I did not buy expensive things. He is moving so slowly that someone from the front desk comes to the room to ask if he ever intends to leave. From all three shows, as played on During his service, he secured an amateur radio license and a general radiotelephone operator license. [16], Stanley met the members of the Grateful Dead during 1965. 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. When you get to 400, you just totally lose it. [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. He died Sunday in a car accident in Australia. So of course behind his back, people were sneaking candy bars in. Stanley lived with his wife Sheilah (a former clerk in the Grateful Dead's ticket office) in the bush of Tropical North Queensland, where he worked to create sculpture and wearable art. 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. So they never became visual, they stayed in the oral world, which is, everything is part of reality. The Bear, says Jerry [Garcia], is Satan in our midst, friend, chemist, psychedelic legend, and electronic genius; not a leader, but a moon with a gravitational pull. Check out our owsley stanley jewelry selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. Owsley lives by selling his art through his Web site (thebear.org) and royalties from Dead recordings. His nickname, Bear, reputedly was inspired by the profuse . 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. 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. I loved it.. He's also related to William Owsley, the 16th governor of Kentucky, for . Unable to swallow solid food since the cancer treatments, he laments that he can no longer enjoy dining out with friends. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known as "Bear," was the Grateful Dead's first live sound engineer, the group's benefactor in their early years, and arguably the most famous manufacturer and distributor of LSD the world has ever known. Ego death. The effort to preserve these historically vital recordings is estimated to cost between $300,000 $400,000. I generally was not much of a consumer., Concerning much of what has been attributed to him during this period, Owsley says, The only thing I havent been associated with is walking on the moon, for Christs sake. Owsley did not parachute in to the Human Be-In in January 1967, as was widely reported, but he did provide 300,000 hits of acid called White Lightning for the event. "[1], During his time as the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, Stanley started what became the long-term practice of recording the Dead while they rehearsed and performed. 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. Living in Marin County, he supported himself doing sound for Jefferson Starship and Phil Lesh and selling his jewelry backstage, in arena parking lots and in hotel bars after shows whenever the Grateful Dead toured. His grandfather, also named Augustus Owsley Stanley, was a trust-busting Democratic congressman from Kentucky who spent twelve years in the House of Representatives. And the band had a bunch of macho cowboys as a crew who were snorting blow and drinking a whole lot of beer, and Bear was offended by their language and by their beer., After being thrown across the room by one of the roadies during an argument, Owsley asked the band to give him the power to hire and fire the crew so they would know they were working for him. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decades counterculture. 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. 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. Cancers grow on glucose. He also studied ballet, Russian and French. 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. The Bear - Owsley Stanley. During the past month, he has dispensed with 1,400 of them. How did the court musician of the Maharaja, a man called the "Bach of India," and "perhaps the greatest musician in the world" find himself playing to a psychedelic crowd at the Family Dog, a countercultural beacon on the edge of Western civilization, with Owsley mixing the sound? SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - Millionare Augustus Owsley Stanley III, revered among hippies as the "King of Acid," finally has run into big, big trouble with the federal narcotics boys. I am often asked about the origin of the so-called "dancing bears" which were commonly seen around GD shows. He participated in a low carb forum where he shared his experience with and knowledge about eating a diet comprised entirely of animal foods. Greenfield's book, which is full of anecdotes and insight, tracks Stanley's life from his early days in the South through his final years in Australia. Its sometimes called witchcraft, and its extremely dangerous. [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. Bcc: this option will retain the list of addresses on the server, placing only one address per copy as it sends to each name on the list. The issue is available in the online archive. Robert Greenfield. While driving to work one day in his MG, Owsley saw an orange and blue logo with a white bar across it on a building. 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. 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. 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. 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. [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. Garcia was the center. Once a year by invitation only, he throws a party attended by friends, family and musicians from all over Australia who play all night long. Unlike his own father, Owsley has made every effort to be an active parent to his son Starfinder and daughter Redbird (whose mother is Cargill), born three weeks apart to two different mothers who remain good friends and raised their children as brother and sister. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known as Owsley, in 1967. Although he never smoked tobacco as an adult, Owsley learned in 2004 that he was suffering from stage-four throat cancer. The statement released on behalf of Stanley's family said the car crash occurred near his home, on a rural stretch of highway near Mareeba, Queensland. So when you had something that affects the minds of thousands and thousands of people in the palm of your hand, how could you not believe that your state of mind mattered?, By May 1965, he was back in the Bay Area with 3,600 capsules of extraordinarily pure LSD, dubbed Owsley by a pot-dealing folk guitarist friend. Link to comments by the Bear on a low carb forum back in 2006. Two nights later, the junkies returned only to discover that Owsley had fortified the place, hired some people and armed ourselves to the teeth. A running gun battle ensued, with one of the junkies taking a bullet through his arm. The Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound" was a massive sound system designed by LSD chemist, Owsley Stanley. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American-Australian audio engineer and clandestine chemist.He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture.Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live . 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. Musicians can adjust it. Take out the sun, and the planets all go their own way. Owsley Stanley was a counterculture transformer famous for the purity of two things: the LSD he cooked up and the rock 'n' roll sound system he created. Shining an LED light on them, he sprays each one with Detsol, a liquid disinfectant much like Lysol that is highly toxic to them, throws each one into a bucket, and then dumps their corpses into the woods the next day. 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. His initial motivation for creating what he dubbed his "sonic journal" was to improve his ability to mix the sound, but the fortuitous result was an extensive trove of recordings from the heyday of the San Francisco concert/dance scene in the mid-1960s. When the Dead declined to do so, Owsley found himself in what McNally calls limbo. Shifting his focus to what he knew best, the science of sound, Owsley began working on a revolutionary new system that would deliver crystal-clear audio in the big hockey arenas and indoor stadiums the Dead were now selling out. All the occult literature about ceremonial magic warns about being very careful when you start exploring these areas in the mind. And they laughed at me., Even as he was freaking out that night, Owsley experienced the single insight that would shape his life for years to come. That was the initiation. We would liken it to alchemy. Immediately following his release, Stanley resumed working for the Grateful Dead as a roadie and sound engineer in the summer of 1972. The tools of the trade, belonging to the man "most responsible for psychedlicizing the United States" (Jarnow 16). We were officially granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. 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. I dont want my life exposed publicly. By then, most of the money Owsley had amassed during his days as the worlds reigning acid chemist was gone. Owsley Stanley, famed Grateful Dead soundman and the first person to privately manufacture LSD, lived in the Poet's Corner cottage during the Summer of Love. I was just a neurotic kid, he says. 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 . Musicians plugged their instruments into amplifiers connected to single-channel speakers. Its absolutely clear. Just to show you. Until now, he has never been willing to speak extensively about his life. For him, this is just another day on the road. On January 14, 1967, Owsley supplied LSD for an even larger festival, The Gathering of the Tribes, a Human Be-In, held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. There were no onstage monitors, so musicians couldnt hear one another. Soil in Latest 'Bear's Sonic Journals' Release", "1960s LSD Figure Owsley Stanley Dies In Crash Entertainment News Story WISC Madison", "Jimi Hendrix inspiration and LSD producer Owsley Stanley dies", "Owsley Stanley Obituary - Owsley Stanley Funeral - Legacy.com", "Complete transcript of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in a BBC-Online Chat, March 4, 2000", "Kid Charlemagne: A Close Reading Of Steely Dan's Ode to Haight Street's LSD King", "Producer Sujoy Sarkar Drops Enigmatic Debut Album 'Sitting At Strawberry Fields Cause I Met Owsley on the Way', Celebstoner.com report of Owsley Stanley's Death, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Owsley_Stanley&oldid=1142575554, Owsley's association with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead is described in Tom Wolfe's, A newspaper headline identifying Stanley as an "LSD Millionaire" ran in the, Stanley is mentioned by his first name in the song ", Stanley is mentioned in the title of Sujoy Sarkar's debut album, This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 05:21. sulver buckle. Had it not been for Sheilah, he says, I dont think I would have survived. Augustus Owsley Stanley III (January 19, 1935 - March 12, 2011) was an American audio engineer and clandestine chemist. Stanley was charged with illegal possession of narcotics, dangerous non-narcotics, LSD, and barbiturates. In April, Owsley visited Timothy Leary, the east coast figurehead of LSD, at the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, NY.Stanley and Leary had met in LA in the spring of 1966, but . By his own account, between 1965 and 1967, Stanley produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, amounting to a little more . 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 . N o one did more to alter the consciousness of the generation that came of age in the 1960s than Augustus Owsley Stanley (who passed away March 13 . We are truly soulmates after twenty-two years together, and our love is as strong today as it was in the beginning. [32], Stanley believed a "thermal cataclysm" related to climate change would soon render the Northern Hemisphere largely uninhabitable, and moved to Australia in 1982. Tom Sizemore, Heat and Saving Private Ryan Actor, Dead at 61 Even though Owsley had already put about $50,000 into the band and would no longer be working for them, he told the Dead to pick out new equipment and send him the bill. Those were all allegories. Joel Selvin also wrote an extensive note on Owsley back in 2007 on the occasion of his . The Owsley Stanley Foundation is pleased to present an audiophile release of incendiary performances by the incomparable Doc and Merle Watson, from Bears Sonic Journals -Owsleys storied trove of live concert recordings. He, Scully, and Melissa Cargill (a skilled chemist and Cargill family scion who became Stanley's girlfriend following an introduction by Susan Cowper, a former girlfriend) set up a lab in the basement. These performances have not been heard since the nights they were played more than 40 years ago ! The photo to the right shows the source of the design of the bear motif on Bear's Choice. After he was released from prison, Stanley resumed working for the Grateful Dead as their live sound engineer. The Grateful Dead were not just good they were magic personified. Then and there, he decided to work for the most amazing group ever, have a fabulous time of it and try to make a positive contribution. Though Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh was the band member with whom Owsley would forge the closest ties, he saw Jerry Garcia as the sun in the center of the solar system. Lexington was blown out from under Owsleys father during the Battle of the Coral Sea in World War II, he began drinking heavily and became a lifelong alcoholic.

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