I am often asked about the origin of the so-called "dancing bears" which were commonly seen around GD shows. These . The Owsley Stanley Foundations ninth release ofBears Sonic Journals: The Foxhuntfeatures the Chieftains performing live in San Francisco in 1973 (CD & vinyl) and 1976 (CD & digital only). Adopt-A-Reel Program:For donations of $400 or more, we will work with you to select one of Bears Sonic Journals for priority preservation. The price I had to pay to get through the gate. Tripping frequently if not constantly. As much of his portfolio had been delegated to as many as four sound engineers during his prison sentence, he struggled to regain his past influence among the band and support staff. He had this stuff, and we thought it might be good, Owsley says. In June 1956, he enlisted in the United States Air Force as an electronics specialist, serving for 18 months (including stints at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Edwards Air Force Base's Rocket Engine Test Facility) before being discharged in 1958. Died at age 76 in an automobile accident. On January 30th, 1970, after a Dead show in New Orleans, police walked into the bands Bourbon Street hotel with search warrants and busted the Dead, along with Owsley. Check out our owsley stanley shirt selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. Owsley hired the vice mayor of Berkeley as his attorney, who forced them in court to furnish us with a sample, which we submitted to an independent laboratory that proved them wrong, leading to the dismissal of all charges.. During the past month, he has dispensed with 1,400 of them. In 1963, Owsley moved to Berkeley so he could take classes at the university, where the student protest movement was growing. Jerry Garcia's Lost Pipe Has Been Found After 30 Years and It Still Smells Like Weed. (He has also never willingly allowed his photograph to be taken.) Owsley declined. Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate. When Owsley asked Lesh what he could do for the band, the bass player said they had no manager and offered him the job. Believing there is no past and no future because everything exists only in present time, it never occurs to him to drive five minutes out of his way to the Monterey Fairgrounds where, forty years ago, his high-powered rocket fuel helped launch the Summer of Love. We were officially granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. I did not buy expensive things. 5 out of 5 stars (955) $ 29.95. Pittsburgh Post Gazette (PA.) Reno Gazette Journal (NV.) [28] During this period, he also assisted Phil Lesh in salvaging the technically deficient recordings assembled for Steal Your Face (1976), a poorly-received live album culled from the final October 1974 pre-hiatus shows at Winterland Ballroom. Owsley Stanley (a.k.a. Just to show you. He then talked to his friend Bob Thomas about putting the lightning bolt through the words Grateful Dead in lettering, which from a distance would look like a skull. He also came up with the concept for what eventually became the bands logo. Because the Dead then began playing a lot of festival-style shows where the equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle, Owsley says, he decided to mark their gear so the roadies could easily locate it. Owsley "Bear" Stanleyinterview by David GansJanuary 13, 1991KPFA (94.1 FM) Radio ArchivesAugustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was . Since 1965 he and Melissa Cargill had distributed an . Joel Selvin also wrote an extensive note on Owsley back in 2007 on the occasion of his . We had enough acid to blow the world apart. 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. 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. [13][14] He was featured (most prominently his freak-out at the Muir Beach Acid Test in November 1965) in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Tom Wolfe's book detailing the history of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. 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 . I was not responsible for his wings, but they did carry me to all kinds of places.. Yet today, at seventy-two, he is all but forgotten. With his dark-brown goatee and a gold hoop dangling from his left ear, he looks like an older, careworn version of the Edge from U2. Elected governor in 1915, he became a United States senator and served on the commission that oversaw construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Once the systems set, you can walk away from the board. Musicians can adjust it. By then, most of the money Owsley had amassed during his days as the worlds reigning acid chemist was gone. Roughage is the worst thing you can put through your body, he says. When I build a sound system, Owsley says, I do it in a single cluster, because everything in the hall must come from one spot in the room. Stanley died after a car accident in Australia on Saturday, March 12, 2011,[5] not Sunday, March 13, as reported in most publications[7][8][9][34][35] (a widely propagated error stemming from the Monday release to the press of the initial family statement, which was written on Sunday, stating he "died yesterday"). Much like his theory that human beings are meant to eat only meat, Owsleys concept of climate change is at odds with most current scientific thought on global warming. 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. Stanley's lab in Berkeley was raided in 1966 and he was arrested. An Amazon Best Book of November 2016: Most people with passing knowledge of San Francisco and the 60s are familiar with the main players: the Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Hells Angels, et al, but how many know of August Owsley Stanley III, aka Owsley, aka Bear? Spirited. - Commander Cody, "Sociologically, you know, this all represents a big switch in the whole rock 'n' roll trip" - Jerry Garcia, A legend recording a legend T. Michael Coleman, Bass, Its not just the energy of youth that shakes me when I listen to these tracks its the musical dialogue that Jack and I shared in these amazing moments. 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. 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 . Served 2 years in prison at one point in his early life. When you get to 400, you just totally lose it. I just wanted to know the dose and purity of what I took into my own body. February 11, 13, & 14, 1970, The Boarding House, May 1 May 4, 1974Seven CD Set. Stanley took advantage of the opportunity there to learn the trade of metalwork and jewelry-making.[5]. Bear's website, thebear.org, is still accessible as well, where you can see his jewelry designs and read his stories and essays. 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. At the time, live sound at rock concerts was extremely primitive. Especially this one. The situation was exacerbated by his disdain for the coarse language and deleterious drugs (most notably alcohol and cocaine) favored by the band's physically imposing roadies, many of whom perceived themselves as "macho cowboys" in contrast to Stanley's diminutive stature and scholarly appearance. Owsley had gotten the recipe for STP from a former Dow chemist named Alexander Shulgin(who would later reintroduce Ecstasy to the rave generation). Owsley Stanley, (Augustus Owsley Stanley III), "audio engineer and clandestine chemist", iconic figure of the counter-culture, "Acid King", "Bear"(as he was affectionately known), is our focus today. That amount of protein equals about 14-20 oz of meat (lean portion) per day. . Take out the sun, and the planets all go their own way. 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. There were no onstage monitors, so musicians couldnt hear one another. His ashes were placed on the soundboard at the celebration of the Grateful Dead's 50th anniversary at the Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead shows in Chicago, on July 35, 2015. Quickly regaining control, he says, But, hey, Im alive, right? Without waiting for an answer, he stalks out the motel-room door. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known as Owsley, in 1967. Once he stopped exploring, the whole scene stopped exploring.. Berkeley Troll House, where the 'psychedelic elite' partied, has sold for $1.4 million. He says his method was simple. 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. He was the key supplier of LSD during the 60s Hippie movem. The Owsley Stanley Foundation and the Allman Brothers Band are pleased to present the latest chapter in, The Great American Music Hall, May 5, 1976, 2021 Owsley Stanley Foundation | Web Partner, The Family Dog at the Great HighwayMarch 28, 1970, 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, A masterpiece. These performances have not been heard since the nights they were played more than 40 years ago ! On December 11th, 1965, the Dead played at the Muir Beach Acid Test in a lodge by the sea in Marin County. I had it for at least three years, but it never left the left side of my neck. Phil Lesh and I would talk about this, Owsley says. Together, they devised the Steal Your Face logo (a.k.a. [12] In 1963, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became involved in the psychoactive drug scene. Professionally recorded by Owsley in 1974, and mastered using todays most cutting edge technologies, they are exquisite. So they never became visual, they stayed in the oral world, which is, everything is part of reality. His first shipment arrived on March 30, 1965 and he produced 300,000 hits (270 micrograms each) of LSD by May 1965; then he returned to the Bay Area. Technician for Grateful Dead and an LSD cook. The original idea was to put recording studio technology into an electric guitar. And he was not surprised you would choose to be an idiot. pate88. When he finally returned to his physical body and found it mostly intact, Owsley was horrified by the way Kesey and the Pranksters were messing with peoples minds. It was brilliant and it worked, McNally says. With this rock band, I can rule the world! So we ended up living with Owsley while he was tabbing up the