text:  had an academic career. Meanwhile, Bill Kirchner, the lead guitar player in the First Commander Cody band, had gone out to San Francisco, and he was a motorcycle delivery guy out there playing at various bars, and he would be on the phone with me every night saying, listen, why don't you just quit your stupid job and get out of the snow and come on out here? It's the summer of love, and you're nuts if you don't make it. Well, I quit, and I got there June 4th, 1969, and by the end of August, we were opening for the dead.