It is a grave mistake for human beings to think that they can understand everything about the meaning of life. The Greek myth of Icarus tells of how he fell to his death by flying too close to the sun. We are supposed to do the very best we can and avoid assuming that we have figured everything out.
If we are going to embrace the idea of agape, universal love, it cannot apply only to our tribe or group of tribes. It has to apply, literally, to everybody. A piece in the Oracle called for “love and compassion for all hate-carrying men and women.” Today this seems a wee bit condescending. Calling those outside of the hippie life “hapless robot receptors” was, I can now see, not the best way to connect with strangers.
Loving everybody is very hard to do, even for saints, but that’s the gig. I can see now that even the word “counterculture” was inherently polarizing. As Dr. King said, “Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.”
While recognizing the fact that life’s forces sometimes move backward and that darkness sometimes temporarily prevails, it is important to appreciate the good things that have happened. It could be worse, and it has been. Millions of people feel empowered today who would have felt like isolated freaks before the sixties.
Mel Brooks’s character the 2,000 Year Old Man said, “There’s something bigger than Phil.” The hippie idea of prioritizing peace and love above all else was bigger than money, bigger than fear, bigger than sex, bigger than drugs, bigger than war, and bigger than the Beatles, but it wasn’t a gateway into a new age, just a flash to indicate that something different was possible.
One of the aspects of LSD I liked best was the way that time sometimes slowed down and a single minute could seem to last for years. Conversely, the passage of fifty years sometimes feels like a few minutes. Perhaps the best way to look at the “lost chord” of 1967 is a trip that millions of people took together.
Maharaji told Ram Dass that LSD could allow you to spend a couple of hours with Christ, but then you’d have to come back down and do the spiritual work to actually live in that consciousness. Similarly, Peter Coyote says, “Acid showed you what was there but it did not deliver it. It was like having a helicopter take you to the top of a mountain and then bring you back without providing a guide to get you back up there.” Moral and spiritual progress usually takes decades or even lifetimes. Hippie skeptic Kerouac said, “Walking on water wasn’t built in a day,” but he didn’t say it could never happen.
1967 timeline
JANUARY 1—New Year’s Eve at the Fillmore in San Francisco, CA, featuring the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane
JANUARY 5—Ronald Reagan is sworn in as governor of California
JANUARY 14—Human Be-In in San Francisco, CA
JANUARY 15—First Super Bowl: Green Bay Packers defeat Kansas City Chiefs, 35–10
FEBRUARY 1—Surrealistic Pillow is released, making Jefferson Airplane pop/rock stars
FEBRUARY 5—The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour premieres on CBS
FEBRUARY 11—A.J. Muste dies at age eighty-two
FEBRUARY 11—Around three thousand WBAI listeners congregate for a “Fly-In” at JFK Airport, on one of the coldest days of the year
FEBRUARY 13—Perception ’67 Conference in Toronto, featuring the Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Alpert, Marshall McLuhan, and Paul Krassner
FEBRUARY 17—Ed Sanders of the Fugs is featured on the cover of a Life magazine issue about “Happenings”
FEBRUARY 17—The Beatles release “Strawberry Fields Forever”/“Penny Lane”
FEBRUARY 18—J. Robert Oppenheimer dies
FEBRUARY 22—MacBird! premieres in New York, NY
FEBRUARY 25—Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” peaks at #6 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart
FEBRUARY 28—Henry R. Luce dies
MARCH 1—Adam Clayton Powell Jr. is denied a seat in Congress (Arthur Kinoy represents him in court)
MARCH 6—Lyndon B. Johnson announces draft lottery
MARCH 20—Obscenity trial for Peace Eye Bookstore, New York, NY
MARCH 26—Easter Be-In, Central Park, New York, NY, and at Elysian Park, Los Angeles
APRIL 4—Martin Luther King Jr. announces opposition to Vietnam War in speech at Riverside Church, New York, NY
APRIL 7—Underground radio host Tom Donahue begins broadcasting on KMPX
APRIL 11—Adam Clayton Powell Jr. reelected
APRIL 15—Forty thousand (or more) march and protest as part of the Spring Mobilization to End the Vietnamese War at Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA
APRIL 20—US bombs Haiphong for the first time
APRIL 28—Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the US Army
MAY 12—H. Rap Brown replaces Stokely Carmichael as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
MAY 18—Andrei Voznesensky performs with the Fugs at an antiwar event at Village Theater, New York, NY
MAY 25—John Lennon’s psychedelically painted Rolls-Royce is delivered
JUNE 1—Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released
JUNE 2—Race riots in Roxbury, MA
JUNE 5–11—Six-Day War in the Middle East
JUNE 7—Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic opens
JUNE 11—Race riots in Tampa, FL
JUNE 12—Loving v. Virginia strikes down state bans on interracial marriages
JUNE 13—Thurgood Marshall is nominated to the Supreme Court by President Johnson
JUNE 16–18—Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey, CA
