Inside the Laurel Canyon...

[cholas]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/155794-Inside-The-LC-The-Strange-but-Mostly-True-Story-of-Laurel-Canyon-and-the-Birth-of-the-Hippie-Generation-Part-1

This article was a Best of the Web(not written by SoTT) and I read it very closely. Then again. I found it fascinating. However, although it did have some good points and suspicious coincidences, it seemed to contain more heavy hints and unsubstanciated conclusions than facts. A good start for a hypothesis I suppose.

For example: Wouldn't most young Americans from this period have fathers that served in the military? Didn't many(most) able-bodied men join during WWII? I didn't find that overly suspicious. And just because one's father is in the military doesn't necessarily mean they are "intelligence" or involved in some top-secret nefarious project. Also from what I observed, having gone to high-school in a military-base town, is that it was quite normal for kids to remember each other from some other base/country years before. And Virginia/Washington Area was a popular one. Again I don't find it suspicious that John Philips' first wife(military father) knew Jim Morrison(ditto) in elementary school.

So far, I haven't yet been able to connect any of the authors named musicians with their so-called "intelligence" family's activities. Still looking into it though.

Also Laurel Canyon had attracted a unique artist/actor/musician crowd long before the mid-60's "flower children" moved in. There is a decent list of who's-who having lived in that area at wikipedia(search "Laurel Canyon"). I'm not clearly seeing the idea that they were "programed" ala mk-ultra to go there,"where there was no scene" and start a sinister, sticky peace/music op for Southern California.

If indeed there was an infiltration inside this group, and I'm sure there was, I really don't see enough evidence showing the people the author mentions as all being involved. Psychopathic personalities such as Manson, most likely. The damage he did to "the movement" was monumental. Straw-man?

It took this long to comment because I wanted to do a little research as well. Considering that many the author names are among my favorite musicians, it was important to look for my own sacred-cows/emotional attachments.

I look forward to reading Part 2.

Thanks SoTT.

 

[Laura]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading the next installment myself to see where Dave is gonna go with this.

Your point is valid that, at that period of time, probably most American kids had a father who had been in the military. I certainly did. And both my uncles AND one of my aunts, as well! All Navy. BUT, none of them continued in the military after their time of service was finished. (4 years for all except the aunt who did two tours) None of them were connected to intelligence services.

So, I think Dave's point here is that these people continued in a relationship with the military or intelligence services. And for sure, some of those stories were really odd, like showing up in Africa or Cuba.

Yeah, he named a few of my favorite musicians also and that's probably why it was so shocking to me to read the article. But shocks are generally good. They make you stop and reconsider things you may have been taking for granted.

So, let's wait for the next installment and see where it goes!

 

[Rabelais]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

Also Laurel Canyon had attracted a unique artist/actor/musician crowd long before the mid-60's "flower children" moved in. There is a decent list of who's-who having lived in that area at wikipedia(search "Laurel Canyon"). I'm not clearly seeing the idea that they were "programed" ala mk-ultra to go there,"where there was no scene" and start a sinister, sticky peace/music op for Southern California.

This is a very good point. I was there in the sixties... as an aspiring musician. You went to LA because that was where the record companies were. If you wanted to do studio work or get signed to a label, that was the place to be. LA was a major destination for musicians long before the hippies. Laurel Canyon was the residential center of that artistic universe... and a rather pleasant calm rustic hide away in the middle of the urban chaos of Hollywood. It was where the stretched heads had always gravitated - for decades.

Another minor point; SF was the origin of "flower power" and the hippy peace movement, although it arrived in LA shortly thereafter.

Other noteworthy similar artistic enclaves in the LA area were Trancas Canyon, north of Malibu on the coast and Ojai.

Looking forward to part two, too.

 

[Meg]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

That was quite interesting. The connections speak volumes about the music industry and it's influence. It makes me wonder about the popular bands of today as well. I am looking forward to the next installment.

 

[bikernina]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

Forgive me for starting out here with a somewhat contradictory comment, but I'd like to offer something that needs to be said:

It is a distortion of history for this author and his readers to think, 'aha, I just knew the hippies were up to something' because the el-lay people of his essay never were a real part of a much greater generational awakening of consciousness. El-lay people didn't march in Selma, they didn't witness children of the slaves armed with baseball bats going at their own in the Pickrick, they weren't forbidden to dance at high school sockhops because the preacher said so. Who among them fought hand and fist with classmates on the schoolroom floor arguing over integration?

