The psychedelic revolution
"If you come to San Francisco, don't forget to put flowers in your hair..." In the summer of 1967, the hippie anthem sung by Scott McKenzie accompanied the arrival in San Francisco of tens of thousands of young people in revolt against the conformism of Sixties America. The epicenter of the movement was Haight-Ashbury, a peaceful neighborhood lined with cheap-rent Victorian houses, and the wide lawns of nearby Golden Gate Park. It all began in January, when 30,000 people, many from the libertarian University of Berkeley, converged on the town to attend the Human Be-In festival. The Grateful Dead performed a free concert, with Allen Ginsberg, founder of the Beat Generation, reciting his poems. On stage, psychologist Timothy Leary, a champion of LSD, declares "Get out of your mind and into your senses", encouraging his audience with this cryptic phrase to take the famous blotter, which circulates in the audience alongside marijuana and peyote from neighboring Mexico. At the time, the Merry Pranksters were touring the region in a red bus, offering the substance along with anacid testdiploma... If the epicenter of psychedelic culture is in California, it's also because LSD is mass-produced there. Augustus Owsley Stanley, a former Berkeley literature student, was the first person to synthesize the drug, back in 1964. From his laboratory, he is credited with producing the first million doses ofacid, which only became illegal in October 1966.
The San Francisco Sound
Under the influence of psychotropic substances, the hippie musicians of what came to be known as the "San Francisco Sound" created the soundtrack to Summer of Love, breaking with rock standards. Their songs leaned towards folk and jazz, stretching into long, epic instrumental improvisations that far exceeded the regulation three minutes of radio-friendly hits. As for the message conveyed by the lyrics, it revolves around love, hedonism, solidarity, travel and wisdom, with numerous references to the Beat Generation writers who gravitate to the Bay Area, such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and William Burroughs. In addition to the Grateful Dead, famous for their drum duo, the main representatives of the San Francisco Sound are Jefferson Airplane and its acoustic blues version, Hot Tuna, Carlos Santana, Steve Miller Blues Band, The Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service and, in a more soulful version with a large brass section, the black band Sly & the Family Stone.. Some of these groups featured women in prominent roles, such as Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin, who made her debut with Big Brother & The Holding Company. All these groups performed at the Fillmore and Winterland venues, often under the aegis of producer Bill Graham, who hired numerous local artists to design the psychedelic concert posters, largely inspired by the Art Deco movement of the early 20th century. The movement also spread to the East Coast, with bands such as Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago. Across the seas, LSD is also presumed to have played a fundamental role in the genesis of the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , released in June 1967. In May, Paul McCartney borrowed Frank Sinatra's jet to deliver a test pressing of the album to Jefferson Airplane in his Haight-Ashbury lair.
The Monterey Pop Festival
In June 1967, a huge festival dedicated to the new rock wave and in particular the San Francisco Sound was held in Monterey, a small town on the Pacific coast, south of the Bay Area. The organizers included producers Lou Adler, Alan Pariser and Derek Taylor, as well as members of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, and John Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas, author of the famous song San Francisco performed by Scott McKenzie, who promoted the event. For three days, one concert follows another in front of some 80,000 people. Jimi Hendrix completes his Wild Thing by spraying his guitar with gasoline before setting it on fire, in one of the most famous images in rock history. We dance to Janis Joplin, whose epic performance made her a star, Jefferson Airplane with their hits Somebody to Love and White Rabbit, The Who, who arrived from England to make a name for themselves on the other side of the Atlantic, Otis Redding, the shooting star of R'n'B who disappeared in a plane crash a few weeks later, and Ravi Shankar, who had just secured his fame playing with the Beatles and who gave an afternoon-long sitar recital. Paul McCartney attends the festival incognito, accompanied by his sidekick George Harrison, as does Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, who even takes to the stage to introduce Jimi Hendrix. The sun shines, the atmosphere is euphoric, and the bands on the bill sometimes give a second impromptu concert in the campsite. The mainstream media ignored the event, but fanzines and independent radio stations gave it a resounding echo in the Americanunderground. It would become legendary with the release, the following year, of the documentary Monterey Pop. nothing was rehearsed, nothing was prepared, nothing was orchestrated," says director D.A. Pennebaker. For me, it's the only way to make a documentary. If Etna wakes up, you have to be there, that's all, and find a way to watch. The musicians of that era were fascinating, completely consumed by their passion for the blues and the importance of the moment." The event would set the example for a whole series of pacifist festivals, including those on the Isle of Wight in England in 1968 and, of course, Woodstock in New York State in 1969. As for the song sung by Scott McKenzie, which is played over and over on the radio, it attracts flowery American youth to the Bay Area all summer long, before making its way around the world, even being covered in French by Johnny Hallyday.
