Hippie Hippie Shake

by Richard Neville

  The next day, Louise and I were back in each other’s arms. The break from the basement had buoyed her spirits, along with the sun and the swimming and the attentiveness of a Californian or two. With wine and paella at a portside café, we swapped gossip and watched jaunty holiday-makers stroll to the lighthouse. The sense of the moment was overpowering, the past, that tableau of deceits and anger, already a blur. Two super-hippies from San Francisco pulled up chairs. David and Lester’s dynamite grass was carried in hand-sewn leather pouches strapped to their belts. They loved everything in the universe. David lit up a joint. ‘Welcome to this jewel of decadent splendour,’ Lester said, giving me a California bear hug.

  The harbour bobbed with wooden fishing boats. Louise and I strolled arm in arm along a curved path towards the lighthouse. She wore jeans and a cowboy shirt. The full moon glowed down at its own reflection. Louise said, ‘Thank God the book is done with. The last six months were a nightmare.’

  ‘It was lousy for you, I know.’

  ‘You worked so hard . . . telling people not to work so hard.’

  ‘Now I’m back where I started.’

  ‘Worse,’ she said. ‘All your hangers-on think you sell tickets for success.’ Louise had had a premonition about Playpower. ‘I knew the end of the book would be the end of you and me.’

  ‘Why? Because I wouldn’t need you any more?’

  ‘Because I knew the media would eat you up. They need you. Everyone else in the Underground is too stoned to finish a sentence.’ She had got sick of it – the interviews, the telephone, strangers invading our lives. ‘It went on and on, till midnight every night.’

  ‘I know . . . I know.’ She had kept the show on the road. And all the while had unobtrusively dealt with her asthma, the lamb roasts, the filtering of phone calls . . . No wonder Ibiza seemed such a paradise.

  ‘And you’ve never bothered to take care of me.’

  I promised to be more attentive in future. We rounded the lighthouse, laughter echoed from the cobbled square.

  ‘But this place,’ she said, ‘these people . . . so calm, so much kindness here.’

  The lifestyle on this hippie hide-away seemed sensuous and non-attached. Cheap, too, with six-room houses in the countryside for twenty pounds a month. The beautiful people ate whole-wheat noodles and read Alan Watts, trying to ‘join their minds and their bodies’.

  ‘Or maybe just their bodies and other bodies,’ I mocked.

  She laughed.

  That night, most of the ‘heads’ set off to the tumbledown cinema to see Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Mandrax was available without prescription, trade-named Dormadena. People took handfuls and giggled in the front stalls.

  Louise’s apartment smelt of frangipani and incense, the terracotta tiles strewn with paperbacks – Carlos Castaneda’s In Search of Don Juan, Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers. We snuggled on a straw-filled mattress. Both of us felt on the brink of a new era, more honest and caring, more open. My Fillmore bootleg of Van Morrison rattled the speakers each side of our pillows. The rain let up/And the sun came up/And we were getting dry . . . A husky purr drowned out the chorus, ‘Tell Louise how much I love her.’ It was the voice of Lillian Roxon. ‘Tell her she’s gorgeous, and sexy and outrageously thin . . .’ Louise laughed and passed the grass and the moon rose higher over the glistening sea. And it stooooned me, to my soul . . . stoooonnned me . . .

  A few days later, Louise succumbed to a fever. Within an hour or two, she was moaning and holding her stomach. Sam Hutt, the ‘hippie doctor’ first encountered on the train home from the Isle of Wight, was holidaying on the island. I tracked him down. Sam took one look at Louise and rushed her to hospital. The Spanish doctor diagnosed appendicitis, but Hutt suspected an infection of the fallopian tubes as well. Louise underwent an emergency operation, with Hutt in attendance as an observer. The doctor removed her appendix, and confirmed Sam’s additional diagnosis. The infection was acute. Looking grey and concerned, Sam loped into the grubby waiting room and warned me that Louise might not make it through the night. Tears rolled down my face.

