Last Hippie Standing – Goa Gil
Dr Albert Hoffmann and Goa Gil
It all started for me in 1965 when I was 14, there were some of us musicians and we used to sit on the sidewalk outside the psychedelic shop on the corner of Haite and Ashbury, San Francisco. In 1966 I was in a group that included Janis Joplin, and then with another group that became “Steppin Wolf”. After that I started to work for “The Family Dog” which was a group of freaks who made the first parties in San Francisco. Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company were like the house band. There was this explosion of awareness that hit so many young people which became the whole 60’s movement, the scene was new and everybody was so innocent, it was the first time it was being done, and there was something really magical happening. It ended in the summer of ’69 when the Rolling Stones played a free concert in San Francisco and one guy got killed in front of the stage. That was the moment the bubble burst. Everything changed after that. Nixon was President, Reagan was the Governor of California, and all over the world people had had enough. Some people stayed on in San Francisco and became yuppies, some moved off and made communes as they no longer wanted to live in the cities. Many people came to India on a spiritual trip.
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