acid in the place we lived. Source: medium.com. [31], Notwithstanding his tour activities, Stanley made his first public appearance in decades at the Australian ethnobotanical conference Entheogenesis Australis in 2009, giving three talks during his time in Melbourne. At this point, Stanley rented a house in Point Richmond, Richmond, California. [36], After Stanley's death in 2011, his family and some close friends created a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called the Owsley Stanley Foundation. Add to Favorites Dancing Bear patch, Grateful Dead patch, Owsley Stanley patch, Iron on patch, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Dead and Company, Shakedown . The Japanese don't write in alphabetic writing; they write in pictographs. The new lab was set up in the basement of a house across the street from the Denver Zoo in early 1967. Last note: In 2005 Bear found out The Oxford English Dictionary had added a word: "owsley, N. An extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD; a tablet of this. The Wall of Sound fulfilled Owsley's desire for a distortion-free sound system that could also serve as its own monitoring system. A year earlier in Los Angeles, narcotics agents had begun picking through their garbage. And that alone gives him credibility for that scene., By the time lsd became illegal in California on October 6th, 1966, Owsley had become a mythic figure. Later, inspired by a 1958 performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, he studied ballet in Los Angeles, supporting himself for a time as a professional dancer. When he was fifteen, Owsley spent fifteen months as a voluntary psychiatric patient in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.[9] Without having graduated high school, he was admitted to the University of Virginia, where he studied engineering for a year. He lived in a picturesque Berkeley cottage filled with high-end stereo equipment where he kept an owl to which he fed live mice. 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. 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. 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. [6], He died in a car accident in Australia (where he had taken citizenship in 1996) on March 12, 2011. The headmaster later told High Times magazine that he remembered Owsley as almost like a brainchild, a wunderkinder, tremendously interested in science. Even then, Owsley was possessed by what he calls this rogue, get-high nature of mine and was expelled in ninth grade for smuggling alcohol into school during homecoming weekend, getting virtually every student on campus blasted out of their minds., When he was fifteen, Owsley spent fifteen months as a voluntary patient in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where the poet Ezra Pound was also confined. [3], Stanley's level of access to the group's inner echelon (including complimentary food from the band's caterers) was somewhat controversial among the band's employees, with one staffer opining that "he had the sales tactics of a Mumbai street peddler"; on one occasion, Garcia and Weir were forced to intervene when Stanley provoked Chelsea Clinton's Secret Service detail as he attempted to conduct business with the then-First Daughter. [30], In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stanley briefly served as the live mixing engineer for Robert Hunter and Jefferson Starship. In 1984, Owsley appeared at Phil Leshs house with a map of the world showing the mean temperatures at the height of the last ice age. These are the most extensive files there are of our music from this time. Donations are much appreciated, and are in fact essential to our ability to preserve and release future recordings! Augustus Bear Owsley Stanley 1967 Gathering of the Tribes. A legend recording a legend T. Michael Coleman, Bass. [29] Following the hiatus, Stanley returned as Lesh's personal roadie for "a couple of tours" in the late 1970s, although personality conflicts with other crew members once again precipitated his departure. On a good night, Owsley will catch as many as 225 toads. . Although he never smoked tobacco as an adult, Owsley learned in 2004 that he was suffering from stage-four throat cancer. The Owsley Stanley Foundation is a 501c(3) non-profit organization 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. The money flow was very embarrassing, he recalls. Adopt-A-Reel Program:For donations of $400 or more, we will work with you to select one of Bears Sonic Journals for priority preservation. 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. The little bears found in the form of stickers and stuffed dolls are taken from Bob Thomas' album cover art. Written by WL Woodward. His father was a government attorney. Owsley and Scully finally met a few weeks before the Trips Festival in the fall of 1965. Despite maintaining a 3.4 grade point average with minimal effort, he dropped out because of his disinclination for slide rules and mechanical drawing. We were officially granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. Former Grateful Dead sound engineer Owsley Stanley (left) is seen with Jerry Garcia at the San Diego International Airport in 1968. Almost before I realized what was happening, the whole affair had gotten completely out of hand. Adopt-A-Reel Program: They were all gone. Although people speculated for years about how Owsley managed to conceal his stash, no one ever figured it out. Check out our owsley stanley jewelry selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. 