Alan Wilson didn't show up at the airport.
September 2, 1970. Los Angeles. Canned Heat was flying out for their European tour that evening.
Their lead singer and harmonica player was missing.
His bandmates weren't worried. Alan was always late. Disorganized. Spaced out. He'd catch a later flight, like he always did.
They got on the plane and left.
The next morning, friends went looking for him.
They found him in his sleeping bag on the hillside behind drummer Bob Hite's house in Topanga Canyon.
He had slept out there many times. He loved the trees.
This time he wasn't waking up.
He was 27 years old.
The cause of death was barbiturate overdose. Officially ruled accidental — there were unused pills still on his body. He left no note.
But Alan Wilson had been deeply depressed for years. He had tried to kill himself before. He had been in a psychiatric hospital.
His drummer Fito de la Parra believed Alan had killed himself.
Either way, the man called "Blind Owl" — the genius who'd written Canned Heat's biggest hits, sung at Woodstock, and recorded with John Lee Hooker — was gone.
Two weeks later, Jimi Hendrix died. Three weeks after that, Janis Joplin.
Hendrix and Joplin became legends.
Nobody remembered Alan Wilson.
Here's how he got there.
July 4, 1943. Arlington, Massachusetts. Alan Christie Wilson was born.
Highly intelligent. Painfully shy. Severely nearsighted.
He was bullied through every grade of school. Couldn't make friends. Couldn't talk to girls.
He found music instead. By his teens he was obsessed with Delta blues. Robert Johnson. Son House. Charlie Patton.
He moved to Cambridge in his late teens. Started playing harmonica and slide guitar in coffee houses.
In 1965, the bluesman Son House came out of retirement to record his comeback album. He'd been off the road so long he'd forgotten how to play his own songs.
The producers brought in a 21-year-old white kid from Cambridge to teach Son House back to himself.
That kid was Alan Wilson.
Alan played him his own old recordings. Showed him the fingerings. By the time the sessions ended, Son House could play his classics again.
Alan also played guitar and harmonica on two tracks of the album.
It was an extraordinary thing for a 21-year-old to do.
Later that year, the guitarist John Fahey took Alan with him to Los Angeles. Alan forgot his glasses on the trip. Fahey started calling him "Blind Al," then "Blind Owl" — for his round face and scholarly intensity.
The nickname stuck.
In Los Angeles, Alan met Bob "The Bear" Hite — a 300-pound record collector who claimed to own 15,000 blues 78s.
They couldn't have been more different. Hite was loud, extroverted, gigantic. Alan was tiny, quiet, blind without his glasses.
But they loved the same records.
They formed Canned Heat in 1965.
By 1967 they were on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival. By 1968 they had a Billboard hit: "On the Road Again." Alan sang it. Alan played the harmonica solo.
In 1969, they had another hit. "Going Up the Country." Alan wrote it. Alan sang it.
That August, they played Woodstock. "Going Up the Country" became the unofficial theme song of the festival. Every kid who saw the documentary heard Alan's high, lonely voice over the opening credits.
500,000 people. The biggest concert in American history.
Alan mostly hid behind the amps.
He hated touring. He hated crowds. He hated planes.
He told friends he wanted to quit the band.
In 1970, Canned Heat got to record with John Lee Hooker — Alan's lifelong hero. The album was called Hooker 'N' Heat.
Hooker was a notoriously difficult musician to follow. He played his own time. Most guitarists couldn't keep up with him.
Alan locked in with him instantly.
Hooker said on tape: "You musta been listenin' to my records all your life."
He later called Alan "the greatest harmonica player ever."
That was Alan's last recording.
His depression got worse. He sought out therapy. Spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Was prescribed antidepressants but also took barbiturates from the street to sleep.
He told friends he had no one. No girlfriend. No real family contact. Just the band and his blues records and the trees.
He loved the trees most of all.
He founded a conservation group called Music Mountain. Wanted to use the band's money to save the California redwoods.
In the liner notes of Future Blues, he wrote: "The redwoods of California are the tallest living things on Earth, nearly the oldest, and among the most beautiful to boot."
A few weeks later, he was dead in a sleeping bag.
Here's what makes this story matter.
1970 was the year rock and roll lost its prophets.
September 3: Alan Wilson. Age 27. Barbiturates.
September 18: Jimi Hendrix. Age 27. Barbiturates.
October 4: Janis Joplin. Age 27. Heroin.
The "27 Club" got built that autumn.
Hendrix and Joplin became immortals. Movies. Posters. Statues. Streets.
Alan Wilson got his name on a few Canned Heat reissues.
Canned Heat is one of the few bands in history that played both Monterey and Woodstock — the two biggest counterculture concerts ever held. They were on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Their music is still in commercials. "Going Up the Country" gets used every time a movie wants to summon the 1960s.
Most people who hear it don't know who sang it.
Alan Wilson's body was cremated. His ashes were scattered among the redwoods he had tried to save.
His Music Mountain fund didn't survive long after him.
The redwoods are still being logged.
Alan Wilson. Singer. Songwriter. Harmonica genius. Found in a sleeping bag at 27.
His crime? Being too sad to keep going on the road.
His legacy? The song the world plays every time it wants to remember the 1960s — and a name almost no one remembers.
~Forgotten Stories
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