tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/summer-of-love-40358/articlesSummer of Love – The Conversation2018-06-22T11:34:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955672018-06-22T11:34:05Z2018-06-22T11:34:05ZWhite Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground’s monochrome obituary for the love generation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224284/original/file-20180621-137738-xwplh4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C281%2C1291%2C503&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thatspep/6813450964/in/photolist-bo5HAu-gfF4Qu-gfEPxb-7rdXf8-8qn2TY-gfEGjJ-bZKsH9-9wqCT3-6oMDpw-8qiTtR-nSbn1E-kHpHD-7yqfCR-dMg6mC-6s4wN-iKuao-b9qU8r-8tj34G-8tj33y-nbK9aA-8qk6np-8qoXuj-24Y42u8-RBfX6-8sp7aE-8qiTvx-ctc5y3-8sp71w-8qk5WV-8LvSLv-8qoXBC-8qiSgT-8qoXGW-kNMRrc-8qkMpn-8qoY95-fyB6ej-8qn3bW-9Nn2Gk-ocL4g-8qn28q-7heJFj-8qn2SU-8qiSmz-8qk5Mt-6cukvr-8qk6m6-8qoXKd-8qiSnD-8qoX9j">thatspep</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Veteran CNN reporter David Axelrod recently described 1968 as a time of “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/23/opinions/memories-of-1968-chaos-in-black-and-white-axelrod/index.html">chaos in black and white</a>”. After the optimistic psychedelia of the previous year, events took a harsh turn as assassinations, riots and war unfolded on TV screens across the globe. Fifty years on, two music LPs from 1968 especially sum up Axelrod’s stark monochrome vision: The Beatles White Album, and White Light/White Heat, the second album from The Velvet Underground, the New York cult rock group previously managed by pop artist Andy Warhol. But it was White Light/White Heat that best anticipated the end of the hippy dream.</p>
<p>In reality, Warhol’s “management” of the group meant using them for his <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/andy-warhol-exploding-plastic-inevitable">Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI)</a> – a series of multimedia events across America. Featuring film screenings, fetish dancing and light shows, EPI was one of the first “happenings” – and Warhol placed the Velvet Underground at the centre of each event. He famously persuaded them to adopt <a href="https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/nico-the-return-of-the-rocknroll-star-26482989.html">German actress and model Nico</a> as a singer, and funded their first LP, The Velvet Underground and Nico, released the previous year.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224295/original/file-20180621-137714-3vogau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Pop art icon, part-time band manager.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andy_Warhol_by_Jack_Mitchell.jpg">Jack Mitchell</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>White Light/White Heat was a break from both the Warhol circus and the lyrical beauty of their debut record. While their first album contained a few harsh moments (the “rushing” sections of Heroin and the improvised noise of European Son), a coarse, distorted sound totally dominated their second. The stark mood change is explained partly by the chemical and psychological landscape of the time. </p>
<p>The optimistic, fragrant and colourful manner of psychedelic music and art, as expressed in the previous two years (with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper at its zenith), was replaced by paranoia, depression and anxiety. And the tensions between group leaders Lou Reed and John Cale were nearing boiling point, exacerbated by dangerously extreme use of hard drugs.</p>
<h2>Avant garde</h2>
<p>The unapologetic sound, combined with deliberately deathly artwork, makes White Light/White Heat a very confrontational album. While The Beatles went for purity with their minimalist white Richard Hamilton-designed cover, a beautiful black-on-black image of a skull tattoo (Warhol’s final gift to the group) snarls out at you from theirs, and even the supposed “rock” tracks are disruptive and provocative.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224290/original/file-20180621-137728-oc57ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Simple cover, complex sound.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>I Heard Her Call My Name contains, according to rock magazine Crawdaddy’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=C-Ne8rSuNRoC&pg=PT150&lpg=PT150&dq=Wayne+McGuire,+one+of+the+most+highly-charged+moments+ever+heard+in+music&source=bl&ots=plYGVnPDh3&sig=t4N-OgTkC_xzQsLlmbq8z6F8lo8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY5oyij-XbAhUjDcAKHT6ZDYgQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Wayne%20McGuire%2C%20one%20of%20the%20most%20highly-charged%20moments%20ever%20heard%20in%20music&f=false">Wayne McGuire</a>, “one of the most highly-charged moments ever heard in music” and features some of the most extreme guitar soloing of all time. Guitar greats such as Robbie Robertson would queue around the block to see Reed play, only to be disappointed by his perceived lack of “technique”.</p>
<p>On title track White Light/White Heat, a crunching bass cuts through a wall of distorted guitars, emerging at the end of the song as the sole survivor, while Moe Tucker’s drums are reduced to a swirling, crashing noise.</p>
