Another Hippy Remembers Part 1

A Fleeting Glimpse is delighted to welcome on board another survivor from the halcyon sixties Ian Macintosh. Ian has written a 3 part series of stories about those days, with liberal dashes of Pink Floyd memories. I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did. Peace. Col

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July 29th 1967. The sun is shining, 'All You Need is Love' and 'See Emily Play' dominate the pirate radio stations, and Terry has talked me into thumbing our way up to London to do some cruising down the Kings Road, Chelsea, then off to the First British Love-in at the Ally Pally in Wood Green. I'm on summer hols from Oxford High, Terry is on hols from Morris Motors Post Rooms.

The plot was hatched at a Friday evening party. Terry held out the advertisement in the Melody Maker. The list of performers at the Love-inwas enough to confuse and excite a couple of moddy boys on the look out for more exotic and cerebral pleasures than soul music and scooters.

Eric Burdon and the New Animals, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Creation, Tomorrow, the Pink Floyd, Blossom Toes, Sam Gopals Dream (featuring a younger Lemmy), Apostolic Intervention, Brian Auger Trinity and Julie Driscoll, plus various art groups and members of the Scaffold hosting proceedings.

So, alibi in place ("I'm staying at Terry's for the weekend!"), we headed 'up the smoke'.

Now, I had already worked up a sort of crush on Syd Barrett at the ripe old age of fifteen. Syd was enjoying a reasonable amount of second division press coverage as the poet / painter leader of this psychedelic group who 'recreated the LSD experience on-stage'. I latched on to Arnold Layne from the first, and related to the composer on many adolescent levels. I still think today that Emily was, and is, the finest 3 minutes in music. Now I was going to experience the man's work first hand.

From a Shepherd's Bush drop off we headed for King's Road, and made a beeline for Dande Fashions, purveyors of fine shirts, indian scarves,caftans and bells. Terry paid a fortune for a salmon pink and gold shirt( which I still possess), and a cow bell, while I looked on enviously. We took in some antique books of Fairy Tales in the Chelsea Bookstore, wandered Kensington Markets and watched the beautiful barefoot girls dressed in granny nightdresses and little else, then headed north for Wood Green with the smell of patchouli and sandlewood clinging to our clothes.

Wood Green station, Dark, pouring with rain, where the hell did summer go? It was a slow, damp walk up the hill to the Ally Pally, but as we approached, any depression we felt just melted away. The Ally Pally was alive with light, and several hundred damp souls were gathered around waiting to go in. This was a show in itself - 'blocked' mods in bright caftans twitching and chewing nervously…flower children with flowers in their hair, petals on their faces, carrying good joss…girls straight out of a Rackham painting…older hippies looking contemptuously at the younger heads…face and body paint…photographers…dandies…tramps…all standing in the rain, tinkling, and waiting .

In the background, from deep within the bowels of the Palace, we could hear the sounds of instruments tuning up and sound checking. And there, clear in my mind as if it were yesterday, a series of cavernous Floydian organ runs. My mind was already blown. Suddenly, the hold-up cleared and in we poured in, handing over one pound in coppers to an amused freak on the door - "I'll trust you" he said and dropped the bread into the box. We were in!

How to describe the Hall. It was already full, and there was a long stage divided in two at one end of the building. But the best thing were the light shows. Every wall, from ceiling to floor, had white sheeting covering it, and every white space had projections swirling and flashing and dissolving across it. Mark Boyle's Sensory Laboratory blew some stunning liquid shows, there was film of a baby in a bath running at one frame per second, avant garde films, animations, flower motifs, kaleidoscopes, Op Art, strobes (including a WW11 searchlight with a strobe device attached) slowed down voices, vast industrial sounds, more liquids. Across the two stages a vast montage of liquids slowly revolved and pulsed - very prehistoric outer space. The sources for the projections were numerous high lighting towers strategically positioned around the great hall. This was apocalyptic stuff for a young flower child, and I felt an extreme sense of revelation coming over me; that this place and these people were emerging with a completely new tribal culture, language and symbols - from the underground. Just consider the semi-religious nature of the band names, and you can sense the effect.

The crowd - 10,000 wide eyed, spaced heads…TV crews…Yoko Ono happening…tripping girls in states of undress playing with dolls…face painting flowers, third eyes, OM signs…tinkling bells…very fairy tale and Indian rather than Red Indian…a market with Oz, IT and Gandalf's Garden on sale…joss, and more joss…lots of smiling at strangers…

And of course, the music.

We'd come to see The Pink Floyd, but we saw so much more. Someone dressed as a Cardinal did most of the MC-ing, and the first band I recall was Creation, a parallel band to the Who, but in my mind Creation had the psychedelic edge. The guitarist, Eddie Phillips, was the guy who introduced the practice of pulling a violin bow across the guitar strings. This was borrowed by Jimmy Page and used to great effect later of course. Creation were pure psychedelic / pop art. And so right for the time and place we found ourselves in. They always brought a 2 metre high paper screen on stage with them whenever they played. At the climax of 'Painter Man', the singer sprayed day-glo coloured paint across the screen, and as the band collapsed into a cacophony of violin bow induced feedback and power chords, he set fire to the screen! They were banned everywhere of course.

Tomorrow occupied that same sort of space as Creation, but more Kings Road in appearance. They had a Floydian style hit called 'My White Bicycle', inspired by the Dutch Provo's free bike scheme in Amsterdam. But I recall most vividly their version of 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. The Beatles claimed they couldn't play this stuff live, but Tomorrow could, and some. Steve Howe could recreate the backwards guitar solos live, and heavy. They were a UFO and crowd favourite, and to many were the most impact that night.

Then a treat, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. A two piece Crazy World, Vincent Crane and Carl Palmer, commenced the set with some fantastic Jimmy Smith influenced instrumentals that allowed Vincent, head permanently down on his chest, to go off on some virtuoso runs into the stratosphere. Then, in a cheesy strip joint spruker voice, Vincent introduced Arthur. He was the manifestation of some Celtic nightmare, wearing only a sort of wretched loincloth, his chest spattered in woad and wearing a silver face mask, he twitched and lurched onto stage doingsome kind of manic version of a shamanic dance. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the vast liquid show behind the band, and this skinny creature - very pagan. Girls in the audience screamed as he removed his mask, revealing a face covered in black and white war paint ( a popular look for bands at the time). He sang the brilliant first single, Devil's Grip, and of course 'I put a spell on you'. But the highlight for Terry and myself was the hilarious song 'Give Him a Flower'. He could laugh at himself too. Stunning metallic Hammond- driven psychedelia.

Unlike the Techncolor Dream (sic) eight weeks before, the Floyd came on around 2 or 3.00am, sort of midway through the night it seemed. Much has been written about this gig, especially June Bolan's recollection that Syd was too out of it to play, and that it was Syd's final gig with the band. Well, it wasn't Syd's last gig,and Terry and I have a very different memory.

Syd was in fact just about first on-stage, full 'Granny Takes A Trip ' costume and Dylan curls. Roger Waters was dressed in his red flares and pink shirt, cutting an almost beautiful, mythical, bestial figure with his lyre bass in hand. The crowd moved back from the stage - this trip was going to be loud. They hardly acknowledged the audience, there was an air of solemnity pervading everywhere. They started with Astronome Domine, and followed with 'Pow. R Toc H', during which Rogers lips seamed to grow into a maw like appendage as he did his scream. All through this, the music was G-R-E-A-T, original, and evocative. The band just seemed to use the light show that was there, but as that was probably Mark Boyle, the UFO lensman, then there was no problem - it was all so f*cking beautiful and original. I cannot recall the other tracks, but there was no 'Arnold' or 'Emily', although I remember a piece that was Emily-ish which might well have been 'Reaction in G'. Each piece was many minutes long, lots of improvisation, and the Floyd inhabited a space all their own. There were no magic moments as such from Syd, it all seemed very intense and workmanlike, but when it was over, we all felt that we'd witnessed something special. Space music? Absolutely! Intentionally or not, that's where they took you. Inner and outer.

There were many other bands playing after that, some brilliant, some pretty dire. But for Terry and myself, it was the first day of a new perspective on life. At dawn, we wandered out of the Ally Pally as if we'd passed through an initiation. Geez…London was sunny and misty in the morning. We headed for Portabello Road and Notting Hill Gate, then caught the bus back to the city of dreaming spires.

Back in Oxford we admired the UFO posters we had bought (mine is still on my wall) and hatched plans for the rest of the summer,culminating at Christmas On Earth Continued at Earls Court in London. Syd's final Floyd official gig at the head of the Pink Floyd… 

Part 2 | Part 3