Flashback time folks ... also on YouTube is Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco" at
Notes:
We met once a lifetime ago ...
SAN FRANCISCO
Scott McKenzie
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
...it was in April...1964 at Guelph University taping the Canadian Folk Music show called "Let's Sing Out" "with Oscar Brand. Scott was performing with The Journeymen. John Phillips went on to form the Mama's and the Papa's. Scott went on to record San Francisco and Dick Weissman just kept playing an amazing banjo.
Scott contacted me when he saw the video's of the Journeymen on this StonewallStudios Youtube channel. His contact was inspiring. The other day I asked if I could produce San Francisco and he wrote:
I see no problem with you creating a video around San Francisco at all...
I contacted Scott McKenzie wondering if these images were suitable. Here is his response:
"Just for clarification: Although the idea for the song was my idea, my dear friend John Phillips wrote it".
"As for the images that were in our minds (I was with him when he wrote it; we had been discussing it for weeks) ... John and Lou Adler were producing Monterey Pop - just a few weeks off -- and we were both thinking about the already huge number of young people who were making their way to California, especially to San Francisco. I was concerned that many of those young people might not understand how older people, especially property owners and residents in the San Francisco and Monterey area, were understandably anxious about this deluge of people who belonged to a generation that had rejected their values. John had encountered hostility from some of the people in Monterey to the idea of using the fairgrounds for pop music.
One interesting note -- when John was writing, the idea of Greek youth attending the first Olympic games flashed into his mind. So "flowers in their hair" also referred to these idealized youth of ancient times. John was a great lover of Byron, Shelley and Keats, so ancient Greek references were completely natural to him.
Does any of this help?"
I Guess it does Scott. Thank you...for these liner notes on this wonderfull watershed song known world wide.