Owsley Stanley Quotes

Jerry [Garcia] held his guitar and picked some random licks. I spoke from an LSD haze. 'LSD changes perception. Music transcends the musician. You are the vehicle for communication.' Garcia stopped and stared at me. 'I practice,' Garcia declared. 'Anyone can do that.' That shut me up and he returned to the guitar

St. Albert and the LSD Revelation Revolution oil painting by Alex Grey, 2006 color image in the book Net of Being by Alex Grey, 2012

I figured 'good enough for rock 'n' roll' should be better than good enough to go into space.

As was the custom with big events in the mid- to late-1960s, particularly in the northern California area, Altamont was drenched in acid. And as was also the custom at that time, that acid was provided free-of-charge by Mr. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, also known as The Bear. At the so-called “Human Be-In” staged in January of 1967, for example, Owsley had kindly distributed 10,000 tabs of potent LSD. For the Monterey Pop Festival just five months later, he had cooked up and distributed 14,000 tabs. For Altamont, he did likewise. Also present that day, and featured in the Maysles brothers’ film gyrating atop a raised platform near the stage, was the King of the Freaks himself, Vito Paulekas.