Play Power - Richard Neville

PLAY POWER - RICHARD NEVILLE

If any magazine could be said to be seminal then it would surely be Oz, the hippy Underground publication brought to the attention of a mainstream audience due to it being at the centre of a controversial prosecution case in 1971. Oz was a thing of beauty; its multi-coloured, psychedelic pages incorporating text, photography and innovative graphic design in a genuinely unique and inspiring fashion. Unlike a lot of other Underground papers and magazines of that same period, Oz wormed its way into the hands of an eager readership previously unbothered by such publications, introducing a whole slew of radical ideas and attitudes to virgin minds.

Was it the sex, the drugs and the rock'n'roll that caught the attention of a wider audience? Most probably but these were essentially trojan horses used to smuggle and convey concepts of flower power, black power, gay power and what editor Richard Neville termed 'play power'.

'Revolution must break with the past, and derive all its poetry from the future,' Neville quotes from the International Situationists. And then from John Sinclair, of MC5 and the White Panthers: 'Our programme is cultural revolution through a total assault on culture, which makes use of every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on... our culture, our art, the music, newspapers, books, posters, our clothing, our homes, the way we walk and talk, the way our hair grows, the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep - it's all one message - and the message is FREEDOM.'

So Neville takes us by the hand and through his book, Play Power, leads us on a guided tour from the beginnings of hippy culture to the heart of the vision of the new world that Oz was very much a part of.

Pop! Bang! Pow! The words and names come thick and fast, conjuring up images, thoughts and ideas like a grand firework display lighting up the sky. Many of the sayings, words, and ideas he recites are old hat nowadays, of course, and many as might be expected are positively antiquated as viewed from a 2017 perspective. Many others have been forgotten with the passing of the years and come as a joy to exhume:

'Carry on motherfuckers!' - What does that conjure up nowadays? Barbara Windsor with a tommy gun?

'Youthquake' - So that's where Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive got the name for his album.

'The militant poor' - Plebeians on council estates, high on a heady cocktail of Sixties idealism, Eighties radicalism and Noughties existential austerity.

'A gathering of the tribes' - Memories of free festivals before everything turned a little too corporate for a lot of people's liking.

'Growing your own' - Allotments?

'Doing it in the road' - Tarmacadam burn?

And so on and so forth.

It's probably unfair to read and judge Play Power from the vantage point of 2017 but then how else is it meant to be read? It's a bit difficult not to, really. The problem being, is that it highlights a lot of huge clangers of political and social acceptability. For example, at one point Neville writes 'It's time traditional Marxists realised that their textbook revolutionaries - the workers - are inevitably reactionary, conformist and authoritarian because they are sexually repressed.' Which is a bit of a generalization, to put it mildly. Maybe back in the late Sixties and early Seventies there was some evidence to base such a claim on but if so, then surely the same could be said of the middle and upper classes?

For sure, from my personal experience there has always been a swathe of 'workers' who (in public, at least) are indeed sexually repressed. They're fully liberated (and far more liberated than other classes) when it comes to an issue such as violence, for example, or when it comes to speaking their minds but when it comes to something like pan-sexuality, you might as well be talking about something only fit for aliens from another planet. For some, monogamy is the only order of the day and the man should always be on top. Having said that, however, some of the most weirdest and perverse sexual antics I've only ever heard tale of (ahem) on council estates. And I don't mean the kind of things that Richard Neville lets slip about himself in the book regarding fourteen-year-old 'chicks'.

And there's a thing: the word 'chick'. It's a word I've always had a problem with because of its demeaning and sexist connotations but a word fully associated with hippydom just as 'man' is. It's always made me wince and still does whenever I might hear it being used to this day.

Maybe it's due to the time that Play Power was written in but it's interesting when Neville writes about the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park following the death of Brian Jones that he doesn't bat an eyelid when recounting the part about master of ceremonies Sam Cutler ordering the press section down by the stage to be emptied out a bit.

'There isn't enough room for everyone,' Sam Cutler announces 'So chicks will have to leave... Angels (as in Hells Angels), get rid of them.' From a 2017 perspective, of course, such an announcement is staggering in its sexism but for someone as so say liberal as Neville it goes unnoticed. And not because he's unaware of women's issues either, because he's by that time already read the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas though he admits that what the manifesto asserts is 'hopefully a minority viewpoint'.

