UK Underground movement
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The UK Underground movement in the UK was focused on the Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill area of London, which Mick Farren commented "was an enclave of freaks, immigrants and bohemians long before the hippies got there" (1). It was immortalised in Colin MacInnes' famous novel "Absolute Beginners" depicting street culture at the time of the Notting Hill Riots in the 1950s.
The Underground paper International Times (IT) started 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”. Even though Hoppy was University educated it did not stop him from favouring the more anarchistic elements in the Underground Movement including a key figure Mick Farren who by 1967 was working at IT and UFO club.
Police harassment of ‘freaks’ became commonplace to the point that in 1967 The police particularly focussed on the ‘source of the antagonism’ – The Underground Press. It has the opposite effect. “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” remembered Mick Farren (1).
Key Underground (community) bands on the time who often performed at benefit gigs for various worthy causes included Pink Floyd (when they still had Syd Barrett), Hawkwind, Deviants (featuring Mick Farren), Pink Fairies, other 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. Sci-Fi writer and sometime Hawkwind member Michael Moorcock remembers:
"everything happened in Ladbroke Grove in the sixties and seventies. I mean it was just nice and I happened to live in Ladbroke Grove and it all happened around me. You couldn’t actually move for bloody Rock and Roll bands." (Reference - personal communication with author Fee Mercury Moon)
Within Portobello Road stood the Mountain Grill greasy spoon (working man's) café which in the late 1960s and early 1970s was frequented by many UK Underground artists such as Hawkwind featuring, at the time, Lemmy Kilmister. It was of sufficient import to the members of the UK Underground that in 1974 Hawkwind released an album titled Hall Of The Mountain Grill and Steve Peregrin Took wrote Ballad of the Mountain Grill (2).
[edit] References
- (1) Funtopia Retrieved Aug. 8, 2004
- (2) Steve Took's DomainRetrieved Aug. 8, 2004