This article is just one person's perception. He paints a place as an ongoing Halloween party passing around a dish of peeled grapes in the dark. Really skeery. But north of his ponorious weasels' nest it wasn't like that at all. Up in the Haight, they didn't like el-lay people for not only this guy's perceptions of the el-lay scene, but because el-layers carried very bad Kharma, were too fast on the draw, too aggressive, discourteous in general and smarmy dealers behind many rips, bad trips and running meth like Johnny Appleseed on speed. They were easily recognized by normals for what they were and reviled for it.

The word is psycopa---. You with me?

Fast forward four decades and what is Laurel Canyon Boulevard today? The razorwire capitol of the illegal car parts industry. You had a total loss? That's where your car went to heaven while its organs go to the highest bidding high-roller retro fanaticists aka trust fund babies who own the coast. Own the coast? Yes, birthplace of mass foreclosures, so strung out on leveraged debt, porn and bigboy toy hoarding, cleverly gated out of sight of citations, their cassons are caving into the sea with every winter rain. And who was it that allowed illegals to proliferate like hamsters in a bathtub anyway, you don't think picking them up at dawn every day at every corner el-lay convenience store from Topanga to Lancaster so the jobs Americans won't do - got done, might have had a little something to do with it? Sounds pretty supportive to me. Why wouldn't American military brats in el-lay do those jobs property owners everywhere else do? How about too busy being fabulous on a scene pumping egos and making too much money to care that funky mattresses, broken highchairs and plastic shopping bags were spilling over the hillsides as long as the cheatgrass gets mowed at Steinbeck prices before the summer deadlines arrive? Kharmic payback always comes around.

Maybe it was a perverts draw? Maybe it WAS designed to be such? It fits, right alongside Farsi-speaking let's liberate Iran radio and superporn studios, swinger stores and levitating surfers.

If the psycopaths wanted to mold a citizenry, it didn't work very well in el-lay. The good people split, the bad people died. Borderline people went the way of lifetime junkies, the revolving doors of prison or back to where they came from, sadder and wiser. And then Marshall McCluhan co-opted the conundrum for me-generation advertising cum propaganda eugenics and it became too lame to see yourself in a Pucci as a Peter Max pastel.

In the end, those surviving members of the 60's generation, tirelessly dedicated to global awareness, just grew up, striving ever-onward to do good and leave something worthwhile behind that says their time on Earth had positive meaning.

Show me a single article, book, song (excepting Dylan) or documentary accurately depicting the 60's Haight without distorting it one way or another. To link it with whatever the psychos were up to in LA is to call truthseekers "9/11 enthusiasts".

Flowers? No way, unless you were an Orange County runaway on spring break. Zappa, creepy as Kiss. But the Diggers ... now they had something going. Nurturing the hungry is a beautiful legacy.

 

[mada85]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

What are the odds of so many influential and famous musicians, who defined the sound of the sixties and seventies, all coming from military families and all arriving in the same area at the same time? Something does seem rather fishy here…

Apropos of military involvement in Laurel Canyon, the Laurel Canyon Association's history page on their website (_http://www.laurelcanyon.org/20cHist.html) says:

In 1947, the Army Air Corps built its top-secret movie production studio on Wonderland Park Avenue. Military training films and Department of Defense documentaries were churned out, including a particularly famous series on the aboveground nuclear tests in Nevada. The studio was deactivated in 1969, and thanks to the efforts of the Laurel Canyon Association, it was prevented from being zoned for further commercial activity.

In 1981 Frank Zappa's log 'cabin' burned down on Halloween, which event was preceded by the Wonderland Murders on July 1.

Links:

The Laurel Canyon Association
_http://www.laurelcanyon.org

Wonderland Murders
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderland_Murders

The Little Laurel Canyon House Zappa Used To Live In
_http://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/publish/Musically_Speaking_43/Little_Laurel_Canyon_House_.php

 

[mudrabbit]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

snipped:
It is a distortion of history for this author and his readers to think, 'aha, I just knew the hippies were up to something' because the el-lay people of his essay never were a real part of a much greater generational awakening of consciousness. El-lay people didn't march in Selma, they didn't witness children of the slaves armed with baseball bats going at their own in the Pickrick, they weren't forbidden to dance at high school sockhops because the preacher said so. Who among them fought hand and fist with classmates on the schoolroom floor arguing over integration?

