Owsley Stanley, LSD Supplier/Grateful Dead Sound Engineer Dies

I'll admit that I had no idea who Owsley Stanley was until I came across this article in today's WSJ. What a guy! Mr. Stanley directly influenced the 1960s acid rock culture by distributing shit tons of, well, high purity acid, often times for free, at concerts with the goal of introducing a new form of consciousness. Over the course of his travels, which included the UVA School of Engineering and the Air Force, he wound up becoming the Grateful Dead's audio expert: creating their sound system, introducing live recordings and even coming up with the trademark skull and lightning-bolt logo. As described in the journal:

Mr. Stanley was the rebellious scion of an eminent Kentucky family. His grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, was a U.S. senator after serving as governor. The younger Mr. Stanley was described by a former schoolmaster "almost like a brain child," but was kicked out of the Charlotte Hall Military Academy in 9th grade for "getting the whole campus intoxicated" on smuggled booze, he told a biographer of Jerry Garcia, the late guitarist for the Grateful Dead.

Owsley died last Sunday at 76 after a car accident in Queensland Australia. The whole article is here.