In 1963, Owsley moved to Berkeley so he could take classes at the university, where the student protest movement was growing. In 1959, the poet Allen Ginsberg took LSD for the first time, at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. From all three shows, as played on Spirited. - Commander Cody, "Sociologically, you know, this all represents a big switch in the whole rock 'n' roll trip" - Jerry Garcia, A legend recording a legend T. Michael Coleman, Bass, Its not just the energy of youth that shakes me when I listen to these tracks its the musical dialogue that Jack and I shared in these amazing moments. It was brilliant and it worked, McNally says. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American-Australian audio engineer and clandestine chemist.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.Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live . The sound of Jerry Garcias guitar grabbed hold of Owsley, and he freaked out on acid for the first time. 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. Counterculture legend Owsley "Bear" Stanley is most closely associated with the Grateful Dead. 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 We had enough acid to blow the world apart. sulver buckle. After he was released from prison, Stanley resumed working for the Grateful Dead as their live sound engineer. Amongst his outrageous success from the sale of his acid, Stanley also worked for a time as the Grateful Dead's sound engineer. Almost before I realized what was happening, the whole affair had gotten completely out of hand. You can donate via our secure form, or send checks made out to the Owsley Stanley Foundation to: Owsley Stanley Foundation PO Box 625 Occidental, Ca 95465. Once he stopped exploring, the whole scene stopped exploring.. Written by WL Woodward. $40.00. Owsley Stanley, (Augustus Owsley Stanley III), "audio engineer and clandestine chemist", iconic figure of the counter-culture, "Acid King", "Bear"(as he was affectionately known), is our focus today. I was riding a magic stallion. The Owsley Stanley Foundations Seventh release of Bears Sonic Journals: Merry-Go-Round at the Carousel features Tim Buckley at his jazzy, improvisational best, including the only known recordings of several Buckley originals and a stunning medley showcasing a version of Fred Neils, Merry-Go-Round.. 1 of 8 Veternarian Starfinder Stanley, son of the late Owsley Bear Stanley, lifts Sherman, his tortoise who moves like a tank, plowing through branches at his home on 06-03-17, Sebastopol . Stanley died after a car accident in Australia on Saturday, March 12, 2011,[5] not Sunday, March 13, as reported in most publications[7][8][9][34][35] (a widely propagated error stemming from the Monday release to the press of the initial family statement, which was written on Sunday, stating he "died yesterday"). Owsley Stanley. On December 11th, 1965, the Dead played at the Muir Beach Acid Test in a lodge by the sea in Marin County. In April, Owsley visited Timothy Leary, the east coast figurehead of LSD, at the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, NY.Stanley and Leary had met in LA in the spring of 1966, but . 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. When Owsley showed up one day during the fall, he walked over to Kesey and handed him a couple of hits of acid. The effort to preserve these historically vital recordings is estimated to cost between $300,000 $400,000. Details Details. But manufacturing acid is not the only accomplishment on Owsleys rsum. He died in a car crash last week in . He also came up with the concept for what eventually became the bands logo. I later learned who every one of them was, Owsley says, but I did not feel I could do anything about it. 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. Because the Dead controlled everything from onstage, no one had to mix from the house. The situation was exacerbated by his disdain for the coarse language and deleterious drugs (most notably alcohol and cocaine) favored by the band's physically imposing roadies, many of whom perceived themselves as "macho cowboys" in contrast to Stanley's diminutive stature and scholarly appearance. When Owsley asked Lesh what he could do for the band, the bass player said they had no manager and offered him the job. Tripping frequently if not constantly. N o 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 . [24] Stanley and Scully made trial batches of STP in 10mg tablets and then of STP mixed with LSD in a few hundred yellow tablets, but soon ceased production of STP. Because you were. Stanley lived with his wife Sheilah (a former clerk in the Grateful Dead's ticket office) in the bush of Tropical North Queensland, where he worked to create sculpture and wearable art. But there are areas on the planet that are safe, and I hope Im in one of them.. [30], In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stanley briefly served as the live mixing engineer for Robert Hunter and Jefferson Starship. The police were looking for methamphetamine but found only LSD, which was not illegal at the time. After obtaining a court order that made the police return his lab equipment, Owsley and Cargill split for Los Angeles. Elected governor in 1915, he became a United States senator and served on the commission that oversaw construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. All Rights reserved. 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. Musicians can adjust it. 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. * 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 . At a time when the Dead were trying to keep ticket prices down, the wall cost about $350,000. 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. We are truly soulmates after twenty-two years together, and our love is as strong today as it was in the beginning. So of course behind his back, people were sneaking candy bars in. 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. I could leave it for up to thirty days in the bus station and I would go to it wherever it was, take out whatever I needed, take it back in, and send it to myself in the next city. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe described how Owsley completely lost control of himself, dissolving into gaseous nothingness until he became nothing more than a single cell. These two men both ate an average of 100-140 gm of protein and 200-300 gm of fat, totally 2100-3000 calories per day. 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." He was magnanimous about it, remembers former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow. 