<p>Other tracks are revolutionary in a different way – by blending experimental rock with the spoken word. In The Gift, a groove the band jammed to in live shows plays under a short story written by Reed at university, in which a man mails himself to his estranged girlfriend in an attempt to win her back. As you might expect, the ending is bleak, comic, and straight out of a Shirley Jackson novel.</p>
<p>Lady Godiva’s Operation is a disturbing, aural anaesthetic. The lyrics tell the legend of the famously naked Godiva, re-imagined as a cosmetic surgery procedure. Another groovy backtrack is augmented with a slowing pulse, deep breathing and sickening shudders straight out of a low-budget horror film. Both tracks are narrated by Cale – his Welsh lilt adding an extra dimension of strangeness.</p>
<h2>Sister Ray said</h2>
<p>But the most famous track on the album is Sister Ray – a raucous, 17-minute symphony of noise beneath another grim tale of New York’s underbelly. Here the Velvet Underground emulate the improvisation of free-jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor with, in the <a href="http://doczz.net/doc/6473335/the-seminal-velvet-underground-by-jim-derogatis-i.-introd...">words of Reed</a>, “a rock n’ roll feeling”. It is the epitome of the group’s art.</p>
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<p>While other Velvet Underground LPs are now feted and revered, White Light/White Heat remains an enigma. It was virtually ignored on its release in June 1968, shunted aside, as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MhpKDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT165&lpg=PT165&dq=lester+bangs+velvet+underground+by+safer,+flashier+music+which+eventually+proved+so+stereotyped&source=bl&ots=gm6RUnIySM&sig=57HMg7EYXIPAw8w-KowSgst2Rl0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij-56GkOXbAhUIXMAKHTvLBvIQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=lester%20bangs%20velvet%20underground%20by%20safer%2C%20flashier%20music%20which%20eventually%20proved%20so%20stereotyped&f=false">Lester Bangs put it</a>, “by safer, flashier music which eventually proved so stereotyped”. But with its harsh sound, strange technical effects, spoken word elements, improvisation and dreadfully poor production, it’s a unique entrant in the pantheon of classic rock.</p>
<p>It became a catalyst for punk rock and New York’s subsequent <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2014/03/10/a-beginners-guide-to-no-wave/">“no-wave” movement</a>. But imitators always lacked the group’s profound engagement with, and ability to combine, avant-garde aesthetics, literary modes of expression, experimental art and primitive elements of early rock and roll. Copycats never had the courage to go as far as Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker did on that second LP, and any future musician who does so will be brave indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Goodall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the happy psychedelia of the Summer of Love, the Velvet’s second album seemed to usher in a new, darker era in rock musicMark Goodall, Head of Film and Media, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/879922017-12-01T00:41:36Z2017-12-01T00:41:36ZCharles Manson and the perversion of the American dream<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196404/original/file-20171126-21805-ao52xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charles Manson leaves a Los Angeles courtroom in March 1970.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Californi-/296e3fb8237b4c4c8d9987cf367d284a/94/0">George Brich/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Charles Manson died in November 2017, his name carried weight even among those who weren’t alive when he committed his crimes.</p>
<p>For decades, Manson was the symbol of evil, a real-life boogeyman who loomed as the American conception of wickedness incarnate. His death ended 48 years of imprisonment for a series of murders in August 1969, some of which he committed, most of which he ordered.</p>
<p>But his death also reminds us of Manson’s obsessive longing to make a name for himself. As I was researching <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Had-Ocean-Mayhem-Angeles/dp/1613734913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509465732&sr=8-1&keywords=everybody+had+an+ocean">my book on Los Angeles in the 1960s</a>, I was struck by how fame – more than art, more than religion, more than money – motivated Manson as he careened from prison, to musician, to murder. In his way, he was an early adopter of something that permeates American culture today.</p>
<h2>Becoming something out of nothing</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=Manson+in+His+Own+Words">According to Charles Manson</a>, when he was a boy, his family didn’t pay him much attention: His mother, a prostitute and small-time thief, once traded him for a pitcher of beer. </p>
<p>Manson was jailed for the first time at 13, for burglary. By the time he was in his early 30s, he’d already spent half his life behind bars.</p>
