Further: Monterey Purple

Augustus Owsley Stanley was largely responsible for bringing acid to the masses in the sixties, which in a way also makes him responsible for things like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and so the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test... the Hells Angels parties at La Honda with Hunter S Thompson and Allen Ginsberg and so in a way Hunter's Hells Angels, and if we're talking about acid, I guess Fear and Loathing and much of the whole the sixties thing.
If Owsley didn't do it, someone else would have. But he is the guy who did it.
He also created one of my all-time favourite band logos, the Grateful Dead's 'Steal Your Face' skull.

By May 1965, he was back in the Bay Area with 3,600 capsules of extraordinarily pure LSD, dubbed "Owsley" by a pot-dealing folk guitarist friend. "I never set out to 'turn on the world,' as has been claimed by many," Owsley says. "And I certainly never made $1 million from drugs. I just wanted to know the dose and purity of what I took into my own body. Almost before I realized what was happening, the whole affair had gotten completely out of hand. I was riding a magic stallion. A Pegasus. I was not responsible for his wings, but they did carry me to all kinds of places."

Read the whole Rolling Stone article here.
Augustus Owsley Stanley died on March 13, 2011.