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. The Owsley Stanley Foundation is pleased to present an audiophile release of incendiary performances by the incomparable Doc and Merle Watson, from Bears Sonic Journals -Owsleys storied trove of live concert recordings. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. Ifeel as if Ive known you through many lifetimes., You have, Owsley replied, and you will through many more to come.. Yet today, at seventy-two, he is all but forgotten. We had Meet the Beatles! [1], Called the Acid King by the media,[2] Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD. The Point Richmond lab turned out more than 300,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of LSD, dubbed "White Lightning". 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. Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Drag Bill Youre concentrating a lot of mental energy on one package. The altercation led Stanley to request the formal codification of his perceived managerial power over the equipment staff, including unprecedented hire/fire privileges. 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. Long before global warming became an international hot-button issue, he delivered what writer David Gans described as a ninety-minute lecture on a thermal cataclysm that he said would begin with a six-week rainstorm and leave the entire Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable. Passing around Australian visa applications, Owsley then urged all those present to join him in the Southern Hemisphere. All in all, I was making about a dollar fifty an hour. His agricultural career came to an abrupt end when some local junkies intent on ripping off his crop put a pistol under his chin and pointed a .22-caliber rifle at his chest. Source: medium.com. 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. There diet derived 75-80% of all calories from fat. Owsley Stanley 1935-2011 'Bear' helped Grateful Dead, made LSD. 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. $30.00. I did not buy expensive things. Since 1965 he and Melissa Cargill had distributed an . [4][33] From at least the mid-1960s until his death, Stanley practiced and advocated an all-meat diet, believing that humans are naturally carnivorous.[4]. So youre Owsley,Lesh said. 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. I did not feel it was mine, since what I was doing was in my mind a service to my community. At the end of Hendrixs live version of the Beatles Day Tripper, recorded at the BBC studios in 1967, he can be heard calling out, Oh, Owsley, can you hear me now? In 1976, Steely Dan burnished Owsleys myth by recording Kid Charlemagne: While the music played/You worked by candlelight/ Those San Francisco nights/You were the best in town. The same year, Stanley officially shortened his name to "Owsley Stanley". 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. The "Save The Music!" The Bear. The shelves werent even in there just these big hunks of meat. In this new three-part series, you and I will explore the life and times of Owsley Stanley, who early on financed the Grateful Dead with money he made as a "cosmic chemist" and was instrumental in the design of the band's legendary "Wall of Sound" stage system. 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. Living in Marin County, he supported himself doing sound for Jefferson Starship and Phil Lesh and selling his jewelry backstage, in arena parking lots and in hotel bars after shows whenever the Grateful Dead toured. He's also related to William Owsley, the 16th governor of Kentucky, for . These . Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live performances. 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. 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. A thought occurred to me: if the orange were red and the bar across were a lightning bolt cutting across at an angle, then we would have a very nice, unique and highly identifiable mark to put on the equipment. Country * The grandson of a Kentucky senator, Owsley found his way to California, discovered drugs, and promptly blew . In prison, Owsley got himself assigned to the kitchen. I am often asked about the origin of the so-called "dancing bears" which were commonly seen around GD shows. 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. Bear wanted to be the sound man, and he was not the sound man, and he just never got it, because he had a single vision. Every single note is separately placed in space as well as in time. Thomas, who died in 1993, sold it to the band as a letterhead for $250, meaning that neither he nor Owsley ever saw a dime from all those Deadhead stickers on the rear bumpers of Volkswagen buses. An article in The Los Angeles Times described him rolling up to a Sunset Strip bank on a red motorcycle with crumpled bills stashed in his helmet, pockets and boots. For him, this is just another day on the road. Owsley adored his grandfather, but his relationship with his parents was difficult. Written by WL Woodward. [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. 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 . sulver buckle. He was the Grateful Deads original sound man and their initial financial benefactor. Im not really interested in talking about myself, he says. By doing so, he compiled a historic collection of live performances. Once a year by invitation only, he throws a party attended by friends, family and musicians from all over Australia who play all night long. When Owsley showed up one day during the fall, he walked over to Kesey and handed him a couple of hits of acid. Come take a magical trip with us and find out! 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. A high-school dropout of preternatural intelligence who was born from a Kentucky political dynasty and became the live sound-engineer for the Grateful Dead, his most notorious legacy is as the first Acid Millionaire. The American psychologist Timothy Leary's famous invitation to "tune in, turn on and drop out" changed a generation. In every way, the briefcase reflects his mind. 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. Add to Favorites Dancing Bear patch, Grateful Dead patch, Owsley Stanley patch, Iron on patch, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Dead and Company, Shakedown . The alchemist Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who transformed not only the Dead's sound, but American consciousness. Everything is connected, because its all being created by this one consciousness. 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. 