Two Londons
In 1967, two scenes overlapped in London. One was “Swinging London”, the label that had spread after a Time magazine article in 1966 about the city’s fashion, pop music and nightlife. It centred on Carnaby Street and the King’s Road, where boutiques, photographers, models and pop stars gave a glossy image of a youthful city. The other was a smaller underground, made up of poets, artists, musicians, activists and publishers who were interested in psychedelic drugs, experimental art and alternative politics. The two mixed, and the same people sometimes appeared in both, but they were not the same thing.
The Summer of Love as a phrase was American in origin. In Britain the same mood was usually described through the music, the clubs and the press, and it never became a single organised event.
The UFO Club
The centre of the London underground scene in its first year was the UFO Club. Opened in late December 1966 in a basement on Tottenham Court Road, it was run by John “Hoppy” Hopkins and the American producer Joe Boyd, and it held weekly all-night sessions. Pink Floyd, with Syd Barrett as their leader, were among the house bands, and the Soft Machine also played. The nights combined music with light shows, films, poetry and a crowd in unconventional dress.
UFO moved premises during its life and closed later in 1967, partly because of money and management difficulties. Its short life is typical. Many of the places that defined the scene lasted months, not years, but their effect on the bands that played there was significant, and the early work of Pink Floyd is closely tied to it. Pink Floyd’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, released in August 1967, came directly out of this moment.
Press, bookshops and the Technicolor Dream
The scene had its own media. International Times, known as IT, launched in October 1966 and became the main underground newspaper. Oz magazine appeared in London in 1967, edited initially by Richard Neville. Both were part of a wider underground press movement. The Indica Bookshop and Gallery in central London sold literature and hosted exhibitions, and it was there that John Lennon met Yoko Ono in November 1966.
The best-known gathering was the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream at Alexandra Palace on 29 April 1967, a benefit for IT after a police raid on its offices. Many bands played through the night, with light shows and films, and attendance is generally described in the thousands. Pink Floyd are reportedly among those who performed as morning approached. It has often been called London’s equivalent of the Human Be-In, although it was an indoor, ticketed event rather than a free park gathering.
Drugs, the law and the establishment
Britain’s mood was shaped by arguments about cannabis. In February 1967, police raided a party at Keith Richards’s house in Sussex, and in late June Mick Jagger and Richards were sentenced for drug offences. The severity of the sentences prompted an editorial in The Times on 1 July headed “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”, and on appeal at the end of July Jagger’s sentence was replaced by a conditional discharge and Richards’s conviction was quashed. Hopkins himself was jailed for cannabis possession in mid-1967.
In response, a rally for cannabis law reform took place in Hyde Park on 16 July 1967, and on 24 July The Times carried a full-page advertisement signed by prominent figures, including the Beatles, arguing that the law on cannabis was unjust. These episodes show how the British scene was pulled more directly into debates with the legal system and the press than its California counterpart.
Music and fashion
Parliament also passed the Sexual Offences Act and the Abortion Act in 1967, reforms that matched the city’s permissive reputation, although they were the result of long campaigns and not of the youth scene. Britain’s music scene in the summer of 1967 was extraordinary on its own terms. The Sgt. Pepper album came out on 1 June, Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” reached number one in the early summer, and the Beatles took part in the satellite broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” on 25 June, usually remembered as the Our World broadcast. The American guitarist Jimi Hendrix had moved to London in 1966 and built his reputation in clubs there before returning to the United States for the Monterey Pop Festival in June. Offshore pirate radio ships had broadcast pop to a huge audience, and a new law shut most of them down in August 1967, just before the BBC’s Radio 1 took on the role.
The fashions on view in the boutiques ranged from the mod fashion of the earlier part of the decade to a frilly, military and Victorian-inspired psychedelic style.
How London differed from California
The main contrasts, in general terms, were these:
- Scale and geography. London’s scene was concentrated in a few districts and venues and was far smaller than the crowds in the Haight.
- Art school roots. Many British musicians had attended art schools, which fed an emphasis on design, film and experiment.
- Less communal living. Shared flats existed, but there was little equivalent of the Diggers’ free food or of rural communes in 1967.
- Fashion and commerce. The line between underground and the fashion industry was thinner, and there was less suspicion of being “sold out”.
- Weather and politics. A damp climate and a different legal and class system shaped everything from where people gathered to how their activities were reported.
The British scene lasted beyond 1967 in the form of free concerts in Hyde Park from 1968, further underground publications, and early squatting and community advice groups. It was never as heavily mythologised as San Francisco, but it was among the most creative scenes of the decade.