1966 Notting Hill Carnival/Fayre 50th anniversary exhibition at The Red Lemon 45 All Saints Road 27/9-9/10/2016 opening slideshow 27/9 6.30-8 pm

1966 The year the decade exploded in Notting Hill Part 3 also featuring the London Free School, Muhammad Ali visiting Tavistock Crescent, and Pink Floyd playing in All Saints church hall on Powis Gardens.

Colville Community History Project issue 17 September 2016 It’s Your Colville www.colvillecom.com contact tomvague@gmail.com Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate

‘Blow Up’, ’Alfie’, ‘Morgan A Suitable Case for Treatment’, Cat Stevens’ ’Portobello Road’ song, Beatles, Stones, Beachboys and Cream visited Lord Kitchener’s Valet, Twiggy and Nancy Sinatra were photographed, Muhammad Ali visited the London Free School, the first Carnival procession, auto-destructive art on the Westway site and Pink Floyd at All Saints Church Hall. IT happened here in 1966 poster design Michelle Brigandage www.sexyhooligans.com

In June 1966 The Grove Notting Hill neighbourhood newsletter announced the London Free School September Fayre, featuring a pageant, fireworks, music, plays and poetry: ‘September 1966 will be a landmark in Notting Hill. For the first time this century—apart from a bank holiday entertainment that survived until the First World War (see carnival tradition note below)—Notting Hill is to have its own Fair or Fayre, as they seem to be calling it. An opening pageant, with all the glamour and happiness of the Mardi Gras; a week of evening enter-tainments at low prices; a grand torchlight procession ending in a firework display; these are some of the activities planned by the Notting Hill Fayre Committee.’ The fair organiser Rhaune Laslett said it was happening to bring the various communities in the area together: “We felt that although West Indians, Africans, Irish and many other nationalities all live in a very congested area, there is very little communication between us. If we can infect them with a desire to participate then this can only have good results.” Rhaune Laslett was born in London to an American Indian mother and Russian father. In a interview with the Caribbean Times in 1989 she recalled that the Carnival idea came to her in a dream (known as a Hamblecha by American Indians), after she had been dealing with a landlord/tenant dispute: “Suddenly I had this sort of vision that we should take to the streets in song and dance, to ventilate all the pent-up frustrations born out of the slum conditions.” The ‘Notting Hill Fayre programme of events’, from Sunday September 18 to Saturday September 24, consisted of: ‘pageant, procession, musicals; Inter-national song and dance festival; Dickens and drama night; Jazz and folk festival; Poetry and choir night; Old Tyme Music Hall; and torchlight procession and fire-works.’ The Free School newsletter report concluded with: ‘Will one woman’s dream come true? Mrs Laslett will soon be confined to a wheelchair, and she confided: “It will be the last thing I ever do, and the best. It could mean so much to so many.” By any standards, her efforts are remarkable. What better way to start retire-ment than to try and bring a little colour and excitement to a district which is often drab and sordid, neglected and overcrowded. Let’s all make it a success.’ Although a ‘bank holiday fair that survived until the First World War’ isn’t mentioned in local history books, there was a local fair tradition. An August bank holiday fair was held on Little Wormwood Scrubs in Victorian times that continued into the 1960s, and there was the Princess Louise Hospital Notting Hill Carnival procession through North Kensington in the 1930s up until the Second World War. Rhaune Laslett said in another interview that she was influenced/inspired by the early 20th century Bangor Street Rag Fair street market in Notting Dale and called the Carnival “a celebration of poverty.”

