What was the summer of love?

What was the summer of love?

The 'Summer of Love' refers to 1967 - not so much because that year saw a revolutionary new movement, but because that was when the media came to identify and focus on the hippy phenomenon, the underground alternative youth culture that had been brewing in America and Europe for several years.

The focus was San Francisco, where young people travelled from across America and beyond, attracted by the promise of the chance to cast off conservative social values and experiment with drugs and sex. Many came for the Monterey Pop Festival, the world's first such major event, which Scott McKenzie's San Francisco ('If you're going to San Francisco...') was originally designed to promote. In fact the song became a Summer of Love anthem, reaching number four in the US charts but number one in Britain.

Hippy culture embraced foreign travel as a means to find oneself and communicate with others, and the first backpackers set off on what became known as the 'hippy trail', through Europe and the Middle East to India. They hitchhiked, travelled by public transport or used revamped double-decker buses and camper vans, always living as cheaply as possible.

Why did it happen then?

A new generation of bohemians had developed through the early 1960s, partly led by the Beat Generation of poets and writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, but the counterculture came to a head that year.

The Human Be-In rally in San Francisco on 14 January is considered the starting point. Beat Generation speakers and poets gathered in Golden Gate Park to celebrate key ideas of the 1960s rebellion: communal living, political decentralisation, environmental awareness and 'dropping out'. Jefferson Airplane played and LSD was distributed amongst the crowds when a power failure led to a break in the music.

The Haight-Ashbury district, where dissaffected student groups gathered, became the focal point of hippy counterculture, and 100,000 young people arrived there over the summer. The local council supposedly came up with the title 'Summer of Love' to put a positive spin on the druggy, hairy, hippy gatherings that were portrayed negatively by the media.

Psychedelic music had its moment too: the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on 1 June, and other key albums included Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced?, Cream's Disraeli Gears, Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and the eponymous album from the Doors.

How did it end

By the autumn, everything had soured and a dark side distorted the hippies' hopeful aspirations. The movement had become a commercialised media spectacle - and a bit of a mess. The realities of 'dropping out' hit home: 'free love' was used to excuse rape, thousands suffered from serious drug addiction and mental problems, or became homeless. San Francisco was overrun with dealers and teenage runaways, and the Haight-Ashbury scene deteriorated through overcrowding, homelessness and crime. Many of the originators of the scene fled elsewhere and in October a mock funeral, the 'Death of the Hippy' ceremony, was held by some of those that remained. Realising that peace and love couldn't sustain them forever, most of the hippies eventually had to go back to university or get a job, although some found ways to continue their alternative lifestyles at home or abroad. For most, though, the utopian dream had come to an end.