History of the hippie movement
Encyclopedia
The hippie
subculture
developed as a youth movement that began in the United States
during the early 1960s and spread around the world. Its origins can be traced back to classical culture, and to European social movements in the early 20th century i.e.: Fabians
and Bohemians
. From around 1967, its fundamental ethos — including harmony with nature, communal living, artistic experimentation particularly in music, and the widespread use of recreational drugs — spread around the world.
ist movement in Persia, whose leader the Persian reformer Mazdak, advocated communal living, the sharing of resources, vegetarianism
and free love
. A 1967 article in Time Magazine asserted that the hippie movement has a historical precedent in the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks
, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope
and the Cynics. The article also claimed that the Hippies were influenced by the ideas of Jesus Christ, Hillel the Elder
, Buddha
, St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau
, Gandhi, and others. Some have pointed to the short-lived Merrymount colony (ca 1625)
(allegorically portrayed by Nathaniel Hawthorne
) as the first 'hippie' experience on the American continent.
In fin de siècle
Europe, from 1896–1908, a German youth movement known as Der Wandervogel
began to grow as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs that centered around German folk music. In contrast to these formal clubs, Wandervogel emphasized amateur music and singing, creative dress, and communal outings involving hiking and camping. Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche
, Goethe, Hermann Hesse
, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors.
During the first several decades of the twentieth century, these beliefs were introduced to the United States as Germans settled around the country, some opening the first health food store
s. Many moved to Southern California where they could practice an alternative lifestyle in a warm climate. In turn, young Americans adopted the beliefs and practices of the new immigrants. One group, called the "Nature Boys", took to the California desert, raised organic food, and espoused a back-to-nature lifestyle. eden ahbez
, a member of this group, wrote a hit song called Nature Boy
, which was recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole
, popularizing the homegrown back-to-nature movement to mainstream America. Eventually, a few of these Nature Boys, including the famous Gypsy Boots
, made their way to Northern California in 1967, just in time for the Summer of Love
in San Francisco.
, especially those associated with the San Francisco Renaissance
gradually gave way to the Sixties counterculture, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie." Many of the original Beats remained active participants, notably Allen Ginsberg
, who became a fixture of the anti-war movement. On the other hand, Jack Kerouac
broke with Ginsberg and criticized the 1960s protest movements as an "excuse for spitefulness." Bob Dylan
became close friends with Allen Ginsberg, and Ginsberg became close friends with Timothy Leary
. Both Leary and Ginsberg were introduced to LSD
by Michael Hollingshead
in the early 1960s, and both became instrumental in popularizing psychedelic substances to the hippie movement.
In 1963, Ginsberg was living in San Francisco with Neal Cassady
and Charles Plymell
. Around that time, Ginsberg connected with Ken Kesey
, who was participating in CIA sponsored LSD trials while a student at Stanford. Cassady drove the bus for Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters
, and he attempted to recruit Kerouac into their group, but Kerouac angrily rejected the invitation and accused them of attempting to destroy the American culture he celebrated.
According to Ed Sanders
, the change in the public label from "beatnik" to "hippie" occurred after the 1967 Human Be-In
in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where Ginsberg, Gary Snyder
, and Michael McClure
led the crowd in chanting "Om". Ginsberg was also at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention
, and was friends with Abbie Hoffman
and other members of the Chicago Seven
. Stylistic differences between beatniks, marked by somber colors, dark shades and goatees, gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair worn by hippies. While the beats were known for "playing it cool" and keeping a low profile, hippies became known for displaying their individuality.
One early book hailed as evidencing the transition from "beatnik" to "hippie" culture, was Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
by Richard Fariña
, brother-in-law of Joan Baez
. Written in 1963, it was published April 28, 1966—two days before its author was killed in a motorcycle crash.
were a group who originally formed around American
novel
ist Ken Kesey
, considered one of the most prominent figures in the psychedelic movement, and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon. Notable members include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs
, Neal Cassady
, Mountain Girl (born Carolyn Adams but best known as Mrs. Jerry Garcia), Wavy Gravy
, Paul Krassner
, Stewart Brand
, Del Close
, Paul Foster
, George Walker
, and others. Their early escapades were chronicled by Tom Wolfe
in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
.
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters are remembered chiefly for the sociological significance of a lengthy roadtrip they took in 1964, traveling across the United States
in a psychedelically painted school bus
enigmatically labeled Further, and for the "Acid Tests". Kesey believed that psychedelics were best used as a tool for transforming society as a whole, and believed that if a sufficient percentage of the population had the psychedelic experience then revolutionary social and political changes would occur. Therefore, they made LSD available to anyone interested in partaking - most famously through the "electric kool-aid" made available at a series of "Acid Tests"; musical and multi-media events where participants were given "acid", the street name for LSD. The tests were held at various venues in California, and were sometimes advertised with colorful crayoned signs asking "Can you pass the acid test?" The first Acid Test was held in Palo Alto, California
in November 1965. (LSD was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966.) The young psychedelic music
band the Grateful Dead
supplied the music during these events.
. In April 1963, Chandler A. Laughlin III established a kind of tribal, family identity among approximately fifty people who attended a traditional, all-night peyote
ceremony which combined a psychedelic experience with traditional Native American
spiritual values.
During the summer of 1965, Laughlin recruited much of the original talent that led to a unique amalgam of traditional folk music and the developing psychedelic rock scene. He and his cohorts created what became known as The Red Dog Experience, featuring previously unknown musical acts - Big Brother and the Holding Company
, Jefferson Airplane
, Quicksilver Messenger Service
, The Charlatans
, Grateful Dead
and others. There was no clear delineation between "performers" and "audience" and the music, psychedelic experimentation, unique sense of personal style, and Bill Ham's first primitive light shows combined to create a new sense of community.
in the first half of the 1960s, traveling across the country to take part in sit-ins and marches against segregation
in the South. The first draft card burnings took place May 12, 1964 in New York City. Others followed, including more draft-card burnings in May 1965 at the University of California, Berkeley
(which had already seen a precedent to the subsequent social turmoil, in form of the Free Speech Movement
), and a coffin was marched to the Berkeley draft board. As similar protests continued through the summer, President Lyndon Johnson responded by signing a new law on August 31, 1965 penalizing the burning of draft cards with up to 5 years in prison and a $1,000 fine, although such burnings went on regardless. In later years, the Viet Cong flag of the "enemy" was even adopted as a symbol by more radical anti-war protesters. However, the core "hippie" philosophy remained staunchly aloof to politics, and politicians, throughout this time.
, made an early Broadway appearance October 6, 1965 with the opening of a popular new play, Generation by US playwright William Goodhart, starring Henry Fonda
, which, according to one of its reviews in Time, "converts a Greenwich Village
loft into a sparring ground for the Establishment and the hippie, the parent and the child." Owing to the success of this play, it went on to be made into a 1969 film, alternately titled Time for Giving.
, which began in May, 1964 as a broadside entitled The Faire Free Press. This was soon followed by the Berkeley Barb
in August 1965, the East Village Other
of New York, in October 1965, The Fifth Estate, in Detroit in November 1965, and East Lansing's The Paper in December 1965. By 1966 the Underground Press Syndicate had been organized; 80 presses of U.S. and Canada came to a conference sponsored by Middle Earth in Iowa City. Liberation News Service, located in Washington DC, then New York, then split between New York and a commune in rural Massachusetts, served up alternative stories to the underground press world.
A Tribute to Dr. Strange
When they returned to San Francisco at the end of Summer, 1965, Red Dog participants Luria Castell, Ellen Harman and Alton Kelley created a collective called "The Family Dog." Modeled on their Red Dog experiences, on October 16, 1965, The Family Dog hosted "A Tribute to Dr. Strange
" at Longshoreman's Hall. Attended by approximately 1,000 of the Bay Area's original "hippies," this was San Francisco's first psychedelic rock
performance, a costumed dance and light show featuring Jefferson Airplane
, The Great Society, and The Marbles. Two other events followed before year's end, one at California Hall and one at the Matrix.
Trips Festival
A much larger psychedelic event, "The Trips Festival," took place on January 21–January 23, 1966 at Longshoreman's Hall, organized by Stewart Brand
, Ken Kesey
, Owsley Stanley
, Zach Stewart and others. Ten thousand people attended this sold-out event, with a thousand more turned away each night. On Saturday January 22, the Grateful Dead
and Big Brother and the Holding Company
came on stage, and 6,000 people arrived to imbibe punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era.
Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom
By February 1966, the Family Dog became Family Dog Productions under organizer Chet Helms
, promoting happenings at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium
in initial cooperation with Bill Graham
. These and other venues provided settings where participants could partake of the full psychedelic music experience. Bill Ham perfected his liquid light projection shows which, combined with film projection, and became synonymous with the San Francisco ballroom experience.
When San Francisco's Fox Theater went out of business, hippies bought up its costume stock, reveling in the freedom to dress up for weekly musical performances at their favorite ballrooms. As San Francisco Chronicle music columnist Ralph J. Gleason
put it, "They danced all night long, orgiastic, spontaneous and completely free form."
Some of the earliest San Francisco hippies were former students at San Francisco State College
(later renamed San Francisco State University) who were intrigued by the developing psychedelic hippie music scene and left school after they started taking psychedelic drugs. These students joined the bands they loved and began living communally in the large, inexpensive Victorian
apartments in the Haight. Young Americans around the country began moving to San Francisco, and by June 1966, around 15,000 hippies had moved into the Haight. The Charlatans
, Jefferson Airplane
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
, and the Grateful Dead
all moved to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during this period.
Love Pageant Rally
On October 6, 1966, the state of California made LSD a controlled substance, making the drug illegal. In response to the criminalization of psychedelics, San Francisco hippies staged a gathering in the Golden Gate Park panhandle
, called "The Love Pageant Rally", attracting an estimated 700-800 people. As explained by Allan Cohen, co-founder of the San Francisco Oracle
, the purpose of the rally was twofold — to draw attention to the fact that LSD had just been made illegal, and to demonstrate that people who used LSD were not criminals, nor were they mentally ill. According to Cohen, those who took LSD were mostly idealistic people who wanted to learn more about themselves and their place in the universe, and they used LSD as an aid to meditation and to creative, artistic expression. The Grateful Dead played, and some sources claim that LSD was consumed at the rally.
Diggers
Hippie action in the Haight centered around the Diggers, a guerrilla street theatre
group that combined spontaneous street theatre, anarchistic action, and art happenings
in their agenda to create a "free city." By late 1966, the Diggers opened stores which simply gave away their stock; provided free food, medical care, transport and temporary housing; they also organized free music concerts and works of political art. The Diggers criticized the term 'hippie' with their October 1967, 'Death of Hippie' event.
The Death of Hippie event: In late September 1967, many of the shops in the district began to display a stack of 4x5 cards on their counters proclaiming "Funeral Notice for Hippie". "Friends are invited to attend services beginning at sunrise, October 6, 1967 at Buena Vista Park". An organization known as the Haight Ashbury Switchboard actively supported the Digger's funeral concept. A funeral procession went from the park down Haight St and ended in the Panhandle with supporters carrying a trinket filled casket. It was emblematic of the fate of the hippie movement in San Francisco.
By mid-1968, it was widely noted that most of the original "Flower Children" had long since departed the Haight Ashbury district, having been replaced by a more cynical and exploitative crowd.
coffeehouses and beat culture sustained the hippies, giving birth to bands like The Doors
. Sunset Strip
became the quintessential L.A. hippie gathering area, with its seminal rock clubs Whisky-a-Go-Go and the Troubadour. The Strip was the location of the protest described in Buffalo Springfield
's early 1967 hippie anthem, "For What It's Worth."
and Richard Alpert formed the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in Newton, Massachusetts
, inhabiting two houses but later moving to a 64-room mansion at Millbrook, New York
, with a communal group of about 25–30 people in residence until they were shut down in 1967.
, residents constructed geodesic domes and zonahedra to house themselves, using geometric panels made from the metal of automobile roofs and other inexpensive materials. In 1967 the group, consisting of 10 core people and many contributors, won Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion award for their constructions.
in San Francisco popularized hippie culture across the United States, with 20,000 hippies gathering in Golden Gate Park
. The Monterey Pop Festival
from June 16 to June 18 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love." Scott McKenzie
's rendition of John Phillips
' song, "San Francisco
," became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name, "Flower Children
."
Bands like the Grateful Dead
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
(with Janis Joplin
), and Jefferson Airplane
continued to live in the Haight, but by the end of the summer, the incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade. According to the late poet Stormi Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the Panhandle
to demonstrate the end of his/her reign. Regarding this period of history, the July 7, 1967, TIME
magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."
It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the "hippie" label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse
and lenient morality, fueled the moral panic
s of the late 1960s.
, who studied the American commune movement, estimates that by the early 1970s, about 750,000 people lived in more than ten thousand communes across the United States.
The Farm
In 1967, Stephen Gaskin
began to develop a philosophy of hippie perspectives at San Francisco State College, where Gaskin taught English, creative writing, and General Semantics
. Gaskin's "Monday Night Class" became a broad, open discussion group involving up to 1,500 students and other participants from the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1970, Gaskin and his wife, Ina May Gaskin
led a caravan of 60 buses, vans and trucks on a cross country speaking tour. Along the way, they checked out various places that might be suitable for settlement. When they got back to San Francisco, they decided to return to Summertown, Tennessee
, where they bought 1,700 acres (688 hectares) and created an intentional community called "The Farm
." The Farm became a widely respected, spiritually based
hippie community that still thrives, although it is now more a hip village of 300 than a commune of 1,200. The Farm continues in many public-service and philanthropic enterprises through the Farm Midwifery Center, Plenty International, and other sub-organizations.
Strawberry Fields
The second commune on the west coast
Started by former Boston Stockbroker and later Probation Officer Gridley Wright, Strawberry Fields, named after the song by the Beatles, occupied forty four acres of land in Decker Canyon,the arid hills above Malibu, California. Nine adults and six children made up the original community, housed in two old houses and a barn. Over fifty people ended up there during its five months of existence. It was a stopping off place for Timothy Leary
as well as other well known figures in the psychedelic movement. Annie and the Family were one of the original families to take up residence there, they later went on to take part in the magical mystery tour and to live in a number of other communes in Europe.
" generation, many of whom may have aspired to emulate the hardcore movements now living in tribalistic communes, but had no overt connections to them. This was noticed not only in terms of clothes and also longer hair for men, but also in music, film, art, and literature, and not just in the US, but around the world. Eugene McCarthy
's brief presidential campaign successfully persuaded a significant minority of young adults to "get clean for Gene" by shaving their beards or wearing lower miniskirts; however the "Clean Genes" had little impact on the popular image in the media spotlight, of the hirsute hippie adorned in beads, feathers, flowers and bells.
The year 1968 also saw the development of two new, but dissimilar, genres of music that each exerted some influence on, and were influenced by, the hippie movements: Heavy metal
, and reggae
.
and Jerry Rubin
, became notorious for their theatrics, such as trying to levitate the Pentagon at the October 1967 war protest, and such slogans as "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball!" Their stated intention to protest the 1968 Democratic National Convention
in Chicago in August, including nominating their own candidate, "Lyndon Pigasus Pig
" (an actual pig), was also widely publicized in the media at this time.
By the time of the convention, city officials were prepared for the worst, with 23,000 police, National Guard, and Federal troops. Following the pig's nomination on the first day, Rubin and 6 others were arrested, but protests and music concerts were allowed to continue in Lincoln Park for two days, albeit an 11:00 PM curfew was enforced. On the Convention's second night, poet Allan Ginsberg led protesters out of the park, thus avoiding confrontation, by chanting "Om
". On the third night, riots erupted in response to the curfew, causing police to indiscriminately attack protesters and innocent bystanders alike, including journalists from around the world and even visiting dignitaries, throughout the streets of Chicago. The violence suffered by the journalists present, even including Mike Wallace
, Dan Rather
and Hugh Hefner
, resulted in a mainstream media that was more sympathetic to certain hippie ideals, and less so to politicians, for several years. However, this galvanized the protest movement, and the following year, the trial of Hoffman, Rubin, and others as the "Chicago Seven
" (originally Eight) generated significant interest.
, started by the recently assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr.
, organized a shantytown known as Resurrection City, composed of around 3,000 black, native, and Latino militants, along with a significant contingent of hippies and diggers, encamped on the National Mall
in Washington, DC. This culminated in the June 19 "Solidarity Day" protest which drew 55,000 protesters, after which the tent settlements' population dwindled to around 300. It was finally razed, after almost 6 weeks, on June 24, 1968 by 1,000 riot police using tear gas.
had demolished all the buildings on a 2.8 acres (11,331.2 m²) parcel near campus, intending to use the land to build playing fields and a parking lot. After a long delay, during which the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park. A major confrontation ensued on May 15, 1969, and Governor Ronald Reagan
ordered a two-week occupation of the city of Berkeley by the United States National Guard
. Flower power
came into its own during this occupation as hippies engaged in acts of civil disobedience
to plant flowers in empty lots all over Berkeley under the slogan "Let A Thousand Parks Bloom."
In August 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Festival took place in Bethel, New York
, which for many, exemplified the best of hippie counterculture. Over 500,000 people arrived to hear the most notable musicians and bands of the era, among them Richie Havens
, Joan Baez
, Janis Joplin
, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival
, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Santana
, The Who
, Jefferson Airplane
, and Jimi Hendrix
. Wavy Gravy's
Hog Farm
provided security and attended to practical needs, and the hippie ideals of love and human fellowship seemed to have gained real-world expression.
, about 30 miles (45 km) east of San Francisco. Initially billed as "Woodstock West," its official name was The Altamont Free Concert. About 300,000 people gathered to hear The Rolling Stones
; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Jefferson Airplane
and other bands. The Hells Angels
provided security that proved far less beneficent than the security provided at the Woodstock event: 18-year-old Meredith Hunter
was stabbed and killed while drawing a gun in front of the stage during The Rolling Stones performance, and four accidental deaths occurred. There were also four births at the concert.
that had spawned hippie culture seemed to be on the wane, at least in the US. The events at Altamont shocked many Americans, including those who had strongly identified with hippie culture. Another shock came in the form of the Sharon Tate
and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murders committed in August 1969 by Charles Manson
and his "family" of followers.
Nevertheless, the oppressive political atmosphere that featured the bombing of Cambodia
and shootings by National Guardsmen at Jackson State University
and Kent State University
still brought people together. These shootings inspired the May 1970 songs by Quicksilver Messenger Service
"What About Me?," where they sang "You keep adding to my numbers as you shoot my people down" and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's protest song "Ohio".
Meanwhile, in England, the Isle of Wight Festival 1970
(August) drew an even bigger attendance than Woodstock, and was a major gathering of the hippie movement (as well as one of the last major concert appearances for a few prominent musicians of the time, such as Jimi Hendrix
).
Also in 1970, coverage of the Chicago Seven
trials provided the mainstream media an opportunity to highlight the most radical aspects of the movement. Yippie leader Jerry Rubin
's guest appearance on the Phil Donahue Show in that year (April 1) represents the virtual apex of such publicity — surpassed only by his appearance November 7 that same year on The David Frost Show, where he lit a joint and tried to pass it to Frost, then summoned an army of expletive-using hippies planted in the audience to swarm the stage, all on live television.
and the ability to charm a crowd with his guitar
playing, his singing and rhetoric, Manson exhibited many of the outward manifestations of hippie identity. Yet Manson hardly exemplified the hippie ideals of peace, love, compassion and human fellowship; through twisted logic and psychological manipulation
, he inspired his followers to commit murder. Manson's highly publicized 1970 trial and subsequent conviction in January 1971 irrevocably tarnished the hippie image in the eyes of many Americans. Other factors, such as the proliferation of drugs and their associated dependency, also contributed to the decline.
took up the mantle of a more prominent media role as a force for continuing the 'humane revolution' that was politically opposed to the 'establishment'. As early as March 1969 the couple had conducted their first "Bed-In for Peace"; in August 1971 they moved to New York City and joined up with the Chicago Trial "Yippie" defendants and other notable activists. In December 1971, Lennon sang at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally
in Michigan
, calling attention to Sinclair
's ten year prison sentence for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman. Sinclair's release was suddenly approved by the state's authorities three days later, a testimony to the potential force of popular pressure; however, soon thereafter, the Nixon administration responded by seeking to have Lennon deported, on the pretext of a 1968 marijuana conviction in London. This dragged on through half of 1973, only increasing their status as anti-war and counterculture celebrities; by June 1973, the Watergate hearings had begun in earnest, and the famous pair made their final political statement by attending one of them. In 1975, the deportation case was dropped, and Lennon and Yoko attended the Inaugural Ball of president Jimmy Carter
in January 1977.
American society by the early 1970s. Large rock concerts that originated with the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival
and the 1968 Isle of Wight Festival
became the norm. Mustaches, beards and longer hair became commonplace and colorful, multi-ethnic clothing dominated the fashion world.
Starting in the late 1960s, some working class skinhead
s have attacked hippies. Hippies were also vilified and sometimes attacked by punks
, revivalist mods
, greasers, football casuals
, Teddy boy
s and members of other youth cultures in the 1970s and 1980s. Hippie ideals were a marked influence on anarcho-punk
and some post-punk
youth cultures, such as the second summer of love
.
In the mid-1970s, with the end of the draft and the Vietnam War
, and a renewal of patriotic
sentiment associated with the approach of the United States Bicentennial
, the mainstream media lost interest in the hippie counterculture, and hippies became targets for ridicule, coinciding with the advent of punk rock
and disco
. Although not as visible as it once was, hippie culture has never died out completely: hippies and neo-hippies can still be found on college campuses, on communes and at festivals; while many still embrace the hippie values of peace, love, and community. Although many of the original hippies and those who were core to the movement remained (or remain) dedicated to the values they originally espoused, many of those who played more peripheral roles are often seen as having "sold out" during the 1980s by becoming a part of the corporate, materialist culture they initially rejected.
Since the 1960s, many aspects of the hippie counterculture
have been assimilated by the mainstream. Public political demonstrations are considered legitimate expressions of free speech. Unmarried couples of all ages feel free to travel and live together without societal disapproval. Frankness regarding sexual matters has become the norm—even conservative talk radio hosts, like Dr. Laura Schlessinger
, feel free to exclaim "Orgasms are cool!" In urban centers especially, and in corporate America, the rights of homosexual
, bisexual and transsexual people have expanded.
Religious and cultural diversity has gained greater acceptance. Eastern religions and spiritual concepts, karma
and reincarnation
in particular, have reached a wider audience with around 20% of Americans espousing some New Age
belief. A wide range of personal appearance options and clothing styles have become acceptable, all of which were uncommon before the hippie era. Co-operative business enterprises and creative community living arrangements are widely accepted. Interest in natural food, herbal remedies and vitamins is widespread, and the little hippie "health food stores" of the 1960s and 1970s are now large-scale, profitable businesses.
The immediate legacy of the hippies included: in fashion, the decline in popularity of the necktie
which had been everyday wear during the 1950s and early 1960s, and generally longer hairstyles, even for politicians such as Pierre Trudeau
; in literature, books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
; in music, the blending of folk rock
into newer forms including acid rock
and heavy metal
; in television and film, far greater visibility and influence, with some films depicting the hippie ethos and lifestyle, such as Woodstock
, Easy Rider
, Hair
, The Doors
, and Crumb
. Even children's television shows like H.R. Pufnstuf
, and educational shows such as The Electric Company
and Mulligan Stew
were influenced by the hippies.
While many hippies made a long-term commitment to the lifestyle, some younger people argue that hippies "sold out" during the 1980s and became part of the materialist, consumer culture. Hippies may still be found in bohemian
enclaves around the world.
Contemporary hippies have made use of the World Wide Web
and can be found on virtual communities. In the United Kingdom
, the New age travellers
movement, while eschewing the label 'hippie', nevertheless revived many hippie traditions into the 1980s and 1990s. Current events, festivals and parties continue to promote the hippie lifestyle and values. The "boho-chic
" fashion style of 2003-2007 had a number of hippie features and the London Evening Standard
even used the term "hippie chic" (11 March 2005).
Some hippie ideals were an influence on anarcho-punk
bands such as Crass
, as well as on many peace punk and some crust punk
bands. Crass's drummer Penny Rimbaud
wrote an essay called "The Last Of The Hippies" recalling how a hippy friend, Phil Russell
(a.k.a. Wally Hope
), was allegedly committed to a mental institution after becoming a thorn in the side of the establishment. The members of Crass were old enough to have been members of the hippie counter-culture.
Neo-hippies, some of whom are children and grandchildren of the original hippies, advocate many of the same beliefs of their 1960s counterparts.
Drug use is just as accepted as in the "original" hippie days, although most neo-hippies do not consider it necessary to take drugs in order to be part of the lifestyle, and others reject drug use in favor of alternative methods of reaching higher or altered consciousness such as drumming circles, community singing, meditation, yoga and dance.
In the United States, some hippies refer to themselves as "Rainbows," a name derived from their tie-dyed T-shirts, and for some, from their participation in the hippie group, "Rainbow Family
of Living Light". Since the early 1970s, the Rainbows meet informally at Rainbow Gathering
s on U.S. National Forest Land as well as internationally. "Peace, love, harmony, freedom, and community" is their motto.
The tradition of hippie festivals began in the United States in 1965 with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests
, where the Grateful Dead
played under the influence of LSD
and initiated psychedelic jamming. For the next several decades, many hippies and neo-hippies became part of the Deadhead
and Phish Head communities, attending music and art festivals held around the country. The Grateful Dead
toured continuously, with few interruptions between 1965 and 1995. Phish
toured sporadically between 1983 and 2004. With the demise of the Grateful Dead
and Phish
, the nomadic touring hippies have been left without a main jam band to follow. Instead, they attend a growing series of summer festivals, the largest of which is called the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival
, which premiered in 2002.
The Oregon Country Fair
began in 1969 as a benefit for an alternative school. Currently, the three-day festival features hand-made crafts, educational displays and costumed entertainment in a wooded setting near Veneta, Oregon
just west of Eugene
. Each year the festival becomes the third largest city in Lane County.
The annual Starwood Festival
, founded in 1981, is a six-day event held in Sherman, New York
indicative of the spiritual quest of hippies through an exploration of non-mainstream religions and world-views. It has offered performances and classes by a variety of hippie and counter-culture icons, from musical guests like Big Brother and the Holding Company
, Merl Saunders
and Babatunde Olatunji
to speakers such as Timothy Leary
, Terence McKenna
, Paul Krassner
, Stephen Gaskin
, Robert Anton Wilson
, Harvey Wasserman
and Ralph Metzner
.
The Burning Man
festival began in 1986 at a San Francisco beach party. Now an annual gathering, the event is held in the Black Rock Desert
northeast of Reno, Nevada
. Though few participants would accept the "hippie" label, Burning Man is a contemporary expression of alternative community in the same spirit as early hippie events. The gathering becomes a temporary city (36,500 occupants in 2005), with elaborate encampments, displays and many art cars.
Held annually in Manchester, Tennessee, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival
has become a tradition for many music fans, since its sold-out premiere in 2002. Approximately 70-80,000 attend Bonnaroo yearly. The festival producers have made investments in their property, constructing vast telecommunications networks, potable water supplies, sanitation facilities, and safety features such as first aid shelters for every 200-300 fans.
The 10,000 Lakes Festival
is an annual three-day music festival in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
. Also referred to as '10KLF' (K for thousand, LF for Lakes Festival), the festival began in 2003. Attendance in 2006 was around 18,000.
In the UK, there are many new age travellers
who are known as hippies to outsiders, but prefer to call themselves the Peace Convoy. They started the Stonehenge Free Festival
in 1974, especially Wally Hope
, until the English Heritage
legally banned the festival, resulting in the Battle of the Beanfield
in 1985. With Stonehenge banned as a festival site new age travellers gather at the annual Glastonbury Festival
to see hundreds of live dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other performances. Others argue that it has now become too much of a commercial event, and instead opt for smaller festivals such as Beautiful Days
or The Big Green Gathering
. In 2005, Glastonbury festival covered 900 acres (3.6 km²) and attracted 150,000 people.
In Australia the hippie movement originated at the Aquarius Festival
held in 1971 in Canberra
and again in Nimbin
two years later. Many festival goers stayed in Nimbin, transforming the town and local area. It also resulted in the formation of one of Australia's largest and most successful commune
s.
Between 1976 and 1981, hippie music festivals were held on large farms around Waihi
and Waikino
in New Zealand
- Aotearoa
. Named Nambassa
, the festivals focused on peace
, love
, and a balanced lifestyle, featuring workshops and displays advocating alternative lifestyles, clean and sustainable energy
, and unadulterated foods. Nambassa is also the tribal name of a trust that has championed sustainable ideas and demonstrated practical counterculture
and alternative lifestyle
methods since the early 1970s.
Many of the bands performing at hippie festivals, and their derivatives, are called jam band
s, since they play songs that contain long instrumentals similar to the original hippie bands of the 1960s. Psychedelic trance
or "psytrance," a type of techno
music influenced by 60s psychedelic rock
and hippie culture is also popular among neo-hippies worldwide. Psytrance hippies usually attend separate festivals where only electronic music is played.
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
developed as a youth movement that began in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during the early 1960s and spread around the world. Its origins can be traced back to classical culture, and to European social movements in the early 20th century i.e.: Fabians
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
and Bohemians
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
. From around 1967, its fundamental ethos — including harmony with nature, communal living, artistic experimentation particularly in music, and the widespread use of recreational drugs — spread around the world.
Classical culture
The hippie movement has found historical precedents as far back as the MazdakMazdak
Mazdak was a proto-socialist Persian reformer and religious activist who gained influence under the reign of the Sassanian Shahanshah Kavadh I...
ist movement in Persia, whose leader the Persian reformer Mazdak, advocated communal living, the sharing of resources, vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
. A 1967 article in Time Magazine asserted that the hippie movement has a historical precedent in the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes the Cynic was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes of Sinope , he was born in Sinope , an Ionian colony on the Black Sea , in 412 or 404 BCE and died at Corinth in 323 BCE.Diogenes of Sinope was a controversial figure...
and the Cynics. The article also claimed that the Hippies were influenced by the ideas of Jesus Christ, Hillel the Elder
Hillel the Elder
Hillel was a famous Jewish religious leader, one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He is associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud...
, Buddha
Gautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
, St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, Gandhi, and others. Some have pointed to the short-lived Merrymount colony (ca 1625)
The Maypole of Merry Mount
"The Maypole of Merry Mount" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It first appeared in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories, in 1837.- Plot synopsis :...
(allegorically portrayed by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
) as the first 'hippie' experience on the American continent.
19th and early 20th century Europe
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
Europe, from 1896–1908, a German youth movement known as Der Wandervogel
Wandervogel
Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward. The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom...
began to grow as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs that centered around German folk music. In contrast to these formal clubs, Wandervogel emphasized amateur music and singing, creative dress, and communal outings involving hiking and camping. Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Goethe, Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors.
During the first several decades of the twentieth century, these beliefs were introduced to the United States as Germans settled around the country, some opening the first health food store
Health food store
A health food store is a type of grocery store that primarily sells health food, organic foods, local produce, and often nutritional supplements...
s. Many moved to Southern California where they could practice an alternative lifestyle in a warm climate. In turn, young Americans adopted the beliefs and practices of the new immigrants. One group, called the "Nature Boys", took to the California desert, raised organic food, and espoused a back-to-nature lifestyle. eden ahbez
Eden Ahbez
eden ahbez was an American songwriter and recording artist of the 1940s-1960s, whose lifestyle in California was influential on the hippie movement...
, a member of this group, wrote a hit song called Nature Boy
Nature Boy
Nature Boy is a song written by eden ahbez and later popularised by Nat King Cole. It may also refer to:In music:* "Nature Boy", a song by Primus from their album 'Pork Soda'...
, which was recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
, popularizing the homegrown back-to-nature movement to mainstream America. Eventually, a few of these Nature Boys, including the famous Gypsy Boots
Gypsy Boots
Gypsy Boots , born Robert Bootzin , was an American fitness pioneer, actor, and writer. He is credited with laying the foundation for the acceptance by mainstream America of "alternative" lifestyles such as yoga and health food...
, made their way to Northern California in 1967, just in time for the Summer of Love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
in San Francisco.
Beat Generation
The Beat GenerationBeat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
, especially those associated with the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...
gradually gave way to the Sixties counterculture, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie." Many of the original Beats remained active participants, notably Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, who became a fixture of the anti-war movement. On the other hand, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
broke with Ginsberg and criticized the 1960s protest movements as an "excuse for spitefulness." Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
became close friends with Allen Ginsberg, and Ginsberg became close friends with Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
. Both Leary and Ginsberg were introduced to LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
by Michael Hollingshead
Michael Hollingshead
Michael Hollingshead was a British-born researcher in psychedelic drugs and hallucinogens including psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide, among others, at Harvard University in the mid-twentieth century. He is the father of comedian Vanessa Hollingshead....
in the early 1960s, and both became instrumental in popularizing psychedelic substances to the hippie movement.
In 1963, Ginsberg was living in San Francisco with Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
and Charles Plymell
Charles Plymell
Charles Plymell is a poet, novelist, and small press publisher. Plymell has been published widely, collaborated with, and published many poets, writers, and artists, including principals of the Beat Generation....
. Around that time, Ginsberg connected with Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, who was participating in CIA sponsored LSD trials while a student at Stanford. Cassady drove the bus for Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters
Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...
, and he attempted to recruit Kerouac into their group, but Kerouac angrily rejected the invitation and accused them of attempting to destroy the American culture he celebrated.
According to Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders is an American poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, author and publisher and has been a longtime member of the band The Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and Hippie generations.-Biography:...
, the change in the public label from "beatnik" to "hippie" occurred after the 1967 Human Be-In
Human Be-In
The Human Be-In was a happening in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word 'psychedelic'...
in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where Ginsberg, Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
, and Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
led the crowd in chanting "Om". Ginsberg was also at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term, the purpose of the convention was to...
, and was friends with Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
and other members of the Chicago Seven
Chicago Seven
The Chicago Seven were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois on the occasion of the 1968...
. Stylistic differences between beatniks, marked by somber colors, dark shades and goatees, gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair worn by hippies. While the beats were known for "playing it cool" and keeping a low profile, hippies became known for displaying their individuality.
One early book hailed as evidencing the transition from "beatnik" to "hippie" culture, was Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is a novel by Richard Fariña. First published in the United States during 1966 the novel, based largely on Fariña's college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque story that is set in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an...
by Richard Fariña
Richard Fariña
Richard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger.-Early years and education:Richard Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Cuban and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School...
, brother-in-law of Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
. Written in 1963, it was published April 28, 1966—two days before its author was killed in a motorcycle crash.
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters
The Merry PrankstersMerry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...
were a group who originally formed around American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, considered one of the most prominent figures in the psychedelic movement, and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon. Notable members include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs
Ken Babbs
Ken Babbs is a famous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s. He along with best friend and Prankster leader, Ken Kesey wrote the book Last Go Round...
, Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
, Mountain Girl (born Carolyn Adams but best known as Mrs. Jerry Garcia), Wavy Gravy
Wavy Gravy
Wavy Gravy is an American entertainer and activist for peace, best known for his hippie appearance, personality and beliefs. His moniker...
, Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...
, Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
, Del Close
Del Close
Del Close was an actor, improviser, writer, and teacher. Considered one of the premier influences on modern improvisational theater, Close had a prolific career, appearing in a number of films and television shows...
, Paul Foster
Paul Foster (cartoonist)
Paul Foster was a Merry Prankster best known for illustrating the book Ken Kesey's Garage Sale.He is the author of The Answer Is Always Yes and he was also a founding member of Wavy Gravy's Hog Farm commune....
, George Walker
George Walker
George Walker may refer to:In arts and letters:*George Walker *George Walker , English chess player and writer*George Walker , American composer...
, and others. Their early escapades were chronicled by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a work of literary journalism by Tom Wolfe, published in 1968. Using techniques from the genre of hysterical realism and pioneering new journalism, the "nonfiction novel" tells the story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters...
.
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters are remembered chiefly for the sociological significance of a lengthy roadtrip they took in 1964, traveling across the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in a psychedelically painted school bus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
enigmatically labeled Further, and for the "Acid Tests". Kesey believed that psychedelics were best used as a tool for transforming society as a whole, and believed that if a sufficient percentage of the population had the psychedelic experience then revolutionary social and political changes would occur. Therefore, they made LSD available to anyone interested in partaking - most famously through the "electric kool-aid" made available at a series of "Acid Tests"; musical and multi-media events where participants were given "acid", the street name for LSD. The tests were held at various venues in California, and were sometimes advertised with colorful crayoned signs asking "Can you pass the acid test?" The first Acid Test was held in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
in November 1965. (LSD was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966.) The young psychedelic music
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
band the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
supplied the music during these events.
Red Dog Experience
The Red Dog Saloon was a bar and music venue located in the isolated, old-time mining town of Virginia City, NevadaVirginia City, Nevada
Virginia City is a census-designated place that is the county seat of Storey County, Nevada. It is part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 855 at the 2010 Census.- History :...
. In April 1963, Chandler A. Laughlin III established a kind of tribal, family identity among approximately fifty people who attended a traditional, all-night peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
ceremony which combined a psychedelic experience with traditional Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
spiritual values.
During the summer of 1965, Laughlin recruited much of the original talent that led to a unique amalgam of traditional folk music and the developing psychedelic rock scene. He and his cohorts created what became known as The Red Dog Experience, featuring previously unknown musical acts - Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
, Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, Quicksilver Messenger Service
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Quicksilver Messenger Service is an American psychedelic rock band, formed in 1965 in San Francisco.-Introduction:Quicksilver Messenger Service gained wide popularity in the Bay Area and, through their recordings, with psychedelic rock enthusiasts around the globe and several of their albums ranked...
, The Charlatans
The Charlatans (U.S. band)
The Charlatans were an influential psychedelic rock band that played a role in the development of the San Francisco music scene during the 1960s and are often cited by critics as being the first group to play in the style that became known as the San Francisco Sound...
, Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
and others. There was no clear delineation between "performers" and "audience" and the music, psychedelic experimentation, unique sense of personal style, and Bill Ham's first primitive light shows combined to create a new sense of community.
Anti-war protests
Although there were many diverse groups and elements protesting the US military involvement in Vietnam as it began to escalate, many of the protesters, rightly or wrongly, came to be associated with aspects of the "hippie" movement in the popular view. A number of them had been highly active in the Civil Rights movementCivil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
in the first half of the 1960s, traveling across the country to take part in sit-ins and marches against segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
in the South. The first draft card burnings took place May 12, 1964 in New York City. Others followed, including more draft-card burnings in May 1965 at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
(which had already seen a precedent to the subsequent social turmoil, in form of the Free Speech Movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
), and a coffin was marched to the Berkeley draft board. As similar protests continued through the summer, President Lyndon Johnson responded by signing a new law on August 31, 1965 penalizing the burning of draft cards with up to 5 years in prison and a $1,000 fine, although such burnings went on regardless. In later years, the Viet Cong flag of the "enemy" was even adopted as a symbol by more radical anti-war protesters. However, the core "hippie" philosophy remained staunchly aloof to politics, and politicians, throughout this time.
Generation
The new "hippie" values, e.g. natural childbirthNatural childbirth
Natural Childbirth is a philosophy of childbirth that is based on the notion that women who are adequately prepared are innately able to give birth without routine medical interventions. Natural childbirth arose in opposition to the techno-medical model of childbirth that has recently gained...
, made an early Broadway appearance October 6, 1965 with the opening of a popular new play, Generation by US playwright William Goodhart, starring Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
, which, according to one of its reviews in Time, "converts a Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
loft into a sparring ground for the Establishment and the hippie, the parent and the child." Owing to the success of this play, it went on to be made into a 1969 film, alternately titled Time for Giving.
Underground press
Another signal of the rising movement was the sudden appearance of an underground hippie press in several US cities. Among the first of these was the Los Angeles Free PressLos Angeles Free Press
The Los Angeles Free Press , also called “the Freep”, was among the most widely distributed underground newspapers of the 1960s. It is often cited as the first such newspaper...
, which began in May, 1964 as a broadside entitled The Faire Free Press. This was soon followed by the Berkeley Barb
Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb was a weekly underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, from 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the anti-war and civil-rights movements as well as the...
in August 1965, the East Village Other
East Village Other
The East Village Other , was an American underground newspaper in New York City, New York, published biweekly during the 1960s. EVO was among the first countercultural newspapers to emerge, following the Los Angeles Free Press, which had begun publishing a few months earlier...
of New York, in October 1965, The Fifth Estate, in Detroit in November 1965, and East Lansing's The Paper in December 1965. By 1966 the Underground Press Syndicate had been organized; 80 presses of U.S. and Canada came to a conference sponsored by Middle Earth in Iowa City. Liberation News Service, located in Washington DC, then New York, then split between New York and a commune in rural Massachusetts, served up alternative stories to the underground press world.
Psychedelic rock
When they returned to San Francisco at the end of Summer, 1965, Red Dog participants Luria Castell, Ellen Harman and Alton Kelley created a collective called "The Family Dog." Modeled on their Red Dog experiences, on October 16, 1965, The Family Dog hosted "A Tribute to Dr. Strange
Dr. Strange
Doctor Strange is a Marvel Comics character and Sorceror.Doctor Strange or Dr. Strange may also refer to:*Doc Strange, a Nedor Comics character named Doctor Thomas Hugo Strange*Hugo Strange, a DC Comics character and recurring Batman villain...
" at Longshoreman's Hall. Attended by approximately 1,000 of the Bay Area's original "hippies," this was San Francisco's first psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
performance, a costumed dance and light show featuring Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, The Great Society, and The Marbles. Two other events followed before year's end, one at California Hall and one at the Matrix.
Trips Festival
A much larger psychedelic event, "The Trips Festival," took place on January 21–January 23, 1966 at Longshoreman's Hall, organized by Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
, Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, Owsley Stanley
Owsley Stanley
Owsley Stanley also known as Bear, was an essential and transitional personality in the development of the San Francisco Bay counter-culture. Spanning the Beat-era years of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters scenes, he was equally pivotal to the explosion of 1960's Psychedelia culture...
, Zach Stewart and others. Ten thousand people attended this sold-out event, with a thousand more turned away each night. On Saturday January 22, the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
and Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
came on stage, and 6,000 people arrived to imbibe punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era.
Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom
By February 1966, the Family Dog became Family Dog Productions under organizer Chet Helms
Chet Helms
Chester Leo "Chet" Helms , often called the father of San Francisco's "1967 Summer of Love," was a music promoter and a cultural figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the late Sixties....
, promoting happenings at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium
The Fillmore
The Fillmore Auditorium is a historic music venue in San Francisco, California, made famous by Bill Graham. Named for its original location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it lies on the boundary of the Western Addition and the Pacific Heights neighborhoods.In 1968,...
in initial cooperation with Bill Graham
Bill Graham
William Carvel "Bill" Graham, PC QC is a former Canadian politician, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of National Defence, and Leader of the Opposition and interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.-Personal life:...
. These and other venues provided settings where participants could partake of the full psychedelic music experience. Bill Ham perfected his liquid light projection shows which, combined with film projection, and became synonymous with the San Francisco ballroom experience.
When San Francisco's Fox Theater went out of business, hippies bought up its costume stock, reveling in the freedom to dress up for weekly musical performances at their favorite ballrooms. As San Francisco Chronicle music columnist Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph Joseph Gleason was an influential American jazz and pop music critic. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival.-Biography:Gleason was born in New York City and attended Columbia...
put it, "They danced all night long, orgiastic, spontaneous and completely free form."
Haight-Ashbury
Some of the earliest San Francisco hippies were former students at San Francisco State College
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
(later renamed San Francisco State University) who were intrigued by the developing psychedelic hippie music scene and left school after they started taking psychedelic drugs. These students joined the bands they loved and began living communally in the large, inexpensive Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
apartments in the Haight. Young Americans around the country began moving to San Francisco, and by June 1966, around 15,000 hippies had moved into the Haight. The Charlatans
The Charlatans (U.S. band)
The Charlatans were an influential psychedelic rock band that played a role in the development of the San Francisco music scene during the 1960s and are often cited by critics as being the first group to play in the style that became known as the San Francisco Sound...
, Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
, and the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
all moved to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during this period.
Love Pageant Rally
On October 6, 1966, the state of California made LSD a controlled substance, making the drug illegal. In response to the criminalization of psychedelics, San Francisco hippies staged a gathering in the Golden Gate Park panhandle
Panhandle (San Francisco)
The Panhandle is a park in San Francisco, California that forms a panhandle with Golden Gate Park. It is long and narrow, being three-quarters of a mile long and one block wide. Fell Street borders it to the north, Oak Street to the south, and Baker Street to the east. The Haight-Ashbury District...
, called "The Love Pageant Rally", attracting an estimated 700-800 people. As explained by Allan Cohen, co-founder of the San Francisco Oracle
San Francisco Oracle
The Oracle of the City of San Francisco, also known as the San Francisco Oracle, was an underground newspaper published in 12 issues from September 20, 1966, to February 1968 in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of that city...
, the purpose of the rally was twofold — to draw attention to the fact that LSD had just been made illegal, and to demonstrate that people who used LSD were not criminals, nor were they mentally ill. According to Cohen, those who took LSD were mostly idealistic people who wanted to learn more about themselves and their place in the universe, and they used LSD as an aid to meditation and to creative, artistic expression. The Grateful Dead played, and some sources claim that LSD was consumed at the rally.
Diggers
Hippie action in the Haight centered around the Diggers, a guerrilla street theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
group that combined spontaneous street theatre, anarchistic action, and art happenings
Happening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
in their agenda to create a "free city." By late 1966, the Diggers opened stores which simply gave away their stock; provided free food, medical care, transport and temporary housing; they also organized free music concerts and works of political art. The Diggers criticized the term 'hippie' with their October 1967, 'Death of Hippie' event.
The Death of Hippie event: In late September 1967, many of the shops in the district began to display a stack of 4x5 cards on their counters proclaiming "Funeral Notice for Hippie". "Friends are invited to attend services beginning at sunrise, October 6, 1967 at Buena Vista Park". An organization known as the Haight Ashbury Switchboard actively supported the Digger's funeral concept. A funeral procession went from the park down Haight St and ended in the Panhandle with supporters carrying a trinket filled casket. It was emblematic of the fate of the hippie movement in San Francisco.
By mid-1968, it was widely noted that most of the original "Flower Children" had long since departed the Haight Ashbury district, having been replaced by a more cynical and exploitative crowd.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles also had a vibrant hippie scene during the mid-1960s. The VeniceVenice, Los Angeles, California
Venice is a beachfront district on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, artists, and vendors...
coffeehouses and beat culture sustained the hippies, giving birth to bands like The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
. Sunset Strip
Sunset Strip
The Sunset Strip is the name given to the mile-and-a-half stretch of Sunset Boulevard that passes through West Hollywood, California. It extends from West Hollywood's eastern border with Hollywood at Harper Avenue, to its western border with Beverly Hills at Sierra Drive...
became the quintessential L.A. hippie gathering area, with its seminal rock clubs Whisky-a-Go-Go and the Troubadour. The Strip was the location of the protest described in Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...
's early 1967 hippie anthem, "For What It's Worth."
Millbrook
Before the Summer of Love, Timothy LearyTimothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
and Richard Alpert formed the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in Newton, Massachusetts
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States bordered to the east by Boston. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Newton was 85,146, making it the eleventh largest city in the state.-Villages:...
, inhabiting two houses but later moving to a 64-room mansion at Millbrook, New York
Millbrook, New York
Millbrook is a village in Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is often said to be a "low-key version of the Hamptons" and one of the wealthiest towns in New York State. Millbrook's estimated town population was 1,551 in 2008. Millbrook is located in the Hudson Valley, an hour and thirty...
, with a communal group of about 25–30 people in residence until they were shut down in 1967.
Drop City
In 1965, four art students and filmmakers, Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit and Clark Richert, moved to a 7 acres (28,328 m²) tract of land near Trinidad, Colorado. Their intention was to create a live-in work of Drop Art, continuing an art concept they had developed earlier, and informed by "happenings." As Drop City gained notoriety in the 1960s underground, people from around the world came to stay and work on the construction projects. Inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminister Fuller and Steve BaerSteve Baer
Steve Baer is an American inventor and solar and residential designer. Baer has served on the board of directors of the U.S. Section of the International Solar Energy Society, and on the board of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. He is the Founder, Chairman of the Board, President, and...
, residents constructed geodesic domes and zonahedra to house themselves, using geometric panels made from the metal of automobile roofs and other inexpensive materials. In 1967 the group, consisting of 10 core people and many contributors, won Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion award for their constructions.
Summer of Love
On January 14, 1967, the outdoor Human Be-InHuman Be-In
The Human Be-In was a happening in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word 'psychedelic'...
in San Francisco popularized hippie culture across the United States, with 20,000 hippies gathering in Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a...
. The Monterey Pop Festival
Monterey Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California...
from June 16 to June 18 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love." Scott McKenzie
Scott McKenzie
Scott McKenzie is an American singer. He is best known for his 1967 hit single and generational anthem, "San Francisco ".-Life and career:...
's rendition of John Phillips
John Phillips (musician)
John Edmund Andrew Phillips , was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter and promoter . Known as Papa John, Phillips was a member and leader of the singing group The Mamas & the Papas...
' song, "San Francisco
San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)
"San Francisco " is a song, written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, and sung by Scott McKenzie. It was written and released in 1967 to promote the Monterey Pop Festival....
," became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name, "Flower Children
Flower child
Flower child originated as a synonym for hippie, especially the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and environs during the 1967 Summer of Love. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear and distribute flowers or floral-themed decorations to symbolize altruistic ideals of...
."
Bands like the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
(with Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
), and Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
continued to live in the Haight, but by the end of the summer, the incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade. According to the late poet Stormi Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the Panhandle
Panhandle (San Francisco)
The Panhandle is a park in San Francisco, California that forms a panhandle with Golden Gate Park. It is long and narrow, being three-quarters of a mile long and one block wide. Fell Street borders it to the north, Oak Street to the south, and Baker Street to the east. The Haight-Ashbury District...
to demonstrate the end of his/her reign. Regarding this period of history, the July 7, 1967, TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."
It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the "hippie" label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
and lenient morality, fueled the moral panic
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
s of the late 1960s.
New Communalism
When the Summer of Love finally ended, thousands of hippies left San Francisco, a large minority of them heading "back to the land". These hippies created the largest number of intentional communities or communes in the history of the United States, forming alternative, egalitarian farms and homesteads in Northern California, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee and other states. According to Timothy Miller, communes were organized in many different ways, some along religious, political, and even sexual orientation. Poet and writer Judson JeromeJudson Jerome
Judson Jerome was an American poet, author, and literary critic, perhaps best known for having written the poetry column for Writer's Digest for thirty years....
, who studied the American commune movement, estimates that by the early 1970s, about 750,000 people lived in more than ten thousand communes across the United States.
The Farm
In 1967, Stephen Gaskin
Stephen Gaskin
Stephen Gaskin is a counterculture hippie icon best known for his presence in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s and for co-founding "The Farm", a famous spiritual intentional community in Summertown, Tennessee...
began to develop a philosophy of hippie perspectives at San Francisco State College, where Gaskin taught English, creative writing, and General Semantics
General Semantics
General semantics is a program begun in the 1920's that seeks to regulate the evaluative operations performed in the human brain. After partial program launches under the trial names "human engineering" and "humanology," Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski fully launched the program as...
. Gaskin's "Monday Night Class" became a broad, open discussion group involving up to 1,500 students and other participants from the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1970, Gaskin and his wife, Ina May Gaskin
Ina May Gaskin
Ina May Gaskin, CPM, has been described as "the mother of authentic midwifery."-Family:Gaskin was born to an Iowa Protestant family . Her father, Talford Middleton, was raised on a large Iowa farm, which was lost to a bank not long after his father’s accidental death in 1926...
led a caravan of 60 buses, vans and trucks on a cross country speaking tour. Along the way, they checked out various places that might be suitable for settlement. When they got back to San Francisco, they decided to return to Summertown, Tennessee
Summertown, Tennessee
Summertown is an unincorporated community in Lawrence County, Tennessee, USA. Summertown is surrounded by 4 counties: Lawrence, Lewis, Maury, and Giles...
