson, only to find out the day printed in last week’s Rocktalk was wrong. I was a day late. Boy, was I disappointed! Not only because I missed the concert, but because I was the one who got it wrong.