It transpired 56 summers ago, this June, the granddaddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what is known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli, sandalwood incense, not to mention the aroma of what was variously known as cannabis sativa, marijuana, reefer, tea, Miss Green, mary jane, pot, weed, grass, pacalolo (Hawaiian term), loco weed, and just plain dope. But my friends and I, students at an all-boys Catholic high school that enforced a strict dress code, were fairly straight: we partook of no orgies, smoked no dope, and slept in a motel. The wild stuff came later in our lives, when we were better able to handle it.
I have in my hand the program book of the Festival, in mint condition. Do I hear $1,000? On the first page there is a quotation from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night, become the touches of sweet harmony.
Ah yes, I remember it well, the "sweet harmony" of the whining feedback of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster plugged into his towering Marshall amps and the "soft stillness" of the The Who smashing their instruments to pieces. Not to be outdone, Jimi lit his Strat on fire with lighter fluid. The image is burned into my memory. It shocked my working-class frugality. I used to baby my Fender Mustang and I once got mad at a girl for placing a coke can on my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.
On the last page of the program book, a more fitting quotation: the lyrics of Dylan's The Times They Are A'Changin', perhaps the numero uno '60s anthem to youth and social ferment. (Click on the link; great piano version. Live 1964 guitar version.) Were the utopian fantasies of the '60s just a load of rubbish? Mostly, but not entirely.
"Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."
The Who, My Generation. "I hope I die before I get old."
Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin'
Mamas and Papas, I Call Your Name
Canned Heat, Rollin' and Tumblin'
Byrds, Chimes of Freedom
Otis Redding, Try a Little Tenderness
Scott MacKenzie, San Francisco
Jefferson Airplane, Embryonic Journey
YouTuber comment:
For all the people getting sad nostalgia from this, whether it’s from missing friends or missing the good days, please don’t be sad, be happy that you got to live through this time and experience it with your friends, I’m 16 and feel so out of place in this generation, yes I have lots friends but for them fun is crammed in someone’s basement blasting dubstep and fighting over games of pong, you guys did well, be proud of it.
Thanks. We're proud. Perhaps too proud.
The hipster-monk Tom Merton would have found good things to say about the festival. He was 52 in '67.