Albion Dreaming (17 page)

Though neither Leary, Metzner nor Alpert were known to have been in Britain during 1963, “one of the self-appointed generalissimo-guru-high-priests of the acid revolution” implies it must have been Leary or one of his close associates. In 1992, Laing’s son Adrian asked Leary if he had been the trans-Atlantic
acid evangelist only to have the notion rebuffed as “ludicrously false”. In fact Laing and Leary didn’t meet until October 1964. Perhaps Hollingshead, up to his old tricks again, was trying to gain Laing’s cooperation in an attempt to curry favour with Leary.

Although an enthusiastic advocate of LSD use in both therapeutic and recreational circumstances, something about the visit pricked Laing’s social conscience. He was only too aware of LSD’s potency and potential for serious psychological disturbance and, sensing something wasn’t right, he tried to report the encounter to the Home Secretary. After being told this wasn’t possible he was eventually referred to “Chief Superintendent Jeffries and his colleague Sergeant Bing, of Scotland Yard”.

Jeffries may have been from Scotland Yard but “Sergeant Bing” was in fact Henry “Bing” Spear from the Home Office Drugs Inspectorate. A meeting took place in which Laing disclosed details of his mysterious visitor, privately assuaging his worries about the possible indiscriminate spread of LSD.

Whether or not Hollingshead was involved in this incident, his entreaties paid off, and by the autumn of 1964 he was once again back with Leary in America. Leary had returned from Mexico, and was in the process of setting up an LSD research centre in upstate New York at Millbrook, a huge mansion rented from psychedelically inclined millionaire Billy Hitchcock. All manner of psychedelic experimentation took place at Millbrook, with Hollingshead working hard on ways of understanding, enhancing and expressing the psychedelic experience.

Leary and his coterie of psychonauts may, initially at least, have been happy to have Hollingshead back in the fold, but others were not so sure. Millbrook resident Art Kleps’ first encounter with Hollingshead was “bizarre and vaguely unpleasant”:

“I was in the kitchen during the first evening of my visit, talking to Ralph [Metzner] and Susan [Leary], when a tall man with unreadable features, dressed in slacks, a sport coat and a fedora with a ribbon of photographs around the brim, came twirling into the room ... As this apparition spun around the table muttering to himself, Ralph’s eyes narrowed and Susan took a deep breath and held it. He acted as though he wanted to sit down on one of the
empty chairs but couldn’t figure out how to do it. I pulled one out for him, which seemed to piss him off. He moved his arms angrily and sputtered. Still twirling, he moved out of the room. “Susan exhaled.

“‘What the fuck?’ I asked.

“‘Michael Hollingshead,’ Ralph said, poker faced as usual.”
¹²

Everyone who came into contact with Hollingshead was struck by his personality and charisma, yet few seemed to like the man. It appeared that Hollingshead, while being a consummate psychedelic explorer, was a control freak. This perception was picked up even by casual visitors to Millbrook, including a journalist from the
Charlotte Observer
, who opened his article about Millbrook with: “‘I am Michael Hollingshead,’ says the man in the doorway, half an hour later. He is tall, thirty-ish, baldish, with cold, cruel grey eyes. ‘I am your guide for the weekend. Will you follow me?’ He has an English accent and a soft voice of sinister authority.”
¹³

Hollingshead’s presence at Millbrook had an important effect on the LSD experiments there. As a confident and experienced LSD user he was good to have around, especially when the going got psychically rough. Off LSD Hollingshead was at best a difficult personality, at worst downright dangerous. But when high on psychedelics he became something else; a natural guide, a benevolent presence, someone who exuded a sense of safety. Hollingshead, for all his failings, understood LSD and, like Leary, recognised the drug’s tendency to engender a desire for spiritual knowledge in those who took it.

Leary also understood the cosmic joker in Hollingshead’s psychological make up, referring to the times at Millbrook when, “he would have everyone holding burning candles. With dilated eyes and spinning heads, people would follow him down ... You’d crawl through various passageways, then suddenly come around a corner where the mischievous prankster Michael Hollingshead had put a mirror! That was the ultimate confrontation with the wisest person in the world!”
¹⁴

During this period with Leary at Millbrook, Hollingshead was still sending LSD back to various friends in London. The majority
of those using the still legal drug were having the time of their lives with no adverse psychological reactions. Bad trips were few and far between and when they took place were recognised as just another part of a rich and varied experience. People began to realise they could affect the mood of an LSD trip by changing the lighting, the music or other environmental variables. Bad trips could be prevented and good trips enhanced.

Inevitably though, LSD, as with any drug which affects consciousness, was causing serious problems in some individuals. Such cases were rare, but the damage could be permanent, often resulting in admission to psychiatric wards and occasionally in suicide. Others had their mental equilibrium so disturbed that they could never again regain the quality of life they enjoyed prior to the LSD experience. LSD proselytisers dealt with these very real dangers of LSD in different ways. Some ignored them altogether. Others accepted that there were bound to be casualties with any mind expanding drug as powerful as LSD. The general consensus among the LSD subculture was that the benefits of the drug far outweighed the disadvantages and, as we will see, considerable time and effort was put into harnessing the LSD experience to prevent unpleasant experiences. But for those who reacted badly to LSD and lost everything this was little comfort.

One of Britain’s earliest rockers, Vince Taylor described by Joe Strummer of The Clash as, “... the beginning of British rock’n’roll. Before him there was nothing. He was a miracle” had his career and life destroyed by a single LSD experience. The result of Taylor’s encounter with LSD, and that of others who have suffered long term psychological reactions to the drug, begs the question whether these individuals had a predisposition to mental illness. In Taylor’s case there is some evidence for this; his reaction to smoking cannabis on one occasion in 1962, when he believed he was in a giant coffin and couldn’t recall doing his show that night, suggests undiagnosed mental problems, while on another occasion he told friends he was an aeroplane.

On 22 May 1964 he turned up late for a gig in Paris looking dishevelled and clutching a bottle of Mateus wine. In response to his band mate’s concerns Taylor said, “You think I’m Vince Taylor
don’t you? Well I’m not, my name is Mateus, I’m the new Jesus, the son of God.”
¹⁵

The night before, in London, Taylor had taken his first LSD trip at a party thrown for Bob Dylan (who allegedly thought the quality of the drug that night to be so good he bought £200 of LSD to take back to the US).

For the next few years Taylor lived a street existence, taking more LSD and whatever other drugs he could get hold of, preaching he was Jesus Christ and wallowing in paranoid fantasies. In 1966 Taylor met David Bowie in a coffee bar, monopolizing the conversation with stories from the other side of madness. Bowie couldn’t “... remember if he said he was an alien or the Son of God, but he might have been a bit of both.”

Later that night Taylor showed Bowie a map of the world marked with alien bases and treasure locations. Taylor was a rock star who had lost the plot and had nowhere to go but further into his own delusions. Bowie remembered that meeting and later based his Ziggy Stardust persona on Taylor’s fractured rock life.

A similar psychological fate would later befall Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett who first took LSD when it took a firm foothold in the university town of Cambridge during 1965. A small LSD scene developed there around a group of creative people, many of whom went on to become movers and shakers in the art and music world. This set included many of the future members of Pink Floyd and their immediate circle, including novelist and playwright David Gale, who remembers, “LSD came to Cambridge, and it was absolutely imperative that you take it; you had to whether you wanted to or not.”
¹⁶

LSD was introduced to Cambridge by Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon; he and his friends were already enthusiastic cannabis smokers. They also occasionally dabbled with the psychedelic compound extracted from morning glory seeds. However, morning glory seeds are much less potent than LSD and have to be chewed in bulk or made into a distasteful brew to release the active chemical. This process resulted in variable effects, often making the user so ill they couldn’t enjoy the experience. Needless to say, Lesmoir-Gordon and his circle were looking for something stronger and more focused.