For all that and for all its other faults, the hippy vision that Neville describes in Play Power has its positives that actually out-weigh the negatives. In describing Paris '68, for example, he writes 'For thousands, one night behind the barricades proved a more effective political education than fifteen years in the library.' And he's absolutely right. Just as he is when describing Abbie Hoffman's and Jerry Rubin's Youth International Party - better known as 'the Yippies' - and the battle of Chicago in '68: 'A chimera without any political tradition or ostensibly, any coherent philosophy, operating from a dilapidated New York office, without financial resources, without a network or even a branchline of brother organizations, without a master plan or a master - helped mobilize not only the thousands who poured into Mayor Daley's city in August, but indelibly branded the imaginations of millions who experienced Chicago second hand. The secret weapon? Understanding media. Unlike most radical groups, eschewing the press or issuing them with dry facts and pompous resolutions, later wondering why they're not published or complaining of distortion if they are, the Yippies relied upon that distortion, and exploited it; comprehending its myth-making potential and resolutely weaving a seductive spell of fiction and fantasy which, by the very act of publication, gained a compelling credibility.'

It's a lesson that years later groups such as Class War would come to learn and demonstrate and one that any present day revolutionaries - no matter that we now have social media - would do well to learn also.

Richard Neville passed away in September of 2016. Hippydom went on to splinter into a million different ways of life and careered off down a thousand different roads, one of them being Punk that itself subsequently splintered into another thousand different ways of life. Who now might be the holder of the torch and where next it might flare up is anyone's guess but if history teaches us anything it is that the torch will without any doubt flare up at some point again. What potential benefits might be derived from it when it does can only be speculated on but one thing that can be for sure is that if we fail to remember the past... then we will be condemned to repeat it.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth skies (Part 40)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 40)

After the storm, the calm...

Madcap - The Half-Life Of Syd Barrett - Tim Willis

MADCAP -

THE HALF-LIFE OF SYD BARRETT,

PINK FLOYD'S LOST GENIUS -

TIM WILLIS

Was Syd Barrett a genius? Well, the terms need to be defined, really, but if someone has Aspergers exasperated by copious drug use and then has a nervous breakdown, is it a recipe for genius? Is it a recipe for Syd Barrett?

According to Tim Willis, author of Madcap - The Half-Life Of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's Lost Genius, the answer is a most definite 'Yes', Syd Barrett was a bona fide genius and he's at pains to prove it. He compares him to the poet Rimbaud, that other boy genius who blazed so brightly whilst young before turning his back on his art to become a gun runner in Ethiopia. The comparison is fair enough but sometimes Willis overdoes it and comes across as if he's clutching at straws in his attempt to present Barrett as the instigator of various cultural shifts.

According to Willis, Barrett was using cut-out, blackmail-type lettering years before Jamie Reid came along and used it for the Sex Pistols' album cover. Apparently, Jamie Reid and Malcolm McLaren tried to contact Barrett to ask him to produce that same album. Apparently, Ziggy Stardust was based on Barrett as in "He came on so loaded, man. Well hung and snow white tan". Apparently, Barrett was using the cut-up method of writing (in a booklet he produced called Fart Enjoy), years before William Burroughs started using it. Apparently, it was even Barrett himself who first planted the seed of the idea of him being replaced by David Gilmour ages before Pink Floyd had even formed.

There's no question over the genius of Barrett's songs and music, whether it's his nursery-rhyme freak-outs lasting 40 minutes each or his English psychedelic vignettes. That's never been contested. No, it's Barrett's mental health that has been the subject of a debate that still to this day is ongoing. Is Barrett viewed as a genius because of his mental health problems? Were it not for his mental health problems would he still be as canonised as he is?

I don't know about anyone else but I actually want my pop stars to be unhinged. I want them to be of interest, to have something to say for themselves if not through their music then through their personalities. If they can do it through both then all the better but I want my pop stars to be fat and bloated Elvis Presley style, shooting at the television with a golden pistol whilst overdosing on qualludes. I want them locked in permanent childhood Michael Jackson style, riding their own private rollercoaster at midnight and having sex with their pet monkey. I want them fading away before our very eyes a la Karen Carpenter. I want them in full-blown fucked-up mode a la Sid Vicious; heroin tracks down their arms, on stage with a bloody nose and 'gimme-a-fix' carved into their chest. I want them blown away into oblivion by massive consumption of hallucinogenics a la Syd Barrett. And if the myth doesn't match the truth, I want the myth. And when it comes to Syd Barrett, there are certainly a lot of myths.

"Where are you going, Syd?" a friend calls out to him after seeing Syd striding down Oxford Street. "Far further than you could possibly imagine," comes the reply. Syd's on an epic trip, is the implied meaning. Trip, of course, being of the LSD kind.

On another occasion, Syd is spotted by some friends standing on the kerb of a road in Cambridge. "What are you up to, Syd?" he's asked. "Waiting for a lift," he replies. "Well, you've got one. Hop in." he's told. They all then go to a nearby pub where Syd doesn't say another word.

Syd visits a King's Road shop, tries on three pairs of trousers in different sizes, then buys the lot.

Syd's in a studio with Robert Wyatt during the recording of Madcap and he's asked what key he's in? "Yeah!" comes Barrett's reply. Songs in the key of Yeah!

Roger Waters takes Barrett to visit psychiatrist RD Laing but when they get there, Barrett refuses to get out the car. "What can you do?" asks Waters. Barrett and RD Laing. Can you imagine?

Photographer Mick Rock visits Barrett at his Earl's Court flat to take some pictures for the Madcap album sleeve and finds him there with a naked Eskimo. He's painted the dusty, unprimed floorboards alternatively blue and orange - literally painting himself into a corner.

Barrett is hammering from inside his lavatory, "Get me out! Get me out!" It's explained to him through the door that he would have to release the catch. An hour later Syd works it out and emerges sweating and trembling like he'd had a fit. Or an acid flashback, even.

For all this, the question still remains: Was Syd Barrett a genius? Well, if someone has Aspergers exasperated by copious drug use and then has a nervous breakdown, is that a recipe for genius? Is it a recipe for Syd Barrett?

John Serpico

Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen

POVERTY: THE FORGOTTEN ENGLISHMEN -

COATES AND SILBURN

The immediately striking thing about Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen is that it was first published in 1970 then reprinted in 1973 with an added introduction lamenting how little had changed over the intervening years. Reading it now in 2017 what is immediately striking is how still very little has changed. The landscape has been renovated, of course; from the cities, the towns, the suburbs and the estates but this has not been accompanied by any noticeable human advance among the poor.

Throughout the whole of the UK the poor are still with us, and even though they might now be fortified by consumer goods and living in houses considerably better than those of the past, their problems still remain. Material advances in living conditions have been negated by eternal economic uncertainty and the sheer cost of being able to simply function in society. In real human terms, it could be said that poverty has become even more severe, deprivation even more manifest, and hope even more elusive.

There was once a fashion of blaming poverty upon the individual, that it was their shiftlessness, low intelligence or their incapability to budget that led to their economic position. As poverty was mostly found among the working class, the blame was laid upon the so-called 'problem family', or the 'multi-problem' family, even. There are still some, of course, who hold this opinion, particularly those of a conservative bent though nowadays it is more widely accepted that the problem of poverty is actually rooted in the economic and class structure of society. Poverty, it could be said, is an inevitable if not intentional result of economics and a cornerstone on which the whole class system is built.

According to Bono of U2, that well-known defender of the poor and the oppressed, in the eyes of those who live hand-to-mouth there is no difference between the wealth of a white collar worker and Bono's own vast wealth. Meaning, both the white collar worker and Bono can eat well, can afford medicines, have time off, and don't have to worry about their children. This, however, is a very one-dimensional if not very wrong interpretation of what poverty is. It's an interpretation used and cited not as a way to help the poor in any way but to defend and justify the privileged.

Poverty is absolute and poverty is relative. There is no defining poverty line that can be drawn though many still to this day insist upon one. Poverty doesn't just mean to be without the essentials of life such as food, heat, water and shelter. If you have these essentials, for example, but then can't afford the bus ride to get to work to pay for them, where does that leave you? In poverty. If you can afford the bus ride but then once after paying for the essentials you can't afford other necessities as determined by the society you live such as laundry, cosmetics, hair-dressing, clothes, etc, etc, where does that leave you? In poverty.

Being unable to function properly in the society you live due to the economic position you're in inevitably means a lack of power as compared to that held by the more privileged. Which is the point at which Marx comes in: "If the income of the worker increases with the rapid growth of capital, the social gulf that separates the workers from the capitalists increases at the same time," as Marx pointed out "The power of capital over labour and the dependence of labour on capital increases at the same time."

So, if in a capitalist system poverty means loss of power, this not only means that people are in want but that they're also ill-placed to complain effectively about their condition. Which is the point at which the likes of Bono steps in to speak up on behalf of them - or some of them at least.

There are a lot of important, thought-provoking ideas raised by the authors Ken Coates and Richard Silburn in this book, and whilst their study is focussed upon the St Ann's area of Nottingham, what comes out of it is just as relevant to any other part of the country where poverty flourishes.

One of the most important things to be said about poverty, they declare, is that the main cause of it is not indolence, nor fecundity, nor sickness, nor even unemployment, nor villainy of any kind but is, quite simply, low wages.

Is there a culture of poverty, they ask? The answer is a most definite 'Yes', one aspect of that culture being acquiescence with the normalization of poverty. The normality of poverty? Is it really normal to be poor? Is it right for the poor to just accept their lot? Is it normal and right that some are rich at the expense of others? Do they not owe us a living, as the saying goes?

Which all leads to the most salient point in the book, that being when the authors talk about those who draw their influence and power from a willingness to impose poverty and the normalization of it on others. Which is the point at which - for the reader - anger comes into it. Or it should. And if it doesn't then it would suggest just how deeply and comfortably the acquiescence has actually sunk in to us all.

John Serpico

Street Art Exmouth Style (Part 20)

STREET ART EXMOUTH STYLE (Part 20)

Another typical night of depravity down at The Exmouth Arms...