I
never saw the Beatles.
The first album I bought was Sergeant Peppers, played on a Garrard 401 turntable
with an S.M.E. arm, a Leak stereo 30 tuner and Jordon Watt Jupiter speakers.
In May 1968, I had decided to visit Paris and hitched from Calais having got the
boat over the channel. Paris was celebrating a small revolution, though I spent
most of my time in a youth hostel talking to a plump girl who was using
amphetamines. When I did wander out I saw a riot policeman in a grey leather,
full length coat and steel helmet, armed and looking like a cyber man. I went
back to the youth hostel and then being broke went to the British Consulate, who
kindly paid my fare home.
The summer of 1969 was bright and fair and at the age of 18, it was time to set
out into the world.
I had a good life in a large detached house on a hill, a third of a mile from
the BBC TV and radio mast in Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, a Warwickshire
town that had just joined the city of Birmingham.
When I was 13, I had seen a UFO high in the sky, probably catching up on an episode
of the Archers.
My mother had come from North Wales to find a job after doing war work as a
supervisor in a munitions factory at
Marchwiel near Wrexham and she had met my
father at a dance. He had spent his war in shadow factories as a toolmaker and
had joined the family engineering business in Bath Street, Birmingham. This had
gone from strength to strength and on the winnings, we had moved from Small
Heath to Sutton in 1958.
Having escaped from a minor public school in Colwyn
bay, I had finished my education at Ryland Bedford secondary modern in Sutton
town centre, leaving with a toolbox of exams. My auburn hair was growing over my
ears and my school friends had introduced me to the pleasure of smoking herbs.
Having had a number of jobs I was not in education or work and getting up my
parent’s nose was put in touch with a shrink, I did not take up my fathers offer to go and see him.
I got a bed-sit in Sutton town centre which my school friends and their partners
used for a bit of adolescent fun, the youth leader of the local YMCA which did
an excellent disco on a Friday, called me to see him. I met a bunch of
professional do-gooders who advised that I should get a job, needles to say I
ignored them and carried on signing.
Moving to a bed-sit on the Lichfield Road I set out for Devon and Cornwall with
a friend Alan Garner, ending up at St Ives. In London on the way down I had sold
the camera my grandmother bought me for some black hash, though to be honest I
got little out of it at the time other than paranoia, so I didn’t smoke that
much.
St Ives like many places had a number of young people living the alternative
life, we generally looked after each other and slept in the hills around the
town, there were even two young runaways who were madly in love, the police came
looking for them and I threw my herbs away. The next day we all went down to
Saint Erth and left our doss bags at the train station, one of the older lads
had a coat in which he kept some food and a little stove, so we had something to
eat, when we got back to Saint Erth our stuff had been moved by the railway
people and we had to go and fetch it.
We hung around St Ives for a bit and then decided to
hitch back to Birmingham. On reaching Okehampton we met a kind farmer who
invited us to stay at his small farm. It was a beautiful farmhouse with no
electricity and fresh, pure water drawn from a stream that ran beside the
farmhouse. Arthur Owen Greed was a good man and lived on his own, we spent a
week or so with him and I slept beside him in an old wooden bed, he took us both
up to the nearest pub and
introduced us to the delights of the local scrumpy cider. The days past quickly
and though Arthur would have let us stay had we desired, we felt we had to get
on our way, he paid for our fare back to Birmingham on a coach and as we left
their were tears in his eyes. It is said that what is in a name? for Arthur Owen
Greed was a generous kind and loving man, who offered shelter and rest to two
city kids for no payment.
Getting back to the bed-sit in Sutton which had been borrowed by my friends, we
settled down in front of the black and white TV with a coat hanger for an aerial
and watched man land on the moon, it was not made of green cheese, but in honour
of the moment I’d made a spliff rocket of the finest Afghani hashish. As they
touched down we touched of, I wandered out onto the quiet Lichfield road in the
bright sunshine and watched an old man on an ancient bike slowly making progress
up the slight incline and I felt great, things were looking up.
Then I got a job, original art distributors was a scam using young hippy looking
sales persons to sell art from door to door. As people had an interest in art
and some surplus income we went round selling what was a very cheap product for
what our verbal skill could get, although it was not our work we used all the
tricks of a salesperson to make out it was. In the afternoon a sales team would
meet, have a meal in a café and then have a sales talk. Split up in teams and in
a car we would pick an area and spend the evening working. We had to give a set
price to our team leader and could keep the rest, it was fun and gave us a good
income. The creators of this project lived in a modern, detached, rented house in
Edgbaston and as the organization was expanding I decided to go up to work for
them in
Glasgow.
The first city of Empire was charming in its Victorian
vista and most welcoming to this young Brummy. I found a bed-sit near Byres Road
and soon got into knocking the doors of the Glaswegians. One of its delights was
the large number of cafes that would sell you a foaming cup of coffee, followed
by a scoop of ice cream in a stainless steel bowl, all served on a formica table
by a girl in a black and white uniform. There was also a neat
underground system with rattling cars and staff that had a black band on their
uniforms in remembrance of Queen Victoria. Getting to know the locals through
the sales team I met Richard who was selling herbs and due to the time would
take you on a little walk and dig your purchase out of some hidden place. He
bought a small tenement for a couple of hundred pounds in Maryhill and I would
often go there to have a smoke and pass the day away. This small dream consisted
of two rooms, one with a kitchen and sink the size of a wardrobe and a small
coal fired range, with a nook for a bed. In the corridor was a toilet and if you
wanted a bath we would go to the Victorian bath house that was doing a roaring
trade and for sixpence you would get a fresh towel, marked with Glasgow’s
council motto “let Glasgow flourish” and a huge stainless steel bath with acres
of red hot water that came out of a wide fawcett.
The days passed quickly and I got to know many of alternative Glasgow, moving to
a small one roomed flat at the top of a large Victorian house with two artists
who went to Glasgow art school, here I fell in love with a beautiful local girl. It may have been a slum but to us it was a small
heaven. One of my friends and his girlfriend were expecting a child and buying a
beautiful, Victorian, carved oak nursing chair from some passing boy scouts who
were taking it to a jumble sale, I presented it to them when they left for more
accommodating accommodation.
The winter came and went and I was getting quite good at selling the original
art, but in the spring their was a tragic accident when a car with a sales team
came round a corner and went straight under a flat bed lorry. The roof was
ripped of and all were killed, I went to my first funeral, but my joy in the
work had gone, as it had for many of us and I left. Such was the footprint of
this disaster that legislation was passed in parliament requiring lorries to
have a steel bar placed at the back to stop this sort of thing happening again,
they had at least not died in vain and many thousands of life’s have been saved
by this simple piece of law.
