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Counterculture Timeline: The High Sixties: Magical Mystery Tour 1967 - 1968
    EVENTS   ARTS
1967

  Bellbottoms and other inexpensive clothes from army-navy surplus stores become popular.   1967
















Life magazine - September 13 - John on cover
fall   40 large campus demonstrations against military and Dow recruiters  
Sept 1   Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour album

 
Sept

[SOPH xx]
  500,000 [US soldiers??] in South Vietnam, 600,000 in Southeast Asia

Tom Hayden & 30 Americans meet North Vietnamese leaders in Czechoslovakia; Hayden goes on to Vietnam to help return three U.S. P.O.W.s (to Nov 11)

Boomers born in 1949 are turning 18 & enter college

Beatle John Lennon writes "I Am The Walrus" on acid

Sept? Alpert meets Bhagwan Dass at the Blue Tibetan in Katmandu, stays in India & follows him until he meets his guru

 
Sept 15   Donovan at Hollywood Bowl (must be + touch-feel entrances?) xx

 
Oct 2   Dead House at 710 Ashbury is busted

 
Oct 3   Woody Guthrie dies (Huntington's Chorea)

 
Oct 4   Psychedelic Shop closes and the Thelins go to Washington DC for the Exorcism of Pentagon

 
Oct 5   [Lawrence Lipton starts class at UCLA xx]  
Oct 6   Death of Hippie, Loyal Son of Media, birth of free man

 
Oct 8   Che Guevara killed in Bolivia (by troops trained in U.S.)

 
Oct 9
  First edition Rolling Stone magazine (dated November 9, with John Lennon on the cover) put out by Jann Wenner (21) after drop out from U.C. Berkeley

[met with Chester Anderson of Communications Company in Los Angeles xx]


 
Oct   Carl Stokes becomes first black mayor of Cleveland

Dylan recording John Wesley Harding

 
Oct
6-12
  LA Free Press headline: Why did you get up this morning?  
Oct 11 &12 + ?   Teach-in at UCLA (with David Harris)  
Oct 12   "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", NY Review of Books
2,000 sign, including academics, clergymen, writers [The Draft p. 225 & 263]

 
Oct
16-22
 

Stop the Draft Week: Anti-draft/draft-card "turn-in" rallies: Chicago, Phil, Boston, Cincinnati, Portland; organized by National Mobilization Committee, a broad coalition of pacifist, religious, & radical groups

Oct 17 - Joan Baez + 122 arrested Oakland Induction Center

date? Rev Wm Sloane Coffin Jr (43, Yale chaplain), Dr Benjamin Spock (64), Mitchell Goodman (41, novelist), Marcus Raskin (33, former White House Disarmament aide & co-director of Washington research organization), and Michael Ferber (23, Harvard grad student) and 1 other deliver draft cards to U.S. Justice Department

Oct 21-22 35,000/50,000/100,000 Wash DC - 647 arrested at Pentagon;
Oct 21 Diggers "Exorcism of the Pentagon" (psychedelic face paint & flowers stuck in barrels of guns); 250 arrested including Norman Mailer [also saw as Nov 21]
Oct when? Rev. Philip Berrigan, a Josephite priest, Tom Lewis, David Eberhardt, and James Mengel pour duck's blood over draft files in the Baltimore, Md. Selective Service headquarters

 
Oct 28   5 a.m.: Huey Newton (25) questioned by police in Oakland "desolate district". One hour later under arrest at hospital with gunshot wound in stomach. Few weeks later indicted on murder of one officer (John Frey Jr.), wounding of another, & kidnapping of bystander.

