Rock 'n' Roll (17 page)

1972

JANUARY

Syd Barrett impromptu, King's College Cellar, Cambridge.

FEBRUARY

Syd Barrett impromptus, Dandelion Coffee Bar, Cambridge; Market Square, Cambridge.

24
Syd Barrett's last performance, Corn Exchange, Cambridge.

MARCH

Czech Journalists' Union announces that 40 per cent of journalists have been dismissed since August 1968 for not following the government line.

JUNE

Five burglars arrested in Watergate Building.

1974

Havel spends nine months working in a brewery, the inspiration for
Audience,
his first ‘Ferdinand Vanek' play.

1975

FEBRUARY

Margaret Thatcher becomes Tory leader.

APRIL

Havel's ‘Letter to Dr Husák'.

1976

JULY AND SEPTEMBER

Seven members of the Czech Rock ‘n' Roll underground receive prison sentences for spreading anti-socialist ideas.

SEPTEMBER

Seven Czech writers sign a letter to Heinrich Boll appealing for solidarity with the rock musicians on trial.

1977

JANUARY

240 people sign Charter 77, accusing the Czech government of violating human rights that it had agreed to uphold by signing the ‘Helsinki Agreement'.

AUGUST

Elvis Presley dies.

1978

OCTOBER

The Power of the Powerless
by Havel rekindles ‘dissident' debate in Czechoslovakia.

1979

MAY

Mrs Thatcher becomes British prime minister.
Eleven leading ‘Chartists', including Havel, are arrested. In October, six of them receive prison sentences of two to five years.

1980

DECEMBER

John Lennon shot dead.

1985

MARCH

Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader.

1987

JANUARY

Gorbachev announces
perestroika
(reconstruction) and greater ‘control from below'.

The Czech leadership refuses to publish Gorbachev's
perestroika
speech, despite the fact that Soviet TV is available in Czechoslovakia.

FEBRUARY

Andy Warhol dies.

APRIL

Gorbachev visits Prague.

JUNE

Mrs Thatcher elected for a third term.

DECEMBER

Mrs Thatcher and Gorbachev meet in London.
Husák resigns from Czech party leadership but retains his presidency.

1988

OCTOBER

Syd Barrett, ‘Opel'.

1989

NOVEMBER

Fall of Berlin Wall.

Czech Communist leadership resigns.

DECEMBER

The USSR and four other Warsaw Pact countries jointly condemn the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

10 The first non-Communist Czech government for forty-one years is sworn in by President Husák, who resigns immediately afterwards.

29 The Federal Assembly, under the re-elected chairman Alexander Dubcek, unanimously elects Václav Havel as President of the Republic.

1990

JANUARY

The Czech government appoints Frank Zappa, the American rock musician, as Czechoslovakia's representative of trade and culture and tourism; appointment later rescinded as ‘over-enthusiastic'.

FEBRUARY

President Havel meets Soviet leader Gorbachev in Moscow to agree to the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia.

AUGUST

The Rolling Stones play in Prague.

2006

JANUARY

6 Syd Barrett's sixtieth birthday.

sources:

Gregory C. Ference, ed.,
Chronology of Twentieth-Century

Eastern European History
(Gale Research).

Chronicle of the Twentieth Century
(Longman).

Julian Palacios,
Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink

Floyd
(Boxtree).

Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga,
Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story
(Omnibus Press).

Jan Vladislav, ed.,
Václav Havel, or Living in Truth
(Faber and Faber).

1
. All the information about the Vanek plays comes from Carol Rocamora's careful and comprehensive book about Havel's life and work,
Acts of Courage
(Smith and Kraus, 2004), which, absurdly, I never got round to reading earlier because I was too involved in my play.

2
. Much of Havel's prose writing, notably ‘The Power of the Powerless' (in
Open Letters,
Faber and Faber, 1991) and
Letters to Olga
(Faber and Faber, 1988), has been translated by Paul Wilson who made translations for me of the exchanges between Havel and Kundera, Vaculík and Pithart referred to earlier. Wilson, a Canadian, has the further distinction of having been a member of the rock band Plastic People of the Universe between 1970 and 1972 (vocals and rhythm guitar).