EssEffChron
Owsley Stanley, an icon of Bay Area counterculture in the 1960s and a longtime associate of the Grateful Dead, died Sunday in a car accident in his adopted home of Queensland, Australia, according to family spokesperson Sam Cutler. He was 76.
Known as "Bear," Mr. Stanley came to prominence as the first to manufacture LSD in quantity. Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" was believed to have been inspired by a particularly potent batch of Mr. Stanley's product. The Dead wrote the song "Alice D. Millionaire" in his honor after a headline in a 1967 newspaper article referred to him as an "LSD Millionaire."
Many of Mr. Stanley's live recordings of the Dead were released as albums. Along with Bob Thomas, he also designed the band's famous lighting bolt skull logo, known officially as Steal Your Face.
Before enrolling at UC Berkeley in 1963, Mr. Stanley served in the U.S. Air Force and studied ballet in Los Angeles. He dropped out of school after one semester once he discovered the recipe for making LSD in the Journal of Organic Chemistry at a UC Berkeley library.
Air Force...ballerina...I'm sure there's a connection there somewhere and why can't I make winky smiley faces with this thing?
While working a technical job at KGO TV, Mr. Stanley started manufacturing large quantities of LSD. Bear Research Group reputedly made more than 1.25 million doses between 1965 and 1967, essentially seeding the entire modern psychedelic movement.
I'm not sure how 'modern' the 'psychedelic movement' is since most of us are old farts like me now, but Mr. Stanley was certainly at the forefront of it.
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