 
Nov   Air war against North Vietnam accelerated (bombing Hanoi)

 
Nov 7   General Hershey announces draft crackdown on deferred college students who are active in anti-war demos

 
Nov 9   Apollo 4 (unmanned) [takes photos of moon shadow on earth (?)] - "first US photo of whole earth"

 
Nov 14   5,000 demonstrate outside New York foreign policy banquet addressed by Secretary of State Rusk

 
Nov 25   "last flower-child hippie-type demos in New York City - after this, demonstrations were militant"

 

Nov

[mj xx

& every
body starts xx]

  Don McCoy & friends start community at Olompoli Ranch

Cream: Disreali Gears / Judy Collins: Who Knows Where The Time Goes

How I Won the War with John Lennon (directed by Richard Lester)

A new strain of malaria hits GIs in Vietnam

Life magazine: Police new riot weapons: "instant banana peel", "chemical mace", "tanks that shoot tear gas"

The Graduate (directed by Mike Nichols)

 
Nov 30   Eugene McCarthy (Senator from Minnesota) announces candidacy for President, running on anti-war platform
was this the start of the People's Party?

 
Dec 1   Life: Return of the Red Man [explain xx]

 
Dec 2   [saw Joan Baez at UCLA xx]

 
Dec 4   MLK announces Poor People's Campaign in Wash D.C. (to start late spring)

 
Dec 7 (or 5)   Beatles: opening of Apple Shop, 94 Baker Street, London with murals by The Fool

Black boycott of Olympics (announced?)


 
Dec
5-8
  "Stop the Draft Week" at Whitehall, NY Army Induction Center
546/585 arrested, including Spock & Ginsberg
+ Madison, Manchester N.H., Cincinnati, New Haven


 
Dec 8?   Otis Redding records "Dock of the Bay", his only major hit

 
Dec 10   Otis Redding dies at 26 in plane crash

 
Dec 22   Owsley busted in Orinda (stops production of acid)

 
    solstice "people started to leave for the country"

 
Dec   Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour released UK

 
Dec 31   Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory & friends pronounce themselves "Yuppies"

 
1967   end: 486,000 American troops in Vietnam;
Of the 15,000 killed, 60% died in 1967

 


1968   Number of divorces, & divorce rate, both jump by 12% and start rise

Charlie Hall, Hashbury, invents the waterbed as a school project

Steve Gaskin starts the Monday Night Class in San Francisco

Yogi Bhajan comes to U.S. to teach Kundalini Yoga (Healthy, Happy, Holy)

Wiretapping becomes a federal crime

Gun Control Act curbs sale of handguns

Dec 67 - mid-68: first heart transplants

Hong Kong flu (?the first flu brought back from Vietnam?) - Influenza pandemic (new gene combination)

US scientists tell natives evacuated in 1946 from Bikini it is safe to return;
by 1978, 139 who return found to contain dangerous levels of cesium & re-evacuated

The dollar is worth 362 yen; Japan is still known for "cheap" trinket import items.

SDS has 100,000 "members"

Ivan E. Sutherland at University of Utah, invents first head-mounted Virtual Reality display,
but powerful enough computer to use with it does not yet exist

Wavy Gravy and others run a pig named Pigasus for President

Carnegie Hall: Tribute to Woody Guthrie (Pete Seeger, Jack Elliott, Judy Collins,
Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, Odetta, Richie Havens, & Dylan with The Band - Dylan's first public appearance since accident in July 1966)

when? Biafra

"Gold crisis" [1969 almanac p. 72]

  1968
MUSIC / CINEMA / PUBLISHING

Abraham, Martin & John
*RS: Beggar's Banquet
(Honky Tonk Woman)
?Beatles: White Album [or was this 69?]
Hey Jude; Lady Madonna
?? Revolution / Get Back
Dylan: John Wesley Harding
*The Band: Music from the Big Pink
*Donovan: From a Flower to a Garden & Hurdy Gurdy Man
Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge over Troubled Water
*Doors: Waiting for the Sun
(July 1968)
*Hendrix: Axis Bold As Love -&- Electric Ladyland
*Fleetwood Mac
*Steve Miller
*Quicksilver
Dr. John: first solo
*Sly and the Family Stone
Creedence Clearwater Revival
------
"Heavy Metal":
*Blue Cheer
*Iron Butterfly
*Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat
*Deep Purple
------
*Moody Blues
*Electric Flag
*Blood, Sweat & Tears
*Seatrain (formed from Blues Project)
------
from UK:
*Jeff Beck Group
*Traffic
*Joe Cocker
*Bonzo Dog Band
*Pentangle
--------
*Joni Mitchell (first)
*Leonard Cohen
*Randy Newman
Taj Mahal
?Cream [at UCLA May 68]
Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airma?n
moves from Detroit to SF
(?Roberta Flack)

