Flashback to the ’70s: Gainesville’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Past

For a modest college town, Gainesville has made its fair share of contributions to the world. Among the many things we claim bragging rights to are Gatorade, Steve Spurrier, Marco Rubio and the viral phrase “Don’t tase me, bro.” But in spite of plenty of recognition in the worlds of athletics, research, and politics, there are still few people who associate Gainesville with music.

Though the evidence can be harder to find these days, in late sixties and early seventies – before Cantina was a thing and before Tim Tebow had ever blessed the University of Florida with his presence – Gainesville had rock and roll. The population was around 64,000, parking was a little more plentiful and the Beatles had already exploded across popular music in the United States. In the songs, the venues and the ones who lived it all survives a record of the mark that Gainesville made on rock music.

The late sixties and first half of the seventies were the “golden decade of music in Gainesville,” according to Marty Jourard, a musician who grew up in Gainesville between 1958 until 1976. He would go on to play saxophone and keyboard in the popular new wave band The Motels. In those days, though, he played in a band called Road Turkey and frequently shared the stage with Mudcrutch, a local Southern rock band with a skinny, long-haired bass player who was listed in the Gainesville High School yearbook as Tommy Petty.

It was a bold era of counterculture and it would go on to produce several Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, among them Tom Petty, Stephen Stills, and Don Felder and Bernie Leadon of the Eagles. Back then, they were just a few young musicians in a town that was full of young musicians, booking shows at high school sock hops, fraternity parties and local topless clubs and spending Saturdays playing together at Lipham’s Music Store.

“It was our town hall,” Jourard said of Lipham’s. “You’d come out there and hear all the players come, rock and country and western players trying out banjos and guitars and just kicking ass.”

Though a town full of students looking for the next party provided plenty of venues to play, the presence of a physical stage was often more of an afterthought.  Mudcrutch became known for their spontaneous outdoor performances, be it at the famous Mudcrutch Farm Festivals or at the Stone Castle, a residence on 5 acres of land level with the railroad tracks bordering 13^th Street.

“They would put on these concerts there where they would bring their gear and just start playing there out in the dirt, plugged in with extension cords,” Jourard said. “Anyone driving down 13^th would hear it and pull over to listen. “

Today, the spot is home to an apartment complex called Wildflower – a name that happens to be shared with one of Tom Petty’s solo albums from the 1990s.

“There was this sense of community because we were all hippies, really. We were all musicians, we had long hair and we were part of a clique. It was just a wild music scene and it was everywhere,” Jourard said.

Everywhere included, of course, the University of Florida campus. Jeff Goldstein, a student during the early 1970s who would eventually become chairman of UF’s Student Government Productions, was a part of a small team called the Rose Community Center that was responsible for organizing many of the bigger shows in town.

“The best venue on campus was, and probably always will be, The Plaza of the Americas,” Goldstein said.  “The crowds were always large and that’s where the energy of it all started. I think Tom [Petty] really realized then that they needed this kind of exposure if they were going to go anywhere.”

Shows like the annual Halloween Masquerade Ball would draw around 10,000 people – a number that equaled about half of the student body at the time – into the Plaza to dance, smoke some weed and listen to music late into the night. Though the university rule was that no outdoor performance could go for longer than four hours, the shows would be planned on the night in October that the clocks were set back to squeeze in an extra hour. And still every year, there would be riots from the crowd when the bands finally went quiet.

It was as much a destination for well-loved national acts as it was for up-and-coming artists.  Jimmy Buffet came to play once a year. Lynyrd Skynyrd and Tom Petty’s Mudcrutch shared a stage alone together for the first and only time in the University Auditorium, another favorite venue for students and musicians alike. The likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Roger McGuinn were hosted on Florida Field in 1976 during the Rolling Thunder Revue, a caravan tour that brought 280 traveling musicians to Gainesville for one show. When the show fell on the birthday of one of Bob Dylan’s sons, Joan Baez organized a birthday party for him in a tent on Florida Field, in the spot where the south stands now sit.

“A lot of the [touring] bands would charge just enough money to pay for gas and buy some sandwiches,” Goldstein said. “It wasn’t about making money, it was about making love, and there was love in the music.”

Jourard attributes the music-making magic that was at work during this era to the type of atmosphere created in a town dominated by energetic young people, full of unrestrained passion for music, art and being alive.

“It was like a musician was in a greenhouse, and you’re growing and you’re getting all the water and soil and heat and sunlight that you need,” Jourard said. “The Gainesville environment really helped us to develop our music. We had everything we ever needed to get better there.”

 

Jourard’s upcoming book on Gainesville’s musical history, Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town, will be published in April 2016 by the University Press of Florida.

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