Summer of Love
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This article refers to the summer of 1967. For the film of a similar name, please go to My Summer of Love
The Summer of Love refers to the summer of 1967, and particularly to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where thousands of young people from all over the world loosely and freely united for a new social experience. As a result, the hippie counterculture movement came into public awareness.
The beginning of the Summer of Love has popularly been attributed to the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14 of that year.
John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas took twenty minutes to write the following lyrics for the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)":
| “ | If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair... |
” |
Scott McKenzie's rendition of the song was released in May, 1967. The song was designed originally to promote the June, 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, the world's first major rock festival, which was attended by over 200,000 people. "San Francisco" became an instant hit (#4 in the United States, #1 in Europe[citation needed]) and quickly transcended its original purpose.
During the Summer of Love, as many as 100,000 young people from around the world flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley and other San Francisco Bay Area cities to join in a popularized version of the hippie experience.[1] When these newly recruited Flower Children returned home at the end of summer, they brought new styles of fashion, ideas and behaviors to most major cities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The promise of the Haight-Ashbury district attracted a wide range of people of various age groups during the summer of 1967, ranging from college students intrigued on many fronts, through middle-class vacationers wondering what was the cause of all the excitement, all the way to partying military personnel from bases within an easy drive's distance.
The evolution of the Beatles and their music also contributed to the global impact of the Summer of Love. By late 1966 the Beatles had moved beyond their "moptop" era, and in February, 1967 they released "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" as a double A-sided single. In June, 1967 their song, "All You Need Is Love," was heard around the world as part of the "One World" radio broadcast, further emphasizing the countercultural theme of unity and freedom. More or less simultaneous with this broadcast, the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in Europe and the United States. With its psychedelic influences, Indian instrumentals, its vivid album cover, and possible drug references, it encaptured the very essence of the Summer of Love.
The phrase "Summer of Love" (or, more accurately, the "Second Summer of Love") is sometimes used (particularly in the UK) to refer to the summers of 1988 and 1989 and the rise of Acid House music and rave culture.
