San Francisco's Summer of Love

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1965 to 1967 was the era the world knows as the Summer Of Love though 1967 is the celebrated year. It was a cultural revolution brought on by people's loss of patience over war, racism, and stereotypical society.

The 1960's political climate was not always love and flowers. Race riots, with arrests and deaths were being reported in many parts of America. Anti-war marches were becoming commonplace. Some protests taking on a sideshow quality as spirituality, Yoga, music, and dissent came together in a weird, yet cutting edge for it's time, attempt to levitate and exorcize the Pentagon!

Young people waved colorful rebellious flags in the face of mainstream America, their ideals set on a new world order. Their hope was and still is to sow the seeds of compassionate idealism that lives and breathes in the hearts of many and our own and subsequent generations of today.

The cultural pinnacles of this era was 1967 with the Human Be In, Monterey Pop, and the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Intellectuals were collaborating with artists and activists to raise awareness and change minds. They not only changed minds, they reinvented the music industry and Rock n Roll became a legitimate art form.

The Monterey Pop Festival - 1967

Please scan down to view 1967 stories on The Summer of Love,The Beatles Sgt Pepper's, The Doors
and The Monterey Pop Festival.

After 17 years of leading a sheltered life in a small Central California farming community, my trip to the Monterey International Pop Festival was my first real opportunity to be out on my own. Oh, I had sneaked away the previous summer and tried to cross the border into Tijuana with some buddies (we had a lot of fun and got into a lot of trouble, but that's a whole different story), but we were only gone one night. This trip was going to be 4 whole nights away from Mom and Dad. So my friend, Jerry, and I hopped into his MG and set off for the coast. After a side trip to San Jose to visit a friend, we made our way down to Monterey. The town was full of long haired kids (of all ages) and finding a place to stay was impossible. We tried everything. No luck. So, we decided we'd just have to worry about it later and went to the festival.

Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot, John Phillips & Denny Doherty, The Mamas & the Papas

Working hand in hand with Derek Taylor, the former press agent for the Beatles and Lou Adler a LA record label owner, John Phillips was instrumental in putting the festival together. And even though his schedule kept The Mamas and The Papas from rehearsing for three months, their performance was outstanding. There was just something about the harmonies they produced that would capture an audience and hold them spellbound. I wondered if Cass Elliot’s name was Ramona would she be as popular. I think so, her personality was as big as her voice. And was that you Michelle that Paul McCartney was singing about?

The opening night was quite an eye-opener for the two of us. My friend and I were used to being the only two long-hairs in our little red-neck town and we took a lot of abuse for it. But Monterey! Man! Hippies everywhere! Bearded, long-haired guys and beautiful little hippie girls everywhere. We just knew we were in for the time of our lives. Volkswagen busses and old cars painted up with peace symbols and flowers all over them. One group was (living?) in a big old bus that was painted all psychedelic. There were people walking and hitchhiking everywhere with big backpacks. There were people wearing furs and skins and moccasins and beads and feathers and flowers. It looked more like a fur trappers' "ron-day-voo" from the 1800's than a music festival.

Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and David Crosby of The Byrds mingled freely with festival fans. Crosby also
performed with Buffalo Springfield since Neil Young had left the group and missed Monterey Pop altogether.

We got our tickets for the performances and moved on into the fairgrounds. It was even freakier than outside on the street. Beautiful people everywhere. Cops with flowers in their hats. Gigantic balloons floating overhead. Colorful banners hanging everywhere. People sitting and lying on the ground everywhere. Booths set up all over the fairgrounds selling weird stuff like crystals and peace-symbol necklaces and beads and hand made goods. Captain Beefheart bumper stickers. (Remember those? "Safe as Mother's milk.") Flutes playing everywhere, congas and bongos banging out the same rhythm all over the fairgrounds. (In fact, all over the town.) Rock Stars walking around like they were just regular people and nobody bugging them for autographs or pictures. It was great.

After the Friday night performance we made our way out of the grounds and back to the car which we had left in the parking lot of Denny's on Fremont Street. At a wooded lot next door a bunch of people were setting up camp. We milled around for a little while meeting people and having a good time and the number of campers steadily grew. The next thing we knew, it was like a regular little village. A couple of guys from Indiana began to play Bluegrass on guitar and mandolin and drew quite a little crowd. Everyone was sharing whatever they had. I can't tell you how many offers of food we turned down. Finally, and I couldn't tell you what time it was, we decided we had to get some sleep. So we put down the top of the MG, leaned the seats forward, and planted our butts in the well behind the seats. With our backs leaning against the seat backs and our legs hanging out over the trunk, we went to sleep.