, where they bought 1,700 acres (688 hectares) and created an intentional community called "The Farm
The Farm (Tennessee)
The Farm is an intentional community in Lewis County, Tennessee, near the town of Summertown, Tennessee, based on principles of nonviolence and respect for the Earth. It was founded in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin and 320 San Francisco hippies; The Farm is well known amongst hippies and other members of...
." The Farm became a widely respected, spiritually based
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
hippie community that still thrives, although it is now more a hip village of 300 than a commune of 1,200. The Farm continues in many public-service and philanthropic enterprises through the Farm Midwifery Center, Plenty International, and other sub-organizations.
Strawberry Fields
The second commune on the west coast
Started by former Boston Stockbroker and later Probation Officer Gridley Wright, Strawberry Fields, named after the song by the Beatles, occupied forty four acres of land in Decker Canyon,the arid hills above Malibu, California. Nine adults and six children made up the original community, housed in two old houses and a barn. Over fifty people ended up there during its five months of existence. It was a stopping off place for Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
as well as other well known figures in the psychedelic movement. Annie and the Family were one of the original families to take up residence there, they later went on to take part in the magical mystery tour and to live in a number of other communes in Europe.
1968
By 1968, hippie-influenced fashions were beginning to take off in the mainstream, especially for youths and younger adults of the populous "Baby BoomerBaby boomer
A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even...
" generation, many of whom may have aspired to emulate the hardcore movements now living in tribalistic communes, but had no overt connections to them. This was noticed not only in terms of clothes and also longer hair for men, but also in music, film, art, and literature, and not just in the US, but around the world. Eugene McCarthy
Eugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...
's brief presidential campaign successfully persuaded a significant minority of young adults to "get clean for Gene" by shaving their beards or wearing lower miniskirts; however the "Clean Genes" had little impact on the popular image in the media spotlight, of the hirsute hippie adorned in beads, feathers, flowers and bells.
The year 1968 also saw the development of two new, but dissimilar, genres of music that each exerted some influence on, and were influenced by, the hippie movements: Heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
, and reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
.
Yippies
The Yippies, who were seen as an offshoot of the hippie movements parodying as a political party, came to national attention during their celebration of the 1968 spring equinox, when some 3,000 of them took over Grand Central Station in New York — eventually resulting in 61 arrests. The Yippies, especially their leaders Abbie HoffmanAbbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
and Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin was an American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, he became a successful businessman.-Early life:...
, became notorious for their theatrics, such as trying to levitate the Pentagon at the October 1967 war protest, and such slogans as "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball!" Their stated intention to protest the 1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term, the purpose of the convention was to...
in Chicago in August, including nominating their own candidate, "Lyndon Pigasus Pig
Pigasus (politics)
Pigasus was a pig and was a satiric candidate for President of the United States for the Youth International Party . The pig's name was a play on Pegasus, the winged horse in Greek mythology. Led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Pigasus was purchased by Phil Ochs and the candidacy was announced...
" (an actual pig), was also widely publicized in the media at this time.
By the time of the convention, city officials were prepared for the worst, with 23,000 police, National Guard, and Federal troops. Following the pig's nomination on the first day, Rubin and 6 others were arrested, but protests and music concerts were allowed to continue in Lincoln Park for two days, albeit an 11:00 PM curfew was enforced. On the Convention's second night, poet Allan Ginsberg led protesters out of the park, thus avoiding confrontation, by chanting "Om
Om
Om is a sacred syllable of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.OM and similar may also refer to:-Music:* Om , a stoner metal band* Om , a 1965 album* OM , a 2006 album* Om...
". On the third night, riots erupted in response to the curfew, causing police to indiscriminately attack protesters and innocent bystanders alike, including journalists from around the world and even visiting dignitaries, throughout the streets of Chicago. The violence suffered by the journalists present, even including Mike Wallace
Mike Wallace (journalist)
Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace is an American journalist, former game show host, actor and media personality. During his 60+ year career, he has interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers....
, Dan Rather
Dan Rather
Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. He is now managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9,...
and Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
, resulted in a mainstream media that was more sympathetic to certain hippie ideals, and less so to politicians, for several years. However, this galvanized the protest movement, and the following year, the trial of Hoffman, Rubin, and others as the "Chicago Seven
Chicago Seven
The Chicago Seven were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois on the occasion of the 1968...
" (originally Eight) generated significant interest.
Resurrection City
Beginning May 12, 1968, the newly formed Poor People's CampaignPoor People's Campaign
Organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Poor People's Campaign addressed the issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the United States King said, “We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the war and the opening of a...
, started by the recently assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
, organized a shantytown known as Resurrection City, composed of around 3,000 black, native, and Latino militants, along with a significant contingent of hippies and diggers, encamped on the National Mall
National Mall
The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...
in Washington, DC. This culminated in the June 19 "Solidarity Day" protest which drew 55,000 protesters, after which the tent settlements' population dwindled to around 300. It was finally razed, after almost 6 weeks, on June 24, 1968 by 1,000 riot police using tear gas.
People's Park
In April 1969, the building of People's Park in Berkeley, California received international attention. The University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
had demolished all the buildings on a 2.8 acres (11,331.2 m²) parcel near campus, intending to use the land to build playing fields and a parking lot. After a long delay, during which the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park. A major confrontation ensued on May 15, 1969, and Governor Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
ordered a two-week occupation of the city of Berkeley by the United States National Guard
United States National Guard
The National Guard of the United States is a reserve military force composed of state National Guard militia members or units under federally recognized active or inactive armed force service for the United States. Militia members are citizen soldiers, meaning they work part time for the National...
. Flower power
Flower power
Flower power is a slogan used by the American counterculture movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and non-violence ideology. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in...
came into its own during this occupation as hippies engaged in acts of civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
to plant flowers in empty lots all over Berkeley under the slogan "Let A Thousand Parks Bloom."
Woodstock
In August 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Festival took place in Bethel, New York
Bethel, New York
Bethel is a town in Sullivan County, New York, USA. The population has been estimated at 4,532 in 2007.The town received worldwide fame after it became the host of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, which was originally planned for Wallkill, New York, but was relocated to Bethel after Wallkill withdrew.-...
, which for many, exemplified the best of hippie counterculture. Over 500,000 people arrived to hear the most notable musicians and bands of the era, among them Richie Havens
Richie Havens
Richard P. "Richie" Havens is an African American folk singer and guitarist. He is best known for his intense, rhythmic guitar style , soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.-Career:Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children...
, Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
, Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival was an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a number of successful singles drawn from various albums....
, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
, The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
, Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, and Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
. Wavy Gravy's
Wavy Gravy
Wavy Gravy is an American entertainer and activist for peace, best known for his hippie appearance, personality and beliefs. His moniker...
Hog Farm
Hog Farm
The Hog Farm is an organization considered to be America's longest running hippie commune. With beginnings as an actual collective hog farm in Tujunga, California, the group, founded in the 1960s by peace activist and clown Wavy Gravy, evolved into a "mobile, hallucination-extended family", active...
provided security and attended to practical needs, and the hippie ideals of love and human fellowship seemed to have gained real-world expression.
Altamont
In December 1969, a similar event took place in Altamont, CaliforniaAltamont, California
Altamont is an unincorporated community in Alameda County, California. It is located northeast of Livermore, at an elevation of 738 feet , in the Altamont Pass. It was in 1969 the site of the Altamont Free Concert at the Altamont Speedway...
, about 30 miles (45 km) east of San Francisco. Initially billed as "Woodstock West," its official name was The Altamont Free Concert. About 300,000 people gathered to hear The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
and other bands. The Hells Angels
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a worldwide one-percenter motorcycle gang and organized crime syndicate whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation. Their primary motto...
provided security that proved far less beneficent than the security provided at the Woodstock event: 18-year-old Meredith Hunter
Meredith Hunter
Meredith Curly Hunter was a male spectator at the Altamont Free Concert. During the performance by The Rolling Stones, Hunter pulled out a gun after being punched by a Hells Angel and was then stabbed to death by a Hells Angel serving as a security guard...
was stabbed and killed while drawing a gun in front of the stage during The Rolling Stones performance, and four accidental deaths occurred. There were also four births at the concert.
1970-present
By 1970, the 1960s zeitgeistZeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
that had spawned hippie culture seemed to be on the wane, at least in the US. The events at Altamont shocked many Americans, including those who had strongly identified with hippie culture. Another shock came in the form of the Sharon Tate
Sharon Tate
Sharon Marie Tate was an American actress. During the 1960s she played small television roles before appearing in several films. After receiving positive reviews for her comedic performances, she was hailed as one of Hollywood's promising newcomers and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for...
and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murders committed in August 1969 by Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
and his "family" of followers.
Nevertheless, the oppressive political atmosphere that featured the bombing of Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
and shootings by National Guardsmen at Jackson State University
Jackson State University
Jackson State University is a historically black university founded in 1877 in Natchez, MS by the American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York. The Society moved the school to Jackson in 1882, renaming it Jackson College, and developed its present campus in 1902. It became a state supported...
and Kent State University
Kent State University
Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...
still brought people together. These shootings inspired the May 1970 songs by Quicksilver Messenger Service
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Quicksilver Messenger Service is an American psychedelic rock band, formed in 1965 in San Francisco.-Introduction:Quicksilver Messenger Service gained wide popularity in the Bay Area and, through their recordings, with psychedelic rock enthusiasts around the globe and several of their albums ranked...
"What About Me?," where they sang "You keep adding to my numbers as you shoot my people down" and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's protest song "Ohio".
Meanwhile, in England, the Isle of Wight Festival 1970
Isle of Wight Festival 1970
The 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was held between 26 and 31 August 1970 at East Afton Farm an area on the western side of the Isle of Wight. It was the last of three consecutive music festivals to take place on the island between 1968 and 1970 and widely acknowledged as the largest musical event of...
(August) drew an even bigger attendance than Woodstock, and was a major gathering of the hippie movement (as well as one of the last major concert appearances for a few prominent musicians of the time, such as Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
).
Also in 1970, coverage of the Chicago Seven
Chicago Seven
The Chicago Seven were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois on the occasion of the 1968...
trials provided the mainstream media an opportunity to highlight the most radical aspects of the movement. Yippie leader Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin was an American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, he became a successful businessman.-Early life:...
's guest appearance on the Phil Donahue Show in that year (April 1) represents the virtual apex of such publicity — surpassed only by his appearance November 7 that same year on The David Frost Show, where he lit a joint and tried to pass it to Frost, then summoned an army of expletive-using hippies planted in the audience to swarm the stage, all on live television.
