Filmore George is dead

Sept. 7, 1971

Louise got the call from New York yesterday, and learned George was dead.

We knew he worked for the Filmore as a bouncer but died out in Central Park at some rock concert where he’d been hired freelance.

He was only 22 yet seemed older in my memory from late last year and earlier this year when we lived up the street and later downstairs from him on East Sixth Street.

“He was working a concert for The Who,” his wife told Louise, her voice lost to emotion or perhaps to the uncertain circuitry of long distance. She loved him, but not so much as to be shattered at his demise. He had been in fights before at the Filmore and had even been stabbed once or twice.

The dispute came as result of someone screaming about not being able to get into the concert and when George went to escort him away, the guy stabbed him, said Caroline, his wife, girlfriend or whatever, we never knew.

George – who the paper said was George Byington (not a name we knew him by) apparently had been taking up these gigs since the Filmore closed earlier this year. His wife had called to Louise to tell her about his working The Mother’s concert at the Filmore before the doors closed for the last time.

We knew him as George Ethridge and he lived at 422 East Sixth Street for a few months prior to our return to New York last year on Labor Day. He supposedly lived in Florida before that, although he told us at the time, he was raised in upstate New York.

This was sad news, if not surprising and for me was the last contact with Filmore's greatness fading into an attack of broken bottles and knives – although George was that kind of man though that was likely to get stabbed.

He had a suppressed rage that he someone overcame with a diehard dedication to The Doors and The Dead.

George was thrilled to be a part time a bouncer at the Fillmore East.

He wore his hair in a white man's afro, blonde hair frizzed out like Garfunkel's and he had thick blond mustache, which showed the trail of drugs that he used -- his nose the main entrance to his body for almost anything he could consume.

I was always struck about him and his chosen profession, since he seemed too small for the part.  He was skinny and short, about five foot six with bones that look like they would break once they got a good grip on him.

His face was pot marked with the scars any reference of a bad case of teenage pimples, although at 22, those problems were only memories. The scar down his right cheek was a memory to another attempt of someone stabbing him which he survived and was extremely proud of.

When he was relaxed, he often would sit with his hands clamping and unclamping unconsciously. Whenever someone noticed this and mentioned it to him, he denied it as if it was something terrible to admit it.

His house was always ready for a party with the beer in the refrigerator a bong by the fireplace and dope stashed in various different locations about the house.

Caroline was always scared that the police would come, and they would not be able to find all the dope in time to flush it.

He thought this fear absurd and he told her as much.

He lived on the second floor of the second East Sixth Street tenement while we occupied one apartment on the first floor.

He had inherited the apartment through a string of girl and boy friends.

He had the whole floor of what was called a rail road style apartment and somehow managed to acquire the rail road apartment across the hall. So, he actually controlled all four doors that looked out onto the hallway – although only permitted people to come and go by one of the two doors at the rear of the hall, the one near the head of the stairs coming up from the street. This allowed him or one of his minions to look out through the door on the opposite side of the hall to see just who was knocking and if it was the police. He had an escape plan that included letting the cops in that door while everybody else fled out the other and down to the street.

A person could circle the whole floor from one room to another without actually stepping out into the hall.

George sometimes called it “the hive,” though this described the situation as well, such as the remarkable collection of people, men and women, who started out as lovers and he hung on to in some perverse sense of an extended family. Each person adopted a corner of the vast space and then adapted it to their own personal turf.

One person had racks and racks of silk screen equipment stacked in his corner, and shelves stuffed with t-shirts and other items he peddles to local merchants or in bulk or on consignment.

In another corner, a woman made candles, drips of hot wax clinging to her usually bare breasts as she dipped the wick into a bubbling caldron against and again, smiling at me and others who passed.

Many of the corners of this vast apartment housed musicians, guitars, drums and less rock and roll oriented instruments scattered along the walls or in closets.

But the Hive held a fair share of painters and photographers as well, though these last apparently dedicated their lives and craft to capture images of one subject: The Grateful Dead.

In fact, George’s passion for the San Francisco-based band seemed to be the one and only criteria for living in the Hive. Anyone who expressed interest in the band was welcome to say.

