In Search of Captain Beefheart – A Rock Memoir -Paperback, Kindle, Hardcover 

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Another little slice of my life. By 1971 it felt as if the whole dream was over. I was wandering through the rubble of the sixties looking for evidence of life. We headed for the USA for a few months.

I was still searching for that perfect Rock Music.

Extract:

Back in 1971 we still thought we’d be young forever and that the whole scene was so normal it would always be there. Wandering around Greenwich Village was a casual experience not even worthy of note. We hadn’t even gone to see anyone at the Café WHA? – Or the Bitter End, Gerdes Folk City, the Fat Black Pussycat or even the Gaslight. We could always do that another time if there was someone on who we wanted to see. The age of Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan was gone forever.

We didn’t even visit the Chelsea Hotel. Who knows? We might have actually bumped into someone? Maybe Jimi, Janis or Leonard? It wasn’t that long ago that Dylan had dried out there.

But this was the 1960s – you didn’t visit places and see things – you lived them! Sight seeing was square. Experience was all there was.

We were content to wander and meet up with like minded people, hanging around, talking and playing music. We asked what was good to eat as we only had $5 between us. We advised that knishes were good. That’s what we ate.

By 2010 all the experiences were hidden away in the past. We were more eager to seek out the hazy ghosts of their former existence. We couldn’t hear the Beat poems of Ginsberg, Kerouac and their wild friends and neither could we hear Phil Ochs singing his heart out.

We wandered down Bleeker and MacDougal and I looked in a book shop. They had a Richard Brautigan hardback with a signed dedication for $1200. That sort of summed it up.

We checked out all the clubs that were left and where the others had been, found Jimi’s Electric Ladyland studio and bought some knishes.

This time we went in the Chelsea Hotel and wandered round its rambling corridors looking at the art on the wall. It was shabby and atmospheric. I could see why it would appeal. The bohemian history of Dylan Thomas down to Patti Smith was seeped in its walls.

We tried to find where Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable had been but there was nothing to see.

The Sixties Counter-Culture saved the World!

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Beefheart played his part!

Anecdote – A Bedford van around Europe!

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I incorporated some of the stories of my various travels round Europe and America into this novel – Goofin’ with the Cosmic Freaks – a kind of sixties ‘On the Road’.

A Bedford van around Europe

There were four of us: my wife Liz, my friend Pete and his new wife Julia. We aimed to travel round Europe for the summer. Pete had bought an old Bedford Van and we worked out a loose itinery.

We set off in our beat-up van with four bunks and basic stove much to the bemusement of Julia’s parents. We gathered that it wasn’t quite their idea of a honeymoon.

All went well. We caught the ferry and toodled around France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In Paris we discovered the disadvantages of not having a toilet on board. The cafés wouldn’t let you use the toilet unless you bought something. First thing in the morning was fun – ordering coffee cross-legged.

The plan was then to head down to the tip of Italy, ferry across to Greece and work our way back through Yugoslavia. That did not work quite to plan.

Italy was great. We took the scenic route on the old road, up and down mountains on the windy road. We had time and saw all the little villages. Besides, we did not have money for the tolls.

At the top of a mountain the van would not start. We tried rolling it down and bump-starting it but it still would not catch. In the end we free-wheeled it down the mountain to the little village at the bottom. It was a bit hairy hurtling round the corners with no engine engaged. The van veered around a little and leaned rather precariously. But we got down in one piece, free-wheeled as far as possible and pushed it to a little garage in the centre of the village fronting on to the sea.

The mechanics, who could not speak a word of English, seemed quite amused at the sight of a quaint old Bedford van with its four colourfully attired, long-haired characters. The sixties had not yet arrived in this part of Italy. But they were very friendly. They helped push the van on to the ramp and began pulling the engine to bits.

In the afternoon, with bits of engine all over the place, one of the mechanics managed to explain that we had burnt a valve out and that they would have to order a part from England. That would take a week.

That was a bit of a bummer. That was our home he was talking about.

We were homeless.

We managed to convey this to the mechanics who kept smiling and shaking their heads.

It seemed that they were happy for us to live in the van up on the ramp in their garage. They let us use their toilet and sink.

All was good. We had our home back.

For a week we lived on a ramp in an Italian garage. All day we’d mess about on the beach and in the sea and at night they’d wave to us and lock us in for the night.

I can imagine the tales and gossip concerning the four British Hippies living in their garage. They found it very funny.

The part duly arrived. The van was mended and we resumed our adventure. Pisa, Venice, Rome and Florence were all, strangely, extremely Italian and different. We couldn’t afford to eat much but feasted on melon and fruit.

