London’s own version
London had a distinct counterculture in 1967 that echoed San Francisco’s but grew from different roots. It was smaller, more centred on a handful of venues and publications, and strongly tied to the city’s art schools, its fashion trade and the pop music industry. It is also a mistake to treat it as a copy: London’s scene began forming in 1966, before the American summer was widely publicised, and it developed its own style, sometimes called “underground” in Britain.
“Free love” was a common label in press coverage, but the scene itself was as much about music, art and politics as about sex. British law and public opinion were changing at the time, with the Sexual Offences Act partly decriminalising some homosexual acts in England and Wales in 1967, though the underground was only one of several social currents behind these shifts.
The UFO Club
The UFO Club, spelled in the press as UFO or “Uffo”, opened in December 1966 in a basement at 31 Tottenham Court Road, a space otherwise used as an Irish dance hall called the Blarney Club. It ran on Friday nights and was organised by Joe Boyd, an American record producer who worked in London, and John “Hoppy” Hopkins, a photographer and activist. The club mixed live music, light shows, film and poetry.
Pink Floyd was one of its regular bands, and the Soft Machine also played there. The Floyd’s style, with long instrumental passages and projected lights, suited the room. The group released its first single, “Arnold Layne”, in March 1967, followed by “See Emily Play” in June, and the album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn later that summer. By late 1967 the club had moved venues and soon closed, with the exact timing less well documented than its opening.
International Times
International Times, usually called IT, was an underground newspaper launched in October 1966 with a party at the Roundhouse in north London. It carried news of music, drugs and politics, along with listings and classified ads, and became a model for other British underground papers, a part of the wider underground press. Hopkins was one of its founders. The paper faced police attention, including a raid on its office in 1967, and money problems.
The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream
To raise money for IT, supporters organised an all-night event at Alexandra Palace on 29 April 1967, titled the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream. A long list of bands performed, among them Pink Floyd, the Soft Machine and the Move, together with poets, light shows and artists including Yoko Ono. Reports speak of thousands of people attending, though precise numbers are uncertain. Pink Floyd’s dawn performance has often been described as one of the evening’s highlights.
The event is regularly called the high point of the London underground, and it is a fair summary to say that it gathered nearly every strand of the scene in one huge building. It did not solve the paper’s money problems for long.
Granny Takes a Trip
On the fashion side, a shop called Granny Takes a Trip opened on the King’s Road in Chelsea in 1966, run by a small group that included designer Nigel Waymouth. It sold secondhand and reworked clothes, and its shopfront was painted in a changing pop-art style. Musicians who shopped there reportedly included members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It belonged to the wave of boutique fashion that made the King’s Road famous, along with the general British appetite for Carnaby Street looks and Twiggy fashion. Not all of that was countercultural, and the commercial side of London’s youth scene was always larger than the underground itself.
Drugs, police and the press
Cannabis was the drug most associated with the London scene, and authorities took enforcement seriously. John Hopkins was jailed in 1967 for possession, and in July the Times newspaper carried an advertisement signed by well-known figures, usually called the Times marijuana advertisement, arguing for a change in the law. The Beatles were among the signatories. Rolling Stones members also faced drug charges that year. These cases made the question of drug law part of mainstream news and gave the underground a political edge.
Comparing London and San Francisco
Differences between the cities are worth stating plainly:
- London had few communal neighbourhoods like the Haight; people mostly lived in ordinary flats and houses around Notting Hill and Chelsea.
- Its heroes were pop musicians and artists, many already well known, rather than newly formed local bands.
- Pirate radio stations and the BBC’s changes in 1967 shaped what the public heard.
London’s scene lasted into 1968 and later, but by the end of 1967 many of its first organisers had moved on to other projects, in music, publishing and politics.