Reach out if you have questions, or to see how you can support the Owsley Stanley Foundation. Along with other recognition of your generous contribution, if the recording you select is viable for future release by OSF, you will receive a liner note credit. His father was a government attorney. In 1959, the poet Allen Ginsberg took LSD for the first time, at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. The pot vessel was made by LSD pioneer Owsley Stanley for the Grateful Dead frontman. A year later, Mario Savio made his historic Free Speech Movement address from atop a police car to student protesters gathered outside Sproul Hall. The "Save The Music!" The Owsley Stanley Foundation is a 501c (3) non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of "Bear's Sonic Journals," Owsley's archive of more than 1,300 live concert soundboard recordings from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, including recordings by Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Fleetwood Mac . It was brilliant and it worked, McNally says. * John Perry Barlow, who has been there, describes the enclave as something out of Lord Jim, but the main living area is rather Victorian, handsomely carpeted, lots of books around, nice furniture and no walls. Owsley generates all his own power through a solar and wind system he built himself and collects rainwater he stores in two large tanks. In this new three-part series, you and I will explore the life and times of Owsley Stanley, who early on financed the Grateful Dead with money he made as a "cosmic chemist" and was instrumental in the design of the band's legendary "Wall of Sound" stage system. He died in a car accident in Australia (where he had taken citizenship in 1996) on March 12, 2011. Stanley moved to Australia in 1982, and frequently returned to the United States to sell his jewelry (which commanded high prices) on Grateful Dead tours. He died in a car crash last week in . It's made of solid bronze, It's made of solid bronze, there were also some made in the mid 90's that were solid silver. As much of his portfolio had been delegated to as many as four sound engineers during his prison sentence, he struggled to regain his past influence among the band and support staff. The Idol: How HBOs Next Euphoria Became Twisted Torture Porn. The reason is that Im a total carnivore. How did the court musician of the Maharaja, a man called the "Bach of India," and "perhaps the greatest musician in the world" find himself playing to a psychedelic crowd at the Family Dog, a countercultural beacon on the edge of Western civilization, with Owsley mixing the sound? After experiencing chest pains seven years ago, Owsley underwent surgery to correct a ninety percent blockage in an artery in his heart that dated back to his teenage years. [5][7][8], Stanley was the scion of a political family from Kentucky. Owsley adored his grandfather, but his relationship with his parents was difficult. [31], Notwithstanding his tour activities, Stanley made his first public appearance in decades at the Australian ethnobotanical conference Entheogenesis Australis in 2009, giving three talks during his time in Melbourne. Owsley acid was named for its creator, Owsley Stanley, who was the first person in the United States to mass produce high-quality LSD.In the 1960s, after he had served 18 months in the U.S. Air . Without his technical innovations he was one of the first people to mix concerts live and in stereo the band might never have emerged from the San Francisco scene. Owsley Stanley, also known as Bear, was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the counterculture of the 19. The top of the circle was orange, and the bottom blue. He participated in a low carb forum where he shared his experience with and knowledge about eating a diet comprised entirely of animal foods. February 11, 13, & 14, 1970, The Boarding House, May 1 May 4, 1974Seven CD Set. Check out our owsley stanley belt buckles selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. "[1], During his time as the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, Stanley started what became the long-term practice of recording the Dead while they rehearsed and performed. The Bear. The universe is a creation entirely within a being that is outside time and space, and dreaming what we are. And we were just musicians in this house, and we were guinea-pigging more or less continually. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. This article appeared in the July 12-27, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone. They had no skills at it. A thought occurred to me: if the orange were red and the bar across were a lightning bolt cutting across at an angle, then we would have a very nice, unique and highly identifiable mark to put on the equipment. Our staff is entirely comprised of volunteers, and many of the support services necessary to run the organization have been donated by generous contributors that believe in the mission to save this music before it is lost forever. From the start, Owsley felt that his state of mind while he was making acid would affect the nature of the product. We want to hear it. Thomas, who died in 1993, sold it to the band as a letterhead for $250, meaning that neither he nor Owsley ever saw a dime from all those Deadhead stickers on the rear bumpers of Volkswagen buses. The thing about Owsley, Townshend said, is that when he gave you something, he would take it too. [18] Along with his close friend Bob Thomas, Stanley designed the band's iconic 'Steal Your Face' lightning bolt-skull logo. Owsley Stanley. Owsley Stanley Foundation Merch Mountain Store; OSF Doc Watson 100 Year Anniversary Tee. $30.00. Wherever he goes, he carries an astonishing aluminum briefcase bedecked with wrinkled rock & roll stickers and ancient Grateful Dead backstage passes stuffed to the brim with precious scraps of platinum and gold from which he has fashioned his jewelry, a jewelers loup so his pieces can be viewed at close range on black felt jewelers boards, a small metric scale, a portable memory drive, numerous rolls of tape and a plethora of tiny plastic film containers. There are titles here never heard before [on a release] and seldom played. It is loud without being loud. This live concert recording features recently discovered and previously unreleased music from Jefferson Airplanes fabled guitar and bass players before they became known as Hot Tuna. Musicians plugged their instruments into amplifiers connected to single-channel speakers. I never took notes when I was in college,he says. I was not responsible for his wings, but they did carry me to all kinds of places.. Much like his theory that human beings are meant to eat only meat, Owsleys concept of climate change is at odds with most current scientific thought on global warming. Owsley says that psychological problems made him unmanageable in the public-school system, so his father enrolled him in Charlotte Hall, a military prep school in Maryland. Bcc: this option will retain the list of addresses on the server, placing only one address per copy as it sends to each name on the list. Stanley attended the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966 with his new apprentice Tim Scully, and provided the LSD. In 1963, Owsley moved to Berkeley so he could take classes at the university, where the student protest movement was growing. All Rights reserved. Stanley returned to Los Angeles to pursue the production of LSD. Youre dealing with part of the unconscious mind that they used to define as angels and devils. Although people speculated for years about how Owsley managed to conceal his stash, no one ever figured it out. He kept the LSD in an inexpensive footlocker that traveled constantly on Greyhound buses between Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco. He puts on a pair of old bluejeans that are now several sizes too big and places a brown Thinsulate stocking cap on his head. I remember the first time I took acid and walked outside, he says, and the cars were kissing the parking meters. During the same week, he also heard the Beatles for the first time. Masterpieces Unearthed from Owsleys Famed Archive, Family Dog at the Great HighwayMay 29, 19702 CD set, The Family Dog at the Great HighwayMarch 28, 19702 CD set, 3 CD release with extended material [1] The lightning bolt design came to him after seeing a similar design on a roadside advertisement: "One day in the rain, I looked out the side and saw a sign along the freeway which was a circle with a white bar across it. In his classic account of the Grateful Dead on the road in May 1969, Michael Lydon noted the ongoing tension between Hart and Owsley by writing that they were like two selves of the Dead at war, with the Dead themselves sitting as judges. Owsley "Bear" Stanleyinterview by David GansJanuary 13, 1991KPFA (94.1 FM) Radio ArchivesAugustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was . In every way, the briefcase reflects his mind. It was the most dangerous, underpaid job I ever had in my life, he says.I was never a real grower. But he also inspired another famed rock band, Steely . Adopt-A-Reel Program:For donations of $400 or more, we will work with you to select one of Bears Sonic Journals for priority preservation. From all three shows, as played on Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD. 3.83. For the Dead, the good news was that they now had nothing to do all day but jam. An Amazon Best Book of November 2016: Most people with passing knowledge of San Francisco and the 60s are familiar with the main players: the Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Hells Angels, et al, but how many know of August Owsley Stanley III, aka Owsley, aka Bear? According to Rolling Stone,[25] everyone in the band except Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and Tom Constanten - neither of whom used psychedelic drugs - was included in the arrest, along with several members of their retinue, including Stanley and some locals. I did not buy expensive things. He dropped out after a semester, took a technical job at KGO-TV, and began producing LSD in a small lab located in the bathroom of a house near campus; his makeshift laboratory was raided by police on February 21, 1965. [19] (Another reason for the first recordings was that Stanley had hearing damage in one ear from a swimming-pool diving accident when he was 19, and wanted a way to check himself. Kesey liked 400. He, Scully, and Melissa Cargill (a skilled chemist and Cargill family scion who became Stanley's girlfriend following an introduction by Susan Cowper, a former girlfriend) set up a lab in the basement. OSF Doc & Merle Watson: Never the Same Way Once - Live at the Boarding House - May 1974 Double Vinyl Set. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. Along with other recognition of your generous contribution, if the recording you select is viable for future release by OSF, you will receive a liner note credit. I dont care who you are. Link to comments by the Bear on a low carb forum back in 2006. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - Millionare Augustus Owsley Stanley III, revered among hippies as the "King of Acid," finally has run into big, big trouble with the federal narcotics boys. The Wall of Sound fulfilled Owsley's desire for a distortion-free sound system that could also serve as its own monitoring system. During the first week of the course, Id buy my textbooks and read them all through. The Owsley Stanley Foundations 8th release ofBears Sonic Journals: Johnny Cash At the Carousel Ballroomfeatures Cash playing songs of outsiders, outlaws, and in-laws, exquisitely captured by Bear. Augustus Owsley Stanley III aka Bear was an American audio engineer and an underground drug maker. The same year, Stanley officially shortened his name to "Owsley Stanley". [UPDATE 11/21/22]: In an effort to refute claims made by Steve Cabella about the origins of a pipe allegedly gifted to Jerry Garcia by Owsley "Bear" Stanley, Bear's son Starfinder Stanley . While driving to work one day in his MG, Owsley saw an orange and blue logo with a white bar across it on a building. When he finally returned to his physical body and found it mostly intact, Owsley was horrified by the way Kesey and the Pranksters were messing with peoples minds. Tue 15 Mar 2011 14.49 EDT. [28] During this period, he also assisted Phil Lesh in salvaging the technically deficient recordings assembled for Steal Your Face (1976), a poorly-received live album culled from the final October 1974 pre-hiatus shows at Winterland Ballroom. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture. The American psychologist Timothy Leary's famous invitation to "tune in, turn on and drop out" changed a generation. We were officially granted 501 (c) (3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. Gallery: Random Notes, Rocks Hottest Photos. Its something that goes from being absolutely inert to so powerful that twenty-five micrograms will cause a change in your consciousness, he says. The police were looking for methamphetamine but found only LSD, which was not illegal at the time. 94tracks reflecting a broad cross-section of musical forms, including bluegrass, blues, folk, country, swing jazz, and rockabilly, among others. By his own account, between 1965 and 1967, Stanley produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, amounting to a little more . His early activities spanned the Beat-era years of Ken Kesey 's Merry Pranksters scenes, but he played a role during the explosion of 1960's Psychedelia culture. After a year-long investigations, agents raided a two-story home in suburban Orinda, picked up Stanley, his girl friend, and three others. Owsley also sent a photographer back to England with a telephoto lens packed with tabs of purple acid on the condition that he share them with the Beatles. For decades, a . Lenny Hart and Owsley, who had never trusted preachers anyway, got on like oil and water. His defense was that the illegal substances were for personal use, but he was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. [4][33] From at least the mid-1960s until his death, Stanley practiced and advocated an all-meat diet, believing that humans are naturally carnivorous.[4]. Technician for Grateful Dead and an LSD cook. Check out our owsley stanley jewelry selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. A Pegasus. And Then There Was David Lindley, See the Beths Deliver Refreshing 'Expert in a Dying Field' Mini-Set on 'CBS Mornings', The YSL Case Is Stretching Fulton County's Justice System to Its Breaking Point, NBA 'Investigating,' Team Suspends Ja Morant After Allegedly Flashing Gun on Social Media. In other words, this cancer was living in a desert.. Owsley Stanley (born Augustus Owsley Stanley III, January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) also known as Bear, was a figure of the San Francisco Bay counter-culture. He had this stuff, and we thought it might be good, Owsley says. It all seemed to fit together. The alchemist Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who transformed not only the Dead's sound, but American consciousness. I dont eat carbs. But they had to double the size of the crew and, in the process, the crew took over the band. Because the Dead were unwilling to fire any members of their large and sometimes dysfunctional family, the band decided in 1974 to instead take a break from touring, not going on the road again until the summer of 1976. On a good night, Owsley will catch as many as 225 toads. By then, most of the money Owsley had amassed during his days as the worlds reigning acid chemist was gone. And that alone gives him credibility for that scene., By the time lsd became illegal in California on October 6th, 1966, Owsley had become a mythic figure. Until then, the drug had been available in America only to those conducting serious medical research. It was amazing, he told Jerry Garcia biographer Blair Jackson. Or riding your own sound wave. He also noted that the music made during the forty-odd shows when the system was used is still regarded by Deadheads as the pinnacle of live performance.. I later learned who every one of them was, Owsley says, but I did not feel I could do anything about it.