Beatle George Harrison toured the Haight-Ashbury yesterday peering through lavender glasses, strumming a guitar and eventually drawing a huge following of flower children behind him. Harrison, called “the quiet Beatle,” and his wife Patti, first parked at Masonic Avenue and Haight Street about 6 p.m. and wandered down the street unnoticed among the throng of hippies. Harrison sported the drooping French moustache, long hair, buttons, flowered trousers, denim jacket and heart-shaped shades affected by many members of the love generation. And 23-year-old wife Patti could have been just about any hippie girl with her long blonde hair and granny glasses.
The two walked the length of Haight Street looking into the shops and watching the local residents and finally stopped at “hippie hill” in Golden Gate Park. A young man was entertaining a crowd of about 20 hippies. Harrison and his wife listened for a minute and then Harrison asked, “Can I borrow your guitar?” The young man said “Sure.” Harrison took the guitar and started to play. And played unrecognized for about three minutes. A girl listened and looked at Harrison then started shouting: “Hey! That’s George Harrison. That’s George Harrison!” ... A sizeable crowd formed. Harrison played for about ten more minutes and then shouted, “Let’s go for a walk.” And off they went, Harrison strumming the guitar, the hippies following along. As the crowd left the park it grew. “What do you think of the Haight-Ashbury?” asked a hippie. “Wow. If it’s all like this it’s too much,” Harrison answered.
[David Swanston, San Francisco Chronicle, 8th August 1967]
George and Pattie accompanied by Derek Taylor and Magic Alex checkout the hippy scene at San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district on the 7th August, 1967.
