Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (44 page)

Stark maintained an expensive apartment in Greenwich Village and liked to dine at the best restaurants in immaculate three-piece suits. Yet whenever he visited the Brotherhood ranch, he put on a smelly jellaba or a rumpled shirt and grease-stained tie. Five foot eight, with a bulging waistline, high forehead, and thick, brooding moustache, he could easily come off as a
shlub,
but his motley appearance belied a ruthless and cunning intelligence. Although only in his early thirties, Stark spoke ten languages fluently, including French, German, Italian, Arabic, and Chinese. He was, in short, a genius con artist who could talk circles around just about anybody.

Stark presented himself to the Brothers as the premier fixer, the man who could get anything done. He came across as someone who really knew his way around the world of international finance, claiming to sit on numerous boards of numerous corporations—some legitimate, others illegitimate—that he alone controlled. He promised to use his connections to help the Brothers. Stark warned them that buying real estate openly, as they had done, was much too risky—but his lawyers could remedy the situation by hiding ownership in a maze of shell companies. Before long he assumed Hitchcock’s role as banker and money manager for the Brothers’ dirty cash.

But Stark got much more involved than Hitchcock, overseeing the production end of the LSD operation in addition to the finances. As
eminence grise
of the psychedelic movement, he had a lot going in his favor, principally a reliable source of raw materials from Czechoslovakia and an excellent manufacturing facility in Paris,
which had already produced large quantities of LSD in crystalline form. The acid was dyed orange so as to continue the sunshine legacy, and the Brothers tabbed and distributed it.

Meanwhile the redoubtable Stark dashed to and fro, attending to various business scams in at least a dozen countries. Like a chameleon, he moved swiftly from underground drug factories and hippie communes to posh hotels and private clubs for the rich and famous. He maneuvered on four continents, leaving a trail of ambiguities at every turn. A master of innuendo and disinformation, he preferred to keep his range of contacts ignorant of each other’s activities. Oftentimes he concealed the fact that he was an American. His European associates were not privy to his affairs in Africa, and those in Asia knew little about his work in the States. The Brothers, for example, had no idea that he was running a separate cocaine ring in the Bay Area.

Stark compartmentalized the different spheres of his life, managing everything on a “need to know” basis. His
modus operandi
was not unlike that of an intelligence operative. He often claimed to know exactly how things worked in the espionage community. He said he knew lots of spies, and to some of his friends he even boasted of working for the CIA. It was a tip from the Agency, he explained, that prompted him to shut down his French operation in 1971. A few months later he opened another sophisticated production center in Brussels, which masqueraded for two years as a reputable firm engaged in biomedical research. During this period Stark communicated on a regular basis with officials at the American embassy in London. He even elicited their assistance while setting up his Belgian drug lab. By the time it was all over, Stark had made twenty kilos of LSD—enough for fifty million doses! It was by far the largest amount of acid ever to emanate from a single underground source, and most of it was sold in the United States.

Some of the Brothers began to have qualms about the way Stark operated. Scully, for one, decided to retire from the acid business not long after Stark entered the picture in the summer of 1969. There was something unnerving about this newcomer. His slick manner seemed worlds apart from the traditions of the psychedelic movement, and Scully distrusted him. A man with bisexual proclivities, Stark used drugs and sex to manipulate people. Occasionally he made overtures to one of the Brothers. This didn’t bother Scully as much as the overall feeling that Stark was an unsavory character. His
intuition proved correct, as Stark ended up with nearly all the money and property in his name after the feds broke up the Brotherhood network in the early 1970s.

“He must have pegged us as real softies,” said Scully, who attributed much of his own naivete to an infatuation with LSD. “My friends and I thought that taking acid would necessarily make people very gentle, very honest, very open, and much more concerned about each other and the planet,” he explained. “But, in fact, that was just a projection of our own trip. It had nothing to do with reality, and we were able to ignore what was actually happening for a number of years. . . . Many people had different reasons for what they were doing, and they were all coming from wildly different places. Because of the feeling you get when you’re stoned on acid—that you’re one with others—you think that the people you’re with understand you and agree with you, even though that may not be the case at all. I’m sure that led a lot of people astray.”

