Subscribe
Apple | Spotify | Amazon |iHeart Radio | Castbox | Podcast Republic | RSS | Patreon | Discord | Facebook | IMDB
Podcast Transcript
In the 1960s, a generation of young people rejected the world their parents had built.
They turned away from war, conformity, consumerism, and traditional authority, and embraced music, peace, love, psychedelics, communal living, and a radically different vision of freedom.
For a brief moment, it seemed as if they might change everything. Then, almost as quickly, the movement began to fall apart.
Learn more about the rise and fall of the hippie movement on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The hippie movement did not emerge out of nowhere. Its intellectual and cultural ancestors can be traced back to several earlier traditions.
One major influence was bohemianism. Bohemians, who began in the early 19th century in Europe, rejected conventional middle-class life, embraced art, poetry, free love, unconventional dress, and often lived in poor but creatively vibrant neighborhoods.
Another influence was the 19th-century transcendentalist tradition, especially figures such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He offered a model of simple living, resistance to unjust government, and spiritual independence.
The Beat Generation and beatniks of the 1940s and 1950s were the most direct predecessors. Writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady rejected the conformity of postwar America.
“Beat” culture drew influence from jazz and intellectual subcultures. Jazz music played constantly, and fashion was inspired by musicians. Poetry was also a major part of beat culture, as artists sought to express themselves spontaneously through beat poetry, challenging existing American literary standards.
The American Hippie Movement began in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. It started in the Haight-Ashbury District when artists, students, and dropouts moved into the region.
Individuals were initially drawn to Haight-Ashbury because the rent was cheap. Additionally, the area offered a more Bohemian lifestyle distinct from mainstream America.
This unconventionality was vividly reflected in the local businesses, including coffee houses, boutique shops, and stores selling drug paraphernalia. This distinct environment drew teenagers and young adults eager to escape their conservative, middle-class upbringings.
The term “hippie” comes from the word “hip,” which was borrowed from the earlier Beatniks. In the hippie movement, the term “hippie” was actually mostly used by older outsiders to mock young people in the movement. This term was picked up by journalists, who brought the nickname to widespread attention.
Despite being called hippies, the group typically did not use the term or identify with it. They called themselves “flower children,” “freaks,” or “The Underground.”
The majority of hippies were part of the baby boomer generation, the children born in the aftermath of World War II. The 1950s saw consumer culture at an all-time high. It was also the height of the Cold War with duck and cover drills and fear of the Soviet Union.
Despite their background, many felt isolated by the mainstream world and they wanted something more.
This desire led them to seek others with unique lifestyles. They separated from society and often lived in large groups. Many adopted holistic medicine and unprocessed organic diets.
Their style also broke from traditional norms. They rejected conservative fashion. Male hippies often had long, scraggly hair and beards. Women also kept their hair long and wore it casually.
Their clothes were vibrant, often with psychedelic colors. Many wore flowers in their hair. Long, loose clothing, such as bell-bottom pants and Victorian shawls, was common, as were beads and sandals.
The hippie aesthetic bled into popular culture. It was found in the clothing, advertising, and design of the 60s, even among people who wouldn’t be described as hippies.
The hippie lifestyle was heavily defined by drug use, particularly psychedelics such as LSD, which could alter a person’s mood, thoughts, and perception.
Marijuana and LSD became deeply integrated into the community, frequently present at parties, protests, and music events. This substance use contributed to the emergence of new musical styles, including psychedelic rock and the subgenre Acid Rock. It also played a major role in the eventual fall of the movement, more on that in a bit.
Hippies also felt passionately about the environment. Because their lifestyle was connected to nature, they believed in eco-living. The hippie compounds tried to be self-sufficient, and the food was usually grown on-site and was organic. Hippies played a major role in establishing the first Earth Day.
Many of the members of the hippie movement lived in communes. During the movement, about 3,000 hippie communes existed, each having its own culture, shaped by its members. Communes allowed hippies to reject mainstream culture and allowed them to live in the free love style and peace they wanted.
Communal lifestyles varied significantly from one group to another. In terms of spirituality, some known as Jesus Freaks were Christian, while others embraced Buddhist or Hindu practices, and many adopted no faith at all.
Substance regulations also differed, as drugs were permitted in most communes but prohibited in others. Clothing standards ranged from traditional attire to complete nudity. Furthermore, while certain communities achieved full self-sufficiency, others engaged in various forms of commerce.
Despite their various practices, problems arose in communes. The main issue was the lack of a governing body. With lax rules, many skipped work, choosing hanging out or drugs over their responsibilities. Many communes also struggled financially, which led to tension. Older members often left, either returning home or moving to another commune.
Part of the hippie movement was public gatherings. These events were called Be-ins. The term be-in came from a combination of “be” and “sit-in.”
The initial “be-in,” called the Gathering of Tribes, took place in San Francisco in 1967. This gathering initiated the “Summer of Love,” a major cultural phenomenon that highlighted protest, spirituality, and music. The Summer of Love successfully expanded the awareness of the hippie movement.
During the Summer of Love, 100,000 people visited the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco, seeking to experience the city’s music, peace, and love. The enormous influx of people created chaos in the area rather than fulfilling these promises.
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held in August 1969 in upstate New York, became the defining symbol of the hippie movement.
