Jefferson Airplane played at the Minneapolis Auditorium on Friday, May 15, 1970, with local – now national – band Crow playing warmup.

Jayme Kleinbaum remembers:

I was there. When Grace saw the size of the crowd she said, “Wow, Minneapolis, welcome to San Francisco.” We said, “San Francisco, welcome to Minneapolis.”

Songs mentioned in Will Shapira’s review were:

•  Volunteers
• Somebody to Love
• The Other Side of This Life
• We Can be Together

 

 

 

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REVIEWS

Local reports are that Crow was really tight and the Airplane came off really sloppy.

Dodd Lamberton, reviewing for the Minneapolis Star, noted that Crow, formerly the South Forty, had a successful national reputation and much of its repertoire was original.  The lead singer sounded quite a bit like John Fogerty, he though, and the gyrations and facial contortions of the drummer (Denny Craswell?) made him afraid that a heart attack was soon to follow.

Then came the chaos.  During “Slow Down,” the crowd rushed the foot of the stage, making it impossible of the fans seated on the main floor.  The band and the management begged them to move, they didn’t, and the band played on.

 

When the Airplane arrived, the crowd went even wilder, which didn’t set well with the reviewer.  No middle-aged stiff himself, Lamberton was a music major at the U.  Nevertheless, he wrote, “It is unfortunate that whenever Minneapolis rock fans get a first-rate group to perform, they make fools of themselves by clustering around the stage, dancing and cheering every movement the performers make.”  (May 16, 1970)

The Minneapolis Tribune recruited Will Shapira, a writer for Connie’s Insider, to review the show.  Shapira reported that 8,000 “young heads” had turned out for the performance.  He, too, noted that the crowd surged to the edge of the stage, but that there was “no trouble.”  (May 17, 1970)

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BALIN BUSTED IN BLOOMINGTON

It all started with a phone call by an irate parent who called the police and complained about a pot party his daughter had attended at the Thunderbird Motel with two soundmen with the group, Graydon C. Odell and Terry D. Cost.  The two were originally arrested at 6 am Saturday, May 16, for contributing to the delinquency of minors, but while they were being transported to the Bloomington Police Department, they “attempted to conceal containers containing narcotics.”  They were they charged with unlawful possession of marijuana and cocaine.

This resulted in a search warrant, which turned up marijuana and a cube of hashish in the possession of Martyn J. Buchwald, who performed under the name of Marty Balin.  Bloomington police arrested Balin shortly before noon on Saturday, May 16.  It is unclear whether he spent Sunday, May 17 in Jail.  (Minneapolis Star, May 19, 1970)

On Monday May 18, the three appeared in Hennepin County Municipal Court on charges of possessing marijuana.  They all demanded a pretrial hearing and were released on $5,000 each.   (Minneapolis Tribune, May 19, 1970)

Below is the iconic photo of Marty Balin – Probably taken on May 18, 1970, on the way to the Hennepin County Courthouse for arraignment after a weekend in the Bloomington Jail?

 

Although the pretrial hearing was scheduled for June 16, the two soundmen (now referred to as stagehands) pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful possession of narcotics on May 27.  They were fined $1,000 each, and given suspended one-year workhouse sentences and put on five years unsupervised probation.  (Minneapolis Star, May 29, 1970)

At Balin’s two-day hearing (May 28 and June 1, 1970), the judge found him guilty of one of the two counts against him of unlawful possession of marijuana.  Balin did not deny the charge, and insisted that the real issue was illegal search and seizure.  The policeman who found the marijuana in Balin’s motel room entered the room under the pretext of looking for one of the soundmen, who he knew was already in jail.  The verdict of guilty was given by the judge, who sentenced Balin to one year in the workhouse and a $1,000 fine, stayed.   (Minneapolis Star, June 2, 1970)

Marty Balin died on September 27, 2018, in Tampa at the age of 76.