Syd Barrett's Psychedelic London, Part II

Of Two Johns: Lennon & Sinclair, posted here a short while ago, tells of John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and Yoko Ono all as active participants at The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, an early London Be-In. Providing more detail of that story, Julian Palacios, author of the forthcoming book, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd—Lost in the Woods, has graciously permitted an abridged chapter to be published herein. Click here for part one. Below is part two, reprinted here by permission:

The 14-Hour
Technicolor Dream

The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream marked the height of underground fashion. The full range of uniforms prevalent in sixties culture was in evidence. Here a phalanx of pea-coated beatniks, there a Kings Road fashion maven in a 1940’s satin dress with a chinchilla wrap. As proof of the Beatles sartorial dominance, everywhere were men with Edwardian beards and moustaches, rather than bog-brush beards of the later sixties. John Lennon grokked the scene clad in a sheepskin Afghan coat and granny specs.

The Pink Floyd made their way back from Heathrow. Stopping in at Edbrooke Road, [Peter] Jenner and Syd [Barrett] each dropped a tab of LSD before driving up to Muswell Hill in a convoy of Bentley and Transit van. Jenner said, "The most psychedelic experience that I’ve ever been to. At least half the audience was doing acid. I was doing acid. We’d had to take a long drive to get there from a gig in The Netherlands."

The group alighted at the Alexandra Palace at 3 am. They, like all the other bands, were playing free for the benefit. Syd wandered the crowd, tripping on LSD, having already smoked strong weed in Amsterdam earlier in the day. [He] ran into Mick Rock. The pair climbed scaffolding to peer into pipe organ bellows and entertained themselves pelting Yoko Ono with bits of wadded up paper as she organised a Fluxus-style happening. With a working title of "A Pretty Girl is a Manifesto," Ono had model Carol Mann [seated] on a stepladder dressed as a nun under a blazing spotlight. Audience members were handed scissors, outfitted with a contact microphone plugged into the sound system. Instructed to snip off her clothes, bit by bit her clothes fell away, as a crowd of bemused male punters swarmed. Amplified scissors echoed across the Palace until Mann sat, in all her glory, nude.

When Soft Machine took the stage, Daevid Allen wore a miner’s helmet with lamplight atop, Kevin Ayers sported oracular makeup. Robert Wyatt cut his hair short, wore a suit and tie, and set drums sideways. The group played [the] joke number We Did It Again, which repeated the title over one monotonous groove for 40 minutes at a stretch. Barrett soon adopted this avant-garde prank onstage to his band mates despair. ("Soft Machine were good fun," in Barrett’s view.)

Continued...

Daevid Allen said, "After we had finished I wandered about among the huge crowd." Allen also noted that, paradoxically, he never felt more alone in his life. "As this realization took hold of my entire being, I became aware of a celestial orchestra playing over a slow beat. I was drawn to the far stage where, unopposed by a simultaneous band, a group of slightly embarrassed musicians played symphonic slide guitar under the camouflage of vividly hypnotic light projections. The music thus created was almost Wagnerian in its emotional power. It welled up, expanding through the swirl of liquid light." A life changing moment for Allen, who adapted Barrett’s glissando technique, refined over a 40-year stretch with various incarnations of Gong.

Robert Wyatt was also impressed, "The Floyd played at 4 in the morning. It must have been one of the greatest gigs they ever did. Syd played with a slide and it blew my mind. I was hearing echoes of all the music I’d ever heard, with bits of Béla Bartók and God-knows-what."

The Pink Floyd at the Dream was the high point of the psychedelic era to Peter Jenner. "A perfect setting, everyone had been waiting for them and everybody was on acid." To a fanfare of the Finale by Bream, the group took the stage. Colin Turner was on hand, "The dawn arrived in a triumphant pink hue, the light came cascading in from the huge windows. Amid this awesome display of nature, Pink Floyd took the stage. They were wearing outfits with flared trousers and satin shirts. People began to awake and hold hands as the first notes of Astronomy Dominé echoed through the Palace."

