Counterculture

In sociology, counterculture is a term used to describe a cultural group whose values and norms are at odds with those of the social mainstream, a cultural equivalent of a political opposition. In casual practice, the term came to prominence in the general press as it was used to refer to the youth rebellion that swept North America and Western Europe in the 1960s and early 1970s

Counter Culturein the 60th

This movement was a reaction against the conservative social norms of the 1950s, the political conservatism (and perceived social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam. It is sometimes discussed as the inheritor of the "Beat Generation" sensibility of the late 1940s and 1950s. Opposition to the war was exacerbated in the US by the compulsory military draft.

In one view, the 1960s youth rebellion largely originated on college campuses. The Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley was one early example. However, other rebellious-youth formats also contributed, some involving people who had never been college students. The beatnik café and bar scene was a tributary stream.

The Beat Generation was a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their most important works are Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959).By either definition, the members of the Beat Generation were new bohemian ecstatic epicureans, who often engaged in a spontaneous creativity.

Beat Generation

The style of their work may seem chaotic, but the chaos was purposeful; it highlighted the primacy of such Beat Generation essentials as spontaneity, open emotion, visceral engagement in often gritty worldly experiences. Kerouac introduced the phrase Beat Generation sometime around 1948 to describe his friends and as a general term describing the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York at that time.

Beat Generation

The adjective beat (introduced to the group by Herbert Huncke) had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out", but Kerouac added the paradoxical connotations of upbeat, beatific, and the musical association of being "on the beat".

Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969)

American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and part of the Beat Generation. While enjoying popular but little critical success during his own lifetime, Kerouac is now considered one of America's most important authors. The spontaneous, confessional prose style inspired other writers, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bangs, Ken Kesey, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Kerouac's best known work is On the Road.

Jack Kerouac

Kerouac wrote On the Road in April, 1951. Fueled by Benzedrine and coffee, he completed the first version of the novel during a three week extended session of spontaneous confessional prose. This session produced the now famous scroll. His technique was heavily influenced by Jazz. Publishers rejected the book due to its experimental writing style and its sympathetic tone towards marginalized social groups of the US in the 50ths. In 1957, Viking Press purchased the novel, demanding major revisions

ON the Road “Scroll”

The scroll is the physical embodiment of Kerouac's spontaneous writing method. One of the most remarkable literary manuscripts in existence, "On the Road" is a key work of American literature and marked a turning point in 20th-century culture.Typed by Kerouac in New York in a 20-day marathon in April 1951, the scroll comprises the first draft of the definitive Beat Generation novel. The original manuscript was typewritten onto 12-foot lengths of paper that were taped together.

The 0nly people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spider across the stars....

Jack Kerouac

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's best known work is from the 1960s when he became an informal documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest.

He had the finger on the pulse of his generation

Bob Dylan

Some of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'",[1] became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements.

There were certainly some stylistic differences between "beatniks" and "hippies" — somber colors, dark shades, and goatees gave way to colorful "psychedelic" clothing and long hair. The beats were known for "playing it cool" (keeping a low profile) but the hippies became known for "being cool" (displaying their individuality).In there were some changes in substance: the beats tended to be essentially apolitical, but the hippies became actively engaged with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.

From Beat Generation to Hippies

RevolutionDrugsSex

& Music

Another way of viewing the counterculture is as 'the principle of expansion' as applied not to economies or political spheres of influence but to aspects of personal life and to creativity.

The Key

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,With tangerine trees and marmalade skiesSomebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,Towering over your head.Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,And she’s gone.Lucy in the sky with diamonds.Follow her down to a bridge by a fountainWhere rocking horse people eat marshmellow pies,Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,That grow so incredibly high.Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,Waiting to take you away.Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,And you’re gone.Lucy in the sky with diamonds,Picture yourself on a train in a station,With plasticine porters with looking glass ties,Suddenly someone is there at the turnstyle,The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.

