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He’s emceed Woodstock, lived with Bob Dylan, clowned for the Grateful Dead, co-founded a summer camp and saved the eyesight of millions. A resident of Berkeley since the ’70s, he’s being feted this weekend in San Francisco.
by Nathan Dalton May 12, 2026 (Berkeleyside.org)
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Ninety years does not seem like enough time to contain the life of Wavy Gravy. The hippie icon is probably best known as the emcee of Woodstock, but his impact on American culture goes far beyond those three days of peace and music.
He was Albert Einstein’s neighbor, Bob Dylan’s roommate, and the official clown of the Grateful Dead. His friends are a who’s who of 1960s counterculture: Lenny Bruce, Ram Dass, Ken Kesey. He’s been a beatnik poet, a hog farmer and a jester. An actor, an activist, an artist. A Merry Prankster, a Yippie and an ice cream flavor. He introduced granola to the hippies at Woodstock and ran a pig for president against Richard Nixon.
He once ran for Berkeley City Council, promising “a rubber chicken in every pothole.” He’s been called a “living Buddha” (by the daughter of Jerry Garcia) and declared by a police officer to be “too weird to arrest.” He’s also the co-founder of a commune, a summer camp, and an organization that has provided sight-saving surgeries and other eye care to 75 million people worldwide.
The longtime Berkeley resident is being honored at a 90th birthday party and benefit concert this Saturday, May 16, at the Masonic in San Francisco with performances by Steve Earle, Cat Power, Aloe Blacc, and more. The concert will raise money for the Seva Foundation, the Berkeley-based eye-care nonprofit he founded with Dr. Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass, and others.
“It has been incredible to work for Seva after all these years,” Wavy Gravy told Berkeleyside via a recorded video. “From the beginning of the founding of the organization until this very moment, we have restored sight to millions of people throughout the planet.”
Earle, who has played many benefit concerts for Seva, said via text message that “We all show up for Wavy because he’s a genuine cultural icon and a rock and roll hero who wakes up every morning and asks himself, ‘How may I be of service?’”
On the trail of wavy gravy
- From Princeton to the Hog Farm
- Breakfast in bed for 400,000
- A ‘Journey to the East’ to deliver food and medical supplies
- In Berkeley, Wavy becomes a clown, a candidate and an ice cream flavor
Wavy Gravy will also be in attendance at a special screening of the 2009 documentary “Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie” on Friday — his actual birthday — at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with Wavy, his wife, Jahanara Romney, Dr. Brilliant, director Michelle Esrick and producer David Becker. The conversation will be moderated by music historian Robert Santelli. The screening will benefit the scholarship fund for Camp Winnarainbow, the Berkeley-based performing arts and circus camp Wavy founded with his wife in 1975.
“When you’re in front of Wavy Gravy, you sort of get elevated to another level, which includes being inspired to want to go help people,” said Esrick, who spent 10 years following and documenting the life of Wavy Gravy.
From Princeton to the Hog Farm
Wavy Gravy was born Hugh Romney, Jr. on May 15, 1936, in Princeton, New Jersey. As a child he remembers taking walks with neighbor Albert Einstein. And while he doesn’t remember the conversations he had with the world-famous physicist, he does remember the way he smelled, according to an interview he did for the podcast, “American Prankster: Wavy Gravy’s Life Story.”
“I’ve never smelled it since,” he said. “But someday I’ll walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hey man, you smell like Albert Einstein!’”
Romney’s parents divorced when he was young, and he moved with his mother to Albany, New York, sometimes taking the train into New York City to visit his architect father. He later moved with his mother to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he graduated from high school in 1954 and then joined the Army. He studied theater at Boston University on the GI Bill, then moved to New York where he started reading poetry at the Gaslight Cafe, the heart of folk and beatnik culture in Greenwich Village. He regularly shared the stage with the likes of Tiny Tim, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan, who wrote the lyrics to “A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall” on Romney’s typewriter when the two shared an apartment.
“Someday I’ll walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hey man, you smell like Albert Einstein!’” — Wavy Gravy
He also became friends with the infamous comedian Lenny Bruce, who took a shine to young Hugh Romney, becoming his manager and taking him out to California, where Romney recorded a comedy album and was the opening act for Thelonious Monk.
Romney and his wife soon settled in a small cabin north of Los Angeles, but were evicted after his landlord dropped by one day as Ken Kesey and some 45 of his Merry Pranksters were visiting. But in an instance of what Wavy would refer to as “kitchen synchronicity,” the farmer at a nearby hog farm had just suffered a stroke and the farm was in need of caretakers. Romney and friends decamped for the spot, and the group became collectively known as the Hog Farm, keeping the name even after they moved away from the area and began traveling the country by bus.
Around this time, Romney coined the term “Electric Kool-Aid,” i.e. Kool-Aid laced with LSD, during one of Kesey’s famous acid tests. Tom Wolfe would use the phrase as the title of his book about Kesey, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
Breakfast in bed for 400,000
In 1969, the Hog Farm, known for organizing events at the commune, were tasked with providing security at Woodstock.
“If there is serious trouble we have ordered a carload of lemon pies and seltzer bottles for riot control,” Romney told a news reporter at the time.
The group referred to themselves as the Please Force and set up “freak out tents” to help concertgoers experiencing bad LSD trips, and a free kitchen to help feed the hungry hordes.
Romney made several announcements from the stage at the festival, and came to be known as the emcee of Woodstock.
“What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000,” Romney said one morning as members of the Hog Farm passed out granola in Dixie cups.
