by Andy Roberts
While pop stars, minor aristocracy and the rich and famous were happy to take their LSD in exclusive clubs, and private country retreats, the growing numbers of hippies in London were attracted to clubs such as UFO, Middle Earth and Happening 44. LSD was a feature at these nightspots, available cheaply or even given away. Dave Tomlin, a regular at UFO, recalls the acid ambience: “Foxy girls with heavy mascara slink in the candlelit shadows, where sugar cubes receive their globule of nectar from the tip of a glass dropper, to be sucked like lemon drops by hopeful trippers intent on adding spice to the night.”20
Inevitably the media were infiltrating the hippie nightspots to file reports for their outraged readers. When the People discovered that the Electric Garden club was in Covent Garden, just round the corner from their offices, they immediately sent reporter Patrick Kent to see what was going on. Somewhat predictably he saw lots of hippies involved in a happening, many of them under the influence of drugs. The hippie cult, Kent opined in his last paragraph, was: “... degrading, decadent and just plain daft.”21
Occasionally, presaging the festivals to come, hippie celebrations broke free of the subterranean clubs. At one-off events such as the “14 Hour Technicolour Dream”, held on 29 April 1967 at Alexandra Palace, they gathered in large numbers. Over thirty bands spread across two stages took the hippie masses through the night until dawn. A huge light show projected coloured bubbles and abstract patterns onto billowing white sheets, while fairground rides and inflatables added to the sensory overload.
The cream of London’s psychedelia was at the event both as performers and participants. John Lennon wandered freely through the audience and the bands included Soft Machine, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and of course the band that perhaps most represented the experience of LSD at the time, Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd manager, Peter Jenner remembers the experience well: “That really was the most psychedelic experience that I’ve ever been to. At least half the audience was doing acid. I was doing acid ... I did some acid before we went, and by the time I got to Alexandra Palace the old acid was beginning to go and trying to drive the van was getting quite exciting.”22
As dawn broke the sun’s light began to filter through Alexandra Palace’s huge windows, transforming the Victorian “People’s Palace” into a psychedelic cathedral. For many hippies there it was the moment they had been waiting for. Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett high on acid, was playing and it was a high point, in all senses of the word, for psychedelic culture. Peter Jenner recalled: “The band played at dawn with all the light coming through the glass at the Palace, the high point of the psychedelic era for me. It was a perfect setting, everyone had been waiting for them and everybody was on acid; that event was the peak of acid use in England ... Everybody was on it: the bands, the organisers, the audience, and I certainly was.”23
But the idea of putting almost ten thousand people, even hippies, together for several hours had its faults. Pink Floyd lighting engineer, Peter Wynne-Wilson saw another side to the hippie dream: “I can remember thinking that the drug situation had got extremely messy and perverted because there were people completely in a state because of drink and drugs. And it seemed to me to be a real falling apart, I didn’t like it at all.”24
Wynne-Wilson’s observations were astute. When taken in controlled circumstances LSD was a powerful but usually harmless experience. But when taken with strangers in huge venues, accompanied by disorientating lights and music, the experience was much less predictable. LSD use at the “14 Hour Technicolour Dream” showed the crossroads use of the drug had reached. Numbers of LSD users were increasing daily and were becoming bolder in going out to pubs, clubs and gigs. Entrepreneurs, both hippie and straight, saw an opening in the market and sought to provide venues for large numbers of people, many of whom would be under the influence of LSD. In their enthusiasm, whether driven by ideology or profit, to create environments in which people could enjoy the LSD experience, the organisers had ignored the absolute importance of set and setting.
After all the negative publicity surrounding LSD in the first half of 1967, its supporters received a boost in June when Paul McCartney admitted on TV to ITN’s Keith Hadfield that he had taken it four times. The revelation reverberated through the UK. Where once the Beatles had been the clean cut antithesis of the Rolling Stones, after McCartney’s frank disclosure it was obvious to all they had crossed the great divide between “straight” society and the psychedelic pioneers.
