THE COUNTERCULTURE

 

See Also: COUNTERCULTURAL MAGAZINES; POP & ROCK; SQUATTING

 

The Alchemical Wedding

In 1968 the Royal Albert Hall hosted The Alchemical Wedding. At this John Lennon and Yoko conducted a bag happening to promote bagism. Jack Henry Moore (1940-2014) acted as the silent master of ceremonies.

Location: Kensington Gore, SW7 2AP (red, brown)

 

The Arts Lab

In 1967 Jim Haynes opened the Arts Lab in two warehouses that were located on Drury Lane. The lighting designer and long-time Lindsay Kemp associate John Spradbery (1930-2014) was active in the Drury Lane Arts Laboratory. He described it as being an extraordinary place where Hell's Angels and squatters lived among the debris and paraphernalia of artists ambition. Moore designed the facility's cinema and theatre space. The productions that were mounted there included Jane Arden's Vagina Rex and The Gas Oven (1967) and Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's In The Penal Colony.

Those who frequented the Robert Street Arts Lab included John Hoppy Hopkins (1937-2015). In 1970 the Arts Lab invited the writer J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) to curate an exhibition. He based Crashed Cars on his transgressive short story Crash which had been published in The Atrocity Exhibition collection. Later that year the Arts Lab closed. Moore moved to Amsterdam where he co-founded The Milky Way. He went on to establish The Videoheads archive of film that pertained to the counterculture.

Location: 182 Drury Lane, WC2B 5PP (blue, red)

1 Robert Street, NW1 3JU (red, turquoise)

See Also: ARTS VENUES

 

Jenny Fabian

The Queen magazine features editor Ann Barr's (1929-2015) encouraged Jenny Fabian to write about the counterculture for the publication.

 

The Glastonbury Festival

Randolph Churchill hired Andrew Kerr (1933-2014) to be his researcher for a biography of Sir Anthony Eden. Kerr was an undiagnosed dyslexic, therefore, Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) carried out much of the work. Kerr became Randolph s personal assistant; his talents included being the only person in the household who could work out how to operate the boiler. He effectively became a member of the family and their social circle. Randolph died in 1968. By then Kerr and Randolph's daughter Arabella (1949-2007) were particularly close. An interest in the writings of John Michell led him into the hippy demi-monde and this in turn to the shambolic Isle of Wight Festival. He and Arabella decided to organise a countercultural festival that would not have an element of rampant profiteering.

Their first choice was Stonehenge. Jimi Hendrix agreed to headline. However, subsequently, he died thereby forcing the organisers to cancel. However, the site did not prove to be practicable. Michael Eavis had staged a musical festival at Worthy Farm in 1970. This had been by Marc Bolan, however, the dairy farmer had made an overall loss. He proved to be open to co-organising another one; he soon that Kerr's charisma and charm would facilitate doing so. Eavis was to conclude that the crowd of upper-crust hippies were slightly unhinged . Upon one occasion he and they were in disagreement. The hippies decided that the matter should be resolved by a tarot reading. The apparent message No one with the name Michael should be involved with the festival. His response was to point out that it was his farm. He continued to participate in the decision-making. He appreciated their commitment to ecological and environmental issues.

The stage was designed by Bill Harkin after he had consulted Michell about the matter. The result was a 1:10 size replica of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Arabella furnished the 4000 that it cost to build. Kerr believed that the property stood a leyline that connected Glastonbury to Stonehenge. He dowsed the in order the exact site upon which it should be erected. Elsewhere, sites were set aside for flying saucers to land.

Kerr resolved that the Fayre should take place at the summer solstice so that it would be attuned to the pagan calendar. The acts that attended five-day-long event included Arthur Brown, David Bowie, Fairport Convention, Hawkwind, and Traffic. The model Jean Shrimpton made a generous contribution so that free food was available. There was no advertising, no programme and no tickets. 7000 people attended. Onlt two people were arrested and one detained under the Mental Health Act. Nic Roeg and Peter Neal filmed the occasion. The result was entitled Glastonbury Fayre.