Colin: "There was an extraordinary connection between the group and the audience. Then the magic happened. Syd’s mirror-disc Telecaster caught the dawn’s pink light. Syd noticed this and with drug-filled eyes blazing, he made his guitar talk louder and louder, higher and higher as he reflected the light into the eyes of his audience and christened those of us lucky enough to be there followers of Pink Floyd for life."

Chris Beard, "Something was not right and Syd was not up to it, just standing there out of his tree I suspected. Roger Waters seemed to take over. I admired Waters for this and was not happy that Syd had now drifted off." In a photograph, Barrett looks as though viewing things from a slight remove, as though already absent. Acid accentuated his offbeat charisma, such that he seemed in retreat even as the group approached fame.

As morning broke, sun streamed through the tall windows, lighting up the Palace in ghostly white angles. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, arriving a bit late, pulled up in Bentley and emerged looking rather shattered, clad in a full pearly king outfit. Beck’s Bolero by Jeff Beck blasted through the Palace, with Indian modal scales colliding head-on with Elmore James and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Hoppy and Suzy Creamcheese stood at the door. In inimitable style, they shook hands and said good morning to everyone as they filed out into the light. Hoppy’s court trial was four weeks away.

[International Times] summed up, "The beautiful scene at the benefit at the Alexandra Palace on the 29th seems long ago when considered in the light of all that has happened since then." Nick Jones wrote in Melody Maker, ‘The audience were happy looning about, looking at other’s clothes, eating, sleeping, dancing and just freaking out, doing whatever they damn well wanted. I found the Dream a most absorbing experience.’

Hoppy says, "The Dream was a crest of a wave. It was a landmark event. Everyone involved has a different story. All are true. It’s one of those paradoxes. The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream is a prime example of how memory gives the opportunity for many people to claim it was their event. Everyone can claim a piece, if they feel it important. Everybody thinks they know what the Dream was about, but when you look, there is something that you cannot find out about it. The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream is a cultural memory. It’s hidden and occluded." An accurate summary of the acid experience.

From Amazon.com: Syd Barrett was an art school student when he founded Pink Floyd. Famous before his 20th birthday, Barrett led the charge of psychedelia onstage at London’s famed UFO club, and his acid-inspired lyrics became a hallmark of London’s 1967 Summer of Love.

The second edition of Palacios' Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd—Lost in the Woods, from Plexus Publishing Ltd.—completely revised, expanded and amended—will be available in time for Christmas, 2009.

Syd Barrett 's Psychedelic London

Of Two Johns: Lennon & Sinclair, posted here a short while ago, tells of John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and Yoko Ono all as active participants at The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, an early London Be-In. Providing more detail of that story, Julian Palacios, author of the forthcoming book, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd—Lost in the Woods, has graciously permitted an abridged chapter to be published herein. Here is part one, reprinted here by permission:

The 14-Hour
Technicolor Dream

That night the Pink Floyd topped the bill at multi-band extravaganza, The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream. Hoppy organized a group of his girlfriends to stand in Regent Street and pass out fliers, dressed in miniskirts ten inches above the knee. Later, the same flower and fancy dress contingent dropped off an invitation to the Dream for the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Envisaged as a "giant benefit against fuzz action" of the sort that arrested Hoppy and tried to shut down [the International Times], The Technicolor Dream was to raise funds for the [IT] legal defence fund. Word of the event spread throughout London for weeks. An estimated 7,000 punters crowded into the vast Alexandra Palace in London, hired out for the night by Hoppy and Dave Howson of Middle Earth.

The Alexandra Palace was a series of Victorian glass and steel halls built in 1875 crowning the top of Muswell Hill, overlooking London like an aerie. The Great Hall’s awe-inspiring vaulted roof and 30-foot tall glass windows surrounded space for 12,000 with 2,000 more in orchestra stalls. The colossal Willis Organ, driven by steam engines and vast bellows, was under scaffolding for repairs.

The Dream began at 8pm and went through the night until 10 in the morning. Many groovers had been up since the night before at UFO, when Jimi Hendrix jumped up to play bass with Tomorrow. [They] arrived in black ties, blazers, and evening dress befitting attending a cultural event. A generous assortment of caftan and bell wearing ravers flowed through them, bursting into the Palace in high spirits.

