SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 2007
Remembering The Summer Of Love
Forty Years Ago, The World Was Introduced To The Counterculture
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Play CBS Video Video Monterey Pop Festival CBS News RAW: Listen to songs performed by bands at the Monterey Pop Festival held in Monterey, California.
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Jimi Hendrix became a rock star after a stunning performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. (CBS)
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Photo Essay Monterey Pop Images The 1967 Monterey Pop Festival was the seminal event of the Summer of Love.
Dreams of transforming society turned into business as usual, particularly for the drug dealers.
"You know, in 1967 a great deal of what happened in the Haight-Ashbury and in the aura of the Haight-Ashbury was commercial," Gitlin said. "You know, there were shops, people making money selling drug equipment. Or selling drugs. They were parasites on a cultural movement."
In October '67 the Diggers declared the death of the hippie with a mock funeral. The summer's magic had been fleeting.
"Anybody talking about the Summer of Love is basically dealing with Baby Boomer nostalgia," Flanagan said.
That nostalgia is certainly on display this 40th anniversary. Among those remembering is New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. The posters from that era were never meant to last, but now they are treasured. Haight Ashbury has spent 40 years reliving the Summer of Love. There's still plenty of free expression here, along with a free clinic, a taste for tie die and all things psychedelic.
Most significantly perhaps, 40 years later, we're still listening to the music of 1967.
"At that time, all the best minds of the generation went into music," Flanagan said. "That's why the music lasts when most of the other things from the culture at that time are forgotten. And the music provides a soundtrack for the memories of a summer when so much seemed possible."
See images from Monterey Pop link=http://www.tgoportfolio.com/>here.
Watch some footage from Monterey Pop here.
Events Commemorating the Summer of Love:
The Public Theatre
To commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, New York's Public Theater will be presenting performances of "Romeo & Juliet," which runs 6/5 through 7/8; "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," which runs 8/7 through 9/9; and "Hair" (TBD).
Public Theatre's Web site.
Exhibits:
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
The Rock Hall is located at:
One Key Plaza
751 Erieside Ave
Cleveland, Ohio, 44114
Rock Hall Summer of Love exhibits include:
Click here for more information.
The Whitney Museum of Art in New York City:
Click here for more information.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Add a Comment See all 23 Comments
- Main Street Motion Media is the only event in the country to be held on the anniversary of Monterey Pop. On the biggest silver screen in the Northeast, at the Academy of Music Opera House in Northampton MA you'll see them larger than life: Hendrix, Joplin, The Dead, The Stones, The Who, Baez in full length concert films including Monterey Pop: live as they were then. More than a memory. A trip inside your past.
June 15-17th, 2007. www.mainstreetmotionmedia.com - Reply to this comment
- LucyMcG: sorry but there are no free Monterrey Pop sites but you can see clips at the "Eons" web site under H4L (Hippies For Life)
http://community.eons.com/groups/group/hippies-for-life - Reply to this comment
- is there online video of the monterey pop festival footage they showed this morning?
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- Yeah, MCVet's statements are pretty raw, not to mention unnecessary.
That's why he call's himself McVet - like McDonalds, McNewspaper, McHouse - all alluding to a certain cheapness, cookie-cutter kind of thing.
Everyone knows his comments & opinions are McIrrelevant. - Reply to this comment
- Thanks for the clarity, fridak. It's always the one's that weren't around then that have the most negative opinions about the 60's.
It was my experience that when guys in my town came home from Nam, with very few exceptions,they melted right in with the counterculture. It was as if they had a social home to come back to. The few that felt like outsiders were probably not going to fit in even if they had stayed home.
In the "Winter Soldier" documentary from '70 a vet says that the first time he smiled in a long while was when he was in a VA hospital and someone showed him a newspaper article on Woodstock. The rest of the vets in the room clapped when he said that. There's so much that people don't know about that period. - Reply to this comment
- I was in SF then, and it was really a great thing. Later, I got drafted, served in Nam', and came home ok. I still thought it was a great thing and I still do today. The country was changed forever, and this current bit of antiprogressive *** will hopefully go away soon. I get tired of a bunch of young dweebs that wern't even born yet taking issue with something you know nothing about. Hypno, I had served and gotten out before you even had green s--- in your diapers - go stick it.
- Reply to this comment
- re: Micky Dolenz. It was footage of the Monterey Pop Festival film. He and Peter Tork longed to be accepted by the counterculture. The Beatles were gracious towards them,as were other artists but the public never took them seriously.
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- We changed the WORLD! That's right all you Nazi's, no matter how much garbage you try to spew about the Generation... no matter how hard you try to take us back, WE changed the world for the better and are on the brink of doing it yet again. If you fascist out there think you had it rough the first time around, just wait. The Boomer Generation is getting ready to take over as the Senior Generation and by pure numbers the politic's of the next couple of decades will be MORE "people" friendly and less Corporate Friendly. So hang on to those swastika's and your Goldwater Pic's because we're going to take you through a whole new door.... And if history is any indication the earth and all on it will be better off for it. Just as the present day world is better off for the 60's generation. Sieg Heil Y'all.