  Outside, I banged my fists against the stucco walls and shouted to heaven for help. By mid-morning the crisis had passed. That afternoon, Colette came with flowers, a bright smile and piles of cassettes. The facilities in the ward were primitive, owing to the anti-Franco sentiments of the locals, which had led to a clamp-down on funding. I recalled Ken Tynan’s question, ‘In the alternative future, who’s going to build the hospitals?’ The island’s ‘backwardness’, so attractive when I arrived, was now a source of irritation. Meanwhile, Sam Hutt had his hands full cleaning up another medical problem in the hippie community – an epidemic of clap. What a mob of careless fuckwits we were.

  I visited Louise every day. She made friends with a patient in the next bed, a teenager in traction, who had been riding a motorbike stoned, while listening to headphones, and failed to hear approaching cowbells. I put in a long-distance call to Jim to explain my delayed return. I asked him how Schoolkids Oz was coming along.

  ‘Fantastic. Like a weekend commune.’ Twenty teenagers milling around his flat, cutting up type, drawing, Letrasetting headings, playing records, raiding the fridge. ‘They seem delighted we’re not hip executives with silk ties and carpeted offices.’

  ‘Is the copy all anarchist propaganda?’

  ‘Not anarchist enough.’ Jim laughed. ‘Relax. The boy who loves his school wrote a wonderful piece. He finds it safe – like a second home.’

  ‘Great. Are you keeping Felix under control?’

  ‘You mean with the schoolgirls?’

  ‘Well, that, of course. I mean with the layout, the copy. Crass headlines.’

  The phone line sputtered and faded.

  ‘Don’t make Oz too shocking,’ I shouted, reminding him of our close shave with Homosexual Oz. ‘That impulse of yours to . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, be happy.’ Crackle, fizz. Jim said something about the issue getting a little footloose and fancy free . . .

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oh, by the way, Playpower is being reprinted. Isn’t that terrific?’

  On 30 April 1970, President Nixon announced an ‘incursion’ in Cambodia by 8,000 US ground troops. Students at Kent State University in Ohio, a sleepy campus renowned for its wrestling teams, thronged into the streets, breaking bank windows and lighting bonfires. On 4 May a group of guardsmen on the campus aimed their rifles at gathering demonstrators and observers, and fired fifty rounds. Four students were killed and eleven wounded. Protests erupted across America, closing down 410 campuses and sending the Dow Jones index plummeting. At four in the morning a couple of days later, a handful of students wandering by the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC encountered President Nixon. Plastered with makeup, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched, he was staring at the ground, rambling on. Freaky, freaky, freaky, was their overall verdict. ‘There was no train of thought,’ one of the students told Rolling Stone. The President asked if anyone had come from California, and when a young man said, ‘Yes’, Nixon praised the surfing beaches. ‘He was trying to grasp on to anything he thought we could relate to,’ said another witness, ‘but he couldn’t.’ Meanwhile, US and South Vietnamese troops, now numbering 50,000, napalmed their way into Cambodia.

  The flat stone roof of the farmhouse baked in the sun. Four naked women were stretched on the bamboo mats, gossiping about the latest influx of celebrities. Nico had been spotted in town . . . Suzy Creamcheese, Terence Stamp, Taj Mahal, Donovan’s wife, heavily pregnant. Neal Phillips, naked, squatted astride a honey-skinned Israeli, massaging coconut oil into her buttocks. He was having a ball – a far cry from the dungeons of Greece and the marauding landlords of Morocco.

  ‘What happened to Lee Heater?’ he wanted to know.

  He had been deported from Belfast, I said, and was back in California, reunited with Kathy, his long-suffering heiress wife.

  The field below, dotted with almond tr
ees and tinkling with cowbells, stretched to a graceful rim of wooded hillocks. A dizzying fiddle riff from the Incredible String Band filtrated through the hash fumes and the oily slaps of palms on thigh.

  ‘One of the many hidden treasures here,’ Neal said, ‘is an endless supply of yohimbine.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Yohimbine, he explained, was the principal alkaloid in the bark of a West African tree, long used in folk medicine. It was sold in tablet form at the local pharmacies. According to the instructions, three a day turned a man or woman into a steaming cauldron of sexual desire. Neal said, ‘This is my fifteenth day.’

  The chemical structure of yohimbine is similar to that of LSD, yage, marijuana and psilocybin. Laboratory mice, injected with yohimbine, reacted with spontaneous ejaculations. I wondered if Neal had reached that point.

