This is a memoir of my life with Rock Music. I started collecting vinyl in 1959 at the age of ten. I started gigging at fourteen (The Birds and then Them) and I’m still doing it!! For me it is a quest to find the absolute best, the most exciting, the most satisfying – from Roy Harper to Captain Beefheart, from Son House to Bob Dylan, from Woody Guthrie to White Stripes. It never stops. Here’s a short section – (sorry, can’t seem to get the photos to come out.)
In Search of Captain Beefheart: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502820457: Books
Mining in the Underground – 60s
Being weird was a profession. The 60s Underground was an alternative society, a bunch of brothers and sisters who were readily identifiable; a camaraderie that meant you shared everything; a sense of fun; a tolerance for new ideas, difference, new experience; a different morality; a wish to travel, experience and live; a joie de vivre; a wish to chuck out the old rules and live in a better way. We were naïve and innocent but we were happy.
Opher & Liz 1968
We’d looked at the boring drab lives of our parents; at the humdrum of suburbia; the class system and soulless prostitution of work; the cycle of war and exploitation; we’d seen the intolerance, bigotry and arrogance and we thought we could do better. You could see the way the chips were stacked that it was impossible to change the system, the establishment was established and as immovable as a mountain. Therefore we would drop out of it and do our own thing.
When you walked round town and saw some dude coming towards you sporting hair and colour you knew you could go across, introduce yourself and have a good chat. There was an energy and camaraderie. We were in the same tribe, unified against the machine, digging the same vibe.
When I was in Boston it was quicker to hitch-hike round town than to get on a tram or bus. A lot of the Freaks were taxi drivers and they would pick you up for free. The creed of the Underground was to share and look after each other.
The problem was that doing your own thing meant scrabbling around for somewhere to live and something to live off. There were numerous little cottage industries in making belts, beads, scarves, clothes, candles and paraphernalia. There was always room for a little dealing, squatting, panhandling and dole. Failing that you could head off into the country and try your hand at self-sufficiency.
Dropping out of the system was fraught with problems unless you were a talented musician and could make it in a band.
Fortunately for me I was exempt from those kinds of concerns. I was a student. All I had to worry about was how to eke out a modest grant (I believe it was £110 a term) to pay rent on a shared room, eat, put petrol in my vehicle (currently a comer cob van hand-painted bright yellow) and still gain me access to three gigs a week and second-hand vinyl. In order to achieve this I worked as a road sweeper in the summer and for a year I worked all Friday night, six pm to six am, in Lyons bakery. It gave me a great deal of freedom though I did have to go in and catch at least half of my lectures or they would throw me out!
I chose my college, out of a very limited choice due to my poor grades at A Level, because when I walked in for interview it had a poster for Roy Harper in the entrance.
Opher 1967 – University application photo with hair carefully combed back out of the way.
I walked in to the refectory at our induction and made a beeline for a table where I befriended two mad characters in Jules and Pete who became friends for life. Funny how the subconscious works!
Every week we would study the NME for gigs and select what was best. There was at least one mandatory Harper gig and the scope for the others was amazing. Everyone was playing non-stop all the time! At the time we thought it would never end. Unfortunately it did end.
It left me feeling that I wish I had been more organised, selective and systematic. There were so many great acts that I never got to see. It was always that I’d see them next week. Thus Lennon, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Screaming Jay Hawkins slipped through the net. However I did see most and had the pleasure of seeing them in small clubs and getting backstage to have a chat. Security did not exist back then and the bands were still one with the audience. We were all freaks creating an alternative culture. That rapidly went out the window.
So, let me see? What is the best way of explaining this? (If only I’d had a camera, taken notes or something – memories are so febrile).
OK – I’ll ramble because that is pretty much what it was like back then. I’ll go over the whole thing from 1967 to 1971 when the dream was finally over (though we kept pretending for a year or two more!). I’ll mix up venues and bands.
First there was the college circuit. Various universities put on gigs via their entertainment committees. These were usually bunches of Freaks who wanted to get their hands on all the best bands and because the best bands were cheap they could get just about anybody. So my college (Barking – later North East London Poly) put on regular concerts by the likes of Roy Harper, Al Stewart, the Prettythings, Third Ear Band, Slade and the like. I went to most of these although I gave Slade a miss because I considered them lightweight. Entry was usually about 4 shillings – 20p.
Other colleges put on just about everyone so I made a habit of catching Edgar Broughton, Davey Graham, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Traffic, Family, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed.
Then there were the pubs that put halls aside for concerts. The Fishmongers Arms in Wood Green put on Pink Floyd and Man. The Toby Jug had a regular Blues Night with John Mayall, Chicken Shack, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Aynsley Dunbar and the like. Though they were more expensive and charged 5 shillings – 25p.
There was Eel-Pie Island who had bands like Blossom Toes and Pink Floyd.
Then there were venues like the Mecca ballrooms that would put on Family and Arthur Brown.
The Freak venues were the all night clubs like the Marquee, UFO, Middle Earth and Klooks Kleek. They would do everything from Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Cream, to visiting West Coast Bands. An all night gig might have three top bands on such as Traffic, Soft Machine and Pink Floyd and might cost 10 shillings – 50p.
It was non-stop and there was always choice. I find it hard to imagine that back then I was choosing between Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac or Lennon playing the Lyceum with a host of other possibilities (many of whom I would now die for) bringing up the rear. There was even the odd occasion when you couldn’t be bothered.
