Post by Swamp Gas on Jan 14, 2007 0:30:01 GMT -5
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/14/BEIN.TMP
... with flowers in your gray hair
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Close your eyes, man, and think of this: ten thousand people, most of them young, half of them stoned, in Golden Gate Park listening to music, to poetry, celebrating life, celebrating being human. Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll. A Human Be-In.
"If you weren't there, you were square,'' said Marylyn Lucas, a San Franciscan who has spent a lifetime collecting rock posters and hippie arts and crafts.
There are a lot of myths about that day, and one truth: If you were there then, you are, like, old. The Human Be-In, held on the warmest day of the San Francisco winter of 1967, was 40 years ago today.
The Be-In -- unlike a teach-in, or a sit-in -- was what Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason called "the greatest nonspecific mass meeting in years, perhaps ever.''
There was no real point. It was a gathering of the tribes, the passing of the baton from the Beat Generation to the hippies. It was the winter before the Summer of Love. It just was.
"I remember the day, I remember playing,'' '' said Gary Duncan, guitarist with the Quicksilver Messenger Service. "I remember we thought we were gonna play a free gig in the park before a few hundred people, but when we got there, there were so many people we couldn't get to the gig, we had to crawl over people. It was amazing. It was monumental.'' He was 22.
People used to say if you remember the '60s you weren't there, but people remember this one. The Grateful Dead played, Quicksilver played, Country Joe and the Fish played.
The Beats were there -- Allen Ginsberg read his poems. Gary Snyder, the poet, then in his Japanese period, chanted; Timothy Leary advised the crowd to tune in, turn on, drop out.
Jerry Rubin denounced the war (in Vietnam, remember?). Leonore Kandel, described by the papers the next day as "The love poetess," read some of the works that had gotten her arrested not long before for producing pornography.
LSD was passed around. People sat on the grass making their own music: guitars, harmonicas, tambourines, flutes, sitars. Nobody sold anything to anybody.
In the middle of one of the music sets, an airplane flew over, and a man floated down in a parachute and landed right in the middle of all those thousands of beats, Berkeley radicals, college students, hippies, freaks. What did they say back then? Cool.
The Hells Angels provided security. This was the old Hells Angels, the ones who used to beat up long hairs just for fun. On this occasion, a Hells Angel functionary named Frank Reynolds -- Freewheelin' Frank, they called him -- guarded the electric lines powering the bands and beat time to the chants with a tambourine.
When it was over, at sundown, there was no litter. People picked up their own trash.
"It was great,'' Country Joe McDonald said. "It was f -- great, man.'' He painted his face, wore a hippie shirt. "I felt a part of it,'' he said. "I was a part of it."
Some thought the Be-In, which was the idea of Allen Cohen, editor of a paper called The Oracle, was the beginning of something, a change, a watershed. "It was the passing of the late-era beatnik, and the beginning of psychedelia,'' said Bill Belmont, who was 24 in 1967.
"The Haight was just beginning,'' he said.
Just after the Be-In, the San Francisco music scene flourished, the city was taken over by flower children, by what they called the Summer of Love. "What happened was the creation of an American archetype, like the cowboy -- the San Francisco hippie,'' said The Chronicle's Joel Selvin, who has written several books on the scene, including "The Summer of Love."
"What was there not to like about being a hippie?" said Country Joe. "You didn't have to work, you didn't have to do anything. There wasn't any bad parts to it." He had just turned 25 that winter.
"The Be-In was an important symbolic event,'' said Stephen Becker, retired executive director of the California Historical Society. "Old hippies have a tremendous nostalgia for it. We love talking about those days.''
Becker wasn't at the Be-In. "I was a high school hippie,'' he says, but he's studied the era.
The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society held a program last week commemorating the anniversary of the Be-In, starring several members of the original cast. The organizers were astounded when 400 people, most of them gray-haired, showed up at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco's Presidio Heights.
