The Summer of Love, 1969 (The Hippie Thread)

The summer of 1969 I was a junior in College, I had hair down to my waist, I owned a motor cycle and was living with a women in a house in the woods. I also had a draft status of 1A and assumed at any moment I would end up in the army, which for some reason never happened. It was (in retrospect) the best of times.

joni's version is by far the best

i heard james taylor do a very nice version on the howard stern show once

I was in England when Woodstock went on so I missed it. But a good friend went and complained that it was incredibly uncomfortable. He was dying of thirst the whole time.
Maybe Woodstock was the watershed for the whole hippie era because soon after Altamont surely closed the door.

Both songs were released in '67. White Rabbit was on the Billboard Top 100 for 10 weeks, peaking at #8. San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) peaked at #4, staying on the charts only a couple weeks longer than had Rabbit.

White Rabbit was a song Grace brought with her when she replaced Signe Anderson as The Airplane's lead female vocalist. She and her brother-in-law, Darby, had penned it in '65 or early '66, performing it all over the Bay Area with their group The Great Society. By some accounts, it was that song - or rather Grace's performance of it - which decided Paul Kantner on the idea of bringing Grace to The Airplane. The Airplane's other big hit from that year, Somebody to Love, also a Grace and Darby piece from The Great Society, hit #5, and was on the chart for 15 weeks.

Scott McKenzie was a longtime freind of John Phillips, and very nearly was one of the Mamas and Papas. That didn't work out, but Scott's only 2 charters, San Fransico etc and the muchly forgotten Old Time Movie Show both were Phillips compositions.

Oh the sixties were a great time....working on Nixons campaigns....pledging Kappa Alpha....wearing those cool Bass Weejuns and Gant shirts....

Who could have thought different?

The Great Society CD is interesting. They do a cover of "Sally Go Round The Roses" the Jaynettes tune.

The first Saturday American Bandstand (Sept 7, '63 - previously it had for 6 seasons been a weekday afternoon show) featured the Jaynettes, with Niel Sedaka as the other Guest Act.

SALLY, GO 'ROUND THE ROSES
The Jaynettes


Sally go round the roses (sally go round the roses)
Sally go round the roses (sally go round the pretty roses)
Hope this place can't hurt you (hope this place can't hurt you)
Roses they can't hurt you (roses they can't hurt you)
Sally don't you go, don't you go downtown
Sally don't you go-o, don't you go downtown
Saddest thing in the whole wide world
Is see your baby with another girl
Sally go round, oh Sally don't you go
Sally don't you go, Don't you go downtown
Oh, don't you go downtown
Saddest thing in the whole wide world
See your baby with another girl
Sally go round the roses (Sally go round the roses)
Sally go round the roses (Sally go round the pretty roses)
They won't tell your secret (they won't tell your secret)
They won't tell your secret, Oh no won't tell your secret
Sally baby cry, let your hair hang down
Sally baby cry, let your hair hang down
Sit and cry with the door closed
Sit and cry so no one knows
Sally baby cry, let your hair hang down
Sally baby cry, let your hair hang down
Saddest thing in the whole wide world
See your baby with another girl
Sally go round the roses (Sally go round the roses)
Sally go round the roses (Sally go round the pretty roses)
Sally go round the roses (Sally go round the pretty roses)

FADE

Sally go round the roses (Sally go round the pretty roses)


There was a lotta conjecture and controversy at the time about the meaning of the lyrics. There's still some mystery. Just whutinhell was Sally's secret? Could an early-'60s pop song really have been about a tear-strewn lesbian love triangle?

The production cost of their single of that tune was extraordinary for those days; over $50,000. It briefly hit #18 on the '63 Billboard Top 100, and was on the chart for 10 or 12 weeks in all. It is uncertain whether the Jaynettes got much if anything after the studio and distribution costs were settled. As many as 8 singers were involved, along with a small orchestra and a chorale group. The recording apparently took place through all of one week and a couple days into the next, counting mixdown and overdubs.