Coming as it did only weeks after the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the cynical might have viewed McCartney’s bombshell as a cynical marketing move, a trick designed to get maximum publicity. But the Beatles didn’t need the publicity and McCartney’s candour was such that he seemed to have been genuine in his desire to share his experiences with his fans.
For McCartney, taking LSD meant mind expansion and the ending of all social evils: “We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what we could all accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world. If the politicians would take LSD, there wouldn’t be any more war, poverty or famine.” Not only did the Beatle admit to enjoying LSD he was clear that: “My personal opinion is that LSD is not dangerous.” For anyone still hesitant about using LSD McCartney’s admission he had taken the drug was as near to a celebrity endorsement as was possible. And for many Sgt Pepper’s was the ultimate psychedelic album, made by acidheads for acidheads.25
The album’s iconic sleeve photograph was conceived by pop artist Peter Blake and photographed by Michael Cooper at his London studio. According to McCartney two of the Beatles had taken LSD for the event. Sgt Pepper’s has come to define psychedelic music and the summer of 1967. From its release on 1 June the album was everywhere, playing on the radio, TV, in shops and in hippie pads across the UK. It became, for a while at least, the album to listen to while on LSD. Its bright, colourful splashes of sound and inventive lyrics made it almost impossible to have a bad experience.
Several tracks on the album appeared to be about drugs, although whether they actually were or not is a matter for conjecture. Speculation has raged to what degree socialite Tara Browne’s death inspired “A Day in the Life”, the closing track on the album. Because of his penchant for LSD, rumour spread that the phrase, “he blew his mind out in a car” referred to the possibility Browne was on an LSD trip at the time of his death. Lennon claims the song’s lyric grew from stories in the Daily Mail for 17 January 1967 (“I read the news today, oh boy”) which juxtaposed details of Browne’s inquest with a surreal filler about the number of road works in Blackburn, Lancashire. McCartney allows that while he didn’t connect the lyric with Browne he accepts that Lennon did.26
Though the record buying public received Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ecstatically, the British cultural establishment wasn’t at all happy that some of its lyrics might be affecting the nation’s youth. Prior to its releases some broadcasting mavens within the BBC already had severe doubts about the lyrics to “A Day in the Life”, mainly because of the line, “I went upstairs and had a smoke, somebody spoke and I went into a dream”. They may also have heard the rumours about the cause of Tara Browne’s death. On 19 May the BBC Press Office issued an internal statement relating to the song: “The Beatles new LP ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lone (sic) Hearts’ Club Band’ contains one song which the BBC has decided not to broadcast. It is called “A Day in the Life’”.27
It seems from this statement that the BBC wanted to ban the song and for the ban to remain secret if at all possible: “This information is on no account to be volunteered but it may break from other sources in which case you may talk as follows.” The statement went on to describe that if challenged about the existence of the ban it was to be acknowledged but qualified with: “The BBC takes a pretty liberal attitude these days ... however, we have listened to this particular song over and over again and we have decided that as far as we are concerned it appears to go a little too far and could encourage a
permissive attitude to drug-taking.”28
The BBC went a step further on 25 May when they issued a statement to the heads of every major record label in Britain. Frank Gillard, Director of Sound Broadcasting issued a two page statement in which he wrote: “I am writing to tell you that we are increasingly concerned over the allegations that some pop records contain references to drug taking, and could be construed as giving encouragement to unfortunate habits and perhaps even to vice.” Gillard insisted the BBC would be ultra vigilant even to the point of banning some records that may have entirely innocent lyrics. Somewhat amusingly Gillard suggested that: “... these references are often obscure and couched in language not readily understood by ordinary people.” Clearly, in the eyes of the BBC LSD takers were not “ordinary”!29
Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones took off for America in mid-June to attend the Monterey Pop Festival. There were few British bands on the bill but this was the first multi-day rock festival ever to be staged and Jones wanted to be part of it. While there he hooked up with his old friend Dennis Hopper and the pair took LSD together. The Monterey Festival was notable for “Monterey Purple”, a bespoke batch of LSD created for the festival by noted San Franciscan LSD chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III. A large quantity of this LSD was destined for Britain and Owsley recalls: “Brian Jones had a photographer in his entourage who brought a telephoto lens which had been gutted. He took it back filled with Monterey Purple. I asked Brian to share the stash between his Stones and the Beatles. So far as I am aware he did so.”30
Throughout 1967 there was a dramatic increase in LSD availability in Britain. Quantities of good quality “outlaw chemist” LSD were being brought from America and there was also a supply from an as yet unidentified UK laboratory. The rapidly growing counter culture, combined with the long hot psychedelic summer created an almost insatiable demand for the drug.
