A New Rock Opera Brings The Free Life Back to Life

Besides the car accident on Springs Fireplace Road that claimed the life of artist Jackson Pollock in 1956, it was probably the most famous event that ever occurred in Springs — the celebrated launch of The Free Life, a hot air balloon that took off from George Sid Miller’s field on Accabonac Harbor with the lofty, record-setting goal of sailing fair winds to France.

The date was September 20, 1970, and aboard The Free Life was a young married couple, Rodney Anderson and Pamela Brown — age 32 and 28 respectively, along with their 32-year old British pilot and navigator Malcolm Brighton. Together, the trio planned to make history by being the first team to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean in a hot air balloon.

But it was not to be. Just 32 hours into the flight, the balloon encountered a massive storm system and instead of becoming record-breaking heroes, the crew of The Free Life became victims after they went down in rough seas off Newfoundland. Though parts of the destroyed balloon were found, no trace of the three passengers ever was.

It was a most tragic ending, given that the mission had begun with such an earnest sense of optimism earlier that summer, captivating the imaginations of the Springs community. When Anderson and Brown, who lived in New York City, let it be known they planned to launch their ambitious project from the humble hamlet, Springs residents had rallied behind the couple and the cause, donating food, lodging and even Bonacker mechanical know-how to get the project off the ground, literally.

Genie Chipps Henderson, a longtime Springs resident and archivist at LTV Studios, grew up with Pamela Brown in Lexington, Kentucky and was her best friend. Henderson, who came to the East End for the first time that summer to support Brown, recalled that the launch of The Free Life was a source of great pride for Springs residents who frequently felt as if their community existed on the margins and in the shadows of more famous and prosperous neighbors.

“Springs is no longer the poor relation of East Hampton, but in those days it still was,” explained Henderson during a recent interview at LTV. She added that once Clarence and Dorothy Barnes of Barnes Country Store and “Mom” VanDewater, who loaned Anderson and Brown free use of a cottage on her property, agreed to help, the entire Springs community jumped on board.

“It was Bonac town and of course, there were the artists. But I think because the Barnes and VanDewater, people who were the heart and soul of Springs, got involved, then the fire department started helping and suddenly, it was this group of Springs people,” said Henderson. “I think they saw it as not wanting it to be an East Hampton thing.”

That’s where Sag Harbor composer and musician Dan Koontz comes in. A few years ago, Koontz became intrigued with The Free Life after reading a newspaper account of the ill-fated balloon trip. The tale of youthful optimism and a working class community that joined the effort, swept up in the excitement of it all, only to be devastated by great tragedy, piqued his interest and inspired him to write “The Free Life,” a new rock opera that will premiere at LTV Studios on Thursday, September 21, at 7 p.m.

“I call it a rock opera because there’s not a good way to talk about it,” said Koontz of the 13 songs that make up his musical version of the story. “I wanted the songs to have a life of their own. I didn’t write it from the point of view of individual characters. ‘The monster in the back yard,’ that’s what Pam took to calling the project. So I have a song called ‘Monster in the Yard.’

“It’s an obsession these two people have — a project they started and can’t give up and they can’t stop thinking about,” he added of Anderson and Brown. “It consumes money and time, like an addiction.”

Also among the songs Koontz wrote for “The Free Life” is the moody, Appalachian roots-inspired “Fireplace Road.” Written in the voice of a local, it speaks not only of Pollock’s accident, but also the hardscrabble fishing and farming life that long defined the community, as well as residents’ excitement for the balloon project.

“There’s enthusiasm among the people in this community to get their project happening. Mom VanDewater worked at a restaurant on Newtown Lane and she’s offering Rod her guest house free of charge,” said Koontz. “She’s calling Barnes Country Store to offer free food and provisions for the voyage, they all start helping. They’re even trying to build the burners to provide more lift.

“The more I looked into it, the more The Free Life is one of the most notable things that ever happened in Springs,” added Koontz. “The people who were there were working class people who did things like milking cows. They didn’t do glamorous things.”

