#ghhaightashbury55

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Derek Taylor, "Magic" Alex and others in Haight-Ashbury on 7 August 1967; photos by Gene Anthony.

“[That visit to Haight-Ashbury] certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what I’d thought — spiritual awakenings and being artistic — it was like alcoholism, like any addiction. The kids at Haight-Ashbury had left school and dossed out there, and instead of drinking alcohol they were on all kinds of drugs. That was the turning-point for me – that’s when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid. I had some in a little bottle (it was liquid). I put it under a microscope, and it looked like bits of old rope. I thought that I couldn’t put that into my brain any more.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology (2000)

Next was a flight to Monterey...

“I was sitting right behind the pilots; two big brown-brogue-shoed Frank Sinatras. As it took off, the plane went into a stall — we hadn’t got very high before we went into a steep turn and the plane made a lurch and dropped. The whole dashboard lit up saying ‘UNSAFE’ right across it. I thought, ‘Well, that’s it.’ Alex was chanting, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,’ and I was saying, ‘Om, Christ, Om…’ Somehow it recovered itself, and we flew down to Monterey and stopped there. We went to the beach and became calm again.” - George Harrison, ibid (x)

"We went on to Monterey, and had difficulty getting coffee in a coffee-shop. When the waitress, pretending not to see us in this Lytham-St-Anne's-on-Pacific, was hailed by George ('We have got the money, you know,' he said finally, not quietly, waving a thousand dollars in bills) she recognized him and dropped every piece of crockery she was holding. Dozens of plates and saucers and cups shattered on the floor – she had collected them, too many of them, as she busied herself to avoid the cloud of denim in the corner. Things hadn't loosened up everywhere yet, it seemed." - Derek Taylor, ibid

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Derek Taylor, and "Magic" Alex in Haight-Ashbury on 7 August 1967. Photos by Grant Jacobs, Gene Anthony, AP Photo, Bettmann via Getty Images.

George's Haight-Ashbury turning point visit, 55 years later; post 1 of 3.

“Everywhere we went, people were smiling and, you know, sitting on lawns ‘drinking tea,’ you know; festivals of music... I mean, that Summer of Love, a lot of that was bulls***, really, it was all what the press were saying, but there was definitely a vibe.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology (2000)

“I went to Haight-Ashbury and it was totally unlike the idea I had in my mind. I thought it would be full of artistic hippies crafting clothes, jewelry, artwork, all that sort of stuff. But when I got there, it was like the Bowery. It was a lot of dropouts who were lost. And they’d had so many different drugs that they didn’t know which way they were going. As they say: if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. It turned me round totally. I thought, well, that’s it for me. I don’t really want to be a person that they look up to. I just thought I had to get out of this. I was very disappointed, really.” - George Harrison, I Me Mine - The Extended Edition

“On the way, Derek produced a tab [of LSD]. Would we like some? Since we were going to Haight-Ashbury, it seemed silly not to. […] We got out of the car, the acid kicked in and everything was just whoah, psychedelic and very… I mean, it was just completely fine. We went into a shop and noticed that all these people were following us. They had recognized George as we walked past them in the street, then turned to follow us. One minuter there were five, then ten, twenty, thirty and forty people being us. I could hear them saying, ‘The Beatles are here, the Beatles are in town!’ We were expecting Haight-Ashbury to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with Beautiful People, but it was horrible — full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains. Everybody looked stoned — even mothers and babies — and they were so close behind us they were treading on the backs of our heels. It got to the point where we couldn’t stop for fear of being trampled. Then somebody said, ‘Let’s go to Hippie Hill,’ and we crossed the road, hoping the lights were red, and went into a park. Then somebody said, ‘Let’s sit down here,’ and we all sat down n the grass, our retinue facing us, as if we were on stage. They looked at us expectantly — as if George was some kind of Messiah. We were so high, and then the inevitable happened: a guitar emerged from the crowd and I could see it being passed to the front by outstretched arms. I thought, Oh, God, poor George, this is a nightmare. Finally the guitar was handed to him. I had the feeling that they’d listened to the Beatles’ records, analyzed them, learnt what they’d thought they should learn, and taken every drug they’d thought the Beatles were singing about. Now they wanted to know where to go next. And George was there, obviously, to give them the answer. Pressure. George was so cool. He said, ‘This is G, this is E, this is D,’ and showed them a few chords, then handed back the guitar and said, ‘Sorry, man, we’ve got to go now.’ He didn’t sing — he couldn’t have: he was flying. We all were. I was surprised he could even do that. Anyway, we got up and walked back towards the limo, at which point I heard a little voice say, ‘Hey, George, do you want some STP?’ George turned around and said, ‘No, thanks, I’m cool, man.’ Then the bloke turned round and said to the others, ‘George Harrison turned me down.’ And they went, ‘No!’ And then the crowd became faintly hostile. We sensed it because when you’re that high you’re very aware of vibes, and we were walking faster and faster, and they were following.
When we saw the limo, we ran across the road and jumped in, and they ran after us and started rocking the car, and the windows were full of these faces, flattened against the glass, looking at us.” - Pattie Boyd, Wonderful Tonight (2007)

