Summer of Love changed music and culture

Where have all the flowers gone?

Usually, they don’t last long. Dunk them in a vase and they’ll hold up for a few days before the wilting process begins. They’re temporary by nature.

Somehow, someway, the flowers introduced in conjunction with the Summer of Love of 1967 have held strong, at least philosophically. They were a mightier breed. It’s been 40 years, and they still make an impact today on the culture.

The Summer of Love celebrates its 40^th anniversary this year. The exact date is sketchy, lost somewhere in the psychedelic haze of historical memory. Some events that presaged that summer include a “Human Be-In,” which took place in January 1967, at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and included performances by local bands the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. And by the fall of ’67, some of the bloom had come off, rifts in American life had deepened and cynicism was on the rise.

But the Summer of Love endures today, because it represents a time like no other in American history. While there were societal upheavals before, there had never been the tremors that began in the West and shook the status quo from coast to coast, for better and for worse.

‘You’re going to meet some gentle people there’
The Summer of Love’s most recognizable denizens were the hippies, immortalized in the Scott McKenzie song “San Francisco” (written by John Phillips) with the words, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair; if you’re going to San Francisco, you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.”

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And indeed, there were gentle people, awash in new ideas, fresh attitudes, boundless energy and free love. There were also grimy, seedy, drug-addled loners and drifters who used the spirit of the Summer of Love as an excuse to avoid responsibility. There were all kinds, who gathered at the epicenter that was San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. That’s what happens when tumult envelops a nation with a population at the time of about 200 million.

In practice, the Summer of Love had a dark side filled with cracks and fissures, duly noted over the years by critics who blame it and the attitudes it engendered for everything save for fluctuations in weather patterns. In spirit, though, it was a bellwether for profound change. And change, whether desired or not, is indeed inevitable.

The anniversary of the Summer of Love comes at a significant time. It sprung largely from dissatisfaction with an unpopular war that seemed to have no end. In March 1965, 3,500 Marines were sent to Vietnam, which essentially began the ground war, and by December of that year the number of total U.S. troops had stretched to 200,000. By 1969, there were more than 500,000 American troops involved in combat operations.

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The Summer of Love was a backlash to that war. The nation had been set in its ways, and that period shook it by its roots. Some wanted progress, others resisted. Some methods of change proved healthy, others were damaging, depending on which social observers are to be believed.

But the anniversary hits at a time when a “surge” strategy by the United States is taking place in the Iraq war. Surge now, escalation then.

The music in and around 1967 provides the most indelible reminders of that era and the outrage directed at the Vietnam War. The Summer of Love produced some of the most important works of popular music in history. Some of it represented a direct protest of the war, some simply reflected the yearning for peace and love.

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Summer of Love changed music and culture

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