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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

June 29, 2005

Another Victim of Hep C

Chet Helms, a Rock and Roll Hero

by STEW ALBERT

Chet Helms just died of Hepatitis C complications. When I first arrived in
Berkeley in 1965 Chet was one of the golden prince’s of acid rock. He organized mind blowing rock events at the Avalon in San Francisco and was the moving force behind Big Brother And The Holding Company. Rumor said he hitched to SF from Texas in the company of Janis Joplin.

Chet was always a soft touch for doing benefits and making contributions. I met him in some Haight Ashbury sanctuary, where we were all planing the first Human Be-In, a mass event in the park where the spectacles and pleasures of the new psychedelic community would be on free flowing display.

It’s hard to believe that there was a crafty, sinister, then unnamed virus that would enter Chet’s blood stream and 40 years later, it would destroy his liver and kill him.

Chet’s death is a very personal thing for me because I just defeated the same Hepatitis C virus via a year in chemotherapy hell.

Others that I knew have died of this same plague.

What a cruel irony that back in the mid 60s amidst all that energy and abundant life force a deadly disease was targeting Chet and so many other really beautiful people.

Hep C must be destroyed.

STEW ALBERT runs the Yippie Reading Room. His memoir, Who the Hell is STEW ALBERT?, is just out from Red Hen Press. He can be reached at: stewa@aol.com