There is controversy concerning Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. When it was released, it was believed, and there are those that still believe that because hidden in the title of the song are the initials "LSD", that it was a composition inspired while under the influence of that drug. However, John Lennon has offered an explanation that was contrary to this belief, he said this song was inspired by a drawing of his young son Julian.......

Psychedelic cover of The Beatles' Revolver album. There was little doubt with the release of this album that the music was inspired by LSD. The most controversial part of the album, however, Tomorrow Never Knows. The beginning of the song, "turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream..." was taken from the introduction of the book, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary

L S D Lysergic acid diethylamide

It is a chemical that changes a user's mood, thoughts or perceptions. For this reason, LSD is grouped into a class of drugs known as hallucinogens or psychedelics.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

LSD was first synthesized from a fungus that grows on rye and other grains. In 1938, Albert Hofmann working in the Swiss pharmaceutical company called Sandoz, produced LSD for the first time. He was hoping that this new drug could be used to stimulate circulation and respiration.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

However, the tests he conducted were all failures and he forgot about LSD for 5 years. In 1943, Hofmann accidentally ingested (or somehow absorbed) a bit of LSD and experienced some of the psychedelic effects of this chemical: dizziness, visual distortions and restlessness. A few days later he prepared 0.25 mg of LSD in water and drank it. He again experienced the mood and thought altering effects of LSD.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

Until 1966, LSD was provided by Sandoz Laboratories free of charge to interested scientists. The use of these compounds by psychiatrists to gain a better subjective understanding of the schizophrenic experience was an accepted practice. Many clinical trials were conducted on the potential use of LSD in psychedelic psychotherapy, generally with very positive results.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

LSD first became popular recreationally among a small group of mental health professionals such as psychiatrists and psychologists during the 1950s.

Cold War era intelligence services were keenly interested in the possibilities of using LSD for interrogation and mind control, and also for large-scale social engineering. The CIA conducted extensive research on LSD, which was mostly destroyed.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

Several mental health professionals involved in LSD research, most notably Harvard psychology professors Drs. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), became convinced of LSD's potential as a tool for spiritual growth. Their research became more esoteric and controversial, alleging links between the LSD experience and the state of enlightenment sought after in many mystical traditions.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

They were dismissed from the traditional academic psychology community, and as such cut off from legal scientific acquisition of the drug. Dr. Leary was then (allegedly unbeknownst to himself) approached by agents of the CIA, who supplied him with such quantity of purified LSD-25 that he and Dr. Alpert/Ram Dass made available to a much wider portion of the public.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

Timothy Laery

Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996)

American writer, psychologist, campaigner for psychedelic drug research and use, 60s counterculture icon and computer software designer. He is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. During the 1960s, he coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Turn on, tune in, drop out

"Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary in the 1960s. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City in 1966. This phrase urged hippies to initiate cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by removing themselves from the existing society

Turn on, tune in, drop out

Leary later explained: 'Turn on' meant activating your neural and genetic equipment. 'Tune in' meant interacting harmoniously with the world around you. 'Drop out' meant a voluntary detachment from involuntary commitments like school, the military, and corporate employment.

Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001)

American author, cultural icon who some consider a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s. Born in La Junta, Colorado, he attended the University of Oregon, where he received a degree in speech and communication. In 1958; he moved to California to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University.

Ken Kesey

He is probably best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.At Stanford in 1959, he volunteered to take part in a study at the Menlo Hospital on the effects of psychoactive drugs such as LSD, sponsored by the CIA. Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences. His role as a medical guinea pig inspired Kesey to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

With the commercial success of his first novel in 1962, Kesey moved to La Honda, in the mountains outside of San Francisco. He frequently entertained friends with parties he called "Acid Tests" involving music (such as Kesey's favorite band, The Warlocks, later known as the Grateful Dead), black lights, fluorescent paint, strobes, and other "psychedelic" effects, and of course LSD (often slipped surreptitiously into a punch).