Selvin, who was the master of ceremonies, asked how many had been at the original Be-In. Maybe a hundred hands went up. "OK,'' he said, "How many people in this audience dropped acid?'' Half the audience of 400 people -- doctors, lawyers, grandmothers -- put up their hands.
Though many of the thousands who went to the original Be-In saw it as the start of something big and important, others saw it as the end of something important but small.
Duncan, the Quicksilver guitarist, remembers that David Freiberg, the bass player, had noticed all the media -- newspapers, magazines, television -- at the Be-In. " 'Oh man,' he said, 'look at that! You know who that is? That's so-and-so from ABC-TV. Godammit, it's over, man.' "
He meant, Duncan explained, that the Bay Area scene, the music, the whole thing, what was a local scene -- "just us," Duncan called it -- had been discovered by the American image machine. TV, radio, Time magazine, the BBC, Japanese television, the full catastrophe.
Next thing you know, there were songs about the songs. "When you go to San Francisco/be sure and wear a flower in your hair.'' One song went. That sort of thing.
"Every sad little kid in the Midwest, everywhere, wanted to run away from home and go to San Francisco,'' Duncan said. "And to what? To a life that didn't exist.''
The Haight descended into crime and hard drugs, the hippies drifted off, or grew up, or died. In a couple of years, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and the others were dead, the music went commercial.
Cohen, whose idea it was, is dead, and so are Leary, Ginsberg and others who seemed so ancient to the kids in the park. Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize. Kandel, the "love poetess,'' who appeared as a character full of love and life in Jack Kerouac's "Big Sur," is 75 and handicapped.
Could the Be-In happen again in San Francisco?
"No,'' said Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who owned City Lights books, where the arrested poets hung out and who had an honored place on the stage at the Be-In.
"Not these days. The age today is so different. 'Be Here Now' was the slogan then. Now with cell phones and the Internet and all, it's 'Be Somewhere Else Now.' ''
Could it happen again? "I think there's always stuff happening," said Country Joe McDonald. "But would you and I know if anything like this was happening now?"
The Be-In was a celebration of being young. Country Joe just turned 65.
... with flowers in your gray hair
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Close your eyes, man, and think of this: ten thousand people, most of them young, half of them stoned, in Golden Gate Park listening to music, to poetry, celebrating life, celebrating being human. Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll. A Human Be-In.
"If you weren't there, you were square,'' said Marylyn Lucas, a San Franciscan who has spent a lifetime collecting rock posters and hippie arts and crafts.
There are a lot of myths about that day, and one truth: If you were there then, you are, like, old. The Human Be-In, held on the warmest day of the San Francisco winter of 1967, was 40 years ago today.
The Be-In -- unlike a teach-in, or a sit-in -- was what Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason called "the greatest nonspecific mass meeting in years, perhaps ever.''
There was no real point. It was a gathering of the tribes, the passing of the baton from the Beat Generation to the hippies. It was the winter before the Summer of Love. It just was.
"I remember the day, I remember playing,'' '' said Gary Duncan, guitarist with the Quicksilver Messenger Service. "I remember we thought we were gonna play a free gig in the park before a few hundred people, but when we got there, there were so many people we couldn't get to the gig, we had to crawl over people. It was amazing. It was monumental.'' He was 22.
People used to say if you remember the '60s you weren't there, but people remember this one. The Grateful Dead played, Quicksilver played, Country Joe and the Fish played.
The Beats were there -- Allen Ginsberg read his poems. Gary Snyder, the poet, then in his Japanese period, chanted; Timothy Leary advised the crowd to tune in, turn on, drop out.
Jerry Rubin denounced the war (in Vietnam, remember?). Leonore Kandel, described by the papers the next day as "The love poetess," read some of the works that had gotten her arrested not long before for producing pornography.
LSD was passed around. People sat on the grass making their own music: guitars, harmonicas, tambourines, flutes, sitars. Nobody sold anything to anybody.
