On May 24, 1971, the BBC program New Horizons ran a documentary about the new youth culture under the title “The Alternative Society.” Rather than make jokes at the expense of empty-headed young hippies, the segment, which runs about 22 minutes in this video (although it is missing both the start and the end) chose to seek the validity in the new generation’s need to communicate, experiment with illegal drugs, create new fashions and music, create social services separate from those provided by the state, and so on.
Featured in the show are several important figures from the U.K. counterculture scene who have popped up on DM before. For instance, the man addressing the camera in the opening sequence is Richard Neville, whose groundbreaking underground newspaper OZ has been highlighted at DM several times.
Caroline Coon, an artist, music journalist and activist (who was featured in the documentary She’s a Punk Rocker) is interviewed as the founder of Release, which was a parallel organization to NORML in the U.S., providing legal services to those charged with drug possession. In the years to come she would become romantically involved with Paul Simonon of the Clash (she briefly managed the group) and serve as technical advisor on the cult punk movie Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.
The narrator of “The Alternative Society” is Harvey Matusow, an extremely interesting fellow who was primarily known as being an FBI informer in the 1950s but worked with people in the Fluxus movement and not long after this documentary got involved with a hippie commune called Brotherhood of the Spirit. Always a joiner (or something), in the late 1970s he became a Mormon and took on the name Job Matusow.
Barney Bubbles, the brilliant designer responsible for the covers of classic albums by Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Hawkwind and many others, is shown working on layout at the offices of Friends, an “bazaar ... run by heads, for heads.”
Hawkwind’s horn player Nik Turner can be glimpsed in his finest “space/glam finery” exiting the basement of Friends Market. They were on the verge of recording their album In Search of Space, which would feature a dazzling cover by Bubbles.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Every issue of OZ, London’s legendary psychedelic newspaper, is available online