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Did The U.S. Establishment Promote Flower Power?

Zeke Newbold

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
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Apr 18, 2015
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Such is the claim hinted at in this book, (but also to be foumd elsehwhere):

https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122

(I should say that I haven't read this book myself, but just discussed it with a mate of mine who has).

Apparently it makes a lot of the fact that, for example, Jim Morrison came from a heavily military family - but would deny this in interviews, either saying he didn't remmemer who they were or just inventing a ficitional family and stuff like that. Moreover, his band The Doors seemed to spring fuly fledged out of nowhere - complete with good songs and musical talent and so on that none of the members had betryed earlier.

As Conpiracy theories go (and I'm usually a cock -up man every time) this one has credibiity. In the America sixties the powers-that-be were busy trying to contain the Red Menace in South East Asia as well as win the Space Race - meanwhile there was already a gaping generation gap - and the last thing they needed was a bunch of smart kids getting into Maoism and supporting the Vit Cong, or even just being radical in their liberalism. Far better then to divert the whole thing into something more maneagable and cuddly: blissed out, inane self-destructive drop out culture.

Was the hippy counter-culture a dummy opposition?
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Such is the claim hinted at in this book, (but also to be foumd elsehwhere):

https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122

(I should say that I haven't read this book myself, but just discussed it with a mate of mine who has).

Apparently it makes a lot of the fact that, for example, Jim Morrison came from a heavily military family - but would deny this in interviews, either saying he didn't remmemer who they were or just inventing a ficitional family and stuff like that. Moreover, his band The Doors seemed to spring fuly fledged out of nowhere - complete with good songs and musical talent and so on that none of the members had betryed earlier.

As Conpiracy theories go (and I'm usually a cock -up man every time) this one has credibiity. In the America sixties the powers-that-be were busy trying to contain the Red Menace in South East Asia as well as win the Space Race - meanwhile there was already a gaping generation gap - and the last thing they needed was a bunch of smart kids getting into Maoism and supporting the Vit Cong, or even just being radical in their liberalism. Far better then to divert the whole thing into something more maneagable and cuddly: blissed out, inane self-destructive drop out culture.

Was the hippy counter-culture a dummy opposition?
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looks like an interesting read , i'll have to pick up a copy
 
Well thanks to MK Ultra being uncovered, we know the CIA were experimenting with LSD long before the hippies did. Possibly they sanctioned easy access to it around certain university campuses just to see if it made the younger generation more docile?Obviously that didn't work out for them as the hippies - at least the hardcore hippies rather than the mere followers of fashion - became highly politicised and prone to anti government protest.

As for the Doors, like a lot of psychedelic bands they spent a couple of years playing blues and R&B covers and gradually working up original material before finally scoring a record contract.

(Pink Floyd, for example, followed a similar trajectory, Hendrix started out as a blues sideman, while Jefferson Airplane started off as folkies who went electric. All of them released remarkable debut albums that apparently came out of the blue but were actually the result of years of work and development.)
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Such is the claim hinted at in this book, (but also to be foumd elsehwhere):

https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122

(I should say that I haven't read this book myself, but just discussed it with a mate of mine who has).

Apparently it makes a lot of the fact that, for example, Jim Morrison came from a heavily military family - but would deny this in interviews, either saying he didn't remmemer who they were or just inventing a ficitional family and stuff like that. Moreover, his band The Doors seemed to spring fuly fledged out of nowhere - complete with good songs and musical talent and so on that none of the members had betryed earlier.

As Conpiracy theories go (and I'm usually a cock -up man every time) this one has credibiity. In the America sixties the powers-that-be were busy trying to contain the Red Menace in South East Asia as well as win the Space Race - meanwhile there was already a gaping generation gap - and the last thing they needed was a bunch of smart kids getting into Maoism and supporting the Vit Cong, or even just being radical in their liberalism. Far better then to divert the whole thing into something more maneagable and cuddly: blissed out, inane self-destructive drop out culture.

Was the hippy counter-culture a dummy opposition?
Click to expand...
Winston Churchill's granddaughter was one of the people who organised the first Glastonbury festival so that's our UK conspiracy theory angle covered there in all things flower power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabella_Churchill_(charity_founder)
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Such is the claim hinted at in this book, (but also to be foumd elsehwhere):

https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122

(I should say that I haven't read this book myself, but just discussed it with a mate of mine who has).

Apparently it makes a lot of the fact that, for example, Jim Morrison came from a heavily military family - but would deny this in interviews, either saying he didn't remmemer who they were or just inventing a ficitional family and stuff like that. Moreover, his band The Doors seemed to spring fuly fledged out of nowhere - complete with good songs and musical talent and so on that none of the members had betryed earlier.

As Conpiracy theories go (and I'm usually a cock -up man every time) this one has credibiity. In the America sixties the powers-that-be were busy trying to contain the Red Menace in South East Asia as well as win the Space Race - meanwhile there was already a gaping generation gap - and the last thing they needed was a bunch of smart kids getting into Maoism and supporting the Vit Cong, or even just being radical in their liberalism. Far better then to divert the whole thing into something more maneagable and cuddly: blissed out, inane self-destructive drop out culture.

Was the hippy counter-culture a dummy opposition?
Click to expand...
There are good interviews with David McGowan on youtube about this book. He claims that not only Morrison, but just about EVERY other 'star' from the music scene at that time had close relatives high up in Government. Morrisons Father was DEFINITELY a major player. He was the Naval commander in the 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident which escalated the start of the Vietnam war for a start! And how did all those kids from the Doors, Beach Boys, Byrds and many others, just happen to avoid the draft? John Fogerty from Creedence went, as I think Steven Stills did, but that's about it. Also, it was always New York and Nashville that were the music centres of America- all of a sudden it becomes Los Angeles. Yes, lots of strange stuff going on here. I suggest you read the book.
 
bob61 said:
looks like an interesting read , i'll have to pick up a copy
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Yes. Also mentioned is ''Lookout Mountain Air Force Station'' with secret film studios in Laurel Canyon. Coordinates:
17px-WMA_button2b.png
34.108810°N 118.388588°W
 
Sounds fascinating, thanks.
As @graylien says above the cia and mkultra were experimenting with LSD. Ken Kesey was one of their experimentees, and he took acid to kids across the country in his bus. Was this a government plot? was kesey 'tricked' into it?

Without having read the book, I'm not sure that all the 'leaders' of counterculture music being from military families is a conspiracy, so much as bog standard nepotism. 'hey guys, this is joe, his dad served with mine at x-base when we were kids'.

Of course their dads could've got them out of the draft if they wanted. less conspiracy and more whispers in the right ears.

but still its an intriguing notion.
 
Ladyloafer said:
Sounds fascinating, thanks.
As @graylien says above the cia and mkultra were experimenting with LSD. Ken Kesey was one of their experimentees, and he took acid to kids across the country in his bus. Was this a government plot? was kesey 'tricked' into it?

Without having read the book, I'm not sure that all the 'leaders' of counterculture music being from military families is a conspiracy, so much as bog standard nepotism. 'hey guys, this is joe, his dad served with mine at x-base when we were kids'.

Of course their dads could've got them out of the draft if they wanted. less conspiracy and more whispers in the right ears.

but still its an intriguing notion.
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Well, yes it's true that maybe these 'high up' parents could have helped their kids out of the draft in some cases, but they'd have to have serious clout to do that. And would they really have wanted them to just for them to become ''dirty, workshy hippies''? Usually, military parents are pretty strict themselves. Look at Morrison just a year or two before- he was as clean cut as can be. (I suppose most of them were in the beginning though to be fair). However if you read John Densmore's book 'Riders On The Storm' (Drummer with the Doors), he states that he faked being homosexual, Robby Kreiger's family were wealthy and paid a lawyer to say he was unfit for service, and Ray didn't have to go as he'd already done his service, so perhaps it wasn't too difficult to get out of it- if you knew the right people as you say. However, Morrison never revealed to the others how HE got out of it. As for Kesey, I know he was (willingly) taking L.S.D as part of the C.I.A programme in the early 60s, (around 1963 I think), so whether he was part of something more than just physical/mental experiments, I don't know.
 
Sometimes music scenes do just kick off in certain regions - there are always various theories as to why this happens.

For instance the Merseybeat scene of the early 60s was possibly down to Liverpool being a port visited by a lot of US sailors, who brought the latest blues and R&B releases over with them to sell to the local kids. Then there was the whole Madchester thing in the early 90s. Or New Orleans jazz in the early 20th century.

Interesting about draft dodging, though apparently Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys was drafted, was taken to court as a conscientious objector, and ended up being ordered to do community service after a protracted legal battle. (Bizarrely he offered to take the Beach Boys on a tour of Vietnam!).

Apparently out of a pool of 27 million eligible men, around 2.2 million were actually drafted for Vietnam. So statistically speaking the odds did favour you missing the draft.
 
graylien said:
Sometimes music scenes do just kick off in certain regions - there are always various theories as to why this happens.

For instance the Merseybeat scene of the early 60s was possibly down to Liverpool being a port visited by a lot of US sailors, who brought the latest blues and R&B releases over with them to sell to the local kids. Then there was the whole Madchester thing in the early 90s. Or New Orleans jazz in the early 20th century.

Interesting about draft dodging, though apparently Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys was drafted, was taken to court as a conscientious objector, and ended up being ordered to do community service after a protracted legal battle. (Bizarrely he offered to take the Beach Boys on a tour of Vietnam!).

Apparently out of a pool of 27 million eligible men, around 2.2 million were actually drafted for Vietnam. So statistically speaking the odds did favour you missing the draft.
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Yes, that was definitely the case in Liverpool's music scene of the early 60's, I would say. And as for Vietnam, those statistics do lower the odds of you going, somewhat. Still, David McGowan mentions lots of strange stuff that was going on at the time.
 
I've long heard the idea floated that LSD was deliberately introduced to the counterculture to draw them away from left-wing politics and into trippy navel-gazing.
 
James_H said:
I've long heard the idea floated that LSD was deliberately introduced to the counterculture to draw them away from left-wing politics and into trippy navel-gazing.
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Some say it was more to do with taking people's eye off the raging war in Vietnam. ''Look at these dirty layabout hippies'' kind of thing.
 
Having 'been there' (i.e., having some of age during that period), here are some comments ...

The Doors weren't central to the 'flower power' movement(? - cultural motif; whatever) at all. They didn't break through nationally until late summer and early autumn 1967 (i.e., after the 'Summer of Love'). Given some of Morrison's lyrics and comments, people heavily invested in the 'peace / love' aspects of the nascent counterculture didn't embrace - or even tolerate - the Doors at all.

Another thing to point out is that the Doors were products of the LA 'scene', whereas 'flower power' was intrinsic to the San Francisco 'scene'. These were two separate and self-distinguished pop cultural contexts or venues at the time.

It wasn't until 1968 that youth protests emerged as serious and recurrent social disruptions, so 'The Man' didn't have much reason to foresee a widespread youth-centric social threat earlier, when the 'flower power' themes arose.

The politically active and / or the psychedelically benign American youth of the late Sixties weren't all members of one all-encompassing group. Indeed, folks self-identified as members of one or the other subset often made a point to distinguish themselves from the other group and its values - even to the point of criticizing or ridiculing the other ones.

The groups most associated with the San Francisco scene (and the emergent hippie / 'flower power' stuff) were more often descended from the folk and blues music scenes than rock. The two groups dominating Haight-Ashbury at the time (Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead) were originally categorized as 'folk rock'.

