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87.
REHEARSAL FOR THE YEAR 2000 (Drugs, Religions, Madness, Crime, Communes, Love, Visions, Festivals and Lunar Energy); The Rebirth Of Albion Free State (Known in the Dark Ages as England); Memoirs of a Male Midwife (1966-1975) by Alan Beam.
London: Revelaction Press, 1976. First edition. Tall 4to. Pink wrps., stapled, 220pp. Printed on different colour papers.
Nicholas Albery’s pseudonymously-written autobiographical adventure through the counterculture as told by a single composite of several characters “rolled into one and improved by wish-fulfillment”, populated by often thinly-disguised fictitious characters and organisations (although many are referred to by their real names, such as Greg Sams, Jim Haynes, Release, and others).
The story opens with the author’s account of his experiences with acid in London in 1966, including his “weekly trips to the commune in Earlham Street” to visit Peter Wynne-Willson and Susie Gawler-Wright (‘John’ and ‘Annie’ in the book), then follows his move to San Francisco to live amidst the hippie culture of Haight-Ashbury. Returning to London and immersing himself in the underground scene, Albery helps run ‘Link’ (BIT) with ‘Guy’ (Hoppy), publishes his booklet “Project Free London”, helps establish the Arts Labs and the Commune Movement, and in 1970 marries ‘Naomi’, the daughter of a communist film producer of Jewish Ukranian origin. Further sections cover his friendship with South African LSD explorer, Dr. Robin Farquharson, travels in Africa, his anorexia nervosa, the production of a guide to the alternative society, trips to Glastonbury, the Notting Hill ‘freak’ scene, the squatting movement, the Windsor Free Festivals (and his successful suing of the Chief Constable), subsequent visits to communes in the States (including Stephen Gaskin’s Farm), and as a contemporary reviewer in Seed put it, his eventual and unwilling “settling down… to an oppressive state of domesticity and neo-marital depression”.
Cover photographs show the author with his wife, Josefine, baby son, Merlyn, close friend Nicholas Saunders (‘Alan Sanderson’ in the book), and others strolling naked with a goat through Piccadilly Circus at dawn on September 7th, 1976, an “undress rehearsal” for Timothy Leary’s vision of pasture land in Piccadilly by the year 2000 (the photograph is by Mark Edwards, who also documented Christiania, the commune in Copenhagen Albery once described as “the seventh wonder of the alternative world”).
A seamless blend of fact and fiction, and probably the most vivid participant’s account of the emergent alternative society and the birth of the New Age movement.
Wrappers damaged, with worn spine panel (partially repaired with archival tape), torn scratch to front cover and noticeable darkening to upper halves of both front and back covers. Internally clean, but overall Fair to Good only.
Together with:
i) an official letter from the London Institute of Structural Anthropology certifying Nicholas Albery as one of its students, dated November 6th, 1975, along with an autograph note in which Albery provides details of his birthday, address, sample signature, etc.; and a passport photograph of Albery with a typed letter from him relating to the dubious acquisition of a passport. Albery later founded The Institute for Social Inventions, a think tank set up to publicise and launch ideas for improving the quality of life and to promote non-technological innovations;
ii) four somewhat worn and tatty autograph letters SIGNED from Nicholas Albery to Susan Janssen, dated between March-July 1977. In them, he requests a copy of “Wet Dreams”, first shown to him by Heathcote Williams (‘John Host’ in his book); mentions seeing “Heathcote’s new play ‘Hancock’s Last ½ hour’… funny & sad”, and watching him “fire-eating the other night at a busker’s concert”; encloses “a copy of my book which you probably haven’t seen” [ie. the copy here]; and finally, “I liked and like reading the Wet Dreams book. It is perhaps a bit old on the whole, but its nice to read about Heathcote and Lynn [Tillman] and people I know… as a book I prefer the ‘Hello I Love You’ one. It would be nice to repeat it with another generation.” Three of the letters bear the address 107 Freston Road, soon to be the headquarters of Frestonia, the Free & Independent Republic of which Albery later became a Minister. In one of them, he writes: “We haven’t been evicted - it must be taking the Conservatives at the GLC time to settle down to their new power.”.
