"We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas..."
This is the excerpt from Herman Hesse's Demian which appears on the inside cover of Santana's album, Abraxus.
There was a certain element of hopefulness, a "becoming" inherent to the work of Hesse, that appealed to the youth of this generation, and the spirit of this time.
The band Steppenwolf, another big-time rock band in the '70s, also took an obvious influence from Hesse; Hesse's Steppenwolf was published in 1927.