UK underground

British counterculture

This article is about the 1960s cultural movement. For the tube train system, see London Underground.

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Oz number 31 cover. The text in the lower right corner says: "He drives a Maserati/She's a professional model/The boy is the son of the/art editor of Time magazine/Some revolution!"

The British counter-culture or underground scene developed during the mid-1960s,[1] and was linked to the hippie subculture of the United States. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London. It generated its own magazines and newspapers, bands, clubs and alternative lifestyle, associated with cannabis and LSD use and a strong socio-political revolutionary agenda to create an alternative society.

## Beat generation influence

[edit]

Many in the blossoming underground movement were influenced by 1950s Beat generation writers such as William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, who paved the way for the hippies and the counterculture of the 1960s.[2] During the 1960s, the Beat writers engaged in symbiotic evolution with freethinking academics including experimental psychologist Timothy Leary.

An example of the cross-over of beat poetry and music can be seen when Burroughs appeared at the Phun City festival, organised in 24–26 July 1970 by Mick Farren with underground community bands including The Pretty Things, Kevin Ayers, Edgar Broughton Band, Pink Fairies, Shagrat, and, from the United States, the MC5.

## History

[edit]

The UK's underground movement was focused on the Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill area of London, which Mick Farren said "was an enclave of freaks, immigrants and bohemians long before the hippies got there". It had been depicted in Colin MacInnes' novel Absolute Beginners, about street culture at the time of the Notting Hill Riots in the 1950s.

The underground paper International Times (IT) began to appear in 1966 and Steve Abrams, founder of Soma, 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 of International 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 the underground 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."

Oz number 33, back cover advertising "A Gala Benefit For The OZ Obscenity Trial"

Key underground (community) bands of the time who often performed at benefit gigs for various worthy causes included Pink Floyd (when they still had Syd Barrett), Soft Machine, Tomorrow, Pretty Things, The Deviants (featuring Mick Farren), Tyrannosaurus Rex, Edgar Broughton Band, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies (featuring Twink and ex-The Deviants), Shagrat (featuring Steve Peregrin Took, Mick Farren (early lineup), and Larry Wallis); key people included, in the late '60s, Marc Bolan, who would leave "the Grove" to find fame with T. Rex, and his partner Steve Peregrin Took, who remained in Ladbroke Grove and continued to perform benefit gigs in the anti-commercial ethos of the UK underground.

Within Portobello Road stood the Mountain Grill, a greasy spoon cafe, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s was frequented by several UK underground artists, including Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies.[3] In 1974, Hawkwind released an album titled Hall Of The Mountain Grill and Steve Peregrin Took wrote Ballad of the Mountain Grill (aka Flophouse Blues).[4]

## Commentators

[edit]

Mick Farren said,

> My own feeling is that, not just sex, but anger and violence, are part and parcel of rock 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. We were 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 in jail were our own way of expressing our anger, and we wanted change - I believed that picking up a guitar, not a gun, would bring about change.[5] It's like Germaine 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]

## Lifestyle

[edit]

The underground movement was heavily symbolised by the use of drugs. The types of drugs used were varied and in many cases the names and effects were unknown as The Deviants/Pink Fairies member Russell Hunter, working at International Times (part of the underground 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 (of The Deviants and Pink Fairies), Tony the now and again keyboard player, and a young David Bowie, fresh from Beckenham Arts Lab, sunbathing on the roof, taking photos of each other and posing coyly as sodomites".

## Aesthetics

[edit]

The image of the underground as manifested in magazines such as Oz and newspapers like International Times was dominated by key talented graphic artists, particularly Martin Sharp and the Nigel Waymouth–Michael English team, Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, who fused Alfons Mucha's Art 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]

## The overground

[edit]

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) and Vishtaroon—adopted this "overground" style. Gandalf's Garden was also a shop/restaurant/meeting place at World'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 of Gandalf'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 in The Incredible String Band, who in 2003 were described as "holy" by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in a foreword for the book Be 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 programme Desert Island Discs). The critic Ian MacDonald said: "Much that appeared to be profane in Sixties youth culture was quite the opposite".

## See also

[edit]

* Counterculture of the 1960s
* Hungry generation
* Jim Haynes
* White Bicycles
* Bomb Culture

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Barry Miles (30 January 2011). "Spirit of the underground: the 60s rebel". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 December 2023.
2. ^ Rahn, Josh (2011). "The Beat Generation". The Literature Network. Retrieved 29 December 2021.
3. ^ Chris Parkin (13 August 2007). "Counterculture in Ladbroke Grove". Time Out. Archived from the original on 10 January 2014.
4. ^ "Steve Took's Domain". steve-took.co.uk. Retrieved 8 August 2004.
5. ^ Mick Farren - The Strange Days interview Archived 2008-05-08 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 26 April 2006
6. ^ Mick Farren interview Archived 1 March 2004 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 26 April 2006
7. ^ Staveley-Wadham, Rose (7 September 2021). "Ten Television Series That Shaped the 1960s". The British Newspaper Archive Blog. Findmypast Newspaper Archive Limited. Retrieved 30 November 2023.

## External links

[edit]

* The Sound of Ladbroke Grove punk77.co.uk
* International Times official site
* Scans of OZ magazine (archived site)
* Ladbroke Grove sleeve notes from Cries from the Midnight Circus - Ladbroke Grove 1967-78, Nigel Cross
* Joe Beard's biography of The Purple Gang – Taking the Purple contains many references to the underground movement, UFO, IT, 'Hoppy' Hopkins, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, etc
* "Covering the Counterculture - the 60s Underground Press in Pictures" at The Guardian website.

* v
* t
* e

British underground

People|

* Stephen Abrams
* Nicholas Albery
* Tariq Ali
* Jim Anderson
* Kevin Ayers
* Edward Barker
* Syd Barrett
* Mark Boyle
* Joe Boyd
* Arthur Brown
* Barney Bubbles
* Bob Cobbing
* Caroline Coon
* Felix Dennis
* Robin Farquharson
* Mick Farren
* Duggie Fields
* Germaine Greer
* Hapshash and the Coloured Coat
* Lee Harris
* Jim Haynes
* Wally Hope
* John 'Hoppy' Hopkins
* Michael Horovitz
* Peter Jenner & Andrew King
* Mike Lesser
* Tom McGrath
* John Michell
* Barry Miles
* Sue Miles
* Richard Neville
* Jeff Nuttall
* Neil Oram
* John Peel
* Aubrey Powell
* Sid Rawle
* Craig Sams
* Gregory Sams
* Martin Sharp
* Nicholas Saunders
* Storm Thorgerson
* Steve Peregrin Took
* Alexander Trocchi
* Heathcote Williams
* Ubi Dwyer

Publications|

* Alternative London
* Brighton Voice
* Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain
* The Black Dwarf
* Gandalf's Garden
* Gay News
* Ink
* International Times
* Muther Grumble
* The Mersey Sound
* Oz
* Schoolkids Oz
* Peace News
* Seed - The Journal of Organic Living
* Spare Rib
* Undercurrents

Bands|

* AMM
* Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
* The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
* The Creation
* Edgar Broughton Band
* Delivery
* The Deviants
* Fairport Convention
* Family
* Gong
* Hawkwind
* The Incredible String Band
* Pink Fairies
* Pink Floyd
* Pretty Things
* The Purple Gang
* Quintessence
* Sam Gopal's Dream
* Shagrat
* Soft Machine
* Third Ear Band
* Tomorrow
* Tyrannosaurus Rex

Events|

* Games for May
* International Poetry Incarnation
* The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream
* Phun City
* Windsor Free Festival

Other|

* Arts Lab
* Better Books
* BIT
* Compendium Books
* Games for May
* Granny Takes a Trip
* Indica Gallery
* "It's So Far Out, It's Straight Down"
* London Free School
* London Film-Makers' Co-op
* Mr Freedom (fashion)
* Release
* Seed Macrobiotic Restaurant
* UFO Club

See also|

* British Poetry Revival
* Counterculture
* English underground
* Freak scene
* Hippies
* Youth subculture

* v
* t
* e

Youth empowerment

Elements|

* Evolving capacities
* Free-range parenting
* Future generations
* Intergenerational equity
* Leaving the nest
* Student voice
* Youth-adult partnership
* Youth mainstreaming
* Youth rights
* Youth voice

Types|

* Anarchistic free school
* Community youth development
* Democratic education
* Popular education
* Positive youth development
* Student activism
* Student-centered learning
* Student rights
* Teen court
* Youth activism
* Youth council
* Youth engagement
* Youth leadership
* Youth-led media
* Youth organizations
* Youth participation
* Youth philanthropy
* Youth politics
* Youth service
* Youth suffrage
* Youth vote
* Youth work

