On Bill Middlejohn by Coastside Musician Fayden

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Bill Middlejohn is one of the folks who played regularly at the Shelter/Spouter Inn [Miramar Beach Inn] and did live on the coast for a short time.

Bill had a really soothing voice, and a nice finger picking style, a sense of humor in some ways like Arlo Guthrie. I seem to remember he glued a plastic eyeball on the tuning head of his guitar, but maybe that was somebody else. A bunch of us jammed together, Bill being one of them.

There was a brilliant lead guitarist guy, Jimmy or Billy Dean from the Santa Cruz area (I think it was) that o.d.’d while we were all playing, and Middlejohn wrote him a memorial song. There was so much talent under this Shelter Inn roof around 1970 that I am absolutely amazed more people who played there never got acknowledged publicly.

On the other hand as a very wise somebody said once, “We were the only generation that started a revolution, won it, then lost interestand went off to drink beer and play frisbie”.