Before returning to his native state, California previously played with Jimi Hendrix as a member of Jimmy James and the Blue Flames in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1966.

Although his earlier career was primarily in jazz (including stints with Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Roland Kirk, Thelonious Monk and Lee Konitz), he had served as the founding drummer of Rising Sons, an early blues rock vehicle for Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder.

Early demo recordings by the band were produced by their Topanga Canyon roommate Barry Hansen, later known as the radio host Dr.

In December, they appeared at the Denver Auditorium, with support band Led Zeppelin,[3] who soon after interpolated parts of Spirit's song "Fresh Garbage" in an extended medley based around their cover of Bob Elgin and Jerry Ragavoy's "As Long as I Have You" (initially popularized by Garnet Mimms) during their early 1969 concerts.

[6] In 2014, Mark Andes and a trust acting on behalf of Randy California filed a copyright infringement suit against Led Zeppelin in an attempt to obtain a writing credit for "Stairway to Heaven".

The band chose frequent Neil Young collaborator David Briggs as the producer at the recommendation of the singer-songwriter, an acquaintance from the Topanga Canyon scene.

Like The Who's Tommy and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is critically regarded as a landmark of art rock, with a tapestry of literary themes about the fragility of life and the complexity of the human experience, illustrated by recurring lyric "life has just begun", and continued the group's pioneering exploration of environmental issues in their lyrics (cf.

Shortly thereafter, bassist and recent University of Texas School of Law graduate Al Staehely was recruited by Locke and Cassidy to replace Arliss.

Al's brother, John Christian (Chris) Staehely, auditioned for the band and was quickly brought on board, departing the Texas rock group Krackerjack.

It was a different turn for the group, showing more of a country rock influence pervading their jazzier tendencies, but it met with only a mild commercial response, also reaching No.

While the tour for Feedback proceeded very well for much of that year, Cassidy and Locke lacked an affinity for roots-based music and soon left the lineup.

The Staehely brothers completed the critically successful tour with drummer Stu Perry before dissolving the group in mid-1973 and releasing their own album, Sta-Hay-Lee.

In early 1975, the group was scheduled to open for Ten Years After at a show in Florida, but when the headlining band backed out at the last minute, Spirit was granted permission to take over the theater for the evening.

After going around to local radio stations to promote the show and setting a low ($3) ticket price, Spirit managed to sell out the 3,000-seat theater.

Neil Young created an incident during the final show's encore of "Like a Rolling Stone" when he walked on stage inebriated.

California moved over in front of Neil and began pushing him backwards, away from the microphone, back past the drumkit and offstage.

Cassidy initially quelled the situation by leaving his kit and physically pulling both California and Young back onstage to the microphone to close out the song, asking the audience to sing along with them.

Afterwards, California assembled Future Games: A Magical Kahauna Dream with Cassidy and limited assistance from session musicians.

The experimental album included a Hendrix-influenced cover of "All Along the Watchtower" and underpinned science fiction-based lyrical themes with many samples from Star Trek: The Original Series in a variant of filk.

Kopter-era trio, California, Cassidy and Larry "Fuzzy" Knight toured extensively as Spirit throughout 1978; an English leg saw the band headline a triple bill that included post-punk ensemble Alternative TV and The Police.

The German TV/radio programme Rockpalast recorded and broadcast Spirit's entire show of March 4/5, 1978, including the encore jam where Dickey Betts joined the band.

Consequently, in 1981, California released an overdubbed selection of tracks from the original album alongside several unrelated songs dating from the late 1970s.

On February 14, 1982, Spirit, performed as a three-piece band, Randy California, Ed Cassidy and an unknown bass player, at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, MO.

When the power generator failed—allegedly because the operator had fallen asleep stoned and neglected to refill the fuel—Heyman performed a twenty-minute solo while the situation was rectified.

[17] California headed to England and recorded his third solo album, the contemporary hard rock effort Restless, for which Heyman (who played on the track "Jack Rabbit") secured a deal with Phonogram for in late 1985.

Following a few live dates in England, California returned to the United States and resumed touring extensively with Cassidy, Monahan, and Waterbury.

Although the group (including California, Cassidy, Locke, Nile, Monahan, and George Valuck on keyboards) toured extensively in support, the album failed to chart.

This is thanks to the efforts of Sony Music (with the Epic catalog, though Collector's Choice Music was the first to reissue Feedback on CD in the U.S., following a brief release on disc in France in the late 1990s) and Beat Goes On alongside Edsel, both UK labels (with the Mercury catalog, some of which had made it to CD prior to Beat Goes On and Edsel reissuing all of their Mercury albums).

"The notes identify them as 'pioneers' of 'topical lyrics that were realized by the production of the song,' which makes me think again about the way the first two cuts, '1984' and 'Mechanical World,' shift texture and tempo.

This is not an unmixed distinction, but it could be worse: the topicality is a notch above ordinary rock sci-fi (they have a sense of humor), the derivations more jazz than classical.