George’s space included a horse-shoe shaped couch, a fire place into which George had installed a stereo.

Grateful Dead album covers leaned against the leg of a table, along with the covers of other legendary San Francisco bands from the period George called “the classic period” by which he meant 1963 to 1966.

He also had a few albums by LA bands such as “The Doors” and “Buffalo Springfield.”

But nowhere in the apartment could you find a record by more commercial bands such as “The Beatles” or “The Stones.”

George did, however, have a number of band posters, mostly billboard advertisements from Grateful Dead appearances at the Filmore East where he worked.

George was one of the few people I knew who actually had a telephone. This was kept in a small table in remote corner of the vast apartment, with George acknowledging the need for an occasional contact with the outside world. He tried his best to discourage this, of course, and he monitored those who used it, keeping in that section of the apartment he considered his.

George was born upstate New York; his father was a politician for a time then retired to some sort of law firm in Albany and George despised him.

His mother was an ex-Miss New York who came twice a month to see George bringing him that extra bit of cash that she managed to sneak around his father these days usually came around the 1st and the 15th and were marked on the calendar with a large red M.

There were no parties on these two days or the days before them either. Those were the days when the apartment was cleaned, and the dope stashed.

The party's came after mother left and these usually were marathon events which brought most of the block dealers down. Many saw George as a little god, someone who got them into the Fillmore got them to meet the stars, got them good dope. He was a fun guy.

Caroline – girlfriend or wife – loved and hated him and cheated on him often, and especially with people close to him. He didn't seem to mind as long as she stayed with him in the end.

George invited me up to his apartment frequently. This was one of those mysterious attractions that I never quite understood. He seemed to trust me when he rarely trusted anybody else. Maybe because Louise was pregnant at the time, he figured we didn’t pose a threat.

As with his other friends, Louise and I were expected to think of him as cool.

Louise and I were naive enough to believe this, even though in some ways he was just a grouchy young man strung out and lonely, who surrounded himself with a lot of lost people; so, he felt less lost than he was. We were all lost souls on a ship lost at sea, knowing that the ship was slowly sinking and the whole effort to keep it afloat was pointless.

But George loved the short walk up East Sixth Street to his job at the Filmore.

Caroline loved the strange sexual scene they had created.

George and Caroline made up the inner core of The Hive, with Bob and Mary, a foursome that was supposed to be exploring sexual extremes, overseen by George, but manipulated by Caroline.

Bob was a strange fish in this world because he looked so normal, more like a Madison Avenue executive than a freak, although he and Mary were even more naïve than Louise and me or any of George’s other followers.

Mary was Caroline's best friend from Atlanta, Georgia and brought Bob with her at Carolyn's invitation.

Bob was a dirty blond hair Southern boy with more of a taste for whiskey than pot but grew slowly more familiar with George is kind of high. Mary was a black-haired beauty, always made up with shimmering red lips.  Carolyn had a beauty, too, but hers was quieter. She was a small woman who wore her brown hair in pigtails and who dressed in sandals and leather Native America Indian dresses.  There were many artifacts both authentic and imitation scattered about the apartment many of the rugs and pictures had Indian scenes in them.

Mary dislike this tendency in Caroline's. She like things modern. she liked wearing tight silk and leather pants. She liked hard rock music.

Bob was like Carolyn and agreed with her often which was the cause of many of his problems with his wife. Mary's favorite fantasy and one that she engaged in often was partner switching.

The problem is George never cooperated. George would often rather sit back and watch another man make love to his wife then participate actively with another woman. Many times, Mary enlisted other men letting her own husband make love to Carolyn.

These sessions, of course, were close to the general party crowd.

We knew about them only because Mary more than once tried to enlist me as the fourth party – and I was always tempted because when pregnant Louise did not want to have sex even though I did. I kept these invitations secret from her because Louise liked Mary and I didn’t want that to change.

But it wasn’t for any noble reason that I kept out of the fray. George and his world scared me, and I had the ugly feeling that I could get sucked into something without knowing it and see my world spin out of control.

Now, 3,000 miles away in Portland, Oregon, I wonder what will become of The Hive and the crowd now that George is dead.