Ego death. When Owsley was eight, his parents separated and his mother took him to Los Angeles. At the time, live sound at rock concerts was extremely primitive. He married and divorced twice, fathered two children and got himself arrested on a variety of charges. His early activities spanned the Beat-era years of Ken Kesey 's Merry Pranksters scenes, but he played a role during the explosion of 1960's Psychedelia culture. The "Save The Music!" By the time Owsley returned to the Dead in August 1972, Dennis McNally says, It was a different world. 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 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. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 The price I had to pay to get through the gate. So of course behind his back, people were sneaking candy bars in. The effort to preserve these historically vital recordings is estimated to cost between $300,000 $400,000. In other words, this cancer was living in a desert.. While driving to work one day in his MG, Owsley saw an orange and blue logo with a white bar across it on a building. Under the professional name Bear, he was the soundman for the rock band the Grateful Dead, whom he met when Ken Kesey invited them . Stanley Clarke took possession of his first Alembic bass in 1972 which brought a fair amount of interest from outside the Grateful Dead community . 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. 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. 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. 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. "Bear," as he came to be known, was a hoot and . Stanley took advantage of the opportunity there to learn the trade of metalwork and jewelry-making.[5]. The sound of Jerry Garcias guitar grabbed hold of Owsley, and he freaked out on acid for the first time. The bad news was that since Owsley was paying the rent, he expected them to adhere to his unconventional ideas and beliefs. 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. His initial motivation for creating what he dubbed his "sonic journal" was to improve his ability to mix the sound, but the fortuitous result was an extensive trove of recordings from the heyday of the San Francisco concert/dance scene in the mid-1960s. And he was probably right. Years later, Lesh would write that Garcia once told him, Theres nothing wrong with Bear that a few billion less brain cells wouldnt cure., The bands impatience with how long it took Owsley to set up its equipment and then take it back down again soon led to a parting of the ways. Owsley Stanley 1935-2011 'Bear' helped Grateful Dead, made LSD. Details Details. Once he stopped exploring, the whole scene stopped exploring.. That was the initiation. He also came up with the concept for what eventually became the bands logo. Owsley Stanley Foundation Merch Mountain Store; OSF Doc Watson 100 Year Anniversary Tee. In a new biography, find out more about the life of this LSD preacher than ever before. Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate. So youre Owsley,Lesh said. How did the court musician of the Maharaja, a man called the "Bach of India," and "perhaps the greatest musician in the world" find himself playing to a psychedelic crowd at the Family Dog, a countercultural beacon on the edge of Western civilization, with Owsley mixing the sound? It was brilliant and it worked, McNally says. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. Robert Greenfield. sulver buckle. 2021 Owsley Stanley Foundation | Web Partner, Merry-Go-Round at the Carousel, Tim Buckley at the Carousel Ballroom, Ali Akbar Khan, That Which Colors the Mind, Found in the Ozone, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Dawn of the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Allman Brothers Fillmore East February 1970, Doc & Merle Watson Never The Same Way Once. That got good and weird., By the time the Dead returned to San Francisco in April, Owsley had already made it plain to the band that as far as he was concerned, there was only one way to do everything: his way. Another West Coastbased rock band, Jefferson Airplane, had been arrested two weeks earlier in the same situation. For most people, Owsley says, the proper dose is about 150 to 200 micrograms. The Owsley Stanley Foundation is a 501c (3) non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of "Bear's Sonic Journals," Owsley's 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 . Letting vegetable matter go through a carnivorous intestine scratches it up and scars it and causes mucus that interferes with nutrition., For the next six weeks, the Grateful Dead and their girlfriends ate meat and milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I never set out to turn on the world, as has been claimed by many, Owsley says. Just to show you. Although he never smoked tobacco as an adult, Owsley learned in 2004 that he was suffering from stage-four throat cancer. Needless to say, the party is electric. The new lab was set up in the basement of a house across the street from the Denver Zoo in early 1967. 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. [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]. This should set the Buckley-sphere on Fire! 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. Stanley's lab in Berkeley was raided in 1966 and he was arrested. 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. [7], Stanley and Scully built electronic equipment for the Grateful Dead until late spring 1966. 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. Its something that goes from being absolutely inert to so powerful that twenty-five micrograms will cause a change in your consciousness, he says. [6], He died in a car accident in Australia (where he had taken citizenship in 1996) on March 12, 2011. Ive watched wonderful people get destroyed by it., From the time he was a child, what made Owsley unique was his extraordinary family background and the power of his mind. The key element was "turn on" and it was Owsley . The Idol: How HBOs Next Euphoria Became Twisted Torture Porn. Reach out if you have questions, or to see how you can support the Owsley Stanley Foundation. Born in 1935, Owsley was "authentic Bluegrass political royalty." His father was a prominent government attorney and his grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, was elected governor of Kentucky in 1919 and served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. By doing so, he compiled a historic collection of live performances. He was convinced that human beings were natural carnivores, not meant to eat vegetables or fiber. Augustus Bear Owsley Stanley 1967 Gathering of the Tribes. These . Adopt-A-Reel Program: 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. During his service, he secured an amateur radio license and a general radiotelephone operator license. Augustus Owsley Stanley III was infamous in the 60s counterculture scene and his legacy reaches further than most. Even though Owsley had already put about $50,000 into the band and would no longer be working for them, he told the Dead to pick out new equipment and send him the bill. 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 . Wall Street Journal. [12] In 1963, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became involved in the psychoactive drug scene. Would the Summer of Love have ever happened without Stanley, the reclusive acid impresario who turned on the world? On September 24, an previously unreleased 1968 live album by Johnny Cash that was recorded by Owsley "Bear" Stanley, the Grateful Dead's legendary concert documentarian (and . Until now, he has never been willing to speak extensively about his life. The alchemist Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who transformed not only the Dead's sound, but American consciousness. I said to him, You guys are fucking around with something that people have known about forever. March 14, 2011. From the start, Owsley felt that his state of mind while he was making acid would affect the nature of the product. Three years later, she sent him back to Virginia to live with his father. He died in a car crash last week in . Grateful Dead Archivist Discusses Dicks Picks Series. For him, this is just another day on the road. There were no greens or anything he called it rabbit food. , Nor was there any point in trying to argue with Owsley about it. His father was a government attorney. This live concert recording features recently discovered and previously unreleased music from Jefferson Airplanes fabled guitar and bass players before they became known as Hot Tuna. Get the full owsleystanleyfoundation.org Analytics and market share drilldown here 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. 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. Musicians can adjust it. Until you had tripped, you were not part of the new culture. Professionally recorded by Owsley in 1974, and mastered using todays most cutting edge technologies, they are exquisite. A year later, Mario Savio made his historic Free Speech Movement address from atop a police car to student protesters gathered outside Sproul Hall. 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. 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. The pot vessel was made by LSD pioneer Owsley Stanley for the Grateful Dead frontman. Lenny Hart and Owsley, who had never trusted preachers anyway, got on like oil and water. 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". Owsley Stanley put Ron and Susan together with Rick Turner who was a guitar repairman hailing from the east coast. 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. 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. Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live performances.