SCOTT MCKENZIE, IF YOU GO TO SAN FRANCISCO...

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Hippie movement and she has been listening to some anthem of that age. One of the most beautiful songs was San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) sung by Scott McKenzie, the American singer and songwriter, who died on a day like today in 2012.

Scott McKenzie (born Philip Wallach Blondheim III; January 10, 1939-August 18, 2012) was an American singer and songwriter. He was best known for his 1967 hit single and generational anthem San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).

Philip Wallach Blondheim III was born in Jacksonville, Florida on January 10, 1939 as the son of Philip Wallach Blondheim, Jr. and the former Dorothy Winifred Hudson. His family moved to Asheville, North Carolina, when he was six months old. He grew up in North Carolina and Alexandria, Virginia, where he became friends with John Phillips, the son of one of his mother's friends. In the mid-1950s, he sang briefly with Tim Rose in a high school group named The Singing Strings. He graduated high school from St. Stephens School for Boys in Alexandria.

Later, with Phillips, Mike Boran, and Bill Cleary, he formed the doo wop band The Abstracts.

In New York City, The Abstracts became The Smoothies and recorded two singles with Decca Records, produced by Milt Gabler. During his time with The Smoothies, Blondheim decided to change his name for business reasons:

[We] were working at one of the last great night clubs, The Elmwood Casino in Windsor, Ontario. We were part of a variety show... three acts, dancing girls, and the entire cast took part in elaborate, choreographed stage productions... As you might imagine, after-show parties were common.

At one of these parties I complained that nobody could understand my real name... [and] pointed out that this was a definite liability in a profession that benefited from instant name recognition. Everyone started trying to come up with a new name for me. It was [comedian] Jackie Curtis who said he thought I looked like a Scottie dog. Phillips came up with Laura's middle name after Jackie's suggestion. I didn't like being called 'Scottie' so everybody agreed my new name could be 'Scott McKenzie'.

In 1961, Phillips and McKenzie met Dick Weissman and formed the folk group The Journeymen at the height of the folk music craze. They recorded three albums and seven singles for Capitol Records.

After The Beatles became popular in 1964, The Journeymen disbanded. McKenzie and Weissman became solo performers, while Phillips formed the group The Mamas & the Papas with Denny Doherty, Cass Elliot, and Michelle Phillips and moved to California.

McKenzie originally declined an opportunity to join the group, saying in a 1977 interview I was trying to see if I could do something by myself. And I didn't think I could take that much pressure. Two years later, he left New York and signed with Lou Adler's Ode Records.

John Phillips wrote and co-produced San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) for McKenzie. Phillips played guitar on the recording, and session musician Gary L. Coleman played orchestra bells and chimes. The bass line of the song was supplied by session musician Joe Osborn. Hal Blaine played drums.

It was released on May 13, 1967 in the United States and was an instant hit, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 in the Canadian RPM Magazine charts. It was also a number 1 in the UK and several other countries, selling over 7 million copies globally.

McKenzie released the single Like an Old Time Movie, which Phillips wrote, composed, and produced, and which was a top-40 hit (number 24 on Billboard; number 27 in Canada). His first album, The Voice of Scott McKenzie, was followed with an album titled Stained Glass Morning. He stopped recording in the early 1970s, living in Joshua Tree, California and Virginia Beach, Virginia.

McKenzie wrote and composed the song What About Me that launched the career of Canadian singer Anne Murray in 1968. Murray's United States breakthrough, with Gene McLellan's Snowbird, would not follow for several years.

In 1986, he started singing with a new version of The Mamas and the Papas. With Terry Melcher, Mike Love, and John Phillips, he co-wrote Kokomo (1988), a number 1 single for The Beach Boys.

By 1998, he had retired from the road version of The Mamas and the Papas, and resided in Los Angeles until his death. He appeared at the Los Angeles tribute concert for John Phillips in 2001, amongst other 1960s contemporary acts.

McKenzie died on August 18, 2012 at the age of 73 in Los Angeles. He had suffered from Guillain–Barré syndrome from 2010 until his death.

More information: The Guardian

I knew I didn't have the right name for a singer.
Having a name that nobody could pronounce was hardly an asset.

Scott McKenzie

THE BEANS & THE HIPPIE MOVEMENT IN SAN FRANCISCO

Paqui Bean ready to enjoy Hippie lifestyle

Today, The Beans have been working some new aspects of the English grammar like Used to and Object Pronouns. 

The family is a little tired because of the rythm of the trips. They are doing exceptional efforts but they are hard workers and exceptional students and they are doing a great job.

More information: Used to 1, 2 and 3

The family has decided to stay in the hotel and talk about the history of the city that they are going to visit deeply during the next days. San Francisco is a city with a huge history, a great referent in all kind of social movements and the city where the Hippie movement born in the 60's like a peaceful movement against war policies.

The Beans have been talking about the importance of this movement not only for the history of the USA but for the universal history because it was a mirror for other countries and communities.

More information: Object Pronouns

If you talk about the Hippie movement, you must remember incredible voices and composers like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Scott McKenzie, Jefferson Airplane and others. An exceptional generation of great artists who expanded the global message of peace and love around the planet.

Salvador Dalí, a genius of painting

The Grandma has also talked about the influence of the drugs in this movement, particularly, and how drugs have been used by the power to stop social movements and to control them. 

It has been a very hard moment because this is a theme that affects everybody in some senses and everyone of us has a closer experience to tell, to remember and sometimes, to forget.

Finally, the family has been talking about some important artists and writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Mercè Rodoreda, Agatha Christie, Federico Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado and Miguel Hernández.

More information: Cambrige 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

A hippie is a member of a counterculture, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. The term hippie first found popularity in San Francisco by Herb Caen, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Jimmi Hendrix & Janis Joplin

The origins of the terms hip and hep are uncertain. By the 1940s, both had become part of African American jive slang and meant sophisticated; currently fashionable; fully up-to-date. Hippies created their own communities, listened to psychedelic music, embraced the sexual revolution, and many used drugs such as marijuana, LSD, peyote and psilocybin mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness.

In 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, popularized hippie culture, leading to the Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. 

Hippies in Mexico, known as jipitecas, formed La Onda and gathered at Avándaro, while in New Zealand, nomadic housetruckers practiced alternative lifestyles and promoted sustainable energy at Nambassa. 

More information: All That Interesting

Hippies enjoying life in the 60's

In the United Kingdom in 1970, many gathered at the gigantic Isle of Wight Festival with a crowd of around 400,000 people. In later years, mobile peace convoys of New Age travelers made summer pilgrimages to free music festivals at Stonehenge and elsewhere.

In Australia, hippies gathered at Nimbin for the 1973 Aquarius Festival and the annual Cannabis Law Reform Rally or MardiGrass. 

Piedra Roja Festival, a major hippie event in Chile, was held in 1970. Hippie and psychedelic culture influenced 1960s and early 1970s young culture in Iron Curtain countries in Eastern Europe.

More information: The Culture Trip

Hippie fashion and values had a major effect on culture, influencing popular music, television, film, literature, and the arts. Since the 1960s, mainstream society has assimilated many aspects of hippie culture. The religious and cultural diversity the hippies espoused has gained widespread acceptance, and Eastern philosophy and spiritual concepts have reached a larger audience.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. 

When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history,  

looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion. 

Vivienne Westwood