We're coming up on the two-year anniversary of the death of one of the major LSD producers of the Psychedelic era.
Bear Stanley was from a political family in Kentucky. He was the Grateful Dead's sound engineer, and the inspiration for their song "Alice D. Millionaire". And between 1965 and 1967, he produced 1.25 million doses of LSD.
In 1963 he dropped out of Berkeley and started making LSD in his bathroom. He was a fastidious perfectionist, and within two years, he became the primary supplier for Ken Kesey and co. for their acid tests. He supplied the Grateful Dead with "all the acid they could drop", and paid their rent before they were famous. He also created the Grateful Dead's 600-speaker "wall of sound" used at their shows. He worked for them until they parted ways over a disagreement about vegetables. Really. He was an avid carnivore, and believed carbohydrates were poison:
In 1963 he dropped out of Berkeley and started making LSD in his bathroom. He was a fastidious perfectionist, and within two years, he became the primary supplier for Ken Kesey and co. for their acid tests. He supplied the Grateful Dead with "all the acid they could drop", and paid their rent before they were famous. He also created the Grateful Dead's 600-speaker "wall of sound" used at their shows. He worked for them until they parted ways over a disagreement about vegetables. Really. He was an avid carnivore, and believed carbohydrates were poison:
"Mr. Stanley always had been a controlling personality — when he rented a house for the Grateful Dead in 1965, he refused to allow “poisonous” vegetables inside, and everyone subsisted on meat for months. That stubbornness helped contribute to his break with the band in the mid-1970s."He would later move to Australia where he lived the rest of his days. He died two years go tomorrow. You can read all about him in his obituary in the Washington Post. Don't worry, this won't be on the test.
