The Peculiar Truth about Wavy Gravy

• August 17, 1969: The Woodstock Music Festival had been underway for 40 consecutive hours, and the oversized crowd was weary, hungry, and covered in mud. At 9 am on Sunday, a man in a tattered cowboy hat and a red-white-and-blue suit took the microphone. He was missing several front teeth and had a joyful spirit. His name was Hugh Romney.

• He gave what became known as the ‘Breakfast in Bed’ speech. The vast majority of concertgoers had no food, so Romney and other volunteers scrounged up granola, as well as rice and beans, to serve to the roughly 400,000 young people in attendance.

• The happy fellow said, “We’re all feeding each other! We must be in heaven, man!”

• The Woodstock generation and many others for more than 50 years has known Hugh Romney by his performing name, which he has always preferred.

• Everyone calls him Wavy Gravy.

• He was born in Princeton, NJ in 1936 to working-class parents; his father a traveling salesman, his mother a cook.

• Young Hugh took walks as a boy with his kindly old neighbor, Albert Einstein.

• His parents divorced, so Hugh traveled about the northeast. He entered the US Army and, thanks to the GI Bill, entered Boston University.

• In the early 60s, he ran a poetry cafe in Greenwich Village. When he was married for the first time, Bob Dylan attended his wedding.

• Another friend, Lenny Bruce, encouraged Romney to move to Los Angeles to try standup comedy. Lenny even acted as his manager. Romney was the opening act for jazz musician Thelonious Monk.

• Then in 1965, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters entered Romney’s life. Not by coincidence, so did LSD. That effectively ended his marriage.

• Romney divorced and remarried and moved to a pig farm in the San Fernando Valley. The Hog Farm became a psychedelic commune with 30 to 50 residents.

• 1969: The Woodstock organizers needed volunteers, so they flew everyone from the Hog Farm across country to help out with music festival, which grew to unexpected proportions. Romney and his crew organized tents for medical assistance and other needs. They created a “Please Force” (as opposed to Police Force), which was tasked with would-be concert security. Romney was the “Please Chief.” His Breakfast in Bed food plan helped save the concert from near disaster.

• Later in ’69, Romney attended a Texas blues festival. He made an odd comment about dancing “on the wavy gravy.” Blues legend BB King overheard him and asked, “Are you Wavy Gravy?” Romney replied, “Yes, sir.” The name stuck.

• Wavy Gravy relocated to Berkeley, CA - where he has lived ever since - and continued to be a happy, clown-like symbol of the Sixties counterculture. Due to beatings during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, he suffered ongoing back pain. That limited his mobility.

• He found a new calling as a clown. For years, Wavy Gravy has volunteered at Oakland Children’s Hospital to make bedridden kids smile. He and his wife Bonnie founded Camp Winna Rainbow, a nonprofit circus and performing arts camp for kids in Northern California.

• In 1993, Ben & Jerry created a flavor named after him. Wavy Gravy ice cream sold for 10 years but was discontinued. Bewildered customers wondered whether it contained gravy.

• On May 15, 2026, the longtime peace activist and comic symbol of the hippie counterculture will celebrate his 90th birthday.