Acid Test

Furthur

When the publication of his second novel in 1964 required his presence in New York, Kesey, Cassady, and others in a group of friends they called the "Merry Pranksters" took a cross-country trip in a school bus nicknamed Furthur. This trip, was the group's attempt at making art out of everyday life. In New York, Cassady introduced Kesey to Kerouac and to Allen Ginsberg, who in turn introduced them to Timothy Leary.

The bus was stripped down and remodeled inside and out for a psychedelic excursion across the country with Kesey and his Merry Pranksters on board

Furthur

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Guinsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997)

American Beat poet born in Paterson, New Jersey. He formed a bridge between the Beat movement of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Gregory Corso, Bob Kaufman, Herbert Huncke, Rod McKuen, and Bob Dylan.

Irwin Allen Guinsberg

Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by modernism, romanticism, the beat and cadence of jazz, and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl", is well-known to many for its opening line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". It was considered scandalous at the time of publication.

Irwin Allen Guinsberg

It was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted after judge Clayton W. Horn, declared the poem to possess redeeming social importance. Ginsberg's leftist and generally anti-establishment politics attracted the attention of the FBI, who regarded Ginsberg as a major security threat.

Irwin Allen Guinsberg

It was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted after judge Clayton W. Horn, declared the poem to possess redeeming social importance. Ginsberg's leftist and generally anti-establishment politics attracted the attention of the FBI, who regarded Ginsberg as a major security threat.

Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman(November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989)

Social and political activist in the United States, co-founder of the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and, later, a fugitive from the law who lived under an alias following a conviction for allegedly dealing cocaine. He came to prominence in the 1960s, but practiced most of his activism in the 1970s and has remained a symbol of the youth rebellion of that decade.

Abbie Hoffman

During the Vietnam War, he was an anti-war activist who used deliberately comical and theatrical tactics, such as a mass demonstration in which over 50,000 people unsuccessfully attempted to levitate The Pentagon using psychic energy.

Hoffman was also successful at turning many flower children into political activists.

Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman is the author of Steal This Book, a commercially successful guide to living outside of the established system. Other titles include Fuck the System, Revolution for the Hell of It, Woodstock Nation, his 1980 autobiography, and his last book, published two years before his death, Steal This Urine Test. His life was dramatized in the film Steal This Movie.

Summer of Love

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 so-called "hippie movement" came to full fruition. (It is taken as an article of faith by some hippies that the word 'hippie' itself was invented to "cash in" on the movement.)

Summer of Love

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.

Summer of Love

The 'Human Be-In' was a happening in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a household word as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word 'psychedelic' to suburbia.

Summer of Love

The 'Human Be-In' focused the key ideas of the 1960s counterculture: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, consciousness expansion.

Summer of Love

The Haight-Ashbury is a district of San Francisco, California, named after the intersection of Haight Street and Ashbury Street. It gained a reputation as a center of illegal drug culture, especially with the use of marijuana. Also many participant of Ken Kesey Acid test move to Haight-Ashbury.

Haight-Ashbury

The area was thus sometimes known as The Hashbury, but, ca. 1967, its fame chiefly rested on the fact that it became the neighborhood of choice for a number of important psychedelic rock performers and groups of the mid-1960s. Acts like the Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, who all lived a short distance from the famous intersection

Haight-Ashbury

Woman Liberation

Woman LiberationIn the 1960s and 1970s, feminism and feminist theory largely represented, and was concerned with, problems faced by Western, white, middle-class women while at the same time claiming to represent all women. Since that time, many feminist theorists have challenged the assumption that "women" constitute a homogenous group of individuals with identical interests. Feminist activists emerged from within diverse communities, and feminist theorists began to focus on the intersection between gender and sexuality with other social identities, such as race and class.

Psychedelic ArtThe Psychedelic Era (1965–1975), associated with the use of psychedelic drugs, also produced psychedelic art which may enjoyed by both those who have, and who have not, had a personal psychedelic experience.