Because Koontz didn’t grow up on the East End and the story was new to him, in writing his rock opera, he turned to Henderson, who, in many ways, is now the keeper of The Free Life history. Not only had she known Pamela Brown since their shared childhood in Kentucky, as LTV’s archivist, she also has access to photos and film footage from the era.

“Pam and I met when we were preteens and never looked back, we had been hand-in-hand ever since,” explained Henderson. “Pam was living in New York at the time where she had met Rod, and it was all his idea. Someone at the bar said, ‘You know what’s never been done? Nobody’s ever crossed the Atlantic in a balloon.’ Most people would say, ‘Oh really? Let’s order another drink.’

“For Rod, it electrified him and he wanted to do it.”

Pamela Brown was a fairly high-profile person. She hailed from a fabled Kentucky family and her father, John Y. Brown Sr., was a U.S. Congressman, while her brother, John Y. Brown Jr., became CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken and eventually served as governor.

“Pam was exotic and her family were major players. As teenagers, she would say, ‘Daddy’s closing his case today, we have to go hear him,’” said Henderson. “He was a great orator, the whole town would turn out to hear him.”

Henderson describes Brown as personable, bright and dynamic. She aspired to be an actress and moved to New York to pursue her dream. That’s where she met her husband, who worked as director of admissions at New York University, and, in an ill-fated decision, shifted course to pursue his dream of ballooning across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Brighton was brought into the project late in the game to replace the original pilot who had reservations about the project and backed out at the 11th hour.

“Malcolm was another ebullient personality; this was to be his 100th ascent. He was a fun, good risk taker,” said Henderson.

Koontz learned more about the story through Anthony Smith’s 1994 book “The Free Life,” which is now out of print, but was published by Genie Henderson’s husband, Bill Henderson, though his Pushcart Press.

“I get this email from Dan, and we got together for a coffee in Sag Harbor. When he showed up, he identified himself by holding up the book,” said Henderson. “I was blown away. He wanted to know a lot of facts about it. But he’s also an artist and wanted to put his own spin on it.”

Besides being an author, Smith was also a balloon pilot and a good friend of Brighton’s. He had flown with him on many occasions and in his book, he suggests that the attention and public support for the trip in the months leading up to the launch made it virtually impossible for the trio to back out of the plan once all eyes were on them.

“They were youthful, good looking and Pam was a woman. It had all that appeal and that big, beautiful balloon,” said Henderson. “We were all caught up in it. Nobody that day or that summer thought they shouldn’t do this. It seemed well planned. They had Pan Am and Abercrombie and Fitch as corporate backers and sponsors, and the balloon was built.”

“In the book, Anthony Smith has a name for that idea of not backing out,” said Koontz. “Both he and Malcolm experienced this. He talks about going from an island off the African coast to the mainland, they sent up a trial balloon and it wasn’t going in the direction they thought it needed to go. But they took off anyway because all these people on the island who had helped were watching. They did go the right way, but only by virtue of the fact he had misread his navigational equipment.”

“When Malcolm came aboard, he was so experienced. Now, he did have problems with the design. He thought, ‘I’m going to get this thing off the ground at least, or maybe get a lot of publicity,’” said Henderson who suspects that the pilot might have considered bringing the balloon down somewhere farther up the East Coast, once everyone had seen it off, but before it headed too far out to sea.

“Anthony Smith was a great friend of Malcolm Brighton’s and they flew balloons all over. He was off on his own adventure when The Free Life happened, otherwise, he would’ve talked him out of it,” said Henderson. “I think Malcolm thought, ‘if I can get this off the ground and make Pam and Rod happy, I’ll see how it goes. We’ll stay close to land.’ And the take-off was perfect, nothing stumbled.”

As planned, the balloon sailed up the East Coast, sticking close to land. But then things got dicey.

“Once they got to upper Maine, that’s when they caught the wind to Europe and they probably had to make a big decision,” she said. “The first they heard of the storm was from an airline pilot, all the airline pilots were radioing them and could see them far below.”

