Puff the Magic Dragon was a large anchored barge on the Mississippi river with a stage on it, and bands and played to people on land.  It was anchored at the Svoboda Boat Works, 1835 S. Mississippi River Blvd., under the W. 7th Street Bridge in St. Paul (near Hidden Falls, say people on Facebook).  Puff was the brainchild of Bill Svensson and his brother Paul, both of Golden Valley.

BILL SVENSSON

William A. Svensson was born in 1940 and was a championship swimmer from a young age through his high school years at West High.  He served on submarines in the Navy from 1957 to 1961.

In 1963, Bill, 22, and his brother Paul, 18, bought the former Pylon drive-in on Highway 12 (6224 Wayzata Blvd.), spread sand around, and renamed it the Beachcomber.  Unfortunately, Bill paid the $25 food license and the $6 cigarette license with a bad check, and was hit with a $100 fine, not to mention 30 days for driving with a suspended drivers license.

Before he embarked on his Puff adventure, he was variously described in newspaper reports as a restaurant designer and a designer of pool areas in apartment complexes.

He began building his boat in about April 1970 in Osceola, Wisconsin, and had it towed to its location across from Fort Snelling in late May.  He told reporter John Greenwald of the Minneapolis Star that he had wanted to make a trip down the Mississippi River for about ten years, and, at age 30, this was the time.

 

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PUFF WAS A BIG DRAGON

Puff would feature a dragon’s head in front and a tail behind.  The pink and purple craft would ban drugs, but “three kegs of beer will be going 24 hours a day.”  Svensson planned to begin his trip to New Orleans by July 1, 1970 and reach his destination in a month, stopping each night at marinas so that performers on board could perform for crowds that would gather.  80 people would make the trip, each a shareholder.    (Minneapolis Star, June 10, 1970)

Puff was further described as:

a kind of an ark about [80] feet long being built with 55-gallon empty oil drums underneath and full beer kegs on the two upper decks.  The bearded gentry doing the constructing near Ft. Snelling said the craft will be floated down to New Orleans with the help of four 120-horsepower engines.  There will be numerous riverbank stops during with entertainers aboard will perform numbers from “hair” and “Oh, Calcutta.”  (Minneapolis Star Letter from home, June 15, 1970)

The boat had three levels:  couches on the first floor, berths on the second, and the stage was on the top.  The structure supposedly weighed 30 tons.

 

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ROCKFEST

The first musical event on Puff was to be a Rockfest held at Harriet Island on July 10 and 11, 1970, featuring scenes from “Hair” and music by nine bands, including The Mystics.  Tickets were $3.50.  Well, the first outing was a disaster, as reported by Will Shapira.  As Puff was being moved to Harriet Island several miles downstream, it got stuck on a sandbar at the Boat Works.  A tugboat and a crew of volunteers finally got Puff freed at 10:15 pm, and the wet but still enthusiastic volunteers got in their cars and headed to Harriet Island.  Puff puffed in at 11:45, only to find that the bands had either played or left, and the audience gave up the ghost.  Not to be discouraged, Puff”s house band, appropriately called The Noise, gave a short set.  Hopefully Puff got home all right.  (Minneapolis Tribune, July 12, 1970)

 

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JULY 24 – 26

The second concert was on July 24 – 26, 1970, where Puff was tied to the Svoboda Boat Works.

 

 

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This three-day music festival was not well received by the residents living in the Highland Park and W. 7th Street neighborhoods, according to the Star, which reported that a half dozen rock bands were still playing at 6 am on Sunday morning, and police and the City Council had had enough of the noise.  And the pot smoking in the churchyard.  And the lovemaking on the riverbanks.  And the illegal parking on Mississippi River Blvd.  etc. etc. etc.  So when the Svenssons requested a license to hold another concert for the upcoming weekend, “the license committee today nixed the idea” and alerted them to about a dozen ordinances and state laws that were broken.   (Minneapolis Star, August 6, 1970)

 

 

Will Shapira reacted to similar bad press in the St. Paul Dispatch, calling it ridiculous.  He said that more than 3,000 people attended the 3-day event and there was no trouble of any kind.  (Another estimate was 2,000.) Residents polled said they were able to sleep with their windows open, young boys were hired to clear away the trash, and the St. Paul cops didn’t hassle anyone.   And besides, “is it really a civic problem if a couple makes love while grooving to music?  Is this the concern of government?”