People were still turn up several weeks after the event asking when was it going to happen. A few continued to appear each June. In 1978 Eavis helped them hold an impromptu event. He secured a bank loan and allowed Kerr and his associates to organise a small ticketed festival the following year. This made a large loss. Eavis then took over the planning. He proved to have a gift for organisation. Glastonbury became a regular event in the early 1980s. Subsequently, Kerr stepped down from acting as one of the principal organisers.

Website: www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk

 

John Hoppy Hopkins

After reading physics at the University of Cambridge, John Hoppy Hopkins (1937-2015) was determined to avoid national service. He did so by joining the staff of the Atomic Energy Authority. He became part of the local beatnik milieu and joined C.N.D.. He went on a tour of the Eastern Bloc in a yellow hearse that was painted with the organisation's emblem. The Daily Mirror newspaper ran a story about how Soviet agents had tried to recruit him. He was sacked. He became a photojournalist first for the broadsheet Sunday newspapers and then for the music paper Melody Maker. By reading the band dynamics of the Rolling Stones and opting to take them to a cafe rather than try to shoot them in a studio, he became the only photographer who was reputed to have secured photographs of them before midday.

For Hopkins the moment when the British counterculture coalesced was when 6000 people attended a poetry reading that Allen Ginsberg gave at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1964 he met the record producer Joe Boyd, a London resident American.

In 1964 Hopkins visited the United States for the first time. What he saw there, turned him on to the idea of an alternative society . He decided to set up a free school where anyone who had knowledge to impart could do so in lessons. Those who attended the Free School included the future actress Anjelica Huston, who at the time was a pupil at Holland Park Comprehensive Park. To raise awareness of the project he and Rhaunie Laskett, a local community activist, organised a street process. This became an annual event and evolved into being the Notting Hill Festival.

The School needed sources of income. A series of fund-raising concerts were staged in All Saints Hall. At these bands such Pink Floyd and Soft Machine made some of their earliest performances. Hopkins and his friend Barry Miles assumed control of The Gate, a local newspaper. They transformed it into the International Times. The metamorphosis was financed by Paul McCartney. The publication launched the underground press in Britain. It was launched on 15 October 1966 with a party at The Roundhouse. The publication acquired a circulation of 40,000.

Subsequently, Hopkins was to admit that the London Free School. What it did do was act as a magnet for a group of disparate thinkers and thus as a catalyst.

At the close of 1966 Hopkins and Joe Boyd opened the UFO nightclub on the Tottenham Court Road to raise funds for IT. A week later the former's flat in Westbourne Grove was raided by the police. He had left a block of cannabis by his bed. It was found and he was charged with possession of it.

In March 1967 IT's offices were raided by the police.

The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream was held on 27 April 1967. The event was filmed by Peter Whitehead. The result was entitled Tonite Let's All Make Love In London.

Hopkins opted for a trial by jury. He did this in order to have an opportunity to try to publicise his belief that marijuana should be decriminalised. In June 1967 Judge Gordon Friend sent Hopkins to prison for nine months, admonishing him as a pest to society . Hopkins took this declaration to be a compliment. The sentence marked the start of a clampdown on the counterculture. On the same day Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released.

A long list of social and cultural luminaries signed a document that called for cannabis to be legalised. Those who put their names to the document included Francis Crick and Jonathan Miller. It was published in The Times newspaper as an advertisement. McCartney paid the cost of running it. The mainstream media did not pay much attention to a campaign that was run to try to secure Hopkins's release. Rather, it opted to focus upon the arrests of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

The Stones bust. Their release was swift. Hopkins served six months in Wormwood Scrubs. As a result, he did not participate in the Summer of Love. He had been one of the phenomenon's principal architects.

The International Times was charged with obscenity. It had published gay contact ads.

The spell in prison had an adverse effect on Hopkins's confidence. Following his release, he was not the same organising force that he had been prior to his arrest. His subsequent employers included the Home Office.

Without Hopkins's guiding influence, the UFO lost its focus. It closed in the autumn.

The events that took place in Paris in May 1968, prompted Hopkins and Miles to turn IT into a workers co-operative.

Location: The London Free School, 22 Powis Terrace, W11 1JH. The basement. (red, blue)

105 Westbourne Grove, W2 4UW. Hopkins s flat. (blue, brown)

See Also: FAIRS The Notting Hill Carnival; NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED UFO; SQUARES Tolmers Square

Website: www.hoppyx.com

 

The London Traverse Theatre Company

Jim Haynes was an American who had settled in Edinburgh. There, he had opened the Paperback Shop, helped revitalised the city's festival, and founded the Traverse Theatre Company. Jack Henry Moore (1940-2014), a gifted Oklahoman, became his close associate. Moore was openly gay. This was a factor in the two men's decision to move to London. With the backing of the Arts Council they established the London Traverse Theatre Company. This was based in the Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre. The productions that transferred to the West End included Joe Orton's Loot (1965). Moore became a member of the group that coalesced around the UFO nightclub

The Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre hosted Yoko Ono's first U.K. happening.

Location: The Cochrane Theatre, 48 Southampton Row, WC1B 4AP (blue, purple)

See Also: FRINGE THEATRES & SMALL THEATRES

 

Release

In June 1967 Clive Goodwin, the editor of Black Dwarf magazine, asked Caroline Coon, a student a Central St Martins College of Art, to help organise a demonstration in Fleet Street to protest at the role that the News of the World newspaper had played in the prosecution of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. During the demonstration she met Harris, who was also a student at St Martins, beneath the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus.

Release was founded in the summer of 1967 by Caroline Coon and Rufus Harris (1946-2007) to provide legal advice and welfare services to young people who had been arrested for drug offences. Coon and Harris, both of whom had attended art schools, had met a few weeks before during a demonstration. The organisation was prompted into being by the imprisonment of John Hoppy Hopkins, the partner of Joe Boyd, for cannabis offences. The folk singer Julie Felix provided the initial funding. Jonathan Aitken aided the project. Those whom it helped included George Harrison and John Lennon. Harris developed a close working relationship with H.B. Bing Spear, the progressively-inclined head of the Home Office Drugs Inspectorate.

In 1969 Coon and Harris published The Release Report on Drug Offenders, which described excessive drug sentencing and police corruption.

To generate income, Harris organised the Implosion concerts that were held at the Round House from June 1969 to October 1973. These superseded the Middle Earth and UFO clubs.

Release s activities were reviewed by the Rowntree Foundation. As a result, in 1972, it was granted charitable status. Subsequently, it was awarded a Home Office grant.

At the end of the 1970s Harris left release although he continued to act as a consultant to it. He became a solicitor.

Release and the Notting Hill Carnival were the only aspects of Alternative 1960s Notting Hill that survived in the 21stC.

Location: 61 Mansell Street, E1 8AN (red, purple)

50 Princedale Road, W11 4LY. Oz magazine was based next door. (orange, purple)

Website: www.release.org.uk

 

The Society of Mental Awareness

Steve Abrams (1938-2012) was an American who in the 1960s was involved a parapsychological research group at the University of Oxford that sought to investigate behavioural engineering. It was financed by the C.I.A.'s MK Ultra project. In 1967 he emerged as a public advocate of cannabis. He established the Society of Mental Awareness (S.O.M.A. - a reference to Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World (1932)). This organised a letter that sought to bring pressure to bear on the Wootton Committee. The letter, which was signed by 65 public figures, was published in The Times newspaper on 24 July 1967 as an advertisement. The 1800 bill was met by The Beatles.

THC, the active property of cannabis, was still legal. S.O.M.A. synthesised some and two doctors were licensed to prescribed it. The New of The World newspaper demanded, in reference to Abrams, This dangerous man must be stopped!

The Wootton Report was published in 1969. The document's findings were liberal. However, by then the Home Office had reverted to an authoritarian stance on drugs.

In 1970 Abrams closed's.O.M.A..

Abrams research materials were vested with the Wellcome Trust.

Location: 4 Camden High Street, NW1 7JE. A S.O.M.A. office. (purple, red)

438 Fulham Road, SW6 1DU. A's.O.M.A. office. (blue, yellow)

David Backhouse 2024