It was among the first really multi-tracked, looped-synched-and-overlaid recordings, though in its original release it was mixed down to mono, and no stereo master exists that I know of. The technique used went on to become known as Phil Spector's famous "Wall of Sound" that was MoTown's hallmark for over a decade. The song can be heard on some Oldies/Girl Groups/Motown Roots compilation albums, but so far as I know the stereo mix heard on the re-releases is processed from the original mono master.

I could be wrong about some of that, but I've just been the rounds with a buncha fellow vinyl junkies, and that seems to be the straight scoop.


Oh, and reportedly, according to Spector, the producer, the lyrics were just words that worked well with the pre-determined musical and production arrangement. Could be, I s'pose. Who knows?

I thought the Summer of Love was in 1988. Aciiiiiieed!, and all that.

Missed that one too, tho.

As Timber has already pointed out, if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. I remember only one (well, two) things about 1968. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about ML King having been assasinated and I remember exactly the same about Robert Kennedy's assasination that same year. Other than that, it's mostly a blank slate. And I didn't sober up until 1995.

I liked acid , mesc and shrooms of course...and stp and dma were cool..even did some belladonna once and it was kind of creepy, but my favorite hallucinogen hands down was MDA.....

What I loved about the music of 1967-73 was nobody sounded like anybody else. Big Brother and the Holding Company did not sound like the Grateful Dead did not sound like Jefferson Airplane did not sound like the DOORS did not sound like any of the folky-okie- Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield or the Stone Poneys and flying above it all the beatles and the rolling stones.

And how about Joni Mitchell? Has anyone ever sounded like her?

Joe Cocker...

Jimmi

so many, many more,,,,,,,,,,

I gotta go lay down.

Joe (On the way to Alice's Restaurant) Nation

Yeh, I agree with you, Joe.

Moby Grape. Beautiful Day, H.P. Lovecraft and on and on and on.

I was going on thirteen years old in 1968 and lived that whole scene vicariously through my older brothers. The fashions, the music, that sort of thing. Didn't get into the drugs or the politics until later but I do remember exactly where I was when Dr. King was assassinated. I remember the riots and the fires on the west side of Chicago. I also remember, vividly, the overwhelming feeling of disbelief when Bobby Kennedy was murdered just a few months later. That such as thing could happen twice, in so short a span of time, made quite an impression on me back then about the frailty of life in general and the world we were living in.

In 1969 I graduated from the eight grade and entered high school that fall and that's all that mattered to me that year.

I was just about a year older than you, eoe. In 1968, I went to a slumber party for a girlfriend's birthday on a Saturday night. We were 14...we were good girls, we couldn't even date 'til we were 16...ah, innocence.

My friend lived near a street named Paseo that was known as a hippie hangout. About midnight, her mother (who was Cool...with a capital C) loaded all eight of us in our nightgowns and robes into her station wagon and drove us down to Paseo. AFTER she swore us all to secrecy that we would NEVER tell our parents. There were all sorts of crazy things happening down there. People living in hearses, psychedelic wigs, half-dressed people stumbling all over the sidewalks, and the most wonderful music spilling out of every window and doorway. We saw a guy with a black top hat and no other clothing with the letters "LSD" across his chest. Someone had just painted the word "MAYONNAISE" in huge white letters down the middle of the street. That confused us girls until Cool Mom told us the latest fad was shooting it up. We were scandalized. Multi-color lights decorated windows and people were sleeping on the sidewalk in the middle of all the mayhem. Cool Mom made us roll up the windows after people started trying to pass us pills. I think that freaked her out. She took us straight home after that.

We stayed up and talked about it all night while we painted our toenails baby pink and danced to the radio with each other.

What a great thread! I lived in San Francisco from '64, when I was 21, to late '66. That was a strange time for me because I married a very abusive man who wanted to know where I was at all times--very creepy; but we lived in the Haight Ashbury which was wonderful. The pot was so good---I loved listening to music while I was stoned. He gave me some acid without telling me what to expect, so the trip was beautiful for a while with neon notes that coincided with the music being played, floating on the wall. It became extremely frightening when I realized that I couldn't just turn it off but, luckily, I didn't freak out and was able to come down safely. I agreed to do it one more time and it was completely enjoyable, but I never wanted to try it again.

