Article published in Rave magazine – September 1967

Haight-Ashbury: Epicenter of Flower Power: What do flowers mean to you? To the Flower People (the Gentle People, the Beautiful People) they signify love, freedom, goodness, fun and new experiences. Flower-power has its roots on the West Coast of America, which is where it all began. And it looks as if it’s catching on over here. Maureen O’Grady reports . . .

Pick a flower, any flower, a rosebud. Okay, so now you’re a rosebud, and part-way to becoming a hippy Flower Child! Dress yourself in bizarre clothes, wear beads and flowers copiously — in your hair, around your neck, or carry them! Be kind to everyone, love everybody.

Gain new experiences by thought (not drugs). Forget what day, month and year it is. It doesn’t matter to you any more. Turn on to a new way of thinking, where ties and responsibilities are not burdens.

Turn on the Beatle music; there are hidden gems and pearls of meaning in those plastic, psychedelic grooves. Go to love-ins, be-ins, be a gentle person, believe in love and have beautiful thoughts. Violence is never on your agenda.

Haight-Ashbury: Epicenter of Flower Power

Just honesty, kindness and happiness. Get hypnotised by tinkling bells, flashing lights, the heavy lingering essence of incense, pretty blossoms, the sounds of the new West Coast groups and jangling beads. It is a pretty wonderful life you’re leading now, with no looking back!

You’re entering the world of the ‘Paradise Lost’ people, and there’s a jungle of swamps and creeping vines and undergrowth behind you. You’ve escaped, you’ve made it.

This is how a hippy might try to convert you to the life of the Flower People.

Flower Children (although age is virtually limitless), escape from reality. They let their minds float to a land where ideas and thoughts are purer, bigger, larger than life and clearer than the sharpest crystal.

Passing Fad

Although about a year ago American hippies were cast off as being just another passing fad, they have now increased in their thousands. The cult is slowly but surely spreading and its peak has not yet been reached!

They are gentle, likeable people oozing with friendship, peace and love. Protest marches or meetings are definitely non-violent. They have love-ins and be-ins in public parks and open spaces.

They are always surrounded by their symbol of love—flowers, which in itself is a beautiful thought. Flowers as a symbol of love is a great idea, but it is the other things associated with the Flower Children; such as drugs, that you must be wary of.

Haight-Ashbury or Hashbury, in San Francisco, is the hub of it all. There in the streets you can see them, bare-footed, bearded, blanket-cloaked, Indian-beaded, elephant-belled, sleeping in doorways, rambling in conversation, listening to the music of their groups—the Doors, the Seeds, Grateful Dead—blaring out of juke-boxes.

Haight-Ashbury: Epicenter of Flower Power

In Hashbury the Flower People are a self-supporting community. They queue up daily for their free plates of stew. No-one wants for anything, not even clothes. All needs are supplied at the Diggers’ free store. The pads they live in are gaudily painted in this technicolour kaleidoscopic town of the turned-on and uninhibited!

Although they do not have a leader, they do have their ‘heroes’ —Buddha and St. Francis, because they dropped out of rich families to live by their ideals, Christ because he was cool, and Gandhi for being non-violent.

With such a large number of hippies some organisation had to come into their lives sooner or later! They have their own employment agency—part-time, that is—and they have another outfit providing food and homes, and a farm where they grow their food.

Monterey

The greatest gathering of hippies yet was at the Monterey Pop Festival, where they camped out for the three day duration of the Festival, and where 200,000 flowers were distributed among the Beautiful People.

Whenever a hippy meets someone straight he tries to turn them on—but not forcibly.

After the Flower People have undergone the personality, mind and thought changes, they change their name to complete the spell. First reactions upon entering hippydom is living for pleasure and taking whatever they can lay their hands on to turn them on, taking in colours, sounds and lights until their minds explode.

This stems, they say, from a great discontent and wanting-out of the American way of life and thinking.

Singer Scott McKenzie first introduced flower music to Britain with his song ‘‘San Francisco—Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair”. As far as Britain is concerned flower-power already has its followers, although they are mainly in London and the pop world.

London’s Children

They are the kind of people who call the most insignificant things beautiful, the ones who dress strangely in flowing caftans, big-brimmed hats, rajah jackets, silks and satins, Indian beads, bracelets, brocade, Chinese silk jackets, necklaces, bells and flowers.

