Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Scott McKenzie, singer of San Francisco's Summer of Love anthem, is dead at 73

Scott McKenzie's only smash hit the charts just five years after Tony Bennett's valentine to the City by the Bay became popular, but it remains a siren call from to bohemians all over the word from a place now too expensive for any of them to inhabit.
     McKenzie, who recorded "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" to promote the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, died Saturday in Los Angeles. The song, written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, got to #4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and was #1 in the UK and most of Europe. It sold over 5,000,000 copies worldwide. In Europe it became an unofficial youth anthem for freedom, played widely during Czechoslovakis 1968 Prague Spring uprising against Soviet rule. It was used in Forrest Gump and several other films. From a web site dedicated to McKenzie:
In retirement Scott lived in LA and became a big fan of Facebook where he had many friends in his "Asylum". Scott was in and out of hospital since 2010 after falling ill with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disease affecting the nervous system. It is thought he may have had a heart attack in early August, 2012. Staff did not want him to leave the hospital, but he wanted to be at home and passed away on 18th August 2012.


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