JUNE 19—Paul McCartney reveals in Queen magazine interview that he has taken LSD
JUNE 20—Muhammad Ali is convicted in Houston, TX, for violating the US Selective Service law
JUNE 22—The San Francisco Chronicle’s front page reads, “Hippies Begin Their Summer of Love,” and a phrase is coined
JUNE 25—The Beatles perform “All You Need Is Love” live on international TV
JUNE 26—Race riots in Buffalo, NY
JUNE 27—Celebration of Peace Eye Bookstore acquittal, New York, NY
JULY 4—Freedom of Information Act becomes official
JULY 5—Electric Circus opens in New York, NY
JULY 12—Race riots in Newark, NJ
JULY 15–30—The Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation (for the Demystification of Violence), London, England
JULY 17—John Coltrane dies
JULY 19—Race riots in Durham, NC
JULY 23–27—Race riots in Detroit, MI
JULY 28—Johnson forms National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, knows as the Kerner Commission, to study race riots
JULY 30—Race riots in Milwaukee, WI
AUGUST 2—The film In the Heat of the Night is released
AUGUST 3—President Johnson announces 45,000 more troops will be sent to Vietnam
AUGUST 13—The film Bonnie and Clyde is released
AUGUST 24—Abbie Hoffman and others release fistfuls of money onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
AUGUST 25—The Beatles attend a seminar in Wales by the Maharishi
AUGUST 30—US Senate confirms Thurgood Marshall, making him the first African American Supreme Court justice
SEPTEMBER 3—General Nguyen Van Thieu is elected president of South Vietnam
SEPTEMBER 9—Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In pilot airs on NBC
SEPTEMBER 11—The Carol Burnett Show premieres on CBS
SEPTEMBER 21—The Diggers’ Free Store opens on the Lower East Side, New York, NY
OCTOBER 3—Woody Guthrie dies
OCTOBER 6—The Diggers’ Death of Hippie march and ceremony takes place in San Francisco, CA
OCTOBER 7—James “Groovy” Leroy Hutchinson and Linda Fitzpatrick are murdered in New York, NY
OCTOBER 7—Trial begins for Deputy Sheriff Cecil R. Price and eighteen o
thers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for the killing of three civil rights workers in 1964
OCTOBER 8–9—Che Guevara is captured and executed in Bolivia
OCTOBER 11—Yoko Ono’s solo art show opens at the Lisson Gallery in London, sponsored by John Lennon
OCTOBER 17—The musical Hair has its off-Broadway debut
OCTOBER 21—Around 100,000 people march on the Pentagon in an anti–Vietnam War rally, including Norman Mailer, who loosely based his 1968 nonfiction “novel,” The Armies of the Night, on the march
OCTOBER 27—Blood is poured onto Selective Service records in Baltimore, MD, by Philip Berrigan and others
OCTOBER 28—Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, is arrested for murder in Oakland, CA
OCTOBER 30—Charles Manson arrives in Topanga, CA, from Haight-Ashbury
NOVEMBER 7—President Johnson signs bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
NOVEMBER 7—In Cleveland, Ohio, Carl Stokes becomes the first African American mayor of a major city
NOVEMBER 9—Debut issue of Rolling Stone
NOVEMBER 21—President Johnson signs the Air Quality Act
NOVEMBER 27—The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour is released
NOVEMBER 29—Robert S. McNamara announces he is stepping down as secretary of defense to become the head of the World Bank
NOVEMBER 30—Senator Eugene McCarthy announces his campaign to oppose President Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination
DECEMBER 5—Allen Ginsberg and Dr. Benjamin Spock are arrested at a Vietnam War protest in New York
DECEMBER 10—Otis Redding dies
DECEMBER 12—Timothy Leary and Rosemary Woodruff’s wedding ceremony in Millbrook, NY
DECEMBER 22—The film The Graduate premieres
DECEMBER 27—Bob Dylan releases John Wesley Harding
DECEMBER 31—The Youth International Party, a.k.a. the Yippies, is founded by Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jim Fouratt, Stew Albert, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, and Paul Krassner
DECEMBER 31—Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother play at the Winterland Arena, San Francisco
sources
The following is a list of key sources I used in my research while writing this book:
Books:
Growing Up Underground by Jane Alpert
The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama by Eric Alterman and Kevin Mattson
The Summer of Love: Haight-Ashbury at Its Highest by Gene Anthony
And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir by Joan Baez
A Blue Hand: The Beats in India by Deborah Baker
Forward Through the Rearview Mirror: Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan by Paul Benedetti and Nancy DeHart
Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul by Clara Bingham
Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. the United States of America by Howard L. Bingham and Max Wallace
Rolling Thunder by Doug Boyd
White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s by Joe Boyd
At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch
Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History by Larry Brilliant
Boom! Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow by Tom Brokaw
The Hare Krishnas in India by Charles R. Brooks
Country Joe and Me by Ron Cabral and Joe McDonald
Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and American Liberalism by William H. Chafe
White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg by Peter Conners