On top of that you had the free gigs, benefits, happenings and such – like a regular Hyde Park hosted by Roy Harper and featuring Edgar Broughton, Deviants, Pink Fairies, Pink Floyd, Action, Third Ear Band, Soft Machine, Family, Jethro Tull, etc etc etc. and then the biggies with Blind Faith and the Stones.
Then there were the weekend festivals. They were really pricey though – a three day festival might set you back thirty shillings – £1.50.
Then there were things like the Electric Cinema, the Lyceum, Les Cousins, the Three Horseshoes Pub on Tottenham Court Road, the Barge at Kingston and various small clubs around like one out near Sunbury where were used to go and catch Mayall regularly.
In between all this you had to hang out with your mates playing each other music, sharing music and talking about music, politics, relevant news issues, social situations, mysticism and the nature of infinity, the universe and life, and reading.
Apart from Kerouac and the Beats there were the Freak activists like Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, George Jackson and Angela Davies. There were my Sci-Fi novels and other novels to read. There was OZ and IT to get through. I tell you, man, life was hard! I don’t know how I fitted it all in. No wonder I had to stay up most of the night. Oh, if only I had recorded some of those all-night raps! It’s a wonder I got to college at all! My education was had in my own room.
Beatific Opher 1971
So now you will perhaps indulge me as I ride the beast of nostalgia and shine the spotlight of imperfect memory to illustrate the highlights that come to mind. It is a feeble, melancholic attempt at best for I fear that most is lost in the fog of time, and that which is remembered lacks the colour and intensity of the original. I am aware that whole gigs, bands and episodes are deleted in history for I have no recollection of having seen them at all even though I can confirm that I was there. However these fragments may serve to give you a flavour of those years – years in which I was ridden by a crazy force and filled with a passion that made my eyes gleam and loosened my tongue to fly its imaginative path of ideals faster than my brain could keep up.
We had fun bopping to Edgar Broughton and gleefully chanting to get those demons out. The demons were, in my mind at least, the crazy capitalist war-mongering society that was guiding our exploitative, intolerant, selfish, greedy and cruel society towards extinction (it still is). Edgar growled in his best Beefheart voice as he urged us to drop out and we loved it…….
There was Pink Floyd who I saw quite regularly. Their early shows in Middle Earth with Syd were mind blowing. The later incarnations maintained that imaginative creativity. The light shows and mesmeric sounds were spacey and like nothing I’d heard. The stand out things for me from later was a piercing performance of ‘Careful with that axe Eugene’ at the Fishmonger’s arms where I got an image of the band as silhouettes acting it out. But then that might just have been me. Then there was the Parliament Hills Camden free concert and grooving along to ‘Astronomy Domine’ which was the best I’d ever heard them do. It really drove along. Then there was Eel Pie Island where the floor was bouncing as they played. I got to see most of the other psychedelic bands – Action, Godz, Mandrake Paddle Steamer, Simon Dupree, Moody Blues, Tomorrow etc. but none of them got close to Floyd and later, when Prog Rock took off I saw bands like Genesis and Yes and they could not hold a light. The only band that managed to produce a great heavy spacey sound was Hawkwind.
I really regret not going along to Floyd’s stadium stuff in the 70s and 80s. I took the view that which would I want to go along and pay an exorbitant amount to see a band, who were reduced to distant ants on a stage, when I had seen them up close and personal for free, or at most 25p, on numerous occasions. I had the belief that Rock was best in a small sweaty club – close up! I still think it is but I had failed to realise that it had moved on and that there was a place for stadium rock. The whole thing had become a spectacle and a show rather than a performance. I think I would have enjoyed them.
As a footnote I did get to meet Syd. I was wandering through EMI studio in 1971 with Roy Harper and we bumped into Syd. Roy stopped and had a chat with him while I stood silently by. It was true what they said – he was a quiet pleasant guy, small with dark curly hair and he spoke quite vaguely but his eyes were gone; they were really glistening black holes peering out from some inner void.
Opher on the beach in Devon 1969
The Incredible String Band were another favourite. Gary Turp had got me into them. He was into Buddhism and meditation and had got himself a job in the park so that he could sit cross-legged in his hut and meditate. It always seemed to me that there was an underlying ploy. It appeared to attract hordes of pretty girls and he wasn’t adverse to a bit of Kundalini awakening! I first saw the Incredibles as a duo at some big festival when they played littered the stage with a vast assortment of instruments which they constantly picked up and put down in the course of every song. They did a great version of ‘Maybe Someday she’ll come along’. I also have fond memories of a great performance in the incongruous London Palladium of all places with the two girls Licorice and Rose. I loved their ‘Very Cellular song’ and was always singing ‘May the long time sun shine upon you’ – very uplifting. I later saw them with the theatrical group performing U at the Roundhouse. It was panned at the time but I loved it. It was great to see them reform and to get backstage at the Bloomsbury Theatre, courtesy of Darren. They then toured as a trio again and I got to meet Clive Palmer at Beverley Playhouse.
I was quite into Buddhism and Eastern philosophy at the time which was a consequence of the whole Jack Kerouac Beat thing. I was extremely turned off by the staid religion I was surrounded with full of Christian hypocrisy and I was looking for meaning and wonder. There seemed to me to be a different level to things. It fitted in with the whole acid culture. I was really into mystical experiences, different dimensions, wisdom of the ancients, infinity and the nature of the universe. We had endless excited discussions about it.