Scott McKenzie - San Francisco [Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair]

Scott McKenzie, who died on Saturday 18th August, aged 73, will be forever defined musically by his huge hit of 1967 San Francisco [Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair], a song written by John Phillips from The Mamas & The Papas to promote the Monterey Pop Festival.  It is a gorgeous pop song with which to be defined, and its hippie sentiments with all the innocent celebration of a geographical focus-point for a new generation of peace and love endure in that magnificant melody and moment.

Not that I shared in the moment. In 1967 I had just arrived in England as the all-American boy with a Beach Boys haircut and a patriotic fervour inculcated by a midwestern myopia where the only world outside Nebraska was the surf and hot rods of California, not flowers in very long hair. I was 13 years old. As I have articulated elsewhere on this blog, my beliefs and preconceptions were soon challenged and changed by those with alternative world views. I do recall loving the song for its melody, but I don't believe I had any idea about the hopeful meaning of its lyrics. Had I returned to San Francisco or similar in the early 70s, rather than an insular and redneck Michigan as I did, I might well have stayed to pursue that hippie dream rather than escape back to England from what I thought was an endemic small-town/small-minded hatred for what was then my incipient long hair and all it seemed to represent for those who despised such an appearance.

I may now have a knowing reflection, but I still hold a nostalgic reverance for the beauty of this song and its sentiments, even if it took me some years to understand, and even more to understand its fleeting dream. But as a song it has the power to transport the listener to its moment, no matter how transient, and we can thank Phillips and McKenzie and a whole generation for this. I do believe that fundamental principles from the world that song invokes have informed many aspects of my life so this is more than sentimental reverie, but that doesn't mean I've been wearing flowers in my hair to announce.

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair

All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion people in motion

For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there

If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there.