Hi Bikernina,

Perhaps you're unaware of all the information that came before he started this series of articles? This particular "Part 1 in a series" is a continuance of things that went before.
I would suggest you go to the site and see what he has to say about it.
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/index.html
Seems more like he's just laying out the clues for us to make these connections ourselves. Which can be a hard thing to do if we identify strongly with something.

So far, I don't think he's named ALL the bands we admired back then, but there's several more parts to go before we really find that out.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

You make some valid points, here. I don't think what you are saying and where Dave M. seems to be going with this is contradictory.

I took the point about Laurel Canyon and the LA scene as a kind of vectoring of the countercultural energy by strategically placed people. Dave has also written interesting things about Manson in his book, Programmed to Kill, and his connection with Naval Intelligence, etc. Yes, the interesting stuff was happening in SF not LA, but LA was the media center, and it was in LA that they learned to make money on it, and to vector it in certain ways that would be useful later.

I think there was a lot of high level intelligence prodding to the counterculture and that it was being done for (among other things that is beyond what I can think of) the purpose of shocking average folks into supporting the right-wing reaction (Ronald Reagan's career is the perfect case in point, as is Richard Nixon's) and also, by pushing psychedelics, to open millions of people's minds up to hypnotic programming. Who knows what's embedded into all those songs and TV shows that are engraved in our brains!

And even in SF, a lot of the seminal figures were MKUltra alumni (Ken Kesey, Robert Hunter, etc.) Who really knows what was done to them? Many of them also spent time in Scientology. SF was also a center for the revival of Satanism (see McGowan's Programmed to Kill for this, too).

And after everyone was pretty burned out on psychedelics, the CIA types introduced cocaine into the scenes. Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia's wife, Carolyn Adams (AKA, Mountain Girl) wrote some things about that on the web, how cocaine was introduced by CIA-seeming types to the Grateful Dead. I remember when mainstream newspapers in the Midwest in the very early seventies glamorized cocaine, wrote that it was safe, non-addictive and used by the most fashionable people. It was unbelievable in today's context, but it is clear that "they" were pushing it and that it served their agenda.

There were indeed real people who awakened then and did great work, but the ones that got the attention and the money often had very dubious connections. You are also right that the rank and file had contempt for the so-called leaders of the counterculture, but because of the media, that's what got into people's minds.

Fascinating stuff!

Forgive me for starting out here with a somewhat contradictory comment, but I'd like to offer something that needs to be said:

It is a distortion of history for this author and his readers to think, 'aha, I just knew the hippies were up to something' because the el-lay people of his essay never were a real part of a much greater generational awakening of consciousness. El-lay people didn't march in Selma, they didn't witness children of the slaves armed with baseball bats going at their own in the Pickrick, they weren't forbidden to dance at high school sockhops because the preacher said so. Who among them fought hand and fist with classmates on the schoolroom floor arguing over integration?

This article is just one person's perception. He paints a place as an ongoing Halloween party passing around a dish of peeled grapes in the dark. Really skeery. But north of his ponorious weasels' nest it wasn't like that at all. Up in the Haight, they didn't like el-lay people for not only this guy's perceptions of the el-lay scene, but because el-layers carried very bad Kharma, were too fast on the draw, too aggressive, discourteous in general and smarmy dealers behind many rips, bad trips and running meth like Johnny Appleseed on speed. They were easily recognized by normals for what they were and reviled for it.

 

[mudrabbit]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

Here's what Dave had to say about this recent group of articles:

Last two paragraphs at
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr91.html

I still have a bit of reading to finish up, after which I have to somehow organize my voluminous notes in some coherent fashion, but then I’ll be ready to pen what could conceivably turn into a book-length series of posts. The topic will be a new one, but the ground that we will be dragging the old conspiracy plough through will be all-too-familiar to regular readers. Along the way, we’ll encounter a whole lot of people with military and/or intelligence connections, and we’ll occasionally brush up against organized pedophilia, mass murder, a secret military installation in the most curious of places, creepy underground tunnels, and a ‘call boy’ ring allegedly servicing Washington politicos. Indications of occult activity, of course, will weave their way through our story. And we will trip over more dead bodies than you can shake a friggin’ stick at – although I’m not really sure why you would want to shake a stick at dead bodies, though what you do on your own time is, I suppose, none of my business. But as I was saying, there are an extraordinary number of curious deaths attached to this story.