<p>As he was being released from California’s Terminal Island prison in 1967, he panicked and asked the jailer not to turn him out into the world. The guard laughed, but Manson was serious. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Had-Ocean-Mayhem-Angeles/dp/1613734913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509465732&sr=8-1&keywords=everybody+had+an+ocean">Prison was the only real home he’d known</a>.</p>
<p>When the lifelong con man hit the streets, much had changed since 1960, the year he had last tasted freedom. It was the <a href="http://www.the60sofficialsite.com/Summer_of_Love.html">Summer of Love</a>, and Manson drifted to San Francisco, the epicenter of America’s cultural revolution. </p>
<p>There he found docile flower children – easy marks, even for an inept crook. He adopted the hirsute look of the tribe, recycled some of the Scientology babble he’d picked up in the joint and started building a “family” of followers drunk on his flattery. He preyed on lost and damaged young women – wounded birds – and made them think they were beautiful, as long as they followed him.</p>
<p>He sought fame. He deserved fame, he reasoned, and he needed to make the world notice him. Music would be his vehicle: He knew a few chords and could reasonably mimic the peace, love and flowers ethos in his lyrics. </p>
<p>“His followers had no idea that Charlie was obsessed with becoming famous,” biographer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/books/review/manson-a-biography-by-jeff-guinn.html">Jeff Guinn</a> wrote. “He told them that his goal, his mission, really, was to teach the world a better way to live through his songs.”</p>
<p>He brought his “family” of damaged goods to Los Angeles and sent his women to find people who could help him in his quest. While hitchhiking one day, a couple of the girls found an easy mark: the big-hearted, generous and sex-obsessed drummer for the Beach Boys, <a href="http://www.williammckeen.com/an-excerpt-from-everybody-had-an-ocean/">Dennis Wilson</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Had-Ocean-Mayhem-Angeles/dp/1613734913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509465732&sr=8-1&keywords=everybody+had+an+ocean">He picked them up</a>, took them home for milk, cookies and sex, then left for a recording session. When Dennis returned home in the middle of the night, the girls were still there, along with Charles Manson and 15 other young women, all mostly nude. For a sex junkie like Dennis, it was paradise. He bragged about his nubile roommates to his rock star pals, and by the end of 1968, Britain’s Record Mirror <a href="http://www.smileysmile.net/uncanny/index.php/dennis-wilson-i-live-with-17-girls">published a profile</a> titled “Dennis Wilson: I Live With 17 Girls.”</p>
<h2>Grasping at coattails</h2>
<p>Manson saw Dennis – and his Beach Boy brothers Brian and Carl – as his entrée to the music business and international fame. Although the group’s star was dimming by the late ‘60s – they were no longer the hip boy band they had once been – it was at least a foot in the music industry’s door. Through his time as Dennis Wilson’s roommate, Manson had gotten to know record producer Terry Melcher, Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, Neil Young and Frank Zappa. </p>
<p>Convinced he would make Manson – whom he called the Wizard – into a star, Dennis urged his brothers to record the fledgling singer at the Beach Boys studio in Brian Wilson’s home. Wherever Manson went, of course, his “family” followed. Marilyn Wilson, married to Brian at the time, had the bathrooms fumigated after every session, fearing the filthy girls were spreading disease. (And they were, though not the kind that showed up on toilet seats. Dennis ended up footing, for the Manson women, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beach-boys-a-california-saga-part-ii-19711111">what was jokingly referred to</a> as the largest gonorrhea bill in history.)</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Beach Boys pictured in November 1966. Clockwise from left: Dennis Wilson, Alan Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love and Carl Wilson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-International-News-Ente-/6cebe0432e3243d999c5f65a92f1aa08/8/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>After Dennis’s efforts bore no fruit, Manson glommed onto Melcher, who had produced the Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Melcher and Wilson introduced Manson to Los Angeles’s music society, largely through lavish parties at the estate on Cielo Drive that Melcher shared with actress Candace Bergen. At Cass Elliot’s parties, Manson played whirling dervish on the dance floor, entertaining all with his spastic monkey moves. </p>
<p>When Neil Young heard Manson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpx4ODP35VQ&list=PLj2l6Lgg-kToX1vJaO881hGiUmqSzJ9n_">sing his compositions</a> during a drop-in at Dennis Wilson’s house, he called Mo Ostin, president of Warner-Reprise Records, to urge the boss to give the guy a listen. Young warned him that Manson was a little out there and spewed songs more than sang him. But still, Young insisted there was something there.</p>
<p>And there was. Manson’s voice was good enough that he had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/style/charles-manson-annoying-hipster.html">a reasonable expectation of getting a recording contract</a>. His original compositions were good enough to be recorded: The Beach Boys adapted one of his songs into something called “Never Learn Not to Love,” which they performed on the supremely wholesome “Mike Douglas Show.” </p>
<p>Manson’s lyrics, unfortunately, were mostly gibberish, bad enough to justify Ostin’s rejection and for Melcher to tell Manson he couldn’t get him the record contract he so desperately wanted.</p>
<p>But it was too late to stop now. He had drunk from the trough of fame. He mingled with rock stars and thought he was entitled to be one. </p>
<h2>Manson’s American dream</h2>
<p>The American dream used to be described thus: Come to America with nothing and, with the great freedoms and opportunity offered by the country, exit life with prosperity. It has also been described as simply the ideal of freedom – of living in a free and robust society, with nothing to impede people but an open road.</p>
<p>At some point, this changed. In the post-war world of abundant leisure and instant gratification, an ethos of opportunity, hard work and the gradual accumulation of wealth fell away, replaced by a longing for instant fame and fortune. Perhaps it was a result of the conspicuous wealth so visible on the new medium of television. Maybe these new celebrities burned so much brighter because their images slipped through the cathode ray into millions of American homes, turning the house into the new movie theater. </p>
<p>Either way, for millions today, the American dream is simply <a href="https://theconversation.com/inspired-by-kim-kardashian-a-feverish-legion-of-followers-struggle-to-achieve-online-fame-51534">the delirious pursuit of fame</a>. Ask a schoolchild what he wants and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/yalda-t-uhls/kids-want-fame_b_1201935.html">many will say to be famous</a> – by any means necessary. </p>
<p>Charles Manson was an early avatar for this new concept of the American dream. He sought fame at any cost. He tried to achieve celebrity through music and, when he didn’t reach that goal, he turned to crime. Sure, he would spend 61 of his 83 years in prison. But the cameras rolled, the papers were printed, the books were sold. No one would ever forget his name.</p>
<p>In the summer of 1969, actress Sharon Tate and some houseguests were living in a <a href="http://cielodrive.com/10050-cielo-drive.php">Cielo Drive</a> home recently vacated by Terry Melcher and Candace Bergen. Manson didn’t send his murderous family for Melcher and Bergen – he knew they had moved. Instead, he wanted to frighten Melcher and other members of the rock’n’roll elite. The following night’s murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca was likewise intended to breed hysteria. It worked.</p>
<p>Manson achieved his goal, becoming so famous that his name replaced those of his victims. The crimes became known as the Manson murders.</p>
<p>Look to the media today to see Manson’s ideological descendants, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/fashion/jake-paul-team-10-youtube.html">thirsting for fame</a>. Some don’t just risk humiliation, they court it. Remember the early rounds of “American Idol” with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5eP0wWLQY">jarringly dreadful performances</a> giving the reprehensible “singers” their 15 seconds of fame? </p>
<p>Other, more deadly offspring, could be the boys who shoot up schools and coffee shops and prayer-group meetings. They might be dead, they might have left a trail of destruction in their wake and they aren’t mourned. But like Manson, they are remembered. That’s certainly more than most failed con men can claim.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Manson did end up achieving his goal. Perhaps the best way to honor his victims is to forget his name.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William McKeen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Desperate to achieve fame by any means necessary, Manson was ahead of his time: Today, the delirious pursuit of fame has gone mainstream.William McKeen, Professor and Chair, Department of Journalism, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824212017-09-15T10:21:55Z2017-09-15T10:21:55Z‘Jesus People’ – a movement born from the ‘Summer of Love’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186063/original/file-20170914-8998-1ybmeg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A crowd at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco celebrates day one of the 'Summer of Love.'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the 50th anniversary of the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/summer-of-love/">“Summer of Love.”</a> Popular culture remembers the tens of thousands of joyous young <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/american-hippies?format=PB#iBsstwp2Tarvf3kb.97">hippies</a> that descended upon San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district to celebrate personal expression, drug experimentation and easy sexuality. </p>
<p>What’s less known and what I discovered <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">in my own research</a> is that Haight-Ashbury also proved to be fertile ground for a startling new combination of the hippie style with conservative evangelical Christianity – the “Jesus People.” </p>