This connection to the earlier folk / traditional music scenes also meant a connection back to the beats and scattered pre-countercultural alternative people and groups of the 1950's and early 1960's - among whom the earliest opposition to Fifties conformity and the Vietnam War arose.

The 'flower power' theme emerged circa 1965 / 1966 and traces directly to Alan Ginsberg - hardly an establishment tool. In its original form, Ginsberg contextualized 'flower power' as a form of flagrant street-theatrical Ghandian passive resistance countering reactionary violence.

More generally, mainstream America was caught totally off guard by the rise of the Sixties youth counterculture. It spontaneously coalesced (to the limited extent it was ever a coherent 'thing') at the intersection of several disparate trends or cultural streams.
 
I have my doubts - why was LSD banned at the height of the summer of love in 1967 after being legal prior to this?

Also, grass & LSD didn't exactly stop protests against the Vietnam war - Kent State University, Civil Rights protests as well..

And it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that musicians in bands like [eg] The Doors couldn't already play a bit, as if 'The Establishment' somehow got them practicing..

As Enola said, one of the main bands was Grateful Dead. To suggest they couldn't play is a bit silly. Did they have Establishment support too? Or maybe Jerry Garcia had been playing since he was a kid.

As others have said, music scenes take off spontaneously in a city if conditions are right, before spreading country/world wide if they're popular enough. Rap/HipHop seems to be the latest. That probably started in LA or New York.
 
I've heard similar theories from ex-new age travelers who believed the "brew crew" was invented by the government, (taking young-unemployed males, giving them access to strong lager and drugs, etc and then encouraging them to join up with the hippies). This resulted in a lot of anti-social behavior, very bad press and anti-new age traveler feeling from the public.

I'm not so sure the Criminal Justice Act seemed to do just fine on its own in destroying the peace convoy.
 
What Enola said. Lots of good comments here. I was about ten years old at the beginning of the hippie times, so nowhere near an adult, but this particular conspiracy theory seems loopy to me too. What a lot of conspiracy buffs love to do is a kind of "reverse engineering" of historical situations and events. They look at some result, then try to go back and connect the dots where some government agency or whoever set out to achieve just that. Well if there is anything less predictable than a movement populated by people between, say, fifteen and twenty-five years of age, then I'd say it would be the effects of LSD on them.

As for the draft and its effect on the music scene and the counterculture in general, we have no way of knowing, of course, how many of the draftees might have become famous or influential had they not been sent off to war, but it's important to keep in mind that most young men were not drafted back then. I don't know the actual numbers, but it was far less than half. There were of course some conscientious objectors, probably some famous ones in the counterculture which would be no surprise. Quite a few draftees were rejected for one reason or another too.

As someone who was there, both as a kid and then as a high school student wondering if I'd be sent off to Egypt to die in some pointless, perverse mess, I can say it was a wild time. Between that and wondering if we were all going to be nuked in the next ten minutes, it was a time of great uncertainty. For me, I think that is how I ended up with a large tolerance for uncertainty. I don't need to have an opinion of whether or how Bigfoot might exist, or whether aliens are zooming around in flying saucers while nobody is looking, or just what some shadowy agency might know about it all. The truth is out there somewhere, but so are next week's winning lottery numbers.
 
It's fairly well established - do a search on it whydontcha - that the American government covertly encouraged certain art forms in the Fifties - namely Abstract Expressionism. They did so because they were worried that intellectuals were turning to Communism and that by promoting an intellectual artform that the Soviets were too straight-laced to ever embrace they could say to the intellegentsia: `Well, look at the transgressive freedoms the West allows you that the commies don't!'

Of course acknowledging this doesn't mean that Abstract Impressionism - Rothko and Pollock et al - is complete rubbish or that the artists lacked talent. That is clearly not the case - just take a look at their work. It's just that they were being manipulated a bit from behind the scenes.

So there is a precedent for cultural dummy oppositions.

