When Owsley got busted in 1967 with 350,000 tabs of acid, he argued in court in his defense that it was for his personal use. Ha ha (ended up sentenced to 3 years in prison).
Owsley co-designed the famous “Steal Your Face” Grateful Dead skull logo — primarily to have something they could stick on his mass of sound equipment to identify it.
Though Owsley gets credit as the “master chemist,” it was primarily his girlfriend at the time, Melissa Cargill — who was a Chemistry major at Cal Berkeley — who was the brains behind brewing up the batches of LSD.
Oddly, in virtually every photo I’ve ever seen of Owsley, he always looks like a completely different person in each photo.
Owsley got the nickname “Bear” because as a teenager he was extremely hairy.
In his later years, Owsley moved to a desolate area in the outskirts of Australia because he felt it was the only place that would survive the oncoming Ice Age.
Died at age 76 when his car ran off the road and crashed into a tree.
Ace Backwords Photos 