Haight-Ashbury, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Acid Rock

by Robert J. Campbell, David P. Szatmary (Revised by), David P. Szatmary (Editor)

Overview

Combining literature, social history, and personal experience, author Robert J. Campbell traces the birth, downfall, and legacy of the innovative, playful, and spontaneous counterculture launched in 1960s Haight-Ashbury. In a lively writing style, Campbell describes the discovery of LSD, its slow adoption, and the promotion of it by Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, who each became missionaries for the drug. Campbell relates how LSD allowed users to enhance the perception of alternative realities and describes its wide-scale use in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco from 1964 to 1967 that led to imaginative and creative change, including collaborative behavior, a new way of looking at the world, acid rock, and a host of other paradigm shifts. Haight-Ashbury, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Acid Rock concludes by examining the inherent dangers of constant drug use as well as the positive legacy of the 1960s, including a focus on health food, cooperative living arrangements, recycling, battling climate change, free medical help, and personal responsibility. The book incorporates ideas from a broad range of disciplines for general readers for a unique and fresh look at this impactful era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438493350
Publisher:	Excelsior Editions
Publication date:	07/01/2023
Series:	Excelsior Editions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Robert J. Campbell (1950–2016) was a 60s activist, Beat scholar, and editor of the Colorado Springs Independent. David P. Szatmary is former Vice Provost at the University of Washington. His books include Jazz: Race and Social Change (1870–2019) and Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface

1. Setting the Stage

2. The Circle Widens

3. The Psychedelic (R)Evolution: Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and the Beat Generation

4. Moving to the West Coast: The Kesey Wing

5. The ’60s at Berkeley: Civil Rights and Free Speech

6. Precursors to the Haight: The Red Dog Saloon

7. The Flowering of the Haight: Haight-Ashbury Happens

8. Acid Rock: The Folk Roots

9. The Trip Intensifies

10. The Decline of the Psychedelic Consciousness

11. The Psychedelic Legacy

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

05/22/2023

Campbell (1950–2016), a former editor of the Colorado Springs Independent, provides a rambling and enthusiastic account of the counterculture that emerged in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the 1960s, and the music and substances that fueled it. Campbell explains how the “unprecedented” quantities of LSD brought to the Bay Area beginning in 1965 helped to foster a “mindset, sensibility, and perceptual style linked to psychedelics.” Meanwhile, music venues such as Mother’s opened and began hosting nascent rock bands, fueling the appeal of the “quasi-utopian, countercultural” community. Long before finding bigger stages, such bands as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane “considered their music more of a community interaction/recreation than an entrepreneurial venture,” Campbell writes. After the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, acid rock went mainstream just as Haight-Ashbury, now inundated by droves of “would-be hippie” newcomers, “deteriorated into a carnival freak show—all circus, no bread—in celebration, imitation, and perversion of itself.” While much of the ground Campbell covers is well-worn and several sections drag, it’s a vivid and up-close portrait of a much mythologized place and time. Hippies will welcome this deep dive into the culture of the Haight. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"A diverting and informative tour and an excellent companion to William Schnabel's Summer of Love and Haight." — Library Journal

"…a vivid and up-close portrait of a much mythologized place and time. Hippies will welcome this deep dive into the culture of the Haight." — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

06/01/2023

The late Beat scholar Campbell (1950–2016) and Szatmary (Jazz: Race and Social Change 1870–2019) discuss the origin and legacies of the drug-fueled hippie counterculture in the U.S. from 1964 to 1967, plus the artistic, literary, and musical figures associated with the early use of LSD (Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Hunter Thompson, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Jerry Garcia). The book also reveals relatively unknown but salient characters, such as former U.S. Air Force technician Owsley Stanley, who widely distributed LSD before it became illegal, and Billy and Peggy Hitchcock, sibling heirs whose New York State mansion was a center for psychedelic experimentation. The book argues that the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival was the culmination, not the beginning, of true psychedelic culture, and that Woodstock and later manifestations were ironic imitations of what had been authentic. The book also examines different distinctions within psychedelic consciousness, such as the purposeful East Coast vs. the self-indulgent West Coast. Some readers may find debatable the concluding suggestion that these phenomena encouraged a deeper social perception, cooperation, and greater awareness of varied possibilities, even without drugs. VERDICT A diverting and informative tour and an excellent companion to William Schnabel's Summer of Love and Haight.—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.

Library Journal