"Oh Owsley, can you hear me now" Jimi Hendrix says on a BBC sessions recording of "Day Tripper just before he starts his solo. It's an appropriate reference, and one of very many in popular American music from the '60s and '70s, to Owsley Stanley. Rolling Stone called him "The King of Acid", as he reportedly referred to himself when he was arrested with the Grateful Dead.

Dennis McNally, a biographer of the band, wrote that “Without [Stanley], there simply wouldn’t have been enough acid for the psychedelic scene of the Bay Area in the Sixties to have ignited." By his account, between the years of 1965 and 1967 Stanley produced over a million doses of acid as his formula became the industry standard.

Stanley, born Augustus Owsley Stanley III in 1935, was known to nearly all his many friends and customers as "Bear." But in a single released by Steely Dan from the 1976 album The Royal Scam, Stanley has another name: "Kid Charlemagne."

A reference to the first Holy Roman Emperor and "Father of Europe," the song looks at the rise and fall of the local legend who literally influenced San Francisco and american music.

While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town

Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have made explicit their song's allusion to Stanley, who was certainly regarded as "the best in town" when he began producing LSD in the Bay Area. Nicknamed for his hairiness from a young age, according to his obituary in the New York Times Stanley was born to a patrician Kentucky family. He was expelled from a military preparatory school in Maryland for furnishing alcohol to his fellow students. Later, he served in the US Airforce and entered the ballet as a professional dancer.

Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That's when you turned the world around

White Lightning. Monterey Purple. Blue Cheer. Those were a few of the varieties of acid Stanley produced — though not, as rumored, Purple Haze — once he encountered the stuff for the first time in Berkeley.

After weeks spent studying his craft through books at the university library, Stanley started his own production at a small lab located in the bathroom of a house near campus. Soon he had dropped out of school for another calling — the "Bear Research Group," as he sometimes referred to his endeavors.

Did you feel like Jesus
Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes

Through Steely Dan, Stanley has even changed the work of Kanye West. Fans of that artist will recognize this section of "Kid Charlemagne" from West's sample of it on "Champion" off the 2007 album Graduation.

On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home
Every A-Frame had your number on the wall
You must have had it all
You'd go to LA on a dare
And you'd go it alone

Stanley told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007 that he was just making a product that he knew well and could consume himself. “And my friends all wanted to know what they were taking, too,” he said, adding that “my ‘friends’ expanded very rapidly.”

Soon Stanley was involved with the Merry Pranksters, the cohort of Ken Kesey who might be referenced with that "technicolor motor home" aside. Stanley met Kesey in 1965, and his "bad trip" with the writer is immortalized in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.

Through Kesey, Stanley formed a lifelong relationship with the members of the Grateful Dead. He would be known as a pioneering sound man, but first a served as a manager and financial backer (and sometimes as a housemate).

No doubt an important role of Stanley's was keeping the band in good supply. When he was referred to as an LSD Millionaire in a newspaper headline, the Dead composed their own anthem for him, “Alice D. Millionaire.”


With Bob Thomas, Stanley, who also worked as an artist, designed the Dead's skull-and-lightning-bolt logo known to fans as "Stealy." Before the term "taper" came into use, Stanley was recordings the band's performances.

Stanley's influence could be seen everywhere: In Bob Thomas' other popular dead symbol, the "dancing" bears, for example. Stanley, however, described them as marching rather than dancing.

Could you live forever
Could you see the day
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne

According to a biography by Bob Spitz, John Lennon contracted a lifetime supply of acid from Stanley. But according to Rolling Stone, the man and his habits could not reign forever. He soon parted ways with the Dead, anecdotally over a dietary disagreement.

Purportedly, Stanley insisted that the band adhere to his diet, which we would today refer to as "strict paleo." Stanley simply did not believe in eating plants, and would credit his carnivorous streak with his renewed health after a bout of throat cancer. The record should show he also received radiation therapy.

Now your patrons have all left you in the red
Your low rent friends are dead
This life can be very strange
All those dayglow freaks who used to paint the face
They've joined the human race
Some things will never change
Son you were mistaken
You are obsolete
Look at all the white men on the street

Acid became illegal in 1966, and in late '67, Stanley's La Espiral, Orinda lab was raided by police. Though he claimed the thousands of doses discovered there were for his personal use, he was sentenced to three years in prison. Stanley's incarceration was bemoaned by Hunter Thompson's in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cast as a death knell for the '60s.

Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne
Clean this mess up else we'll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get them all out of here

Released from prison, Stanley returned to work sound with the Dead. He was present at the famous New Orleans bust recalled in song "Truckin,'" during which 19 band and crew members were arrested for possession of a variety of narcotics at their French Quarter hotel. According to an article in the State Times of Baton Rouge, Stanley identified himself to the police as "The King of Acid" and a band technician.

In 1970, once a judge revoked Stanley’s bail from a drug arrest in 1967, he served two years in federal prison.

Is there gas in the car
Yes, there's gas in the car
I think the people down the hall
Know who you are

Stanley emigrated to Australia in the 1990s. There, in 2011, his car swerved off a highway and down an embankment, hitting trees near a town in Queensland according to the Associated Press. Stanley's wife was involved in the crash, but survived.

Careful what you carry
'Cause the man is wise
You are still an outlaw in their eyes
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne

Most recently, according to The Owsley Stanley Foundation, which is made up of friends and family, at the Fare Thee Well concerts in Chicago, the Grateful Dead said a final goodbye to Bear. Stanley's ashes were displayed on the sound board where he so often worked.

Related: San Francisco's 16 Greatest Infamous Local Legends

via thebear.org