For decades, many users of psychedelic drugs report that they perceive a fractalization of the things they are looking at and a kaleidoscopic patterning. Recent scientific examination of the visual cortex suggests that a fractal structure based on hexagons may be how the receptive fields are organized.

Psychedelic Art

In the 60s, the creativity was bubbling in every fields of Art.

Painting, Graphic, Cartoon, Literature, Music...

Painting

Santana cover of their album Abraxas in 1970

Abdul Mati Klarwein

The most famous unknown artist Behind the world-famous painting 'Annunciation', used by Santana for the cover of their album Abraxas in 1970, hides the incredibly rich, but little known, universe of Mati Klarwein.  Although Mati produced some of the most iconic images of the 60's and 70's, his name, and much of his work, remains unknown to many. 

Aleph Sanctuary : The original Aleph Sanctuary was a portable 3 x 3 x 3 metre cubic temple made out of various metals and wood and panelled with 68 original paintings of various sizes.  It was built between 1963 and 1970

Opt ArtInspired by the the psychedelic movement, in 1966, for a few months, it was possible, to walk up and down Madison Avenue and see in every boutique window a pulsating, psychedelic painting, or print, of dots by Victor Vasarely, king of the next great movement, Op Art.OP Art: Optical illusion style of art.  Many artist tried this style in various mediums.  Geometric patterns that fool the eye with an illusion of three dimensions.  This style reached a peak of popularity during the hippie era. Artists who specialized in this type of work includ M.C.Escher, Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley.

Comics

Robert Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943. As a kid, he started drawing homemade comic books, together with his brother Charles, for the amusement of himself and his family. One of the characters he invented then was Fred the Cat, after the family's pet. Fred eventually became Fritz the Cat, one of Crumb's best-known characters.

Crumb hated the film so much that he killed off Fritz once and for all in a strip in The People's Comics.

Music

The Grateful Dead (a name chosen at random from a dictionary) was an American psychedelia-influenced rock band, formed in 1965 in San Francisco from the remnants of another band, "Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions." The Grateful Dead were known for their unique and eclectic songwriting style—which fused elements of rock, folk music, bluegrass, blues, country, and jazz—and for live performances of long modal jams. The band's numerous fans, often referred to the band simply as The Dead.Many bands from this area went on to national fame, such as Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother & the Holding Company, giving San Francisco an image as a center for the hippie counterculture of the era.

JeffersonAirplane

Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band from San Francisco, a pioneer of the LSD-influenced psychedelic rock movement. Various successor incarnations of the band have performed under different names, reflecting changing times and performer lineups, known as Jefferson Starship, and later simply Starship.

The term Jefferson airplane is also slang for a used match bent to hold a marijuana cigarette that has been smoked too short to hold without burning the hands. An urban legend claims this was the origin for the band's name

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American blues-influenced rock singer and occasional songwriter with a distinctive voice. Joplin released four albums as the frontwoman for several bands from 1967 to a posthumous release in 1971.Cultivating a rebellious manner that could be viewed as "liberated" – the women's liberation movement was still in its infancy at this time – Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines, and in part after the beat poets. She left Texas for San Francisco in 1963, lived in North Beach and in Haight-Ashbury

Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd (formed in 1965 in Cambridge, England) are perhaps the most influential British progressive rock band, famous for what many fans view as their cerebral lyrics.Pink Floyd enjoyed moderate success in the late-1960s as a psychedelic band led by Syd Barrett.In August 1967, the band's debut albumThe Piper at the Gates of Dawn is considered to be a prime example of English psychedelic music.Pink Floyd were recruited by director Michelangelo Antonioni to produce a soundtrack for his film, 'Zabriskie point', which premiered in 1970.

Woodstock

The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was the most famous rock festival of its era. It was held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in Bethel, New York, on 15, 16, and 17 August, 1969.

The Woodstock Festival represented the culmination of the counterculture of the 1960s and the ultimate climax of the "hippie era". Many of the best-known musicians of the times appeared during the rain-plagued weekend, much of which was captured in a successful 1970 movie, Woodstock.

Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag is a popular protest song from the band Country Joe and the Fish. The song begins with the "fish" cheer which was a cheerleader-style call-and-response with the audience where Country Joe spells out "fish" ("Give me an F!"). The song itself is a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus ("One, two, three, what are we fighting for?") is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam Vets of the 1960s and 1970s. It is the bands most successful and popular songs peaking in the top 40 spot on the charts.

In one of the most memorable performances at the legendary Woodstock Festival, Country Joe, performs the song solo. He altered the fish cheer to say "fuck" intsead and all half a million attendees sang along. At one point, most of the audience members stood up to sing along with him. The performance garnered international attention and has since been seen as the epitome of the anti-war movement of the 1960's.

Jimmy Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix(27 November 1942 – 18 September , 1970)

American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is widely considered the most important electric guitarist in the history of popular music.Hendrix extended the tradition of rock guitar: by using feedback, distortion and other effects as sonic tools, He was able to use such techniques as an integral part of his compositions.

Jimi Hendrix's performance of "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock was a turning point in the history of the counter-culture movement. As a summing up of one of the most volatile eras in the nation's history, his adaptation of the American national anthem has entered into our cultural lexicon as perhaps the most powerful musical touchstone of the era, a zeitgeist of expressiveness.

Jimmy Hendrix in Woodstock

The sounds Hendrix drew from his Fender Strat were literally an aural recreation of war. In between the machine-gun fire, bombs dropping, smoke billowing from napalm blazes, and a wrenching undercurrent that evoked the agonizing polarity which tore our country apart and destroyed Vietnam. As much a statement about his feelings about war, "Star Spangled Banner" was a perfect vehicle for Hendrix's complex vision of incorporating stunning technical work with completely new ideas in feedback.

Jimmy Hendrix in Woodstock

As the sixties progressed, the Vietnam war became an increasingly high-profile object of criticism, and the sense of the younger generation as a class who wished to create a different society gained momentum. One manifestation of this was the general strike that took place in Paris in May 1968, nearly toppling the French government.

Social & political Impact

As criticism of the established social order became more widespread among the newly emergent youth class, new theories about culture and personal identity began to spread, and traditional non-Western ideas – particularly with regard to religion, social organization and spiritual enlightenment – were also embraced.

Social & political Impact

This introduces one way of looking at the particular countercultural development of the mid 1960s to mid 1970s – simply an upwelling of youth. A quip from Winston Churchill is often paraphrased these days; it goes: "If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative at 40 you have no brain."

Social & political Impact

Many segments of the youth of this period were well educated, by comparison with earlier periods, leading to an interest in political philosophies. So, in the "youth culture" view of the phenomenon, every sort of outlook and political philosophy (and form of political apathy) except social conservatism might be expected to flourish. Given the era's capacity for both direct and media communication, it would be natural too that some members of the older generation would contribute to, and be influenced by, this social current within society.

Social & political Impact

In any case, as members of the hippie movement grew older, the 1960s counterculture was absorbed by the mainstream, leaving a lasting impact on morality, lifestyle and fashion. Jay Walljasper, the editor of Utne Reader, has written, "From the great gyrations of the counterculture would come a movement dedicated to the greening of America.

What Remains

In his essay From Satori to Silicon Valley (published 1986), cultural historian Theodore Roszak made the point that the Apple Computer emerged from within the West Coast counterculture. Roszak gives a bit of background on the development of the prototype models of these original home computers and on the two Steves' (Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the computer's developers) evolution toward being businessmen.

What Remains

In fact, a considerable number of early computing and networking pioneers – after discovering LSD and roaming the campuses of UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT in the late 60s and early 70s – would emerge from this caste of social "misfits" to shape the modern world.

What Remains

We are here to make a better world.No amount of rationalization or blaming can preempt the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on this planet. The lesson of the 60's is that people who cared enough to do right could change history.We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation.We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support.We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens.We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided.The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong and scared half to death.And we were right.Abbie Hoffman