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