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 "Save The Music!" So youre Owsley,Lesh said. [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. Concise Comments. Courtesy Legacy. The headline in the New Orleans Times-Picayune the next day read Rock Musicians, King of Acid, Arrested. Although all charges were eventually dropped, a fucking judge who wanted to make sure I did time revoked Owsleys bail on the 1967 LSD bust after he was arrested again in Oakland. 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. Bear's website, thebear.org, is still accessible as well, where you can see his jewelry designs and read his stories and essays. Details. [1], Called the Acid King by the media,[2] Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD. 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. 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. The Bear) A colourful character, carnivore for over 47 years. As reclusive and protective of his identity as Owsley "Bear" Stanley had been, one can't manufacture the purest LSD on the planet and personally turn on half of the state of California and parts of Nevada and remain unknown. He died Sunday in a car accident in Australia. 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. In 1984, Owsley appeared at Phil Leshs house with a map of the world showing the mean temperatures at the height of the last ice age. As their sound engineer, Stanley frequently recorded live tapes behind his mixing board and developed their Wall of Sound sound system, one of the largest mobile public address systems ever constructed. Musicians plugged their instruments into amplifiers connected to single-channel speakers. I had it for at least three years, but it never left the left side of my neck. Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate. 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). There diet derived 75-80% of all calories from fat. And we were just musicians in this house, and we were guinea-pigging more or less continually. By then, the band was being managed by Lenny Hart, the father of drummer Mickey Hart and a minister who believed God had called upon him to save the Dead from their never-ending financial woes. And if you believe, as I did, that the universe is a creation in the mind of a being that is creating time and space, then everything is mental. Gallery: Random Notes, Rocks Hottest Photos. The Owsley Stanley Foundation, in partnership with the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, CA, is pleased to announce the sixth release from Owsley's storied archive of live concert recordings - Bear's Sonic Journals: That Which Colors the Mind, a previously unreleased 1970 live concert featuring one of the greatest masters of Indian classical music, Ali Akbar Khan (sarod . Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph from San Francisco Chronicle, via . 5 out of 5 stars (955) $ 29.95. But before Owsley came along, no one could be sure that what they were taking was really even LSD. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 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. Would the Summer of Love have ever happened without Stanley, the reclusive acid impresario who turned on the world? Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Drag Bill He retained backstage access during this period, and his clientele included such notable figures as Keith Richards. (He has also never willingly allowed his photograph to be taken.) [13][14] He was featured (most prominently his freak-out at the Muir Beach Acid Test in November 1965) in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Tom Wolfe's book detailing the history of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known as "Bear," was the Grateful Dead's first live sound engineer, the group's benefactor in their early years, and arguably the most famous manufacturer and distributor of LSD the world has ever known. The bad news was that since Owsley was paying the rent, he expected them to adhere to his unconventional ideas and beliefs. See Tom Taylor's account of his life and times published late last year in Far Out magazine. All donations and proceeds from the development of the recordings flow back into the effort to preserve more of Bears Sonic Journals and perpetuate Owsleys legacy, including patronage of the arts in all of its forms. The foundation is dedicated to restoring and preserving the archive of Stanley's recordings, which he called his "sonic journals".[37][38][39][40][41]. On February 21st, 1965, police raided the house and confiscated various chemicals, including a substance they wrongfully identified as speed. We had Meet the Beatles! The Owsley Stanley Foundation is dedicated to preserving and sharing the experience of the. The Denver Post (CO.) Press & Sun . Owsley Stanley, an icon of Bay Area counterculture in the 1960s and a longtime associate of the Grateful Dead, died Sunday in a car . Owsley Stanley (born Augustus Owsley Stanley III, January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) 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 1960's.As a crafts-person, Under the professional name of "Bear", he worked with the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead's international fan "family". Especially this one. The original idea was to put recording studio technology into an electric guitar. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was infamous in the 60s counterculture scene and his legacy reaches further than most. You can donate via our secure form, or send checks made out to the Owsley Stanley Foundation to: Owsley Stanley Foundation PO Box 625 Occidental, Ca 95465. "[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. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was born on Jan. 19, 1935, to a patrician Kentucky family. How many people can say that? Owsley also credits his all-meat diet for keeping him alive. 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. [5][7][8], Stanley was the scion of a political family from Kentucky. Check out our owsley stanley jewelry selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. Then Id sell them all back to the bookstore at full price as if Id changed classes, because I never needed to look at them again.. A Pegasus. Breeding so rapidly that they soon became a national nightmare, the giant toads (some of which weigh as much as two pounds and have come to be considered an environmental menace in both Hawaii and Australia) are now poisoning the baby fish in the acre-and-a-half lake Owsley created on his property. 