There are two very entertaining accounts of the founding of the Airmen on the web, a story in George (Cody) Frayne’s own words and an old Ed Ward article from Rolling Stone. In the late 20th century, the Universities of Michigan and California (at Berkeley) were the top public schools in the nation, and the traffic back and forth was thick with scholars, activists and musicians. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen’s mixture of honky tonk, rock and roll and Texas swing, with a twist of hip self-consciousness, made them a Berkeley band, playing modified versions of strains of popular music little known to middle-class suburbanites.Ĭody and the Airmen were from Ann Arbor, MI, but Berkeley and Ann Arbor have always had a symbiotic relationship.
Tower of Power were the pride of Oakland, and they played Berkeley many times, but they were not Berkeley centered in the manner of Country Joe and The Fish and Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen.Ĭommander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were also interesting in that the key members of the band moved to the Bay Area in order to succeed, as did many 60s bands, but Cody and company actually achieved their goal. The group was actually formed in El Cerrito, and the band members lived around various cities in the East Bay as the band evolved. However, Creedence could more fairly be termed an “East Bay” band, which certainly included Berkeley, but they were not an exclusively Berkeley band.
Their label, Fantasy Records, was on 10th Street (at Parker) in Berkeley, and John Fogerty took guitar lessons in Berkeley, among many other Berkeley connections. Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the biggest bands of the 1960s, and they were very much an East Bay band. Of course, quite a number of successful Bay Area bands had roots in the East Bay. However, the ubiquity of the band’s 1972 hit was so great that people of a certain age who grew up in the Bay Area, whether or not they recall the name Commander Cody, know that Pappy said son, you’re gonna drive me to drinking, if you don’t stop driving that Hot-Rod-Lincoln. Of course, the members of both bands have considerably fuzzier memories and fewer dollars than fans might think appropriate to genuine legends, but such was rock music stardom in the 1960s. (A flyer for the Grateful Dead show at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, August 29-30, 1969, representing the first known appearance of Commander Cody on a Bay Area rock artifact)Ĭommander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were the second group from Berkeley to have a successful rock and roll music career, after Country Joe and The Fish.
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