Mike Wilhelm
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Mike Wilhelm
Mike Wilhelm is likely the greatest living unheralded guitarist of the 60s era.
He started his career as the backup guitarist for the Chambers Brothers after having studied guitar with Brownie McGee.
He was a founding member of the Charlatans, the first psychedelic rock band in San Francisco (and Virginia City where the band had a legendary residency).
His previously banned sixties cover of Buffy St. Marie's "Cocaine" was used in the movie, "Boys Don't Cry" during Hillary Swank's sex change scene. His guitar solo, one of his favorites, was deleted on the movie soundtrack and the Charlatans had to sue the director of the film to get paid.
Unfortunately, their first album came out some time after the band broke up and their stellar singer and drummer, Dan Hicks, had left the group.
Wilhelm spent six years as lead guitarist with the Flamin' Groovies and toured Europe and elsewhere with them. He is on two of the three CDs in the Goovies' "The Sire Years" collection.
He later formed a trio called Loose Gravel and famously gave Bill Graham the finger in the movie of "The Last Days of The Fillmore" when Graham refused to let his then group, Loose Gravel, play in that real dud of a film. Graham, however, who filmed everything, liked Mike giving him the finger so much he left the scene in the movie.
Wilhelm released several solo CDs including: Live In Tokyo: At Grateful Dead Land (Japanese issue), Wilhelm (on New Rose in France), a 70s era album with John Cippolina and friends which has been reissued, the as yet sadly unreleased "Austin Sessions" with Steady Freddy Krc, recorded at South by Southwest in 2000, and a new official bootleg" guitar solo CD, also unreleased. He recently remixed The Amazing Charlatans, in his spare time when he wasn't roofing his house. It was reissued in England a few years ago but with a pathetic sound mix but stellar liner notes by Alex Palao who is in Cyril Jordan's new band, Magic Christian, which also includes the Tubes drummer, Prairie Prince.
Wilhelm currently performs with the Lake County Blues Band in Lake County California where he also resides with his wife, Ana, whose name is inscribed on Mike's guitar, and their cat, Felix, "guardian of Konocti Harbor."
The Flamin' Groovies were named No. 4 on the San Francisco Chronicle's 2000 list of the 100 Greatest SF bands of all time, right after the Grateful Dead and way before a lot of more famous pickers.
There are still more than a few sixties icons who get mighty nervous if Wilhelm shows up, as he did in his original Charlatans hat at the recent SF kickoff party for the Summer of Love's 40th Anniversary.
He sat in with the Plimsouls at the Cafe Du Nord in 2005 and previously appeared as an opener for Peter Case, who, amazingly, began his career with The Nerves in Lake County. Case, in his blog at www.petercase.com describes Wilhelm as "Dapper And Dangerous As Usual." The two used to busk together in North Beach.
In the 60s the photographer Herb Green asked Captain Trips who his favorite guitarist was?
"Mike Wilhelm" was Jerry Garcia's reply.
(Source: "Mike Wilhelm: Dapper And Dangerous As Usual" by Gary Peterson on www.lakeconews.com, February 2007 and numerous other articles by the same author, who also posted this entry. See as well numerous Wilhelm articles by the same in the Lake County Record Bee and the Lake County Outlook between 1998 and 2004.)