In July 1967 Allen Ginsberg, the American beatnik poet, arrived in Britain. He had been invited by R.D. Laing to speak at the Dialectics of Liberation conference held at the Roundhouse in north London. While in the capital Ginsberg did several poetry readings and was interviewed extensively. He spoke in depth about LSD and how useful it was for breaking the bounds of social conditioning. Ginsberg stressed that LSD was not an end in itself but should be used to regain the lost awareness written about by poets such as William Blake. And he was clear that LSD had set in motion a movement of altered consciousness and perception which would continue even without the drug: “Even if LSD disappeared and all the beards and the hair disappeared the awareness would spread ... Even if the police captured all the LSD manufacturers like Owsley, put everybody in gaol, I think ZAP, everything would spread anyway. YOU CAN’T STOP IT NOW.”31
Interviewed by film maker and poet Iain Sinclair, Ginsberg offered a series of practices he felt would be useful during an LSD trip. These were basically techniques borrowed from Eastern philosophies and included breathing and posture exercises: “A little five minute ritual is a very good form of meditation when you are going up on a psychedelic. Also a good place to come back to at any point during a trip when you want a simple place to lay your body against.”32 Ginsberg also stressed that getting out into the countryside among nature’s solitudes was also an excellent way of preventing problems on a trip.
These were all ideas taken for granted among the early LSD community in the USA, now starting to filter through to the psychedelic scene in Britain. Ideas of minimal consumption, voluntary poverty and the possibilities of consciousness expansion without LSD were coalescing in the minds of many LSD trippers. For some the LSD vision was enough to give them the realization that western consumerism was a pointless waste of time, designed only to enslave mind and body. Many left on the “hippie trail”, overland to the East in search of a genuine spirituality. Others travelled east to continue the counter cultural lifestyle in countries where living was much cheaper and the pursuit of consciousness expansion was less restricted.
After the Roundhouse conference Ginsberg travelled to the Black Mountains of Wales to stay at the country retreat of his English publisher, Tom Maschler. On 28 July, both men took LSD and wandered the hills around Llanthony Abbey, marvelling at the amplified sensory intricacies of the natural world. The experience inspired Ginsberg to write “Wales Visitation”, a glorious evocation of the inter-connectedness of everything. The poem demonstrated that for all his New York City beat-speak Ginsberg was a nature mystic at heart.
Ginsberg wanted to create, “... an artwork comprehensible to people not high on acid, an artefact which could point others’ attention to microscopic details of the scene ... It might transfer the high consciousness of LSD to somebody with an ordinary mind”.33
No imperfection in the budded mountain,
valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed.34
Maschler recalled the trip as being a “... superb experience but I never wanted to take it again.”35 The poem was published in book form a year later with photographs of a clearly intoxicated Ginsberg communing with nature on the damp, cloud-wreathed Welsh hillside.
Another poetic reference to LSD came in the form of Roger McGough’s “Poem For National LSD Week”, published in the 1967 anthology The Mersey Sound. The poem is actually shorter than its title and is a clever play on words, adding a comma between the first and second words of the phrase “mind how you go”; thus encapsulating both the effect of LSD and a warning about its use in four words.