What we will be looking at, fearless readers, is the birthplace of the 1960s counterculture – the place that spawned the freak/hippie/flower child movement and the new styles of music that would provide the soundtrack for an era. As we all know, that place was, of course, the legendary Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. Except that, as is so often the case, what we all ‘know’ to be true isn’t really true at all. So we will be spending our time in a different place, though we might drop in on the Haight every now and then. But here I’m getting ahead of myself, so for now, while you wait with breathless anticipation for the new posts to surface, here are some links to a handful of fairly recent interviews that I have done:

 

[NormaRegula]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

When one considers the strange circumstances leading to John Lennon's death...and Jim Morrison's suicide...it might make sense for the PTB to have controlled from the beginning or, at the very least, made an attempt via carefully groomed handlers, groupies, managers, etc. to vector selected musicians turned rock icons in a certain direction like popularizing drug use, gratuitous sex, violent rebellion, Cointelpro programming via public relations, their recordings (yeah, it can and has been done...more overtly, than the old "play the record backwards for a message from Satan" silliness) and interviews. If the rock icon was deemed too dangerous to the PTB plans, (such as John Lennon advocating real peace by non-violent protest/telling others to refuse to go along with the Status Quo to achieve same) it would also make sense that the PTB would dispose of and/or discredit the icon. The PTB could also use an icon, not necessarily in the rock n roll industry, to appear anti-drug, pro-military, wholesome, etc. as a contrast to those rock n roll bad boys.

A few years ago, there was book entitled "The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley", written by author/researcher Alanna Nash. Talk about deeply weird! Nash alleges that Elvis manager Colonel Tom Parker (whose real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, fled Holland for the USA at age 20, joined the American Army Corps, possibly due to his being a chief suspect in a young girl's murder.) Kuijk a.k.a. Parker, took on a whole new identity for himself, even claiming to have been born in West Virginia, and had military intelligence connections. (Not too unusual as he spoke fluent Dutch, German, and English...a useful ability during WWII.) The author also got a hold of Parker's US Army military medical records which tellingly gives him a discharge "on basis of Constitutional Psychopathic State, Emotional Instability". Parker, however, still maintained relationships with his former MI colleagues despite the discharge. He held a tight grip over Elvis' career, and was rumored to have kept his charge in line due to his having a film of the King having sex with an underage girl.

An interesting review of the aforementioned book is here: _http://earcandy_mag.tripod.com/ronniebookreviews12-03.htm

Perhaps it's difficult for some of us Baby Boomers, who grew up enjoying and identifying with many of the rock stars of the 50's, 60's, and 70's, to think that the novelty, rebelliousness, message...and that terrific beat...was not as spontaneous as we might have thought. I know that I identified with many rock musicians during those decades. My father (another former military guy!) became a radio/TV personality during that time period. My dad left Top 40 radio by 1969, claiming that, get this, the leftists (ie: Commies) were covertly destroying the rock music industry, making teenagers depressed, into drugs, and/or violent. All I recall was how my friends and I loved to listen and dance to the music, because we could block out our troubles and the world for a few minutes to a few hours. Certain songs still take me back. It's only today that I see how music makes me disassociate. Same with old TV shows and films.

I've read some of McGowen's writing. His theories are well-researched, and definitely have that "where there's smoke, there's fire" factor. It's not too improbable that the PTB would try to control key parts of a powerful medium like rock n roll. Look at how the 60's sense of social change fizzled into a drug and "do your own thing" fest. Look at MTV. Look at how certain idols were promoted over others. The truth is out there. Hopefully, my admitted nostalgic identification with an era...and its musical celebrities...won't block my mind from getting to the truth...no matter how disturbing it might be to those fond memories.

 

[Vulcan59]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

For those of us following McGowan's Laurel Canyon series, part 2 and part 3 has been posted on his website.

 

[NormaRegula]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

Okay, just read Part II...and, yeah, it definitely has that "golly, gee whiz, ain't this world an incredibly strange place?" ring to it. The coinky dinks and connecting threads between the players are amazing. One could spend weeks just tracking down the info provided in the first few paragraphs.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Well, after I finally catch my breath, it's onto Part III...

 

[Mr. Premise]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

After reading parts II and III, it's easier to see where he's going with this (especially, as he said, after reading Programmed to Kill). What I found convincing is that there seemed to be more evidence for his thesis that I could think of that he didn't even use, probably to keep it manageable.