I was getting into the tarot and the I Ching and studying the life of Aleister
Crowley, hanging around the central library and marvelling at the art works in
the Kelvingrove art gallery, as well as learning about the life of artists at the
Rennie Mackintosh art school, a world class work of art on its own. As students
all their course fees were paid and they got a grant for rent and living
expenses as well as free art materials. In the meantime I was smoking draw with
friends and generally have a good time, I didn’t need much to survive and the
dole provided me with a small but adequate stipend. Even signing on was
painless, their was so much work available there’d be more people serving you in
the labour exchange, as it was then called than people signing on. No
identification was needed, they never hassled you to get a job and you got your
money in cash, their being a delightful absence of security screens. Once coming
back from signing I saw the white champagne, flute prow of the Queen Elizabeth
the 2nd in dry dock, towering above the grey granite of the warm tenements.
Bath and West.
Then I heard of a music festival being held at the
Bath and West showground in Somerset and without a thought packed a small bag
and headed to Calder Park Zoo to hitch a ride going south. Hitchhiking as well
as squatting were along with the welfare state and peace part of our inheritance
from the long war against fascism, we were the baby boomers and very much the
hope of our parents for a better life. While waiting for a lift playing jack
stones and looking for four leaf clovers where part of the art, passing the time
and keeping your spirits up. Within half an hour one of Castle Bromwich’s
spitfires, a brand new white Jaguar pulled up and a smiling face invited me in,
he was going to Bath and I was to get there quicker than the train. Finding the
site I got in under a loose chain link fence and entered my first music
festival. I wandered about for a bit taking in the atmosphere and crashed out in
a communal tent. The next day I spotted some bloke in a wizard’s costume handing
out free LSD, this had come over with one of the bands hidden in their speaker
cabinets and was the best Kool-Aid Owsley acid. I went up and took the sacrament
and within about half an hour was beginning to feel it coming on. I walked
through a large dark barn type building that gave me some real bad vibes and
came out to the bright sunshine of Ravi Shankar playing sitar that split the
light blue sky into a heaven of emotions, the day went fine, looning about and
taking in the music and the laid back atmosphere, it was the best trip I ever had. Their was no security and I
watched as someone selling yoghurt turned to put his takings into the till, only
to have the punters help themselves to his goods, while his back was turned. The
stage was a poor affair of corrugated iron though on it where to appear some of
the best music at the time, Donovan, Mothers of Invention, Santana, Led
Zeppelin, Country Joe McDonald, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, The Byrds, John
Mayall, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention amongst others, though to me the music
was just the excuse to have a fun time with like minded people.
I then decided to get a free tea stall together and set out to get the necessary
kit, within a few hours I was up and running, but people could not get their
head round the fact that the tea was free so I put a little tin out for
contributions and at the end of the day found I had raised £40. I gave half of
this to Caroline Coons Release a newly formed drug charity and decided to treat
myself to a train journey to the town holding the next festival I had heard
about, Phun city in Worthing. This was to be Britain’s first free music
festival, that is Mick Farren of International Times, the alternative news paper
of choice and the MC5 and Edward Barker the creator of the Largactylites and one
of the countries top cartoonists provided the cash and the audience who built
the infrastructure, provided the food and libations and the bands who played for
free. Arriving in Worthing I needed somewhere to sleep and asking the first
likely lad I saw, he invited me to doss on his bed-sit floor, the next day I
signed on.
Worthing was a charming holiday resort and I got into a local café and it’s life
of youth, one of the customers was an art student who had done a rather fine
screen print of Tolkien’s the Hobbit and spending a good part of my weeks dole
on a ream of paper, I sneaked into the art college and ran of a hundred or so
screen prints which I started selling for 50p around the town. I managed to get
picked up by the local police and stuffed my small bit of draw down the side of
the seat in the panda car and after explaining myself was let free to carry on.
I had a bad trip on the South Downs but got over it as soon as I had come down.
The summer was bright and sea fresh and soon the Phun city free festival was
calling, I said goodbye to my bed-sit friend and headed out to the festival
site.
Phun city.
Phun city was Britain’s first free festival, held outside Worthing in a field
that had a small wood leading from one side. I found a road diggers caravan and
moved it into the wood with some help and watched as the festival took shape. A
small festival like this one didn’t need much info structure, a stage built out
of scaffolding and planks, some power from generators and a stand pipe or two
for water, some bogs helped but this one had few and like bears most of us did
it in the woods. Dave Mother an hip and beautiful guy set up a little hut at the
entrance to the woods and I set up a free food kitchen, using a new galvanized
dustbin as a cooking pot, Dave Mother asked Mick Farren for some money to buy
some food and he generously handed him a bundle of notes. To stop the local bus
to Worthing Dave lay in the road, the bus came to a juddering halt and we
climbed aboard, finding a supermarket we got our supplies and Dave treated
himself to a flagon of cider, paying the bill with a flourish of notes, like
magic the phun began. Just before the festival started a biker called Buttons
turned up and drove his car straight at Dave’s hut, coming to a swift stop he
got out and they started chatting. Buttons was a Hell’s Angel and had brought
chapter accreditation over to the UK from the USA, Dave and Buttons talked away
and he told me after that they had come to an accommodation whereby the freaks
and angels would work together, something I believe that still holds to this
day. We were treated to the sounds of The MC5, Kevin Ayers, Free, Edgar
Broughton, Mungo Jerry, The Pink Faeries and Michael Chapman all played for
nothing except apparently Free. The straight caterers Red Umbrella were given a
hard time and a lot of their stuff was “liberated” as my free food kitchen
filled the gap. The man who ran Red Umbrella had to throw a lot of food away,
although some was recycled at the end of the festival to keep us going.
There was a neat sign on display that consisted of illuminated words moving
along the front, that could easily be made to say anything; like “Londinium’s
been nuked, you are now free” amongst other things. Soon it was all over and
those of us with nowhere to go stayed on to clear up, only to watch the police
arrive in buses and enter the back of the woods, trashing the tents and
generally harassing people, it was rather a sad end to a great gig and we had
done nothing to warrant such treatment other than being young and free, I left
and wandered back to Worthing, the next festival was calling. It was the 28th
July 1970 and after nearly another week in Worthing I headed out to the Plumpton
jazz and blues festival held on a horse race track. The owners of a café nearby
the bed-sit I was crashing in gave me a servants bell to take with me, which
turned out to be lucky.
Plumpton jazz and blues festival.
On arriving I started to set up another free food kitchen and went about begging
funds from the crowd at which point I was given a tab of acid and was soon
coming up on the trip. Then a farmer’s son asked me if I was doing a vegetarian
or non vegetarian kitchen and decided to do both, he appeared with a legal
shotgun and ammunition used on his farm and we set of to shoot some rabbits.
Getting on to the nearby railway embankment he handed me the loaded gun and I
took my first ever shot from some hundreds of yards at a black cat sitting in a
circle of rooks, needless to say the shot went nowhere near it was supposed to
and the birds or the cat didn’t move a muscle. He then took the gun from me and
expertly bagged a few rabbits, as most had myxomatosis this wasn’t hard. He
took the rabbits and I wandered back to the site sporting a bandolier of
cartridges and a broken and unloaded shotgun. I soon got the attention of the
rugby club security and got jumped on and taken to the local police station in
the back of a mini moke, my luck then changed and the local copper was a
friendly sort and obviously used to farmers and guns, after I’d explained myself
and with my friend turning up to add his story, we were allowed to go after
being given a warning about the danger of guns on festival sites and had the
shotgun confiscated. I look back in horror at our wide eyed innocence and am
extremely grateful to that thoughtful police man, still the lesson was learned
and I’ve never handled a gun since. The acid was roaring round my head and I got
into an ecstasy of dreaming thinking that a cotton bag of corn which I thought
was glowing gold contained the secret of life and promptly went round showing it
to all and bemused sundry, eventually I came down and their was talk of Hawkwind
and the Pink Faeries turning up to do a free festival, it was wishful thinking
and the event finally came to an end. I headed back to Worthing and after a
couple of weeks set out to for the Isle of Wight festival where James Marshall
Hendrix was to play, it was the to be the most amazing festival I ever went to.
The Isle of Wight.
I arrived at the Isle of Wight by ferry hidden under a blanket in the back of
a mini van I’d hitched a ride in, the site was huge with a long small hill on one
side and I made my way to Desolation Row an encampment hiding in a small track
way bordered by a thick hedge and trees, most of the festival goers paid up and
as their were many hundreds of thousands of us, a colossal amount in used notes
was carted of, I doubt if much of it was declared. The first night I was a bit
lonely, but in the morning the fresh air and some breakfast cheered me up and I
set about getting another free food kitchen started and went to raise some
funds. I met a dealer who laid a few ounces of good draw on me and swiftly
knocked it out amongst the crowd, purchased some spuds and started to boil them
up, the fresh sea air doing the rest and they were soon eaten with some butter
by my fellow campers, time to inspect the site. I came across two film makers
with an arriflex 35mm camera, got into conversation and turned them onto some good
acid, they wandered of filming the sunshine. Then I stumbled on a band set up on
the cut straw ground in a large white marquee, their was no audience and
directed them to the fairground dome a large inflatable that held hundreds of
people, they got a flat bed lorry in as a stage and played free form all night,
to the delight of all who where there. The band were
Hawkwind and as a thank you
Nick Turner the saxophone player got me onto the main stage, at the time no one
was performing and I thought it would be fun to get Nick to play his flute to
the sea of faces, unfortunately we didn’t know how to turn the power on and so
we left the main stage and went our separate ways.
I crashed out in a small encampment on Desolation Row that night and the next
day went in search of Dave Mother who I knew was around.
I wandered all over the site calling out “Dave” “Dave” but amongst 600,000
people I had little chance of finding him, so I sat down by the main entrance
letting the flow of people go past me and low and behold he appeared, “Mr.
Livingstone I presume” said I, we hugged and he went on his way. On the
corrugated iron fence perched a naked girl and a river of piss flowed out from
the bog area. I watched as French anarchists and others flattened the fences
hurling their bodies against this hated structure, it was double skinned and
uniformed guards patrolled with alsatian dogs, the festival creators appeared on
stage and said to the jeers of the huge crowd that this party was now free.
Going into Ryde I watched as a tripping friend James who we called the Hobbit
because of his small stature and furry feet, get picked up by the police for
standing bemused holding a world wildlife panda, that had been handed to him. He
was taken to a court set up at the festival site and to the delight of us all
when told by the magistrate that stealing a world wildlife panda was a serious
offence replied that he was the world wildlife, we fell about, James’s fine was
paid by monies that had been collected from the crowd and he was let free still
tripping to go about his business. That night I sat on the hill and watched
James Marshall Hendrix perform like a small bright faerie in the Dunkirk
distance, it was the early hours of Sunday morning and I laid my weary head down
having watched the most electrifying performance I had ever seen. The next day
rose bright and fresh and I decided to look around the edges of the site and
came across a small beach area where numerous people where making love in the
open air, in the middle of this bacchanalia a “normal” family where in the best
British tradition merrily having a picnic, oblivious to all around them. As
quick as this dream had started it came to an end, people drifted away in droves
and soon the wreckage of the largest gathering of human beings ever in these
islands had come to an end, the few of us left began to glean amongst the
rubbish, often finding a good draw in a lost stash, usually an empty box of
matches and began to think of moving of the site.
I hitched to London and dossed with the film cameraman who I’d met earlier, he
was an actor who’d had a part in the film the dirty dozen, after some time with
him I crashed with a hip doctor, his wife and young child who I knew, I’d visit
Ladbroke Grove where at least one in ten of the houses were squatted and dropped
a trip with the good doctor and went attaching balloons on the Albert memorial,
it was a fun and easy time.
Glastonbury festival 1970.
Then I heard about a small festival being held on a
farm at Pilton near Glastonbury, rolling up my doss bag I hit the road. Soon
arriving at Worthy farm I found that although their was an entrance charge no one really minded if
you didn’t pay and their was free milk being given away in cartons. It was a
real farm as an abandoned old bath lay on the grass in front of the farmhouse
being used as a water trough for the cattle. I blagged some food and went in
search of music, finding Marc Bolan with Tyrannosaurus Rex performing in a
field not far from the left of the farmhouse. The band where set up on the
grass, with a haphazard bit of scaffolding covered in a green tarpaulin forming
this small stage, only a few people were watching and Marc produced a
professional set and I wandered of.
The farm was at the top of a small valley and it
seemed to me that the best place for a stage was near the bottom of this natural
curve in the largest of the small mediaeval fields. Ceasing the moment and under
the impression that the farmer had lost a lot of bread, having heard that he’d
been fined 2K for
selling milk from a brucellosis unaccredited herd though it was never
confirmed and what with the cost of the bands, I felt he’d taken a big hit and I
felt sorry for him, though at least he was trying to create a festival. I learnt
latter that he to had been to the Bath and West showground having like me got
under the fence for free. I went into the farmhouse’s main room and put my ideas
to Michael, full of festival culture and a few pages ahead in the book of fools
we made a strange sight. Michael was small and intense with an upside down face
and a small, dark beard sans moustache, regulation farmer gear of jeans, wellies
and an old thick woollen sweater. I was over six feet tall and my auburn hair
fell in ringlets to my waist, sporting a thin gingerish beard and road gear of
sailor’s trousers from the army and navy stores, an huge first world war flying
officers greatcoat from Oxfam, with the pilots name in dip pen on the inside
pocket, topped of with a second world war flying helmet, a big old wool sweater
and baseball boots. Michael listened patiently as I put on my best spiel, honed
from many months selling original art and explained that I would endeavour to
find the money for him to put on another festival and that the natural
amphitheatre that the farm presented was the best place for a stage. Having said
my piece coloured by my travels, I thanked him and left to hitch hike to London,
the only person who I knew who might help was Mick Farren of International Times
and in no time at all I was talking to him. Mick is a nice bloke and had treated
us well at Phun city, I laid my trip on him and the only person he could think
of was Geoffrey Ashe the magical writer and historian, though I was to contact
him other things were happening. I decided to go to Kensington market which at
the time was a magnet for alternative people and while wandering around I saw
James Marshall Hendrix trying on a pair of leather snakeskin boots, I sat on the
few stairs leading into the shop but did not involve him in conversation,
thinking he must get enough hassle from fans of his music and art.
I’m a talkative person and get on with most people and at the front of the
market I got chatting to a lady on a stall and told her my festival tale, she
listened generously and to my surprise mentioned a bloke called Andrew Kerr who
wanted to put on a free festival, like the Queen I carried no cash, I was broke,
so she gave me a few pennies to ring him. We got on fine and he invited me to
see him, she then gave me the bus fare to travel south of the city near the
river and I duly arrived at a smart new house in a small close and introduced
myself to Andrew. He was good looking and had an assured air about him, I told
him about Worthy farm and seeing I was on the road kindly let me have a bath and
a good supper. A young man about my age was also there, he had a tight hand
knitted sweater on and in the middle was a colourful God’s eye , he didn’t say
much and I settled down for a good nights sleep after Andrew had telephoned
Michael. Before I went to sleep Andrew told me that he was the private secretary
for Arabella Churchill a relation of the late Sir Winston Churchill.
In the morning Andrew decided to go and meet Michael at Worthy farm and we
climbed into his 3 litre non coupe Rover and headed out, it was a treat not to be
hitch-hiking. We stopped at Avebury on the way down and did a bit of dousing
with a hazel stick I had cut from the hedge row. After this rest we arrived at
the farm where the festival was winding down and standing near the farmhouse
Michael appeared, Andrew having not seen him before took no notice of him, so I
told him that that was the farmer and he went over to introduce himself, at that
moment the free Glastonbury festival of 1971 was born.
(The time line for this
adventure is a bit mixed, it seems from some Facebook posts I must have got to
the farm on the 15th or 16th September 1970 and saw Michael and headed for
London on the 17th. There I think I saw Jimi Hendrix in Kensington market before
heading out to see Andrew Kerr. The next day the 18th we arrived at the farm and
Andrew met Michael. On the 19th I heard that Jimi Hendrix had died the day
before.)
I wandered of into a small outhouse and was told that Jimi Hendrix had died, it
was a shock and expected the usual hippy scum dies of drug overdose in the
press, it was a great loss to both world art and culture but life goes on. I
watched a fly zip energetically across the outhouse and felt the road calling,
it was time to move on.
I knew nothing about Glastonbury and its myths, but
after I spent a night in a cricket pavilion getting covered in white marker
paint. I went up the Tor and in
a very short space of time was given a rundown of the magic of this place and
the main players, Joseph of Arimathea, Katherine Maltwood, Alfred Watkins, Dion
Fortune and John Michell, just after I was warned of the danger of these myths,
it was good advice. I soon met up with the freaks living around the town and
found that a local café proprietor whose business was at the side of a car park
at the bottom of the main drag was friendly and would let us leave our doss bags
there. This place had a mural by John Michell on the wall with a light at either
end looking like a flying saucer. The local library had many of the books
written by these myth makers and my days passed easily there, meeting and greeting
and generally enjoying a small market town in Somerset as the apple season
approached. It was a local custom for us dossers to walk with bare feet, some
small hangover from its Christian past that fitted in with the underground
culture of the day, it was OK as long as the weather was hot and dry.
We slept wherever we could and signing on gave us enough to keep body and soul
together, it never occurred to any of us to get a job even though their was
plenty of work. Drugs were mainly absent and non of us took to the local cider.
The town held some artists who were friendly and we would spend time at John
Shelley’s a potter who lived at the bottom of the Tor. As the winter approached
a warm place and decent shelter was needed so I headed back up to Glasgow where
I was to spend the winter hanging out in Maryhill, enjoying Kelvingrove art
gallery and spliffing the days away. Dave Mother who had made it to Glasgow had
headed of to Canterbury as spring approached and it seemed like a good idea to
go and join him, he was living in a squat on the Whitstable road and with my
magic thumb soon arrived in the heart of Christian England.
The large, empty, detached three storey house that Dave had squatted was made
into a labyrinth of bed-sits all with a coin operated electric meter. As the
electric or gas wasn’t on and we would keep warm by burning scrounged and found
wood, I took great pleasure in hacking dozens of these little slave machines of
the walls with a found fireman’s axe, I then took them all up to the top floor
and dropped them onto the concrete courtyard below, it was a small symbol of our
freedom. We began to take up the floorboards and doors and soon had a roaring
fire going, time to discover Canterbury.
Canterbury was an apple sized town, with an ancient cathedral and the remains of
medieval walls. It had a large modern university which I soon found was a
welcoming place for young out of town squatters, I got to know some of the
students and helped myself to the subsidized food and even went to some of the
lectures, I looked like a student of the time. The cathedral was a jaw dropping
marvel that you entered through a small town gate and it opened out like a
tardis. I found a café where I was welcome and soon settled into the life of the
town. Someone found an abandoned piano in a garage and we trundled it up through
the town to our squat and chucked it down the basement stairs, where it lay for
the length of that summer, it’s back open to the elements and used by all and
sundry to make a cacophony of sound. One of our lot borrowed a bowler hat from a
visitor to the cathedral and as he was a senior member of the British
establishment two special branch spent sometime looking for it as he looned
about the place wearing it covered in stars. We got a visit from the police who
those days wouldn’t wear flack jackets and helmets and stove the door in with
cameras in tow, in the early hours, but knocked politely and showed a warrant. At
first we told them to go away but when they said they were the murder squad we
let them in, it was nothing to do with us and we went on squatting. One of us
used to work the railway crossing and we would spend the night with him in his
warm hut tripping, as he let the cars over the railway track by working the
large wooden gates.