Psychedelic lyrics and the widespread knowledge that many pop musicians were taking LSD caused policy makers within the BBC to sit up and take notice. In July Huw Wheldon, controller of programmes, issued an internal policy statement that summed up the current legal status of drugs and mused on the moral and social implications of songs with drug related lyrics. Wheldon was staunchly against the idea of the BBC playing any part in condoning drug use in any way whatsoever: “The programmatic considerations are these: that we can condone by default. We can help make the thing a commonplace. This we cannot allow ourselves to do.”36
In retrospect these statements appear amusing. The idea of the BBC trying to prevent drug use by banning certain songs was never going to work. Many songs slipped through the BBC’s net and it was clear that the Corporation hadn’t even gone to the trouble of bothering to ask anyone from the counter cultures which songs were and which were not about drugs.
“Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces, released on 4 August, is just one example of an LSD song the BBC failed to spot. With its subversive lyrics about playing truant from school, “why go to learn the words of fools” and its knowing invite to Itchycoo Park, “over bridge of sighs, to rest my eyes in shades of green” where the participants would get “high”, the song was as obvious a hymn to LSD as there could be. The closing refrain of “It’s all too beautiful” left the listener in no doubt as to what they thought of the LSD experience.37
The Small Faces were one of the bands who took LSD a little less reverently than many of their contemporaries. Instead of using it primarily to explore the mysteries of mind and matter, they took LSD mainly to have a laugh, a good time. People were beginning to realise that once you were used to taking the drug you could get out and about, visit pubs, clubs and the countryside, all seen through a colourful LSD prism.
However, bands like the Beatles and the Small Faces were really mainstream psychedelic musicians. Numerous groups jumped on the psychedelic bandwagon and sang vaguely drug suffused lyrics dressed in the latest paisley fashions. It was a good marketing tool but hardly true to the spirit of the drug or the counter culture. Record company heads soon realised that drugs, like sex, sold records and promoted their acts accordingly.
The true musical psychedelic pioneers weren’t the brash popsters but were small groups o
f friends who enjoyed playing LSD inspired music together. Donovan was popular among serious LSD takers, his filigree musical arrangements and lyrics about relationships and the wonder of the universe being to many acidheads’ tastes. But even Donovan was classed by some as having “sold out”, sacrificed his principles in favour of a pop musician’s lifestyle.
Bands such as the Incredible String Band were regarded as making authentic LSD music. The String Band, as they were known, had developed out of Edinburgh’s beatnik scene, later taking easily to drugs and a semi-communal LSD-inspired lifestyle. In December 1966 their original banjo player, Clive Palmer, had been the first person in Scotland to be arrested for possession of LSD but left the group after the first LP. Palmer was not a drug taker and didn’t appreciate LSD at all: “People used to tell me you could write fantastic music on LSD, but it didn’t affect me at all. It was rubbish, I couldn’t do anything. I just wanted to sit down.”38
The two principals of the String Band, Mike Heron and Robin Williamson were rather keener on the drug and in July 1967 released 5,000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion. This was challenging, barely describable music, which polarised opinion in those who heard it. It was clear to any LSD takers who heard 5,000 Spirits that Heron and Williamson had also taken the drug. Their acid folk songs of hyper-awareness, talking clouds, death and Williamson’s desire to reflect “the sheer unspeakable strangeness of being here at all” echoed and amplified the odd perceptions experienced by LSD users. The musical accompaniment was of strings bowed, plucked and strummed, sitar, eastern drone and pattering clay drums. The overall effect was of music from a luminous multiverse where lysergic logic made perfect sense. The cover art clearly spelt out the contents to prospective buyers and provided LSD-inspired listeners with hours of study. The Fool, a group of Dutch artists much beloved of the Beatles, had been commissioned to provide the cover art. They came up with a psychedelic classic: a kaleidoscopic organic vision of vegetation, sun, moon and stars complete with hermaphroditic human faced winged creature. If you were a teenager, whereas your parents might just tolerate the Beatles, you could expect a bang on the bedroom door telling you to “turn that rubbish off” if you slipped 5,000 Spirits onto the turntable.