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Download: Ya Ho Wha 13 “Treat You So Right”

(from Magnificence in the Memory out June 23 on Drag City)

Ya Ho Wha 13 were the band formed out of the pre-dawn practice sessions that served also as morning meditation for the Source Family, the L.A.-area religious sect that ran their own health food restaurant during the ‘70s. They released nine albums but recorded hours of material. Drag City has collected nine unreleased songs for this month’s Magnificence in the Memory. This interview by Dan Collins.

How did you get your name, Isis?
Isis Aquarian (Source Family historian): It was the family name given to me. Father said that the names we were given were for several reasons—either because that’s the name that we needed to learn from, or that’s the name of who we were, or that’s the name we needed to get qualities from. In other words, whatever name we had, nobody could go on an ego trip about because you never knew why you had that name.
You never had an ego trip about being named after an Egyptian goddess?
No, not really! I always related to her, though. Manly P. Hall from the Philosophical Research Society—who did Secret Teachings of All Ages—was a mentor to Father when he was Jim Baker, before he became Father and started the Source. And we had gone over to see Manly P. Hall in the early days, and he handed Father a list of names, and he said ‘These names are the names to give the people in the Family.’ And we went back and people either picked what name they liked, or Father gave them a name. And somebody gave me the name Isis, and I didn’t relate to it. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to take that name!’ And Father was standing there and he said, ‘No, that’s your name.’
What was your original role in the Family and in the Source?
I had known Father as Jim Baker, when he had his other restaurant called the Old World. He had three restaurants—the Aware Inn, the Old World, and he opened up the Source. And they were all within, I would say, four or five blocks of each other on Sunset Boulevard. And they were all very famous. And he had his first two as Jim Baker. I met him, he had the Old World, and he was living with his wife of the time, Dora, a French girl. And I became friends with Dora, and I hung out at the Old World. And I knew Jim, but we never seemed to really connect, which was very strange, because he was very good looking, and he was the kind that would flirt with everybody. But there just seemed to be a hold on us at the time. But then I went my way, and he went his way, and I ended up living with Ron Raffaelli. He was a famous rock photographer—he was known as Jimi Hendrix’s photographer. That’s how I met him. I was asked to go on a shoot with Jimi Hendrix, and we became engaged. And I had my life at the studio with him for a couple years. And I had heard that Jim had opened up the Source, and was being known as Father, and was starting a spiritual family. We were looking for a group of people with long hair that looked like Jesus, because we were doing a poster for Jesus Christ Superstar. And I said to Ron, ‘I know where there’s a bunch of people running around looking like Jesus. They’re at this place called the Source! I’m going to go down there—I’ll get us some models.’ So I drove down to the Source, and oh my god, the place was incredible. As soon as you stepped near it, you knew something was happening. And I stepped onto the patio, and I asked for Jim Baker and somebody said ‘Oh, you mean Father.’ And he came walking out, and he was like 6’3’, and he looked like Moses. He had long hair and a beard, and he was no longer the Jim Baker I knew. And I was immediately smitten, as they say, and he just embraced me and said ‘I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come home—to come back.’ And I basically forgot what I was even doing there. And he invited me to come to morning meditation the next day, and then I basically never left. So I just walked out of my home life and became a full time part of the Source family.
How old were you?
I was in my late twenties. A lot of the kids were sixteen, seventeen, and in their early twenties. I’m not saying I was the oldest one there, but I had also known Jim Baker so I wasn’t intimidated by him. Most people were finding their guru and their masters, and I found him as my earthly spiritual father, for sure. But I knew that I had a destiny with him. I basically became his right hand—that’s what he called me. The Family had other names for me. ‘Bulldog’—you know there’s a bulldog in every family. And ‘hatchet lady,’ ‘dragon lady’…
Did you like those nicknames?
It didn’t bother me, no. In fact, ‘Dragon Lady’ was kind of endearing! You had your role, and you played it out, and Father always had my back.
When did the band Ya Ho Wa 13 start?