In retrospect Scully realized that the love-and-peace mythology associated with LSD made the scene especially attractive to hustlers and con men who claimed to have lofty motives. This in part explains how a complete stranger like Stark was able to insinuate himself with such ease into the core of the Brotherhood and assume a commanding position within the organization. His fateful appearance at the Idylwild ranch coincided with the unpleasant changes that began in the summer of 1969, when Griggs died and Hitchcock pulled away from the group. Ironically, things started to sour just when the acid generation was celebrating its greatest public triumph on a rain-soaked weekend in upstate New York.

Bad Moon Rising

It was awesome to behold: a wide, sloping pasture paved with humanity, countless bodies nestled together in a swirl of dazzling colors. Close to a half million people had descended upon Max Yasgur’s farm in August 1969 to attend the Woodstock music and arts fair. The three-day “Aquarian Exposition” was the greatest be-in of all, and a good many acid heavies came out of the woodwork to join the celebration. A full busload of Merry Pranksters, wildly attired in their Day-Glo costumes and American flags, drove all the way from Springfield, Oregon, where Kesey was sitting out three years’ probation for marijuana possession on his brother’s farm. The Yippies
were also there, along with a rabble of Crazies, Motherfuckers, White Panthers, and Weathermen, who came to politicize the stoned masses. The activists set up booths and a printing press in a choice spot known as “Movement City,” situated next to a psychedelic forest where headshops and dealers advertised their wares: “Acid, speed, mushrooms, mese. . .” As soon as they arrived, the Motherfuckers struck a blow against hip capitalism by tearing down a portion of the wire fence that surrounded the natural amphitheater, and Woodstock became a free festival by default.

But losing money was not the primary concern of the promoters at this point, for they had an enormous problem on their hands. By the second day food was running out, the wells weren’t pumping, and trucks couldn’t get in to service the overflowing portable toilets. After the first downpour the field turned into an oozing crater of mud, with collapsed tents, bottles, tin cans, and garbage galore giving off a horrible stench. Medical supplies were brought in by army helicopters, conjuring up images of a Vietnam delta under siege, and the press carried a very plausible report that the entire festival site was about to be declared a disaster area.

But there was no disaster—no riots and no violence despite the abominable conditions. What kept the peace was no great secret. Nearly everybody was buzzed on something, and the unarmed policemen, clothed in bright red T-shirts with the words “love” and “peace” emblazoned across the chest, wisely followed a laissez-faire policy and let the dopers do their thing. Orange sunshine was plentiful, and lumps of hash appeared like manna from heaven. Some badly manufactured LSD also circulated among the crowd, and the makeshift hospital staffed by the Hog Farm, a New Mexico-based commune, was crammed with hundreds of freaked-out trippers. For the most part, however, the drugs had a calming effect, and a spirit of goodwill prevailed throughout the weekend. Woodstock “was less a festival than a religious convocation,” wrote Myra Friedman in her biography of Janis Joplin. “Its ceremonies were the assertions of lifestyle, and the lifestyle included a celebration of the mystical relationship between drugs and rock. . . . What ruled was the rock world’s
Realpolitik:
you are only as good as the number of joints you smoke, only as blessed as you are high. It was as if Woodstock was the ultimate declaration of dope, not as an incidental euphoriant, but as some kind of necessary virtue.”

If rock-dope had become a new American religion, then the musicians
were akin to prophets. Thirty-one of the finest musical acts, including a number of San Francisco acid rock bands, performed that weekend. But the real stars of Woodstock were those who sat in the mud and listened to the assembled talent. Never had a hippie gathering been so successful, so impressive by any standard. Here, it seemed, was irrefutable proof of the moral superiority of the new order. The sheer power of the cultural mood was overwhelming. “One, Two, Many Woodstocks,”
Rolling Stone
exulted in an article that told of plans to repeat the triumph. Not every segment of the youth culture, however, was wild about what went down at Yasgur’s farm. “Fuck hippie capitalism,” the Weather Underground declared. “Events like the Woodstock gentleness freakout. . . indicate that as long as militancy isn’t a threat, pig and ruling class approval is forthcoming.” The Yippies agreed with their Weather brethren. “The revolution is more than digging rock or turning on,” said Abbie Hoffman. “The revolution is about coming together in a struggle for change. It’s about the destruction of a system based on bosses and competition and the building of a system based on people and cooperation.”

