Owsley Stanley was born 87 years ago today.
Stanley played a pivotal role in the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s. As a crafts-person, he became best known simply as “Owsley” – the LSD "cook" (underground chemist).
Under the professional name of "Bear," he worked with the Grateful Dead's international fan "family."
Bear was an early soundman for The Grateful Dead, a band he met when Ken Kesey invited them to an Owsley Acid test party. As their sound engineer, Bear frequently recorded live tapes behind his mixing board and helped "The Dead" become the first performers since Les Paul to custom-develop high-fidelity audio components and sound systems.
Stanley was the first private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD. Between 1965 and 1967, Stanley produced more than 1.25 million doses of LSD.
Stanley died in an automobile accident in Australia on March 12, 2011 at age 76.