Charles Manson
Charles Manson was a lifelong criminal who had been released from prison just in time for San Francisco's Summer of Love. With his long hair, charismaCharisma
The term charisma has two senses: 1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others, 2) a divinely conferred power or talent. For some theological usages the term is rendered charism, with a meaning the same as sense 2...
and the ability to charm a crowd with his guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
playing, his singing and rhetoric, Manson exhibited many of the outward manifestations of hippie identity. Yet Manson hardly exemplified the hippie ideals of peace, love, compassion and human fellowship; through twisted logic and psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
, he inspired his followers to commit murder. Manson's highly publicized 1970 trial and subsequent conviction in January 1971 irrevocably tarnished the hippie image in the eyes of many Americans. Other factors, such as the proliferation of drugs and their associated dependency, also contributed to the decline.
John Lennon
Also around this time, John Lennon and his wife Yoko OnoYoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
took up the mantle of a more prominent media role as a force for continuing the 'humane revolution' that was politically opposed to the 'establishment'. As early as March 1969 the couple had conducted their first "Bed-In for Peace"; in August 1971 they moved to New York City and joined up with the Chicago Trial "Yippie" defendants and other notable activists. In December 1971, Lennon sang at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally
John Sinclair Freedom Rally
The John Sinclair Freedom Rally was a protest and concert in response the imprisonment of John Sinclair for possession of marijuana held on December 10, 1971, in Crisler Arena at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan...
in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, calling attention to Sinclair
John Sinclair (poet)
John Sinclair is a Detroit poet, one-time manager of the band MC5, and leader of the White Panther Party — a militantly anti-racist countercultural group of white socialists seeking to assist the Black Panthers in the Civil Rights movement — from November 1968 to July 1969...
's ten year prison sentence for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman. Sinclair's release was suddenly approved by the state's authorities three days later, a testimony to the potential force of popular pressure; however, soon thereafter, the Nixon administration responded by seeking to have Lennon deported, on the pretext of a 1968 marijuana conviction in London. This dragged on through half of 1973, only increasing their status as anti-war and counterculture celebrities; by June 1973, the Watergate hearings had begun in earnest, and the famous pair made their final political statement by attending one of them. In 1975, the deportation case was dropped, and Lennon and Yoko attended the Inaugural Ball of president Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
in January 1977.
Mainstream
Much of hippie style had been integrated into mainstreamMainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
American society by the early 1970s. Large rock concerts that originated with the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival
Monterey Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California...
and the 1968 Isle of Wight Festival
Isle of Wight Festival
The Isle of Wight Festival is a music festival which takes place every year on the Isle of Wight in England. It was originally held from 1968 to 1970. These original events were promoted and organised by the Foulk brothers under the banner of their company Fiery Creations Limited...
became the norm. Mustaches, beards and longer hair became commonplace and colorful, multi-ethnic clothing dominated the fashion world.
Starting in the late 1960s, some working class skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
s have attacked hippies. Hippies were also vilified and sometimes attacked by punks
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
, revivalist mods
Mod Revival
The mod revival was a music genre and subculture that started in England in 1978 and later spread to other countries . The mod revival's mainstream popularity was relatively short, although its influence has lasted for decades...
, greasers, football casuals
Casuals
The casual subculture is a subsection of association football culture that is typified by football hooliganism and the wearing of expensive European designer clothing. The subculture originated in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s when many hooligans started wearing designer labels and...
, Teddy boy
Teddy Boy
The British Teddy Boy subculture is typified by young men wearing clothes that were partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period, styles which Savile Row tailors had attempted to re-introduce in Britain after World War II...
s and members of other youth cultures in the 1970s and 1980s. Hippie ideals were a marked influence on anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
and some post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
youth cultures, such as the second summer of love
Second Summer of Love
The Second Summer of Love is a name given to the period in 1988-89 in Britain, during the rise of acid house music and the euphoric explosion of unlicensed MDMA -fuelled rave parties...
.
In the mid-1970s, with the end of the draft and the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, and a renewal of patriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
sentiment associated with the approach of the United States Bicentennial
United States Bicentennial
The United States Bicentennial was a series of celebrations and observances during the mid-1970s that paid tribute to the historical events leading up to the creation of the United States as an independent republic...
, the mainstream media lost interest in the hippie counterculture, and hippies became targets for ridicule, coinciding with the advent of punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
and disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
. Although not as visible as it once was, hippie culture has never died out completely: hippies and neo-hippies can still be found on college campuses, on communes and at festivals; while many still embrace the hippie values of peace, love, and community. Although many of the original hippies and those who were core to the movement remained (or remain) dedicated to the values they originally espoused, many of those who played more peripheral roles are often seen as having "sold out" during the 1980s by becoming a part of the corporate, materialist culture they initially rejected.
Legacy
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
have been assimilated by the mainstream. Public political demonstrations are considered legitimate expressions of free speech. Unmarried couples of all ages feel free to travel and live together without societal disapproval. Frankness regarding sexual matters has become the norm—even conservative talk radio hosts, like Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Laura Schlessinger
Laura Catherine Schlessinger is an American talk radio host, socially conservative commentator and author. Her radio program consists mainly of her responses to callers' requests for personal advice and has occasionally featured her short monologues on social and political topics...
, feel free to exclaim "Orgasms are cool!" In urban centers especially, and in corporate America, the rights of homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, bisexual and transsexual people have expanded.
Religious and cultural diversity has gained greater acceptance. Eastern religions and spiritual concepts, karma
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
and reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
in particular, have reached a wider audience with around 20% of Americans espousing some New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
belief. A wide range of personal appearance options and clothing styles have become acceptable, all of which were uncommon before the hippie era. Co-operative business enterprises and creative community living arrangements are widely accepted. Interest in natural food, herbal remedies and vitamins is widespread, and the little hippie "health food stores" of the 1960s and 1970s are now large-scale, profitable businesses.
Necktie
A necktie is a long piece of cloth worn for decorative purposes around the neck or shoulders, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat. Variants include the ascot tie, bow tie, bolo tie, and the clip-on tie. The modern necktie, ascot, and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neck...
which had been everyday wear during the 1950s and early 1960s, and generally longer hairstyles, even for politicians such as Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...
; in literature, books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a work of literary journalism by Tom Wolfe, published in 1968. Using techniques from the genre of hysterical realism and pioneering new journalism, the "nonfiction novel" tells the story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters...
; in music, the blending of folk rock
Folk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
into newer forms including acid rock
Acid rock
Acid rock is a form of psychedelic rock, which is characterized with long instrumental solos, few lyrics and musical improvisation. Tom Wolfe describes the LSD-influenced music of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Iron Butterfly, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Cream,...
and heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
; in television and film, far greater visibility and influence, with some films depicting the hippie ethos and lifestyle, such as Woodstock
Woodstock (film)
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...
, Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
, Hair
Hair (film)
Hair is a 1979 American film adaptation of the 1968 Broadway musical of the same name about a Vietnam war draftee who meets and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to the army induction center...
, The Doors
The Doors (film)
The Doors is a 1991 biopic about the 1960s-1970s rock band of the same name which emphasizes the life of its lead singer, Jim Morrison. It was directed by Oliver Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson , Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger,...
, and Crumb
Crumb (film)
Crumb is a 1994 documentary film about the noted underground comic artist Robert Crumb and his family. Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by Lynn O'Donnell and David Lynch, it won widespread acclaim, including both the Grand Jury Prize and best cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival...
. Even children's television shows like H.R. Pufnstuf
H.R. Pufnstuf
H.R. Pufnstuf was a children's television series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft in the United States. It was the first Krofft live-action, life-size puppet program. The seventeen episodes were originally broadcast September 6, 1969 to September 4, 1971...
, and educational shows such as The Electric Company
The Electric Company
The Electric Company is an educational American children's television series that was produced by the Children's Television Workshop for PBS in the United States. PBS broadcast 780 episodes over the course of its six seasons from October 25, 1971 to April 15, 1977...
and Mulligan Stew
Mulligan Stew (TV series)
Mulligan Stew was a children's educational program, sponsored by the 4-H Council and shown both in schools and on television. It was produced by Michigan State University and premiered in 1972 during National 4-H Week in Washington, D.C...
were influenced by the hippies.
While many hippies made a long-term commitment to the lifestyle, some younger people argue that hippies "sold out" during the 1980s and became part of the materialist, consumer culture. Hippies may still be found in bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
enclaves around the world.
Contemporary hippies have made use of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
and can be found on virtual communities. In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, the New age travellers
New age travellers
New Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
movement, while eschewing the label 'hippie', nevertheless revived many hippie traditions into the 1980s and 1990s. Current events, festivals and parties continue to promote the hippie lifestyle and values. The "boho-chic
Boho-chic
Boho-chic is a style of female fashion drawing on various bohemian and hippie influences, which, at its height in 2004-5, was associated particularly with actress Sienna Miller and model Kate Moss in the United Kingdom and actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Nicole Richie in the United States...
" fashion style of 2003-2007 had a number of hippie features and the London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
even used the term "hippie chic" (11 March 2005).
Some hippie ideals were an influence on anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
bands such as Crass
Crass
Crass are an English punk rock band that was formed in 1977, which promoted anarchism as a political ideology, way of living, and as a resistance movement. Crass popularised the seminal anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, and advocated direct action, animal rights, and environmentalism...
, as well as on many peace punk and some crust punk
Crust punk
Crust punk is a form of music influenced by anarcho-punk, hardcore punk and extreme metal. The style, which evolved in the mid-1980s in England, often has songs with dark and pessimistic lyrics that linger on political and social ills...
bands. Crass's drummer Penny Rimbaud
Penny Rimbaud
Jeremy John Ratter , better known under his pseudonym of Penny Rimbaud, is a drummer, writer, poet, former member of performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass with Steve Ignorant in 1977.-Biography:Rimbaud Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943,...
wrote an essay called "The Last Of The Hippies" recalling how a hippy friend, Phil Russell
Wally Hope
Wally Hope was a name by which Phillip Russell was known.Phil was a visionary and a free-thinker, whose life has had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK Underground and beyond...
(a.k.a. Wally Hope
Wally Hope
Wally Hope was a name by which Phillip Russell was known.Phil was a visionary and a free-thinker, whose life has had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK Underground and beyond...
), was allegedly committed to a mental institution after becoming a thorn in the side of the establishment. The members of Crass were old enough to have been members of the hippie counter-culture.
Neo-hippies
Drug use is just as accepted as in the "original" hippie days, although most neo-hippies do not consider it necessary to take drugs in order to be part of the lifestyle, and others reject drug use in favor of alternative methods of reaching higher or altered consciousness such as drumming circles, community singing, meditation, yoga and dance.