The Dialectics of Liberation by David Cooper
The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education by Peter Coyote
Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle by Peter Coyote
Long Time Gone: The Autobiography of David Crosby by David Crosby and Carl Gottlieb
The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream by Richard Cummings
American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century by Leilah Danielson
America, the Vietnam War, and the World: Comparative and International Perspectives by Andreas W. Daum, Lloyd C. Gardner, and Wilfried Mausbach
Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties by Sara Davidson
Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion
Timothy Leary and the Madmen of Millbrook by Theodore P. Druch
Trashing by Ann Fettamen (a.k.a. Anita Hoffman)
Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music by John Fogerty
Revolution for the Hell of It by Free (a.k.a. Abbie Hoffman)
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Valerie Smith
GINSBERG: India Revisited by Allen Ginsberg
Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Indian Journals by Allen Ginsberg
Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties by Allen Ginsberg
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin
The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left by Todd Gitlin
Live at the Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock’s Greatest Legends by John Glatt
Music in the Air: The Selected Writings of Ralph J. Gleason by Ralph J. Gleason
American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West by Philip Goldberg
New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative by Paul Goodman
Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison by Joshua M. Greene
Swami in a Strange Land: How Krishna Came to the West by Joshua M. Greene
Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III by Robert Greenfield
Timothy Leary: A Biography by Robert Greenfield
Callus on My Soul: A Memoir by Dick Gregory and Sheila P. Moses
Nigger by Dick Gregory
Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps by Emmett Grogan
Dreams Die Hard: Three Men’s Journey through the Sixties by David Harris
Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement by Tom Hayden
The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama by Tom Hayden
Reunion: A Memoir by Tom Hayden
’Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child by David Henderson
Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture by Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley by Laura Huxley
America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s by Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America by Jesse Jarnow
Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel by Marty Jezer
Blues People: Negro Music in White America by LeRoi Jones
American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation by Michael Kazin
Allen Ginsberg in America by Jane Kramer
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture by Paul Krassner
How a Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years by Paul Krassner
Hip Capitalism by Susan Krieger
Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial by Jim Ladd
Flashbacks: An Autobiography by Timothy Leary
The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary
Look Out, Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama! by Julius Lester
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History by Norman Mailer
The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster by Norman Mailer
What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff
The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss
The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
Hippie by Barry Miles
Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters edited by Bill Morgan
The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder edited by Bill Morgan
The 60s: The Story of a Decade by the New Yorker magazine and Henry Finder
Dream Time: Chapters from the Sixties by Geoffrey O’Brien
2Stoned by Andrew Loog Oldham
Dawning of the Counter-culture: The 1960s by William L. O’Neill
The Leading Man: Hollywood and the Presidential Image by Professor Burton W. Peretti
The Haight-Ashbury: A History by Charles Perry
No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead by Peter Richardson
The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll by the editors of Rolling Stone
Memoirs of an Ex-Hippie: Seven Years in the Counterculture by Robert A. Roskind
The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition by Theodore Roszak
Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution by Jerry Rubin
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side by Ed Sanders
Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World by Nicholas Schou
Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg by Michael Schumacher
Living with the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus with Garcia and the Grateful Dead by Rock Scully
The Haight: Love, Rock, and Revolution by Joel Selvin and Jim Marshall (photography)
Monterey Pop by Joel Selvin and Jim Marshall (photography)
Summer of Love: The Inside Story of LSD, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild West by Joel Selvin
Raga Mala: The Autobiography of Ravi Shankar by Ravi Shankar