In the middle of one of the music sets, an airplane flew over, and a man floated down in a parachute and landed right in the middle of all those thousands of beats, Berkeley radicals, college students, hippies, freaks. What did they say back then? Cool.
The Hells Angels provided security. This was the old Hells Angels, the ones who used to beat up long hairs just for fun. On this occasion, a Hells Angel functionary named Frank Reynolds -- Freewheelin' Frank, they called him -- guarded the electric lines powering the bands and beat time to the chants with a tambourine.
When it was over, at sundown, there was no litter. People picked up their own trash.
"It was great,'' Country Joe McDonald said. "It was f -- great, man.'' He painted his face, wore a hippie shirt. "I felt a part of it,'' he said. "I was a part of it."
Some thought the Be-In, which was the idea of Allen Cohen, editor of a paper called The Oracle, was the beginning of something, a change, a watershed. "It was the passing of the late-era beatnik, and the beginning of psychedelia,'' said Bill Belmont, who was 24 in 1967.
"The Haight was just beginning,'' he said.
Just after the Be-In, the San Francisco music scene flourished, the city was taken over by flower children, by what they called the Summer of Love. "What happened was the creation of an American archetype, like the cowboy -- the San Francisco hippie,'' said The Chronicle's Joel Selvin, who has written several books on the scene, including "The Summer of Love."
"What was there not to like about being a hippie?" said Country Joe. "You didn't have to work, you didn't have to do anything. There wasn't any bad parts to it." He had just turned 25 that winter.
"The Be-In was an important symbolic event,'' said Stephen Becker, retired executive director of the California Historical Society. "Old hippies have a tremendous nostalgia for it. We love talking about those days.''
Becker wasn't at the Be-In. "I was a high school hippie,'' he says, but he's studied the era.
The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society held a program last week commemorating the anniversary of the Be-In, starring several members of the original cast. The organizers were astounded when 400 people, most of them gray-haired, showed up at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco's Presidio Heights.
Selvin, who was the master of ceremonies, asked how many had been at the original Be-In. Maybe a hundred hands went up. "OK,'' he said, "How many people in this audience dropped acid?'' Half the audience of 400 people -- doctors, lawyers, grandmothers -- put up their hands.
Though many of the thousands who went to the original Be-In saw it as the start of something big and important, others saw it as the end of something important but small.
Duncan, the Quicksilver guitarist, remembers that David Freiberg, the bass player, had noticed all the media -- newspapers, magazines, television -- at the Be-In. " 'Oh man,' he said, 'look at that! You know who that is? That's so-and-so from ABC-TV. Godammit, it's over, man.' "
He meant, Duncan explained, that the Bay Area scene, the music, the whole thing, what was a local scene -- "just us," Duncan called it -- had been discovered by the American image machine. TV, radio, Time magazine, the BBC, Japanese television, the full catastrophe.
Next thing you know, there were songs about the songs. "When you go to San Francisco/be sure and wear a flower in your hair.'' One song went. That sort of thing.
"Every sad little kid in the Midwest, everywhere, wanted to run away from home and go to San Francisco,'' Duncan said. "And to what? To a life that didn't exist.''
The Haight descended into crime and hard drugs, the hippies drifted off, or grew up, or died. In a couple of years, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and the others were dead, the music went commercial.
Cohen, whose idea it was, is dead, and so are Leary, Ginsberg and others who seemed so ancient to the kids in the park. Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize. Kandel, the "love poetess,'' who appeared as a character full of love and life in Jack Kerouac's "Big Sur," is 75 and handicapped.
Could the Be-In happen again in San Francisco?
"No,'' said Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who owned City Lights books, where the arrested poets hung out and who had an honored place on the stage at the Be-In.
"Not these days. The age today is so different. 'Be Here Now' was the slogan then. Now with cell phones and the Internet and all, it's 'Be Somewhere Else Now.' ''
Could it happen again? "I think there's always stuff happening," said Country Joe McDonald. "But would you and I know if anything like this was happening now?"
The Be-In was a celebration of being young. Country Joe just turned 65.
