For a brief moment in time, rock music seemed to be changing the entire world in the 1960s. Whereas most people were opening their minds to the possibilities of music, there were just as many who saw the whole thing as a lifestyle that could create peace on earth through the power of a few chords and just the right lyric sheet to tie everything together. The Beatles were already at the forefront of that movement, but once George Harrison got to see the hippy movement up close, he realised that he didn’t really have much time for it.
This is strange because the hippies were living in a world that the Fab Four helped create. Regardless of who officially started the ‘Summer of Love’, albums like Revolver and Sgt Peppers helped expose many fans to the idea of living together as one people, which was eventually shot through the roof the minute that the group released their anthem ‘All You Need Is Love’.
However, the idea of utopia was looking a little bit different on the West Coast. Whereas most people were looking to put flowers in their hair and experience the free love movement, there was a flip side to that kind of mentality. As opposed to trying to live the lifestyle, most people just got into the business because they wanted sex and drugs and didn’t care much for rock and roll at all.
When Harrison turned up at the legendary Haight Ashbury scene, though, he was already being treated like the Messiah. People were looking to give him drugs left and right, and the minute that he wanted out; the audience wouldn’t let him leave, which led to his car being shaken by a mob of fans as he tried to get out of the place.
Instead of the fantastic spectacle he had been promised, Harrison thought the entire scene was a cheap version of what he was trying to create, saying in Living in the Material World, “Instead, it turned out to be just a lot of bums. Many of them were just very young kids who’d come from all over America and dropped acid and gone to this mecca of LSD.”
That kind of mentality was also coming back around to bite people on the other side of the world as well. Despite already having mental issues, Syd Barrett succumbed to the effects of LSD and his fragile mind when he left Pink Floyd, as well as Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac leaving his group after frying his brain one too many times.
Whereas most people found their outlet through drugs for the rest of their lives, Harrison continued to follow his muse by building a relationship with God. From the moment The Beatles broke up, some of the best tunes that Harrison ever wrote were about trying to have a relationship with his higher power, whether it was ‘My Sweet Lord’ or reminding people that they could all experience it on ‘Awaiting On You All’.
And Harrison may have been proven correct about the California scene a few months after his visit, with The Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert bringing an end to the idealism angle of the movement when one concertgoer would lose their life at the hands of a Hell’s Angel. Flower Power was fine for the moment it lasted, but Harrison knew there was a line between those who believed and those who were just along for the ride.
