London Calling (40 page)

There was a long length of inflated plastic tubing, almost human height, for people to climb over and play with like a modern-day
bouncy castle. There was free candy floss and sweets as well as free fruit and vegetarian food. A fibreglass igloo was presided
over by Hoppy’s girlfriend, Suzy Creamcheese, in a tiny mini-dress. She handed out joints rolled from dried banana skins for
people to smoke and supposedly get high – that month’s harmless hippie fad. Most of her customers were high already so no-one
could really tell if it
worked or not (not). By most accounts, at least half the people there were high on drugs, most of them tripping. In fact the
drug use even alarmed the organizers, who could see that some people were seriously out of it. Unfortunately, an underground
chemist chose that night to launch STP on the London scene, a very powerful hallucinogen that takes three or more hours to
realize its full effect so people often overdose, thinking that the initial dose was not sufficient. There was possibly more
amphetamine in the doses distributed that evening as many were energized rather than sent on a contemplative trip. John Lennon
and John Dunbar were watching the BBC TV nine o’clock news at Lennon’s house in Weybridge and saw footage of the event, called
the chauffeur, jumped in the Rolls and arrived high on acid. They had forgotten it was on.

There were a few skinheads who had somehow obtained tickets (they were unlikely to buy them) and strutted in, hoping to cause
a spot of aggro but they were love-bombed by a group of girls in lace and velvet dresses and were soon seen skipping hand
in hand with the girls, out of their heads on acid. A more serious incident occurred around midnight. The famous Henry Willis
organ in the palace was undergoing restoration and its pipes were covered with scaffolding. People began climbing up the steel
bars, some of them clearly out of their heads, and could have been killed if they fell. Naturally, the event was not insured
and in the end the music had to be stopped to make them get down. The Ally Pally was like an enormously enlarged UFO Club
and felt very familiar and comfortable to the regulars. As John Dunbar remarked, everyone he had ever known in his life seemed
to be there. There were an estimated 10,000 people, but the hall held far more and there was plenty of space for people to
promenade about, meeting friends, talking and smoking, dressed in their King’s Road finery or full hippie regalia.

The bands were mostly UFO regulars: Arthur Brown gave an inspired performance in his flaming headdress; the Soft Machine
dressed up specially for the occasion, Daevid Allen in a miner’s helmet, Mike Ratledge in his Dr Strange cape, Kevin Ayers
with rouged cheeks and wide-brimmed hat, and Robert Wyatt with a short back and sides. They played a fine set but Daevid Allen’s
memory was not of their own set but of seeing the Floyd. Daevid Allen:

As I recall, the Floyd played at Alexandra Palace at four in the morning. It must have been one of the greatest gigs they
ever did, and Syd played with a slide and it completely blew my mind, because I was hearing echoes of all the music I’d ever
heard with bits of Bartok and God-knows-what.
⁴

The Pink Floyd arrived around 3.30am having played a gig in Holland that evening and returned on the ferry. They were tired
and exhausted and both their manager, Pete Jenner, and Syd Barrett were tripping. Peter Jenner:

I dropped a tab on the way to the gig and it started coming on as we were being directed in. I was having to steer the van
through something very tiny and lots of people were wandering about all absolutely out of their crust. There were people climbing
over scaffolding and it was an extraordinary building with all the glass in the Alley Pally… as the light came up, because
it was the summer… it was a wonderful, really a psychedelic experience. The whole world was there and every band was playing
and it was a magical occasion.
⁵

The Floyd had requested to go on at dawn, and just as the first fingers of light glanced through the enormous rose window
on the south-east front of the building, Roger Waters began the throbbing bass line of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’. I recalled
the event in my book on the Floyd written in the late seventies, saying:

Their music was eerie, solemn and calming. After a whole night of frolicking and festivities and too much acid came the celebration
of the dawn. Throughout the hall people held hands with their neighbours. The Floyd were weary and probably did not play so
well but at that moment they were superb. They gave voice to the feelings of the crowd. Syd’s eyes blazed as his notes soared
up into the strengthening light and the dawn was reflected in his famous mirror-disc esquire, the light dancing in the crowd.
Then came the rebirth of energy, another day, and with the sun a burst of dancing and enthusiasm.
⁶