<h2>How it started</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186062/original/file-20170914-8980-rtjoau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Jesus Movement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.hollywoodfreepaper.org/gallery.php">2017 The Hollywood Free Paper</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The reasons behind the rise of the hippie movement were complex: A rejection of conformity and materialism in American culture and the emergence of a drug culture <a href="http://utpress.org/title/the-hippies-and-american-values/">both played a part</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=UHIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Reference&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=true&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=UHIC%3AWHIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CCX3441300020&source=Bookmark&u=j071909004&jsid=70771243f9f31aa0ce39bf5531cc7b7a">1960s counterculture</a> also contained a decidedly spiritual dimension that attracted a great deal of hippie interest. The movement incorporated meditation, the occult, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-land-looks-after-us-9780195145861?cc=us&lang=en&">Native American spirituality</a> and Eastern forms of religion such as Zen Buddhism and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (“the <a href="http://d6.krishna.com/history-hare-krishna-movement-0">Hare Krishnas</a>”). </p>
<p>However, as writer and observer Charles Perry pointed out in his book <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Haight_Ashbury.html?id=2OcDAQAAIAAJ">“The Haight-Ashbury: A History,”</a> the Summer of Love brought with it a number of problems including overcrowding, crime, sexually transmitted diseases and bad drug trips. Every night thousands of penniless young people would “crash” in whatever space they could find or simply sleep on the streets. </p>
<p>The problems became so bad that the leading hippie paper, “The Oracle,” advised anyone interested in coming to San Francisco to forget (in the words of a hit record from that year) the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKN5h6RrMHo">“flowers in their hair” </a> in favor of bringing along <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-movement-and-the-sixties-9780195104578?cc=us&lang=en&">a sleeping bag, warm clothes and money</a>. </p>
<p>As many became disillusioned with life in Haight-Ashbury, a new set of hippie “Jesus freak” evangelists appeared in the Bay Area, urging people to follow Jesus Christ and forsake drugs and promiscuous sex. Key to this new presence on the streets was Ted Wise, a drug-using sailmaker, who in late 1965 was <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_House_of_Acts.html?id=06woAAAAYAAJ">“saved” after one of his numerous LSD trips</a>. </p>
<p>Along with his wife Elizabeth and several other hip couples, Wise began attending a local Baptist church. </p>
<p>The unconventional ways of these new believers antagonized many in the church. Wise and his group kept long hair, followed eccentric fashion and showed <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">dissatisfaction with middle-class Christianity</a>. One time Wise made a presentation on the music of <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/bob-dylan/biography">Bob Dylan</a> during a Wednesday night prayer meeting. But, as I found in my research, somehow, the hippies and the church people from the “establishment” <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">managed to ride out their differences</a>.</p>
<h2>The ‘Street Christians’</h2>
<p>Drawn by nationwide publicity, somewhere between <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZEUfAQAAIAAJ&q=Charles+Perry+Haight-+Ashbury&dq=Charles+Perry+Haight-+Ashbury&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigxZWHpKXWAhUj4IMKHUxNBY8Q6AEIKDAA">75,000 and 100,000 youth</a> came to Haight-Ashbury during the spring and early summer of 1967. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1226768/pdf/amjphnation00053-0070.pdf">Many became homeless, hungry and sick</a>, and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">Wise urged Pastor John MacDonald to do something</a> to help.</p>
<p>As MacDonald relates in his 1970 book “House of Acts,” he decided to tour San Francisco with Wise. He saw the packed streets and found that Wise “by dress and appearance” belonged and had “remarkable rapport” with the young people who had come to San Francisco that <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=06woAAAAYAAJ&q=John+MacDonald+House+of+Acts&dq=John+MacDonald+House+of+Acts&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjywvyn-KTWAhVk54MKHRw2CXMQ6AEIKDAA">he “clearly did not.</a>” MacDonald agreed that the need was great and that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">something had to be done</a>. </p>
<p>With the assistance of several fellow pastors in the Bay Area, MacDonald helped Wise and his friends establish a coffeehouse called <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">“The Living Room,” a block north of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury</a>. </p>