In the United States, some hippies refer to themselves as "Rainbows," a name derived from their tie-dyed T-shirts, and for some, from their participation in the hippie group, "Rainbow Family
Rainbow Family
The Rainbow Family of Living Light is a loosely affiliated group of individuals committed to principles of non-violence and egalitarianism. They put on events known as Rainbow Gatherings....
of Living Light". Since the early 1970s, the Rainbows meet informally at Rainbow Gathering
Rainbow Gathering
Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.Rainbow...
s on U.S. National Forest Land as well as internationally. "Peace, love, harmony, freedom, and community" is their motto.
Festivals
Acid Tests
The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by Ken Kesey in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid 1960s, centered entirely around the use of, experimentation with, and advocacy of, the psychedelic drug LSD, also known as "acid."...
, where the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
played under the influence of LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
and initiated psychedelic jamming. For the next several decades, many hippies and neo-hippies became part of the Deadhead
Deadhead
Deadhead or Dead Head is a name given to fans of the American jam band, the Grateful Dead. In the 1970s, a number of fans began travelling to see the band in as many shows or festival venues as they could. With large numbers of people thus attending strings of shows, a community developed...
and Phish Head communities, attending music and art festivals held around the country. The Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
toured continuously, with few interruptions between 1965 and 1995. Phish
Phish
Phish is an American rock band noted for its musical improvisation, extended jams, and exploration of music across genres. Formed at the University of Vermont in 1983 , the band's four members – Trey Anastasio , Mike Gordon , Jon Fishman , and Page McConnell Phish is an American rock band...
toured sporadically between 1983 and 2004. With the demise of the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
and Phish
Phish
Phish is an American rock band noted for its musical improvisation, extended jams, and exploration of music across genres. Formed at the University of Vermont in 1983 , the band's four members – Trey Anastasio , Mike Gordon , Jon Fishman , and Page McConnell Phish is an American rock band...
, the nomadic touring hippies have been left without a main jam band to follow. Instead, they attend a growing series of summer festivals, the largest of which is called the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival
Bonnaroo Music Festival
The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is an annual four day music festival created and produced by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, held at Great Stage Park on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. It hosted its tenth annual event June 9–12, 2011...
, which premiered in 2002.
The Oregon Country Fair
Oregon Country Fair
The Oregon Country Fair is an annual three-day fair held in Veneta, Oregon, United States. Located in the Willamette Valley, the site is about west of Eugene along the Long Tom River. Annual attendance is approximately 45,000, and the fair has around 350 booths each year...
began in 1969 as a benefit for an alternative school. Currently, the three-day festival features hand-made crafts, educational displays and costumed entertainment in a wooded setting near Veneta, Oregon
Veneta, Oregon
Veneta is a city in Lane County, Oregon, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 4,561.-History:Veneta was established in 1912 by Edmund Eugene Hunter, who named the settlement after his five-year-old daughter. Veneta post office was established in 1914. Veneta Orilla Hunter...
just west of Eugene
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
. Each year the festival becomes the third largest city in Lane County.
The annual Starwood Festival
Starwood Festival
The Starwood Festival is a seven-day Neo-Pagan, New Age, multi-cultural and world music festival presented in mid- to late July. Approximately 1,500 people attend including staff, speakers and entertainers. The Starwood Festival is a camping event which holds workshops on a variety of subjects...
, founded in 1981, is a six-day event held in Sherman, New York
Sherman, New York
Sherman, New York is the name of two places in Chautauqua County, New York, USA:* Sherman , New York* Sherman , New York, a village in the northern part of the town...
indicative of the spiritual quest of hippies through an exploration of non-mainstream religions and world-views. It has offered performances and classes by a variety of hippie and counter-culture icons, from musical guests like Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
, Merl Saunders
Merl Saunders
Merl Saunders, was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ.-Biography:...
and Babatunde Olatunji
Babatunde Olatunji
Babatunde Olatunji was a Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist and recording artist.- Biography :Olatunji was born in the village of Ajido, a small town near Badagry, Lagos State, in southwestern Nigeria. A member of the Yoruba people, Olatunji was introduced to traditional African music at...
to speakers such as Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
, Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...
, Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...
, Stephen Gaskin
Stephen Gaskin
Stephen Gaskin is a counterculture hippie icon best known for his presence in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s and for co-founding "The Farm", a famous spiritual intentional community in Summertown, Tennessee...
, Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
, Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Franklin Wasserman is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy. He has been a strategist and organizer in the anti-nuclear movement in the United States for over 30 years. He has been a featured speaker on Today, Nightline, National Public Radio,...
and Ralph Metzner
Ralph Metzner
Ralph Metzner Ph.D. , is an American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert . Dr...
.
The Burning Man
Burning Man
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...
festival began in 1986 at a San Francisco beach party. Now an annual gathering, the event is held in the Black Rock Desert
Black Rock Desert
The Black Rock Desert is an arid region in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan...
northeast of Reno, Nevada
Reno, Nevada
Reno is the county seat of Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The city has a population of about 220,500 and is the most populous Nevada city outside of the Las Vegas metropolitan area...
. Though few participants would accept the "hippie" label, Burning Man is a contemporary expression of alternative community in the same spirit as early hippie events. The gathering becomes a temporary city (36,500 occupants in 2005), with elaborate encampments, displays and many art cars.
Held annually in Manchester, Tennessee, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival
Bonnaroo Music Festival
The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is an annual four day music festival created and produced by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, held at Great Stage Park on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. It hosted its tenth annual event June 9–12, 2011...
has become a tradition for many music fans, since its sold-out premiere in 2002. Approximately 70-80,000 attend Bonnaroo yearly. The festival producers have made investments in their property, constructing vast telecommunications networks, potable water supplies, sanitation facilities, and safety features such as first aid shelters for every 200-300 fans.
The 10,000 Lakes Festival
10,000 Lakes Festival
The 10,000 Lakes Festival was an annual four-day music festival in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, at the Soo Pass Ranch that was held since 2003. 10KLF is currently on hiatus due to financial losses and was not held in 2010. Its name refers to Minnesota's nickname, "The Land of 10,000 Lakes"...
is an annual three-day music festival in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
-Demographics:As of the official census of 2000, there were 7,348 people, 3,319 households, and 1,845 families permanently residing in the city. The population density was 980.4 people per square mile . There were 3,782 housing units at an average density of 504.6 per square mile...
. Also referred to as '10KLF' (K for thousand, LF for Lakes Festival), the festival began in 2003. Attendance in 2006 was around 18,000.
New age travellers
New Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
who are known as hippies to outsiders, but prefer to call themselves the Peace Convoy. They started the Stonehenge Free Festival
Stonehenge Free Festival
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1972 to 1984 held at Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating on the summer solstice on June 21. The festival was a celebration of various alternative cultures...
in 1974, especially Wally Hope
Wally Hope
Wally Hope was a name by which Phillip Russell was known.Phil was a visionary and a free-thinker, whose life has had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK Underground and beyond...
, until the English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
legally banned the festival, resulting in the Battle of the Beanfield
Battle of the Beanfield
The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on the afternoon of Saturday 1 June 1985 when Wiltshire Police prevented a vehicle convoy of several hundred new age travellers, known as "The Convoy" and referred to in the media as the "Peace Convoy" from setting up at the 11th Stonehenge...
in 1985. With Stonehenge banned as a festival site new age travellers gather at the annual Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...
to see hundreds of live dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other performances. Others argue that it has now become too much of a commercial event, and instead opt for smaller festivals such as Beautiful Days
Beautiful Days (festival)
This article is about the music festival. For other uses, see Beautiful Days .The Beautiful Days is a music festival that takes place in August at Escot Park, Ottery St Mary, Devon...
or The Big Green Gathering
Big Green Gathering
The Big Green Gathering was a festival with an environmental focus which happened during most summers between 1994 and 2007. It was held at various locations in Somerset and Wiltshire in England...
. In 2005, Glastonbury festival covered 900 acres (3.6 km²) and attracted 150,000 people.
In Australia the hippie movement originated at the Aquarius Festival
Aquarius Festival
The Aquarius Festival was a counter-cultural arts and music festival organised by the Australian Union of Students and sponsored by Peter Stuyvesant and held at Nimbin...
held in 1971 in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
and again in Nimbin
Nimbin, New South Wales
Nimbin is a village in the Northern Rivers area of the Australian state of New South Wales, approximately 30 km north of Lismore, 33 km southeast of Kyogle, and 70 km west of Byron Bay....
two years later. Many festival goers stayed in Nimbin, transforming the town and local area. It also resulted in the formation of one of Australia's largest and most successful commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
s.
Between 1976 and 1981, hippie music festivals were held on large farms around Waihi
Waihi
Waihi is a town in Hauraki District in the North Island of New Zealand, especially notable for its history as a gold mine town. It had a population of 4,503 at the 2006 census....
and Waikino
Waikino
Waikino is a small town situated in the North Island of New Zealand nestled in the Southern end of a gorge alongside the Ohinemuri River, between Waihi and the Karangahake Gorge. The Waikino district lies at the base of the ecologically sensitive Coromandel Peninsula with its vast tracts of lush...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
- Aotearoa
Aotearoa
Aotearoa is the most widely known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand. It is used by both Māori and non-Māori, and is becoming increasingly widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.-Translation:The...
. Named Nambassa
Nambassa
Nambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle...
, the festivals focused on peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
, love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, and a balanced lifestyle, featuring workshops and displays advocating alternative lifestyles, clean and sustainable energy
Sustainable energy
Sustainable energy is the provision of energy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Sustainable energy sources include all renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, wave power, geothermal...
, and unadulterated foods. Nambassa is also the tribal name of a trust that has championed sustainable ideas and demonstrated practical counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
and alternative lifestyle
Alternative lifestyle
An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle generally perceived to be outside the cultural norm. Usually, but not always, it implies an affinity or identification within some matching subculture...
methods since the early 1970s.
Many of the bands performing at hippie festivals, and their derivatives, are called jam band
Jam band
-Ambiguity:By the late 1990s use of the term jam band also became ambiguous. An editorial at jamband.com suggested that any band of which a primary band such as Phish has done a cover of be included as jam band. The example was including New York post-punk band Talking Heads after Phish performed...
s, since they play songs that contain long instrumentals similar to the original hippie bands of the 1960s. Psychedelic trance
Psychedelic trance
Psychedelic trance, psytrance or just psy is a form of electronic music characterized by hypnotic arrangements of synthetic rhythms and complex layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. It appeared in the mainstream in 1995 as with reporting of the trend of Goa trance. The genre offers variety...
or "psytrance," a type of techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
music influenced by 60s psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
and hippie culture is also popular among neo-hippies worldwide. Psytrance hippies usually attend separate festivals where only electronic music is played.
External links
- What Did The Hippies Want? by Alicia Bay Laurel, November 19, 2001.