Blue Fever / Timne / JustUs / Mandala (1966-1969) I've been with the band and its main member, Martin Espinosa, from 1967 to the present (2008) and know their story as intimately as anyone alive.  I totally believed in the talent of this group and still do forty years later.  I'm presently doing videos of the old group and the present group--Bruce Marelich and Mark Lightcap--called "Bad Daddy." I also took twenty of their songs and wrote a rock musical out of them called Psychedelia.  Original Blue Fever, L-R: Mark Lightcap, Martin Espinosa, Derek French, Fayden, Bruce Marelich and Doug Williams By Craig R. Pedersen (manager/producer/songwriter, 1967-1969) When I first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, it was into a flat across the street from the building site of the "new" science building, on the corner of Seventh Street. Along with looking for a job to pay the bills, I was there to find my way into the bourgeoning rock music business and the much talked about "San Francisco Sound."  I had hired The Vejtables for at Allan Hancock Junior College in Santa Maria.  They had a single one the charts called, 'I Still Love You.'  I told Bob Bailey, the Vejtables' guitarist, that I was going to Los Angeles with Something Wild, the band I was working with at the time.  He had told me, "San Francisco is the place to be if you are interested in the music business." The story of that weekend concert with The Vejtables is on the cover liner of the group's rerelease of their original material in the early Nineties. I moved to San Jose, California, that summer, 1967. I got a job there, and met a guy named Bruce Marelich on my new job who had a rock band named Timne.  They practiced at a local shooting range in San Carlos, California, after work from 12 midnight to 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. George Miller (drums), Fayden, Martin Espinosa and Mark Lightcap (Bruce Marelich not shown) Timne had recently won a battle of the bands sponsored by the music store chain, Sherman & Clay. They got to play at the Peninsula Drive-In, with a favorite band at the time known as Country Joe and The Fish, featuring Country Joe McDonald and Head Lights.  They had also won a battle of the bands at the College of San Mateo, where the judges were members of a local band named Fritz. Bruce Marelich, Doug Williams, Craig Pedersen, Martin Espinosa, Mark Lightcap and Fayden (George Miller not pictured) Timne practiced at a shooting range several blocks from the place we worked and they practiced after work (we were on swing shift).  Knowing I was interested, Bruce Marelich invited me to attend. The practice lasted all night, and the next day we got to know each other.  I got along well with Bruce, from work, and the next day I found I got along well with Martin Espinosa as well. That evening, the three of us and I think Mark as well went to the old San Carlos Theater where we saw the recently released (1967), Clint Eastwood film The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, and a film called Beach Red. I found out in passing that they had released a 45 with Action Records and it hadn’t gone anywhere because the company was too small to do the A&R required to get it charted.  They were still doing the songs on that record in their show, along with four or five other originals which they mixed with their sets of cover tunes.   The songs on the 45 were 'Peter Pan Blowup', written and sung by Fayden Holmboe, and 'Love Lock Temperature Drop,' also written and sung by Fayden, who was the group's front man.     Fayden (top), Bruce Marelich (bottom left), George Miller, Mark Lightcap and Martin Espinosa That was the beginning of my association with this group.  They would eventually become known after several names as Uther Pendragon. The name "Timne" didn't last even a few months from that first day, not because of not liking the name, but because a group from Oakland had put out an incredible album which was all over the charts. The chart hit for The Chambers Brothers was called 'Time Has Come Today,' but several people had asked us if that was us and we knew that we had to change our name. We changed it to "Kodiak," which lasted only slightly less than a year; We later played under "JustUs" for a short time. Bruce and I got an apartment in Belmont that was quite small, and would never have worked out as a band house.  We only lived there a few months. Around the time, while we were getting ready to move again, the news came over the television that Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed in Los Angeles. I remember a friend had come down from San Francisco to see me and the sky was the strangest blood red color that evening, to the east--not the west--and we had both mentioned it before we heard the news on television. We finally found a house in the Belmont Hills that looked over the Bay and the city of San Mateo.  It was two bedrooms and in an affluent neighborhood even then.  It became our first band house.   I was already writing songs for the band myself and wanted to get more originals to record for future release.  I added 'Luxury’s Draft' to their song list and also 'Always Together,' 'Ten Miles To Freedom' and 'Devils Due,' which was the overture for my rock opera--which  I had started because I liked what The Who had done with Tommy.  The band also was writing songs themselves, including 'You're A Human Now,' 'Realm Of The Seven Plains,' 'Old Man,' 'Whiskey Is A Sin,' 'Kristina,' 'Music Box,' and a dozen other originals that had been added to our song list by Bruce, Mark and Martin, but didn’t all get played regularly at a gig because we were still doing mostly cover material.  We played high schools, Jaycees, rec clubs, YMCAs, Catholic youth groups, weddings and parties and just about anyplace we could get lined up, even if it didn’t pay some times.  Our music had changed from psychedelic to the more mystical sound of the early "San Francisco Sound."  'White Rabbit,' etc. had changed our direction and the name didn’t fit anymore. Martin Espinosa, George Miller (drums), Fayden, Mark Lightcap and Bruce Marelich We changed our name again, to Hodological Mandala, before I went into the Army destined for Vietnam.  