Haight-Ashbury
• 1965: “A small psychedelic city-state was
taking shape” (141)
• They had “cast aside the syndrome of
alienation and despair that saddled many of
their beatnik forebears” (142)
• Folk and jazz was replaced by rock and roll
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy_JXPixTR
A
Family Dog
“A Tribute to Doctor Strange”
Family Dog
• “Thoroughly stoned on grass and acid and
each other, they rediscovered the crushing joy
of the dance, pouring it all out in a frenzy that
frequently bordered on the religious” (142)
The Free Concert
• “When rock music was performed with all its
potential fury, a special kind of delirium took
hold. Attending such performances amounted
to a total assault on the senses: the electric
sound washed in visceral waves over the
dancers, unleashing intense psychic energies
and driving the audience further toward
public trance” (143)
The Trips Festival
“…a wide-open three-day LSD party with just about every
sigh and sound imaginable” (143)
Jerry “Captain Trips” Garcia
“It was magic, far-out beautiful magic.” – Jerry Garcia
Scores of Local Bands Were Forming
• “Acid rock, as the San Francisco music was
called, was unique not only as a genre but also
as praxis…” (144)
• “To patrol the street in full regalia was an act
of defiance, an open refusal to buy into the
System” (145)
The King of Illicit LSD
• Augustus Owlsey
Stanley III
– Had visited Millbrook
– Went to the Kesey
parties
– Became a patron of the
Grateful Dead
• “The unofficial mayor of
San Francisco”
Arraigned in 1967
Deifying LSD
• Optimism ruled the early days….
• People saw LSD itself as capable of “ushering
in the Kingdom of heaven on earth”
The Ban
• California banned the use of LSD on 10/6/66
• “We were not guilty of using illegal
substances…we were celebrating
transcendental consciousness” - Allen Cohen
of the Psychedelic Shop (149)
Love Pageant Rally, 1966
SCARE HEADLINES
• “Girl, 5, eats LSD and goes wild”
• “A monster in our midst – a drug called LSD”
• “Thrill drug warps minds, kills”
• Politicians issued pronouncements against the
drug… hoping to ride the coattails of a FULL LSD
PANIC that was sweeping the land
Public Enemy Number One
• Lee and Schlain: “…all of a sudden the press
conjured up the frightening prospect of
couples giving birth to some kind of octopus
because LSD had scrambled their
chromosomes” (154)
Vice or Dissidence?
• Octavio Paz claimed the real reason hallucinogens were
banned was because authorities were trying to stamp out
dissidence
• Repressive controls have usually targeted drugs identified
with the poor and with racial minorities in times of crisis
• With psychedelics, it was largely well-educated whites of
privileged background (153)
Bad Trips?
• How many?
• About 50% reported having had at least one
bad trip
• How much was due to the hostile climate –
the creation of a negative set and setting
1967
• The First Human Be-In
– Herb Caen coins the term
“hippies”
– “Flower-children” and
“love generation”
– “Hippies became The
Other, the very people ‘our
parents warned us against,’
and this negative definition
quickly congealed into a
national obsession” (163)
– Ronald Reagan on hippies
The Human Be-In
The Choice, according to Watts:
To Drop Out or Take Over
• Tim Leary: “The choice is between being
rebellious and being religious”
SDS and SNCC
• Trying to create alternative structures within
“the loving community”
• Harkening back to IWW: “forming a new
society within the shell of the old”
The Summer of Love
• Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco (Be sure to
wear flowers in your hair)
• But… “The early days of acid glory had
receded into memory” (178)
Summer of Contrasts
• “America’s war against the Vietnamese had
swollen into a disaster” (179)
• “The black ghettoes of Detroit and Newark had
exploded in the summer heat”
• “Aretha Franklin belted out her anthem for
women and oppressed minorities: ‘All I want is a
little respect…’” (179)
Summer of Love
Jimi Hendrix
1967: Summer of Violence
Detroit
Newark
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Paul McCartney told Life: “[LSD] opened my eyes… It made me a better, more
Honest, more tolerant member of society” (181)
• “It is difficult to overstate the record’s importance
in galvanizing the acid subculture. For the love
generation, Sgt. Pepper was nothing less than a
revelation” (182)
• But… the Beatles eventually jumped off the Magical
Mystery Tour for a fling with the Maharishi
• “’Acid is not the answer,’ said George Harrison. ‘It’s
enabled people to see a bit more, but when you
really get hip, you don’t need it’” (184)
The Spiritualizing of America?
• The “Easternization of the
West”
• How much was
superficial?
• Nirvana, karma, maya…
did most people who
used these words know
what they were talking
about?
Esalen and the Counterculture
“Where spirituality was born?” - The very prospect of being “spiritual but
not religious” was introduced here.
The Dark Side Emerges
• Power trippers, hustlers,
ripoff artists proliferate
• “Call it acid fascism or
plain old psychological
warfare, the hippie
community had
degenerated to the point
where it merely offered a
different setting for the
same destructive drives
omnipresent in straight
society” (186)
Exodus from the Haight
• The end of the Summer
of Love
• The Diggers staged a
funeral: “The death of
the hippie” (191)
By October 1967
• “…cops patrolled the area (Haight-Ashbury) in riot
gear, roughing up longhairs and busting young people
indiscriminately” (192)
The East Village
• The New York Be-In
• “… a combination of runaways, tourism, and Mafia heroin
destroyed a creative scene that had been many years in the
making” (195)
• “The decimation of the East Village and the Haight might
have been the final chapter of a unique phase in cultural
history if not for the profound impact these communities had
on American society as a whole. Like a cueball scattering the
opening shot, the media laser beam broke up the energy
cluster…and spread the psychedelic seed throughout the
country” (195)
Madison Avenue
• The advertising industry appropriates the psychedelic
culture
• “The media would be deeply implicated in everything
that happened thereafter” (200)