http://www.thebear.org/bearstory.html i think the inspiration for the bear also came from Owsley "Bear" Stanley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley im not a dead head though, so i got is wikipedia for answers
^^^ i agree. it was inspired by the bear himself! im actually wearing a GD shirt with the bears on it as we speak.
when i was little, before i fell in love with GD (or even knew of them..), i got a bracelet with the bears on the beads. i wish i still had that. and i agree. owsley is probably the reason. a lot of grateful dead things are based off of other things (as in not about the band so much). like the truckin dude is a cartoon... or casey jones was actually a real person...
it's Owsley and his, er, product. Remember, Bear Stanley also rigged a lot of the early sound scape that evolved into the wall of sound (not spector's, the wall of amps that the Dead toured with for a long time). but the dancing Bear was Owsley's trademark, so to speak.
I recently got to converse with Bear when I was in Australia (where he lives). He's an old asshole now. He lives off the grid, with a harem, but he's got major health problems. He refused an interview with me unless he got paid big bucks. He was paranoid, insulting and totally egotistical. I bet he got hit pretty bad by Cyclone Larry. A far more colorful, engaging and cool dude is Captain Clearlight who distributed millions of hits of Windowpane around the same time Owsley was doin' his thing. He looks exactly like an old wisened wizard (think Gandalf). Captain Clearlight told me all about his "trips around the bay" with Tim Leary (they would have a great Acid party on a boat that went around the bay). I'm gonna go visit him and do an interview one of these days....
That is rather fascinating Skip. Owsley, from the interviews I've read with him, never did seem like a nice chap... too greedy, that one. Good LSD, apparently though.
lol i didnt know that the "bibs" were actually chest fur! ^_^ i cant help it, theyre so cute! i have a pink "lonely hearts" bear back pack-but i never have the heart to use it and get it dirty! skip-thats amazing that you got to meet him! too bad he was sort of a dissapointment captain clearlight sounds like an intrieging character tho!
Hah, I conversed on line with him over his all meat diet. so that's going well?!?! and young assholes tend to grow into old asholes.
Owsley's nearly deaf apparently, and really a grouch. He's living in Australia, so an all meat diet is pretty much the norm... No I never got to meet him personally. Just email and messages conveyed thru my friend to his ol' lady (who are friends). He is too paranoid to meet any strangers apparently. The ironic thing is that most ppl in the area think some kinda American rock star lives in the area, but few if any know who he really is... That is what amazed me. Of course, in his heyday he wasn't well known in Australia at all. Probably why he moved there, for some peace. These were the things I wanted to ask him about in the interview I had planned. Oh well, perhaps Capt. Clearlight will be a better subject.
