Bill Griffith Quotes

It was 1967, and the hippie thing was happening. I got into experimenting with drugs while I was in college in Michigan.

During the 60's, drug use was in fashion in the U.S.

What I really remember is that people camped out everywhere, and the fact everybody expected it might turn into a big nightmare with all sorts of hassles because back in those days everybody was smoking pot and taking acid.

The new generation doesn't know anything about me except for what they saw in' Easy Rider.'

Yes, but personally I was never a big acid head.

The most wonderful time to be in the art world was in the sixties, because it wasn't a business - there was no business of doing art.

Nervousness was never something I would ever associate with the Beatles ever. A Hard Day's Night was relatively unscathed by marijuana, but even then they were quite relaxed about it.

I don't smoke pot. I never liked it.

I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.

Too many younger artists, critics, and curators are fetishizing the sixties, transforming the period into a deformed cult, a fantasy religion, a hip brand, and a crippling disease.

I don't know why people keep banging on about the '60s. I came from a conventional family and I didn't go off with different people - I rather wish I had now, seeing all the fun everyone else was having.

I was constantly being around artists and Bohemian types.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

Once I got to be about twenty-five, I got interested in the music of the time. I started smokin' dope, I started drinking, I started slowing down and trying to find myself. I didn't want to work in nightclubs.

I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was fabulous.

One of my best friends, Stephen Sprouse, Bill Dugan, and I worked designing clothes, doing every conceivable thing. New York was a really intoxicating period for me, literally and figuratively. There was a lot of overlap with Andy Warhol, Studio 54, and Halston.

I never did smoke that much pot; never was a big pothead.

I don't really remember a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, really.

For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.

Like the music and the period, I wanted 'I'm Not There' to be fun and full of emotions, desires and experiments that were thrilling and dangerous.

Back in the 60s, San Francisco artists lived in communes.

I didn't find it difficult to live in the 'Inherent Vice' world or play those scenes, because they just seemed so real.

Here we were supposedly changing the world for the better in the Sixties, but as we get 40 years further down the line, we realise that some of those changes such as the drugs probably weren't all that great or sensible. It was all about social experiments.

Having smoked a marijuana joint in 1968 is no big deal.

To me, I think of the '70s as being this glorious decade where I discovered who I was and discovered all these amazing things... punk rock, electro music, fashion, all of that.