Big Brother and The Holding Company with Janis Joplin - Cheap Thrills (featured a cover illustration by Robert Crumb, then a little known illustrator living in Haight-Ashbury) - August

Marvin Gaye: I Heard It Through the Grapevine / Judy in Disguise (with Glasses) / Green Tambourine / Steppenwolf: Born To Be Wild

Z
If . . . (UK - Lindsay Anderson)
Yellow Submarine
April 3 - 2001 directed by Kubrick
April 29 - Hair opens on Broadway
(Planet of the Apes, Barbarella)
??I Am Curious - Yellow
(Rosemary's Baby - start of satanic children movies)
Godard: One Plus One (last symbols movie)
The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary - James Simon Kunen

first Zap Comix
Tom Wolfe: Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Eldrige Cleaver: Soul on Ice
?Abraham Maslow: Towards a Psychology of Being
Dr. Paul Ehrlich: The Population Bomb
Carlos Castaneda: The Teachings of Don Juan
Akwesasne Notes starts publication

Tiny Tim

Peter Max

"Unisex clothing"

Aerobics - Dr. Kenneth Cooper
(first use of the term for exercise)

Jogging

Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Forty heart transplants

Joan Baez marries David Harris and David Harris starts 3 year jail sentence for refusing to register for the draft

Auroville Cooperative, India, founded

Ananda Cooperative Village, Nevada City, California, founded





This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of everything that stands
The end
No safety or surprise
The end
I'll never look into your eyes again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger's hand
In a desperate land











"spring: Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger dope bust cases" xx

Jan-May   40,000 students participate in 221 major demonstrations on 101 campuses

 
Jan   The Peace and Freedom Party, which was founded on June 23, 1967 by people who wanted to vote for something they could support, runs a massive voter registration drive placed the Peace and Freedom Party on the California ballot. http://www.peaceandfreedom.org

Many hippies register to vote for the first time.

Eldridge Cleaver becomes the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for President


 
Jan 2   Federal: bilingual education

 
Jan 5   Spock, Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, & Marcus Raskin indicted for delivering draft cards (Oct)

 
Jan 9   Beatles Avedon photos/posters appear in Look magazine (they had also appeared in Stern magazine in Germany in 1967)

 
Jan 16   Youth International Party (Y.I.P.) founded - Country Joe & Fish, Fugs, Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Phil Ochs, Jerry Rubin (25 artists, writers & revolutionaries)

 
Jan 18   Eartha Kitt visiting LBJ at White House speaks out against the war

 
Jan 22   B-52 carrying H-Bomb crashes in Greenland

[saw The Committee xx]

 
Jan 23   Pueblo seized by Korea

 
Jan 24   [saw Ravi Shankar again xx]

 
Jan 31

[--> xx]
  Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive - (to Feb 24)
70,000 Viet Cong troops attack 100 S.Viet cities
"start of the turnaround"

+ picture of police chief shooting Viet Cong in head

[Fred's: light shows xx]

 
Feb 2
Feb 4
  [Jeff's party at empty house xx]
[saw Arlo Guthrie at the Troubadour xx
]

 
Feb 9   Free Press headline: In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king

 
Feb 16   Draft deferments for most grad students & all occupational deferments eliminated

 
Feb 17   Second Tribal Stomp

 
Feb   Leary evicted from Millbrook house

Feb 21 *Beatles to India to visit Maharishi (at Rishikesh on the Ganges)
also there: Mia Farrow, Donovan, Mike Love of The Beach Boys;
Ringo stays 10 days, Paul 9 weeks, John & George 3 months;
"get off drugs for the while and write the White Album"
(& Maharishi Mahesh coming to US - when?)

