End of Abbey Road
Belvedere festival's last day recalls Summer of Love
by David Goetz
The Courier-Journal

Marianne Winner spent the Summer of Love in Alaska, a 16-year- old girl waiting tables at a place called "Chilcoot Charlie's."

But to see her yesterday, dancing in a haze of sunlight and nostalgia at Abbey Road on the River, it was easy to imagine her as a hippie, swaying and stepping to the music of the age.

It was the last day of the courier-journal.com Abbey Road on the River, a festival on the Belvedere of bands featuring the music of the Beatles and other mega- groups of the 1960s.

The theme for the day was the Summer of Love, the 1967 migration to San Francisco of young people drawn to the city's Haight Ashbury district and the hippie culture it nurtured.

Winner, 56, of Louisville, and her husband, Bob, were among about two dozen mostly middle-aged music lovers crowded in front of the bandstand on the Great Lawn, grooving, as they used to say, to the best songs of the era.

"We absolutely love this; it's the best weekend (festival) of the year," said Marianne Winner, 56. "If I had another name it would be Spring; that would be my hippie name." Her birthday is March 20.

Bob Winner, the former owner of Winner Furniture, said he was just 10 years old in 1967 and his only memory of that summer is a trip to Montreal with his parents for the Expo '67 World's Fair.

"I didn't get the experience I would have liked," he said . "The 60s ... was a really cool time."

Also at the festival was body artist Candace Hutchison, who gave her henna tattoo business at the festival two thumbs up.

Her temporary tattoos done in henna dye last about a week and a half, she said, and the most popular designs were a portrait of John Lennon and the peace symbol.

Hutchison said she was getting a lot more middle-aged customers than she does at other events.

Meanwhile, Carol Rawert Trainer looked like a 1960s period piece as she circled the crowd with a sign reading "End The War," a protest against the war in Iraq, though, instead of Vietnam.

She said she is married to a retired Army officer and is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a national veterans' organization founded in New York in 1967 after six Vietnam vets marched together in a peace demonstration.

She said about 90percent to 95percent of the people at the festival opposed the Iraq war, but she said there were others who didn't welcome her.

The crowd of several thousand wasn't all former or would-have-been hippies, though.

"The Beatles will always be the Beatles," said 15-year-old Sidney Abramson, whose favorite Beatles album is the contemporary "Love," compiled from the original master tapes at Abbey Road Studios in London.

For Sidney, a student at Male High School, the Fab Four are the thread that runs from the 1960s to kids his age, connecting them with that time through the music their parents still listen to.

"Everybody from that generation, they just pass it along," he said.

Sidney was at the festival with his dad, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, who paused for a second to remember where he was during the Summer of Love.

"I think I was in the Army," he said. "I got drafted."

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