owsley stanley website
Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known as Owsley, in 1967. His initial motivation for creating what he dubbed his "sonic journal" was to improve his ability to mix the sound, but the fortuitous result was an extensive trove of recordings from the heyday of the San Francisco concert/dance scene in the mid-1960s. From 1974 to 1981, he also grew and sold cannabis from his garden in Fairfax, California, but the profits from this endeavor proved to be far less remunerative than his earlier work in clandestine chemistry. In Berkeley, Owsley began smoking pot and selling Heavenly Blue morning-glory seeds (250 for a dollar), which served to get people not high but weird when taken in great quantity. Although no man knows the exact time, we feel that time is very near! In Berkeley, as well as across the bay in Palo Alto, young people seeking a new way to live had begun using LSD to break down conventional social barriers. [18] Along with his close friend Bob Thomas, Stanley designed the band's iconic 'Steal Your Face' lightning bolt-skull logo. Once the systems set, you can walk away from the board. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s. . He was the Grateful Deads original sound man and their initial financial benefactor. Professionally recorded by Owsley in 1974, and mastered using todays most cutting edge technologies, they are exquisite. [3], Stanley's level of access to the group's inner echelon (including complimentary food from the band's caterers) was somewhat controversial among the band's employees, with one staffer opining that "he had the sales tactics of a Mumbai street peddler"; on one occasion, Garcia and Weir were forced to intervene when Stanley provoked Chelsea Clinton's Secret Service detail as he attempted to conduct business with the then-First Daughter. Died at age 76 in an automobile accident. He says his method was simple. Five months later at Monterey Pop, Owsley passed out his Monterey Purple backstage to Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend and the Stones Brian Jones, not to mention much of the festivals staff and crew. This article appeared in the July 12-27, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone. At this point, Stanley rented a house in Point Richmond, Richmond, California. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was infamous in the 60s counterculture scene and his legacy reaches further than most. Once a year by invitation only, he throws a party attended by friends, family and musicians from all over Australia who play all night long. After sampling it, he changed his mind. He must have had the most extraordinary liver., During this period, the Dead wrote Alice D. Millionaire, a play on words from a headline about Owsley in The San Francisco Chronicle that read, LSD Millionaire Arrested. In concert, the band regularly dedicated The Other One to him from the stage. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (later nicknamed Bear) was born on Jan. 19, 1935. 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. It turned out that it wasnt., The senior arresting officer, aware of Owsleys status, noted that the bust would probably cause panic in the streets because to a lot of hippies, their idol has fallen. He added that Owsley was actually a psychedelic missionary who gives the impression that he feels the average person can never actually know himself without turning on with LSD., As Owsleys case dragged through the courts for the next two years, he stopped making acid and worked as the sound man at the Carousel Ballroom for three months before it was bought by Bill Graham and renamed the Fillmore West. 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. With this rock band, I can rule the world! So we ended up living with Owsley while he was tabbing up the acid in the place we lived. pate88. The original idea was to put recording studio technology into an electric guitar. 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.. No one did more to alter the consciousness of the generation that came of age in the 1960s than Augustus Owsley Stanley (who passed away March 13, 2011). He wanted to lose it. Thanks to Owsley, the Pranksters now had enough LSD on hand to begin throwing parties at which everyone could get a dose. Until now, he has never been willing to speak extensively about his life. After he was released from prison, Stanley resumed working for the Grateful Dead as their live sound engineer. A high-school dropout of preternatural intelligence who was born from a Kentucky political dynasty and became the live sound-engineer for the Grateful Dead, his most notorious legacy is as the first Acid Millionaire. It was always in a safe place, and nobody had a clue, because I never told anyone I did that., Despite his precautions, thirteen agents broke into a house in the East Bay that Owsley had rented for the express purpose of making tabs. Quickly regaining control, he says, But, hey, Im alive, right? Without waiting for an answer, he stalks out the motel-room door. For the Dead, the good news was that they now had nothing to do all day but jam. His paternal grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, a member of the United States Senate after serving as Governor of Kentucky and in the U.S. House of Representatives, campaigned against Prohibition in the 1920s.[5]. Stanley also provided LSD to the Beatles during filming of Magical Mystery Tour (1967),[15] and former Three Dog Night singer Chuck Negron has noted that Owsley and Leary gave Negron's band free LSD. Augustus Owsley Stanley III aka Bear was an American audio engineer and an underground drug maker. On February 21st, 1965, police raided the house and confiscated various chemicals, including a substance they wrongfully identified as speed. Available in both digital-to-digital and analog-to-analog separately mastered versions (CD, Downloads, 180g 45-RPM Vinyl, Reel-to-Reel Tape). His paternal grandfather, for whom he was named, was a congressman, governor of Kentucky and United States . Source: medium.com. The Japanese don't write in alphabetic writing; they write in pictographs. ALWAYS enter lists of addressses (greater than 2) in the Bcc: line. He beat the charges and successfully sued for the return of his equipment. He was the key supplier of LSD during the 60s Hippie movem. owsleystanleyfoundation.org is ranked #24747 in the Arts & Entertainment > Music category and #5781650 Globally according to December 2022 data. Needless to say, the party is electric. The key element was "turn on" and it was Owsley . Soil in Latest 'Bear's Sonic Journals' Release", "1960s LSD Figure Owsley Stanley Dies In Crash Entertainment News Story WISC Madison", "Jimi Hendrix inspiration and LSD producer Owsley Stanley dies", "Owsley Stanley Obituary - Owsley Stanley Funeral - Legacy.com", "Complete transcript of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in a BBC-Online Chat, March 4, 2000", "Kid Charlemagne: A Close Reading Of Steely Dan's Ode to Haight Street's LSD King", "Producer Sujoy Sarkar Drops Enigmatic Debut Album 'Sitting At Strawberry Fields Cause I Met Owsley on the Way', Celebstoner.com report of Owsley Stanley's Death, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Owsley_Stanley&oldid=1142575554, Owsley's association with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead is described in Tom Wolfe's, A newspaper headline identifying Stanley as an "LSD Millionaire" ran in the, Stanley is mentioned by his first name in the song ", Stanley is mentioned in the title of Sujoy Sarkar's debut album, This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 05:21. Its sometimes called witchcraft, and its extremely dangerous. Born in 1935, Owsley was "authentic Bluegrass political royalty." His father was a prominent government attorney and his grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, was elected governor of Kentucky in 1919 and served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Long before the Summer of Love drew thousands of hippies to Haight-Ashbury, Owsley was already an authentic underground folk hero, revered throughout the counterculture for making the purest form of LSD ever to hit the street. The sound turns into something youve never heard before. Unlike his own father, Owsley has made every effort to be an active parent to his son Starfinder and daughter Redbird (whose mother is Cargill), born three weeks apart to two different mothers who remain good friends and raised their children as brother and sister. Over the course of the next fourteen years, Owsley known to his friends as Bear because of his prematurely hairy chest as a teenager enlisted in the Air Force, became a ham- radio operator, obtained a first-class radiotelephone operators license, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and served as a summer-relief broadcast engineer at TV and radio stations in Los Angeles. 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. Owsley Stanley 1935-2011 'Bear' helped Grateful Dead, made LSD. The issue is available in the online archive. He died in a car accident in Australia (where he had taken citizenship in 1996) on March 12, 2011. 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. When Owsley showed up one day during the fall, he walked over to Kesey and handed him a couple of hits of acid. A year later, the novelist Ken Kesey was given acid at the Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park as part of a federally funded program in which volunteers were paid twenty dollars a session to ingest hallucinogens. Last note: In 2005 Bear found out The Oxford English Dictionary had added a word: "owsley, N. An extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD; a tablet of this. He married and divorced twice, fathered two children and got himself arrested on a variety of charges. On a good night, Owsley will catch as many as 225 toads. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. The Bear - Owsley Stanley. I had it for at least three years, but it never left the left side of my neck. Because he wanted to keep a sonic journal of his work, Owsley began plugging a suitcase-size Ampex 602 tape recorder into the sound board each night as the Dead played in 1966. When you find a new live Tim Buckley recording, it's like finding a whole new Tim Buckley! The sound of Jerry Garcias guitar grabbed hold of Owsley, and he freaked out on acid for the first time. Add to Favorites Dancing Bear patch, Grateful Dead patch, Owsley Stanley patch, Iron on patch, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Dead and Company, Shakedown . His first shipment arrived on March 30, 1965 and he produced 300,000 hits (270 micrograms each) of LSD by May 1965; then he returned to the Bay Area. He used his Berkeley lab to buy 500grams of lysergic acid monohydrate, the basis for LSD. The Owsley Stanley Foundations ninth release ofBears Sonic Journals: The Foxhuntfeatures the Chieftains performing live in San Francisco in 1973 (CD & vinyl) and 1976 (CD & digital only). But before Owsley came along, no one could be sure that what they were taking was really even LSD. The price I had to pay to get through the gate. Ifeel as if Ive known you through many lifetimes., You have, Owsley replied, and you will through many more to come.. The Owsley Stanley Foundations fifth release of Bears Sonic Journals finds lost treasures in the ozone with the launch of Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen! Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live performances. Owsley Stanley, better known as the Bear, was the acid hero the 60s never knew it had. In 1973, he served as lead designer of the band's Wall of Sound, collaborating with Dan Healy and Mark Raizene, as well as Rick Turner and John Curl of Alembic to design the groundbreaking sound reinforcement system. 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[5][7][8], Stanley was the scion of a political family from Kentucky. When Owsley asked Lesh what he could do for the band, the bass player said they had no manager and offered him the job. On January 14, 1967, Owsley supplied LSD for an even larger festival, The Gathering of the Tribes, a Human Be-In, held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. A year later, Mario Savio made his historic Free Speech Movement address from atop a police car to student protesters gathered outside Sproul Hall. Keith Richards: The Rolling Stone Interview, SST Records Producer Glen Spot Lockett Dead at 72, Glastonbury Co-Organizer Promises Female Headliners in 2024 After All-Male Top Billing This Year, There Were Sidemen. The Owsley Foundation places full page ads in major newspapers that proclaim Christ's Second Coming. Stanley, born Augustus Owsley Stanley III in 1935, was known to nearly all his many friends and customers as "Bear." But in a single released by Steely Dan from the 1976 album The Royal Scam . If you feel you cant love someone and you are universally told that you must love, you become very guilty., After the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Even though Owsley had already put about $50,000 into the band and would no longer be working for them, he told the Dead to pick out new equipment and send him the bill. The new lab was set up in the basement of a house across the street from the Denver Zoo in early 1967. All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible. Reach out if you have questions, or to see how you can support the Owsley Stanley Foundation. Augustus Owsley Stanley I (May 21, 1867 - August 12, 1958) was an American politician from Kentucky.A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 38th governor of Kentucky and also represented the state in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.From 1903 to 1915, Stanley represented Kentucky's 2nd congressional district in the House of Representatives, where he . The Wall of Sound fulfilled Owsley's desire for a distortion-free sound system that could also serve as its own monitoring system. So when you had something that affects the minds of thousands and thousands of people in the palm of your hand, how could you not believe that your state of mind mattered?, By May 1965, he was back in the Bay Area with 3,600 capsules of extraordinarily pure LSD, dubbed Owsley by a pot-dealing folk guitarist friend. The lead and the gold is the lead of the primitive nature into the gold of the enlightened man. He had this stuff, and we thought it might be good, Owsley says. Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD. I did not feel it was mine, since what I was doing was in my mind a service to my community. * I worked my way up to the top job, he recalls, which was as a line backer for the steam tables, and I traded my two cartons of cigarettes a week for a steak a day from the butcher, and I got all the meat and eggs I needed, and I cooked my own food and had a great time. Transferred to Lompoc, where his job was to wax the dining-room floor, Owsley soon moved on to the maintenance shop, where he used the tools to begin doing exquisitely detailed carvings in wood and stone.