<p>Over the next year and a half, thousands of runaway youth and hippie characters (including a man named <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/charles-manson-the-incredible-story-of-the-most-dangerous-man-alive-19700625">Charles Manson</a> later convicted for mass murders) came into the mission to talk with what MacDonald referred to as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=06woAAAAYAAJ&q">the “Street Christians.</a>” Many others came simply to sip soup and coffee and eat donated doughnuts. </p>
<h2>Spread of the movement</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, others in the Bay Area such as Kent Philpott, a Baptist seminary student, and his hippie friend David Hoyt also began to preach on the streets. </p>
<p>By late 1968 they had opened a shelter called <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">“The Soul Inn”</a> in the basement of a small Baptist church in the city’s adjacent Richmond district. </p>
<p>Wise and his friends established a Christian commune in Novato, while Philpott and Hoyt (with the help of the pastors who had assisted The Living Room) put together <a href="http://www.earthenvesseljournal.com/issue04+/articles/Hoyt/Hoyt_13.html">a string of communes</a> in San Rafael, Walnut Creek and other Bay Area communities.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186058/original/file-20170914-8998-1ie6qdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Milwaukee Jesus People.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo.</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>By early 1969 this new-style interaction between hippie Christians and evangelical religion (particularly its Pentecostal branch) was happening elsewhere in the country in cities like Seattle, Detroit and Ft. Lauderdale. Hippies interacted with clergy and laypeople from the churches and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">committed themselves to following Jesus</a>. </p>
<p>One particularly successful commune outside Eugene, Oregon, <a href="https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/shiloh-youth-revival-centers/">“Shiloh,”</a> quickly grew to well over a hundred members. It acquired farms, and sent evangelistic teams across the United States in the 1970s to open <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">new Shiloh communal houses</a>. </p>
<p>But undoubtedly <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">the hotbed of the movement was farther to the south near Los Angeles</a>. There the Jesus People began to attract not only hardcore hippies from the drug culture and the streets but swarms of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=dYMRAQAAIAAJ&q">teenagers from youth groups</a> belonging to the region’s churches. </p>
<p>Hundreds of independent communal homes, coffeehouses and Christian “fellowships” sprang up from San Diego in the south to Santa Barbara in the north <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">between 1969 and the early 1970s</a>. </p>
<p>Eventually, the presence of the Jesus People attracted national publicity. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">Coffeehouses</a> with names like “The Belly of the Whale” and “The Upper Room” appeared from coast to coast. <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/moves/altnews_intro.shtml">Underground</a> “Jesus papers,” like Los Angeles’ <a href="http://www.hollywoodfreepaper.org/portal.php?id=3">“Hollywood Free Paper”</a> and Chicago’s “Cornerstone,” helped carry the message onto the streets. </p>
<p>Photos of ocean baptisms involving hundreds of enthusiastic teenagers being plunged beneath the waves as a sign of their dedication to “follow the Lord” became a familiar sight. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hw8TbEaAceE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>By 1971, the movement had become the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19710621,00.html">religious story of the year</a>, capturing the cover of Time magazine.</p>
<h2>A hip Christianity</h2>
<p>One of the things that attracted youth to the Jesus People was their enthusiastic use of folk, pop and rock music. While many conservative churches had traditionally <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/revive-us-again-9780195129076?cc=us&lang=en&">frowned on “worldly entertainments,”</a> the Jesus freaks embraced their generation’s musical tastes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186064/original/file-20170914-9038-1pil33w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Agape Band.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.hollywoodfreepaper.org/gallery.php">2017 The Hollywood Free Paper</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>Whether singing simple choruses in their gatherings, listening to guitar-strumming artists in coffeehouses or sponsoring full-blown Christian rock concerts, music was a central feature of Jesus People life. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">Jesus music festivals</a> sprang up across the country in the 1970s. </p>
<p>One day-long festival in Dallas in June 1972, sponsored by the evangelical organization Campus Crusade for Christ (<a href="https://www.cru.org/">“Cru”</a> today), attracted as many as <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/photos/2013/06/17/today-in-dallas-photo-history-1972-150000-attend-eplo-72s-jesus-music-festival">150,000 people</a>. </p>
