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The Britishcounter-culture orunderground scene developed during the mid-1960s,[1] and was linked to thehippiesubculture of the United States. Its primary focus was aroundLadbroke Grove andNotting Hill inLondon. It generated its ownmagazines andnewspapers, bands, clubs andalternative lifestyle, associated withcannabis andLSD use and a strong socio-political revolutionary agenda to create an alternative society.
Many in the blossoming underground movement were influenced by 1950sBeat generation writers such asWilliam Burroughs andAllen Ginsberg, who paved the way for thehippies and thecounterculture of the 1960s.[2] During the 1960s, the Beat writers engaged in symbiotic evolution with freethinking academics including experimentalpsychologistTimothy Leary.
An example of the cross-over of beat poetry and music can be seen when Burroughs appeared at thePhun City festival, organised in 24–26 July 1970 byMick Farren with underground community bands includingThe Pretty Things,Kevin Ayers,Edgar Broughton Band,Pink Fairies,Shagrat, and, from the United States, theMC5.
The UK's underground movement was focused on theLadbroke Grove/Notting Hill area of London, whichMick Farren said "was an enclave offreaks, immigrants andbohemians long before thehippies got there". It had been depicted inColin MacInnes' novelAbsolute Beginners, about street culture at the time of the Notting Hill Riots in the 1950s.
The underground paperInternational Times (IT) began to appear in 1966 and Steve Abrams, founder ofSoma, summarised the underground as a "literary and artistic avant-garde with a large contingent from Oxford and Cambridge.John Hopkins (Hoppy), a member of the editorial board ofInternational Times for example, was trained as a physicist at Cambridge."
Police harassment of members of the underground (often referred to as "freaks", initially by others as an insult, and later by themselves as an act of defiance) became commonplace, particularly against theunderground press. According to Farren, "Police harassment, if anything, made the underground press stronger. It focused attention, stiffened resolve, and tended to confirm that what we were doing was considered dangerous to the establishment."
Key underground (community) bands of the time who often performed at benefit gigs for various worthy causes includedPink Floyd (when they still hadSyd Barrett),Soft Machine,Tomorrow,Pretty Things,The Deviants (featuringMick Farren),Tyrannosaurus Rex,Edgar Broughton Band,Hawkwind,Pink Fairies (featuringTwink and ex-The Deviants),Shagrat (featuringSteve Peregrin Took,Mick Farren (early lineup), andLarry Wallis); key people included, in the late '60s,Marc Bolan, who would leave "the Grove" to find fame withT. Rex, and his partnerSteve Peregrin Took, who remained in Ladbroke Grove and continued to perform benefit gigs in the anti-commercial ethos of the UK underground.
WithinPortobello Road stood the Mountain Grill, agreasy spoon cafe, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s was frequented by several UK underground artists, includingHawkwind and the Pink Fairies.[3] In 1974, Hawkwind released an album titledHall Of The Mountain Grill andSteve Peregrin Took wroteBallad of the Mountain Grill (akaFlophouse Blues).[4]
Mick Farren said,
My own feeling is that, not just sex, but anger and violence, are part and parcel ofrock n' roll. The rock concert can work as an alternative for violence, an outlet for violence. But at that time there were a lot of things that made us really angry. Wewere outraged! In the U.S. the youth were sent to Vietnam and there was nothing we could do to change the way the government did it.Smoking cannabis and doing things to get thrown injail were our own way of expressing our anger, and we wanted change - I believed that picking up aguitar, not a gun, would bring about change.[5]It's likeGermaine Greer said about the underground - it's not just some sort of scruffy club you can join, you're in or you're out ... it's like being a criminal.[6]
The underground movement was heavily symbolised by the use ofdrugs. The types of drugs used were varied and in many cases the names and effects were unknown asThe Deviants/Pink Fairies member Russell Hunter, working atInternational Times (part of theunderground press at the time), recalled. "People used to send in all kinds of strange drugs and things, pills and powders, stuff to smoke and that. They'd always give them to me to try to find out what they were! [Laughs]".
Part of the sense of humour of the underground, no doubt partly induced by the effects of both drugs and radical thinking, was an enjoyment at "freakin' out the norms".Mick Farren recalls actions sure to elicit the required response. "The band's baroque House of Usher apartment on London's Shaftesbury Avenue had witnessed pre-Raphaelite hippy scenes, like Sandy the bass player (ofThe Deviants andPink Fairies), Tony the now and again keyboard player, and a youngDavid Bowie, fresh fromBeckenham Arts Lab, sunbathing on the roof, taking photos of each other and posing coyly as sodomites".
The image of the underground as manifested in magazines such asOz and newspapers likeInternational Times was dominated by key talented graphic artists, particularlyMartin Sharp and the Nigel Waymouth–Michael English team,Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, who fusedAlfons Mucha'sArt Nouveau arabesques with the higher colour key of psychedelia. British Television played a substantial role in representing the UK underground and counter-culture movement; At the beginning of the 1960s, three-quarters of the British population had a television, and the number rose to 90% by 1964.[7]
There was a smaller, less widely spread manifestation from the UK underground termed the "Overground", which referred to an explicitly spiritual, cosmic, quasi-religious intent, though this was an element that had always been present. At least two magazines—Gandalf's Garden (6 issues, 1968–72) andVishtaroon—adopted this "overground" style.Gandalf's Garden was also a shop/restaurant/meeting place atWorld's End, Chelsea. The magazines were printed on pastel paper using multi-coloured inks and contained articles about meditation,vegetarianism,mandalas,ethics,poetry,pacifism and other subjects at a distance from the more wild and militant aspects of the underground. The first issue ofGandalf's Garden urged that we should "seek to stimulate our own inner gardens if we are to save our Earth and ourselves from engulfment." It was edited by Muz Murray who is now called Ramana Baba and teaches yoga.
These attitudes were embodied musically inThe Incredible String Band, who in 2003 were described as "holy" by the thenArchbishop of Canterbury,Rowan Williams, in a foreword for the bookBe Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium (Helter Skelter Books). He had previously chosen the band's track "The Hedgehog's Song" as his only piece of popular music on the radio programmeDesert Island Discs). The criticIan MacDonald said: "Much that appeared to be profane in Sixtiesyouth culture was quite the opposite".
