The Owsley Stanley I remember
by Authors, laobserved.com
March 15th 2011 1:33 PM
When Owsley Stanley died recently, everybody recalled that he was an LSD
millionaire and patron of the Grateful Dead back in the Sixties. Some knew that
since the early Eighties had been a recluse living in northern Australia, where
he had become a jewelry-maker. (You can check his website, which also sells
rock recordings he made during his years as a sound engineer and hovering guru
on the San Francisco scene and even offers some of his characteristic essays on
psychedelics, human diet and ice ages.)
None of this captures the odd impressiveness of the man.
As the bios mention, his grandfather and namesake was once the governor of
Kentucky, but the Stanleys were really a Virginia clan, and he grew up in Falls
Church — his father, Owsley Stanley II, was a federal bureaucrat. He was bright
and probably a little weird from the start, and also short, the kind of short
guy who insists that he's "of average height" (as was Lermontov, Owsley would
point out, having studied Russian when he was thinking of becoming a Russian
Orthodox monk) but always wears elevator shoes. Put all this together for a kid
growing up in a bland DC suburb, and it might explain his attraction to
resolutely original, often science-fictional modes of thought.
And maybe his relentless, insistent manner. As Tom Wolfe put it in "The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," talking to Owsley could be like talking to a TV
set. He was certainly hard to take sometimes.
Even so, I liked the guy. He was never predictable, and there was always
something disinterested and nobly intentioned about his intense obsessions. The
last time I saw him, he was working on the development of the ultimate bell
metal, which would be able to make bells that would sound for minutes on end.
He was a bit of a fabulist and a spinner of weird theories, but he wasn't just
a talker. He encountered LSD in 1964 (while he was rooming with me in Berkeley
-- I was not the one who turned him on, I have to insist; that was the heiress
of a famous leather goods company) and was suitably impressed.
Characteristically, his response was to decide to make acid, and not just any
acid but the strongest LSD around. He started with raw lysergic acid, rather
than some earlier stage in the chemical synthesis, as was typically preferred
by other psychedelic chemists because they figured it wouldn't draw any
attention from the Authorities.
Owsley was much bolder and felt you were much safer just not giving the
Authorities any thought, because they're basically looking for furtiveness.
Through a fictitious Bear Research Group, he ordered huge quantities of raw
materials from chemical supply houses, primarily Cyclo Chemical Co. in Los
Angeles. One day in 1966, he showed me a letter from the president of Cyclo
explaining that this would have to be his last shipment of lysergic acid
because of a recent federal law. I was amused to see that the president's name
was Milan Panic. A couple of years ago, I realized that was the same Milan
Panic who later became the president of Serbia.
One time in 1967 Owsley took some of us to visit his favorite chemical
glass-maker, who was about to retire on what Owsley was paying him to make some
highly specialized lab equipment. "Oh, Owsley," the guy said, "some federal
agents were here the other way showing me pictures of you and asking whether
I'd ever seen this person. They were a rather good likeness. You were in them
too," he added, nodding at a denizen of my current commune. About six months
later his final lab was busted, and the San Francisco Chronicle ran a fine
photo of Owsley being led off in handcuffs, bristling with defiance and
resentment. When he was arrested, he told the officers, "I make only the purest
drugs for my family and friends. Why aren't you out arresting criminals?"
That's the Owsley that sticks with me: maverick, purist, aggressive, sort of
admirable when you think about it, and not that far from quixotic.
Perry, a food writer in Los Angeles and co-founder of the Culinary Historians
of Southern California, is a former staff writer at Rolling Stone and the
author of "The Haight Ashbury: A History." He wrote about Stanley in Rolling
Stone in 1982.
Original Page:
http://www.laobserved.com/visiting/2011/03/the_owsley_stanley_i_remember.php
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