victim of bad posture. Puberty had been a hell of a long time arriving and I was still shyly adjusting to the new regime that had only recently invaded my body and hormones.
I was becoming something of a bedroom hermit, plotting out my future and fantasising the hours away behind drawn curtains. I had a lot in common with Tom Courtenay’s escape-obsessed character in the landmark sixties film Billy Liar ; my dreams had lately gotten so out of control that I needed to live them before they devoured me.
But what would happen if my dreams were suddenly revealed as a kind of living nightmare? Wouldn’t it be somehow more sensible to opt for a life of quiet rural underachievement instead? That way at least my ‘innocence’ would still be protected. I wouldn’t be soiled by worldly experience. But innocence has always been an overrated virtue in my scheme of things. It’s a kissing cousin to naivety and being naive is only one small step from out-and-out stupidity. People who endlessly talk up its purity of sentiment usually turn out to be either morons or chicken hawks.
William Blake was right. You have to soldier on down that dank tunnel of adulthood until you arrive at the bigger picture. Otherwise you’re just abandoning yourself to a world of small-mindedness, bitterness and regrets.
1971
Just as the sixties were tapering off into history, a dark vortex opened up in the era’s rock culture. Hard drugs began knocking over musicians like ninepins. By 1971 many were hooked on heroin or burning out their nasal membranes and nervous systems with too much cocaine. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all expired within a few short months of each other, Joplin and Morrison from heroin overdoses, Hendrix from pills and booze. The West Coast rock scene was in utter turmoil. Once upon a time they’d been comrades-in-arms gently cushioned by the sweet scent of pot-smoke; now they were frantically pulling knives and guns on each other over cocaine deals gone awry.
Bad drug craziness was afflicting every nook and cranny of the youth music hemisphere that year. Young hard-rock hopefuls like Michigan’s MC 5 and the Stooges were being seriously sidetracked by their addictions. Down in Georgia, the Allman Bros. Band had to be forced into a rehab clinic by their record company just prior to a tour. The intervention didn’t prevent their guitarist Duane Allman from dying in a motorbike crash just a few months later whilst stoned out of his gourd. Even the introspective US folkie brigade of the hour were tainted: James Taylor, the dulcet-voiced shy and retiring troubadour who’d lately
become a bashful million-selling superstar the world over, was regularly on the nod throughout the period.
Over in England, it was just as bad. John and Yoko were both strung out. Eric Clapton had lately succumbed too. The fabled guitarist stopped playing in public in 1971 and self-medicated himself into temporary oblivion instead. He only left his country home once that year - to fly to the South of France in midsummer in order to attend Mick Jagger’s wedding. As soon as he arrived at his destination he started experiencing acute heroin withdrawal. In great physical discomfort he phoned Keith Richards - who lived nearby - for something to tide him over. ‘Tell him to go and find his own,’ responded Richards curtly to the person who answered the phone and then transmitted the message. The caring, sharing sixties were dead and gone. Now it was every man for himself.
In such a cold and divisive climate, the Rolling Stones could only further flourish. They’d never made convincing propagandists for utopianism anyway. They were more inclined to view life through a dark prism of worldly cynicism. The inky black vortex was their natural habitat and so 1971 became their greatest-ever year, their sustained moment of true creative majesty. It saw the release of two mind-boggling Stones-related films - Performance and Gimme Shelter - as well
I was becoming something of a bedroom hermit, plotting out my future and fantasising the hours away behind drawn curtains. I had a lot in common with Tom Courtenay’s escape-obsessed character in the landmark sixties film Billy Liar ; my dreams had lately gotten so out of control that I needed to live them before they devoured me.
But what would happen if my dreams were suddenly revealed as a kind of living nightmare? Wouldn’t it be somehow more sensible to opt for a life of quiet rural underachievement instead? That way at least my ‘innocence’ would still be protected. I wouldn’t be soiled by worldly experience. But innocence has always been an overrated virtue in my scheme of things. It’s a kissing cousin to naivety and being naive is only one small step from out-and-out stupidity. People who endlessly talk up its purity of sentiment usually turn out to be either morons or chicken hawks.
William Blake was right. You have to soldier on down that dank tunnel of adulthood until you arrive at the bigger picture. Otherwise you’re just abandoning yourself to a world of small-mindedness, bitterness and regrets.
1971
Just as the sixties were tapering off into history, a dark vortex opened up in the era’s rock culture. Hard drugs began knocking over musicians like ninepins. By 1971 many were hooked on heroin or burning out their nasal membranes and nervous systems with too much cocaine. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all expired within a few short months of each other, Joplin and Morrison from heroin overdoses, Hendrix from pills and booze. The West Coast rock scene was in utter turmoil. Once upon a time they’d been comrades-in-arms gently cushioned by the sweet scent of pot-smoke; now they were frantically pulling knives and guns on each other over cocaine deals gone awry.
Bad drug craziness was afflicting every nook and cranny of the youth music hemisphere that year. Young hard-rock hopefuls like Michigan’s MC 5 and the Stooges were being seriously sidetracked by their addictions. Down in Georgia, the Allman Bros. Band had to be forced into a rehab clinic by their record company just prior to a tour. The intervention didn’t prevent their guitarist Duane Allman from dying in a motorbike crash just a few months later whilst stoned out of his gourd. Even the introspective US folkie brigade of the hour were tainted: James Taylor, the dulcet-voiced shy and retiring troubadour who’d lately
become a bashful million-selling superstar the world over, was regularly on the nod throughout the period.
Over in England, it was just as bad. John and Yoko were both strung out. Eric Clapton had lately succumbed too. The fabled guitarist stopped playing in public in 1971 and self-medicated himself into temporary oblivion instead. He only left his country home once that year - to fly to the South of France in midsummer in order to attend Mick Jagger’s wedding. As soon as he arrived at his destination he started experiencing acute heroin withdrawal. In great physical discomfort he phoned Keith Richards - who lived nearby - for something to tide him over. ‘Tell him to go and find his own,’ responded Richards curtly to the person who answered the phone and then transmitted the message. The caring, sharing sixties were dead and gone. Now it was every man for himself.
In such a cold and divisive climate, the Rolling Stones could only further flourish. They’d never made convincing propagandists for utopianism anyway. They were more inclined to view life through a dark prism of worldly cynicism. The inky black vortex was their natural habitat and so 1971 became their greatest-ever year, their sustained moment of true creative majesty. It saw the release of two mind-boggling Stones-related films - Performance and Gimme Shelter - as well
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