Roughly 400,000 people attended. Despite rain, mud, shortages, traffic jams, and logistical chaos, the festival was remembered as a largely peaceful gathering built around music, cooperation, and shared idealism. Performers included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Who, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and many others.
Woodstock became the movement’s great myth: a temporary city of peace and music where young people proved they could gather without descending into violence.
Of course, you can’t really talk about the Hippie Movement without talking about the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was one of the most important forces behind the rise of the hippie movement.
At first, many hippies were more cultural than political. They wanted to change consciousness, relationships, and daily life. But as the war escalated, it became impossible to avoid.
The draft meant that young men could be forced to fight in a war many considered immoral and didn’t want any part of. Television brought images of bombing, burning villages, wounded soldiers, and civilian suffering into American homes.
Hippies often overlapped with the broader antiwar movement, though the two were not identical. Groups such as Students for a Democratic Society were more explicitly political, while hippies were more likely to emphasize peace, love, personal liberation, and spiritual transformation.
One popular slogan during these protests was “Make Love, Not War.” First printed during a Berkley, California, anti-war protest, the slogan was the epitome of the hippie ideology.
The beginning of the end of the hippie movement is usually dated at just four months after Woodstock, the Altamont Free Concert in California.
Held in December 1969 and headlined by the Rolling Stones, Altamont was poorly organized, chaotic, and violent. The Hells Angels were used as security. During the Rolling Stones’ performance, a young man named Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a Hells Angel near the stage.
Altamont is often described as the symbolic end of the 1960s counterculture. That is a simplification, but it captures something real. The hopeful image of Woodstock was replaced by images of violence, bad planning, drug abuse, and danger.
The same year also saw the Manson Family murders, which terrified the public and badly damaged the image of hippie culture. Charles Manson was not representative of hippies, but he used countercultural language, communal living, sex, music, and drugs in a horrifyingly manipulative way. To many Americans already suspicious of the movement, Manson seemed to confirm their worst fears.
As you can probably guess, the hippies were not universally loved. In addition to the expected criticism from more conservative supporters of President Nixon, criticisms also came from unlikely sources.
One surprising critic of the hippies was George Harrison, a member of the Beatles. Harrison visited Haight-Ashbury in 1967 and found the whole scene to be disturbing. He said
…I went to hate Ashbury expecting it to be This brilliant place. I thought it was going to be all these Groovy Kind of gypsy kind of people with little shops making works of art and paintings and carvings, but instead it turned out to be just a lot of bums and many of them were just very young kids who’d come from All Over America and dropped acid and gone to this Mecca of LSD
…. it certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug cult. it wasn’t what I thought of all these groovy people getting having spiritual Awakenings… it was like any addiction so at that point I stopped taking it actually, the dreaded lysergic…
He further went on to say:
Haight-Ashbury reminded me a bit of the Bowery. There were these people just sitting around the pavement begging, saying, ‘Give us some money for a blanket.’ These are hypocrites. They’re making fun of tourists and all that. And at the same time, they’re holding their hands out, begging off them. That’s what I don’t like.
The hippie movement waned in the 1970s for multiple reasons.
First, the Vietnam War began winding down, especially after the draft ended in 1973 and American combat troops withdrew. Antiwar activism did not disappear, but the central issue that had united millions of young people lost urgency.
Second, the movement suffered from drug problems. Psychedelic experimentation gave way in many places to heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, and alcoholism. The romantic image of expanded consciousness became harder to sustain amid addiction, homelessness, and mental breakdowns.
Third, the movement was weakened by poverty and impracticality. Many hippie communities were built on lofty ideals but lacked structures for long-term survival. Shared property, open relationships, anti-leadership attitudes, and disdain for ordinary work produced real problems.
Those who grew their hair out, dressed in vibrant colors, and participated in drugs and “free love” got older and returned to their previous life. They left their communes, went back to school or work, and conformed to the same society they once rejected. Many hippies of 60s became the suspender-wearing Yuppies of the 1980s.
The hippie movement burned brightly and briefly, but its cultural impact lasted far longer than its moment in the spotlight. It became one of the defining cultural revolutions of the 20th century. Hippie fashion and aesthetics remain evident today, and many of their beliefs persist in other social movements.
The hippies did not create the utopia they imagined, and their movement was often undermined by naivete, drugs, and internal contradictions.
In the end, the hippies failed as a revolution but succeeded as a cultural force, leaving behind a world that was far less rigid, far more expressive, and permanently shaped by their dream of peace and love.
The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.
Research and writing for this episode were provided by The Olivia Ashe.
Today’s review comes from listener Leeeesssssssaaaaaa on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write:
Love this podcast
Hi Gary, thanks for this always -interesting podcast! | look forward to learning something new with every episode. I am proud to be the newest member of the Southeastern Pennsylvania completionist club! My 12-year-old, who loves to listen with me, asked if I get removed and reinstated to the club each day as new episodes come out! I told him we’d just have to keep up! Thanks for covering the gamut of interesting topics! And Go Birds!
Thanks, Leesa! Just so you are aware, our Completionist Club chapters in the region serve Philly Cheesesteaks.
Remember, if you leave a review of the podcast on any of the major podcast apps, you can have it read on the show.
