summer of love

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The phrase Summer of Love refers to the summer of 1967 , when the hippie movement in the United States was at its peak. It is often wrongly assumed that the Summer of Love refers to the summer of 1969, when the Woodstock Festival took place.

The expression tried to describe the attitude towards life that prevailed in San Francisco , California , in the summer of 1967. An example of this is the song San Francisco , sung by Scott McKenzie , written by John Phillips , singer of The Mamas and the Papas :

"If you're going to San Francisco,
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
If you come to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there."

– Scott McKenzie : San Francisco, 1967

The phrase Second Summer of Love also refers, primarily in the United Kingdom , to the summers of 1988/1989 and the emergence of acid house music and rave culture.

prehistory

By the early 1960s, a culture had developed in the Bay Area that turned away from contemporary fashions such as beatniks and towards historical models. Victorian clothing and folk music became popular. The Charlatans , in whose environment Janis Joplin moved to San Francisco, are considered formative . Another factor was the culture of the LSD users, as it developed in the form of Acid-Test and the Merry Pranksters around Ken Kesey .

On a joint tour to Virginia City , Nevada in the summer of 1965, The Charlatans and friends The Family Dog invented a style of music and dance that was later described as psychedelic . In the winter of 1965/1966, the first large, multi-day parties and festivals were held in San Francisco, where the hitherto scattered supporters met, formed a common subculture and gained strength. The graphic artist Wes Wilson invented graphic forms for posters for these parties, from which Psychedelic Art arose. At the parties musicians played together for the first time, who then founded the band Jefferson Airplane .

The year 1966 shaped the culture. A revival of anarchism emerged in protest against the Vietnam War . The Black Panther Party was born of the African American civil rights movement . There were offshoots of the culture in other cities, such as New York , where the musical Hair originated and a similar subculture flourished in the East Village . In October 1966, an open-air love-pageant rally was held in Haight-Ashbury , where thousands of young people gathered.

course

This “summer” began with Human Be-In , a happening that took place in Golden Gate Park on January 14th and was prompted by the prohibition of LSD. Among those in attendance were Timothy Leary , Allen Ginsberg , and Jefferson Airplane .

Attracted by the philosophy and ideals of the hippie movement, thousands of young people from all over the United States flocked to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco to take part - partly because of this, 1967 is considered the "high point of the hippie movement".

Many of the Victorian houses in the Haight-Ashbury district became open flat-sharing communities, some with an artistic ( Family Dog ) or musical ( Grateful Dead ) orientation. The Diggers, an action group whose ethic "Free. Free everything" was distributed food in free stores . They named themselves after the Diggers , a 17th-century English dissident group , and the Free Stores are the models for today 's free stores .

Since many doctors refused to treat hippies and they often did not have the money to do so, the first Free Clinic was opened on June 7, 1967. Free not only meant 'free of charge', but also 'unbureaucratic' and 'free of prejudice'. Originally, the operators had expected financial support from the San Francisco Health Department , but that did not happen. A benefit concert organized by Bill Graham featuring the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin , The Charlatans and others. ensured financial survival.

The cultural highlight of the Summer of Love was the Monterey International Pop Festival from June 16-18, 1967. The Death of a Hippie event on October 6, 1967 can be seen as the end of the Summer of Love , when a hippie was symbolically buried would. The organizers protested against the fact that people - caused by the media - only imitated being hippies and no longer felt it.

"Don't do it because someone else is doing it. Do it because that's how you feel about it."

Exactly one year earlier, LSD had been declared illegal.

English musician Eric Burdon released San Franciscan Nights (on the LP Winds of Change ) in 1967, his love letter to late 1960s San Francisco, and a year later Monterey (on the LP The Twain Shall Meet ), a memoir of Monterey pop festival.

literature

itemizations

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, this chapter is based on: Sheila Weller: Suddenly That Summer. In: Vanity Fair , June 2012
  2. ↑ http://www.diggers.org/history.htm
  3. ↑ Derek Taylor : It was twenty years ago Today p. 181, 1987 Bantam Press, ISBN 0-593-01269-0 .
  4. ↑ Geo Special : San Francisco 1988, ISBN 3-570-02824-0
  5. ↑ Derek Taylor : It was twenty years ago Today p. 243, 1987 Bantam Press, ISBN 0-593-01269-0