There was no time to go to Greece though.

We saved that for another day.

Photo Gallery – Back in the Sixties!

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I didn’t use a real photo of me because I didn’t want to scare you.

These are photos from back in the sixties when I was young, wild and free and everything was right with the world. I thought I could do anything I wanted and change the world. Oh to be full of the joys of youth!

My wife doesn’t want to appear on my blog so don’t tell her that I’ve put her photos up here! She is so lovely I couldn’t resist! I’m the ugly one!

Photo Gallery – back in the 60s!

The Sixties, Hippies, Beatniks and Psychedelics

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The Sixties, Hippies, Beatniks and Psychedelics

The big difference between the Beatniks of the Fifties and the Hippies of the Sixties was the drugs of choice.

The fifties Beat Poets used marijuana (tea) and alcohol (as well as some amphetamine and heroin). The sixties Hippies used marijuana and Hash (Pot, weed, bush, spliff) with psychedelics like LSD and Mescaline (there was also a lot of speed but junkies were generally looked down on). The prevailing attitude of the sixties was that these psychedelics and pot were harmless. Indeed there were many who saw them as brain vitamins and a necessary way to augment a musical event complete with lightshow, a film (like 2001 a Space Odyssey) or the creative process. Many bands were producing long drawn out improvisations geared to an audience on psychedelics.

The Hippies thought that pot and LSD were much safer than alcohol and nicotine, and that the older generation were being hypocritical. It is only later with the psychosis and depression created by the drugs that there is perspective. They are not as harmless as they seemed.

For the Beatniks satori was to be aspired to by meditation in the traditional Zen manner. It took years and had to be mastered.

For the Hippies it was as simple; you just dropped a tab of acid and an hour later you were there – instant nirvana.

But were they talking about the same thing?

For straight society it was all very worrying whichever way you looked at it. All this desire to attain a mystical union with the cosmos was disturbing. It was wacky, weird and most unwelcome.

The abiding question of the time was were you hip or were you square? Were you straight or were you cool? Did you opt in or did you drop out?

Who am I?

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Who am I?

I was born in 1949 in the Thames Delta in the deep South outside London. I grew up in the 1960s and was thoroughly immersed in the London scene and counterculture. I was a student through all those heady days and lapped up the idealism and optimism of the times. We knew we were changing the world and bringing new sensibilities to bear. Those were the days that spawned feminism, the green movement, anti-capitalism and civil rights.

I was there through the whole gamut of Rock Music. As a kid I heard Elvis on the radio and then there was the Beatles, Psychedelia and the London Underground, Acid Rock and the West Coast alternative culture, IT, OZ and a thriving Rock scene and cultural tsunami.

I got to see most of the important acts – Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Cream, Roy Harper, Captain Beefheart, Country Joe & the Fish, Muddy Waters, Pink Floyd, Son House and Bo Diddley – and hosts of others. I went to all the big festivals and events.

The 1960s counter-culture was not a fashion statement; it was a way of life. It looked at the boring establishment, the old-boys network, the stereotypical attire, the joyless lack of creativity, the conventions, religion, politics, blatant selfish greed, exploitation, inherent racism and sexism and looked to create something better. I was part of it.

We stood up for our ideals – the anti-war movement, liberation of sex, and the bringing of freedom and colour into a drab 1950s post-war society.

On a creative front, having discovered that despite my passion, I have no talent for music, I went into the real of writing.

In the 1970s the energy and creativity dropped out. Earning a living loomed and I went into teaching where I stayed true to my ideals. I extolled the virtues of fun, freedom and the joy of creativity. I brought a bit of colour into the profession and did things my way. I must have been successful because I rose up to Headteacher and my school became one of the best in the country. It’s Open, Caring, Friendly ethos was mine and I proved it worked. If you treated young people respectfully and made learning fun everything would work. It did.

During the course of my teaching career I built up a large number of books. I wrote whatever took my fancy. I never wrote for financial gain or to get famous; I wrote what I was interested in, moved by or felt the urge to do. I produced Sci-Fi to alternative fiction and Rock biography and history – whatever I enjoyed. I always harboured a desire to make a living out of writing but was always more than content to be a teacher.

To be a teacher is a privilege. A teacher is the equivalent of the tribes shaman; the holder of wisdom, dispenser of knowledge. I was happy with that.

On the family front I fell in love when I was eighteen and married in a great event in the woods in 1970. We have been together ever since and have four very dynamic, individualistic and vibrant kids who are changing the world in their own ways. They fill me with great love and hope for the future.

I now live in the North of England and continue writing and doing my bit to change the zeitgeist.