Section K of the Seattle Times, July 19, 1987, the day of the Dead-Dylan concert in Eugene: a two-page retrospective on By John Bennett Photos courtesy John Bennett « o fh ’e ®- S unun American turns on the TV for an evening of relaxation, index finger tapping out electronic impulses on the magic box—remote control, our specialty. The images flicker by. Ice hockey in Montreal. Raw sex on the Playboy channel. Regan, Schultz and Poindexter on CNN, saying this about that and less about each other. A laser-colored western on channel four. Bill Cosby saying “ It’s my money” for I.F. Hutton. News flashes on uprisings in South Korea, Panama and some place called Oceania. The mind grows bored and the finger does the walking. POWER OFF makes the world go away. The Summer of Love, its twenty-year resurrection vying with the Iran-Contra hearings for prime time. Colonel North pulling rank on Sergeant Pepper. Sergeant Pepper’s band dubbed over with oom-pa-pa. the Summer of Love—a shotgun blast of graphics and letters responding to the T im e s ’ re q u e s t fo r Penny Lane memories. In the graphics department, a collage of paraphernalia: a photo of a Vietnam private juxtaposed with a photo of the Fillmore marquee promoting a soon-to- self-destruct Jimi Hendrix; a repro of the Zigzag Man; a Grateful Dead calling card; the Haight-Ashbury street sign. Implied meaning and significance, slicked over an abyss of incomprehension. And the letters. Star billing is given to an anonymous letter that sets the tone for the entire coverage: that was then and this is now; then was an aberration, a time that bred a profusion of prodigal sons and daughters, and now is a time when these prodigals have been absorbed back into the mainstream of America’s high-tech, corporate democracy, feeling a little foolish about their wayward caper, but willing, at last, to do their part. This anonymous woman left hat kind of force is capable of drawing ■k 50,000 people from northern California IkHv and the entire Northwest to a single foot- ■ ball stadium in western Oregon? What kind of force can bring Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead together on the same stage? The answer is simple: The Sum- F ^^F mer of Love. The media has it implanted in our collective ticky-tack brain that the y Summer of Love was a phenomenon, a force, and the media should know, the media created the Summer of Love. Let me rephrase the question: What were the dynamics involved in the Haight-Ashbury-hippy-counter-culture phenomenon of twenty years ago? What was the force the media cannibalized when it conjured its phenomenon?
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz