Emmett Grogan

Emmett Grogan

Emmett Grogan (1942-1978) grew up on the streets of New York, in the school of gangs, crime and heroin. He got a scholarship to an exclusive private school in Manhattan. Thanks to that, he became a sophisticated jewel thief on Park Avenue. Persecuted by the mafia he escaped to France, then to Italy, then to Ireland, where he became involved with anger, and from there he left to spend a season in London. This wandering life would change definitively when in 1965 he moved to San Francisco and became the "leader" of the group known as the Diggers, a community motor dedicated to street theater, direct action and the distribution of free food -among many other activities- . The Diggers were one of the driving forces of the legendary «Summer of Love». Later he returned to New York. There he established himself as a novelist and lyricist for groups such as The Band. On April 6, 1978, when he was only 35 years old, his body was found in a subway car in New York. The official cause of his death was a heart attack. Shortly after Bob Dylan dedicated his album Street Legal.