PSYCHEDELIC PIONEER MANAGED GRATEFUL DEAD

Owsley (Bear) Stanley, a 1960s counter-culture figure who flooded the
flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the
Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of
Australia Sunday, his family said. He was 76.

The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped
lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a
million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco's Bay Area.

"He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix
wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honour,"
former rock 'n' roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs
You Can't Always Get What You Want.

Hendrix's song Purple Haze was reputedly inspired by a batch of
Stanley's product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The
ear-splitting psychedelic-blues combo Blue Cheer took its name from
another batch.

Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of
their live sound at a time when little thought was given to
amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts
were turned into live albums, providing him with a healthy income in
later life.

"When it came to technology, the Bear was one of the most far-out and
interesting guys on the planet," Cutler wrote. "The first FM live
simulcast could be, in part, attributed to his vision, as could the
first quadraphonic simulcast on radio."

The Dead, a fabled rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965 and known
for its improvisational live concerts, wrote about him in their song
Alice D. Millionaire after a 1967 arrest prompted a newspaper to
describe Stanley as an "LSD millionaire."

Steely Dan's 1976 song Kid Charlemagne was loosely inspired by
Stanley's exploits.

According to a 2007 profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanley
started cooking LSD after discovering the recipe in a chemistry
journal at the University of California, Berkeley.

The police raided his first lab in 1966, but Stanley successfully sued
for the return of his equipment. After a marijuana bust in 1970, he
went to prison for two years.

"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for,"
he told the Chronicle.

"What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the
one making the laws are different."

He emigrated to the tropical Australian state of Queensland in the
early 1980s, apparently fearful of a new ice age, and sold enamel
sculptures on the Internet. He lost one of his vocal cords to cancer.

Stanley was born Augustus Owsley Stanley III in Kentucky. He served in
the U.S. Air Force for 18 months, studied ballet in Los Angeles and
then enrolled at UC Berkeley. In addition to producing and advocating
LSD, he adhered to an allmeat diet.

Cutler, speaking on behalf of the family, said in an interview that
Stanley and his wife, Sheila, were driving to their home near the city
of Cairns along a dangerous stretch of highway when he evidently lost
control during a storm. He died instantly; his wife broke her collarbone.

Stanley is also survived by four children, eight grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren.