The spaced-out years

Barry Miles came to London in the Sixties to escape the horsey torpor of the Cotswolds in which he grew up. Known at first only as ‘Miles’, he worked at Indica and Better Books and was soon helping to organise the Albert Hall reading of 1965 which is supposed to have changed British poetry for ever, though whether it did, or for the better, is debatable (Alan Ginsberg thought none of the British poets were worthy to read with him).

He then moved into journalism on the International Times and wrote biographies of both Beats and Beatles, as well as Zappa and The Clash. He seems to have been present at every ‘underground’ event of the next 20 spaced-out years. That he remembers them is something of a miracle, given the number of substances consumed, and his often too detailed account is unsurprisingly sometimes inaccurate, especially about the scene before his own time. It is also narrowly metropolitan in scope. But it can be recommended for all those who wish to discover, or to be reminded of, a very inward-looking and self-indulgent period, whose most lasting product has been its music.

Starting with Fitzrovia and moving quickly to Soho, the usual drunks and derelicts are recorded, though Miles never sufficiently distinguishes between those who dropped into the French Pub or Muriel’s for an occasional drink from the generally useless and unproductive regulars. He ends claiming millionaires like Gilbert and George and Damien Hurst for the ‘counter-culture’, along with the more plausible Derek Jarman and Leigh Bowery, so the term is so wide as to mean little.

There has always been much interplay between the establishment and its rebels, most of whom are only too happy to join, leaving the young, unknown and unsuccessful to struggle on without them.