Barriers|

* Adultcentrism
* Adultism
* Age restrictions
* Ageism
* Control freak
* Eleutherophobia
* Ephebiphobia
* Fear of children
* Gerontocracy
* Grounding
* Helicopter parent
* Infantilization
* Intrusiveness
* Narcissism
* Parental respect
* Paternalism
* Patriarchy
* School-to-prison pipeline
* Vicariousness
* Youth control complex
* Youth exclusion

Related topics|

* Age of candidacy
* Age of consent
* Age-of-consent reform
* Age of criminal responsibility
* Beat Generation
* Beatnik
* The Catcher in the Rye
* Counterculture of the 1960s
* Greaser
* Hippies
* Hungry generation
* International Youth Year
* LGBTQ student movement
* Subcultures of the 1950s
* Taking Children Seriously
* The Teenage Liberation Handbook
* Teenage rebellion
* UK underground
* Voting age

* Index of youth rights–related articles

* v
* t
* e

Hippies

History of the
hippie movement|

* Etymology
* Beat Generation/Beatniks
* Central Park be-ins
* Counterculture of the 1960s
* Red Dog Experience
* San Francisco sound
* Drop City
* Sunset Strip curfew riots
* Love Pageant Rally
* Haight-Ashbury
* Human Be-In
* Mantra-Rock Dance
* Summer of Love
* Fantasy Fair
* Monterey Pop Festival
* Newport Pop Festival
* Sky River Rock Festival
* People's Park
* Woodstock
* Glastonbury Festival
* The Farm
* Piedra Roja
* Festival Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro
* Nambassa

People and groups|

* Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters
* Acid Tests
* Furthur bus
* Electrohippies
* Diggers
* San Francisco Oracle
* Haight Ashbury Free Clinic
* Haight-Ashbury Switchboard
* Yippies
* Wavy Gravy
* Hog Farm
* The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
* Rainbow Family

Politics and ethics|

* Back-to-the-land movement
* Free love
* Anti-authoritarianism
* Simple living
* Environmentalism
* Pacifism
* Communalism
* Counterculture
* Bohemianism
* Make love, not war
* Turn on, tune in, drop out
* Vegetarianism
* Veganism

Culture and fashion|

* Psychedelia
* Flower power
* Hippie trail
* Hippie exploitation films
* Happening
* Peace symbols
* Bell-bottoms
* Love beads
* Long hair
* Tie-dye
* Intentional community
* communal living
* Free festival
* Music festival
* Flower child

Music|

* Folk music
* Folk rock
* Protest song
* Psychedelic music
* Psychedelic folk
* Psychedelic rock
* Psychedelic soul
* Psychedelic pop
* Psychedelic trance
* Acid rock
* Space rock
* Progressive rock
* Raga rock
* World music
* New-age music
* Jam bands
* List of jam band music festivals
* List of historic rock festivals

Psychedelics
and other drugs|

* Cannabis
* DMT
* LSD
* Psilocybin mushroom
* Mescaline
* Peyote

Hippie related
subcultures|

* Deadhead
* Feral
* Flower child
* Freak scene
* Housetrucker
* Jesus freak
* Jipitecas
* La Onda
* Lebensreform
* Mánička
* New Age
* New Age travellers
* Radical Faeries
* Rave
* UK underground
* Woodstock Nation
* Zippie

Related|

* List of films
* List of books and other publications
* Subculture
* Cannabis culture
* Cyberdelic
* Head shop
* Underground press
* press syndicate
* list
* Legend of the Rainbow Warriors
* Free Speech Movement
* Anti-war movement
* Civil rights movement
* Protests of 1968
* Chicago Seven
* New Left
* New social movements
* Postmaterialism
* Neotribalism
* Hungry generation
* Sexual revolution
* Second Summer of Love
* Neo-psychedelia
* Baby boomers

* v
* t
* e

Counterculture of the 1960s (timeline)

Arts|

* Black Arts Movement
* Psychedelic art
* Psychedelic music
* Youthquake

Cultural events|

* San Francisco Renaissance
* Beatlemania
* British Invasion
* Mods and rockers
* Swinging Sixties
* Hippie movement
* Human Be-In
* Summer of Love
* Bed-Ins for Peace
* Woodstock

Social and political
movements|

* American Indian Movement
* Anti-nuclear movement
* Back-to-the-land movement
* Black Power movement
* Civil rights movement
* Dialoguero
* Free school movement
* Free Speech Movement
* Gay liberation
* Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
* protests
* Second-wave feminism
* Women's liberation movement
* Sexual revolution
* United States

Media|

* Underground press
* newspapers

Subcultures|

* Discordianism
* Freak scene
* Hippie
* Mod
* Rocker
* Rude boy
* UK underground
* Yippies

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