A NEW BOOK FROM PARADISE ROAD

From the International Poetry Incarnation of 1965 via the International Times party at the Roundhouse; the UFO and Middle Earth clubs; the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, Love-In Festival and Christmas on Earth Continued happenings; to Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight and a first Pop, Blues & Folk Festival in a field near Glastonbury in 1970, this book celebrates the multisensory cultural revolution that was the UK Psychedelic Underground.

With music from Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Tomorrow, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Tyrannosaurus Rex… retinal stimulation from Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, Omtentacle, OZ’s Martin Sharp and a host of liquid light shows… weaponised poetry, confrontational performance art and mind-expanding drugs… the emerging counterculture planned nothing less than a shake-up of society.

Compiled from on-the-spot memories and recollections, new and unpublished interviews with key figures, and with rare and previously unseen photos this is the true story of an optimistic, brightly coloured, free-thinking moment in UK cultural history when all things seemed possible.

This is a full-colour book 256mm x 185mm, with 272 pages containing over 200 photographs, flyers, posters, magazine covers and items of ephemera, many previously unpublished.

The authors (L-R)

Jon Newey

Jon witnessed the future at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream in 1967, age 16. Following art college, he combined touring/recording as percussionist with Crew, England’s Glory (Peter Perrett’s pre-Only Ones band), Nick Kent’s Subterraneans, Jabba (ex-Cymande), Chris Jagger’s Atcha and J-Sonics with a staff position on Sounds music paper. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Jazzwise magazine. He has written for Mojo, Record Collector and Downbeat among others, and penned numerous album and DVD sleeve notes.

Andrew Humphreys

Too young to experience the psychedelic underground firsthand, Andrew nevertheless benefitted from the counterculture, spending much of the Nineties travelling and authoring guidebooks for Lonely Planet (to Siberia, Central Asia, Syria, Iran and Egypt, among others), followed by eight years writing, editing and launching international franchise magazines for Time Out. He’s the author of Raving Upon Thames: An Untold Story of Sixties London (Paradise Road, 2022) and the founder of Paradise Road publishing house.

Peter Watts

Peter is a journalist and author who has worked in the UK national media since 1993, starting at The Sunday Times, later becoming chief feature writer at Time Out. He has written for publications including Uncut, The Times, Independent and Observer. He is the author of White Elephants and Flying Pigs: The Extraordinary Afterlife of Battersea Power Station (2016) and Denmark Street: London’s Street of Sound (2023), both published by Paradise Road.

Kevin Foakes

A graphic designer schooled at Camberwell School of Art, he was creating happenings with friends in the form of chill out parties in the early 1990s before touring the globe as a DJ with the Ninja Tune label, for which he was also art director for two decades. A keen counterculture collector with an eye for sight as well as sound, he co-created a multimedia night based around analogue projection techniques called Further in 2016. This led to his first book, Wheels of Light (Four Corners Books, 2022), a visual showcase of the UK’s projection wheel designs.

I’d Love to Turn You On: The Psychedelic Underground 1965-70
will be published on 16 November.
You can pre-order your copy
using the link below.