The 16/9/66 Kensington News reported that: ‘the London Free School are reviving the Pageant and Fair of Notting Hill this Sunday. They are intent on seeing this ancient tradition becoming once more a welcome and regular occasion. Mrs Rhaune Laslett, secretary of the London Free School, who has played a major part in the organ-isation of the Fair, has catered for everybody’s tastes. On Sunday afternoon a pageant procession will start from Acklam Road at 2.30 and will proceed down Ladbroke Grove and through Notting Hill Gate. There will be floats, fancy-dress competitions and decorated cars and everyone is cordially invited to join in on foot. In the evening a festival of international songs and dances will take place in All Saints Hall, Powis Gardens. ‘On Monday, September 19, the Old Tyme Music Hall, with Jimmy Calderbank, will perform also at All Saints Hall, as are all the other events during the week. On Tuesday, at 7.30 the theatre group present ‘Wozzeck’ by Buchner. Alexis Korner will be one of the guests at the Folk Evening on Wednesday at 7.00. On Thursday, also at 7.00, poetry and jazz will be joined together and should be a very interesting event to watch. Dance, drama and song is on the menu for Friday, with the Unity Singers and the Dolphin Theatre Productions. On Saturday is the Carnival Dance and Sunday there is more jazz with Jeff Nuttall and Mike Westbrook in the Animated Jazz Concert.’ On Sunday September 18 1966 the Notting Hill Fayre pageant featured a parade around the area consisting of a man dressed as Henry VIII and children as Charles Dickens characters, the London Irish girl pipers, a New Orleans-style trad jazz marching band, Ginger Johnson’s Afro-Cuban band, Russ Henderson’s Trinidadian steel-band from the Coleherne pub in Earl’s Court, and a fire engine. The 23/9/66 Kensington Post reported 'Crowds at fine start to fayre’ in its ‘Sunshine Carnival’ headline story: ‘Thousands of Kensington people and visitors from all parts of London turned out on Sunday to see the start of the first 'Notting Hill Fayre' in over a century. The traditional fayre of the 1870s is taking the form of a festival week. And its successful start is heralded the start of an even bigger revival of this ancient event. For nearly 3 miles children skipped after the gaily-coloured floats. Lost—But adults as well as children were captured by the carnival spirit. Hundreds of them, trailing after the procession from Acklam Road, became hope-lessly lost as they twined through Ladbroke Grove, Holland Park Avenue, Pembridge Road, Chepstow Road, Great Western Road, Kensal Road, Golborne Road and St Ervan's Road. They had waited for hours with their children lining the streets for the start of the procession at 2.30 pm. Mrs Laslett, organiser of the festival week, said that although she was convinced that it would be a great success she was still “overcome” by the tremendous response to the start.'

London Free School Fayre and Pageant September 1966

'After the pageant, which was part of the London Free School's summer fair programme, an international song and dance night at All Saints Hall in Powis Gardens, Notting Hill, was a “complete sell out.” Mrs Laslett told the West London Observer: “We didn't expect so many people at the pageant or the song and dance night.” Other events in the London Free School's week-long fair programme include a jazz and poetry evening tonight (Thursday) and a parade through Portobello Road on Saturday. The Notting Hill Fair was the event from which the Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea, Alderman Fisher withdrew his patronage last July.' This was due to the involvement of Michael de Freitas. The picture is captioned: 'Children dressed as characters from Dickens at the London Free School fair.' In ‘Notting Hill in the 60s’, Michael de Fritas aka Michael X is described as the co-founder of the Carnival with Rhaune Laslett:

In the West London Observer 'Jollity and Gaiety at Notting Hill Pageant' report: 'A pageant organised by the London Free School, which filled the streets of Notting Hill with music and laughter on Sunday afternoon, was so successful that the school has decided to make the pageant an annual event. Said Mrs Rhaune Laslett, the organiser: “Without doubt we have succeeded in what we set out to do and that was to liven up the community spirit. There are many different nationalities living in Notting Hill and during the pageant they all joined in with the singing and dancing in the streets.” Four bands, including the London Irish Girl Pipers, a West Indian marching band, and an Afro-Cuban band, took part in the pageant which started from Acklam Road. The route taken by the procession was through Ladbroke Road, Holland Park Avenue, Notting Hill Gate, Westbourne Grove, Great Western Road, returning to Acklam Road.

“He was a visionary right, all this Carnival down in the Grove is down to Michael, you know… he’s talking to this woman who’s running a neighbourhood thing down on Tavistock Road, Rhaune Laslett, and they twos up, and that kick off from there... I ain’t saying make an epitaph to him but...” The 1966 Carnival happened in late September around Michaelmas, a medieval quarter day when, appropriately enough, rents were due to landlords. The steel band leader Russ Henderson recalled in his interview for the Mas and Mayhem Carnival history project: “Mrs Laslett knowing I was in the area, she got on to me and asked me if I could come and play for the kids. It was in Acklam Road, some kids dressed up a bit and bunting in the road, they had a clown, donkey cart and juggler, just things to entertain the kids. I felt really out of place in the steel band playing to these people. After a time I said we’ve got to do something to make this thing come alive. Instead of staying outside of Mrs Laslett’s building we walked to one end and we walked back down and we thought that was going good and we said we’ll move the barriers and make a little run. That little run turned out to be the biggest run ever, we set out down on the Great Western Road, went past Whiteley’s into the Bayswater Road, right down and came back up Ladbroke Grove.” Russ Henderson lived on Bassett Road and also played at the first indoors Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Town Hall in 1959, organised by Claudia Jones after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. The beat poet Michael Horovitz’s 1966 ‘Carnival’ poem features: ‘Children all ages chorusing we all live in a yellow submarine—trumpeting tin bam goodtime stomp—a sun-smiling wide-open steel pan-chromatic neighbourhood party making love not war.’ The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ single was number 1 from August 18 to September 15. In Jonathan Green’s ‘Days in the Life’, Michael Horovitz remembered saying: “There used to be a goose fair or something, spelt f-a-y-r-e, before the last war, and Hoppy said Hey, man, there used to be this fayre thing! Listen, man, you poets, we ought to get to-gether and start Live New Departures (Horovitz’s poetry mag) in the local community.” Neil Oram’s ‘The Warp’ play includes scenes in which a hippy guru character addresses his commune in the Free School basement of 26 Powis Terrace. Another hippy talks about opening Colville Square Gardens, so that the kids can generate more positive energy, and a psychedelic pied piper leads children's street processions along Portobello Road. As well as the social nights through the fayre week at All Saints hall on Powis Gardens—featuring international song and dance, Dickens and drama, jazz, folk, poetry, choir singing and Old Tyme Music Hall (presented by the landlord of the Windsor Castle pub on Harrow Road)—the first Carnival included inter-pub darts. Rhaune Laslett recalled Jeff Nuttall’s People Band happening involving ‘motorbikes and very scantily dressed girls riding pillion, throwing jam covered newspapers and other paint dripping missiles at the audience.’