 

Apparently Bill Sumner of the Dispatch also had the audacity to accuse the bands of being “second rate.”  Shapira responded, “This simply was not true; among those performing were The Mystics, White Lightning and a dozen other of the top local groups.  Anyway, how would Sumner know?  The scene impressed even such highly regarded musicians as Three Dog Night.  According to a witness, Three Dog Night visited Puff intending to stay a half hour but wound up jamming with The Mystics for something like four hours!”   (Three Dog Night was in town on July 12….)    (Connie’s Insider, August 1, 1970)

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AUGUST 14 -16

A third concert took place on August 14-16, 1970, after negotiations with St. Paul police.  Music would commence at 8 and stop at 3 am, cars would be parked at the bottom of the riverbank instead of on the street, and off duty police would be on hand for crowd control.  Bill Svensson said he believes people “were more afraid of what might have happened because of bad publicity of other such festivals than of what actually happened.”  (Minneapolis Tribune, August 13, 1970)

Flash Tuesday, White Lightning, and the Mystics were some of the bands that played at this concert, which drew a reported 4,000 people.  Svensson estimated that about 200 people stayed overnight.  It was at this point that he admitted that “I’ve always liked music, but my real interest is in housing.  This boat is really a commercial prostitution on purpose – to get the press I’ve been getting.”  (Minneapolis Tribune, August 19, 1970)

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OTHER CONCERTS

According to calendar ads in the paper, concerts in the summer of 1970 took place on:

• August 21 – 23
• August 28 – 30
• September 4 – 6
• September 11 – 13
• September 18 – 20

One undated article described another temporarily disastrous Friday night concert when

rock groups such as “Your Mother” and the promised appearance of “White Lightning” and “Pepper Fog” kept the shore-bound audience and passing boaters enthralled.  Promoters Bill and Paul Svensson kept a wary eye on the elements as natural white lightning flashed occasionally and about 11:30 p.m. the concert was interrupted by a rain and windstorm.  (John Kelly, St. Paul Pioneer Press)

Apparently the $1.50 price of admission wasn’t cutting it in terms of making enough money to buy the required four outboard motors.  In early September, there started appearing ads offering rides to New Orleans in exchange for outboard motors.

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BANDS

From the looks of it, every local band in town took its turn on the top of Puff, performing to the folks on the shore.  Here’s at least a partial list; if you played on Puff and are not on this list, please contact me!

• Bear, Beaver, Peacock
• Big Island
• C.A. Quintet
• Cricket
• Furnace
• Infinity
• Jarreau
• Jumbo
• Karisma
• Mauraders
• Mills Novelty Band
• Mystics
• Noise (house band)
• Paisleys
• Passage
• Pepper Fog
• Sunshine World
• Syndicate
• White Lightning
• Your Mother

It was not an easy place to set up.  Ron Szybatka of Cricket says, “You cannot imagine the hassle it was to get Bruce Jackson’s Hammond M3 and two Leslie Speakers up onto that third level.”

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NO MORE PUFF

But all good things must come to an end, or someone has to ruin a good thing.  On September 22, 1970, the St. Paul City Council voted to shut down the weekend concerts on Puff after Dean Meredith, public safety commissioner, reported several armed robberies committed on shore adjacent to the barge during concerts.  Another reason given was that the music was not stopped at the  time agreed to but was continuing to 3 or 4 am.  And apparently at the concert the weekend before there was a shooting.  Councilman Victor Tedesco was so incensed at Puff that he suggested that they warn the authorities in Lilydale in case the Dragon was moved there.  (Minneapolis Star and Tribune, September 23, 1970)

Someone named Jimi at Hundred Flowers was equally incensed, encouraging people to contact their elected officials and beseeching them to “Save Puff!!”  (October 30, 1970)  Jimi later published Puff’s “Last Will and Testament,” taking the case on as true government oppression.  (December 18, 1970)   Sorry, Jimi.

 

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PUFF GOES POOF

Bill Svensson’s dream of taking Puff down the Mississippi went up in smoke on June 21, 1971, when fire swept through the barge at 4 am.

 

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Sad to say, Bill Svensson died in Maple Plain, Minnesota, on November 17, 1998, and is interred at Lakewood Cemetery.  He left behind three children – and the memory a summer of music and fun with a dragon named Puff.