ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, Tuesday, July 8, 1969

Bonnie Says She Is a Natural 'Clean' Hippie

By CAROLYN MARVIN

Her children are pictured on the cover of the album she made with her husband and the rest of the rock group called Delaney & Bonnie & Friends.

During the group's 16-week tour, which included the Atlanta Pop Music Festival and a free concert in Piedmont Park Monday, her mother-in-law is babysitting in Los Angeles. It's her first time to be away from four-year-old Suzanne and Rebecca, who’s one, and she missed them so much in Memphis that they flew in for a visit.

Her opinions on child-rearing would be familiar to any mother of the Spock era: children should be raised as individuals and allowed to develop their own talents their own ways.

But there's a difference. At 24, Bonnie is herself a member of the generation raised on Dr. Spock. She describes herself as a "natural hippie." Since she certainly isn't referring to her almost boyish figure, we are to understand that she isn't a "plastic hippie,” one of the "idiots who come to Los Angeles (where Bonnie and husband Delaney live) just to freak out." The "genuine" hip people have their hair to their waists and beards to their belts when they attend PTA meetings, but they aren't dirty, Bonnie maintains.

"Of course, my kids get a bath every night," she says indignantly, "and my baby doesn't have diaper rash!"

Bonnie's claim to membership in the hip generation for herself and her music(she calls it rhythm and country gospel blues) is only incidentally political.

Unlike rock fans who circulated a questionnaire to determine whether "Rock is the revolution" at last week-end's festival, she does not consider rock a political medium and stays away from protest songs because "songs about getting blown to bits by a bomb just aren't entertaining."

Nor does she subscribe to the drug culture. "What I’ve learned, I've been learning for 10 years-before anybody even thought of LSD."

She's against 'the American war on Vietnam,' and the insists that if she were a man she'd "rather commit a felony than a sin against God".

Yet she believes that the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a proven Communist because she heard it on TV.

She sees her own professional responsibly in performing, not reforming, and doesn’t think her political views interfere with her craft.

She sings because, "I get really turned on when I see people enjoying themselves.

“The public works hard eight hours a week, Maybe a guy makes $100 a week at the steel mill and pays $4 for a ticket - he deserves more than just 'having the feedback turned up.”