She theorizes that the crew of the balloon thought they could stay ahead of the storm, using the winds to push them east at a quicker pace and perhaps even break a distance record.

“I was sound asleep when the news came,” said Henderson. “A best friend of Rod’s in the city called me up and said, ‘They are down.’ It was around 10 or 11 p.m. and I said, ‘Oh, they’re down, that sounds like they would be rescued.”

But there would be no rescue, as Henderson soon realized.

“I was on a flight later that went out looking for them near Newfoundland,” she said. “We flew down through a hole in the skies. You take one look at it, the Atlantic churning without land or anything, and you knew it was impossible. That was kind of amazing.”

After the accident, Henderson went home, but she returned to Springs a year later to plant a tree and place a plaque for the explorers at Ashawagh Hall.

“I said I’m never coming back again. I didn’t come here for eight years,” recalled Henderson, who adds that things changed once she met her husband in the city and began spending time at his Water Mill home. “Then Bill and I said, ‘Let’s live out there’ and we bought a house on Fireplace Road, almost directly across the street from the field, which is completely changed now and grown up.”

In fact, a great deal has changed in Springs, and every year there are fewer people left who remember the story of The Free Life and that day in September 1970 when the balloon lifted off and sailed away. With the 53rd anniversary of the event now upon us, that’s part of the reason Koontz thinks it’s a worthwhile story to share through his music.

“I get a lot of different reactions when I talk about this project, including, ‘Ooh, this is a fascinating story.’ A lot of people know it, but surprisingly, a lot don’t and when they hear how it ended, they’re horrified,” said Koontz. “I’m somewhat worried people will be turned off because they don’t want to hear about something that ended badly. It’s like those people who spent tons of money to go down in a submersible.

“Bernie Taupin said a lot of the songs he wrote for Elton John had a lot of dark content,” continued Koontz. “He said, ‘You don’t write about happiness. You don’t write novels about people who have no conflict. There’s the question mark of why do it all? The interesting thing is the obsession, the element of folly. That’s what makes it interesting.”

Koontz explains that the songs in “The Free Life” rock opera are more metaphorical than literal, and not so explicitly tied to the story that they can’t be divorced from the show and stand on their own.

In terms of the musical style, he noted, “As I got deeper into it, I thought what if they had a mix tape? Though that didn’t exist at the time. In my mind, this is The Free Life mix tape. It was 1970, The Who’s ‘Tommy’ was brand new, so some of the songs are reminiscent of Pete Townshend. Simon and Garfunkel were also big then.

“I also have a T-Rex style of song, along with some Joe Cockerish style tunes, Leon Russell, and a gospel tune that’s the last song,” he added. “I wanted to end on a conciliatory note, so was actually quite purposefully calling upon those styles.”

And when Henderson pointed out that Koontz didn’t have a song for Malcolm Brighton, he wrote one inspired by the Kinks in a nod to Brighton’s British roots.

In addition to the music, during the LTV performance images of The Free Life will be displayed on a screen behind the stage.

“Genie’s an incredibly valuable resource for photos,” said Koontz. “She had slides transferred to digital and they are vivid, beautifully colorful shots of the day. Her enthusiasm for the project was a big help.”

“The fact that 53 years later, this was happening, it was intoxicating,” said Henderson of Koontz’s rock opera. “In a way, this is the 50th anniversary celebration because it didn’t happen during COVID. It’s great it’s coming here. Dan talked about taking it other places, but because of my association with LTV, I said, ‘Why not here?’”

“The more time that goes by, the more it becomes its own historical mythical story,” added Henderson. “If they had landed safely in Presque Isle, Maine, would we have a rock opera about it?”

“The Free Life,” a new rock opera, will be presented on Thursday, September 21, at 7 p.m. at LTV Studios, 75 Industrial Road, Wainscott. Band members for this performance include Dan Koontz, James Bernard, Sue Conklin, Fred Glide, Sara Mundy, Andrew Koontz, Bruce Beyer and Steve Shaughnessy. Tickets are $25 at ltveh.org.