  ‘For the first few days it was just a sensation in the back of my legs and pelvis. But now it’s hotting up and spreading through my body.’ He poured ice water on his penis. The previous day, he had been asked to leave La Tierra Bar because his unstoppable three-hour erection had disconcerted too many patrons.

  Giggling, the girls on the roof concurred on these aphrodisiac marvels. Prudently, all had now stopped taking the tablets on a daily basis, but Neal saw this experiment as his chance to make medical history. ‘I intend to keep it up for a month,’ he said, meaning the experiment. ‘I want to fall back in time with the beat of the jungle drums.’ Neal was writing a daily journal, and agreed to send the results to Oz.

  John Wilcock arrived on the island, still publishing Other Scenes from his carry-all. He sat at the Monte Sol café in long grey pants and a white business shirt. ‘This is the last summer before they crack down on all this,’ he sighed, his eyes popping at the transparent bikinis.

  In the abandoned chapel of a hill-top home, I called a meeting to rustle up ideas for an Oz travel issue.

  ‘So you’re tired, baby?’ mocked Birgitta Bjerke, a woman in a crocheted monokini who was of the opinion that our ad for schoolkid editors should have been on the cover. ‘So now you want help from children?’ Birgitta said she had been following Oz from the beginning. ‘I’m glad it exists, but – you’re drowning in your own sperm.’ As the only ‘organised’ Underground mag in Europe, we had a responsibility, Birgitta argued, to spread ‘truth and enlightenment’, to pump out the joy of the flower-power era and not just to shore up the TV image of its garrulous editor. ‘Sure, you have a lot of good writers, but you encourage them to sink in a puddle of shitty sex – give them a better showcase.’ The Velvet Underground droned in the background, but nothing could stop this Swedish fireball. ‘I love fucking – but let it be glorified, not vulgarised. Leave all the sperm splashing to Suck.’ She took a puff on a fat, tapered joint. ‘If I, as a glorious globe-trotting freak for the past ten years, am pissed off with you, think of how many others you’re losing . . .’

  ‘Put all that in a letter’, I said.

  And she did, ornamented with the colours and curlicues of her crocheting. I sent it to Jim.

  Were we drowning in our own sperm? I began to wonder. According to Aleister Crowley, the twentieth-century satanist, the word Oz is of crucial importance in the world of the occult. It derives from the numerical qabalah (adding up to seventy-seven), and represents magic acting on the world of matter. Oz carries heavy sexual vibes. The first letter (Hebrew: Ayin), represents the male goat, a ‘zestful symbol of rampant and joyful lust worshipped at the legendary Witches’ Sabbath’. The creed of numerous magical orders is contained in the manifesto, Lieber Oz: ‘Take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will.’ Spooky, huh?

  After the editorial meeting, I met the playwright Jane Arden at the Montesol. She greeted my attempt to solicit copy with a remark that was to ring in my head for years: ‘Do you always carry Oz around on a flagpole to let people know who you are?’

  Louise was discharged from hospital. Friends dropped by with tapes and Tarot packs and pots of honey. She always seemed surrounded by flowers.

  In June, when Louise was back on her feet, we flew to London. Jim showed me a copy of Schoolkids Oz, hot off the stands. Not bad, not the best Oz, but plenty of pizazz, I thought, flicking through the pages. I took a second look at the wraparound cover. Ye Gods! A bit over the top.

  ‘Did the schoolkids choose this?’

  The illustration came from a book of erotica by one Bertram, published in Paris, that had been lying around Jim’s flat. He looked a bit sheepish.

  ‘It was going to be the centre spread. The kids loved it. But Felix decided that we needed to fill the centre with a Back Issue Bonanza.’ A cash flow crisis. ‘That meant there was nowhere to put it, but at the last minute, our planned cover fell apart. Soooo . . . jackpot!’

  Too much shock fun to resist, he believed. I felt like that bearded hippie on New Year’s Eve, slamming into a truck on his bicycle.

  ‘The dildos are on the back, Richard. No one will ever see them. Too bad, in a way.’

  ‘Ha, ha! Very amusing, Jim. You stupid bloody idiot!’ It was not said without affection, but still . . .

  14

  EVERYTHING into MASHED

  POTATO

  On 8 June 1970, the obscenity squad raided the Oz ‘shopfront’ office at 52 Princedale Road. In charge was Frederick Luff, a fleshy-faced detective sergeant with hard blue eyes. This time, he intoned, Oz had gone too far.

  ‘My mission is to put you lot out of business.’

  ‘What’s all this hostility?’ asked Felix. ‘We’re just a bunch of long-hairs trying to bring out a magazine.’

  ‘It’s disgraceful. Most obscene!’

  Taciturn types in nylon jackets swept paperwork off the desk and began clearing out the files. Jim stood scowling, his arms folded. ‘What about you?’ Luff asked. ‘Aren’t you ashamed?’

  ‘It’s a good issue. I’m proud of it.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Felix.

  ‘It’s the worst yet – aimed at children.’

  ‘You’re wrong there,’ Jim said. ‘It was done by children.’

  ‘How could you get them to do things like this?’

  As every Oz in the office was hauled away, Jim began to explain. The invitation to young budding editors, the meeting with the kids . . .

  ‘Shut up, Jim,’ said Felix. ‘Let ’em do their own homework.’

  ‘It’s OK, Felix, we’ve got nothing to hide . . .’

  Three days later, Luff raided our production office. Wheezing on roll-your-owns, his men lugged away filing cabinets, correspondence, artwork, mailing lists, editorial matter and the last remaining copies of Schoolkids Oz.

  When Jim and Felix recounted the raid, they seemed amused. Police harassment was part of the game. At Oz, we just ‘keep on trucking’. Sure – but that month’s elections replaced the Labour government of Harold Wilson with the Conservative government of Edward Heath.

  Jim remained defensive about the choice of cover. ‘We covered up the blow-job.’

  Yes, with a snap of Robb Douglas, in a school uniform.

  Robb’s self-written profile inside the issue professed a working-class background and a ‘suppressed intelligence’. He confessed that he knew he was ‘going to be famous’. Yeah, Robb, sooner than you dared hope.

  ‘You don’t like the juxtaposition? Fully dressed schoolboy with long hair – naked black lady with short afro?’

  Jim, as usual, was getting lost in visual subtleties. ‘First duty of a revolutionary is not to get caught, Jim,’ I said, quoting Abbie Hoffman.

  ‘Richard – isn’t it our duty to sail as close to the wind as possible? We’ll get away with it. You’ll see.’

  I was unconvinced.

  ‘Oh well. It seemed like a good idea at four in the morning. The artwork was overdue. We didn’t have anything else . . .’

  Scotland Yard stepped up the pressure. Warnings were issued to newsagents, to our distributors and to our latest printer, Sid Spellman, wh
ose reaction was witnessed by Felix.

  Two detectives visited his premises in Lamb’s Conduit Street.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you lot before?’ asked Sid.

  ‘Take it easy, Mr Spellman, this is not an official visit. Just some friendly advice.’ The pair warned Sid that Oz was ‘dirty hippie rubbish. Not worth the trouble it’s bound to cause you – and your family.’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain I’ve seen you before,’ repeated Sid.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yes! Düsseldorf,’ Sid continued, raising his voice. ‘You bastards – Düsseldorf!’

  ‘You’re certainly mistaken, Mr Spellman,’ the younger cop said. ‘I’ve never been to Germany in my life.’

  ‘Yes! Yes! I was only eleven years old. You wore long leather coats, you bastards. You had an Alsatian. My dad was running the shop and you came round and popped him, you filthy, fucking . . .’ The balding printer screamed and shouted, his staff rushed to his support, brandishing broom handles, and the fuzz backed up the stairs.

  Sid Spellman gave Felix a wink.

  ‘Scotland Yard never went back,’ reported Felix, full of admiration. ‘Too much of a nutter.’

  At the end of June, I met with Frederick Luff at the Oz offices.

  ‘While this issue was being put together,’ Luff said, leafing through the Schoolkids Oz, ‘we understand you were in Spain.’

  ‘Yes’.

  ‘So technically, you’re not responsible.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  There was a moment or two of silence. I asked Luff whether he planned to proceed.