It's interesting that Robert Heinlen who -by the sixties-had become a sort of avuncular Establishment figure - and whose novel Starship Troopers is said to have encouraged some young men to enlist into the army to fight in Vietnam -suddenly donned (metaphorical) beads and bangles in the late sixties and wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, a key hipppy text. (From what I can recall from having ploughed through it about 20 years ago, its main philosophy consists of not being prudish about (hetersoexual)sex - which would have been quite acceptable to the status quo of that time, I believe).

Then we have countercultural icons like Dennis Hopper. He starred as the Freak in Easyrider - a film he claimed to be the main man behind - and a film which was responsible for making cocaine a drug of choice among the young. Now here;'s a guy who -almost in the blink of an eye -went from being a full dress-hippy-freak-contercultural-outlaw to being a fat-cigar-chomping pro-CIA, pro-Bush -all-American-blimp. A complete tranformation? I rather think not.

However, we have to set that sort of thing against the fact that there were nevertheless countercultural type people who were also able to make incisive and constrructive political comments - I'm thinking of Hunter S. thompson (in his later years in particuar).

Austin Popper said:
What Enola said. Lots of good comments here. I was about ten years old at the beginning of the hippie times, so nowhere near an adult, but this particular conspiracy theory seems loopy to me too. What a lot of conspiracy buffs love to do is a kind of "reverse engineering" of historical situations and events. They look at some result, then try to go back and connect the dots where some government agency or whoever set out to achieve just that.
Click to expand...

I take that point. I'm not taking sides in this yet. I wasn't there and some of you guys were. I haven't even read the book. (And, for what it's worth, I tend to regard `the sixties` - the music and politics - as a massively over-rated over-hyped period of history).
 
Naughty_Felid said:
I've heard similar theories from ex-new age travelers who believed the "brew crew" was invented by the government, (taking young-unemployed males, giving them access to strong lager and drugs, etc and then encouraging them to join up with the hippies).
Click to expand...
I used to be a young unemployed male back in the day and the government never gave ME strong lager and drugs! Now I feel I missed out.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Of course acknowledging this doesn't mean that Abstract Impressionism - Rothko and Pollock et al - is complete rubbish or that the artists lacked talent. That is clearly not the case -
Click to expand...
Jack the Dripper lacked talent.
 
There's no question the CIA and its siblings have done many heinous things, including some jaw droppingly, insanely evil shit. I just have a problem with the very popular notion, especially on the internet, that 2+2=37.
 
hunck said:
I have my doubts - why was LSD banned at the height of the summer of love in 1967 after being legal prior to this?

Also, grass & LSD didn't exactly stop protests against the Vietnam war - Kent State University, Civil Rights protests as well..

And it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that musicians in bands like [eg] The Doors couldn't already play a bit, as if 'The Establishment' somehow got them practicing..

As Enola said, one of the main bands was Grateful Dead. To suggest they couldn't play is a bit silly. Did they have Establishment support too? Or maybe Jerry Garcia had been playing since he was a kid.

As others have said, music scenes take off spontaneously in a city if conditions are right, before spreading country/world wide if they're popular enough. Rap/HipHop seems to be the latest. That probably started in LA or New York.
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The theory is, if I remember, that they could already play/sing/write and they were just used by the government. I think McGowan suggests that some of them were aware that they were part of a plan and others weren't.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Having 'been there' (i.e., having some of age during that period), here are some comments ...

The Doors weren't central to the 'flower power' movement(? - cultural motif; whatever) at all. They didn't break through nationally until late summer and early autumn 1967 (i.e., after the 'Summer of Love'). Given some of Morrison's lyrics and comments, people heavily invested in the 'peace / love' aspects of the nascent counterculture didn't embrace - or even tolerate - the Doors at all.

Another thing to point out is that the Doors were products of the LA 'scene', whereas 'flower power' was intrinsic to the San Francisco 'scene'. These were two separate and self-distinguished pop cultural contexts or venues at the time.