The Beautiful People of London include the Beatles, Simon and Marijke, Graham Nash, the Stones and Donovan. The clubs they frequent are the Speakeasy, to see groups like the Soft Machine, and the U.F.O. Club to see people like Denny Laine and his Electric String Band, and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

The Hollies, Pink Floyd and Move are known to have handed out flowers to their audiences, and the Syn did a flower-power pop opera at the Windsor Jazz Festival.

The first love-in to be held in this country was at Primrose Hill, London. It poured with rain and was generally considered a flop-out. At the second, hippies were moved on by the police. But a flower was placed on a police car!

Of course, we do have a large number of so-called hippies here, but it would be pretty hard for a Hashbury community to get off the ground here. Drugs, as we know, are a dangerous subject. The Stones took the risk and came pretty near to paying the penalty.

Park Scene

Whether or not flower hippies will be tolerated in this country, as they seem to be in America, is another matter. At a London park where a police band was playing, summer-time hippies appeared on the scene and started to dance round the bandstand.

After patiently playing on, the conductor told the band to put down their instruments and there followed a great police-hippy chase through the park—with all the hippies getting away!

The situation is considered serious in America, but some hope that as most of the Flower People start young they will cool off by the time they reach their twenties!

As a lot of these youngsters are high school drop-outs their level of intelligence and education isn’t developed enough to make them really valuable citizens. After a couple of years of flower-power, is there a way back? Will they want to come back? Just remember that if you feel inclined to tuning in, turning on and dropping out.

Certainly life isn’t a bed of roses for everyone, but do not forget, roses have thorns that cut and hurt . . . !

Question Time With Scott McKenzie

We all know now what Scott McKenzie looks like and sounds like. Here in this exclusive interview with Maureen O’Grady he tells you what he thinks like!

What advice would you give to someone who wants to enter show business?

I don’t have any advice to give anybody and I don’t know if I ever will. I just know what I went through in getting into it. They’ll have to find out for themselves. The only advice I have is don’t sign anything. Just work for yourself.

Work on your music. Get to know people who are good people. There are really good people in this business, who are also successful and who really want to help the young. They make money at it and they get pleasure from being a part of the birth of something.

Get to know those people. Stay away from the ones who say they’re ‘going to make you a star’.

The Journeymen

Did you find it harder to get started because you’re a solo singer and not part of a group?

Well, I was in a group for a long time. That’s the way I started actually, with a folk group, the Journeymen. They were a good group in a lot of ways. We were relatively successful. We made a good living for about three or four years.

Now I’m a solo singer I sort of miss the group. You can have great fun as part of a group. I miss it in a way, and yet I really like the challenge of being a solo singer. Actually the reason I became a solo singer was because I really wanted a challenge.

It was the hardest thing I could think of, the most difficult thing. But I had to do it, and I still have to do it. Whether or not it’s harder to be a soloist, I don’t know. I think if you can produce something that’s good and something that people want to hear, whether you’re a singer or a group, I think it’s going to be acceptable. You’ll be able to make a living at it.

Haight-Ashbury: Epicenter of Flower Power

Is there any kind of music that you particularly like?

I love classical music such as Dvorak and Bach, but I don’t listen to much of Bach because I drive myself insane and up the walls. I like good groups. I’ve always loved harmony, hearing people’s voices together.

When you take a girl out on a date, where do you like to go?

Depends on where I am and what I’m doing. I don’t like night-clubs. I hate night-clubs. I’d eat at a nice restaurant if I was hungry or she was hungry. I don’t like night-clubs because I spend so much time working in them.

I know what’s going on and it’s not an illusion to me. Anyway I’m a bit backward in things like dancing. I like to talk more than anything else, or listen to music. Anything that will help me and a girl learn more about each other. I’m definitely not one for social gatherings!

Dislikes?

Is there anything about your work that you particularly like or dislike?

I dislike interviews but I like recordings and performing.

I don’t like listening to material that is very bad and don’t like having to rehearse. However, I love going “on the road”; the pace, the excitement, the spontaneity of it. One never knows what’s going to happen.

I don’t like all-night plane rides or bad hotel service. I love working with musicians and other creative people. That’s what keeps me going, keeps me alive. That’s life to me.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I don’t have much spare time, which is a bad thing. All my time is spent going after something, working on myself.

How do you feel when you hear your song?

Before I did it, I thought I would accept it very professionally. You know, I’d say, well that’s nice. When it first came out everybody was excited about it. Then I found myself listening to the radio and saying why don’t they play my song?

I got really upset with myself. That went on for about a week. Now I like to hear it on the radio, but I don’t really think about it that much. It’s nice that they’re playing it though because of the business part of it!