The following year, in the underground paper International Times Courtney Tulloch recalled the 1966 London Free School fayre, incorporating the Caribbean ’Notting Hill Carnival’ and jazz enthusiast police, as hippy heaven W11—’a prolonged love programme which ended with Carnival and continued in the form of IT.’ At All Saints hall, during Dave Tomlin (of the Giant Sun Trolley and Third Ear Band)'s ‘Fantasy workshop’—‘a gallery of peace and relaxation'—Michael X was ‘cooling it by the door, impersonating a villain but coming over strongly as the saint he is, hugging all the white guys and talking beautifully about the exciting way everyone was enjoying their little bit of freedom.’ The London Free School founder/promoter/photographer John ’Hoppy’ Hopkins was ‘jumping about the place in his camouflage kit, flying on and off the weeny stage looking derelict, like someone had just thrown a home-made Molotov cocktail under his eyebrows.’ In the 1968 Notting Hill Interzone issue of International Times, the Carnival is said to have ‘evolved out of the Free School ideas and enthusiasm for the community. It was the biggest success—a week of festivity and celebration.’

Acklam before the flyover

‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and ‘Astronomy Domini’, that would become their debut album ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’. Miles wrote in his All Saints hall review that Pink Floyd were taking ‘musical innovation further out than it had ever been before, walking out on incredibly dangerous limbs and dancing along crumbling precipices, saved sometimes only by the confidence beamed at them from the audience sitting a matter of inches away at their feet. Ultimately, having explored to their satisfaction, Nick would begin the drum roll that led to the final run through of the theme and everyone could breathe again.’ Nick Mason recalls in his ‘Inside Out’ book being unimpressed with their manager Pete Jenner (who had been the first Carnival treasurer) when he got them a church hall residency. He describes the venue as ‘unremarkable, with a high ceiling, wooden floorboards and a raised dais at the end.’ But he cites the Notting Hill area as a major influence on the psychedelic scene due to the ‘cheap rents, multicultural residents, activities like the London Free School, and a thriving trade in illegal drugs.’ Syd Barrett was inspired to write the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s second single ‘See Emily Play’ by Emily Young, who went on to be a sculptor. The ‘aristocratic flower child’ was recruited from Holland Park School to the London Free by Hoppy with her friend Anjelica Huston, the future actress daughter of the film director John.

On September 30 John Hopkins presented the first London Free School ‘Sound/Light workshop’ at All Saints church hall by Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. The next one on October 14 was advertised as a ‘pop dance featuring London’s farthest out group the Pink Floyd in interstellar overdrive stoned alone astronomy domini—an astral chant and other numbers from their space-age book’, with accompanying ‘light projection slides liquid movies.’ Encouraged by the liberal ‘hippy vicar’ of the high church, and promoted by Timothy Leary’s ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ slogan, this turned into a 10-gig residency through the autumn—at ‘All Saints Hall, Powis Gardens West 11, every Tuesday.’ Pink Floyd’s Free School Sound/Light workshops have been described as initially ill-attended or elite ‘social nights’, proper educational events with questions from the audience afterwards, and auditions for EMI. The All Saints vicars in the hippy era were John Herbert Brown 1961-66, John Henry Middleton Dixon 1966-67, and Peter Clark 1967-74. At All Saints hall the Pink Floyd Sound dropped the ‘Sound’ from their name and the Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley covers from their set, as they transformed into Britain’s foremost psychedelic pioneers, refining the whimsical, stoned folk pop of ‘The Gnome’, ‘Matilda Mother’ and ‘Let’s Roll Another One’ (‘Candy and the Currant Bun’), and the progressive rock freakouts

