A matter of naming
The phrase “Summer of Love” belongs to San Francisco, where it was promoted in 1967 by a group of Haight-Ashbury organisers. Los Angeles did not have a season formally given that name. It did have a lively youth culture in the same period, built around music, clubs, parks and a long-running argument between young people and the authorities, and that is the story told here. Los Angeles was also the headquarters of the American film and recording industries, so its scene was shaped by commerce more directly than the Haight’s was.
The Sunset Strip
The Sunset Strip, a stretch of Sunset Boulevard on the border of Hollywood and West Hollywood, had been an entertainment district for decades. By the mid-1960s its clubs included the Whisky a Go Go, which opened in 1964, along with Pandora’s Box, the London Fog and others. Young bands played for teenage and young adult crowds who gathered on the sidewalks and in the parking lots. Local residents and businesses complained about traffic, noise and loitering, and police enforced curfew and loitering laws against the under-18 crowd.
The strip’s bands were part of a larger music economy. Record labels based in the city signed local groups, and radio, including Top 40 radio, broadcast their songs. The pattern of record label signings and club residencies meant that bands in Los Angeles could move into national visibility quickly.
The curfew protests
Tensions came to a head in November 1966. Young people gathered on the Strip in protest against curfew enforcement and the planned closure of Pandora’s Box, and on 12 November there were clashes with the police. This is sometimes called the Sunset Strip riot, though several accounts describe it as a demonstration with some disorder rather than a riot in the stricter sense. Singer-songwriter Stephen Stills of the Buffalo Springfield wrote “For What It’s Worth” after seeing the events, and the song was released early in 1967. A low-budget film about the episode, made for the youth market, followed in 1967, an example of how fast the industry reacted.
The Byrds, Love and the Doors
Three Los Angeles bands are especially associated with the scene.
- The Byrds had formed in 1964 and became famous with a folk-rock version of “Mr. Tambourine Man”. Their 1966 single “Eight Miles High” was an early example of psychedelic influences in rock. They were linked to the British Invasion’s influence, in the way Los Angeles bands imitated and adapted English styles.
- Love, led by Arthur Lee, was a racially mixed band that built a following on the Strip. Its album Forever Changes was released in November 1967 and is now widely admired, though it sold modestly at the time.
- The Doors formed in 1965 and played at the Whisky a Go Go, where they were reportedly dismissed in 1966 after a provocative performance of their song “The End”. Their debut album came out in January 1967, and their single “Light My Fire” reached number one in the American charts in the summer. The group’s front man, Jim Morrison, became one of the best-known figures of the era.
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, who had released Freak Out! in 1966, also belonged to the Los Angeles scene and offered a more satirical view of the hippies. Many musicians lived in the canyons above Hollywood, a quieter residential area where a community of songwriters and players formed.
Love-ins in the parks
In 1967 Los Angeles hosted a number of outdoor “love-ins” or “be-ins” in public parks, including one at Elysian Park. These gatherings featured music, picnics, flowers and costumes, and they were small to moderate in size, sometimes drawing a few thousand people. They were influenced by San Francisco’s Human Be-In earlier in the year, and they sometimes led to confrontations or arrests when officials objected to drug use or crowd behaviour. Accurate counts of attendance and details of individual events vary between accounts.
How Los Angeles differed
Los Angeles had no single neighbourhood like the Haight. The city is spread out, car-dependent and organised around separate districts, so the youth scene moved between the Strip, the canyons, Venice and the parks. It was also more influenced by the entertainment business, which both promoted and exploited the culture. Some participants thought that this made Los Angeles less sincere than San Francisco, though many musicians made important work there.
The Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967 was held in northern California but drew heavily on Los Angeles talent and organisers. After 1967 the Strip scene continued, though by the end of the decade it had grown more commercial and the original club audiences had changed.