We had musicians in the Family that would always gather and play. We weren’t doing anything ‘musically,’ but we did realize we had some very talented musicians. Music seemed to be playing all around the house. And that was the thing to do back then. Everybody carried a guitar. It was like music was the new language. And one day I think Octavius came in and was talking about being a drummer, and a lot of people had been musicians, and just gave it up when they came in—whatever any of us were, we gave up when we came in. It was of no necessity at that point. And I just remember Father one day saying, ‘Wait a minute. I have a drummer. I have a guitar player. I have a bass player. We have singers. We have a band. Let’s do some music!’ So, bands started being formed to see what we wanted to do with them. And at this point, Father wasn’t really in them—he was just having fun seeing what we could do. And because we were very famous, and everybody came to the Source, all the movie producers, directors, musicians—John Lennon was there all the time—they all came there. So we figured, ‘Well jeez, we can just start letting people hear it and see if we can do something with it.’
I heard you would play every day from 3 to 6 in the morning! When did you sleep?
Right! That was when we gathered for morning meditation. Father would be so full of energy and so excited, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to the band room!’ And the band room was just a converted garage off the meditation room, and speakers had been hooked up, so no matter what was happening, we could all hear it. Because we all couldn’t fit in the band room.
A lot of your movement’s spiritual beginnings and influences have been chronicled. But what seem less well known are the specifics of the musical side of things.
He formed Ya Ho Wa 13 and started playing with it, and that was like his signature when he started playing with the Family. It’s not like he could play or sing. It was another way of morning meditation. It was another way of his talking about the wisdom teachings. He often said, ‘Long after I’m gone, my teachings will continue because of the music we’re doing now. Music has no barriers. Everyone understands music because it’s a soul thing.’
One of the interesting things about your band is that, given your spiritual and cosmological underpinnings and your emphasis on improvisation and spontaneity, I was expecting you to sound like Sun Ra or something jazzy. But you guys are a rock ‘n’ roll combo.
Very much so. When the band first now started getting back together, I was wondering how it was going to work. Because when you have the head guy no longer there, how does that work? And I know the public’s been going on the albums that had Father in it, like Penetration. So when the three Brothers got together and decided to continue playing as Ya Ho Wa 13, it was interesting to see how that was going to play out: Octavius, drummer, Djin, guitar, and Sunflower, bass.
Was there ever fighting about the music?
There were disagreements, but we never got into bickering or arguing. The short time we lived together was so incredible because we lived in a space and time out of this reality. Certain things didn’t exist that exist for us now that we’re back. We lived in a kind of free zone where certain rules and regulations didn’t exist. We related to people’s souls, not their personalities. When the Family dispersed—and now we’re trying to deal with each other again thirty years later—we’re just starting to relearn those techniques. In 2001, we had our first big reunion, and the last ten years we’ve just been dealing on a social level with each other and trying to be nice. A lot of stuff has come up that we never got to work on, because we all just left. It was like The Day the Earth Stood Still. We looked around and nobody was there.
I remember reading that the Beatles were a big influence on the band.
I think definitely because that’s what the band grew up with. The Beatles were very cosmic. They had stepped over into spirituality, and they were given incredible messages.
Were there specific Beatles songs that you wanted to emulate?
No, once the Family was formed we didn’t listen to other people’s music.
You never stepped into a discotheque or club and heard another band?
The only time that happened was in the early days when we did try stuff like that. We got booked at the Whisky a Go Go, and we walked into the Whisky a Go Go in our robes and our long hair—and we did get laughed at! But when they got up on the stage, everybody was quiet because they could sing. They had some good music happening.
But you must have noticed that at the same time you were making this music, bands such as Pink Floyd, they were doing the same…
Oh, yes, absolutely! I do know that we opened the Crater Festival in 1976, sunrise, here in Hawaii for the 200th anniversary of America, and we opened for Sly and the Family Stone. We asked for that slot, and we led the thousands of people in Diamondhead Crater in star exercise, and we got them chanting.