<h2>A lasting impact</h2>
<p>By the late 1970s, however, the Jesus People had run out of steam. The hippie style grew less popular among teens. <a href="http://www.dacapopress.com/book/the-seventies/9780306811265">New styles of music and fashion came into vogue</a>, and the Jesus People themselves grew older and moved on with their lives. But their impact lived on in a number of ways. </p>
<p>The success of the Jesus People and their sometimes grudging acceptance by older church members marked a major change in <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Rapture-Ready!/Daniel-Radosh/9781416593751">evangelical Christians’ attitudes toward popular culture</a>. </p>
<p>The rock-fueled enthusiasm of the Jesus People for upbeat music created a <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469606873/no-sympathy-for-the-devil/">“Contemporary Christian Music”</a> industry and triggered <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1999/july12/9t8028.html">controversial change in many churches’ worship styles and music</a>. As the years passed, hymns, choirs and organs were <a href="http://www.abingdonpress.com/product/9781426795138#.WbqXhNG1u1s">increasingly replaced</a> in many churches with “praise choruses,” “worship bands” and electric guitars. </p>
<p>The two largest Christian groups to emerge in late 20th-century America, the Calvary Chapel “fellowship of churches” and the Vineyard denomination, trace their roots to the Jesus People movement. Characterized by upbeat music, <a href="http://www.dacapopress.com/book//9780201489316">Pentecostal</a> demonstrations of spiritual gifts and an informal “come-as-you-are” vibe, these two groups are today the <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520218116">largest institutional evidence to come out of the movement</a>. </p>
<p>Fifty years after the Summer of Love, the Jesus People remain one of its lingering ironies. It was because of the Jesus People movement that numerous baby boomers remained anchored to conservative evangelical churches well <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gods-forever-family-9780195326451?q=God%27s%20Forever%20Family&lang=en&cc=us">into the 21st century</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larry Eskridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the Summer of Love ran into a number of problems, a new set of hippie ‘Jesus freak’ evangelists appeared in the Bay Area.Larry Eskridge, Instructor in HIstory, Wheaton College (Illinois)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/772122017-07-06T12:47:16Z2017-07-06T12:47:16ZThe Summer of Love was more than hippies and LSD – it was the start of modern individualism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177056/original/file-20170706-26451-95i8qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Heading to San Francisco.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pretty-young-hippie-woman-driving-her-428532601?src=library">Rishiken/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Something remarkable happened <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-new-age-in-the-modern-west-9781350036819/">to the youth of the Western world</a> 50 years ago. In the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/may/21/golden-daze-50-years-on-from-summer-of-love-san-francisco-festivals">summer of 1967</a> a huge number of American teenagers – nobody knows exactly how many, but some estimate between 100,000 and 200,000 – escaped what they saw as their suburban prisons and made for the city district of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.</p>
<p>We now look back on the “Summer of Love” – the name originated at a meeting of counter-cultural leaders in the spring – as a lost golden age of bliss, excitement and adventure; a paradise which can never be recreated. But in actual fact, this centre-piece of the 60s still looms large over popular culture and social mores today.</p>
<p>Drawing on utopian traditions which <a href="http://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300136159/republic-mind-and-spirit">date back to the founding fathers</a>, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/what-inspired-the-summer-of-love/528675/">fuelled by</a> the euphoric and hallucinatory powers of marijuana and LSD, the summer of 1967 saw an extraordinary culture rise in a remarkably short space of time. </p>
<p>There was a creative explosion in the arts, music and fashion combined with a belief that the world could be born anew. Characterised by the vivid, flowing colours of psychedelic art, and a belief that love was the solution to all problems, hippy culture set out to transform the world by rejecting every social, political, economic and aesthetic feature of mainstream Western society. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/aug/21/san-francisco-exhibition-victoria-albert-revolution-silicon-valley">hippy revolution</a> became a media sensation with the release of Scott Mackenzie’s song, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/aug/20/scott-mckenzie-san-francisco-anthem">San Francisco</a>”, in May 1967, which was a huge hit in the US and much of Europe.</p>
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<p>The story goes that a paradise of peace and love prevailed in San Francisco for much of the year, but came sadly unstuck very soon after. This new Garden of Eden was destroyed progressively by the sheer numbers of teenagers who descended on Haight-Ashbury. One leading figure described the resulting chaos as a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/may/21/golden-daze-50-years-on-from-summer-of-love-san-francisco-festivals">zoo</a>”.</p>
<p>Commercialisation of the hippie dream compounded the problem and disillusion set in. The twin shock of the <a href="https://singout.org/2015/08/10/death-valley-69-charles-manson-murdered-60s-part-one/3/">Manson murders</a> in August 1969, and the brutal killing by Hells Angels of an audience member at the <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-altamont-festival-brings-the-1960s-to-a-violent-end">Rolling Stones concert at Altamont</a> a few months later, provided the epitaph to an era.</p>
<p>According to this version, the “survivors” renounced psychedelia, abandoned the vain belief that love would solve everything and knuckled down to political action – gay liberation, second wave feminism and environmentalism. Or they found gurus and became new agers. The 60s were sealed off, preserved in aspic as a lost golden age, a time of innocence. It was over, finished, forbidden to anyone who wasn’t there.</p>
<p>However, like all golden age stories, this narrative is largely bogus.</p>
<h2>Happy together</h2>
<p>Criticism of the Summer of Love mythology dates back to 1967 itself, to the <a href="http://www.diggers.org/top_entry.htm">Diggers</a> – named after the <a href="http://www.diggers.org/english_diggers.htm">English radicals of 1649-50</a>. This guerrilla street theatre group regarded the hippy phenomenon as a media creation, a distraction from the true attempt to build a new and more just society. They denounced the irresponsible preaching of psychedelic guru <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPSzTBP5PAU">Timothy Leary</a>, who urged teenagers to take LSD and renounce work and education, and attacked the catchy nonsense of MacKenzie’s song as a marketing ploy.</p>
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<p>The truth is that like all apparently simple cultural phenomena, the Summer of Love was complex. There was a deep tension between the Diggers’ back-to-basics idealistic communism, the commercialism of hippy capitalists selling bells and beads, the advocates of psychedelic transformation, and the politicos of the <a href="http://www.eiu.edu/historia/ruhaak%202003.pdf">new left based in Berkeley, California</a>.</p>
<p>The single issue all these groups opposed was <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-protests">American involvement in Vietnam</a>. When the war came to an end with the Paris peace accord in 1973, there was no longer a binding external enemy. The illusion of a single, principled counterculture vanished.</p>
<h2>Flowers in your hair</h2>
<p>In reality, there was no single “60s”, no golden age, and nothing to come to an end. Instead there were three <a href="http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405131995_chunk_g978140513199525_ss4-1">taste cultures</a> that all coincided, and started to change society’s values. </p>
<p>The first of these cultures was based in fashion and music. <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-peacock-revolution-1960s-menswear">Peacock styles for men</a> – long hair and bright colours – and women in mini-skirts or flowing hippy garb. The second group were political revolutionaries, post and neo-Marxists for whom the transformation of socio-economic conditions was the pressing priority. The third group believed in inner transformation and liberation achieved through marijuana and LSD. </p>
<p>Though the three groups’ priorities were fundamentally different, they shared a belief that the past was old and stale, along with a commitment to unfettered individualism. There were, of course, still significant overlaps, and when psychedelic culture met the radical left, notions of protest as play and performance took centre stage.</p>
<p>Half a century on from the height of the Summer of Love, all three taste cultures have survived, but with a different relevance. Individuality and self-expression in fashion and music has continued unhindered. Traditions of political protest flourish as new targets are found in environmental activism and sexual politics. And new generations of spiritual seekers find inspiration in psychedelic drugs, now also known as entheogens.</p>
<p>Defining the 60s as a single unique period, a lost golden age, seals it off from contemporary experience. The sun may have set on the Summer of Love, but the warmth of its rays are still being felt today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Campion does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The year 1967 isn’t a golden fossil sealed off in time.Nicholas Campion, Associate Professor in Cosmology and Culture, Principal Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and the Performing Arts, University of Wales Trinity Saint DavidLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.