“It made me realize: 'This is not it.’ And that’s when I really went for the meditation.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology (2000) (x)

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison in Haight-Ashbury, 7 August 1967; photos by Grant Jacobs.

“Well we were only in Haight Ashbury for about 30 minutes but I did see quite a bit. […] [We] walked along the street for about a hundred yards, half like a tourist and half like a hippie. We were trying to have a look at a few shops. […] They were trying to give me everything. This is a thing that I want to try and get over to people. Although we’ve been identified a lot with hippies, especially since all this thing about pot and LSD’s come out, we don’t want to tell anyone else to have it because it’s something that’s up to the person himself. Although it was like a key that opened the door and showed a lot of things on the other side, it’s still up to people themselves what they do with it. LSD isn’t a real answer. It doesn’t give you anything. It enables you to see a lot of possibilities that you may never have noticed before but it isn’t the answer. You don’t just take LSD and that’s it for ever, you’re OK. […] [T]here were so many great people, really nice people who only wanted to be friends and didn’t want to imposed anything or be anything [in Haight-Ashbury, but there were those who] were so out of their minds trying to shove STP on me, and acid — every step I took there was somebody trying to give me something — but I didn’t want to know about that. I want to get high and you can’t get high on LSD. You can take it and take it as many times as you like but you get to a point that you can’t get any further unless you stop taking it.” - George Harrison, Melody Maker, 2 September 1967 (x)

“Beatle George Harrison toured the Haight-Ashbury yesterday peering through lavender glasses, strumming a guitar and eventually drawing a huge following of flower children behind him. 
Harrison, called ‘the quiet Beatle,’ and his wife [Pattie], first parked at Masonic Avenue and Haight Street about 6 p.m. and wandered down the street unnoticed among the throng of hippies. Harrison sported the drooping French mustache, long hair, buttons, flowered trousers, denim jacket and heart-shaped shades affected by many members of the love generation. And 23-year-old wife [Pattie] could have been just about any hippie girl with her long blonde hair and granny glasses. The two walked the length of Haight Street looking into the shops and watching the local residents and finally stopped at ‘hippie hill’ in Golden Gate Park. 
A young man was entertaining a crowd of about 20 hippies. Harrison and his wife listened for a minute and then Harrison asked, ‘Can I borrow your guitar?’ The young man said ‘Sure.’ Harrison took the guitar and started to play. And played unrecognized for about three minutes. A girl listened and looked at Harrison then started shouting: ‘Hey! That’s George Harrison. That’s George Harrison!’ … A sizeable crowd formed. Harrison played for about ten more minutes and then shouted, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ And off they went, Harrison strumming the guitar, the hippies following along. As the crowd left the park it grew. ‘What do you think of the Haight-Ashbury?’ asked a hippie. ‘Wow. If it’s all like this it’s too much,’ Harrison answered." - article by David Swanston, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 August 1967