I got more and more into the university and began selling the students herbs,
bought from two wholesalers who lived in a flat above a toy shop by Clapham
Common, they had being doing a PhD for some years, claiming a full grant and
putting in a little work once a year, they were friendly and I often dossed with
them when up in town. I used to visit a large Edwardian students house in one of
the villages around this cathedral city and one of the occupants took me to see
his family in Canterbury, they had a collection of English civil war weapons
just propped up against the wall. Time passed quickly and I got involved with
local squatters and became their advisor. Once when squatting a large country
house the owner came back and we had an interesting conversation about property
and theft, the police arrived and we all disappeared into the fields leading
them a merry dance, before we got away.
I visited my friends in Clapham one more time and we
all went to score in Maida Vale, the head man wandered of to make a huge deal of
some dexedrine and I and another bloke who weren’t involved in the transaction
settled back to have a smoke. There was a knock on the door and the drug squad
entered having mistakenly raided the Australians upstairs, also missing the gear
in plastic bags in the loo cisterns. The bloke who had opened the door quickly
went to the table we had been sitting at and swallowed a quarter of good black
hash and I got the roach. We got gently searched as did the punters who where
arriving to score but they were found clean, except for large amounts of cash,
at which point the head man turned up with a large bulging hold all, there was
absolute silence as the police asked him to open his bag only to reveal his
washing, he’d got a bad vibe and not done the deal. My friend who’d swallowed
the hash had to be propped up against the wall as he was in danger of crashing
out from the effects of the gear. We all breathed a sigh of relief and got
searched again, the police found one lone pill in a matchbox and carted of the
sad miscreant, the bust and the day being over, we relaxed for a smoke and
happy chatter. My friends said they would be coming to Canterbury for a break
and had just bought a beautiful blue S type jaguar for fifty quid and after I
arrived back in Canterbury with some very cheap herbs that just didn’t get you
stoned but looked the part. I knocked them out at the university, finding that even though
they were duff, the punters came back for more. Not being in it for the bread ,
it seemed unfair so I stopped this line of trade for a bit and went back to signing, one
of the students was a beautiful ginger haired girl, latter to become Risla Rosie
Boycott.
Glastonbury free festival 1971.
The spring had turned into summer and I’d heard that my work at Worthy farm had
been fruitful and a free festival was planned for the solstice, just before I
left Canterbury my baseball boots had fallen apart and I found a pair of army
boots that were repaired for free by a kind local cobbler, different times
indeed.
Arriving at Worthy farm on the thumb, I found there
were two camps, the farmhouse and the people in the field. Andrew, Arabella and
Bill Harkin the stage builder who’d had a dream and us lot living in a third
world collection of tents, a bamboo and plastic igloo and a huge sheet of
plastic making a crude TP round the remains of a tree. There was a fire
and food store that had a lot of whole foods donated by a kind lady that
consisted of large
branches lent together in a small pyramid and covered with turf. I spent the first night keeping
warm round the fire and next day went in search of something to do. Their was no
real plan and I spent the day laying clay pipes in shallow ditches that had been
dug for drainage that was needed to replace the natural drainage of the ancient
hedges that had been ripped up and burnt, with a grant from the government. Then
I found a maze maker who’d been given the only swamp on the farm to build a maze
and had been there for some weeks digging six foot deep trenches, that naturally
just filled full of water, perverse was the least of it and I felt sorry for him
as he obviously had skill and endeavor, there was about 11 of us on the farm. I
went to get something to eat, but as the only cooking implements were a frying
pan and a kettle, the whole foods remained untouched and we existed on whole
meal
flour and water pancakes, fried with margarine on the battered frying pan and
finished of with a some cheap jam from a large catering tin, tea was also on tap
thanks to the kettle, not exactly the diet of the gods, still it kept us going,
their was very little draw and no cider at all. In Glasgow I had invented a
perfect macrobiotic/vegetarian meal, very cheap and nutritious.
1970 version.
Take a fistful of brown rice per person, check first for stones and bits of
twig.
Especially watch out for little stones, teeth have been lost!
Peel and cut up some spuds, carrots and brussel sprouts.
Put in a pot with a little salt and cover with an inch if water.
Put the vegetables on top.
Slow boil until the water is absorbed and the rice and vegetables are cooked.
Remove the vegetables
Take one egg per person, mix with a little milk and butter, add to the rice and
stir.
Let the latent heat in the rice cook the eggs.
Serve with a little Worcester sauce.
For pudding chop up some bananas, apples, grapes and oranges and serve with
custard.
A good way to feed hungry freaks.
The next day we started on the foundations of the stage, Bill had had a flash of
simple genius and instead of building a large bus shelter, which was the default
stage of choice had decided to build a pyramid. Some wag had declared that this
was on a ley line, if you read the old straight track by Alfred Watkins
something I'd done but the majority who believed in this hadn't, you'd know that
the most powerful ley line in Europe was the M6 going through Spaghetti
Junction, you couldn't make it up. A large square had had its turf
removed and we picked up any rocks lying about that were to act as the solid
foundation, this took up most of the morning and in the afternoon I was lying by
the fire in the sun reading a superman comic, when an older bloke appeared whom I
didn’t know, he started shouting at me to put a large log on the fire and to
humour him I did so. This was Sid Rawles whom I nicknamed Sir Sidney Rolls
Royce, he later explained that he’d been with a commune on an island called
Dornish given to him for the use of “the people” by John Lennon, unfortunately
it flooded every day and with little bread or info structure the commune had
failed.
By now I was living in a small igloo made of clear plastic sheet and bamboo
skeleton that I had moved some way away for a bit of peace and quiet. On waking
the next morning after a good nights sleep, lying in the warmth of the sun I
watched a ladybird climb up a stalk of grass, I felt good.
The next day was bright and windy and the scaffolding had arrived on a flat bed
lorry to build the pyramid stage. Bill had chosen kwik form scaffolding from
Guest Kean and Nettlefold of Birmingham, skilled labour costs serious money so
this kit was as lego to real bricks and instead of using ties it used a pin and
was not beyond mere amateurs like us. We first laid down planks onto the rock
base and then slowly under instruction began to make the pyramid, by the end of
the day so easy to put up was the scaffolding that most of the stage was
finished. A petrol builder's lift was to be used to get the amps and musical kit
up to the stage and a long tied in ladder would get the performers and stage
hands up. The stage floor was made of building planks with gaps of a few inches
here and there. We did our best that afternoon to get a good meal together and
while finishing my superman comic one of the lads said “who’s that guy over
there, he looks like he owns the place” I looked up and saw Michael striding
purposefully on the horizon, “he does” I said “ that’s the farmer”. It was the
only time I saw him since getting Andrew to him the year before. I then got a
raging toothache and Andrew gave me some aspirin and I managed to get a nights
sleep, having been told I might get a lift to Bristol and its dental hospital.
