Newport Art College. As for me, I was told my work had failed to reach the requiredstandard for a place at any London college, let alone the Central. This was partly, Isuppose, through lack of talent, but mostly, I think, because I had spent most of myyear pursuing other things. Music, parties, and adolescent dreams of revolution. I believe I sensed the world was changing, and that restricting myself to the mundaneevery-dayness of attending college, or at least applying myself while I was there, wassomehow counter-revolutionary. Our fourth expeditionary member, James's sidekick,an amiable, dark-haired lad whose name escapes me, had found a place at Chelsea, or Camberwell, I don't remember which.Either way, it became clear as we moved into our final term, that our dream adventurewas destined to remain just that. Without the pals, and without the Landrover, Chinaand the USSR would remain an escapade too far. But gradually, another possibility began to crystalise in my mind. During that year in London, and for some time beforethat, I had become fascinated by what I saw as the rise of a radical alternative societyin the United States. On a smaller scale, there had been similar developments in theUK. At times it seemed that virtually everyone, even school friends who just yearsago had been pill-popping mods, supported the revolutionary overthrow of societythrough a combination of LSD, rock n roll and dole handouts. But all that paled beside the social upheavals that were rocking America, fuelled by the Vietnam War onthe one hand, and increasingly radical demands for social justice from Black Americans, most notably the Black Panther Party, on the other.Without doubt, the rather pallid immitation of the American model that I espoused -not that it seemed particularly pallid at the time - had infused my time at the Central. Iremember, not long before leaving the college for the last time, daubing the walls withrevolutionary slogans in red watercolour paint (that I knew would wash off). For acollege project that had asked us to imagine and illustrate an imaginary future for ourselves, I had envisaged myself ending up as a Cuban revolutionary. I wore my hair long, in what could be taken as an approximation of the windswept style immortalised by Che in the famous photograph. I had taken to wearing a long, anarchist-styleovercoat with turned-up collar. The imaginary passport photo glued into myimaginary biography showed me leering at the lens, flashing a 'v' sign, the photo-flashthankfully bleaching out most of the pimples that by then had become one of my mostdistinctive features.It was, without doubt, an imaginary world I was living in, one in which anythingseemed possible. It bore little if any resemblance to the 9-to-5 drudgery that I felt surewas something a battle-scarred revolutionary hero would never have to endure. Howwrong I was on that score. 'Revolutionary hero' was one job description that wouldnever find a place on my desperately unimpressive curriculum vitae. But at the time,with revolution an ever-present spectre on my personal horizon, going out in a ButchCassidy & the Sundance Kid kind of way, all guns blazing, reactionary elements onthe backfoot, seemed a desirable, even likely, possibility. If only in my mind.But, then, England in those days was a markedly different world than the one it has become. In those days, everything appeared to radiate outwards from the momentouscultural revolution that was rock. Politics, literature, theatre, art: all seemed to beginand end within the parameters of the mesmerising, all-encompassing rock musicuniverse. And at the top of the heap, as they had been for seven years or more: the
Leave a Comment