Summer of Love

[princess007]

Hello can anyone tell me when the Summer of Love actually was... I've been told 1969, 1967 and 1966 so was just wondering when it atually was! Thanks

[netibiza]

True andyhughes - I was there but can't remember!!

[maxi29]

I thought that 1967 was the usually accepted year. 1968 was when it started turning violent....but I suspect, as Andy says, it's when you want it to be.

[zmudge]

The Hell's Angels, an outlaw gang made up of robbers, rapists and murderers, were hired by the Rolling Stones to be security guards at the Altamont concert. Mick Jagger was dressed in a satin cape which glowed red under the lights. Jagger was imitating Lucifer. As the group began playing several of the youngsters stripped off their clothes and crawled to the stage as if it were a high altar, there to offer themselves as victims for the boots the Angels. Standing in the crowd in front of the stage was a young black man by the name of Meredith Hunter. Hunter would soon be singled out for human sacrifice. The Stones had just released a new song entitled, "Sympathy For The Devil." The song begins with Mick Jagger introducing himself as Lucifer. As soon as he began to sing it at Altamont the entire audience rose up and began dancing in a wild frenzy. A Hell's Angel  stalked across to Meredith Hunter and pulled his hair hard to provoke a fight  Five more Angels came to assist him and Meredith tried to run off through the crowd. An Angel caught up with him and brought down a sheath knife hard in the black man's back. Meredith knew then that he was fighting for his life and produced a gun out of his pocket. The Angels were upon him like a pack of wolves. One tore the gun from his hand, another stabbed him in the face and still another stabbed him repeatedly in the back until his knees buckled. The Angels then killed Hunter. Throughout the killing the Rolling Stones continued to play "Sympathy For The Devil." The entire group watched from the stage as Meredith Hunter was killed before them.

[princess007]

thanks for your answers, this has proved to be interesting for me, after andy hughes mentioned Meredith Hunter, I looked up the story on the internet, being born in the 80's I never really got told about a lot of the bad stuff that happened in the 60, just a sex, drugs and flowers!

It's really interesting that people seem to have there own interpretation of the Summer of Love!

[zmudge]

I had no idea that Meredith Hunter was recently featured in the Sunday Times. It sticks in my mind because Mick Jagger quite frequently walks past the windows of my office.

[marmaduke]

If You're Going To San Francisco.

[netibiza]

zmudge I always thought that the Hells Angels appointed themselves as security guards - and to "keep the peace" the RS's let them get on with it - of course it should not have gone so bad.

[zmudge]

Just to recap, the Stones gave a free concert at the Altamont Speedway, Livermore, California on 6 December 1969 at which four people died, the Meredith Hunter murder taking the attention.

Netibiza. As I understand it, it was admitted that the Stones hired the Angels for $500 worth of beer which they placed adjacent to the stage so that the Angels could drink it whilst performing their security duties. This was a cause of the mayhem which followed, but not the sole cause.

Andy Hughes. You are perfectly entitled to express whatever opinion you wish -  it gives rise to no "issue" with me.

[stevie21]

zmudge, even The Sun wouldn't print that first post of yours.

[Ouisch]

Most historical sources describe 1967 as the Summer of Love.  By 1968, drugs like heroin were working their way into Haight-Ashbury, and the area became less about peace and more about crime, illness and homelessness.  1968 was also the year that both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr, were killed, and 1969 was the summer of the Manson Family, so the 60s ended with something of a rough thud.

[Octavius]

The Summer of Love was a phrase given to the summer of 1967 to try to describe (personify) the feeling of being in San Francisco that summer, when the hippie movement came to full fruition.

The actual beginning of this "Summer" can be attributed to the Human Be-In that took place in Golden Gate Park on January 14 of that year. Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and the Jefferson Airplane all participated in the event, a celebration of hippie culture and values.

John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas took twenty minutes to write

"If you're going to San Francisco,
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
If you come to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there.'

The song was designed originally to promote the upcoming Monterey Pop Festival, in June. Scott McKenzie's cover of the song was released in May 1967

Later that summer, thousands of young people from around the nation flocked to the Haight-Ashbury district of the city to join in on a popularized version of the hippie experience.

A full chronology of San Fransisco Rock can be found from the San Fransisco Museuem website: http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist1/rock.html

 

[Octavius]

I can't remember that one, but I can remember the Second Summer of Love in 1987, her name was Jennifer.....

[GMH]

Well, being born in the late 1970s meant that I wasn't around in the 1960s. So, as not being around and not being there mean the same thing, I must remember the 1960s very well!

I would think that it was 1967 as well. San Francisco was a very popular place in that year as half the songs in the charts (Flowerpot Men, (not as in Bill and Ben of course), Scott Mackenzie etc) were about that place.