In early 1965 Lesmoir-Gordon moved to London to take up a place at the London School of Film Technique, moving into a flat at 101 Cromwell Road in West London. The flat was sub-let from Bill Barlow, Lesmoir-Gordon’s Cambridge landlord, and through Barlow, Lesmoir-Gordon met New Zealand expatriate poet John Esam. Esam had a ready supply of LSD – obtained from Trocchi – and soon Lesmoir-Gordon had undergone his psychedelic initiation. His first LSD experience was terrifying because, he believes, he made the mistake of trying to hang on to his ego, refusing to let his consciousness blend into the experience. Nonetheless he recognised LSD’s potential for psychological and spiritual change and continued to take the drug. On his second experience a friend, Mike Raggett, who had experimented with mescaline in Saudi Arabia, acted as his guide. Now, with Raggett watching over him, making positive statements such as, “you are the creator, you are god, you are everything, this is all yours,”
¹⁷
Lesmoir-Gordon was able to let go into the experience. He stared into a crumpled up tissue for up to two hours, “seeing whole universes being born and dying”, listening to Bach’s fugues and hearing them “as music of the spheres”. He believed LSD “opened the doors of perception and thought everyone should take it.” This was a feeling shared by many once they had taken LSD a few times, an evangelical urge to share this awesome, life-changing experience with others ... “this is something we should all have, because this is the truth, a really powerful way of seeing the world and this amazing dance we are part of. It put me in touch with the universe. There were times when I just became the whole universe, when I thought I was infinite and eternal and utterly blessed.”
¹⁸
Lesmoir-Gordon’s experiences with LSD led him to conclude that the key to the secret of life was love, and that God was a creative energy called love. Accounts of people’s LSD experiences may appear self-indulgent, but the insights and experiences were often indistinguishable from those gained from religious and spiritual practice and were often catalysts to major personal and life changes.

Lesmoir-Gordon was soon joined in Cromwell Road by others from Cambridge and by the end of 1965 Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett had taken up residence on the top floor where he began his descent
into LSD fuelled psychoses. Esam sold Lesmoir-Gordon a bottle of liquid LSD and “I took this bottle of LSD and dropped it into sugar cubes and wrapped it in silver paper and told everyone they should take it!” He sold the psychedelic sugar for one pound per trip. Most of the other residents occupying the flats in the three floors at 101 Cromwell Road were enthusiastic LSD takers and word soon spread that it could be bought there. People visited the building every day of the week to buy LSD, many staying to have their first trip there or to repeat the experience with others in the burgeoning hippie subculture. Lesmoir-Gordon and his friends prided themselves in providing a safe place in which people could trip on LSD and they took great pains to ensure a sensuous environment was available where the music, décor and lighting was oriented specifically towards the LSD experience. This type of interior design was the forerunner of the archetypal hippie acidhead pad. Many first time LSD trippers were guided safely through their experience at 101 Cromwell Road making it what Lesmoir-Gordon called “an LSD ashram”, which continued for several years.

On weekends throughout 1965 Lesmoir-Gordon would return to Cambridge, taking LSD with him to turn on friends such as Syd Barrett, and becoming known, only half jokingly, as the “acid king”. When David Gale’s parents left him to house-sit while they went to Australia, his friends moved in and psychedelic experimentation took over.

“Earlier in the day Syd and Paul had each taken a heroic dose, as was the custom, of LSD, on a sugar-lump. Syd had giggled for a while then become contemplative. He had found, in my mother’s kitchen, a plum, an orange and a matchbox. He was sitting cross-legged on the manicured lawn, gently cradling the items in his hands, studying them intently. From time to time he would smile at them in a friendly way.”
¹⁹

On another psychedelic weekend expedition to Cambridge Lesmoir-Gordon, Syd Barrett and others took LSD and went out to a disused quarry. Lesmoir-Gordon filmed Syd looning about on LSD, the film being later erroneously marketed as
Syd’s First Trip
.

Several other well-known musicians passed through 101
Cromwell Road’s portals in its years as an acid ashram, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, P.J. Proby and Donovan among many others. All were keen to learn how to take LSD in a safe environment. Donovan was a regular visitor to Cromwell Road during his years as a psychedelic troubadour and Lesmoir-Gordon later made films with him. He enshrined the psychedelic ashram in his 1965 song, “Sunny South Kensington”.