Photo of the Day: Members of Canned Heat plead Innocent in Denver to Marijuana Possession, 1967

Paul Mason Info

The Denver police hated the idea of a hippie haven in their city and had done all they could to stop the club from opening. Nothing worked. Helms was way too smooth for them and met all legal requirements. When the club finally opened, Helms and his people were subjected to a barrage of harassment and illegal searches. This prompted them to get a restraining order against John Grey, the rabidly anti-drug detective also known as the “Wyatt Earp of the West” for his promise: “I’m going to rid Denver of all long haired people.”

 It was Canned Heat’s bad luck to show up just as the police figured they’d get one of the bands and the bad press and legal troubles would slop over on Helms. On Saturday night October 21, 1967, the police dispatched a stool-pigeon with some weed to Canned Heat’s hotel to socialize a little and get the band high. The Bear swore that the band members (knowing the city’s reputation) actually didn’t have drugs with them that night.
       

It turned out the stool-pigeon was an old friend of Bob’s – Bear grew up in Denver – so he trusted the guy, until he suddenly slid out the door and the cops came barging in to “discover” a lid of grass under the cushion of the chair where the “friend” had been sitting. They arrested everybody on charges of marijuana possession – still a big offense in those days.
Skip, the one guy who did have drugs, wasn’t there. He was in his room with a girl, but the cops went after him to arrest him anyway.

        “You with that band?” asked the cop who knocked on the door.
        “Uh, yeah,” said Skip, who was wrapped in a blanket from the bed.
        His girl was in a sheet
       

Standing on his night stand wrapped in tin foil was a flat chunk of rich dark brown Afghani hashish: it looked like a Hershey’s bar.
      

  “You’re going to have to come with us and the rest of the band,” the cop said. As they left, the cop said to the girl: “Sorry to bother you with this ma’am. But you can finish that chocolate bar all alone.”
     

   The only real dope in the place – except him – and he missed it.
       

The band was hauled off to jail after the search. A judge was not available to set bail until Monday, so the boys spent the weekend in the can. Larry – who never got high – was thrown in a tank with 50 drunks and no sleeping facilities. The bust was immortalized in “My Crime,” which tells the story best.

   To a reporter at the time, The Bear said: “To sing the blues, you have to be an outlaw. Blacks are born outlaws, but we white people have to work for that distinction.”
   

Being led away in handcuffs, kicked off the band’s image as the bad boys of rock, heavy-duty incorrigibles, which  eventually led to our becoming a favorite band of the Hells Angels and other outlaw biker clubs.  At the moment, the band was on the downside of the outlaw life.
   

Skip was desperate. He had a band that was far from a sure thing but was suddenly hot. Unless they could follow up, they might get cold just as quickly. Unfortunately, they couldn’t play anywhere if they were looking at possible jail time.
   

In a gin rummy game in Los Angeles with Al Bennet, President of Liberty Records, Skip mentioned that he had to get $1O,OOO right away for legal fees to fight the bust. Bennett, a shrewd businessman, offered him that much for the publishing rights to the band’s works and Skip grabbed at it.

The Denver authorities were stringently anti-drugs, and the band were facing up to 10 years in prison. [Skip] Taylor went to Al Bennett, who agreed to hire an attorney, who got them off on a misdemeanour technicality. But that required $10,000 bail – money the band didn’t have. Bennett agreed to pay it in return for quashing the publishing deal they had signed a few months earlier.
https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-twisted-tale-of-blind-owl-and-the-bear

Publicity aside, the members, with the exception of [Alan] Wilson, ended up spending the weekend in jail before being released on bail.
Lacking the funds to mount an adequate legal defense, the band was forced to sell half of their publishing rights to Liberty Records for $10,000 so that they could secure the services of a top Denver attorney.
https://www.eventim.co.uk/artist/canned-heat/?affiliate=HEJ

“At the time of the Denver bust, the only asset that Canned Heat had was half of its publishing, which at the time was virtually worthless,” says [Skip] Taylor. “Al Bennett agreed to buy that half for $10,000, which enabled us to have bail money and payment of an attorney to represent us and get us all off.”
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/canned-heat-geico-ad/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

Upon returning to L.A., the group held a press conference to announce that their bust had been orchestrated and that the Denver Police Department had planted evidence to use against them as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment waged against the owners and promoters of the Family Dog (a hippy ballroom) and its patrons.
https://www.eventim.co.uk/artist/canned-heat/?affiliate=HEJ

Source: https://www.paulmason.info/CannedHeat/CannedHeat_at_Liberty.html