WELCOME TO THE SUMMER OF LOVE, BABY

Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Sssssummer in the city. This city. Suddenly Sodom. Gomorrah-on-the-lake.

Toronto the wicked, Toronto the wanton, Toronto the wasted.

All those people avoiding us, SARS scaredy cats, they don't know what
they're missing.

We got: The Rolling Stones, confirmed yesterday as headliners for a
day-long discount-priced concert at the old Downsview airbase.

We got: Police who won't bust pot-smokers, even when they fire up a spliff
right in front of the cop shop.

We got: Bob & Ted and Carol & Alice weddings, same-sex marriages of
perfectly legal status, rendering T.O. the Gretna Green of queer connubial
bliss, and not just for this weekend's Gay Pride parade festivities — an
event predicted to draw a cool (or hot and sweaty and nekkid) million
revellers, and which was formally kicked off on Monday by no less a proper
personage than police Chief Julian Fantino, out for a stroll on the stroll.

We be hip.

We be cool.

We be headed for a summer of love, baby. The Age of Aquarius, passim but
resurrected.

The convergence of all these bewildering elements — most especially the
court ruling on same-sex marriage and pending legislation that
quasi-legalizes pot — have already been addressed, on the pages of this
newspaper, verily, for their broad social implications, with tall-head
columnists positing that Canada has become the cutting-edge model of a
progressive nation, the tout le monde of cultural evolution.

Evolution? Revolution! And the pointy-heads are missing the point.

It's the fun, stupid. Or, in the anthem lyrics of a former generation, as
sung by Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Sex and drugs and rock and roll/are
very good indeed.

Get our yer headbands, yer hippie beads, yer bell-bottoms and yer bongs.
Toronto is turning back the clock atop the old town hall.

Baby-boomers are herewith ordered to drop their golf clubs — an
establishment "sport" that was cultural anathema to youth in the '60s and
'70s — and dig out the rock concert Frisbee.

It's retrograde back-to-the-future, led by Mick and Keith and the boys,
admittedly lurching towards senior citizenship but still raging against the
dying of the light, still "Jumping Jack Flash" nimble on stage, and still
gloriously anti-authoritarian, if corporate suckbloods themselves.

"We're happy to tell you that we're coming to play on July 30 in a great
concert for the people in the city of Toronto, to help bring back the
energy to our favourite city," Jagger declared in a taped message played
during a news conference yesterday morning to announce confirmation of the
event.

"We'll see you there ... bye!"

The Stones, of course, long ago took a shine to this town, using it as a
rehearsal HQ preparatory to their world tours, occasionally popping up to
try out material in small-club venues, and generally hanging out.

It was Toronto MP Dennis Mills who worked most feverishly to bring the
SARS-blows concert to fruition, a musical bash that will now include AC-DC,
The Guess Who (!), Justin Timberlake (!!), perhaps even Bono and U2, if
Jagger can squeeze some arms, with Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi co-hosting.

The feds and the province are kicking in some dough to cover costs, fees
and security, holding the price of tickets — which go on sale Friday — down
to $21.50 (or $16 in the U.S., because presumably the mega-gig will draw
American tourists).

This concert is the cheezie on the cake.

It all brings to mind another era, other love-in summers, when youth ruled
and rebellion was grand.

Whether such an era could be replicated today, in truth, is another matter
entirely. But for commentary on Summer of Love, The Sequel, we went to The
Source, the rebel, rocker and devil incarnate himself: Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins.

"Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll? To be honest, I just can't remember a whole
lot," the rock mentor admits. "But I'm told it was wonderful!"

An icon, now in failing health but not sounding it, American-born Hawkins
takes pride in the fact he survived the epoch of rock and drugs, on both
sides of the border. "I've outlived them all, it seems, except for the
Stones. But I do remember what it was like in Toronto back then, all the
bars clustered together down there on Yonge St., so much great music. Man,
those bars rocked.

"It's all old now."

And Hawkins isn't at all convinced that a younger generation — brought up
on smoking bylaws and the reactionary tendencies of the formerly, even
tragically, now conventionally reformed and middle-aged — would truly
embrace such anti-establishment ethics, even in a retro summer of 2003.

"Hell, I don't think anyone would want to put their bodies through all that!"

Oh, the self-abuse of it. But those bodies were lovely once, innocently
exposed, vessels of free love rather than sexual exploitation, Brother Love
and Sister Moon. And Toronto, for those who were there, here, who can
recall it first-hand, really did somersault into the decadence and abandon
of the late '60s, early '70s, the 24-hour rock-a-billys at Varsity Stadium,
and one memorable summer of a pedestrian mall along downtown Yonge.

Or maybe not.

"Hell, we never knew there was a summer of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll,"
snorts the Star's Peter Goddard, a rock journalist who chronicled the
binges and dazzling excesses of the Free Love Generation and their musical
icons. "We just did them (and no, I never inhaled any, repeat ANY rock 'n'
roll. I just put the vinyl to my lips for a bit).

"If you were lucky, you were never completely aware what season you were
in. (Living in a murky basement for months at a time also helped dull any
perception of seasonal change.)

"These vintage indulgences — the sex, the drugs, the rock 'n' roll have
lost of lot of their zip now that the government has made everything legal.

"What shouldn't be forgotten, though, is how remarkable Toronto was at the
time. Nothing seemed tied down, particularly hidebound ideas. The Toronto
of Sex, Drugs and Rock `n' Roll led directly to the city's remarkable
blossoming in the '70s, when it was the place to live.''

Urban planner and city guru Jane Jacobs certainly thought so. She moved here.

A renaissance is just what Toronto needs at the moment. Achieving it,
recapturing it, even on the back of a summer of S.D.R'n'R, is another
matter, but not impossible.

"Woodstock returns?" muses Paul Rutherford, a professor in the history
department at the University of Toronto, who teaches courses in pop culture
in Canada, cultural theory and the history of images.

"I think replay would be a good word for it, for what's happening right
now, because the '60s continue to have life. And the Stones represent the
ethos and images of the '60s, even if they're almost old enough for a
retirement home. They have remained part of that whole repertoire of those
times."

A nostalgia for the days lingers, especially among the baby-boomer
creatures who lived it, and who now largely control the media monster that
thrives on cultural recidivism. The '60s, and more so the '70s, were what
Rutherford describes as a period of "transgression": going beyond the
limits, defying authority, breaking rules of convention.

Certainly the Stones symbolized that defiance. "There was a dirtiness to
them," says Rutherford. "It wasn't just about music. It was about sex and
changing values and ignoring restrictions. It was breaking taboos and
giving the finger to the establishment."

But, goodness, what taboos are there left to break today? Who to finger?
Hell, everything's legal or at least tolerated.

Nothing to let hang out anymore, except pot bellies.

Anyway, this is getting a little too existentialist for my tastes. And I'm
starting to sound like a tall-forehead myself.

Have a great summer, Toronto. You rock.