"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() Side A of US vinyl single | ||||
Single by Scott McKenzie | ||||
from the album The Voice of Scott McKenzie | ||||
B-side | "What's the Difference" | |||
Released | May 13, 1967 | |||
Recorded | 1966 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 2:58 | |||
Label |
| |||
Songwriter(s) | John Phillips [3] | |||
Producer(s) | ||||
Scott McKenzie singles chronology | ||||
|
"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" is an American pop song, [1] written by John Phillips, and sung by Scott McKenzie. [4] It was produced and released in May 1967 by Phillips and Lou Adler, who used it to promote their Monterey International Pop Music Festival held in June of that year. [5]
John Phillips played guitar on the recording and session musician Gary L. Coleman played orchestra bells and chimes. Bass guitar was supplied by session musician Joe Osborn. Hal Blaine played drums. The song reached the fourth position on the US charts and the number one spot on the UK charts. In Ireland, it was number one for one week, in New Zealand the song spent five weeks at number one, and in Germany it was six weeks at number one.
McKenzie's version has been called "the unofficial anthem of the counterculture movement of the 1960s, including the Hippie, Anti-Vietnam War and Flower power movements." The song has also been widely regarded as a defining song of the Summer of Love along with the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love".
According to Paul Ingles of NPR, "...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 a song, "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)." [6] Phillips reported writing the song in about 20 minutes. [7]
The song is credited with bringing thousands of young people to San Francisco during the late 1960s.[ citation needed ] [8]
Different issues of the recording use slightly different titles, including: "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)"; "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"; and "San Francisco 'Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair'". [9]
Released on May 13, 1967, the song was an instant hit. By the week ending July 1, 1967, it reached the number four spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, where it remained for four consecutive weeks. [10] Meanwhile, the song rose to number one in the UK Singles Chart, [3] and most of Europe. In July 1967, McKenzie's previous record label, Capitol, claimed that the "follow-up" to this was their re-release of his earlier single, "Look in Your Eyes." [11] The single is said to have sold over seven million copies worldwide. [12]
The song has been featured in several films, including Frantic (1988), The Rock (1996) and Forrest Gump (1994). It was also played occasionally by Led Zeppelin as part of the improvised section in the middle of "Dazed and Confused". [13] [14] U2's Bono also led the audience in a sing-along during their PopMart performances in the San Francisco Bay Area on June 18 and 19, 1997. New Order covered it on July 11, 2014, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. [15] A cover by Michael Marshall appears in the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019). [16]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom (BPI) [36] | Silver | 200,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. |
"San Francisco" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | ||||
Single by Johnny Hallyday | ||||
from the album Johnny au Palais des sports | ||||
Language | French | |||
B-side | "Mon fils" | |||
Released | October 20, 1967 | |||
Recorded | Summer–fall 1967 | |||
Genre | Pop, psychedelic pop | |||
Length | 3:55 | |||
Label | Philips | |||
Songwriter(s) |
| |||
Producer(s) | Lee Hallyday | |||
Johnny Hallyday singles chronology | ||||
|
French singer Johnny Hallyday recorded the song in French, with the title "San Francisco". His version reached number five in Wallonia (French Belgium) in 1967, the song was released in October 1967. [37]
7-inch single Philips B 370.454 F (1967)
7-inch EP Philips 437.380 BE (1967)
Chart (1967–68) | Peak position |
---|---|
Belgium (Ultratop 50 Wallonia) [37] | 5 |
British band Psykick Holiday did a cover in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the song. It was a double A-side single with "Let's Go to San Francisco" as the other track. The band also did a Summer of Love EP featuring a French & Spanish version of both songs.
In 2020 and 2022, the English tracks came out on the Compilations' "Femme Fatales of Music" Vol. 1 & 2, credited to Vanessa White Smith, the main vocalist with Psykick Holiday. All releases were on Future Legend Records and made available on iTunes.
American rock band Greta Van Fleet is also known to have covered the song live during their early career. Traces of the song can be heard in their unreleased song called "Written in Gold". This version of the song is very reminiscent to the version heard on The Song Remains the Same by Led Zeppelin, which the band is often compared to in terms of style and influences.
The Summer of Love was a major social phenomenon that occurred in San Francisco during the summer of 1967. As many as 100,000 people, mostly young people, hippies, beatniks, and 1960s counterculture figures, converged in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park. More broadly, the Summer of Love encompassed hippie culture, spiritual awakening, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war sentiment, and free love throughout the West Coast of the United States, and as far away as New York City. An episode of the PBS documentary series American Experience referred to the Summer of Love as "the largest migration of young people in the history of America".
The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day music festival held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. 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.
