An excerpt from my book: Red Jewel
I met a gal named Sarah, a hippy, much younger and impressionable
than me, at the marina side of the area, and went down to Monterey
with her to attend the Monterey Music festival in June, 1967. I guess she
was attracted to me by my scruffy appearance and my longish thinning
scraggly hair. Perhaps she thought that I was part and parcel and paid up
member of the hippy’s counterculture. Perhaps it was because I was
a Brit, an exotic alien. Perhaps. Regardless, we hitched a ride out to the
Monterey fair grounds where the festival was to take place, thanked
the driver and got out. Good thing too as it was automotive gridlock.
Many of the attendees who had decided to drive to the Bay area became
bogged down in the traffic jams. There was a great deal of cussing, yelling,
pushing, and shoving going on among the various drivers and bikers,
especially the bikers. It was automotive pandemonium, definitely a
frightful, fitful, love-in, man, as the fists came out from every which way
from Sunday. And this was only Saturday. “Summer of Love” indeed.
We skirted around the problems, found the main gate, paid our
fee, and walked in. What a sight to behold. Utter chaos. The end of
the world as I knew it. This must be what Armageddon is going to look
like. A sparse, barren, garbage-strewn landscape. Probably around ten
thousand hippies all gathered together in one place. All smokin’, all
tokin’, all jokin’, all smilin’ with their coke-ins and love-ins. Stoned out
of their ever-lovin’ minds. And the music hadn’t even started yet.
A tie-dye convention was suddenly before us. Young women in
their tie-dye, ankle-length skirts, gum boots, tits hangin’ out of their
tie-dye tees, smiling, waving, weaving and smokin’, laughin’ at no one
in particular. Bare-chested, long-haired men, dirty faces, filthy fingers,
and knarling nails quaffing booze, smokin’ joints, hauling ass—literally and figuratively. It was a lice lover’s paradise. Dante himself would have
been impressed but challenged to describe this scene. There was shit
everywhere! And lots of it! I made a mental note to get the hell out of
there before darkness set in.
We made our way toward the large staged scaffold. It was impressive:
large amps everywhere, lights strewn about the structural framework,
drum sets, guitar racks, mics, black staging curtains, and men and
women scurrying about like ants on the stage itself. It was organized
commotion in disarray. It looked as if they knew they were well behind
schedule. We did take a gander at the musical playlist beside the stage. I
never heard of many of these bands. Ravi Shankar? Who was he? Jimi
Hendrix, the Who? Who were they? There were also tents, conveniently
called pavilions, scattered willy-nilly about the grounds. Hippie
entrepreneurs putting it to the man by charging exorbitant prices for
the basic necessities of being in an area with ten thousand of your closest
friends. Love man. Chill. Yes, but they had no pretence in making a
buck at our expense. There were craft pavilions; how-to-make-tie-dye
pavilions; bong pavilions; know-your-grass pavilions, and not the garden
variety type either; the ever-popular oxymoronic-sounding pavilion on
how to take acid safely. “Summer of Love” indeed. Screw you man.
I turned to Sarah. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like it.”
She looked at me and said, “c’mon Nigel, get with the program.
C’mon,” pulling me along to a place where I did not belong. “Let’s get
stoned.”
I complied but with smoke only. She took acid. Then we sat back and
listened to the music and watched the crowds. Forever observant I was.
The Beach Boys were a no show. Otis Reading was fantastic as were Big
Brother and the Holding Company. Their singer was a small, demure
hippy gal named Janis Joplin who belted out her stuff with unbelievable,
raw energy and pitch. It was great. But soon it was over and I wanted to
leave. I had had enough of the hippy lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock n
roll. Sarah wanted to stay but she was still out of it on her acid trip. She
had met some friends with tents and told me to go. I did and left but
not before I was satisfi ed that Sarah’s friends were the real deal. Th ey
assured me that they would look out for Sarah and get her home safe.
Th e concert just re-enforced my belief that the hippie movement and
the so called “Summer of Love” was a huge marketing scam of promoted
excessiveness here in the Bay area, which was the national and world
epicenter of the whole movement. Or perhaps I was becoming cynical
of life itself. Up until now I had been hugely disappointed with the
relationships of the people I had met. I could not trust a hippy. Their
character and their leaders were suspect. This began to askew my
perceptions and my trust in my fellow man. Oh well.
Check out the book Red Jewel at the link at the very top of the page.
