This article appeared on Liberazione del 22 luglio 2007. Irripetibile apice di una stagione, o semplice pagliacciata a metà tra il grottesco e la farsa? Quando le strade di Haight-Ashbury si riempiono di figli dei fiori, nell’estate del 1967, l’underground internazionale è in fermento da buoni due anni. La summer of love di San Francisco, questa specie di girone carnevalesco tutto droga e amore libero, contribuisce a fare del movimento hippie un lucroso argomento da rotocalco, del genere bizzarria pop-sociologica per parrucchiere (con tutto il rispetto per le parrucchiere, si intende). Il primo giugno è uscito il Sgt Pepper dei Beatles, luccicante e un po’ furbo manuale di psichedelia-bene, mentre l’altro grande progetto destinato a cambiare le sorti del pop, lo Smile dei Beach Boys, è naufragato negli abissi psichici del suo autore, Brian Wilson, uno che il viaggio da acido – dopo le “Good Vibrations” di fine ’66 – l’ha digerito quantomeno male. Ne è prova la mancata partecipazione del gruppo al Monterey Pop Festival, primo esempio di baraccone festivaliero proto-Woodstock con tutto quello che ne consegue, che si tiene dal 16 al 18 giugno ancora in California. Poco male: al posto di Wilson & co. verrà chiamato Otis Redding, che tra l’altro morirà in un incidente aereo sei mesi dopo.
Le cronache dell’epoca ci regalano un ritratto dell’estate Frisco that looks like a Bosch painting done by a child of six years: a pit of young visionaries, visionaries of teenagers colored, sballoni stoned, the guys ran away from home (or just on holiday) and irremediable freaks, invades a city so hospitable, tolerant, but still reluctant to have a free hand to 100,000 neobarbari LSD. It will not be a good scene. In October, the hippies will celebrate their funeral, officially sanctioning the death of the movement. Shortly after the usual Frank Zappa chioserà the phenomenon in its own way: "Flower Power Sucks," and more clearly than that you die. He was, moreover, of Los Angeles, and then imagine.
From the ashes of the summer crowds, and a little naive 'ridiculous, takes hold, the United States of America, a reflux segmented contradictory in a thousand souls, which maintain the momentum of lysergic '66-'67 biennium, but they add a dose considerable malice. Fringes are politicized (or presumed) of a movement that actually has little to do with the sixty-eight Europeans, and like the good old days does not give up irony, provocation, in the final "Good Vibrations". Only the smiles that have replaced the jeers, and if we have to Haight-Ashbury Diggers think to revive the glory of a kind of naive anarchism, one that will take after color, rather than acidic, literally soured.
remain memorable undertakings of the Yippies throwing dollar bills from the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange (shorting), and try to levitate the Pentagon, not to mention the incidents to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 , complete with a proclamation of a pig (Pigasus the Immortal) as Chairman of the U.S., and subsequent trial for conspiracy to "Chicago Seven" (with Abbie Hoffman, inviting the court to try LSD). And if Detroit area is the focus of the White Panthers to burn the sunset of '60, in New York, from the ashes of Dada magazine Black Mask, taking hold of the Motherfuckers, sort of street gang that the slogan "free love" (free love) replaced the much more eloquently of "armed love" (love concrete). So, in August 1967, while in Frisco celebrated the summer's most famous story in the pages of Black Mask number 7 appears a title that speaks for itself: "All or nothing."
And finally what about "tangerine trees and marmalade skies" evoked the Beatles Sgt Pepper? Replaced by the droning of heroin Velvet Underground, The Doors toxic by lust, by Frank Zappa in the same horrific deformities that, We're Only In It for the Money, The Beatles took them handsomely for his ass. Also the Beatles, specifically those of "Piggies" and "Helter Skelter" Charles Manson will be guided to the massacre of Cielo Drive. He too is a son of the Frisco left to rot in the sun of summer love.
In 1967, Scott McKenzie called, in the famous anthem "San Francisco", to wear some flowers in your hair once you enter the city. Only a year later, the replica of the MC5 - a group affiliated with the White Panthers and sonic experience of the most violent period - it was a very different tone: "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!", More or less as something "out le palle, figli di puttana!”. Roba che a confronto lo zappiano “Flower Power Sucks” pare un commento a margine trascurabile, anzi: rassicurante.
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