Wavy Gravy, The Hippie Movement and 60s Counterculture
The birth of Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney) and his non-identical twin, the hippie movement, happened in public some time in the mid-1960s.
At the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969, after leading the Hog Farm "Please Force" security detail at Woodstock, Hugh Romney wore himself out pleading with festival-goers to stop taking their pants off or to put them back on, whichever was appropriate.
He laid down on the stage.
An announcement was made that B. B. King was going to play. As Romney began to get up, King put a hand on his shoulder and asked, "Are you Wavy Gravy?" Romney said, "Yes," and since he took this to be a mystical event, took Wavy Gravy as his legal name from then on.
Such was the magic of the Hippie Movement and the 60s Counterculture.
Hugh Romney evolved in five short years from a stand up performer managed by Lenny Bruce, who called him "a perfect entertainer," to Wavy Gravy, commissioner of the Please Force.
Bob Weir calls him "...a saint in a clown suit," and a more colorful Paul Krasner weighs in with "The illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Theresa."
Oh, the clown suit, originally donned for Wavy Gravy's charity visits to children in hospitals near his home in Berkeley and, then, formalized to inoculate him from police abuse during demonstrations, came just a little later.
Photo Credit for Wavy Gravy at 75: my son, Jeremy Stone at the Gathering of Vibes Festival, July, 2011.
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