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. Until now, he has never been willing to speak extensively about his life. Former Rolling Stone editor Greenfield's pretty solid, if skimpily researched, book provides an . He died in a car crash last week in . But manufacturing acid is not the only accomplishment on Owsleys rsum. [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 . (He has also never willingly allowed his photograph to be taken.) 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. Stanley also developed the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound, one of the largest mobile sound reinforcement systems ever constructed. On February 21st, 1965, police raided the house and confiscated various chemicals, including a substance they wrongfully identified as speed. Ignoring the inquiry, Owsley roots through his bags for a large state-of-the-art conical burr grinder and a white funnel-shaped device to heat water so he can make coffee from beans he grew and roasted at home in Australia. These analog reel-to-reel recordings are nearing the end of their expected shelf lives and will deteriorate and be lost forever if they are not preserved. 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. The world would be, like, over. I lost control of that cell as well, Owsley says. From all three shows, as played on 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. Despite maintaining a 3.4 grade point average with minimal effort, he dropped out because of his disinclination for slide rules and mechanical drawing. 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. And because he had the foresight to plug a tape recorder directly into the sound board during Dead shows, the music the band made at the peak of its power has been gloriously preserved in recordings still being issued in the series titled Dicks Picks, for which Owsley continues to receive royalties. 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. All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible. Bear's website, thebear.org, is still accessible as well, where you can see his jewelry designs and read his stories and essays. He was the key supplier of LSD during the 60s Hippie movem. Needless to say, the party is electric. His friends just knew him as The Bear. Jr. Reach out if you have questions, or to see how you can support the Owsley Stanley Foundation. 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. And I certainly never made $1 million from drugs. They decided to try to make acid that was at least as good or better than any pharmaceutical firm. It took Owsley just three weeks in the UCBerkeley library to learn everything he needed to know about the process. But they had to double the size of the crew and, in the process, the crew took over the band. Because the Dead were unwilling to fire any members of their large and sometimes dysfunctional family, the band decided in 1974 to instead take a break from touring, not going on the road again until the summer of 1976. I dont eat carbs. Especially this one. 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. Had it not been for Sheilah, he says, I dont think I would have survived. It is loud without being loud. It all seemed to fit together. 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. 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. 3.83. By his own account, between 1965 and 1967, Stanley produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, amounting to a little more than five million doses at the time. 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. Without his technical innovations he was one of the first people to mix concerts live and in stereo the band might never have emerged from the San Francisco scene. I just wanted to know the dose and purity of what I took into my own body. Youre dealing with part of the unconscious mind that they used to define as angels and devils. Owsley and Scully finally met a few weeks before the Trips Festival in the fall of 1965. He kept the LSD in an inexpensive footlocker that traveled constantly on Greyhound buses between Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco. Donations are much appreciated, and are in fact essential to our ability to preserve and release future recordings! All Rights reserved. .. It was brilliant and it worked, McNally says. Roughage is the worst thing you can put through your body, he says. If you feel you cant love someone and you are universally told that you must love, you become very guilty., After the aircraft carrier U.S.S. 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. 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. AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareDistrict of ColumbiaFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyomingAmerican SamoaCanal ZoneCommonwealth of the Northern Mariana IslandsFederated States of MicronesiaGuamMarshall IslandsNorthern Mariana IslandsPalauPhilippine IslandsPuerto RicoTrust Territory of the Pacific IslandsVirgin IslandsArmed Forces - AmericasArmed Forces - Europe, Canada, Middle East, AfricaArmed Forces - Pacific. The 30-year-old Owsley took the 21-year-old Scully as his apprentice and they pursued their mutual interest in electronics and psychedelic synthesis. 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. They were all gone. There were no onstage monitors, so musicians couldnt hear one another. Suddenly, his eyes redden and he is nearly reduced to tears. My mother died a few months into the experience, but it was there I sorted out my guilt problems about not being able to love my parents, and I came out of it pretty clear. After leaving the public high school, where his physics teacher gave him a D for pointing out that she had contradicted the textbook, he attended the University of Virginia for a year. The sound turns into something youve never heard before. Owsley was sent to Terminal Island Federal Prison, a medium-security lockup in San Pedro where Charles Manson had also done time. But he also inspired another famed rock band, Steely . . Until you had tripped, you were not part of the new culture. (Blind Carbon Copy). We want to hear it. The lead and the gold is the lead of the primitive nature into the gold of the enlightened man. Technician for Grateful Dead and an LSD cook. He lived in a picturesque Berkeley cottage filled with high-end stereo equipment where he kept an owl to which he fed live mice. 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. Long before the Summer of Love drew thousands of hippies to Haight-Ashbury, Owsley was already an authentic underground folk hero, revered throughout the counterculture for making the purest form of LSD ever to hit the street. The Owsley Stanley Foundation is 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. 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.
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