Owsley Stanley died at age 76 this past weekend, following an automobile accident in Australia, where he has lived with his wife for the past 30 years. Revered in the 1960's for the quality of his acid, his name may not be as familiar as Ken Kesey or Timothy Leary, but he was a legend.
Among a legion of youthful seekers, his name was synonymous with the ultimate high as a copious producer of what Rolling Stone once called "the best LSD in the world … the genuine Owsley." He reputedly made more than a million doses of the drug, much of which fueled Kesey's notorious Acid Tests — rollicking parties featuring all manner of psychedelic substances, strobe lights and music. Tom Wolfe immortalized Stanley as the "Acid King" in the counterculture classic "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (1968).
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He was an engineer for the Grateful Dead and so much more. Later in life:
Described by Cutler as a man who held "very firm beliefs about potential disasters," Stanley relocated to Australia because he believed it was the safest place to avoid a new ice age. ...In his later years he was mainly a sculptor and jeweler, and his works were sought by many in the music industry, including the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards, Cutler said.
"He was a very sophisticated man," Cutler said, "an amalgam of scientist and engineer, chemist and artist."
Here's something I didn't know:
Born Augustus Owsley Stanley III in Kentucky on Jan. 19, 1935, he was the grandson of a Kentucky governor and son of a naval commander.
(According to the NYT Times, his grandfather was also a congressman and a Senator who was a vocal opponent of prohibition.)
On the first time he took acid:
He got his first taste of LSD in April 1964. "I remember the first time I took acid and walked outside," he told Rolling Stone in 2007, "and the cars were kissing the parking meters."
One of his labs was raided in 1967 and spent two years in a federal prison between 1970 and 1972,after the judge revoked his bond. That's where he learned metalwork and jewelry making.
His wife sustained only minor injuries in the accident:
In addition to his wife, he is survived by sons Pete and Starfinder; daughters Nina and Redbird; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Another good read: The Arts Desk, RIP The Acid King. And the San Francisco Bay Guardian has a podcast with Wavy Gravy on Owsley.
He survived throat cancer in 2004 and a heart attack, which he believed came from eating broccoli and led him to switch to a diet heavy in meat. How sad that a traffic accident took his life. I wonder if otherwise, he wouldn't have lived to be 100.
As Ken Kesey famously said, "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus." Owsley was not only on the bus, but for a long time, its driver. R.I.P. Owlsley.
Just for fun, here's Tina Turner's 1978 version of Acid Queen:
