I think I've been a hippy pretty much from birth... or maybe before! I first became aware of the hippy world at school in the 60's and 70's. I went to posh private boarding schools to be groomed for some establishment career in law or accountancy or some other un-hippy part of the whole commercial/military/industrial thing. I never felt I wanted to be part of any of that at all, though it was an intuitive thing rather than something I could have explained back then.
It was an amazing era... one minute we were listening to Cliff Richard and the Shadows then the next along came Hendrix!... apparently visiting from a different planet altogether, playing the same guitar as Hank Marvin but taking it into a whole new dimension of sound. And Hendrix was just one part of a whole fantastic exploding-evolving scene, of music and also of art and writing - the last two coming together in subversive and weird cartoon strips by Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and many, many more. We boarding school teenagers lapped it all up in counter culture publications like International Times and OZ. There was some very intelligent and thoughtful criticism of the industrial world in it all and in books of the time like "The Hidden Persuaders" and "The Waste Makers" by Vance Packard. Then in 1969 came WOODSTOCK! We went on a school trip out to see the Woodstock film when it came out the next year - unbelievably exciting! It unleashed something primal in us and sparked off a near riot.
 |
| Robert Crumb is still going strong - and surprise, surprise he's not a fan of that Big Orange Jobby |
 |
| The very rude and subversive world of S. Clay Wilson |
LSD
I remember at school seeing amazing paintings and drawings that people had made under the influence of LSD - wow! you just had to take those pills and become an artist! I couldn't wait to try it myself and the chance soon came round. My friend and I had gone round to our local dealer to get some dope, "Sorry boys! I've no dope, but I've got some acid!" So we spent the next few hours running around giggling in one of the Perth parks. Not much art though…
 |
| Psychedelic album art by Martin Sharp for Cream's Disraeli Gears |
UNIVERSITY - ZERO PER CENT
In the 70's, St Andrews was quite a different place to the hideously gentrified place it has become today - only 1 in four or five or its students now come from Scotland. Back then I really liked meeting people from so many different backgrounds and chatting about all sorts of horizon-widening stuff. Life for me revolved around pubs, (especially the Criterion bar), drugs, guitars, music and cycling. I was supposed to be studying Maths and Psychology but I couldn't be bothered with the lectures and tutorials etc. so ended up with 0% in one exam, Statistics, and didn't do an awful lot better in the others. The academic side of uni wasn't for me - and St Andrews felt the same way.
GENERAL DROPOUT CONFUSION
In the years after uni I travelled around, fixated on guitars, picking up woodwork, guitar making and instrument repair training in a random way. I wanted to make guitars but there was no course just for that. At the same time, my eco adventures were just beginning...
HIPPYDOM IN THE FLESH - THE VERY HOT SUMMER OF 1976
Hippyish friends of mine from uni were managing a small holding near Aylesbury, doing the whole self-sufficient, organic thing and I went to join them. I was very happy to escape Birmingham where I'd been working at John Birch Guitars.
The organic/wwoof/self-sufficient movement was a powerful, well-established thing even back then. It was the first time I saw a polytunnel and heard about great stuff like the Henry Doubleday Research Centre, saving seeds, heritage varieties etc etc. We talked about self-sufficiency and pollution, rather than climate change, which I don't remember as an existential threat topic until the 80's. It was Permaculture in all but name, but, again, I first heard that word in the 80's.
EARTHCARE AND PEOPLECARE
There's a bit of an overlap between Hippydom and Permaculture. Why wouldn't people want to look after the Earth and each other? The mighty industrial machine still grinds away though, exploiting precious resources like there was no tomorrow. Will we ever flick the switch from exploitation to regeneration? At last we can practise what we preach as best we can in the gardens and plots of land we find ourselves looking after.
No comments:
Post a Comment