The intertwining of psychedelics with 1960s counterculture and music had profound and unfortunate consequences. While psychedelic substances catalyzed significant social movements and artistic innovation, their irresponsible promotion by the music industry contributed to a climate of mistrust and misinformation. Psychedelics played a significant role in the anti-war movement and civil rights activism of the 1960s, acting as catalysts for radical thinking and social change.
- After a few weeks of complaints from Mexican officials and travelers, the inspections were abandoned as the Nixon Administration declared it had achieved its objective.
- Looking at musical genres and subgenres, multiple hard rock and heavy metal influenced groups have attracted the label of ‘stoner rock’ for frank references to ‘bongs’, ‘pot’, ‘toking’, ‘weed’, et cetera while avoiding mentioning other drugs in the same manner.
- In terms of a specific personal example, social activist and musician Linda McCartney is known for publicly remarked that she considered marijuana “pretty lightweight” while finding harder drugs to be “disgusting”.
- Despite the profound impact psychedelics had on the anti-war movement, civil rights activism and the counterculture ethos epitomized by festivals like Woodstock, their growing popularity also attracted significant scrutiny.
- The Beats dropped out of regular society, dressed in jeans and black leather, smoked marijuana though it was illegal, and listened to jazz.
Cultural influence
Among the many people who flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 1967 was a career criminal and psychopath, Charles Manson (1934–). Intelligent but mentally disturbed, Manson saw himself as the messiah in a religion that combined the hippie fondness for “peace” and “love” with a strange mixture of biblical prophecy and Scientology. In 1968 they settled down at a friend’s ranch outside Hollywood to live communally. Billboard magazine reported in November 1970 that “MGM Records president Mike Curb has dropped 18 acts who, in his opinion, promote and exploit hard drugs through music.” At the time, Curb was reportedly alarmed by the drug-related deaths of several rock stars. The Nixon Administration, meanwhile, initiated “Operation Intercept,” a surprise anti-drug measure announced by the President on September 21, 1969 aimed at disrupting the flow of Mexican marijuana coming into the U.S.
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The countercultural movement and the hippies gradually increased their visibility to the mainstream. The civil rights movement was attracting national attention by the mid-1950s, and the New Left became a factor in American politics in 1962 following the release of its “Port Huron Statement,” a stirring announcement of youthful political idealism. But the hippies did not become a recognizable social group until after 1965, the year in which they were named “hippies” in the San Francisco Chronicle according to John C. McWilliams, author of The 1960s Cultural Revolution. Hippies as a group are hard to define exactly; there were no membership lists and anyone could claim to be a hippie. But once news reports started coming about the cultural revolution going on in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, California, most Americans began to understand what a hippie was.
The crimes were investigated by district attorney Vincent Bugliosi (1934–),who finally revealed the connection 1960s Music and Drugs between Manson, his Family, and the bloody slayings. The investigation and arrests made the Family the subject of much media attention, as Family members shaved their heads and demonstrated outside the courtroom. Manson and eight Family members were eventually convicted of murder in 1971, and the remaining cult disbanded. The media attention on the case seemed to confirm the worst fears of those who believed that the hippie lifestyle of drugs and sex could easily lead to crime. The Pranksters and their increasingly popular Acid Test music and drug festivals found friendly territory in the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury, near Golden Gate Park and San Francisco State University.
- Psychedelic rock, style of rock music popular in the late 1960s that was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called “mind-expanding” drugs such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide; “acid”), and that reflected drug-induced states through the use of feedback, electronics, and intense volume.
- LSD users said that the drug “blew their mind,” and many wanted to constantly return to the altered state that it offered.
- In June, 50,000 people gathered at the Monterey International Pop Festival, south of San Francisco, to groove to the sounds of psychedelic rock.
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At Kesey’s house in La Honda, the friends gathered to experiment with drugs on their own. In addition to their shared rejection of most mainstream values, many hippies shared a similar social background. Most people who joined the counterculture came from families who had money; the hippies were not members of minority groups who suffered from discrimination. In fact, they were the children of privilege, members of the white middle and upper-middle class. For many, their first stop on the road to the counterculture was college, still a luxury of the well-to-do. Their rejection of mainstream values was surprising because they were the very people who were in position to gain the most—in jobs, political access, and money—from the existing system.
The hippies made up the most colorful, eye-catching, and nonpolitical subgroup of a larger group known as thecounterculture. Although some histories use the term counterculture to refer only to the hippies, the counterculture included several distinct groups that criticized developments in American society and advocated for social change in the late 1950s and through the 1960s. One group, called the New Left, consisted of people who were convinced that the American government did not consider the needs of common people and who urged widespread political action by young people, African Americans, and poor people to force the government to address their concerns. The New Left was active in the formation of such groups as the Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
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The program resulted in a near shutdown of border crossings between Mexico and the U.S., as brief inspections were conducted on every vehicle crossing into the U.S. After a few weeks of complaints from Mexican officials and travelers, the inspections were abandoned as the Nixon Administration declared it had achieved its objective. Some months later, in May 1970, the Jefferson Airplane would release a song titled “Mexico,” written and sung by Grace Slick, that was essentially a rant against the Nixon border operation. The song received little radio air play, and was banned in some states, but it did manage to reach No. #102 on the music charts, just under the Billboard Hot 100.
Overall, drug use has been an influential part of contemporary music culture ever since the 60s and it can be considered negative or positive depending on who is asked. Some of the reasons drugs are used are similar to that of the 60s while there are added reasons. Some members of the previous generation had a lifestyle that anticipated the 1960s’ hippie counterculture. In fact, the members of the Beat Generation of the 1950s—also called simply Beats or Beatniks—made some of the same claims as others made in the 1960s’ counterculture. In novels and poems, writers such as Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), and William Burroughs (1914–1997) announced their generation’s dissatisfaction with old-fashioned society.
The favorite band at the Acid Tests was the Grateful Dead, led by guitarist Jerry Garcia (1942–1995). In 1967, historian Arnold Toynbee called hippies “a red warning light for the American way of life,” as quoted in Newsweek. There were ways in which hippies could be considered a real threat to the social order. The most radical of the hippies called for the end of the American political order and for the introduction of anarchy, the absence of government.
Finally, in October of 1967 hippies led by Abbie Hoffman placed flowers in the gun barrels of soldiers guarding the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. This gesture was a powerful symbolic act that seemed to symbolize the victory of love over war. Many others, including the lawmakers who made the drug illegal, worried about the negative effects of LSD. The best-known negative effect of the drug for the user was the “bad trip.” In a “bad trip,” the drug user experiences intense and irrational fear and frightening sensory perceptions, sometimes to the point that the user considers committing suicide to escape. Another danger is the LSD flashback, in which a person re-experiences part of an LSD trip some days or weeks after taking the drug. But in the 1960s it was the way LSD encouraged people to disconnect or “drop out” that scared non-users the most. Parents worried that a young adult taking the drug would immediately “drop out” and join his or her hippie friends living on the street; politiciansfeared that if too many people dropped out and joined the hippies, they could not maintain social order.
In 1961, Grace married Jerry Slick, a film student and later successful cinematographer. Grace Slick, like others raised in the 1940s and 1950s, was very familiar with the “Alice in Wonderland” story, having had it read to her many times as a child. But for Slick, the story’s imagery and descriptions remained vivid into her young adult years, having an influence on her as she began writing songs.
Later in the 1960s, members of the New Left dedicated themselves almost solely to the anti-Vietnam War movement. (See Chapter 6 for a complete discussion of the New Left.) Another broad group called for the extension of equal rights and the end to discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and gender. The most visible expression of this group’s dissent was the civil rights movement (covered at length in Chapter 8), which called for federal legislation to define and enforce improved conditions for African Americans. There were also significant pressures for full civil rights from Hispanic and Native American groups, and later in the decade a women’s rights movement gained strength. Both of these broad groups of dissenters used political means—protests, calls for legislation, and other forms of direct action—to express their dissatisfaction with American culture.