Do you think if any band forms, even if it’s just four or five people, that something spiritual forms?
Music seems to touch the largest amount of people at one time than anything I know about all over the world. It has no barriers, it has no race, it doesn’t distinguish between color, religion, and nationality. You can put a song on and put it out over the airwaves, and thousands of people, their soul can get out of it whatever it gets out of it.
Contemporaries of yours in the avant-garde, such as La Monte Young and Angus Maclise, have kind of said that there is a spiritual plane you can achieve with pure musical tones. Was there a certain way of playing for you that was more in tune with your spiritual quest?
We were into frequencies. Like—the F note is the sound of nature. And the fact that vibration, if you tune into like a F note and another F note comes before, then you vibrate. Like a tuning fork. He tried that with the gong and the kettle drum. We had the gong from Dr. Zhivago—the movie! He bought it and we still have it, and it’s huge! Often in morning meditation, when we weren’t even doing anything with the music, he would have us all go into meditation, and he would do the gong throughout chakras because the gong had the frequencies—all the frequencies of the chakras.
There was kind of a no-drug policy, wasn’t there? Despite your band being considered psychedelic?
I think marijuana, since we don’t consider it a drug—that is probably being used.
But psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD?
No, no, we didn’t do it in the Family, and as far as I know, it’s not being done now. The family dispersed and we all went our ways and created a new life with new members, and so some thirty years later, we all are not on the same page and we are not responsible for what anyone does or does not. As human beings now out here on our own, it has made it somewhat harder to ‘ante up’ as they say.
Sky Saxon, who joined the band later, has been known to have some drug issues. Did he have those when he was in the band?
Sky Saxon was an entity unto himself. He does his thing. I’m talking about Ya Ho Wa 13.
Whoa! Are you saying the album he recorded with Ya Ho Wa 13 was outside the realm of what you consider their music?
Um… well, during the Family days, after Father left and said he was no longer going to be in the band, he invited Sky—‘Arelick’ was his family name—into the band. And they renamed the band Fire Water Air. And it either didn’t do anything, or we moved. We didn’t accomplish or finish a lot of what we did because we would move and go on to something else, and it was disruptive of what we were doing.
Was Sky part of the Source?
He was. He would kind of come and go, though. Father loved him, but he was always just Sky! The way he is now is the way he was back then. And I think Sky does a lot of things that the rest of us don’t do.
Was there a conscious decision about which instruments to use in the band?
No, that’s just the instrumentation that the band played. And I think it’s the basic formation of a band that you have drum, guitar, and bass, right?
Definitely in rock ‘n’ roll. But did you ever introduce any other instruments?
I think they brought in Pythias for a while on guitar, and Lovely with a violin. Lovely was Andre Previn’s daughter. That was one of the forms of Ya Ho Wa 13 that Father was trying to put together. And they brought in a couple other brothers—Home, who sang and played guitar, and Rhythm, who played piano. After we left L.A., we tried different forms of the band, when we moved to San Francisco and moved to Hawaii.
Brian Wilson considered himself a very spiritual songwriter, and made many songs about Hawaii. You still live there now! Is there a spiritual purity there?
There was to us. Hawaii is very clean. The air is clean. We don’t have pollution. We have nice weather all year. It’s called paradise for a reason!
Were you happy with the Obama presidency being that he was a resident of Hawaii?
I don’t really ‘do’ politics, but as far as being a local Hawaii boy, he’s right here where I live—Kahlua. When he stayed here, he was just like three blocks down the street. We saw him on the beach all the time.
Did he go surfing?
He tried to, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him surf anymore!

YA HO WHA 13’S MAGNIFICENCE IN THE MEMORY RELEASES TUE., JUNE 23, ON DRAG CITY. VISIT YA HO WHA 13 AT YAHOWHA13.COM. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY, SEE THE SOURCE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FATHER YOD, YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY BY ISIS AND ELECTRICITY AQUARIAN AVAILABLE NOW FROM PROCESS MEDIA. PROCESSMEDIAINC.COM.