Rock Stars, Peyote, and the Voice of an Ethereal Being

The Rolling Stones et entourage traveled to the high desert mountain to await UFOs with him. He directed the video of Timothy Leary’s wedding on the mountain where the presiding shaman was too stoned on acid to perform the ceremony. The infamous campfire scene in Easy Rider in which Jack Nicholson riffs on UFOs and the “Venusian invasion” is rumored to have actually taken place at one of Ted Markland’s psychedelic field trips to the desert mountain in Joshua Tree.

Besides his career as a charismatic friend to the curious and the famous, Ted Markland (born 1933) was an actor on many of the hit TV shows of the 60s, working steadily until his death in 2011 at the age of 78.

Markland had been an attendee at one of George Van Tassel’s annual UFO conventions at Giant Rock. In an interview he stated that the first time he visited the mountain, he had been fasting and heard “the voice of an ethereal being,” saw a rainbow, and experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Afterward he made frequent weekend trips to the mountain, bringing with him celebrities including the above-mentioned rock stars, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Steve McQueen.

When the Stones visited Markland’s mountain, along with Marianne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg, Mick compared the energy to Stonehenge and other Druid sites he’d visited. A famous photo shoot taken by Michael Cooper of Keith Richards, Gram Parsons, and Anita Pallenberg at the height of the psychedelic rock era in 1969, shows them all in their youthful, ethereal beauty amongst the stark desert landscape.

One of the celebrities Markland took to the desert was Gram Parsons, an influential musician who some say invented the genre of country rock. Gram died at age 26 in 1973 of an overdose at the Joshua Tree Inn. His Room #8 has been enshrined, and fans still hold vigil every year on September 19th.

In 1975 Markland relocated to the desert permanently and raised a family. The legend lives on. Rock stars continued the pilgrimage to the desert including U2, Victoria Williams, John Lennon (who recorded the rare Joshua Tree Tapes there), Jim Morrison, and a rock star of a different vein, Anthony Bourdain. The folk rock troubadour Donovan said, “Somewhere out in that far distant landscape there’s a secret mountain where there was a door to another world.”

Joshua Tree National Park

West Entrance, Junction of Highway 62 and Park Boulevard at Joshua Tree Village

Joshua Tree Inn

61259 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, CA 92252

Author’s Note: The best I could come up with from my research was that this stuff happened “12 miles into the park.” My partner and I drove into Joshua Tree National Park, measuring carefully 12 miles from the entrance on Highway 62. At 12 miles the energy changed drastically. Suddenly there were cars, day hikers, children, families, loud music -- tourists everywhere visiting the Hall of Horrors (a group of striking rock formations) and Saddle Rocks climbing areas.

We stopped the car, got quiet, tuned in and listened closely, attempting to locate the place where those previous psychonauts had explored alternative spirituality. One of us would get a strong hunch it was over there, then the other of us, over there. We each have our strong suspicions which hill it was, but no proof. Somewhere in Joshua Tree is the mystical mountain, lost in today’s sanitized theme park world. Maybe you’ll be the one to find it?

This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman's book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True.