The Apple that Steve Jobs built based on sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll ...

Apple certainly wouldn?t be Apple without Steve Jobs, its iconic logo, and the letter ?i?.

But according to a new book, The Apple Revolution, we would never have had the iPod, iPad or iPhone if it weren?t also for a hefty dose of sex and LSD.

In what he describes as an ?Easy Riders, Raging Bulls-style? biography of the company, author Luke Dormehl details how it was a bunch of geeky hippies dropping acid that laid the foundations for what would become one of the most valuable brands on the planet.

The technology writer and filmmaker argues that the 60s counterculture ? which took in anti-war protests, the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution ? was a formative experience for Apple?s bearded and barefoot founders, Steves Jobs and Wozniak, and paved the way for the digital revolution we?re enjoying today.

Mr Dormehl told Metro: ?A lot of the people who were working for Apple in the earlier years and who are still working for the company even now were part of that 1960s and 1970s kind of counterculture movement that was going on in the West Coast.

?For example, you have Larry Tesler who went on to become vice president of Apple. In the ?60s, he was a full-blown hippie. He joined anti-war protests, he joined a commune ? the whole shebang. He was also hosting naked house parties and dropping acid.?

Jobs certainly grew up in the thick of the 60s revolution. Allen Ginsberg wrote his seminal poem Howl, one of the most popular of the counterculture generation, only a few months after Steve Jobs was born in 1955, in a coffee house just one hour away from where the future Apple CEO enjoyed his childhood in California.

Mr Dormehl said: ?Certainly, if we didn?t have this revolution which went on in the 1960s and 1970s, which was largely fuelled by drug use and LSD exploration, giving people new ways of looking at the world, personal computer technology wouldn?t have developed along the same lines that it did.

?Before Apple, computers were seen as these sinister government mainframes that regular people wouldn?t have access to.

?After Apple, suddenly personal computers are these tools of freedom fighting and tools of personal creativity.?

In their 1991 profile of Jobs, the FBI noted: ?Mr Jobs may have experimented with illegal drugs, having come from that generation.?

Jobs himself said taking LSD one of the most important things he had ever done.

But Mr Dormehl stops short of advising aspiring young techies to take up a life of sex, drugs and rock ?n? roll in the hope of becoming the next technology visionary.

?I?m not sure that would be the best way of becoming a productive entrepreneur,? he laughed.

?A lot of the guys that I interviewed for this book had gone through the phase of dropping out of society. But it was when they came back and got jobs at big companies that they started contributing creatively.

?So I think probably it?s more the fact that this was a generation of people who looked around and saw how they would like things to be. And had the guts to go in that bold new direction.?

In later life, Jobs managed to reconcile the idea of being a radical with also running one of the biggest consumer brands on the planet - even as a billionaire, he shunned material possessions and was renowned for not owning furniture.

?It?s a really important question,? said Mr Dormehl, ?What happens when a company which is started by two people who styled themselves as penniless hippies becomes the most valuable hi-tech company in the world?

?Is Apple still countercultural? A lot of people would say no ? it?s a huge company and there?s no way that the two could co-exist.

?But I think that now you can have something that is countercultural and also big business. I think the line between the two has become very blurred.

?There?s a strong link between shaking up the establishment and innovation, the sense that what currently exists isn?t good enough, we need to go off and make something new.

?Apple has always been a company, regardless of how big it?s become, that has been good at going off in a lot of these new directions. It?s a wave-maker.

And other companies will then follow in its wake. I think it does still shake up a lot of the status quo even today.?

Whether you regard Jobs as a hippie or just an old-fashioned capitalist, he was certainly the heart and soul of the company.

It is a year since Jobs stepped down as CEO. He died in October last year. Does Mr Dormehl think the brand will suffer now that he?s gone?

?Did Christianity suffer after Jesus?s death? In all seriousness, Apple will carry the image of Steve Jobs for many years to come. More people than ever know about Jobs following his death and, perhaps as a result of the widespread attention that it received, have a greater understanding of what the Apple brand stands for.

'I don?t, therefore, think the brand will suffer, but will the products see a decline from a lack of his micromanaging and overall vision? That?s the multi-billion dollar question.?

The Apple Revolution: Steve Jobs, the Counter Culture and How the Crazy Ones Took Over the World, written by Luke Dormehl, is available now

Source: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/newsfocus/908802-the-apple-that-steve-jobs-built-based-on-sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll

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