CHEECH: Any time you go to a big museum, you see all those kids in the same colored T-shirts holding hands.

That was me.

Then I went to LACMA here in L.A., and now I'm on the board of directors there, you know.

So, you know it's a, it's a... that's nice.

I was living in Canada for three years.

I went up there ostensibly to be a potter.

At the same time, I was part of the draft resistance movement because it was like 1968.

The Vietnam War was raging, and I was very against the war, as were most of the people that I knew.

My roommate in, in, in Banff where I was living.

He said, "Come with me.

I'm going to Vancouver, that's where I'm from.

And we could, we could room together.

And, you know, you dig Vancouver it's really cool."

That's what we did.

He, he knew I was a writer from music magazines you know, and so they were starting the magazine up there, and he said, do the same thing here.

At some point, the publisher of, of the magazine, he says, you know, I got this guy you should meet.

He's doing this weird thing, his name's Tommy Chong, and he's doing this improv company in a topless bar.

So right away I'm interested, you know.

That troupe broke up.

Tommy called me one night and said, "Well, let's do it.

You and me together.

You're a singer, I'm a guitar player.

We'll make a band and we'll do a bits and then we'll play music and, you know, maybe we'll play lounges in, in Vegas or something."

Like, oh, sounds good to me, you know.

One night to Lou Adler, who was the world's biggest record producer at that time, saw us.

Coincidentally, he had grown up in East LA.

He understood what we were doing right away.

So, he put us in the studio, and then we released our first album, and immediately it was a big hit.

The collecting bug started way, way earlier.

I was always a collector of something.

So, when I had some money, all of a sudden and we were traveling throughout the U.S., I started collecting Art Nouveau pieces and have to carry them with me on the plane, you know?

And then Art Nouveau got very expensive, so I got to find something else.

And that's when I discovered Chicano art.

The gap in my knowledge about art history was contemporary art.

I was married to a painter at the time.

She started taking me to contemporary galleries in LA, and that's when I saw the first Chicano painters as Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, and I was intrigued right away.

I knew what the art was because it was built upon their classical education, because all these artists, it wasn't naive art, backyard hobbyists art, they all had went... gone to prestigious art schools.

They knew art history combined with their Mexican heritage, and now their Chicano heritage.

And the Chicanos said "We are Mexicans on this side of the border and we're planting our flag here."

Nobody was collecting it on a large scale.

Nobody that I knew, you know.

And so, I had money.

(laughs).

You can't love or hate Chicano art unless you see it.

Okay, you have to see it.

So how do I make it available for you to see?

So, I started talking to people, and they go, oh, they really intrigued the art because the collection was large now and then one thing led to another and it started gaining traction.

And so, we started doing a big national tour in one museum after the other.

And I was buoyed by the fact that every museum we'd play, we broke attendance records.

We did a show in Riverside, California.

They were gonna to build a new library, and they said, we have to repurpose this building or knock it down.

We would like to offer you the museum for the collection.

I was really struggling with this because it took me over 50 years to amass this collection.

I was walking through the, the building when they were tearing it out and I said, "How big is this building?"

Because it's a big building.

I said, she said, "Well, it's 66,420 square feet" and I go, "420?

That's the sign."

Thank you so much for a sign that's the sign.

And I did that.

And that's the best decision I ever made in my life.

It's the proudest I am of anything I've ever done, because this is the legacy that is for everybody in the family and every part of the community.

You don't have to be Chicano or not.

And it keeps going.

And this is the thing that will last for generations, you know?

So, I mean, how can you not be proud of that?