Other people joined together and lived in communes, self-supporting rural communities that sometimes had spiritual components. Still others—especially those who were more easily persuaded—joined religious or seemingly religious cults, such as the Hare Krishnas and the Moonies (also called the Unification Church), and a fewdecided to follow Charles Manson (see sidebar). A cult is a group of people who believe in a religion or set of beliefs that appears 1960s Music and Drugs to be very different from established religions. Not surprisingly, hippies did so outside the conventional channels of family life and mainstream religions. LSD users said that the drug “blew their mind,” and many wanted to constantly return to the altered state that it offered. In Leary’s memorable phrase for his Playboy interview, they wanted to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Leary and others promoted this “dropping out,” or leaving one’s job, school, or family, as a positive thing, pointing to the great creativity and happiness of those who took hallucinogenic drugs regularly.
Rock Hall Adds More Legendary Names to 2025 Induction…
Grace Slick, however, was asked to join the Jefferson Airplane, bringing with her two songs she had used with her former group – “White Rabbit” and “Somebody To Love” (the latter written by brother-in-law Darby Slick at Great Society). These songs would appear on the Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 album, Surrealist Pillow, each becoming Top Ten hits. At the opening of Lewis Carroll’s story, Alice and her sister are sitting along a river bank one summer day reading when a rabbit happens by. He was attired in a waistcoat, talking to himself, and looking at his pocket watch. Curiosity got the better of Alice and she followed him down a rabbit hole, where her other-worldly adventures soon began.
Rolling Stone
This knowledge gap — a direct consequence of prohibition brought on, in part, by the music industry — continues to hinder our understanding of how these substances can be harnessed to address today’s pressing mental health challenges. President Nixon, dogged by the increasing unpopularity of the Vietnam War, was all too happy to find a zeitgeist culprit. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 lumped LSD and psilocybin with heroin and cocaine, effectively shutting down legitimate research. With counterculture movements scapegoated and psychedelics seen as a societal menace, the scientific community’s promising exploration of these substances became an afterthought.
- Grace too, appeared reasonably dressed, though sporting a see-through fish net blouse beneath her coat.
- Media outlets fanned the flames of fear with tales of bad trips and societal breakdown.
- Some hippies formed small groups and lived together in various kinds of small, self-supporting communities called communes.
- In recent years, she has joined forces with Area Arts of Santa Rosa, California to help market her work, and she had her first exhibition in 2000.
- Many hippies insisted that it was an essential part of their rejection of the “establishment” and no worse, in any case, than the widespread use of tobacco, alcohol, and prescription drugs among mainstream adults.
- Woodstock, held in 1969, was a concert, a collective cathartic moment and a demonstration of the counterculture ethos, where LSD and other psychedelics were ubiquitous.
In a September 1970 speech before Republicans in Las Vegas, Agnew echoed the concerns of Linkletter and other drug critics, and took special aim at the music and film industries, charging them with encouraging drug use. Agnew stated that certain rock songs and their lyrics, along with some Hollywood films, books, and underground newspapers, were among the chief culprits in the rising national drug problem. Sensationalized media portrayals, hyper-enthusiastic musicians and high-profile incidents fueled public concern, overshadowing the therapeutic potential that early psychedelic research had begun to uncover.
The Music Industry’s Role in the Scapegoating of Psychedelics
The mood of the event carried through the summer, through a series of festivals and peaceful demonstrations attended by hippies with long flowing hair and joyous smiles. In June, 50,000 people gathered at the Monterey International Pop Festival, south of San Francisco, to groove to the sounds of psychedelic rock. The festival, like so many of the events of that summer, was peaceful and problem-free, seeming to demonstrate to the world that the hippies’ message of love and peace was real.
Artists – Q-Z
During these years, however, Grace Slick had her personal demons, with alcohol becoming a particular problem for her, leading to DUI arrests, blown concert dates, abusive behavior toward fans, and periods in alcohol rehab. In recent years, she has conquered her alcohol problem, remaining sober for nearly two decades. His 20-year-old daughter, Diane, had committed suicide only weeks before this session, having jumped to her death from the sixth floor of her West Hollywood apartment on October 4, 1969. One of these sessions was held in the Cabinet Room of the White House in late October 1969, where President Nixon invited a group of congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Speaker of the House John McCormick, and several others. This was the era when ex-Harvard University faculty member, Dr. Timothy Leary, had become a prominent proponent of LSD and “mind expanding” drug experimentation. Prior to Slick’s writing “White Rabbitt,” she had listened to the Davis / Evans album for hours, later saying that the bolero they used in parts of their music – a form of slow, crescendo-building Latin/Spanish dance music – was especially appealing.
Abandoning “straight” society, the hippie joined others who believed in peace, love, and togetherness. Unlike organized religions, there was no central rulemaking body and no book of religious teachings, but many hippies claimed that nature was their church and all the world their holy book. Music festivals like Woodstock became epicenters of psychedelic culture, drawing hundreds of thousands of young people seeking to experience freedom, music and mind-expanding substances. Woodstock, held in 1969, was a concert, a collective cathartic moment and a demonstration of the counterculture ethos, where LSD and other psychedelics were ubiquitous. Iconic performances by artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who encapsulated the spirit of the era, blending music with the transformative power of psychedelics.
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. As more people began using these substances to reject mainstream values and explore new realms of consciousness, the media increasingly portrayed psychedelics as dangerous and destabilizing. Many hippies insisted that it was an essential part of their rejection of the “establishment” and no worse, in any case, than the widespread use of tobacco, alcohol, and prescription drugs among mainstream adults. Ironically, the drug so much a part of hippie culture, lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD, was available legally until 1966 in California and until 1967 in the rest of the United States.
In his remarks to the broadcasters, Nixon assured them he had no intention of telling them what songs to play or not play, or how to program their broadcasts, but he would “appreciate” their cooperation on the matter of songs that promoted drugs. Dean Burch of the FCC also addressed the group, and noted the commission would look favorably on stations that aired anti-dug messages. In the Lewis Carroll story, as well as popularized film versions — there were more than a dozen of these films by the time of the 1967 song, including a popular 1951 Walt Disney film — the White Rabbit character appears at the very beginning.
- These Jazz musicians used Cocaine as a boost so they can play for as long as they can as well as a creativity enhancement.
- They called this older generation “square,” “straight,” “uptight,” and a variety of other critical names.
- 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.
- Hippies as a group are hard to define exactly; there were no membership lists and anyone could claim to be a hippie.
In 1965, Grace and Jerry also formed a rock band named the Great Society (a play on Lyndon Johnson’s social program of the same name), which performed for a time in San Francisco’s North Beach area. The song, however, would become controversial and a lightning rod for some social critics and politicians who charged it encouraged drug use among the nation’s youth. This is psychedelics’ frustrating story of artistic and spiritual excess at the expense of scientific progress.
Sixties Counterculture: The Hippies and Beyond
The group, which grew out of Students for a Democratic Society, used a 1969 position paper called “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” as its founding statement. Once LSD was made illegal nationwide in 1967, use of the drug declined dramatically. No longer could hippies take the drug and “trip” in public parks or on city streets.
In my next article of this series, we’ll see how psychedelic research has been revived and has found support from some unlikely corners, as both veteran groups and the next generation of musicians strive to normalize psychedelic-assisted therapy for managing mental health challenges. Media outlets fanned the flames of fear with tales of bad trips and societal breakdown. Public anxieties rose, fueled by stories of LSD-laced Kool-Aid and free clinics handing out mind-altering substances. This, coupled with the counterculture’s embrace of psychedelics, led to a perception shift — from a tool for scientific exploration to a dangerous societal threat. These pioneering scientists and researchers bridged the gap with musicians, who embraced psychedelics not for research but for recreation and artistic inspiration.