“San Francisco” was actually inspired by Scott’s paranoia about the festival’s potential ‘Gi-normousness’, I mean this gathering could be huge! So my childhood chum had this idea: 'Why don't we write a song - well, why don't you, John, write one - saying something like, "If you go to San Francisco for the Monterey Pop Festival, like, behave yourselves, man, let's not have a big riot up there."

So the first thing that came to my mind was sort of the youth attending the first Olympic games, a Grecian Olympic athlete image with the wreath on the winner's head and flowers in his hair. I thought this would be the proper image for the song. About 20 minutes later I'd finished it and told Scott. He and I played it for Lou (Adler) that night, we recorded it the next night, and it came out the following Monday. And just as fast, it became a worldwide hit. I mean, one week, Scott wasn't even recording and the next week he was internationally known, the High Guru of Flower Power. He's never forgiven me for that.

John Phillips (pictured) on the inspiration and creation of “San Francisco”, Scott McKenzie’s watershed anthem about the California Hippie movement and it’s introduction to the rest of the world.

Commentary continued…
The next morning, cold and stiff from sleeping in the car, and after a Denny's breakfast we went back into the fairgrounds and were going to hang around and wait for the afternoon show to begin. But I met a local girl named Sue who took us on a sight-seeing tour of Monterey instead. After a couple of hours of driving around and a quick lunch at KFC in Pacific Grove, we headed back toward the fairgrounds. Sue took us on into Seaside and showed us where we could find a cheap motel. Ah, no more sleeping in the MG. So we unpacked and got back to the fairgrounds just in time for the afternoon performance. We went back to the motel for a short nap between performances and then walked to the fairgrounds for the evening show. After the show I walked (and hitch-hiked) Sue home to Carmel Highlands, then made the long walk back home in the cold and damp fog. I think I finally caught a ride just outside of town.

"Janis was so nervous, it was crazy. But as soon as she hit that stage, she just stomped her foot down and got real Texas." This was Janis' big debut. She had been playing around clubs in Berkeley and the Bay Area for a couple of years and had developed a good local following. Being a hick from Central California, I had only heard of her, but not heard her perform. A former girlfriend had been a go-go dancer in Berkeley clubs and had raved to me about "Big Brother" so I was really looking forward to hearing them. Wow, was I shocked. I had never in my life heard anyone put so much of herself into a performance. She screamed, she cried, she stomped her feet, she sang her heart out. I am not exaggerating when I say the air was so filled with electricity that the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Man! No one has ever moved me the way Janis moved me that day...uh...oh yeah, except my wife.

Prior to this weekend, the group was only known as "Big Brother and the Holding Company" and Janis was "just" the chick singer in the band. But at Monterey Pop Janis Joplin came into her own and established her reputation as a dynamite singer. During the festival she was signed to a recording contract and although Big Brother continues to perform to this day, compared to Janis' fame, they kind of faded into the background. Now, I have never felt Janis' studio recordings lived up to the live performance I heard that weekend. The live recordings from that weekend included in the Monterey Pop boxed set are really good, as is the set on the Pennebraker documentary, but Janis Joplin was bigger than just a voice on a track. You needed the total experience and I believe she needed the live audience before she could give her best. John Phillips

Commentary continued...
Ravi Shankar’s music was mystical, ethereal, rhythmic and exciting. The interplay between the drums and sitar was spellbinding. The audience really got into it. In 1967 Eastern music was becoming increasingly popular. George Harrison and the Rolling Stones were experimenting with sitar in some of their recordings. But four hours was a bit much even for the most devoted. After a couple of hours the crowd started thinning out. Even some of the most spaced out began to leave. I think it may have been a mistake to schedule only Ravi for the whole afternoon.

After playing clubs in Greenwich Village as Jimmy James for a few years, Jimi went to London and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Paul McCartney recommended (actually insisted) that I include Jimi for the Monterey Pop and the rest is history. Jimi set more than his guitar on fire that weekend. He revolutionized modern music and brought the guitar blazing into its own as a fiery solo instrument.

Jimi's fire was fueled by rock, blues, jazz, and his own inspiration. I don't think many of us who heard him that weekend realized it at the time, but when the smoke cleared, we were looking at a new music world which Jimi had created. The prevailing memory of the show was the fire, the smoke, and feedback. But, you know, the guy could really play and sing. Unfortunately, the flame of Jimi's creative genius was snuffed out long before it hit its peak. John Phillips

Commentary continued...
Sunday dawned bright and clear. Jerry and I headed out for the fairgrounds and we were milling around, enjoying the booths and stuff when we met this gal wearing a red band uniform jacket and a flower painted on her face. I can't remember her name, but the only name we called her by anyway was Sgt. Pepper, so I guess it doesn't really matter (except maybe to her). She and I got to be good friends and her friend seemed to like my friend ok, so we decided to spend the afternoon together. We went into Carmel and did some shopping, got called nasty names by the snotty store-keepers because of our long hair and weird clothes and then headed back for the Sunday evening (and final) performance.

Michelle Phillips waves (center photo) from the festival headquarters.

Country Joe and The Fish played "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag", "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine" & "Section 43" among others. Especially memorable, was during one of the anti-war songs, while machine gun sound effects were going off, a big jet came in for a landing at the Monterey airport completely drowning out the PA and lending a powerful realism to the performance.

Eric Burdon & the Animals, Otis Redding, Buffalo Springfield, Country Joe & Lou Rawls

Otis Redding was totally out of sight. This was Otis' first major appearance before a predominately white audience and it's reported he was a little apprehensive. No need. He had the crowd eating out of his hand. Especially when he introduced the first public performance of "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay". Everyone loved him.

Lou Rawls. I've heard criticism of Lou's performance that weekend as being too much like a "lounge act". But, I thought he was great. No other voice, either before or since, has impressed me like Lou's.

Grace Slick, Roger McGuinn, Marty Balin, Jorma Kaukonen, Steven Stills, Simon & Garfunkel and Grace again.

We caught bits and pieces of other groups that weekend. Jefferson Airplane were already a fairly established band and were as good as could be expected. The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield sounded eerily similar, no surprise and the crowd loved them as well. Simon and Garfunkel received a coveted evening slot and it became clear why Simon parted ways with Art. He was fairly regularly off key with the important hamronies that make up their sound.

The Beatles' chamber pop master work album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was, and still is, considered the most pivotal contemporary music influence of the 20th Century, by both critics and publications alike. Innovative in every sense from recording techniques and equipment, to song structure to the cover with its art and gatefold sleeve with a complete set of lyrics on the back, its overall artistic effect was felt around the world.

Before Sgt. Pepper, no one had seriously considered rock music as an actual art form. It was a virtual psychedelic rock opera before the term "rock opera" was coined, and before virtual was thought of as a form of experiencing art.

The Sgt.Pepper album was paradoxical. The most famous rock band in the world in 1967 had donned the persona of an old-time brass band and changed the scope of rock music forever. Sitar, music-hall clarinets, harpsichord, reassembled bits of tape, fuzz guitar, horns and orchestras, strings, brass, woodwind, Hammond organ, electric piano, and new modular effects such as the wah-wah pedal and the fuzzbox developed by George Martin and still used by professional musicians today.

The cohesive structure and careful sequencing of and transitioning between songs on the album, as well as the use of the Sgt. Pepper framing device, have led the album to be widely acknowledged as a ground-breaking example of a concept album. Mojo's John Harris wrote " while there is ambition to transcend pop's existing boundaries, there will be musicians who proudly confide to rock journalists that they have made 'their Sgt. Pepper'."

We will celebrate this phenomenal work by presenting The Sun Kings tribute to
The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s album with a partial orchestra!

RETROSPECTIVE CONCLUDED
In conclusion, I was young and idealistic and really thought we could change the world. It was probably a mistake to think that a bunch of "rock n' roll, freak, hippie, drop-outs" could do anything to end the Vietnam war or bring about world peace, but eventually the world DID change. Not everything we hoped and worked for came to pass, but we eventually did get out of Vietnam. Young people did begin to take a more active role in the political process and became a force to be reckoned with. We've still got a long way to go and we may never get there, but I'm still on the journey. Are you?
Peace, Stan, (unknown)