A message of love
As soon as the Monterey Pop Festival ended, San Francisco once again became the epicenter of the hippie revolution. It took the form of an informal gathering of people of good will, eager for a more fraternal world, against a backdrop of Hindu songs and roaring motorcycles. The "diggers", an avant-garde theater group, organize concerts, meal distributions and free medical care in Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury. The free store, a kind of thrift store/bazaar, also donates its clothes. The excesses of theAmerican way of life are publicly questioned at the concerts: consumer society, religious conservatism, racial segregation, the destruction of nature and, of course, the Vietnam War, in which a hundred young Americans die every week. All against a backdrop of free love (encouraged by the widespread use of the contraceptive pill), which is sometimes experimented with in the park's thickets... Artists from all over the world take part in the effervescence, like the dancer Rudolf Nureyev. This merrymaking was reported in L'Oracle de San Francisco, a fiery newspaper launched by poet Allen Cohen, whose global readership reached half a million at its peak, but it was not to the taste of puritanical America: TV stations like CBS rushed to denounce the scandal. Ronald Reagan, the new Republican governor of California, exclaimed, "A hippie is someone who dresses like Tarzan, has Jane's hair and smells like Cheetah".
The death of the hippie
With the influx of people from all over the country, the situation eventually deteriorated. Dealers, beggars and biker gangs join the Flower Power kids on the streets. Heroin began to appear, crime increased and rapes were reported. Police raided the streets for undocumented minors, presuming them to be runaways or refusing military service to be sent to Vietnam. When George Harrison arrived in San Francisco on August 7, 1967 with his wife Pattie and strolled through Haight-Ashbury, heart-shaped glasses on his nose, followed by thousands of people like Hamelin's Pied Piper, he was taken aback by what he saw: "I went there hoping to find a dazzling place, populated by cool bohemians making art," he recounts in The Beatles Anthology, "but it was crammed with horrible, pimply, stoned teenage runaways. " The hippies began to leave the neighborhood for communities on the Pacific coast and, finally, having become accustomed to happenings, on October 6, 1967 they themselves organized a kind of funeral ceremony to close the Summer of Love. A short silent film entitled Death of a hippie, available from the California Historical Society on Mission Street, shows the scene: a coffin nailed in a backyard crossed by white rabbits, flags at the head of the procession, the final pyre. The funeral is finally interrupted by real firemen... At the same time, the police raid the neighborhood, including the Grateful Dead's home at 710 Ashbury Street.
The utopia only lasted a few months, but the shockwaves would travel the planet for decades. Today, Haight-Ashbury's folklore of incense stores, colorful thrift stores, Indian fabric stores and a few record shops still display the sumptuous psychedelic posters from the concerts of the era. For fifty years, hippie apprentices from all over the world have been coming here to decorate their dorm rooms, or to try and recapture some of the thrills of that summer of love in front ofJimi Hendrix's or Janis Joplin'sold address, during themed guided tours or at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair...
But beyond the nostalgic decorum, the counter-culture of the Sixties above all fostered the advent of ecology, organic farming, feminism, pacifism, the fight against racism and homophobia, as well as the Burning Man festival, which each year draws some 70,000 freaks from all over California, the United States and even the world to neighboring Nevada for an enchanted community experience. The Summer of Love also propelled the humanist and spiritual values that still shape the consciousness of Californians today. The only difference is that the hippies of yesteryear have gradually given way to hipsters, who are far more individualistic and consumer-oriented. But that's another story.