 
Feb 29   RFK & Javits, New York's Senators, speak out

 
when?   Morning Star Ranch busts -> Wheeler Ranch opened to settlers

winter Bill Wheeler (28) opens nearby Sheep Ridge Ranch (Wheeler's Ranch) (320 acres) for people to live on the land

 
Mar 2   RFK speech to Congress about Vietnam

 
March 8   Fillmore East opens in New York City (to June 27, 1971)

 
Mar 8-9   Warsaw student uprisings, March 11 workers uprising

 
March

[first trip to Berk + Fillmore xx]

  Hue bombed to rubble in "25 days of horror" to retake from VC / during "peace feelers" (including Mylai massacre March 16: 200 - 500 villagers killed)

McCarthy's "Children's Crusade": thousands work on New Hampshire primary, calling on nearly every voter in the state

 
Mar 12

[started poetry class xx]
  10,000 students go door to door in heavy snows;
Eugene McCarthy wins 42% of New Hampshire vote, overtaking President Johnson, & causing RFK to "reconsider" on Vietnam
(& LBJ not to run, sez Great Expectations p.113)

 
Mar 16   RFK declares candidacy for Presidency

 
Mar 19   President Johnson's advisors advise getting out of Vietnam war

 
Mar 22   (first N.Y. YIP event)

 
Mar 23   The Kaleidoscope Is Turning On - Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Buffalo Springfield
(Sunset Strip: the Hullabaloo became the Kaleidoscope in 1968, more emphasis on light shows, for people who were on acid. It finally folded and then ["mid-October"] became the Aquarius, which is where Hair had its big L.A. run)


 
    Olympic boycott

 
Mar 31   LBJ announces decision not to run again
and offers partial bombing halt
and appointment of Averell Harriman to seek negotiations

 
Apr 1   Supreme Court extends one-man, one-vote doctrine to local governments ?Baker vs. Carr -> reapportionment

 
Apr 4   Martin Luther King Jr shot and killed, at Memphis motel, 7 p.m.
during Poor People's Campaign (39 years old)

 
Apr
4-11
  within two hours after MLK Shot and killed:
Black uprisings Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia,
San Francisco, Toldeo, Pittsburgh - 125 cities in 29 states total

 
Apr 6   Eldridge Cleaver arrested with a bullet-shattered leg during Oakland police ambush on Panthers
+ Bobby Hutton (17) shot and killed


 
Apr 11   LBJ signs civil rights bill banning housing discrimination (with anti-riot felony amendment)

 
Apr 11   Major call-up of reserves for duty in Vietnam

 
Apr 14   (Easter Sunday) [Love-in Malibu Canyon xx]

Peak of demonstrations in West Berlin against Axel Springer & his publishing empire, after assasination attempt on Rudi Dutschke ("Red Rudy")


 
Apr 15   Spring Mobilization against the war

 
Apr
23-30
  New York City: Students take over five Colombia University buildings protesting University's affiliation with the Institute for Defense Analysis and its Pentagon-related research, and construction of athletic facility opposed by neighboring Harlem (Mark Rudd becomes famous as leader); 700+ arrested,

Apr 25 Demonstrations closed down Columbia University; strike continues for another month

April 26: Up to one million college and high school students boycott classes in a nationwide student strike against the war. - http://www.arc.org/C_Lines/CLArchive/story1_1_07.html

 
Apr 25   Paul Horn records in the Taj Mahal

[Apr 26 - to see The Committee again]

 
Apr 29   Rev. Ralph Abernathy succeeds MLK as President of Southern Christian Leadership Conference

 
Ap/May   Black Panthers start Free Breakfast for Children program

 
May
2-14
  France: street fighting in Paris / "May 3-14 Sorbonne occupied"  
May
2-17
  SCLC Poor People's March on Washington
3,000 erect Resurrection City, tent city on the Mall


 
May 7   [saw Firesign Theatre xx]  
May 12   [Mike Bloomfield at UCLA xx]

 
May 13   US & North Vietnam begin talks in Paris

 
May
13-30
  France: Sorbonne demonstrations: humanism vs technology
French students occupy the Sorbonne