John Edmund Andrew Phillips was an American musician. He was the leader of the vocal group the Mamas & the Papas and remains frequently referred to as Papa John Phillips. In addition to writing the majority of the group's compositions, he also wrote "San Francisco " in 1967 for former Journeymen bandmate Scott McKenzie, as well as the oft-covered "Me and My Uncle", which was a favorite in the repertoire of the Grateful Dead. Phillips was one of the chief organizers of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
Scott McKenzie was an American singer and songwriter who recorded the 1967 hit single and generational anthem "San Francisco ".
Flower child originated as a synonym for hippie, especially among the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and the surrounding area during the Summer of Love in 1967. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear and distribute flowers or floral-themed decorations to symbolize ideals of universal belonging, peace, and love. The mass media picked up on the term and used it to refer in a broad sense to any hippie. Flower children were also associated with the flower power political movement, which originated in ideas written by Allen Ginsberg in 1965.
"Kokomo" is a song by the American rock band the Beach Boys from the 1988 film Cocktail and album Still Cruisin'. Written by John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, Mike Love, and Terry Melcher, the song was released as a single on July 18, 1988 by Elektra Records and became a number one hit in the US and Australia. It was the band's first original top-20 single in 20 years and their first number-one hit in 22 years as well as their final top 40 hit.
"Hey Joe" is an American song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard and has been performed in many musical styles by hundreds of different artists. The lyrics tell of a man who is on the run and planning to head to Mexico after shooting his unfaithful wife. In 1962, Billy Roberts registered "Hey Joe" for copyright in the United States.
Monterey Pop is a 1968 American concert film by D. A. Pennebaker that documents the Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967. Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, the Mamas & the Papas, the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing".
Global Deejays, Global Playboyz or Ravers on Dope are an Austrian tech house DJ team composed of DJ Taylor and FLOw. Their first three singles were big hits in Europe.
"(The Lights Went Out In) Massachusetts" is a song by the Bee Gees, written by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb and released in 1967. Robin Gibb sang lead vocals on this song and it would become one of his staple songs to perform during both Bee Gees concerts and his solo appearances. It later appeared on their 1968 album, Horizontal.
"If I Were a Carpenter" is a folk song written by Tim Hardin in the 1960s, and re-recorded with commercial success by various artists including Bobby Darin, The Four Tops and Johnny Cash. Hardin's own recording of the piece appeared on his 1967 album Tim Hardin 2. It was one of two songs from that release performed by Hardin at Woodstock in 1969. The song, believed by some to be about male romantic insecurity, is rumored to have been inspired by his love for actress Susan Morss, as well as the construction of Hardin's recording studio.
"The Sound of San Francisco" is a song by the Austrian house group Global Deejays. It was released in November 2004 as the lead single from their album, Network. The song was one of the first Austrian dance songs to reach the top ten of more than 10 charts worldwide.
"San Franciscan Nights" is a 1967 song performed by Eric Burdon and The Animals. Words and music were composed by the group's members, Eric Burdon, Vic Briggs, John Weider, Barry Jenkins, and Danny McCulloch. A paean to San Francisco, it was the biggest hit that the new band – as opposed to the first-incarnation Animals of the mid-1960s – would have. It reached a peak position of number 1 on the Canadian RPM charts, number 9 on the U.S. pop singles chart, and number 7 on the UK pop singles chart.
This is a list of the performers at the Monterey Pop Festival, held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California.
Billboard Top Pop Hits is a series of compilation albums released by Rhino Records in 1994 and 1995, each featuring ten recordings from the easy listening charts from a specific year in the 1960s. Ten albums in the series were released, one each for the years from 1960 to 1969.
"The Rain, the Park & Other Things" is a pop song with music and lyrics co-written by Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff. It was recorded by the pop band the Cowsills, and included on their 1967 self-titled debut album. Released as a single, the song reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts. It was kept from the No. 1 spot by "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees. The single cemented the group's international popularity and sold some three million copies over the years. It ties with 1969's "Hair" as the group's biggest hit, as both reached No. 2 in the US. In Canada, "The Rain, the Park & Other Things" reached No. 1 on the RPM singles chart.
"San Francisco" is a song performed by German eurodance recording group Cascada from their fourth studio album, Original Me. The song serves as the album's official first single internationally on June 20, 2011. It was written by Yann Peifer, Manuel Reuter, Tony Cornelissen, and Matthew Langlois and it was produced by Reuter and Peifer. Musically, "San Francisco" is an uptempo pop song which relies on electropop and dance-pop styles with influences of music from the 1970s. The song's lyrics are an ode to the city of San Francisco in Northern California. The song was officially released in the UK for download on July 4, 2011.
The Journeymen were an American folk music trio in the early 1960s, comprising John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, and Dick Weissman.
"San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native)" is a song by the American psychedelic rock band Fever Tree, written by the songwriting duo Scott and Vivian Holtzman, and was released for the group's third single—their first on Uni Records—in March 1968 (see 1968 in music). It was the only single by Fever Tree to reach the Billboard Hot 100 and also appears on their first album Fever Tree.
Notes
Bibliography