Continued...

For many, the Dream was an epochal experience, as a ripple of recognition spread through the crowd, amazed at how many full-fledged freaks were in London, and how many they knew. The small London coterie sent out a wave that affected youth culture the world over. The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream brought the movement out into the open, propagated core ideas, and imploded, in the manner of mass cultural movements.

Dudley Edwards of art ensemble Binder, Edwards and Vaughn says, "For anyone who was privileged to be there, that was the event of the sixties. The huge interior space was lit with big film arc lights turning night into day. There was a feel of a medieval market place with stalls and people in harlequin costumes, acrobats here and jugglers there, a helter skelter."

Paying one-pound admission at the door, crowds streamed into the Hall. The scaffolding around the pipe organ like a baroque reliquary, a battery of spotlights accentuated looming shadows. Three film crews filmed proceedings. Indica gallery owner John Dunbar was at John Lennon’s home that evening. "We were watching TV and suddenly saw this thing was going on. So we thought, [sod] it, let’s go! We ended up at this place where everybody I’d ever known in my life swam before my eyes at one time or another. All eyes were vaguely on us because we were with John and I literally saw people I’d last seen at kindergarten and hadn’t seen since."

Selmer were volunteered by Blackhill to provide a PA system. Two chaps came down from their factory and set up a pitiful 100-watt PA, with two 2 x 12 combos and Selmer Goliath bass cabinet on either stage.

For the better of the night and morning, two bands played simultaneously on the two stages, often causing an unexpected merger of styles though also a headache as sound resounded off the vaulted roof. Mick Farren, "I swear I saw Lennon standing in [the] zone of dissonance moving forward and back looking quite fascinated."

[David] Medalla and half a dozen nubile dancers in flowing scarves and gauze danced freeform pirouettes under powerful lights that cast stark shadows of the dancers across the assembled throng. To the tune of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows, they performed a ballet of sorts dubbed the "fuzz death ballet." Nightstick wielding bobbies chased nymphs and Medalla, with silver reflective discs like the ones on Syd’s guitar affixed to legs and bum.

Jack Henry Moore and a small army of technicians dashed from one spot to another, fixing speakers threatening to fuse and rewiring light fixtures on the verge of collapse. 500,000 watts of lightshows galore lit up every inch of available wall space from a light gantry in the centre of the Palace. Underground films were screened overhead. Projectors beamed onto billowing white sheets taped with electrician’s tape to the scaffolding housing the Victorian organ. The centrepiece was a 70-foot tall helter-skelter slide rented for the night, which people clambered to the top of and spiralled down.

The mood was optimistic, as smiling, colourful dressed people milled with endless chemical quicksteps from corner to corner. A ritual lighting of joss sticks filled the Palace with sickly sweet smoke. A wire igloo with mosquito netting was set up in one corner, where banana skin joints, touted for hallucinogenic effects, were handed out. A bitter after-taste was all it left one with, though the idea was more of an intentional put-on anyhow. Couples grappled in the igloo all night.

Announced by MC Jeff Dexter dressed as a cardinal, complete with robes and vestment, rock bands filed on and off one after the other. The acts included American black comedian/activist Dick Gregory, Yoko Ono, Notting Hill sound artist (and later Pink Floyd collaborator) Ron Geesin and Syd’s Camberwell classmate, Barry Fantoni.

Peter Russell and his lightshow team, attached to Cambridge band 117, occupied the top tier while [art ensemble Binder, Edwards and Vaughn] cast overhead watch glass projections on sheets ringing the Palace. 117’s shows used thin liquid films sandwiched between slides, using heat or pressure (and sometimes injection) to move them. Some early Polaroid work as well.’

Edwards descended from the scaffolding to take in the scene. "It was all so relaxed. Denny Laine was just sitting on the floor strumming his acoustic guitar with no one paying any heed. John Lennon and John Dunbar just strolled through the crowds without interference."

Though obstruction from the Musician’s Union blocked a performance by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, bands pile drove through to the dawn.

The freak contingent was well represented by hardcore underground band The Flies, whom Miles cited as the world’s first punk band. With vocalist Robin Hunt draped in a sheet stolen from the lightshow, the Flies launched into their ferocious freak beat version of (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone. Like the Brothers Grimm, the Flies formed part of the UFO cadre that shouted the Pink Floyd had sold out.

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown made an electrifying performance with a sprightly Arthur Brown in full makeup prancing like a shaman on ayahuasca with headdress in flames, shouting "I am the god of hellfire!"

From Amazon.com: Syd Barrett was an art school student when he founded Pink Floyd. Famous before his 20th birthday, Barrett led the charge of psychedelia onstage at London’s famed UFO club, and his acid-inspired lyrics became a hallmark of London’s 1967 Summer of Love.

The second edition of Palacios' Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd—Lost in the Woods, from Plexus Publishing Ltd.—completely revised, expanded and amended—will be available in time for Christmas, 2009. Visit Floydian Slips again for part two of this story chronicling the emergence of psychedelia.

Of Two Johns: Lennon & Sinclair

Last weekend we watched The U.S. vs. John Lennon. After the show, I told Joanna another Forrest Gumpian story from my past. No, I didn't teach Elvis his moves, but it's another of those Six Degrees of Separation things that amuse me to no end, especially since the degree of separation—for me, anyway—is usually two or three (four at most).

Walking past the smaller of the two school gynasiums one afternoon in 1968, I heard the coolest music playing from within. I stepped inside and, inquiring of my English teacher, Dave Lundin, learned that I was hearing Upper & Lower Egypt from Pharoah Sanders' Tauhid LP.

More important, Dave told me he was setting up the gym for a be-in, to occur that Saturday night and would I like to participate? Sensing that this was something not to be missed, between the two of us we agreed I'd stage a shadow show during the goings on.

6/21/09—This just in from John Sinclair, London, England:

Thanks for the warm memories and the
nice post. Dave Lundin, what a great guy

Love, John

(Only 40 years later did I learn that Dave had been a regular at Wayne State University's infamous Cass Corridor, where he was picking up counterculture influences and importing them to the NW Detroit suburbs for those emulating the Cleaver family in the post-Eisenhower era. About the same time I discovered that Yoko Ono had been an early participant in both Manhattan, then London, be-ins, such as The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream held at the Alexandra Palace to the music of Pink Floyd and Soft Machine. But more on the Yoko connection later.)

At home I dug up all sorts of small treasures for the shadow show which, as it turned out, I performed onstage adjacent to the 10,000 megawatt, 150 decibel, full-on assault of the legendary MC5, followed thereafter by the jazz grooves laid down by the Charles Moore Ensemble. For a good portion of the evening, band manager, poet, musician, Fifth Estate music columnist and White Panther co-founder John Sinclair—attired in vertically striped green and white pants—was prancing around like a leprechaun on an elevated walkway, handing out cinnamon sticks to all those in attendance.

Facing a ten-year sentence, Sinclair was shortly sent to the Michigan State Penitentiary for possession of three joints. After first talking to Lundin about the idea, I wrote to Sinclair and received a very nice reply shortly thereafter. He was obviously very happy to hear from anybody on the outside. Too bad I didn't save his letter!

"The people at Woodstock really were a bunch of hypocrites
claiming a cosmic revolution... while John Sinclair
rotted in jail after a trumped-up drug bust."

Pete Townshend, from The Road to Woodstock by Michael
Lang with Holly George-Warren, Ecco/HarperCollins, © 2009

Two years later "the stars aligned" for the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena. Having been involved on the fringe of radical politics in the U.S. for some time, organizers were able to enlist the aide of none other than that other John—late of Beatles fame—along with his ever-present other half, Yoko Ono. Also about this time Lennon had recorded the song, John Sinclair, released on his Some Time in New York City album. Sinclair was freed and the city of Ann Arbor soon reduced the fine for smoking marajuana to a paltry five dollars.