April 1967 was a turning point. Looking back, the chart success of Arnold Layne was clearly the moment that opened the fatal floodgates; at the time, we thought “the more the merrier”. We were out to change society through music, drugs and a counter-cultural agenda. This was the thinking behind The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, a weekend of tripping and sounds whose fortieth anniversary is about to be celebrated by the ICA in modern, multimedia fashion.

Lying on the grass the morning after the original event, I remember thinking how wonderful it was that the crowds were so big. Our slogan: “When the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake”, was coming true! We failed to grasp, however, that powerful forces would feel threatened by the surfacing of the “Underground”; or how easy it would be for Britain to turn a subversive force into a transitory craze; and how drugs would, in the end, be of so little value in changing society for the better.

The previous year a small group of visionaries had launched the London Free School. The idea was to bring middle-class educational advantages to the back streets, teaching the underprivileged working class to take photographs, speak French and fight City Hall — or at least claim the benefits due to them. By August 1966, the LFS was beginning to have an effect, but was short of funds. The solution was a series of benefits at a West London church hall, featuring an unknown, recently formed band with the curious name of Pink Floyd.

John Hopkins was the inspirational leader of the LFS and he joined forces that autumn with the Indica bookstore/gallery proprietor Barry Miles to launch the International Times, London’s answer to California’s Berkeley Barb. Some have suggested that London’s Summer of Love in 1967 was but a pale echo of San Francisco’s earlier explosion of ecstasy, but that is unfair. In the early 1960s, Britain had emerged from its insular fog, culminating in the Albert Hall poetry reading in September 1965. It wasn’t just that Allen Ginsberg turned up to read: the eyes of avant-garde Europe and America were on London that week and connections were made that would remain open for years to come. London, it was clear, was in the centre of the world; Indica Books had all the latest papers, posters and pamphlets from Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and Sydney as well as San Francisco and New York — not because it wanted to catch up, but because it was at the heart of a transnational movement.

The October 1966 launch party for the International Times was amazing. Hoppy and Miles invited celebrities from music, theatre, fashion and media to enjoy Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, lightshows and “happenings”. There was a feeling of wonder — no one had ever seen anything like it. Hoppy and I got together a few weeks later and hatched our plans for a commercial version of the party. After all, we had to pay our rent! A basement Irish dance hall in Tottenham Court Road seemed the perfect venue for the weekly event we decided to call UFO.

The club’s first few months were idyllic. Freaks descended en masse. We made money, everyone was astonished by how many like-minded souls there were in London, the groups had a prominent platform for the first time and our beautiful silk-screen posters could be seen all over the city. Something new was happening every week and even bigger things, it seemed, were just around the corner. It is hard to convey the excitement and optimism in the air then.

In February I went into the studio with Pink Floyd to record Arnold Layne.Soon after, the first cautionary footnotes began to appear, mitigating our belief that anything and everything was possible. For a start, EMI signed Pink Floyd and made it a condition that in future they use an in-house producer. I was out of a producing job and the Floyd, it was clear, were moving from the Underground into the heart of Big Music Business. Soon afterwards, the Flying Squad raided the International Times office in the basement of Indica Books. Financial records, manuscripts and correspondence were removed. Hoppy’s flat was raided by the drug squad and suspicious substances supposedly found. At the time, we believed all obstacles were there to be overcome.

The tide of history, we were positive, was with us.

There is film of that night at Alexandra Palace. You can see John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix drifting through the crowds, as amazed as everyone else by the spectacle. Dawn arrived bright and clear, the most beautiful spring morning imaginable. Kids rolled down the grassy slopes, laughing and shouting in delight. The future beckoned like a beautiful long British summer. And to some extent, the optimism was justified: Sgt Pepper exploded on to the world in June and became everyone’s soundtrack; the BBC broadcast All You Need Is Love live from Abbey Road in August; everyone called it the Summer of Love. But some of us knew different.

Hoppy was convicted in June and sentenced to prison. In his absence, I steered UFO in a more conventional direction, trying to compete with the commercial promoters who could book Pink Floyd as easily as I could and had more experience and finance to make the shows work. The pure LSD that had provided so many spiritually transforming experiences was in such demand that adulteration soon followed, with bad trips and spiritually empty experiences the result. The media stopped glorifying “swinging London” and started attacking “hippy drug culture”. The genius behind Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, remained with the group in body as he absented himself in spirit; soon the group played on without him.

Like most revolutionaries, the freaks of 1967 aimed high. And like many, they failed to reach their goals. The list of disappointments is long, but one only need watch a right-wing politician or pundit talk about the era to realise how much was accomplished: the very words “the Sixties” make them spit with fury, so we must have got something right! 2007 is not only the fortieth anniversary of The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream; Release, the organisation that helps people to deal with the consequences of drug use — legal, medical and psychological — also celebrates its founding. Release is but one enduring symbol of the idealism and optimism of that time. We had the illusion that the planet’s bounty was limitless. But the love of and respect for nature that we call the environmental movement took much of its inspiration from the spirit of the Sixties, as did the human rights movement and the notions of racial and sexual equality. Conventional wisdom was challenged, mocked and often overturned. April 1967 may have been the beginning of the end of the Sixties, but the mode of music did change and the walls of the city did shake. The reverberations are still being felt.

Joe Boyd is author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent’s Tail). He will be talking at the Tell It Like It Was: The Round Table as part of the fortieth anniversary of the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream at the ICA, London, SW1 (www.ica.org.uk 020- 7930 3647), April 21

1967 IN BRIEF

Politics A Labour Government, led by Harold Wilson, nationalises the steel industry, decriminalises homosexuality and legalises abortion. A. K. Chesterton founds the National Front.

Music Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are charged with drugs possession, and defended by the Editor of The Times: “Would you break a butterfly on a wheel?” The Queen Elizabeth Hall opens, and Jimi Hendrix sets his guitar on fire for the first time at the Astoria in London. His hands are treated for burns. The Beatles release Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd release their first album, and Sandie Shaw wins the Eurovision Song Contest with Puppet on a String.

Other firsts Colour television, the cash machine, Radio 1 and Concorde.

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