In the middle of filming, someone points out Ken Kesey, standing on the sidelines. Next to Kesey stands Rock Scully, associated with the Grateful Dead, and a few others, a small band of notables from the Haight. They had come to England to see if it was really all it was reputed to be. From the shadows they watch the filming of the circus. The next day, while visiting Apple, Kesey – he of innumerable Acid Tests, the de facto leader of the who proclaimed loudly and fervently, “Further! Further!,” is quoted as saying about the circus, “It was all played to the ghost. The audience was a prop. It wasn’t so important what was happening, but what appeared to be happening.”*
In a way I couldn’t fully comprehend at the time I was sandwiched between the outwardly expanding ripples from the Haight, where the acid-fueled quest for the Higher Truth collided with the vastly more traditional, show business efforts of The Rolling Stones and others. The Rolling Stones are producing an Entertainment, novel as it may have been at the time. The incompatibilities that spearated even such natural allies as the music scenes in San Francisco and London presages the ultimate collapse of the American utopian efforts. But it is way too soon for me to have understood. FROM AN AMERICAN STORY
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