In the Haight, there was such music---in almost every little dive there was music that just wouldn't stop--lots of very cool jazz. I met Hugh Masakela, a Brazilian trumpeter, who was young and beautiful.

Sometimes the scene was nightmarish. Young kids with malnutrition or hepatitus or sexually transmitted diseases. I saw a young boy peeing into a car with a window partially rolled down. It wasn't funny. It was a little like Lord of the Flies, with kids running around without any clue about life or self-defense or disease or decent behavior. Still, the beauty of the City, the air of change, the music, art, style, freedom, were irresitable and I mostly loved it, especially when I could get away from my husband and walk alone in Golden Gate Park. San Francisco remains my favorite city in the States.

Driving down to Carmel and Big Sur was unbelievably gorgeous,you didn't need any drug to get high on the beauty of the place and it wasn't spoiled by all the rich movie stars who moved there later and made it too expensive for those who used to live there.

To give you an idea of how much SF had changed from the city of the '40's, my aunt told me about moving there in the early 40's and riding on a cable car for the first time. Of course, women weren't 'allowed' to stand holding onto a pole, they had to be seated. When my aunt got off, the conductor said to her, "Young lady, you must get a hat!" She wasn't properly dressed, although she was wearing proper white gloves. One of the famous hotels actually washed its money so the ladies staying there wouldn't soil their white gloves. The City was still fairly formal in '64. The styles were beautiful and I loved getting appreciative glances while I walked along the sidewalk in my stilletto heels and mod pantsuit. Little did I know that I was ruining my feet because of my vanity.

The flower vendors on every street corner, the shadey gangster types, the madam named Margo St. James who was said to have a sign above her apartment door saying, St. James' Infirmary. Herb Caen, a great newsman, the personalities and fabulous restaurants. Berkeley and idealistic students, some of whom were truly violent. There was an air of danger that, to young people, was addictive.

At that time, I was an attendant with TWA, an airline that has since gone belly up. One of the most difficult parts of my job was seeing young men on their way to Vietnam. They all looked so young and scared. Then i would see the ones coming home, with dead eyes and no emotion on their faces, some missing limbs. One man joked with me that he and his buddy both lost one foot in Nam and they were lucky enough to have lost opposite feet and that they both wore the same shoe size, so they would never have to buy a pair of shoes only to have one go to waste. I'll never forget him. There were others who had black armbands on and didn't look at anyone. God, I saw death walking with them.

It was a revolution of youth with all the idealistic foolishness youth are famous for, but with an idealism that accomplished some truly important civil changes--eventually. For me, it was in some ways surreal, with the pot and the abuse from my husband and the beauty of the setting of San Francisco. Even with the awfulness of my marriage, I mostly remember the beauty and the music and the air of immortality and youth. It's like a dream now, but one I treasure.

Great reminiscences, Diane. What impresses me most is that you actually met Hugh Masakela, one of the truly great jazz trumpeters.

Hugh Masakela!

My second time in SF, first being with a high school friend and our mothers, when we were fifteen, was when I went there with girlfriends when we were nineteen. I bring this up because we did wear high heels and had gloves; I am doubtful we had hats, but maybe. We stayed at the St. Francis and got an upgraded room, part of a suite, the rest of the suite being closed off, and we had a sixth story view of Union Square, a fine view at the time, which was, I think, in the Spring of 1961. I remember walking up to the Fairmont in 4" heels. Luckily one could rest at the top, in the moving restaurant bar. At nineteen, I had yet to take my first sip of alcohol. Naive and bright-eyed we were.

Diane, I am sorry, you know, for all you went through, but glad you love SF.

I went through a couple of tough times there, '65, and '71, won't describe them now. Er, sometime later.
j/osso

Wow. Just remembered that my mother and I went to San Francisco during the summer of 1966. I was ten, going on eleven, and we flew TWA. My mother wore a beautiful ice blue silk shantung suit and I was in baby blue empire-waist dress, baby blue fishnets and white gloves.

I've gotten offtrack. Sorry.