San Francisco singer Scott McKenzie dies at 73

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/20/scott-mckenzie-dies-san-francisco

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Scott McKenzie, whose 1967 hit San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) became an anthem for the 1967 Summer of Love has died at his home in Los Angeles, aged 73.

McKenzie, who had been in and out of hospital since being diagnosed two years ago with Guillaine-Barré syndrome, a disease of the nervous system, had been "very ill" in recent weeks and died on Saturday night, according to his website.

It is thought he may have had a heart attack earlier this month but had insisted on leaving hospital.

San Francisco was a global hit and by June 1967 was No 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in the US and topped the British charts. It was written by John Phillips, of the Mamas and Papas, a close friend who had played in three bands with McKenzie.

As a child, McKenzie lived in North Carolina, Kentucky and Rhode Island with his grandparents and other families before joining his widowed mother who worked in Washington DC.

In an effort to further his career as a musician he had changed his name from Philip Wallach Blondheim, but when Phillips formed the Mamas and Papas he declined an invitation to join them. He released two singles on his own before Phillips and Lou Adler, who were organising the Monterey Pop Festival, saw San Francisco as an ideal way to promote the first major rock event and the rest was history.

McKenzie went on to release two solo albums but further hits eluded him. San Francisco, the song that for many epitomised hippie counter-culture, also rang through eastern Europe. McKenzie regularly dedicated it to US veterans who had fought in Vietnam and sang at the 20th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington in 2002.

He dropped out in the late 60s, moving to Joshua Tree, a California desert town near Palm Springs. In 1973, he went to Virginia Beach, where he lived for 10 years.

Later he co-wrote Kokomo, a No 1 hit for the Beach Boys in 1988, and toured with a new version of the Mamas and the Papas. In 2002, he said: "One thing is certain: the new pop music that emerged from those times was indeed wonderful. Never before or since, with the exception of rap, has popular music contained such sheer poetic and social power. Even at the end of the decade, when so many of us had lost hope, when the summer of love had turned into a winter of despair, our music helped keep us alive and carry us forward into a world we had hoped to change. And so it still does."