Demonstrations in Madrid, Rome, Berlin, New York,
& Czechoslovakia (?"Prague Spring")

 
May  

Two Virgins: Lennon & Yoko naked - explain xx - "recorded in April, after which, Yoko moved in and divorces and remarries"

Beatles launch Apple Corps

Former Stanford Student Body President David Harris marries Joan Baez

May - Life magazine: abundance of show biz people in Presidential campaign


[Cream at UCLA]
[to Army-Navy store for bellbottoms & p-coat xx]
[to see Magical Mystery Tour xx]
[went to Vito]
[David Harris & Joan Baez xx]
[saw Time Buckley xx]
[B Greene xx]
[? Corinne's party with Squeaky?]

 
May 21   Tom Donahue & djs from KMPX start [new format at] KSAN

Second mass arrest at Columbia University

 
May 22   H. Rap Brown of SNCC convicted for carrying weapon across state lines

 
May 24   France: "general strike by half the work force" (or was this just Paris?)

Philip Berrigan & Tom Lewis sentenced to 6 years


May before or after? Philip Berrigan, out on bail, and brother Daniel, a Jesuit priest, and seven others remove records from Catonsville, Md. draft board office and set them on fire outside in the presence of reporters and onlookers

 
May 28   McCarthy wins over RFK in Oregon primaries

 
June 3   Andy Warhol shot at the Factory, off Union Square, New York, by feminist

[Centinela house xx]

 
June 4   California primaries: RFK wins

 
June 5   Robert F. Kennedy shot and killed(42), Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles
(Sirhan Sirhan arrested)

 
June 8   James Earl Ray (accused of MLK murder), arrested London

 
June 9   [Free Clinic]
[Ash Grove: John Fahey]
 
June 14   Spock, Coffin, Ferber, Goodman convicted of conspiracy for "draft counseling"

 
June   Oldest baby boomers (born 1946) graduate college

Boomers born 1950 turn 18 & graduate high school


[moved into Centinela house xx]
[June 9 Free Clinic xx / Ash Grove: John Fahey]

 
June 25   Poor People's Campaign March - 50,000 march from Georgia to Washington D.C.

 
June   Libre, Colorado community founded

 
summer  

early - Hayden to Paris to confer w North Vietnamese representatives

Haight Ashbury Media Summer + "Young Americans Abroad"

 
July 4   Bill Graham first concert at Fillmore West (Van Ness & Market)

[psil 1xx]

 
July   Yellow Submarine movie - premieres in London July 17

Haight Ashbury riot (including Bank of America burning --> leads to H.I.P. boarding up their stores

Wallace campaign

Pope's birth control encyclical

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed

Operation Breadbasket, Chicago, begins with boycott of A&P stores over discrimination in hiring, with Jesse Jackson, 27, ?as head?

U.S. Viet tropps increase by 19,000 to 535,000

Peace & Freedom Party campaign going on: Cleaver for President
[later: Dick Gregory??]

 
July
23-24
  Cleveland black uprising  
July 31   Beatles: Apple Boutique closes

 
August   McGovern enters the race for President (August 10)

Cream: Wheels of Fire

First Apple release: Beatles: Hey Jude & Revolution

1000 meet in prayer before UN for food aid to Biafra

Panthers Tommy Lewis, 18 & Steve Bartholomew, 21 and ?Arthur Morris, 28, shot to death by police in Los Angeles

 
Aug
20-21
  Soviet tanks invade Prague, Czechoslovakia with 200,000 troops  
Aug
25-29
  Democratic Convention in Chicago: demonstrations & police riot
10,000? demonstrators vs. 11,000 Chicago police;
6,000 National Guard; 7,500 U.S. army troops;
and 1,000 FBI,CIA & army/navy intelligence services agents
(Humphrey nominated on platform supporting the war)
(Aug 27 candlelight, matches at Yippie Festival concert, coliseum)

 

On to The High Sixties: Spaceship Earth 1968-1969