Years later, Entertainment Weekly would call the phrase one of the top entertainment lines of the 20th century.
“If there is serious trouble we have ordered a carload of lemon pies and seltzer bottles for riot control.”
Two weeks after Woodstock, the group was invited to bring their Hog Farm magic to the Texas Pop Festival. Romney again took over emcee duties, but because of his bad back — the result of repeated police beatings at political rallies — he spent a fair amount of time lying down on the stage. He was in such a prone position when B.B. King and his band were set to perform. King, after learning about the bad back of the poor fellow, said to him, “You’re wavy gravy” and promptly leaned Romney up against his amplifier.
Romney had no idea what the phrase meant — a Southern term for “gravy that had a tiny bit of meat in it,” according to Brilliant — but was taken by it and began calling himself Wavy Gravy, eventually making it his legal name.
A ‘Journey to the East’ to deliver food and medical supplies
In 1970, the newly named Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm were cast in a film called Medicine Ball Caravan, in which 150 hippies crossed the country by bus, stopping at rock concerts along the way.
“We spent six weeks going across the country,” said Brilliant, who was also cast in the film. “I was the ‘rock doc,’ and Wavy was the master of ceremonies.”
After crossing the U.S., the caravan moved to England, with the trek culminating at a Pink Floyd concert in Canterbury in August.
“When it was over, we all kind of said, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s keep doing this,’” said Brilliant.
Wavy and Brilliant and friends were still in England when a massive cyclone struck Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan. The cyclone was the deadliest on record, killing between 300,000 to 500,000 people. The Hog Farm decided to drive from England to East Pakistan to deliver food and medical supplies. They dubbed the trip “The Journey to the East,” after the 1932 Herman Hesse novel, which Wavy would read out loud during the long drives.
When they finally reached the border of East Pakistan they were turned away because of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and instead headed north to Nepal. When they reached Kathmandu, Wavy, Jahanara, Brilliant and his wife, Girija Brilliant, along with two Tibetan porters and filmmaker Ruffin Cooper, spent 30 days trekking in the mountains, offering aid and medical care to the people they came upon.
“The people were so kind to us,” said Brilliant. “Breathtakingly kind. They didn’t have anything, but they shared what they had.”
The experience eventually led to the birth of the Seva Foundation, the founding mission of which was to treat blindness in Nepal.
“Seva has now given back sight to 10 million blind people in 25 countries and treated 75 million people, mostly for free,” said Brilliant. “And that wouldn’t have happened without Wavy.”
“I became a clown when these docs came to the house in Berkeley and asked me to come cheer up kids.”
“I actually got to put on a doctor suit and enter into an operating theater to see a person having eye surgery and getting his sight restored,” said Wavy when asked about his favorite Seva memory. “Somebody who’d been blind for a considerable time suddenly being able to see their children, their grandchildren, their wife, and it has been truly incredible and amazing.”
Wavy has helped organize dozens of benefit concerts for the foundation, with acts like The Grateful Dead, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, Odetta, Ani DiFranco, David Crosby and Graham Nash lending their voices to the cause.
“He’s always used his fame as a lightning rod to call attention to the issues he cares about,” said Kate Moynihan, CEO and executive director of the Seva Foundation.
Wavy has also organized concerts to benefit Camp Winnarainbow. The camp, with offices based in Berkeley, is held each summer in Laytonville.
“It’s an incredible, affirming, warm, wonderful place where kids have agency and the ability to take risks in a safe environment,” said Jordan Auleb, who first attended the camp at age 13 and went on to help Wavy organize benefit concerts for the camp and the Seva Foundation.
In Berkeley, Wavy becomes a clown, a candidate and an ice cream flavor
After travelling by bus for several years, Wavy and the Hog Farm eventually settled in Berkeley in the late 1970s, eventually buying a home on Henry Street near Live Oak Park. Berkeley was the perfect fit for a hippie icon like Wavy Gravy. It’s also where he first donned clown make-up, as a volunteer at Oakland Children’s Hospital.
“I became a clown when these docs came to the house in Berkeley and asked me to come cheer up kids,” he told Vanity Fair in 2011. “I’d just had my third spinal fusion and I was looking for something to take my mind off the pain I was in.”
During Wavy’s 1990 run for Berkeley City Council, Ken Kesey came to town with his bus Furthur filled with “a bunch of old Merry Pranksters” and drove through the Berkeley Hills tossing out candy and handing out leaflets, recalled Brilliant.
Wavy got just 31% of the vote, losing to incumbent Shirley Dean, who went on to serve as mayor.
In 1993, Wavy was given a rare honor, when Ben & Jerry’s named an ice cream flavor after him. The flavor was discontinued in 2001 and now sits in the brand’s Flavor Graveyard, but Wavy is still a member of the Free Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream for Life Club.
Looking back on 90 years of Wavy Gravy, it’s been quite a run for a man who didn’t think he’d make it to age 30.
“Everything Wavy does is truly to make the world a better place,” said Auleb, who is organizing Saturday’s concert. “Whether it’s small scale, bringing joy and affirming children or helping cure people of blindness and raising awareness and money for that. He put his body on the line at so many protests, was in full body casts protesting the war, he was a big part of the no nukes scene. He’s always dedicated himself to trying to make the world a better place.”
Wavy Gravy’s 90th Birthday: A Benefit for the Seva Foundation, Saturday, May 16, 7pm. The Masonic, 1111 California St, San Francisco.
“Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie,” with Wavy Gravy live in person, plus special guests. Friday, May 15, 7pm. Presidio Theatre, 99 Moraga Ave., San Francisco.
