“San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” was written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas. Phillips reported writing the song in about 20 minutes and played guitar on the recording. Gary L. Coleman played orchestra bells and chimes, the bass line was supplied by Joe Osborn, and Hal Blaine played drums. These three were part of the famous group of session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.

The song was written to promote the Monterey International Pop Music Festival held in June of 1967. “Monterey”, as it came to be known, was much smaller in attendance due to the size of the venue but was second only in popular music history to Woodstock due to the artists who performed. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience. Other artists there were Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and The Mamas & the Papas.

And of course Scott McKenzie performed his song.

Local authorities in Monterey were starting to get cold feet over the prospect of their town being overrun by hippies. To smooth things over, Phillips wrote this song.

The song is credited with bringing thousands of young people to San Francisco, California, during the late 1960s. In San Francisco, the Haight/Ashbury scene had been growing since late 1965, with a small – and delicate – ecology of groups, ballrooms, community shops and papers, idealists and activists: hippies. While much of the activity focused on psychedelic drugs, there were also ideas about sustainability, ecology and autonomy – a vision of a new world and a new type of person that might well have been unrealistic and compromised, but that nevertheless offered up a powerful ideal.

Haight/Ashbury went overground in news terms with the January 1967 Human Be-In and from then on became both a mecca and a refuge for rebellious American teens. It was the new gold rush, but with drugs, music and freedom the goal.

But there was a serious side to the complaints. By the actual Summer of Love, the Haight/Ashbury district had become almost unmanageable thanks to the number of homeless, drug-dazed teens. Activists such as the Diggers – who were involved in the practical problems of dealing with so many runaways – noted that the lyrics were irresponsible at best if not fraudulent: “gentle people with flowers in their hair” was not the reality.

By the week ending July 1, 1967, “San Francisco” reached the number four spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, where it remained for four consecutive weeks. Meanwhile, the song rose to number one in the UK Singles Chart, and most of Europe. The single is purported to have sold over seven million copies worldwide. In Central Europe, young people adopted “San Francisco” as an anthem for freedom, and it was widely played during Czechoslovakia’s 1968 Prague Spring uprising. It was also played occasionally in concert by Led Zeppelin as part of the improvised section in the middle of “Dazed and Confused”.

Scott McKenzie died on August 18, 2012, at the age of 73, in Los Angeles. He had suffered from Guillain–Barré syndrome from 2010 until his death.

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