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. The reason is that Im a total carnivore. According to an article in the Baton Rouge State Times, Stanley identified himself to the police as "The King of Acid" and technician of the band. The universe is a creation entirely within a being that is outside time and space, and dreaming what we are. Come take a magical trip with us and find out! You can donate via our secure form, or send checks made out to the Owsley Stanley Foundation to: Owsley Stanley Foundation PO Box 625 Occidental, Ca 95465. The Owsley Stanley Foundation is a 501c(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Bears Sonic Journals, Owsleys 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, Janis Joplin, and more than 80 other artists across nearly every musical idiom. . When the Dead declined to do so, Owsley found himself in what McNally calls limbo. Shifting his focus to what he knew best, the science of sound, Owsley began working on a revolutionary new system that would deliver crystal-clear audio in the big hockey arenas and indoor stadiums the Dead were now selling out. By doing so, he compiled a historic collection of live performances. Youre dealing with part of the unconscious mind that they used to define as angels and devils. 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. 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 thought it would look cool if the logo was red and blue with a white lightning bolt through it, so he had someone spray-paint a basic version of it on the Deads equipment. Shining an LED light on them, he sprays each one with Detsol, a liquid disinfectant much like Lysol that is highly toxic to them, throws each one into a bucket, and then dumps their corpses into the woods the next day. Night after night during the summer months, Owsley can be found stalking Bufo marinus, the species of poisonous toads (whose venom, Owsley insists, wont get you high) first introduced into Australia in 1935 in the mistaken belief that they would help control the cane beetle. You have to be very careful, because there are all these warnings. I am often asked about the origin of the so-called "dancing bears" which were commonly seen around GD shows. 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. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known as Owsley, in 1967. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. [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. That was the initiation. Alchemy didnt talk about lead into gold until it had to deal with the church in the early Middle Ages., For Owsley, The Kybalion was perfect because it put into total context all the things I had experienced on acid. No improvements for the sound, no new gear, nothing different on stage. 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. The grandson of a Kentucky senator, Owsley found his way to California, discovered drugs, and promptly blew . Just to show you. Im not really interested in talking about myself, he says. Not a single atmospheric scientist subscribes to the concept of greenhouse gases or global warming they all know the truth., Owsley contends there is nothing people can do to prevent the coming of an ice age storm that he describes as a kind of a gigantic hurricane, a cyclone thousands of miles in diameter, turning with winds of ultrasonic speeds that is one-half the planet in size. This is the Biblical flood of Noah, and the entire portion of the planet underneath the storm will be blown flat and buried under water. Im interested in the work Ive done and the things Ive discovered and in some of my philosophical stuff, because I think its of value, but Im not into being a celebrity, because I think celebrityhood has no value to anyone, least of all to the celebrity. Thats what alchemy says., To generate enough cash to purchase the raw materials to make LSD, Owsley and Cargill began making and selling methedrine in a makeshift bathroom lab in Berkeley. Check out our owsley stanley belt buckles selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. Tom Sizemore, Heat and Saving Private Ryan Actor, Dead at 61 Those were all allegories. Owsley wanted the Dead not only to be clearly heard but also in stereo, a concept so far ahead of its time that it would be ten years before such systems were installed in movie theaters. 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. Our planets heat balance and temperature are buffered and controlled by water and water vapor, which also washes CO2 out of the air and not minuscule fractions of a couple of gases, one of which is very soluble and the other unstable. Professionally recorded by Owsley in 1974, and mastered using todays most cutting edge technologies, they are exquisite. All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible. Technician for Grateful Dead and an LSD cook. As part of the work of the Owsley Stanley Foundation, some of the concert recordings have been released as albums: Legal trouble and continued involvement with the Grateful Dead. [16], Stanley met the members of the Grateful Dead during 1965. 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. Thanks to Owsley, the Dead were soon playing through four immense Altec Voice of the Theatre A7 speakers powered by four McIntosh 240 stereo tube amplifiers as delicate as they were huge. He died in a car accident in Australia (where he had taken citizenship in 1996) on March 12, 2011. The new lab was set up in the basement of a house across the street from the Denver Zoo in early 1967. 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. I thought I was going to die, and I said, Fuck it. And that was good., Running out a side door during his freakout, Owsley leaped into his car, gunned the engine and promptly ran into a ditch. The sound turns into something youve never heard before. At the time, live sound at rock concerts was extremely primitive. His father was a government attorney. Donations are much appreciated, and are in fact essential to our ability to preserve and release future recordings! All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible. ALWAYS enter lists of addressses (greater than 2) in the Bcc: line. 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. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 March 12, 2011) was an American-Australian audio engineer and clandestine chemist. Its absolutely clear. Owsley Stanley was known as the foremost underground LSD chemist of the 1960s.
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