I went to the farmhouse and had some porridge for breakfast, I ate alone and
looking round the kitchen found a jar with some weak home grown in it. The lift
had disappeared and I hitched to Bristol after I was told to take a message to
some freaks in Bath. At the dental hospital there was a row of dentists chairs
that a number of patients sat in, then someone came down the line and numbed our
mouths with a syringe full of novocaine and after a bit I had 6 teeth pulled
out. Blooded but unbowed I went to Bath and gave the message to a group there,
staying the night to rest after my ordeal. Arriving back at the farmhouse the
next day to find that the it had been taken over by Sir Sydney and his merry
crew, although I would squat a castle at the drop of a hat I hadn’t thought of
doing this even though we weren’t treated very well. I decided to inspect the
farmhouse and was about to go upstairs when a woman with nearly white blond hair
and a young face came out of one of the rooms, it was Arabella Churchill the
only time I saw her and not wanting to be less than a gent went into the kitchen
where soup was on the stove and people where drying their clothes. I heard
that the revolution had been brought to a swift halt by a big American, (these
Americans where spread about alternative England as currants in a cake, if asked
they said they belonged to the peace corp, which meant of course they were
fleeing conscription and the Vietnam war) apparently he had laid Sir Sidney out
with one blow and the occupants of the farmhouse were letting us get warmed up
as a peace offering.
I didn’t do anything the next day, someone had some draw and I just wanted to
chill. The chicken wire skin was being put on the pyramid and the farmhouse
people appeared as we were running out of time, it looked like a load of six
form kids from a minor public school were crawling all over it, I went up to the
farmhouse but apart from Andrew rapping away on the dog and bone nothing much
was going on. Someone had got hold of some 2nd world war searchlights which
rather fitted in with my apparel which hadn’t changed since I first met the
farmer the year before, I was of course dressed by the army and navy stores,
talk about swords to ploughshares.
In the morning a JCB had arrived with driver and had started to dig some deep
pits that were to be the bogs, the driver was highly skilled and with a few
flips of his wrist managed to scoop out a perfectly rectangular trench. Three
long scaffolding poles were laid across the middle of the trench and the whole
thing covered in a modesty screen of hessian and wood. You stepped onto the
lower pole, put your ass over the middle pole and let fly, God help you if you
slipped. It was a shame that the maze builder didn’t get use of the digger as he
was Britain's foremost maze creator, a maze by him would have been real fun. To
be honest the people in the farmhouse had little communication with us and the
farmer lived in the village, it was amazing anything got done at all, but it
did.
The next day Bill invited me to have a welcome bath in the farmhouse and I
removed the grime of the road and the fields from my thin white body, as was
usual I had to put on the clothes I was wearing as I only owned what I stood up
in. The stage was now finished and as a final touch I climbed up the scaffolding
on the side and hung two large bed sheet sized flags on the front of the stage,
hanging down above its level, that I had bought in the Barrows market in
Glasgow. I didn’t know why I carried them with me except their pure colours
which were scarlet and light blue were strong and pretty, to me these were not
the colours of a football team or institution but represented in the scarlet the
colour of socialism, that is the socialism of “from each according to their
ability, to each according to their need” and in the light blue not the colour
of the summer sky but of the United Nations and the hope of a world that had
been shattered by war and was still recovering, their was a buzz in the air and
the stage was set.
People were starting to arrive and down by the stage a group of people allied to
the band the Pink Faeries came past bashing a big drum, it was a good start, I
went up to the farmhouse and was getting a free food kitchen together in one of
the outhouses, when two vicars arrived to hold a drum head service. Usually used
in a time of war near the front line, the symbolism was not lost on me and with
little ceremony this beautiful article of craft (a painted drum) was placed in front of the
farmhouse and prayers were said for the success of the festival and the welfare
of the people. I went back to see about the free food kitchen to find that Sir
Sydney had taken it over, I was grateful as it set me free to enjoy the
celebrations. I went into the farmhouse looking for something to do and was sent
to one of the car parks to help marshal the cars. The car park was slightly
muddy from rain the previous night and a policeman guided the cars into the
field, at which point they went over a slight rise and a steepish drop to the
bottom of the field where I was putting them in neat lines. I had lined up about
twenty vehicles when a mini van came over the rise, I pointed to where it should
go and they set of down the slope, only to lose control in the mud and career
into the back of a van, the doors of the mini van opened and a breeze of dope
smoke followed, the van’s occupants came out to see the damage and in no time
at all they were all sharing a spliff, only at Glastonbury, the sun was getting
warmer and drying out the ground. By that night a few hundred people had arrived
and I settled down round a fire swapping tales and sharing some dope and cider,
I slept well.
Waking late on Friday morning tents were appearing as swallows coming back from
Africa and their was a real good vibe developing, the music was about to kick of
and the sun was high in the sky. Needless to say the festival passed in a
rainbow blur and for the life of me I can’t remember any of the timeline of what
happened, so I’ll just put down the bits I can remember.
Being given a tab of acid and just feeling a little queasy as I watched Arthur
Brown sing “I am the God of hellfire” with his flaming hat, as three crosses
burnt in front of the stage and a lone American rescued his rescued chicken from
one of the crosses arms, to much for me, I strolled of to hear the Doors and
Melanie. Numerous cool dudes in multi coloured wool sweaters, beads and flowing
locks tootled about naked from the waist down and a lone young woman pranced
about in the nude looking frightened. I went to the free food kitchen and got a
runner to go down to the stage and ask if anyone could donate some herbs to keep
the kitchen staff going, within 10 minutes we had about 2oz of the finest world
draw in a little pile, I started skinning up and passing out free spliffs. Some
bloke with a film camera on his shoulder arrived at the kitchen, I went down to
the stage area were some self proclaimed God was supposed to be arriving. I
climbed up onto the stage, a dude out of his head was wandering near the edge,
it was quite a drop, as this guru person arrived with a farmhouse dining chair
covered in a bed sheet and two Indian heavies in jumble sale suits looking as if
they were tooled up, I watched them for a few seconds and decided to get chummy
of the stage before he fell of. Depositing him safely in the crowd, I listened
to this blokes spiel, it sounded like a load of psychobabble to me and we
christened him guru margarine, being the light weight version of the guy who'd
conned the Beatles for a bit, he was only after people’s bread, but
there’s one born every minute and I believe quite a few people fell for this.
Still each to their own, whatever turns you on being the rule, if any. That
afternoon I had a bath in one of three large metal tubs (water tanks) which had a small fire
lit under them, set up by the free food kitchen that were full of tepid grey
water, still it got rid of some of the festival grime.
