Albion Dreaming (25 page)

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”!
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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”.
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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.
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Maschler recalled the trip as being a “... superb experience but I never wanted to take it again.”
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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.”
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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.
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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 of 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.”
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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.

As did many other musicians, the Incredible String Band later eschewed the adventure of psychedelic drugs. But for a few years in the late Sixties their LPs were psychedelic hymnals for the dedicated LSD tripper.

While the LSD takers in Britain were exploring the inner and outer universe the entertainment industry was slowly realizing there was money to be made from the psychedelic scene. This process began in America and a series of low budget films were produced to cash in on the media hype surrounding LSD. The most significant to impact on the UK was director Roger Corman’s
The Trip
, subtitled, “A big thrill in a little pill”, scheduled for release in October 1967.

The British Board of Film Censors however, had other ideas as they followed in the wake of the BBC’s attempts to surreptitiously protect the nation’s morals from even a whiff of LSD. When confronted with
The Trip
, John Trevelyan secretary of the BBFC, made no attempt to hide his feelings: “Bearing in mind the dangers of the drug we have decided to ban any film which could conceivably encourage taking it. It is a question of balance ... we decided in advance that we will not admit this as a subject for films.” The BBFC file from 1967 no longer exists but a file note from 1971 gives the primary reason for rejection: “The deterrent episodes (e.g. the nightmare quality of a bad trip) are not strong enough to counterbalance the pleasurable effects of the LSD.”
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Despite the fact that
The Trip
was in fact a cautionary tale about the effects of LSD, which it portrayed somewhat luridly, the film did not get a UK release until 2004. It co-starred Peter Fonda and
Dennis Hopper in what was to be a dry run for the definitive LSD film,
Easy Rider
, in 1969.

The Beatles, already at the forefront of psychedelic music and fashion, proved in the fading summer of 1967 they were also in the vanguard of spirituality. Their LSD experiences had caused Paul, John and George to ask themselves questions about their identity and purpose, giving them a glimpse of other realties they found difficult to assimilate. Eastern religion, especially Hinduism, seemed to offer answers or at least some understanding and on 25 August the three musicians boarded a train bound for Bangor in North Wales to study with the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They were accompanied by other LSD taking pop stars with spiritual leanings, including Mick Jagger. This very public excursion and display of piety garnered huge amounts of media attention and brought to the public’s attention the links between psychedelics and spirituality.

Though individuals and small groups continued to use LSD as a religious sacrament or for self development, a growing number of people were using it just for the effect; to be witness to and part of a psychedelic Disneyland of the mind. Taking LSD in clubs and pubs or as part of large crowds at rock shows didn’t suit everyone and “freak outs” were becoming more common. The counter culture realised this and began to issue information about the effects of what they were taking and how to deal with it. In October
International Times
ran the Acid Report, a two-page spread giving basic chemical, legal and sociological facts about LSD. This was intelligent and well presented, although how effective it was in preventing bad experiences with LSD is unclear.
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