Posted on 03/13/2011 7:19:11 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
A 76-YEAR-OLD man who was killed when his car ran off the road in far north Queensland was reportedly Owsley `Bear’ Stanley, a 1960s counter-revolutionary and the first man to produce LSD en masse.
Stanley’s car ran off the road on the Kennedy Highway between Davies Ck and Koah on Saturday.
He was also an accomplished sound engineer and the long-time soundman and financier for psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead.
Former Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead tour manager Sam Cutler, who lives in Brisbane, released a statement on behalf of Stanley’s family confirming his death.
Stanley became an Australian citizen in 1996 and lived on the Atherton Tablelands, where he worked as an artist.
Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era and produced LSD at his labs in San Francisco.
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He is survived by his wife Sheila, two sons and two daughters.
A car crash??? That’s just insulting.
Guess the long strange trip is over for him.
This is why I always buy cars that you have to steer yourself.
Went to one concert. The drums were cool (parking lot) and the people were nice. This one ‘vendor’ popped up out of somewhere and yelled “Grateful Dead Grilled Cheese”. He was swarmed in seconds. Was interesting, never went back.
“come round the bend, you know it’s the end”
RIP
Here’s a useless tidbit. He was the subject of “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan.
He was a radar technician for the Army wasn’t he? (checking wikipedia now).....
Towers of speakers
He’s trippin’ with Jesus now, man.
In 1956, when Stanley was twenty-one, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for eighteen months before being discharged in 1958. Later, inspired by a 1958 performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, he began studying ballet in Los Angeles, supporting himself for a time as a professional dancer.[3] In 1963, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley where he became involved in the psychoactive drug scene. He dropped out after a semester, took a technical job at KGO-TV, and began producing LSD in a small lab located in the bathroom of a house near campus. His makeshift laboratory was raided by police on February 21, 1965. He beat the charges and successfully sued for the return of his equipment. The police were looking for methamphetamine, but found only LSD—which was not illegal at the time.
Stanley moved to Los Angeles to pursue the production of LSD. He used his Berkeley lab proceeds to buy 500 grams of lysergic acid monohydrate, the basis for LSD. His first shipment arrived on March 30, 1965. He produced 300,000 capsules (270 micrograms each) of LSD by May 1965 and then returned to the Bay Area.
In September 1965, Stanley 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. He was featured (most prominently his freak-out at the Muir Beach Acid Test in November 1965) in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a book detailing the history of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters by Tom Wolfe. Stanley attended the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966 with his new apprentice Tim Scully and provided the LSD.
When Keith dies, can we smoke his ashes?
It tells some of his story a song
“He was the subject of “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan.”
And Bear was not too happy about it.
Problem is Keef is not going to die!
Zappa sang about “phony hippies” in “Who Needs The Peace Corps” and one line says he’ll “sleep on Owsley’s floor”
I bet that guy had some pretty decent stories to tell.....if he could remember them....
I bet that guy had some pretty decent stories to tell.....if he could remember them....
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