Pink Floyd at All Saints Church Hall 1966

Nick Mason describes this gig as ‘like Powis Gardens with added glamour.’ Meanwhile back in Notting Hill, Richard Neville arrived on the scene from Australia and launched the London edition of Oz magazine at 70 Clarendon Road (the house of his novelist sister Jill). After Pink Floyd’s All Saints hall residency ended in late November, Hoppy and Joe Boyd opened the Night Tripper/UFO psychedelic nightclub on Tottenham Court Road, to finance IT and as a larger venue for Pink Floyd to expand into from All Saints hall. As they appeared, along with the likes of Hendrix, Soft Machine, Arthur Brown and Procul Harum, accompanied by lightshows, films and experimental theatre, revolutionary plans were made for the underground press, legalising pot and, as Miles recalled, “various schemes for turning the Thames yellow and removing all the fences in Notting Hill.” As Jimi Hendrix returned from UFO club trips to his pad at the purple-painted 167 Westbourne Grove, according to the News of the World’s acid investigation, ‘amongst the most active British groups advocating LSD are some members of the London Free School, which comprises about 200 people and has many supporters.’ EMI presented Pink Floyd as ‘musical spokesmen for a new movement which involves experimentation in all the arts’; with the acid disclaimer: ‘The Pink Floyd does not know what people mean by psychedelic pop and are not trying to create hallucinatory effects on their audience.’ This prompted Hoppy to write in IT: ‘Actually I think I prefer it when the Floyd give me hallucinations.’

Acklam Hall—Subterania In most accounts the London psychedelic scene was closer to San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom than New York’s Factory. Hoppy said: “It turned out that what we were doing in London towards the end of 66 was also being done in San Francisco, lightshows and showing movies on walls and generally throwing together different art forms. The Velvets were in New York, they weren’t quite the same scene, but that was sort of thrown into the mix as well” In the Pink Floyd book ‘Saucerful of Secrets’, Nicholas Schaffner posits that the New York scene was originally more influential, with the All Saints hall gigs imitating Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia happenings. Hoppy’s Warhol star girlfriend Kate Heliczer brought over VU tapes and Pete Jenner attempted to become their manager. Emily Young and Anjelica Huston have recalled going to the gigs dressed in black Velvet Underground-style clothes. At the first Free School Sound/Light workshop, the American associates of Timothy Leary, Joel and Toni Brown turned up at the hall, tuned in and projected slides on Pink Floyd. The liquid-slide lightshow, pioneered in the early 60s by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, was developed at All Saints hall by the Pink Floyd crew—Pete and Sumi Jenner, Andrew King, John Marsh, Joe Gannon, Peter Wynne-Wilson and ’the psychedelic debutante’ Susie Gawler-Wright—into the British psychedelic ‘blob’ show. The Boyle Family were also renowned for artwork made from rubbish found around Notting Hill. The Cream lyricist Pete Brown said of Syd Barrett, looning about in Granny Takes a Trip hippy finery at All Saints hall: “It might be overly poetic, but you could almost say he appeared to exist and live in those lightshows—a creature of the imagination.’ Pete Jenner gave up his day job as a lecturer at the London School of Economics to become Pink Floyd’s manager, and set up Blackhill Enterprises with Andrew King and the band at 32 Alexander Street off Westbourne Grove. As well as Notting Hill Carnival, Pink Floyd, adventure playgrounds and psychedelic lightshows, the London Free School launched the hippy underground press in the UK and the rave club scene on the world from All Saints church hall. International Times or IT, the first and longest running British hippy paper, was a continuation of the Free School newsletter The Gate/The Grove, originally published by Hoppy and Miles’ Love Books and financed by the proceeds of the Pink Floyd gigs. The first issues of IT featured Michael X’s RAAS (Racial Adjust-ment Action Society), Alex Trocchi’s Project Sigma, Steve Abrams’ SOMA Legalise Pot campaign, Gustav Metzger’s DIAS (Destruction in Art Symposium), William Burroughs, Yoko Ono at Indica, the Arts Lab, the Dutch Provos, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Dick Gregory, Harvey Matusow and Ezra Pound. On October 15 Hoppy, Miles and co inaugurated International Times with an ‘all night rave’ at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, featuring Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Yoko Ono and a West Indian steel band.

1966 The year the decade exploded in Notting Hill Part 4 history talk and slideshow by Tom Vague, featuring Lord Kitchener’s Valet and the London Free School, with Brian Nevill reading from ‘Boom Baby’ and Niall McDevitt on International Times Saturday December 17 3-4 pm North Kensington Library 108 Ladbroke Grove W11 1PZ