Reading Part I, I was a little sceptical that all these rock stars could be intelligence agents in the "undercover" sense. But I think where he is going with this is that they were "worked on" with Greenbaum techniques, which makes sense because the evil types volunteer their children for this kind of thing.

The Phil Ochs story was new to me. Wow.

And Janis J., Hendrix and Jim Morrison all dying at 27, which is three times 9, which turned upside down is...

As a side note, Frank Zappa ALWAYS gave me the creeps. I had the misfortune of seeing him live twice in the early seventies. A very scary scene. I can only wonder what effects that had... ;) For those who admire him, just read his lyrics!

Okay, just read Part II...and, yeah, it definitely has that "golly, gee whiz, ain't this world an incredibly strange place?" ring to it. The coinky dinks and connecting threads between the players are amazing. One could spend weeks just tracking down the info provided in the first few paragraphs.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Well, after I finally catch my breath, it's onto Part III...

 

[allenb]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

Continuing on here with a discussion that started in the comments section of part 2 of the article, about whether the people mentioned in this series really had any influence and whether the real agents provocateur of the 60's were people like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and that crowd.

Hendrix honed his guitar skills while serving a hitch in the air force.....so? If you want to write about asshats with some real influence that had a real agenda, do a piece on abby [sic] hoffman and jerry rubin.

Yeah, a piece on Abbie Hoffman would be interesting. He, along with seven others, the "Chicgo Eight" until one of them, Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale was separated from the case, making it the "Chicago Seven," did seem to have a real agenda. That agenda seemed to be speaking out against the damaging and dehumanizing effects of capitalism and U.S. politics.

They WERE asshat performers that were singing tunesmith crap that the establishment SAID had influence on us kids. Lennon, Hendrix and even the Stones had REAL influence. Dylan was in it for the bucks(still is), and Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman were agent provocateurs.

First off, I should say that I am in no way looking to defend Abbie Hoffman. By all accounts he was an egomaniacal publicity hound who was prone to making less than truthful statements to make himself look good. For instance, he denied that the Woodstock incident every happened. Reportedly, he took the stage while The Who was tuning up to give an impromptu speech on the jailing of John Sinclair only to be told by Who guitarist Pete Townsend, "F*** off! F*** off my f***ing stage!" Townsend then reportedly hit him over the head with his guitar which lead to the audience cheering.

Hoffman, in his autobiography Soon to be a Major Motion Picture, has this to say about the incident:

"If you ever heard about me in connection with the festival it was not for playing Florence Nightingale to the flower children. What you heard was the following: 'Oh, him, yeah, didn't he grab the microphone, try to make a speech when Peter Townshend cracked him over the head with his guitar?' I've seen countless references to the incident, even a mammoth mural of the scene. What I've failed to find was a single photo of the incident. Why? Because it didn't really happen.

"I grabbed the microphone all right and made a little speech about John Sinclair, who had just been sentenced to ten years in the Michigan State Penitentiary for giving two joints of grass to two undercover cops, and how we should take the strength we had at Woodstock home to free our brothers and sisters in jail. Something like that. Townshend, who had been tuning up, turned around and bumped into me. A nonincident really. Hundreds of photos and miles of film exist depicting the events on that stage, but none of this much-talked about scene."

Well, actually there is a record of the event. You can hear it for yourself at http://www.legalsounds.com/search?pattern=1969&&searchType=Songs&a_aid=46&a_bid=21. Scroll down to the clip labeled Abbie Hoffman Incident (Live At Woodstock Festival, 1969). It sounds to me like Hoffman isn't quite portraying the facts correctly.

And yet, it seems to me that what Hoffman and others were trying to do was show the absurdity of U.S. "culture" and politics using humor and civil disobedience to break down the hold this "culture" and political/economic system had on people's minds. On the other hand, the Laurel Canyon crowd along with the Flower Children of Northern California we creating a counter culture that was every bit as damaging and sleep inducing as the prevailing culture in the U.S., only with the added enticement of "free love" and lots of dope.

Hoffman was also into dope, by the way. That was kind of the running theme of the 60's. As Timothy Leary like to say, "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

And that is what I find fascinating about this series of articles. While you can't pin everything on the Laurel Canyon crowd (not that anyone is attempting to do that) it breaks open vast network of strange coincidences and connections between the movers and shakers of the era. I think that is the key thing, here. It isn't so much that you can trace a bunch of dope smoking musicians in Laurel Canyon to intelligence agencies as it is how ubiquitous these kinds of connections are.