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 . Until then, the drug had been available in America only to those conducting serious medical research. It is articulate. (Blind Carbon Copy). Forty-feet high, it was composed of 604 speakers using 26,400 watts of power supplied by 55 McIntosh 2300s. 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. [10][11] Despite his dearth of formal education, he secured a position as a test engineer with Rocketdyne in Los Angeles; in this capacity, he worked on the SM-64 Navaho supersonic cruise missile. Grateful Dead Archivist Discusses Dicks Picks Series. . He wanted to lose it. Thanks to Owsley, the Pranksters now had enough LSD on hand to begin throwing parties at which everyone could get a dose. Our planets heat balance and temperature are buffered and controlled by water and water vapor, which also washes CO2 out of the air and not minuscule fractions of a couple of gases, one of which is very soluble and the other unstable. How many people can say that? Owsley also credits his all-meat diet for keeping him alive. Augustus Owsley Stanley I (May 21, 1867 - August 12, 1958) was an American politician from Kentucky.A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 38th governor of Kentucky and also represented the state in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.From 1903 to 1915, Stanley represented Kentucky's 2nd congressional district in the House of Representatives, where he . 9 were here. Moon face buckles were made in solid silver in two . 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. It turned out that it wasnt., The senior arresting officer, aware of Owsleys status, noted that the bust would probably cause panic in the streets because to a lot of hippies, their idol has fallen. He added that Owsley was actually a psychedelic missionary who gives the impression that he feels the average person can never actually know himself without turning on with LSD., As Owsleys case dragged through the courts for the next two years, he stopped making acid and worked as the sound man at the Carousel Ballroom for three months before it was bought by Bill Graham and renamed the Fillmore West. Or riding your own sound wave. He also noted that the music made during the forty-odd shows when the system was used is still regarded by Deadheads as the pinnacle of live performance.. Country * Global warming: the panic, is based exclusively on temperate-zone land measurements and ignores the fact that the planet is seventy percent ocean. 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. The Owsley Stanley Foundations Seventh release of Bears Sonic Journals: Merry-Go-Round at the Carousel features Tim Buckley at his jazzy, improvisational best, including the only known recordings of several Buckley originals and a stunning medley showcasing a version of Fred Neils, Merry-Go-Round.. 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. 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. At a time when the Dead were trying to keep ticket prices down, the wall cost about $350,000. Owsley was sent to Terminal Island Federal Prison, a medium-security lockup in San Pedro where Charles Manson had also done time. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s. The alchemist Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who transformed not only the Dead's sound, but American consciousness. The Owsley Stanley Foundation is a 501c(3) non-profit organization 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. There are titles here never heard before [on a release] and seldom played. Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph from San Francisco Chronicle, via . Stanley is known throughout the west as "king of acid." I said to him, You guys are fucking around with something that people have known about forever. 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. The Bear - Owsley Stanley. It was the most dangerous, underpaid job I ever had in my life, he says.I was never a real grower. The "Save The Music!" One of my friends who was a folkie brought it in and said, Man, you gotta listen to this! And I was off and running. In 1973, he served as lead designer of the band's Wall of Sound, collaborating with Dan Healy and Mark Raizene, as well as Rick Turner and John Curl of Alembic to design the groundbreaking sound reinforcement system. The 1970 Grateful Dead song "Truckin'" is based on the incident ("Busted, down on Bourbon Street / Set up, like a bowling pin / Knocked down, it gets to wearing thin / They just won't let you be").