Need We Say More? > News > Owsley "Bear" Stanley Dies in Car Accident
jambands.com | Mar 13th 2011
Longtime Grateful Dead confidant Owsley “Bear” Stanley died in a car crash near
his home in Australia earlier today. Though his exact age was not known,
Stanley was believed to be 75.
Stanley first met the members of the Grateful Dead at an acid test in San
Francisco in 1966. He held many roles in the band’s organization over the
years, including manager, financier, sound designer and recording engineer. He
designed the group’s signature Wall of Sound system and co-designed its iconic
lightning bolt/skull logo with artist Bob Thomas. Though Stanley and Thomas
originally created the logo in 1969, the insignia first entered the public
consciousness when it appeared on the band’s 1973 live album History of the
Grateful Dead, Volume 1: Bear’s Choice, a tribute to the recently deceased
Grateful Dead keyboardist/vocalist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. The album also
popularized another Dead logo inspired by Stanley: the psychedelic dancing
bear. The dancing part of the logo’s design is a reference to his brief stint
as a professional ballet dancer in the ’50s and members of Stanley’s family
coined his Bear part of his nickname when he started growing body hair at a
young age.
“The Dead in those days had to play in a lot of festival style shows where the
equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle,” Stanley
explained on his blog. “Since every band used pretty much the same type of gear
it all looked alike. We would spend a fair amount of time moving the pieces
around so that we could read the name on the boxes. I decided that we needed
some sort of marking that we could identify from a distance.”
Born the grandson of a former Kentucky governor, Stanley served 18 months in
the United States Air Force before being discharged. He briefly worked as
ballet dancer and attended UC Berkeley before turning his attention to the
production of LSD. Stanley—who was known for his pure strain of acid—was a
chief supplier of Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters and members of the Bay Area
music community. He is profiled in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid
Test and, according to reports, produced more than a million doses of LSD at
his labs.
“Psychedelics are a gift of nature that brings tribalism to people; they bring
an understanding of the ecology of the planet and the interaction of all living
things, because that’s one of the first things you become aware of when you
take psychedelics—how everything is alive and how everything depends on
everything else,” Stanley wrote in his later years. “You go take a look at
every indigenous culture that has a respect for its environment — unlike the
hierarchical approach of the feudalistic structures that the world is now run
by — and you will find that these people use psychedelics of some sort, usually
in a regular, ritualized manner.”
Always a colorful figure—who would pour acid into a squirt bottle and spray
musicians and fans alike at shows—Stanley helped inspire such songs as Jimi
Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” the Grateful Dead’s “Alice D. Millionaire,” Jefferson
Airplane’s “Bear Melt” and “Mexico,” Frank Zappa’s “Who Needs the Peace Corps?”
and even Steely Dan’s ““Kid Charlemagne.” He also made live recordings for
Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, Flying Buritto Brothers, Quiksilver
Messenger Service and many other members of the psychedelic music community.
“He taught me to take myself and my interests out of the picture and work with
the subject under consideration so that the best deductions or conclusions are
made,” Bob Weir said in a statement today. “I guess this means working from the
point of view of the higher self, though that term never came up; it was always
just assumed…Most important was the approach he taught me: Always be open and
engaging – always critical and questioning, but not negatively so much as
playfully.”
“He did phenomenal sound work,” says Relix contributing editor Jeff Tamarkin,
who served as the magazine’s editor-in-chief in the ’70s. “I think part of the
reason the Dead had such an all-encompassing effect on an audience is because
of the pioneering work Owsley did to create live rock sound that was both
forceful and crystal clear. You could be sitting in the top row of the balcony
at Fillmore East and you’d hear every nuance even when they played
acoustically. I think it may be a long time until the extent of his effect on
the ’60s generation is truly appreciated.”
Stanley moved to Australia in the early ‘80s and became an Australian citizen
in the ‘90s. He survived throat cancer in 1994 and claims to have only eaten
meat, eggs, butter and cheese since the 1950s. Stanley rarely made public
appearances in his later years.
“The music of the Grateful Dead is an important assistant to the revival of
tribality. Because it has to do with the way things are,” he posted on his
blog. “It’s not somebody’s idea about the way things might be, or the way
things could be or should be. It’s what it is. It’s real music about real
things. The whole thing is about a social movement. It’s tribalism. Which is
the only social structure that is truly human.”
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