The nights passed round fires rapping away, passing joints and sharing ale
usually crashing out round the fire and the days communing and listening to the
sounds, before I knew it was all over, a midsummer nights dream of a festival,
it was to take Michael, Andrew, Arabella and Bill nearly ten years before they
got this vibe back. People started leaving and in the week we took the stage
down and I had a chat with Andrew as the sun beamed down and we loaded the kwik
form scaffolding onto a flat bed lorry, it was a nice feeling like at the end of
a good party, I’d been in the right place at the right time and we’d done it. I
did a bit of gleaning among the leftovers and found quite a bit of draw, time to
move on, I blagged a lift to Glastonbury where I spent the rest of the summer
before heading back to Glasgow. A triple LP of the events was produced a year
latter and sold, any monies paid out for the hire of the scaffolding, the JCB
and a few bits of kit I believe were recovered. Looking on eBay yesterday the
triple album is for sale at £145, 40 years latter! The last thing I did before
leaving the farm was to talk to a guy called Scorpio and told him that a city
would arise here.
That winter Dave Mother and I squatted a huge Georgian blockhouse on Glasgow’s
south side, it looked as if it hadn’t been lived in since before the war and had
a grey patina of dust over everything. There was a kitchen as big as a house
with a huge Belfast sink and a main room that you could hide a Harrier aircraft
in, the main hall was also massive and had a dozen bedrooms running of it. We
spent some time here and then Dave squatted a tenement near Sauchiehall street,
the council were building a concrete collar of a ring round the city and most of
the area was being pulled down or was abandoned. one night he heard two people
making love while standing in inches of water against the wall of the tenement,
his front door was propped up with found planks. Later I was on the way to knock
out some acid tabs in a pub on the Byres Road, I had put these microdots between
some sticky backed plastic so as to make them easier to handle, having just made
love to a Glaswegian girl who had come from India. I was in a high spirits and
went to where I’d hidden my stash, the rain was chucking it down as I pretended
to tie up my shoelace and recover the stash from the bottom of a fence when a
commer van pulled up and all these men piled out, I took of and chucked the gear
with the men in hot pursuit and legged it up some steep steps, for some reason
even though I was pulling away and well fit I stopped, only to find myself
nicked by Glasgow’s finest. They had found the tabs which if they had been loose
would have dissolved in the dreich weather. I was held over night in the local
cop shop and taken before the beak the next day, pleading guilty I got a £100
fine or ninety days, being broke I was sent to the Bar L a medieval palace of
haunting reputation and spent one day there, where my lovely auburn locks became
a short back and sides. I telephoned my parents, the fine was paid and I was
left to go about my business. It had been a salutary lesson born of naivety, it
wasn’t that illegal substances or their sale were bad, it was just that I was
completely naff at it. I decided it was a bad career move and my spell as a
salesperson came to an end. That October I celebrated my 21st birthday in the
tenement in Maryhill, cards from family and friends and a few presents made for
a great day in front of a roaring range with those I cared for around me.
I made one more visit to
Glastonbury and finding myself in
Pilton went to see Michael on a dark winters night, only to find him
struggling to help a cow give birth, he had some twine attached to the calf
inside the cow and was trying to help it out, as he didn't have the strength I
wadded in and soon a healthy calf was born. Even though I was dossing and broke
as usual I don't think I even got a cup of tea for my efforts.
As the spring came I headed to London and found myself
homeless with only a fiver, so I joined the Krishna’s to get some food and a
roof above my head, they kept me at their London headquarters. I went out daily
in robes and nothing else and was supposed to sell their magazine which I just
gave away, my robes weren’t attached securely and flashing as I chanted didn’t
go down a storm, so I was moved down to their mansion in Hertfordshire. There I
was fed on the left over’s of the head blokes dinner, a bit of salad, this would
not keep a rabbit fit, so I stormed into the main hall where his nibs was
holding court and railed at him saying above other things that he was just a fat
rip of and used gullible people to get a rich free ride and that their was more
spirituality in a boggy than ever in his head, job done the heavies chucked me
out, the only man ever to be thrown out of a cult. I set out for Eel Pie Island
and on arriving found that a film crew from ITV had arrived, I blagged some
money out of them and sent someone to score some hash, which we skinned up in
one of the rooms and with carrier bags full of spliffs went round the place
handing them out, things went mellow, smiling and quiet. Time to move on, this
time down to Devon where I had the strangest lift ever, an old dear with a blue
rinse in a light blue Triumph picked me up while hitch hiking and on getting in
gave me a lecture about the danger of picking up strangers, she thought I was
someone else and I doubted whether she could see me very well, on looking at the
back seat I noticed a live monkey on a lead, I chatted away amiably and got to
where I was going, incredible.
I headed out for Glastonbury with bare feet, in Glasgow I thought that I could control the
weather by thought alone, now they want to control it by reducing greenhouse
gases and when visiting my parents home had realised how far I'd travelled, the
alternative lifestyle that I had chosen was supportive of those of us who were
different. I hitch hiked and walked in the early summer weather and
finally made it, went into a café and ordered a meal even though I was broke,
thinking I would be made to do the washing up they called the police and I was
kept in the local cells where I sang the blues for a night and was fined a fiver
when brought before the magistrate the next morning, my mother sent me some
bread and I paid it. Then I found a home in the back of a removal van and one
night when tripping in a black Moroccan cloak and with a mate in a white cloak,
we ran down the high street to end up having a nice chat with a copper by the
toy shop at the bottom of the hill. Madness for me was intermittent and most of
the time I was OK, at that time in Glastonbury their were some serious abusers
who would prey on the homeless. One sunny day we heard that work was available
and we were to gather on Chalice Hill, a women came by and gathered us into a
circle and chose those of us who looked gullible enough to follow her to a house
in the town, there we had to get our kit of and went into a room with a naked
middle aged man in a state of arousal, we had to lie on the floor in a star
shape and a naked girl was brought into the room. She looked really frightened
and I’d had enough of this crap, so I stood up and gave the bloke who thought he
was some Golden Dawn wannabe a right Brummy mouthful, this brought the
proceedings to a full stop and we left the house. How long this bloke had been
preying of the itinerants of Glastonbury I don’t know, but at least I’d marked
his card and wouldn’t fall for such abuse again, time to go back to my parents.