That name quickly became Mandala.  Bruce and I, Martin Espinosa, Mark Lightcap and George Miller moved into the Hillman band house. Doug Williams had quit the band around the time we moved from the Laurel Ave. Apartments, which was the next best thing to a band house that we had at the time. Fayden Holmboe quit the band after about six months at the Hillman band house, to peruse a solo career.  He later released an album called Fayden through a company that saw him while on a tour of Europe. This made us a four piece band, whether we liked it or not, and it was at a time we had just booked time at Pacific Recording Studio to put together demos Martin and I wanted to take to the record companies in Los Angeles.  We decided to do the sessions without Fayden and had to scramble to get ready.  We recorded four songs in a six hour session at the studio on El Camino Real in San Mateo:  'Ten Miles To Freedom,' 'Realm Of The Seven Plains,' 'You’re A Human Now' and 'Devils Due.'  They were mixing 'Abraxas' there at the time.  We found out it was Carlos Santana, who we had never heard, but they had caused us to have a very small audience at the Redwood City Rec Center a few weeks earlier when they were playing a free gig close by.  It cut our audience to around a hundred. Martin and I hitched to Los Angeles with the tape and lived in laundromats for three days while we went to Dot, A&M and a bunch of other labels.  One was Warner Brothers, who bought Autumn (San Francisco, the Vejtables' label) from Tom Donahue and Bob Mitchell in 1966. Sylvester Stewart (Sly Stone) became the label producer and A&R man. They had early commercial success with Bobby Freeman and The Beau Brummels. Further releases included The Mojo Men and Sly himself. In 1965 the label became a magnet for aspiring groups in the nascent San Francisco rock scene: The Charlatans, Great Society, Dino Valenti and Grateful Dead (as The Emergency Crew).  We had no direct luck with this attempt at finding a label; just a lot of wild stories to tell. George Miller left the group right before I went into the army.  We were booked to play the Vet's Hospital on Willow Ave., in Menlo Park, California, and he didn’t show up; in fact, we never saw him again after that.  This is when I had to report to the Army for basic training, but by going in Los Angeles, I went to Fort Ord for training instead of Fort Lewis, Washington. Just about the time I went into the army, Derek French got out and rejoined the band.  We had moved out of the Hillman band house and Bruce stayed at Martin's mother's house for several months while he got a new job and they looked for a house to rent.  They practiced at Martin’s mother’s house during this period and Derek fit right back in.  They got used to the band house for a few months when I suddenly got sent home from Vietnam and was released after only nine months service because of a medical condition. Martin Espinosa, the bass player and Mark Lightcap, the guitarist and singer, were starting college at San Jose State and were living in an apartment building where they were neighbors with some people with the band Fritz, whom we had met at the battle of the bands at San Mateo College.  We were invited up to San Francisco to see them play at the Fillmore.  They were playing forth bill, which was still a bid deal.  They were fantastic.  After that night our friends dropped out of sight and the only thing we knew is that they went to Los Angeles.  Then six or more months later they popped to the surface in a new group, with an album that was a classic the day it was released. Martin Espinosa, Bruce Marelich and Mark Lightcap The album was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors. And our friends from Fritz had just made it big time. They were Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.  Well, this put a fire under the band to “make it”, but we realized that we would need more originals and that our best bet was to start our own music company and do our own recording, booking and A&R.  Then suddenly, Derek French dropped out of the band, without much explanation, but we soon found that Martin's girlfriend went with him.  We started to map out the band's future and setting up the company we wanted to oversee it all, and the only problem we had was that we didn’t have a drummer.  We had all ready paid around $1,000 in 1970 dollars for an ad in Billboard magazine and we had to use the face of Steve Curtis, our sound wizard, for the pictures and stuff we needed until we found a drummer. The band bought a house on Chester Street in Menlo Park and Martin started going to music conventions and meeting people to get us business.  During this time, we were playing as Mandala still, but wanted to go into something less spiritual.  We had three or four drummers who played with us during this period including a disc jockey at KSOL Radio in the Bay area.  We had to get the artwork for the Billboard ad together so we went out for a photoshoot for images to use.  We had Steve Curtis stand in as the drummer for this again. Mark Lightcap, Bruce Marelich, Steve Curtis and Martin Espinosa When it came time to send In the ad art, we decided to call the band Uther Pendragon.  Because of the restraints of the ad space, we decided to just use the Pendragon name and artwork I did from the photos we took, and the ad art, just to save the production costs.  George Miller, Mark Lightcap, Martin Espinosa, Bruce Marelich and Fayden Shortly after this ad, we got a drummer by the name of Mike Beers.  We ran an ad in the paper.  We had just bought the Chester Street band house, and were playing and building our recording studio and corporate offices at a building on Urban Lane in Palo Alto, California, a block off from University Ave. and El Camino Real, right across the street from the main gate into Stanford University. Links: Official Band Web site Band CDs and DVDs '60's Music & Videos Rock Musical & Videos Rock Opera, Sabbat Gallery Image: