Greenfield's book, which is full of anecdotes and insight, tracks Stanley's life from his early days in the South through his final years in Australia. All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible. The shelves werent even in there just these big hunks of meat. Owsley Stanley Shirt - Etsy And the band had a bunch of macho cowboys as a crew who were snorting blow and drinking a whole lot of beer, and Bear was offended by their language and by their beer., After being thrown across the room by one of the roadies during an argument, Owsley asked the band to give him the power to hire and fire the crew so they would know they were working for him. Your body gets old but your mind can always accept that. Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Drag Bill 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. During the past month, he has dispensed with 1,400 of them. February 11, 13, & 14, 1970, The Boarding House, May 1 May 4, 1974Seven CD Set. Why Owsley Acid Made Carrie Fisher and Dan Aykroyd So Damn - Inverse [17] He both financed them and worked with them as their first sound engineer. Concerning Owsleys legacy to the Dead from this period, Dennis McNally, the bands biographer, says, Bear gave them a vision of quality that quite frankly influenced them for the next thirty years. Adopt-A-Reel Program: 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. By this time, Sandoz LSD sold under the trade-name Delysid was hard to come by, as Sandoz halted LSD production in August 1965 after growing governmental protests at its proliferation among the general populace, which meant that "Owsley Acid" had become the new standard. Stanley's lab in Berkeley was raided in 1966 and he was arrested. 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. On December 11th, 1965, the Dead played at the Muir Beach Acid Test in a lodge by the sea in Marin County. It is for this reason that Owsley and his wife, Sheilah, whom he first met at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley in 1985 while she was working in the ticket office for the Dead, now live in Australia forty-five minutes from anywhere on 120 acres of land he claimed by squatting on it like a pioneer. The Grateful Dead were not just good they were magic personified. Then and there, he decided to work for the most amazing group ever, have a fabulous time of it and try to make a positive contribution. Though Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh was the band member with whom Owsley would forge the closest ties, he saw Jerry Garcia as the sun in the center of the solar system. Courtesy Legacy. The problem is'Packet-sniffer 'bots', very small programs which hackers insert by stealth into an internet router's . I dont eat carbs. Berkeley's historic Troll House sells for $1.4 million Grateful Dead Artist Page: Photos, Videos and More, For the past twenty years, Owsley has lived off the grid in a remote section of Australian rain forest. Bear: The Owsley Stanley Story, Part One - PS Audio The effort to preserve these historically vital recordings is estimated to cost between $300,000 $400,000. The grandson of a Kentucky senator, Owsley found his way to California, discovered drugs, and promptly blew . 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. within a few days of it coming out. On a good night, Owsley will catch as many as 225 toads. When I build a sound system, Owsley says, I do it in a single cluster, because everything in the hall must come from one spot in the room. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was born on Jan. 19, 1935, to a patrician Kentucky family. After selling his Voice of the Theatre speakers and McIntosh amps to Bill Graham, who installed them in the Fillmore, Owsley donated most of the bands other gear to the Straight Theater, a hippie venue on Haight Street. Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD. I dont see how anyone in the Northern Hemisphere could survive the storm. 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. We were officially granted 501 (c) (3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. For him, this is just another day on the road. It is articulate. 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. 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. The cottage commonly known as the Troll House and located at 2321 Valley St., is for sale and . Send us a tip using our anonymous form. The Wall of Sound fulfilled Owsley's desire for a distortion-free sound system that could also serve as its own monitoring system. Throughout the summer of 1965, in a big house down in La Honda, about forty miles south of San Francisco, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters hosted wild parties with guests that included Hunter S. Thompson, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and various Hells Angels. He then talked to his friend Bob Thomas about putting the lightning bolt through the words Grateful Dead in lettering, which from a distance would look like a skull. Stanley also helped Robert Thomas design the band's trademark skull logo. In highly abridged form, what Owsley believes is that the phenomenon is real but that it comes from the steadily increasing movement of large amounts of heat from the tropics across the temperate zones to the poles. Because the Dead then began playing a lot of festival-style shows where the equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle, Owsley says, he decided to mark their gear so the roadies could easily locate it. Three years later, she sent him back to Virginia to live with his father. 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. Obituary: Owsley Stanley dies at 76; 'Acid King' of the '60s I said to him, You guys are fucking around with something that people have known about forever. "Bear," as he came to be known, was a hoot and . The headmaster later told High Times magazine that he remembered Owsley as almost like a brainchild, a wunderkinder, tremendously interested in science. Even then, Owsley was possessed by what he calls this rogue, get-high nature of mine and was expelled in ninth grade for smuggling alcohol into school during homecoming weekend, getting virtually every student on campus blasted out of their minds., When he was fifteen, Owsley spent fifteen months as a voluntary patient in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where the poet Ezra Pound was also confined. OWSLEY STANLEY OBITUARY. Bob Matthews, who had been mixing since my departure, did not want to completely relinquish the mixing desk, which was a total pain in the ass for me, since he was basically a studio engineer and no match for my live mixing ability." I did not feel it was mine, since what I was doing was in my mind a service to my community. 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. The Johnny Appleseed of LSD - Kentucky for Kentucky - KY for KY Store Its absolutely clear. 