It wasn't until 1968 that youth protests emerged as serious and recurrent social disruptions, so 'The Man' didn't have much reason to foresee a widespread youth-centric social threat earlier, when the 'flower power' themes arose.

The politically active and / or the psychedelically benign American youth of the late Sixties weren't all members of one all-encompassing group. Indeed, folks self-identified as members of one or the other subset often made a point to distinguish themselves from the other group and its values - even to the point of criticizing or ridiculing the other ones.

The groups most associated with the San Francisco scene (and the emergent hippie / 'flower power' stuff) were more often descended from the folk and blues music scenes than rock. The two groups dominating Haight-Ashbury at the time (Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead) were originally categorized as 'folk rock'.

This connection to the earlier folk / traditional music scenes also meant a connection back to the beats and scattered pre-countercultural alternative people and groups of the 1950's and early 1960's - among whom the earliest opposition to Fifties conformity and the Vietnam War arose.

The 'flower power' theme emerged circa 1965 / 1966 and traces directly to Alan Ginsberg - hardly an establishment tool. In its original form, Ginsberg contextualized 'flower power' as a form of flagrant street-theatrical Ghandian passive resistance countering reactionary violence.

More generally, mainstream America was caught totally off guard by the rise of the Sixties youth counterculture. It spontaneously coalesced (to the limited extent it was ever a coherent 'thing') at the intersection of several disparate trends or cultural streams.
Click to expand...
Well, seeing as you were there, you know more about it than I do! (I wish I had been there at the time). But a couple of points; I think The Doors have taken over here somewhat. McGowan talks more about Morrison (and his naval commander Father who re-ignited the Vietnam war with the 'Gulf of Tonkin incident'), and how he also turned from a clean cut all- American kid to a drug using 'hippy' in a short time. (And all the others who had close relatives high up in the government.) The Doors actually released 'light my fire' in January '67 and there had already been the 'Sunset Strip Riots' in '66, so there WERE stirrings of discontent already looming well before 'the summer of love 'although, as you say, '68 was went it spread more widely and to Europe. I have, however heard people who were there like you, George Harrison for one, say that actually TSOL lasted about two weeks and only for a couple of thousand people, but of course many people did 'burn out' due to those few weeks/months and it will have often stayed with them for many years (if they survived). It may be that LA and SF were different 'scenes' at first, but in the end, they were all 'hippies' to the people in suburbia, (who McGowan says the government were trying to influence by showing them these 'dirty,lazy,hippies' and make them more 'pro-Vietnam', or certainly feel that the youngsters were ruining the country thereby sending out the 'bring back national service' attitude. Also people moved from one city to the other quite a lot so the different 'factions' became all mixed up in any case. And yes there were many different groups; hippies,yippies,dippies and god-knows how many others, but drugs were a big part of most of these groups, so one could argue it WAS being used to 'control' the younger generation regardless. I must point out, I don't have a view on McGowan's theory either way, but it is an interesting theory nontheless and of course he points out many things I've forgotten, that do seem very odd.
 
James_H said:
I'll mention the theory that the CIA used to sell 'crack' cocaine to the projects. Gary Webb, the investigative journalist who broke the story, died of a double-headshot suicide.
Click to expand...

It's not so much a theory, more a subject the US Govt investigated, found there was some truth to it, then said "Oh, well, let's not talk about that anymore..." and brushed it under the carpet.
 
Lord Lucan said:
Dave McGowan (deceased) the author of the book 'Weird Scenes Inside Laurel Canyon', has a website maintained by his daughter.
A summation of his theory can be found here (I believe a version has also been posted in the Occult Hollywood thread):

The Strange But Mostly True Story Of Laurel Canyon
Click to expand...

Interesting item about Dave here:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/David_McGowan

Spookily, someone predicts that he will die of cancer because he'd pissed off TPTB. Then, he does die of a particularly virulent cancer.
OK, a high percentage of people in the US do get a form of cancer... but still spooky, perhaps?
 
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