John Allen Cassady, a well-known figure in the Beat and Psychedelic scenes, last week took a moment to share his thoughts about friend Chris Gies, who died June 15 of COPD at the age of 73.
The son of Neal Cassady—aka the model for Dean Moriarty character in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road—recalled meeting Gies in the third grade at Fruitvale School, near Saratoga.
“I could tell right away that he was super intelligent,” he said. “I guessed that he had already read every book in the English language.”
Maybe not too different than his own father, he mused.
He was reminded of a “Book Hour” in the 4th grade, where the teacher would ask Gies to read for her.
“I mean, Jack London, Hemmingway—he would put so much expression into the prose that we were all enthralled,” Cassady said. “He was hot, and nobody, including the teacher, wanted him to stop!”
The two kept in touch over the years, even sharing houses and apartments.
Cassady remembered how Gies began selling turquoise necklaces, which caught on with hippies and more.
“It became a real trend, and they were even carried in legit jewelry stores, like in Beverly Hills,” Cassady said. “Before long, everybody and their dogs were wearing them. That’s how he made his first fortune.”
At that time, Gies lived on a farm in Arizona near the Kingman Mines.
“I visited him there once, on my way back from Alabama to California,” Cassady said. “He gave me a Quaalude one night. They were the ‘drug of choice’ in 1972, but I’d never tried one. OK, so I went to bed and I almost died on the mattress in the back of my 1955 Chevy panel truck in the driveway where it was 104% in the shade! They pulled me out at about noon, and I was drenched in sweat. I must have lost 10 pounds! I said, ‘Thanks a lot!’ His neighbors said, ‘You should try two of those next time, dude!’ Big joke.”
Eventually, Gies moved to a house in the hills above Los Gatos—right near Cassady’s parent’s old place on Bancroft Avenue.
“I went to visit Chris in Los Gatos one afternoon,” Gies recalled. “He was sitting on the floor counting money. At that time, he sold more cocaine than Pablo Escobar, and had more money than what’s in Fort Knox.”
Cassady was taken aback by the sentiment Gies expressed.
“I’m so tired of counting twenties,” he recalls Gies saying.
“Separating the hundred dollar bills from the twenties, what a drag!” Cassady retorted. “Do you have any idea about how many people—oh, only about four billion on this planet—would kill just to be you, here, counting money?”
“You’re right,” Gies said, he recalled. “I’m sorry.”
They went out to the deck to smoke a cigarette and watched Bear, the Labrador retriever on the lawn, as he licked his own testicles.
“Man, I wish I could do that,” Gies said, per Cassady’s account.
“Well, hey, if you want, I could spread his legs apart,” Cassady offered.
They laughed so hard at the joke that they had to go inside for more beer.
Cassady says Gies could play guitar and was a talented singer—with a range nearly as wide as from the Al Jolson to the Eagles.
Gies would harmonize with himself using a Teac 3340 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder (state-of-the-art at the time).
Then, they’d use a two-track machine to “ping-pong” between the two machines.
“We felt like we were George Martin,” he said, referring to the “fifth Beatle” Englishman. “I still have cassette copies of those around here somewhere. I think they belong in the Smithsonian in DC, right under the Spirit of St. Louis!”