As people left to walk the mile and a half to Wood Green tube station, Hoppy stood at the entrance shaking hands with everyone
as if it had been a private dinner party. When they entered they had been greeted by Hoppy and Suzy, and also Norman Pilkington
– a writer for
IT
– who gave many of them his address. In the following weeks he received more than forty visitors. It was a beautiful sunny
summer day and many people stayed on for the Be-in, sitting on the grass of the large park surrounding Alexandra Palace, looking
at the wonderful view out over London. Some hippies appeared with a ten-foot-long joint rolled from photo-studio backdrop
paper and filled with flowers and leaves and began running around on the grass with it. The skin-heads, having now come down
again, stole it from them and spent a happy hour kicking it to pieces.

Though the story has been told many times, the raid on Keith Richards’s house by the drugs squad belongs here because it acted
as a rallying point for the underground, and raised concerns among some establishment figures. On 12 February 1967 police
acting on a tip-off from the weekly scandal sheet the
News of the World
raided a weekend house party at Redlands, Keith Richards’s Tudor manor house near Chichester. They first waited for George
Harrison and Patti Boyd to leave as the Beatles still had a degree of immunity because of their MBEs. Then a large number
of West Sussex constables rushed in and seized sun-tan lotion, particularly Ambre Solaire, small bars of soap from hotels,
Earl Grey tea and other suspect substances for analysis, and even a few traces of pot. There was one person present whom no-one
knew very well, an American called Dave ‘Acid King’ Schneiderman, who was later generally thought to have been the
News of the World
’s informant. Schneiderman had with him an aluminium flight case filled with all manner of drugs, including hash, pot and
L S D. Mysteriously the police didn’t examine it and Schneiderman was allowed to leave the country with no charges brought
against him. The tabloid press seized upon the fact that Marianne Faithfull had just taken a bath and was wearing nothing
but a fur rug when the police arrived. The police also regarded antique dealer Christopher Gibbs’s attire as unorthodox until
it was pointed out that it was the Pakistani national dress. The art dealer Robert Fraser tried to make his escape across
the lawn but was rugby-tackled by a policewoman, who found twenty-four jacks of heroin on him. There was no mention of the
raid in the daily press so the usual approaches were made. It turned out that £10,000 could make the small amount of drugs
found disappear, but though the money was handed over, a news story in the next issue of the
News of the World
– a carefully worded report, ‘Drug Squad Raid Pop Stars’ Party’ – put a stop to the payoff.

Four months later, on 27 June, after a farcical trial, the cartoon character reactionary Judge Block found Mick Jagger, Keith
Richards and Robert Fraser guilty: Jagger for the illegal possession of two mild amphetamines found in his jacket that he
bought over the counter in Italy for travel sickness but for which he would have needed a prescription to buy them in Britain
– his doctor said he would willingly have written one; Richards of allowing his Sussex house to be used for smoking hemp;
and Fraser for possession of heroin. The next day, 29 June, the London
Evening Standard
reported:

Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richard and Mayfair art gallery director robert Fraser were jailed this afternoon at
Chichester for drug offences at Richard’s house party in Sussex four months ago. The sentences imposed
at West Sussex quarter sessions were Richard: one year; ordered to pay £500 towards costs. Jagger three months; £100 costs.
Fraser: six months; £200 costs.

Mick was taken to Brixton jail, Keith and Fraser to Wormwood Scrubs. That evening there were demonstrations outside the
News of the World
against their role as police informants in their war against the hippies. After a night in jail, Mick and Keith were granted
bail in the High Court of £7,000 each. Robert stayed in jail and began serving his four months, allowing for good behaviour.

In an unprecedented move, the editor of the
Times
, William Rees-Mogg, defied the sub-judice rules and wrote a stinging editorial, condemning Jagger’s sentence. Published on
1 July 1967, and headlined ‘Who Breaks a Butterfly on the Wheel?’, it described the offence as ‘about as mild a drug case
as can ever have been brought before the courts’ and gave an example of the dangers to the public if such minor technical
transgressions were to be prosecuted: ‘If after his visit to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury had bought proprietary
air sickness pills on Rome Airport and imported the unused tablets into Britain on his return, he would have risked committing
precisely the same offence.’ In the politest possible language he labelled Judge Block as a vindictive fool who was dragging
the law into disrepute, ending by saying: ‘There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr Jagger received a more severe
sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man.’

This fuelled considerable public debate. Even the
Sunday Express
expressed astonishment, saying: ‘He merely had four benzedrine tablets, legally purchased abroad, which, with the knowledge
and approval of his doctor, he took to keep him awake while he worked.’
⁷
Meanwhile the threat of jail hung over them until their appeal on 31 July. The Appeals Court lifted the sentences against
Mick and Keith: Mick was conditionally discharged, Keith’s sentence was quashed because Judge Block did not warn the jury
that there was only tenuous evidence that Keith knew anyone was smoking pot. That evening Mick appeared on ITV’s
World in Action
. He arrived by helicopter for an outdoor discussion with William Rees-Mogg, the editor of the
Times
; Lord Stow Hill; Dr John Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich; and Father Thomas Corbishley, a Jesuit priest. Mick told them:
‘I am a rebel against society, but not an obvious one. Many people like me feel that things are wrong. Society has pushed
me into this position of responsibility.’ The appalling Judge Block’s reaction was seen when he addressed farmers in an after-dinner
speech at a ceremony organized by the Horsham Ploughing and Agricultural Society, at Rudgwick in Sussex, shortly afterwards,
saying: ‘We did our best, your fellow countrymen, I and my fellow magistrates, to cut these Stones down to size, but alas,
it was not to be, because the Court of Criminal Appeal let them roll free.’

Meanwhile, Robert Fraser’s artists gathered together to keep his gallery open. Richard Hamilton commented:

I had felt a strong personal indignation at the insanity of legal institutions which could jail anyone for the offence of
self-abuse with drugs. The sentence in the case of my friend Robert Fraser was blatantly not intended to help him through
a sickness, it was to be a notorious example to others. As the judge declared ‘There are times when a swingeing sentence can
act as a deterrent’.
⁸

The best thing to come out of the Rolling Stones solidarity demonstration outside the
News of the World
was the meeting of Caroline Coon and Rufus Harris. It was dawn, and a lot of young people had gathered in Piccadilly Circus
under the statue of Eros after marching from Fleet Street up Whitehall, through Trafalgar Square to the Dilly. Caroline and
Rufus began chatting and discovered they were both art students – Caroline was at Central St Martin’s – and that they both
had strong feelings about the iniquitous drug laws. The next evening Rufus visited Caroline in her studio, and that was the
beginning of Release.

Caroline’s outrage at the drugs laws came from witnessing the treatment of her boyfriend:

The first time I went to court for a drugs trial was in 1965 at the old Bailey. I was 20. I saw a 25-year-old black Jamaican
friend of mine being tried for possession of cannabis. He was sentenced to three years in prison. I thought what happened
to him was about racism and prejudice against the working class.
⁹

She told
Life
magazine:

Too many people I knew were getting busted and sent to prison, and on too little evidence, because they made foolish statements
to the police or they couldn’t find a solicitor to represent them or the magistrate wouldn’t allow legal aid money. We were
all feeling the pressure, so we called a meeting.
¹⁰

Release, the world’s first 24-hour underground legal aid organization aimed at assisting young people arrested for drugs,
began in Caroline’s
basement flat in Shepherd’s Bush in the summer of 1967. It answered a huge need. More and more young people were growing their
hair and dressing in hippie fashions, which meant more and more of them were being stopped and frisked by the police. Young
people were becoming alienated and the police were treating it half as a sadistic game, and half as a war.

The next year, 1968, Release moved to Princedale Road, next door to
Oz
magazine’s offices, which was handy whenever
Oz
was raided. A blue-painted door led up two flights of stairs to the Release office. The furniture was all second-hand: yellow
oakwood desks and two ancient sit-up-and-beg typewriters, four chairs and a battered settee. Bright psychedelic posters decorated
the walls. In addition to Caroline and Rufus there were two secretaries and a librarian. The running costs were about £100
a week. The office opened from ten until late at night and the phone was manned twenty-four hours a day.