Having just released the memoir/autobiography My 60s (concerning my life, music and the Underground Alternative scene in London during the sixties) I have started to follow that up with a second dose. I am about a third of the way through My 70s. It picks up the story of an alternative 60s freak on a journey through life.
This then is a short extract (rough and unedited):
My 70s.
Introduction
With the ending of my free-wheeling student days in the Summer of 1971 an era of my life was over –
though I refused to accept it. Following the end of my course, instead of hunting around for
employment, like the others on my course Liz and I headed off for the USA. I worked as a dishwasher in
Boston and Liz worked as a waitress. We then hitchhiked and bought a Greyhound ticket for four weeks
of adventure and freedom as described in My 60s.
Then it was over.
In the Summer of 1971 I had decisions to make and not too many choices. At twenty-two years old I was
a married man, a long-haired freak, with limited talents, a head full of ideals, an uncompromising stance,
a bunch of freaky friends and a lust for rock music.
The trouble was that I did not want my life to change. I wanted to live in London, the heart of where it
was happening, and I wanted to be as free as when I was a student. But I was not receiving a grant. I had
no income.
I had my principles. I did not want to be part of that obscene warmongering, elitist, misogynistic,
patriarchal, soul-destroying machine that I saw as society. I’d existed outside of it in my own sixties
bubble, with our different values, morals and aspirations. I’d lived in an idealistic world with friends
who shared those values. Grok.
True, we were like parasites living off the great society. But we lived apart from it. All the politics and intrigue went off to one side. I did not even bother to notice what the machine was up to. I had my IT and OZ, our drugs, music and social scene. We were outsiders who were used to being hassled, shaken down and victimised. We were the freaks.
But I had to live somewhere and I had to eat. Reality hit home. Like many before me I had the artist’s
dream of a creative life outside of the mainstream, a bohemian existence eked out in a garret, like a
perpetual student. No rules, no limitations. I certainly wasn’t dreaming of wealth and fame. I would have
been quite content with poverty. I’d tried my hand at painting and writing but soon realised that in the
short term neither was going to deliver any income.
The trouble was that the 60s dream had started to decay. The tight-knit subculture of like-minded freaks
with their anti-establishment views, sharing philosophy and alternative culture, had been invaded,
watered down, infiltrated and exploited. Business had moved in to make profit out of the fashion, hard
drugs had moved in to numb and addict, casualties were becoming obvious, weekend hippies with
pretentious stereotypical shit looking for the easy drugs and sex had swamped the scene, our leaders
were selling us down the river and all our bands were breaking up, decaying or changing. The scene was
crashing. You could no longer trust that the long-haired guy with the girl in the colourful dress shared
the same values. He could have been an undercover agent on a drugs bust or looking to rip you off.
Already, the story of the 60s, like that of the 50s Beatniks, had become stereotyped. The 60s was being
depicted as the mainstream version of Carnaby Street, mini-skirts and pop music with a dressing of free love, drugs, rebellion and hippy-dippy mysticism – open to ridicule and projected as fashion, shallow kids at play. The real vibe, the heart of the counterculture was being side-lined.
So in 1971 Liz and I returned to London on our flight from New York. We had rucksacks of dirty clothes, a
head full of dreams, memories, experiences and hopes and exactly $1 and 1 cent between us.
My long-suffering parents met us at the airport and took us back with them. In September 1971 I was
back home in Stoke Road in Walton on Thames, my childhood home. I had somehow achieved a London
University honours degree in Zoology but didn’t have the faintest clue what I wanted to do with my life.
My great urge was to get back up to London to reconnect with my friends, the music scene and my way
of life. It wasn’t over. It couldn’t be.
The plan was that we’d stay with my parents for a few weeks. We’d get casual work to get a little cash
together to put a deposit on a flat. We’d move up to London and take it from there.
The sixties had ended and the seventies had begun.
Opher 22.4.2026
My 60s: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9798253680780: Books
My 60s eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store