On arriving in Birmingham city centre I went into Lewis’s department store and
looking like something that had been dragged through a hedge backwards, tried to
steal a 25p badge, the police were called and after the paperwork I was bailed
for £5. I fled to squat in London and fell in with a girl called Hilary, we
moved to a Christian household that looked after dossers and after another squat
I headed home only to be arrested for jumping bail. I was sent to the Green to
await the sentence of the court. They put me in a lone room that was used to
store stuff and I was sent to see a shrink and then taken in handcuffs to the
court. I had no chance to represent myself and was sectioned to Highcroft
hospital an old workhouse in Erdington. On arriving there I was put in a padded
cell and escaped through the window, heading to Sutton park where I spent some
time in a catatonic state in the woods and then went to my parents, the next
day the police arrived and I was carted of back to the bin. On entering I was
thrown to the floor and forcibly injected in the backside with major
tranquillizers, after a few days of drugged sleep I was told that I was to have
ECT, electro convulsive torture was just that, everyone regardless of madness
industry label was plugged in, it's use was banal and like its first appearance
in the lives of first world war veterans suffering from post traumatic stress,
it was applied so that being a quiet and submissive patient was better than
enduring it. The veterans though traumatized would be forced back to the front
line after its application, its use was creating an epidemic of brain damage in
the asylums of the UK and it had nothing to do with healing or science and
everything to do with the abuse of power. This was against my will but having
been treated brutally already I had little choice but to agree to this. I had no
breakfast and then was taken into a ward where a number of people lay on the
beds asleep, a gag was put in my mouth and then I was anesthetized and a muscle
relaxant administered, this was to stop me breaking my back under the force of
the electricity, asleep the current was applied to my head, the only sign like a
hanged man that this was working was the twitching of my feet. On waking after a
deep sleep I was walked into the day room. “You look like the roadrunner” said
one of the inmates kindly, “what do you mean?” I said “you know the cartoon
character that went over a cliff” I was just one of over 250,000 men, women and
children who had been incarcerated in this Victorian institution since 1840, I was now a fool
from the planet schizophrenia, they did it eight further times to me over
subsequent weeks, though I have no memory of this, I was to be left permanently damaged. It was to be a few years
before the film "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" took the field and informed
the world of the routine indifference and arrogance of the madness industry, it
was written by Ken Kesey after his time at Menlo Park veteran's hospital, a man
who lived up to his time as a merry prankster.
After this ritual abuse, I was to spend nearly a year there. Their was never any choice, everyone was on far to many seriously damaging drugs, you either took them or were forced. Their was so called therapy, which included cooking, art and industrial. As a vegetarian I had to become a meat eater and learn how to cook meat and two veg. Then their was art therapy, were you got a cup of coffee and the sort of art materials an infant would use and finally industrial therapy. About 250 human beings were forced to pack things and test things, as we were only paid the equivalent of a couple of packets of fags for a weeks full time efforts, they must have made millions out of us, many had been doing it for over four decades. The union went on strike, which we supported, it was the first ever strike of a whole NHS hospital. During the strike curious Bedlam watchers were brought in, one turned up on our ward and seemed confused that we weren't swinging naked from the rafters, we made him do the washing up. It never occurred to the trade union members that we might have rights and that forced labour was in breach of these. After all this my spirit was nearly broken, at which point I was thrown out with no support. No history was ever taken, no diagnosis given and no kind word ever spoken.
I was cast into bedsit land and unemployment benefit for a few years and in 1978 I came off my medication. I worked as a volunteer for a Birmingham Community Transport for three months and then got a job in London as the assistant manager of a Community Transport. I was living in a squat and decided to got to Worthy farm.
Glastonbury festival 1978.
There was a small collection of people and though no festival was planned one just happened.(I later learnt it was planned) As I entered the farm I took a few tokes on a spliff and became psychotic feeling that I shouldn't walk under the pylon wires crossing the land. So in my madness I decided to climb a pylon and left my boots and money at its base and set on up this huge structure. I was a danger to myself and had also climbed out of a hotel window and down the hotel wall via a drainpipe in Wells, on the way to Worthy farm.
I survived this even though I was in bare feet and it was raining and on stepping down from the pylon saw my money had been stolen and my boots left. I didn't see any music and got a lift back to London the next day. Arriving back at the squat I went to bed and became catatonic, lying in the bed for a few days in this dream like state and then thankfully my brother and sister arrived and took me home.
I stayed a few days at home and then the police took me back to hospital. More ECT and depo major tranx though at least it wasn't forced. I made a chess set in occupational therapy and after a couple of months was once more back in the community.
This time I claimed disability benefits for the first time.
Stonehenge free festival 1984.
I heeded out from my bedsit and started hitchhiking at Spaghetti Junction, or junction 6, M6, I wanted to get to Worthy farm. After a few lifts this white van on the M5 services picked me up and whistled me away to the Stonehenge free festival, the last one. I only had the clothes I stood up in, a few bob and a draw. I also had my camera with me and a few rolls of film which was a present on my birthday, a Fed Zorki 4, with an f2 Jupiter lens....the poor mans Lieca.
Any festival in a summer and so it rolled on. I was photographing a dude knocking in a tent peg with his metal arm, while his friend held the small tent up, they told me to shove the camera where the sun don't shine. Wanting to defuse the situation I bought a harpic line of wizz from them and wandered of into the festival site.
It was like a church fete with drugs. It was smallish and the stage as a scaffolding pyramid covered in a green tarp was the only focus for the trippers. I danced a bit and wandered about and found some friends from home who were selling hot knives, Balf says I stripped naked but I can't remember doing it. Hawkwind as always stole the show all for free, no fences, no security and all the charm of innocence. There where signs advertising draw, wizz, acid, mushrooms and other festival bus tickets. The state decided to stamp its boot in its face, it really was harmless and much gentle fun... they put razor wire instead of chillums sparking into the medieval starry night. I got this poem out of it all.
Glastonbury festival 1984.
I hitched from the stones to Worthy farm and got in for free, no fences see, I had my camera with me, (Glastonbury festival) it was funny like crossing into another land. I parked myself, boots, sweater, a stripped suit top and shorts, by a bloke to the right of the farmhouse. He had a hut surrounded by a fence and a union jack flag on a flag pole. I pulled my coat over my head and crashed out, the first sleep for a couple of days after snorting that wizz at the stones.
When I woke up it was a glorious summers day and chummy with his flagpole leaned over his fence and said "24 people walked over you last night", you couldn't make it up, he must have counted and so it was festival time.
All I remember was the mud and Ian Drury getting it throw at him as he performed. He stopped singing and then went into Spasticus Autisticus, you could have heard a pin drop when he finished and then they went wild. The finest piece of stage craft I have ever seen. And that was it.
Glastonbury festival 1987.
I got a job that paid my ticket taking money at the entrance, I carried thousands of pounds in a carrier bag to a store room in the farmhouse. Loads of money, no lock and no guard..only Glastonbury. I remember feeling lonely in the crowd, it was the last festival at Worthy farm that I was to attend.
In the 1990's I joined National Mind and helped create Survivors Speak Out, it was very good for my mental health.
Now retired living peacefully in a terraced house in Birmingham.
The Glastonbury festival has become a legend and is loved by many, for a few days you can forget and dream and never has the world needed its dreamers.
Stonehenge peoples free festival 1984,
Glastonbury festival 1984,
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