Where is the Counter-Culture?

Where is the Counter Culture?” is a question that keeps haunting me.

I was having breakfast in a small bar on Fillmore street surrounded by San Francisco people going about their business and found myself wishing I could just go over and adopt about 6 or 7 of them as temporary friends…..you know, look into their lives and dreams for an hour or two, have a laugh and experience their life for a moment.  I liked people’s smiles….it all seems so different away from home. away from gloomy Britain and the tabloid determination to scare the hell out of everyone on whatever subject du jour – crime, finance, the weather….here everyone had cosy sweaters on and easy trousers – grown up hippy chic…..A couple sat on the table right by me and suddenly I was in a Seinfeld episode, I couldn’t believe it as I shamelessly evesdropped – what to them was probably a casual conversation made for riveting dialogue to your average English man.

Later that afternoon Mj and I go together to Haight Street..…..Wow its still 1972 here!!!   We walk up and down with the freaks and long hairs and feel real nostalgia for that period – we both feel it. Time’s stood still here.. So is this where counter culture is still alive and well?   Except Mj buys a huge pile of DVDs in Amoeba records (for the Rock and Roll library back home) but its the coolest place, even if there are no $100 Les Paul juniors to be bought in thrift shops anymore, like in Ian Hunters “Diary of a Rock and Roll Star”.  So Counter Culture – how do you find it now, how do you recognise it today?

Way back in the early 70s in the UK we had our version – the axis of Hawkwind, The Edgar Broughton band and the Pink Fairies who played “free” festivals up and down the country.  I remember being at high school looking every week in the then music paper Melody Maker for mention of these bands and trekking out across London in search of this “happening”.  It was the first time to us where the bands were about more than just the music – there was a scene.  I still have the double vinyl album “Greasy Truckers Party” recorded live..bands like the Welsh ‘Man’ (featuring another Mick Jones on guitar) Hawkwind and Brinsley Schwartz. recorded at the famous Roundhouse. We both used to go there as fans, queueing up on the steps outside on a Sunday night to see the bands and later when Mick and I had become friends, the two of us stood there together. We didn’t know that that area of Camden town was to become center of the Clash universe years later.

So many memories….

The London Freak scene… It (International Times) magazine – an “underground” paper along with “OZ” and “Friends” – everything was new and exciting with its psychedelic artwork, hints at forbidden but freely available sexuality (Me and my school friends created  our own magazine called “Rim” – I did the artwork for it in my bedroom – I had no idea what we were doing!)… going up to Notting Hill Gate to the newly opened Virgin record shop that was more than a shop because you could hang out and meet people… Kensington market to get clothes….. The Free festivals at Windsor great park….

And to be a part of this scene you just needed one simple look – Long Hair!

The teacher made me stand outside at maths class because my hair was too long –  can you believe it!!!!!!  And it was only just touching my shirt collar!   One small step for a boy then…. did that threaten society?  But i guess it did because it broke down barriers – it said we’re starting to push barriers, starting to believe that we can be anything we want to be, starting to jump off the straight world treadmill, run far away from becoming another brick in the wall.  It may have started with long hair but it made it easy to see who got it then.

And through it all the soundtrack to our lives was the music. Then I later discovered a  group, not English who were so wild, musically and politically that they exploded into my life – the MC5 from Detroit, along with their mentor John Sinclair, they represented everything in the growing Detroit scene that was challenging the rules of straight society.. At Phun City , a free festival, they were the ones.

Here’s a quote from the time…….” The whole thing was offensive and obscene in many ways and you would have been surprised at some of the people there. There had been university people from America, Oxford and Cambridge and ordinary decent people. They just wanted to do what they wanted to do and they did it. I just cannot understand it ”  This from Mr E.T Oates, chief public health inspector which shows very clearly in those days THAT is what authority thought of Counter Culture…  these people really defined the time and I still don’t think anyone’s come close since then….

Carbon/Silicon quoted the brilliantly inflamatory speech from the introduction to the MC5’s live album “Kick out the Jams” on our poster (currently hanging in HMV in Oxford Street – oh the irony!) as “our inspiration”.  They were the wildest, had the best quotes, were political, were free form, loved Sun Ra ……and the music rocked like hell.  The first song Mick and I ever played together back in 1975 was a version of their “Rambling Rose” – I still have a tape recording of that day with a young Mj on vocals, me on bass and a young Brian James on lead guitar – still sounds pretty wild. The MC5 – I had every record, still do and bought everything on CD again.

The hours I’ve spent online watching rare footage of them – If only we’d had YouTube back in 1975. Watch their amazing shows from the 60s and early 70s!  Mick saw them play at Alesbury Civic Hall.  I’m still learning the guitar solos and to watch that wild footage of Kick out the Jams is the ultimate inspiration to go out and play a great gig.  Ask Primal Scream, they know.

And last Wednesday night, in the hour before our first proper tour date, the Gig at the El Rey in L.A, when we’d got changed and were ready to play, Mick and I sat in the back of our tour bus with Wayne Kramer. He came to see us.

That guitarist!!  And he was great, looked cool, fresh, healthy (and he’s lived the life all right!).. he was sharp and intelligent, been through it.  Sitting there with us (fans!) he still had that something special – the sparkle in the eye that tells the passion still burns. We talked of many things – about how we can we be cool as grown ups and still be in a band, do it with dignity but not be one of those horrible tragic bands  just doing it for the money, with no new ideas… I really liked him and was glad my childhood dreams were still intact when he went off to let us do the gig…….

It was a long way from Phun City…. It seems crazy now to look back at it in this world we now live in, where every outrageous look has been tried, every barrier torn down, every straight challanged – does it seem that nothing threatens us now…… How do you get to be counter culture in 2008? what is threatening now?  Is it just Terror in all it’s shapes and forms – is kids killing each other the new frontier?

So I’m then sitting here now, writing this on the tour bus as we glide away from San Francisco and I’m glad we saw what’s left of Haight Ashbury – it made me think and that’s what it’s all about…

So – does a counter culture exist today or are WE all the mainstream now?  And I love this wired world, where everything and anything is possible – we have the power again – I just hope we use it well.