Summer of Love changed music and culture

A sign that change was coming
But the inspiration was there. And the touchstone event occurred in June, when the Monterey International Pop Festival took place. It was an event that served as a coming-out party for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Canned Heat and Steve Miller; it showcased The Who in all the band’s rebellious fury; and it boosted established acts like Simon and Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds.

The Monterey International Pop Festival was a seminal event because, although there had been similar gatherings, this was considered the first real rock festival and laid the groundwork for Woodstock just over two years later. Monterey, and the release earlier in June of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (Paul McCartney was a member of the board of advisors at Monterey and a champion of Hendrix) were the two most influential happenings that came out of the summer of ’67.

But groundbreaking music wasn’t the only child of that summer. The Summer of Love helped accelerate a counterculture movement that had a widespread impact in fashion and art; in the use of illicit drugs and of vitamins, herbs and natural foods; in the increase in earnest spiritual quests and in philosophical hogwash; in yoga, hiking and other activities that focused on the Earth and the universe; in sexual experimentation and the abandonment of inhibitions, and in the spread of venereal diseases; in the environmental movement; in civil rights; in women’s rights; and in a willingness to question authority.

All of that emanated essentially from one American intersection, at the corners of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco, where both Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead once resided, where thousands of restless young people descended leading up to ’67, and where now merchants and longtime residents today bemoan the roving packs of homeless punks and runaways.

But the Summer of Love was about a mindset, which lingers today in both the idealistic twentysomethings of 1967 who are now wistful sixtysomethings, and in the heirs to that revolution of thinking and behavior. The Summer of Love continues, fresh flowers and all.

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