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.