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. [22], In Denver, the trio was augmented by fellow Berkeley student Rhoney Gissen, who joined the manufacturing effort and began a relationship with Stanley (concurrent with Stanley's relationship with Cargill and Cargill's separate relationship with Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady) that endured through the early 1970s; although they never married, Gissen would eventually take Stanley's surname. But there are areas on the planet that are safe, and I hope Im in one of them.. The "Save The Music!" Bear'S Art Pages Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph from San Francisco Chronicle, via . It is historically important. Would the Summer of Love have ever happened without Stanley, the reclusive acid impresario who turned on the world? The 1970 Grateful Dead song "Truckin'" is based on the incident ("Busted, down on Bourbon Street / Set up, like a bowling pin / Knocked down, it gets to wearing thin / They just won't let you be"). It is loud without being loud. I later learned who every one of them was, Owsley says, but I did not feel I could do anything about it. 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. Owsley Stanley, better known as the Bear, was the acid hero the 60s never knew it had. "The Bear," best known for the sound system he created for The Grateful Dead and manufacturing a very high quality LSD, was a Zero Carb Carnivore for 50 years. His friends just knew him as The Bear. Grateful Dead Archivist Discusses Dicks Picks Series. All the occult literature about ceremonial magic warns about being very careful when you start exploring these areas in the mind. And they laughed at me., Even as he was freaking out that night, Owsley experienced the single insight that would shape his life for years to come. Everything is connected, because its all being created by this one consciousness. CANBERRA, Australia (AP) Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture icon who worked with The Grateful Dead and was a prolific LSD producer, died in a car crash in . Immediately following his release, Stanley resumed working for the Grateful Dead as a roadie and sound engineer in the summer of 1972. Tripping frequently if not constantly. Under the professional name Bear, he was the soundman for the rock band the Grateful Dead, whom he met when Ken Kesey invited them to an Acid Test party. He retained backstage access during this period, and his clientele included such notable figures as Keith Richards. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. The bad news was that since Owsley was paying the rent, he expected them to adhere to his unconventional ideas and beliefs. . Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live performances. Because the Dead controlled everything from onstage, no one had to mix from the house. Owsley Stanley | Eat Meat. Drink Water. The Idol: How HBOs Next Euphoria Became Twisted Torture Porn. His paternal grandfather, for whom he was named, was a congressman, governor of Kentucky and United States . 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. 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. The top of the circle was orange, and the bottom blue. 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. 1st ever box set of live concert recordings from Doc & Merle Watson, 1st release of Bears Sonic Journals from the Owsley Stanley Foundation, Several rare songs Doc Watson never recorded live, The only known contemporaneous photographs of Doc & Merle Watson, Photos of Old Hoss, the Gallagher guitar Doc played from 1968 until the end of this tour in 1974, In depth interview with bassist T. Michael Coleman, An original essay by David Holt, 4-time Grammy winner and longtime Doc collaborator, Original cover art by Mike DuBois based on a drawing by Owsleys son, Starfinder. Together, they devised the Steal Your Face logo (a.k.a. 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. Once the systems set, you can walk away from the board. 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. [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. Tim Scully - Wikipedia He's also related to William Owsley, the 16th governor of Kentucky, for . We want to hear it. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decades counterculture. We were officially granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. Owsley "Bear" Stanley | The alchemist's tools | From the Vault In a new biography, find out more about the life of this LSD preacher than ever before. Almost forty years to the day after he blew minds at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, with a brand-new batch of Monterey Purple, Owsley is checking out of a motel in nearby Carmel. Owsley, who would only ever deal with one person at a time to distribute his product, had already gone through three or four intermediaries, dropping them as soon as he felt they were getting hot. Died at age 76 in an automobile accident. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 Owsley Stanley was a counterculture transformer famous for the purity of two things: the LSD he cooked up and the rock 'n' roll sound system he created. Owsley "Bear" Stanley the Acid King is remembered by friends . It all comes from what the musicians do, and that was my goal from the beginning. The problem was that the system was so huge and required so much setup time that the Dead had to use two separate stages and two crews so the next show could be put up while the last was still being taken down. How Owsley 'Bear' Stanley Inspired Steely Dan's 'Kid Charlemagne' Amongst his outrageous success from the sale of his acid, Stanley also worked for a time as the Grateful Dead's sound engineer. One of my friends who was a folkie brought it in and said, Man, you gotta listen to this! And I was off and running. In other words, this cancer was living in a desert.. Two nights later, the junkies returned only to discover that Owsley had fortified the place, hired some people and armed ourselves to the teeth. A running gun battle ensued, with one of the junkies taking a bullet through his arm. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. The Bear, says Jerry [Garcia], is Satan in our midst, friend, chemist, psychedelic legend, and electronic genius; not a leader, but a moon with a gravitational pull. 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. After a year-long investigations, agents raided a two-story home in suburban Orinda, picked up Stanley, his girl friend, and three others. Owsley Stanley Belt Buckles - Etsy (He has also never willingly allowed his photograph to be taken.) His ashes were placed on the soundboard at the celebration of the Grateful Dead's 50th anniversary at the Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead shows in Chicago, on July 35, 2015. And he was not surprised you would choose to be an idiot. He beat the charges and successfully sued for the return of his equipment. 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 . Despite maintaining a 3.4 grade point average with minimal effort, he dropped out because of his disinclination for slide rules and mechanical drawing. All of the rest of their calories came from fat. Ill never forget that when youd open the refrigerator, there were big slabs of beef in there, Rosie McGee, Phil Leshs girlfriend at the time, later told Garcia biographer Jackson. 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