Credit: Dangerous Minds / Bert Verhoeff / Anefo

At this point, to say there was a dark side to the 1960s is something of a cliché.

Enough ink has been spilt about ‘The Decade That Changed Everything ™’ that seemingly all the negative aspects of it have been mined for as much meaning as they possibly could. Segregation, acid casualties, The Manson Family, Altamont, surely there’s nothing more to bring up? Not so much. When you have that much going on, that much (essentially) being invented, there’s always going to be more horrible, heartbreaking stories to find of those that slip through the cracks.

Few stories like this are more of a tragic waste than that of Christina ‘Licorice’ McKechnie, an Edinburgh native who came to prominence as a member of the Incredible String Band. While her story doesn’t become truly depressing until years after the 1960s had ended, there’s still the sense that the problems stemmed from that decade. She absolutely wasn’t the only one to go through what she went through, even if the really tragic stuff was to come later.

A poet and aspiring singer, McKechnie left home as a teenager with one major drive guiding her. Not fame or fortune, but the burning desire to marry Bert Jansch. Judge all you want, she did achieve that desire (kind of), but the easily distracted Jansch soon tired of her and left her before the ceremony could be completed.

After that, she began a relationship with her friend Robin Williamson, who convinced her to join his band, the Incredible String Band, in 1968.

What happened to Licorice McKechnie next?

McKechnie would support the band over the next four years, singing back-up vocals and playing percussion for them. At the time, the Incredible String Band were a fairly respected psychedelic folk act, so there were high points to her music career.

One would be hard-pressed to argue with playing at Woodstock as a genuine achievement. However, her time in the band lasted as long as her relationship with Williamson, which came to an end in 1972.

Her next public appearance is when things start to get truly depressing. It’s never a good sign when you start turning up in concerts for the Church of Scientology, but McKechnie made her debut for the cult in 1974 after apparently falling in with them just before leaving the Incredible String Band. Through them, she met and married fellow musician Brian Lambert, a marriage which came to an amicable end in the early 1980s, just before things got really dark.

McKechnie seemingly wanted to spend her life away from the limelight. However, the last that her family heard from her was in 1990, and ever since then, nothing. There are a few scattered reports of her being seen hiking the Arizona desert, but nothing confirmed. Here’s hoping that it’s merely someone who wants nothing more than to stay out of the spotlight. However, someone who was involved in the hippy movement of the 1960s, then Scientology, whose family now doesn’t seem to know where she is? This is a story we’ve heard before.

It never has a good ending.