Hoffman was high on acid when he ran on stage at Woodstock to deliver his political rap about the plight of John Sinclair, Pig Nation, and the whole shtick. Just as he started to talk, the microphone went dead, and Peter Townshend, leader of the Who, bonked Hoffman over the head with his electric guitar. So much for the grand alliance of cultural and political rebels that the Yippies were trying to forge under their banner. The two factions were at odds once again, reflecting the old split within the youth movement that became impossible to reconcile as the decade drew to a close.

The once fruitful dialogue between head culture and activist politics had degenerated into acrimonious word-slinging. Jann Wenner, publisher of
Rolling Stone,
the one national magazine that came out of the Haight-Ashbury subculture, dismissed the New Left as “a completely frustrating and pointless exercise of campus politics in a grown-up world.” Wenner believed that rock and roll, in and of itself, would bring about the millennium. But the mystical aggrandizement of rock as “the magic that can set you free” concealed the fact that it was just another form of entertainment for most people. While Woodstock showed the vast size of the rock audience, it also symbolized the rapid growth of the music industry, which by 1969 had become a billion-dollar enterprise. Rock and roll was a victim
of its own success, and the new music, despite its frequent anti-authoritarian overtones, was easily coopted by the corporate establishment. At one point Columbia Records actually ran an advertising campaign based on the moneymaking slogan, “The Man can’t bust our music.”

Economic factors had little to do with the original impetus of acid rock—a vital, seething outburst that blew apart the established world of record company rules. The bizarre, twisting rhythms of the early psychedelic bands were too long and formless for AM radio airplay, so there was little national exposure for this type of music. It wasn’t until after the major record companies swooped down upon the Haight and used their formidable financial clout to sign, record, and promote the most successful acid rock performers that the San Francisco sound was reduced to formula. Earsplitting volume and light shows became standard fare at concerts. “It’s like television, loud, large television,” Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said of acid rock after it became institutionalized. “It was a sensitive trip, and it’s been lost. . . .[It] hasn’t blown a new mind in years.”

The capacity to absorb its critics is among the chief characteristics of American capitalism, and one of the keys to its enduring hegemony. Although they begin by posing a symbolic challenge to the status quo, rebellious styles invariably wind up creating new conventions and new options for industry. Even long hair—the outstanding symbol of revolt in the 1960s (at least for men)—proved to be a commercial bonanza for hairdressers: $20 a clip and everyone could look like their favorite rock star! By the turn of the decade the counterculture had millions of visible adherents. Rock and roll, drugs, and hip fashion were incorporated into the social mainstream like so many eggs being folded into batter.

The Yippies and their allies in the youth movement tried to resist this trend by promoting the myth of a unified counterculture. “We are a people. . .a nation,” said John Sinclair. This unique psychogeographical entity had its own media, its own music and dance, its own youth ghettos and communes; moreover, its citizens were involved in a struggle for national liberation against the “fascist pigs” of the Mother Country. Abbie Hoffman called the budding youth colony “Woodstock Nation,” and in his book of the same title he blasted the movie
Woodstock
for extolling hip capitalism while steering clear of politics. He and his cohorts felt it was high time for the hippies to grow thorns and defend themselves and their life-style,
which had come under increasing attack. There was even talk of forming the Woodstock People’s party, which would serve as the militant vanguard of the psychedelic liberation front.

Such a notion was yet another example of the megalomania of the younger generation, which blithely “mistook its demographic proliferation for real political power,” as Stanley Aronowitz put it.
(We Are Everywhere
was the title of Jerry Rubin’s second book, which he dedicated to the Weather Underground.) In their stoned hubris the Yippies, the White Panthers, and the Weatherpeople misread the depth of the cultural revolution and its impact on the political situation in America. Their delusions about the omnipotence of the Movement derived in part from their experience with psychedelic drugs. They believed that LSD contained an intrinsic revolutionary message; such a notion, however, was essentially an amplified reflection of their own political inclinations. (“Woodstock was political because everyone was tripping,” said Karl Crazy, a member of the YIP steering committee.) Like so many others, the turned-on activists succumbed to the perennial “LSD temptation” and assumed everyone else would have similar insights while buzzed on acid. “I didn’t have a sense of how unique I was,” John Sinclair later recalled. “I projected so much for so many years that it blinded me from seeing it. . . . LSD did that, you know what I mean—‘Everyone is one, and da-da-da.’ . . . I just thought that this is how I got to where I was, and I figured everyone was in the same place. . . . I was so deep into it, I didn’t see what was going on.”