A slow motion crash – In Search of Captain Beefheart: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502820457: Books
The 1960s came to an end like a slow motion crash. I imagine it as a huge ocean liner serenely piling into an iceberg. Like in some cartoon the front end just crumples up as it sails into the immovable berg and it just keeps going getting shorter and shorter. It left all us 60s freaks floundering around in the icy waters of the second-rate 70s.
We never thought it would and didn’t really believe it had when it did. It took me years to finally accept. All those dreams, alternative societies, camaraderie and ideals seemed to decay into fluff and get blown away.
All around me was death, sell-out and casualties.
Jimi choked on his own vomit in strange circumstances, Jim Morrison mysteriously died in his bath in Paris, and Janis O.D’Ed in her hotel room, Brian Jones was found suspiciously floated face down in his pool. Even Bob Dylan’s motorbike accident a few years earlier was weird. He’d come back as an impostor! If I had a suspicious mind I might have thought someone had organised all this.
Then there were the walking wounded, the acid casualties like Syd Barrett and Peter Green, the heroin victims like Clapton and a whole series of others.
On the personal front one of my good friends, Jeff Evans, had got really fucked up on Hollis Brown cough medicine and then acid and dope. He developed extreme paranoia and ended up jumping off a bridge into an express train.
The last time I saw him was in the so called summer of 1970 when I was working as a road sweeper. Unbeknown to me I was busy sweeping down his road. He had popped out of his flat and bumped into me. It had been a really warm greeting. I hadn’t seen him for a good year or so. We chatted for a couple of minutes. His eyes looked strangely blown and vacuous but he sounded fine. Then Jeff said that he was going to get a newspaper and I’d have to pop up for a coffee. That sounded good to me. I worked my way up the street and noticed Jeff coming back. He was hiding behind trees and peeping round at me and scuttled into his house. It was weird. I figured I wasn’t going to get that coffee after all.
That night I met up with a few friends and mentioned it. They said that he’d been getting all these flash-backs and paranoid stuff. Rooms melted and there were machines in the walls. He thought people were robots sent to spy on him.
A few weeks later he killed himself.
Lanky was another friend who got into heroin. He just dropped out of sight and mouldered.
It was a pattern I’d see on many occasions. Once into the abyss they’d rarely make it back, at least not as the same people.
There is a fine line in all risks, explorations and quests. A life without risk is an empty life but taking risks without engaging the brain is just plain stupidity.
The optimism of the 60s was fractured. The Beatles split, as did the Doors, Country Joe & the Fish, Love, Cream, Jimmy Hendrix Experience, Taste, Free, Fleetwood Mac, Velvet Underground and numerous others. It was carnage.
There was the bad vibes of Altamont and the decay of San Francisco.
Those bands that were left were lacklustre and becoming boring.
At first we were lulled. Out of the ashes there were some notable tours de force. Lennon’s first two albums were vitriolic and brilliant. George Harrison released a great triple album. Even Bad Company did a couple of great tracks, but in general it was over.
Everyone woke up to the fact that all the sharing and idealism was a lot of lip service to most of the two faced bastards. There were all our heroes jet-setting around the globes with huge mansions and limousines, flying hairdressers in to do their hair before a gig, while preaching equality and sharing. At least the Beatles tried a more egalitarian approach with Apple and got their fingers burnt for all their trouble.
I was a little shielded from it. I had my hero Roy Harper to buoy me up. Strangely as the scene disintegrated he was reaching his apotheosis with one startling creation after another and I was part of it.