Posted by MCVet at 03:30 PM : Jun 03, 2007
Pretty vicious for a Sunday...wow. - Reply to this comment
- Bill Flanagan would like this. Please take a closer look at the Summer of Love story, aired today, and in the very last frames of the report, after the hippie gives a flower to a cop, at the ending riff of California Dreaming, you'll find it very obvious that Mick Dolenz of the Monkees was among the crowd in that footage.
- Reply to this comment
- turn on: the love
tune in: the love
drop out: of the hate
long live the hippies!! - Reply to this comment
- We changed the WORLD! That's right all you Nazi's, no matter how much garbage you try to spew about the Generation... no matter how hard you try to take us back, WE changed the world for the better and are on the brink of doing it yet again. If you fascist out there think you had it rough the first time around, just wait. The Boomer Generation is getting ready to take over as the Senior Generation and by pure numbers the politic's of the next couple of decades will be MORE "people" friendly and less Corporate Friendly. So hang on to those swastika's and your Goldwater Pic's because we're going to take you through a whole new door.... And if history is any indication the earth and all on it will be better off for it. Just as the present day world is better off for the 60's generation. Sieg Heil Y'all.
- Reply to this comment
- The number of people that were part of the 60's counterculture was actually very small. It was far from an entire generation, so drawing conclusions about how the hippies turned into yuppies is inaccurate. Rich yuppies were a minority also.
Until the Woodstock movie came out most boomers didn't "get it" and even after the movie, to most of them it was just fashion. To be denied service in restaurants, to be profiled by the police, to be denied jobs, to be treated to a haircut and beating in the south just because of how you looked and even to be refused entry into Disneyland required a commitment to that lifestyle.
And yes drugs were a big part of the inner change that caused people to become "freaks". Marijuana and LSD provided insights that caused some people to adopt a more natural lifestyle change. They opened the mind to realities not considered before. Among them that we were all connected and love was elemental.
Ask any person that was a real freak from that period to recount their best experience and it will invariably include LSD. White powder drugs ruined the dream for some but "straight" propaganda was the real culprit.
Unless you were there and unless you were tuned in it would take hours to explain the truth. This report was even handed, unlike the faux documentary by the History Channel, but it's still only a basic intro to a period in history that was unique and misunderstood. - Reply to this comment
- Yes, that was Micky Dolenz in the last shot of the cheering audience...
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- wiredwilly - true, but achieving peace cannot be accomplished by snorting, ingesting, or pumping drugs into one's body, engaging in unsafe *** with just anybody and hope to not get a disease, and then singing ballads about how wrong it is for the cops to take people away for engaging in stupid and dangerous activities.
Okay, the using drugs part is illegal... promiscuous *** is stupid and dangerous, never mind the emotional ramifications of breaking another person's relationship (so much for peace and harmony...) - Reply to this comment
- The 60'S Counter Culture was correct : Love is Better Than Hate. Peace is Better Than War.
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- Listen to the music of the 1960s.
Sounds really good; very creative, yes...
But the lyrics either condone drug use... or are subversive. Often because drug use was illegal, or for other reasons...
The irony is the selfishness of that generation; the results of which became the yuppies of the 1980s.
SOME might argue the same folks are tearing things down in this country today; fulfilling their drugged-up fantasies of 40 years ago. Sounds far-fetched, but what the h3ll. Anything's possible, I suppose.
All I know is, and this is unrelated, priests have sermons about America being underpopulated and ask where the next generation of scientists will come from to resolve these problems... maybe Father Corapi hasn't been reading up on the news when he made that videotaped sermon - those jobs are leaving America... (that aside, he's had some interesting sermons...) - Reply to this comment
- The Monterey Pop Festival changed my life as it launched my rock and roll photography career. Looking back at my shots every performer was touched and able to reach out- it was an experience... a special connection between performers and audince with this kind of music. There was an incredible sense of good feeling, unlike any experience before.
When Hendrix started to burn his guitar I was so stunned I put my camera down and watched in amazement. That powerful gathering in 1967 was the first real tribute to rock and roll!
Thank you Lou ADler and John Phillips!
Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal
www.tgoportfolio.com - Reply to this comment
- In the closing shot to this story, was the Mickey Dolenz, of the Monkees, cheering in the crowd?
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- Seems strange that you only list events celebrating the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love" that are being held on the East Coast. Can't get much further away from San Francisco than that. Surely there is something going on in San Francisco or Monterey that you forgot to mention.
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- My husband and I watched this piece with our kids, ages 15 & 17. The talk in our family was about the story that was missing . . . the one that needed to between %u201CThe AP%u201D and %u201CThe Summer of Love%u201D stories.
"The War In the Living Room" drove so much of what went on at that time . . . we pointed out, that back then, the photo shown during %u201CThe AP%u201D piece: The man with the gun to his head, and many like it (the girl running naked and on fire) were in our living rooms every night, via the evening news, which the AP contributed to. We also made the distinction that today, with 2 wars going on, they don't see the "war in the living room." They see well screened scenes, chaos in the distance, and no endless lines of coffins coming in to Dover.
Yes, your piece was a nice reminder about the Summer of Love - but the evenings of the war in our living rooms played a big role in looking for that love! - Reply to this comment
