David Peel: The Dope-Smokin’ Pope of the New York City Hippies

By the time the Age of Aquarius hit my little Pennsyltucky town, it was already the Age of Libra. For years we stared at our cabinet TVs with envy at the scenes of flower-children burning draft cards in Chicago, marching for peace in D.C., and dancing in hallucinogenic stupor in Golden Gate park. Just when we'd nearly given up hope that we'd ever be hip, God answered our prayers and gave us something to break the monotony of our boring, bourgeois lives: a bearded, long-haired, blurry-eyed, sandaled dude whom the town elders affectionately called "The Dirty Hippie." So touched was he by this moniker that he actually painted the nom de freak on the side of his psychedelically embellished pickup truck. What a treat to see him whiz by -- "Sunshine of your Love" and fragrant smoke wafting from his windows -- as we walked home from school. "Hey look! It's the Dirty Hippie!" we'd cry out as we waved. I have no idea whether our token tokin' rebel embraced the make-love-not-war ideology of the times, but he looked like he stepped right out of central casting for "Easy Rider." And that was good enough for us. We didn't want any trouble-making pinko types, anyway. We weren't ready for our small hamlet to become infested with the city-bred rodent variety of hippie -- like those personified by David Peel.

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Motor City Mavericks: The Pleasure Seekers and Suzi Quatro

When a group of sisters got together in the early '60s to come up with a name for their rock and roll band, they turned to that greatest of reference guides -- the dictionary. Leafing through the large tome, they came across the word "hedonist." Definition: a pleasure seeker. Bingo! Formed in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in 1964 by 17-year-old Patti Quatro, The Pleasure Seekers were born of Beatlemania and bred on Detroit muscle. They paid their dues in clubs and music festivals across the U.S., opened for a slew of big name rock stars, and became one of the first all-female bands to be signed by a major record label. But their biggest contribution to the world of rock came in the form of a 5-foot firecracker named Suzi Quatro.

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And Your Liverbirds Can Sing: The Electric Girls Known as The Female Beatles

"Girls with guitars? That'll never work," John Lennon was rumored to have once said. Little did he know that four fab femmes had been wielding electric guitars in his very own hometown of Liverpool, several years before he and his fellow Beatles took over the world. They named themselves The Liverbirds, for the fictitious Liver Bird that has long symbolized the seaport city, and went on to help define the emerging "Mersey Beat" that would make Liverpool an early rock-n-roll mecca.

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Estelle Axton: The First Lady of Stax

The name Stax Records is synonymous with soul music. But did you know that the legendary label of black artists like Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, and Isaac Hayes was co-founded by a white woman who began her career as a school teacher? In the late 1950s, Estelle Axton began investing in Satellite Records, a small label started by her brother Jim Stewart, a former bank clerk. Satellite evolved into Stax, a premiere recording studio specializing in soul, R&B, funk, jazz, and gospel music. Said Booker T. Jones of the M.G.s, "I doubt there would have been a Stax Records without Estelle Axton." The woman known as "Lady A" marketed the business, ran the Stax record shop, helped choose and develop the label's artists, and provided inspiration, advice, and encouragement to writers and musicians.

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Larry Storch: My Corporal Crush, in the Land of Fort Courage

I gave up trying to explain the appeal of my “crush objects” long ago. My fantasy figures, be they flesh-and-blood or fictional characters, have always been quirky types that never fit the traditional tall, dark, handsome, all-star, man-of-means mold. Such was the case with one of my earliest heartthrobs: Larry Storch. I’ve been in love with the guy from the…

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