The Origin Of Hippies

I previously mentioned the work of Mark Devlin, Neil Sanders and Dave McGowan and how they've addressed the origin of hippies. Well, while their research into the biographies of many of our rock stars from the 1960s is very valid, they have unfortunately drawn the wrong conclusions.

I think, amazingly enough, they have rejected the public face of rock in that day, but bought into the main stream narrative regarding hippies. A very ironic point of view. Dave always says the hippie movement and folk rock music began in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. I believe he's probably wrong on the first assumption, and definitely wrong on the second.

He just ignores John Sebastian and the Lovin Spoonful. He ignores the fact that John Phillips, Cass Elliot, Michelle and folks like Bob Dylan, were already established in their musical style, and that took place in New York City long before they moved to California.

Now we come to my favorite group of actual Southern California dudes, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Long Beach spawned this group, around 1965. So that is very contemporaneous and perhaps preceding the Byrds. The band began with Jeff Hanna and Jimmie Faddon. I have had the privilege of playing music with both these guys, along with John McEuen and a really great dude, Jimmy Ibbotson. This was in 1975.

I fondly remember sitting atop a hood of an old farm truck, along with Ibbotson and Faddon, while they taught me to play and sing Diggy Liggy Lo. We played Bojangles, Jamaica, Rave On, and many of their hits, but I got to play lead singer. That night my little band, Skyscraper, was the opening act. I still have the lyrics to Diggy Liggy Lo that Jimmy Ibbotson wrote by hand atop that old truck.

And when jamming, and I had gotten the hang of the material, around the corner of that truck came John McEuen, picking the banjo and grinning like a kid at Christmas. I just love that guy. I ran into him a decade later at Harrah's Lake Tahoe, after he'd just left the Dirt Band and was doing a solo gig. Hung around the bar a bit together, and I was on a huge ego trip as he'd recognized me.

Sorry, had to brag a bit there. My point here, is that there were many "hippies" who were already frequenting the coffee houses of New York City in the 1950s. I don't think anyone better represented a hippie than Bob Dylan, and he wasn't in Laurel Canyon, boys. At least not in the very early sixties when he was playing along side John Phillips, and many others in the coffee house scene in NYC.

And LSD was discovered in many decades before 1966. As were many illegal drugs. And yes, those drugs were prominent at those same NYC locations, and long before Dylan. So, I will concede that psychedelic drugs became much more prominent in the 60s, but I absolutely do not concede that folk rock music developed in Los Angeles, nor most probably San Francisco. And those groups referenced by Dave and Mark, simply popularized the culture that already existed. So strike two, boys.

Now, the peace movement wasn't invented by hippies. Sorry to burst this bubble. The peace movement was begun by very straight laced college students, who rebelled against their parents paradigm of blind unquestioning loyalty to government, bred by their youth during World War Two, and understandably so.

Did the hippies participate in the peace movement and the civil rights movement? Of course. It was right down our alley. But we cannot claim to have begun any of that.

Perhaps we should go back to square one, and define the term "hippie." I am not sure I can do that, nor can anyone else. It is like saying, "define the color blue." It isn't a philosophy, but more a state of being. I think there have been "hippies" down through the ages. It is very possible Jesus Christ was a hippie. So, I don't buy that hippies were "invented" by the CIA, and placed in Laurel Canyon. Sorry.

And some of the folks who I would define as hippies, never touched an illegal drug, nor were they inclined to "get high" even with liquor. So the drugs are pretty much irrelevant. However, there was a difference made by the psychedelic drugs. There was a level of understanding I could not reach with these "straight hippies." But in many ways it was not that significant. Perhaps those folks had an inherent ability to see into the realms that others of us needed a drug to find.

But most will tell you a person is quite different after taking a trip. Here is also another place where Dave and Mark go wrong. I think most would testify that acid made you more focused. That is diametrically opposed to their assumption that the CIA placed acid in the community to distract the protesters. They think it made us all run to the country to contemplate our navels.

I argue that it made our protesting more dedicated and intense. They get stuck on the main stream story of the hippies. Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out is their mantra. Strangely, it really was never ours. I knew no one who said that. I am aware that Timothy Leary really liked that phrase, but I am unsure any hippies actually thought it to be that creative. And herein lies the deceptive aspect of history. You can't get good history from a book. You might get good history from a compilation of many books. But any book is usually one man's story of history, or his own compilation of other individual's comprehension of what they have read. It is just so much easier to write off oral history as so much mumbo jumbo by indigenous people, or those less evolved than the book readers. Pretty egocentric, I think.

Don't get me wrong, I feel I've read a million books. But it is pretty easy to find inconsistencies in our recorded history. Now, why do you suppose that is? It is due to the fact that no history is accurate. Many seem to be close, but there are those pesky inconsistencies that always crop up, where that highly accurate historian deviates from the majority of other historians. I believe this is how they get to feel they've made an individual contribution to our history, and thereby validating their work. And there are a whole big bunch of history majors running around out there.

Now, if one wants to do the very hard work, and read all the history they can, and collect all the oral history they are able, then conclusions can be drawn. But none are worthwhile unless collaborated by disparate societies, and even civilizations. For instance, tribes and texts throughout the world, speak of a great cataclysmic flood long ago in the past. It is reasonable to assume that societies who had no contact, would develop vastly different stories, but this one pervades nearly all. So it is reasonable to assume there was a flood, and many people died, and things changed on the face of the earth.

But, Mark, Dave and to a much lesser degree, Neil Sanders, still need to do lots of research before being able to make an authoritative speculation on the implications from their own research. They still have lots of homework to do, before making the declarations that they do make. Sorry boys, but I cannot accept those speculations as relevant until they are backed up with much more research than you have shown.

That all having been said, I really like these three individuals I've flamed. I think they are all worthwhile, and that the biographical research they've done is outstanding. I can find no fault there. It is only in their speculative results where I find fault.

Now, I am not an authority. So my condemnation of their theories is also irrelevant. But having come of age in the early seventies, and been a widely experienced teenager in the sixties, their theories and time lines just don't match up with what I remember, and the memories of several friends with whom I've compared notes. And I hate to use this reasoning, but it is undeniable, that nothing gives you perspective like being there, and they are far too young to have participated in that era. They have no idea what if felt like to watch the Cuban Missile Crisis on television. Their presidents never warned them their world may end in fifteen or twenty minutes when the Russian missiles arrive. And they NEVER POSSESSED A DRAFT CARD!

It was a different world in the late sixties, and one cannot apply modern thinking to that time period, without doing lots and lots of research. In this case, I don't feel the proper research has been done to support their findings. But I am anxiously awaiting their further work, as they all three are very bright, and diligent. I just think they still have a ways to go.

Much in the same way that I don't comprehend my parent's generational thinking, I don't think younger people can truly understand the sixties. And whatever you do, don't read Boom by Tom Brokaw. Talk about a blind man trying to describe an elephant, Tom had no clue in the sixties. Sorry Tom, but you were so straight then, we could have used you for a yard stick.

In fact, perhaps this is the way to end this piece. You can go to the zoo everyday, and spend all day just looking at bears. But you won't have a clue what it feels like to be a bear. Spend your whole life in pursuit of history you didn't experience, and at best it is educated guesswork. I don't know what it feels like to be a bear, but I do know what it feels like to be a hippie.