I've been doing a lot of reading on the Bobby Kennedy assassination, which took place in the same era this series of articles is talking about. It is impossible to really pin down who did what and exactly what happened on June 5th, 40 years ago. Key evidence was destroyed by the LAPD (of course). What can be traced, however, is the network of coincidences and interrelationships between various people involved. And, like the coincidences and interrelationships with the Laurel Canyon crowd, the web boggles the mind. There is just to much there for a rational person to accept that it is all coincidence.

I think the truth of the matter is that this web of deceit remains largely unnoticed simply because it is so amazingly pervasive. It isn't that you can look around and find the islands of deceit to point a finger at. It is all deceit and you have to dig and dig, then dig some more to find a little bit of potential truth, tenuous and almost ephemeral, to point your finger at. That is a hard pill to swallow, that virtually everything about our lives and culture is a lie, but the more you look the hard it is to escape that conclusion.

 

[Iconoclast]

Inside the LC(Laurel Canyon):.........

another key player in the whole psychedelic movement was obviously Owsley Stanley.

from wikipedia (edited)
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley

Owsley Stanley (b. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, January 19, 1935, also known as Owsley or Bear) was an underground LSD chemist, the first to produce large quantities of pure LSD. [...] The widespread and low-cost (often given away free) availability of high-quality Owsley LSD in the San Francisco area in the mid-1960s may well have been indispensable for the emergence of the hippie movement during the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury area [...]
Owsley was also an accomplished sound engineer, and the longtime soundman for seminal psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead; the band's well-known "dancing bear" icon derives from his nickname. He designed the first high-fidelity sound systems for rock music, culminating in the massive "Wall of Sound" electrical amplification system used by the Grateful Dead in their live shows, at the time a highly innovative feat of engineering, and was involved with the founding of high-end musical instrument maker Alembic Inc and the pre-eminent concert sound equipment manufacturer Meyer Sound. The combination of his notoriety in the psychedelic scene and his reclusive tendencies (in part cultivated to confuse the authorities ---he avoided being photographed and refused to be interviewed for many years) led to the perpetuation of many inaccurate tales invoking him, and it should be noted that most published materials about him contain some inaccuracies. [...]

Owsley was the scion of a political family from Kentucky. His father was a government attorney, and his namesake and grandfather, Augustus O. Stanley, was a member of the United States Senate after serving as Governor of Kentucky. Another ancestor, William Owsley, also served as Governor of Kentucky in the mid 1800s. Exploration of current online genealogy sites shows that the Owsley family line stretches back through Colonial America to landed aristocracy in England, and is related to many of the royal families of Europe; indeed, Owsley appears to be a direct descendant of Charlemagne.

Owsley served in the U.S. Air Force for eighteen months from 1956-1958.

In September 1965, Owsley became the primary LSD supplier to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters; by this point Sandoz LSD was hard to come by and "Owsley Acid" had become the new standard.

In late 1967 Owsley's Orinda lab was raided by police; he was found in possession of 350,000 doses of LSD and 1,500 doses of STP. His defense was that the illegal substances were for personal use, but he was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison.

After he was released from prison, Owsley went on to do more sound work for the Grateful Dead. Later, he would work as a broadcast television engineer.

A naturalized Australian citizen since 1996, Owsley and his wife Sheilah live off the grid in the bush of Far Northern Tropical Queensland where he creates sculpture, much of it wearable art.

Owsley believes that the natural human diet is a totally carnivorous one, thus making it a zero-carb diet, and that all vegetables are toxic.[1]. He claims to have eaten almost nothing but meat, eggs, butter and cheese since 1959 and that he believes his body has not aged as much as the bodies of those who eat a more "normal" diet. He is convinced that insulin, released by the pancreas when carbohydrates are ingested, is the cause of much damage to human tissue and that diabetes mellitus is caused by the ingestion of carbohydrates.

on his current website there are several essays on diverse topics:
_http://www.thebear.org/essays.html

in particular he writes about the global warming myth:
_http://www.thebear.org/essays2.html#anchor506009
(owsley thinks that a new ice age is coming, that's why he moved to the australian outback)



an interesting character, to say the least.
while i have nowhere near enough information to form an opinion on him, i found the various details about him fascinating enough so that i wanted to include it here in the discussion about LC in particular and the possible "controlled opposition" nature of the hippie movement in general.