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30.
LONG HAIR: 1 - North Atlantic turn-on (London: Lovebooks Ltd., c. December 1965).
Ed. Miles. 8vo. Perfect bound. Wrps., 80pp. Front cover line drawing of Allen Ginsberg by Miles, based on Hoppy’s photograph of Ginsberg at the Albert Memorial; back cover art by Pete Simpson; other graphics by Graham Keen. SIGNED in pencil by Miles inside the front cover.
The third publication from Lovebooks Limited, printed on Hoppy’s offset litho press. Named by Ginsberg after noticing the length of men’s hair in England, and aimed at the audience who had attended the Royal Albert Hall poetry reading in June 1965. Declaring itself as being “interested in all aspects of the NEW esprit nouveau”, and for the revolutions in poetry, prose, clothes, jazz, pop, sex, the mind, free thought and action, it prints the first appearance in print of “Ankor Wat” (pp.8-33), composed by Ginsberg from his extensive Cambodian journal notes, though not yet given that title (it wasn’t published in book form until 1968).
Other contributors include Ted Berrigan (listed as the magazine’s New York editor, underlining the magazine’s transatlantic outlook); Gerard Malanga; Ron Padgett; Lee Harwood; Michael Horovitz; Brian Patten; Tuli Kupferberg; Jeff Nuttall; Kirby Congdon; Paul Abelman; Peter Broxton; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Ray Durgnat; Tom Pickard; Pete Brown; Archie Shepp (a poem about heroin); Dan Richter; Allen de Loach; Charles Plymell; and Jack Micheline.
Advertisers include publishers New Directions and Fulcrum Press; booksellers Better Books and Bernard Stone; the Robert Fraser Gallery; photographers John Haynes and Adam Ritchie; and various other well-wishers. On page 77, a half-page announcement from Miles, Asher & Dunbar Ltd. states that “In February 1965 [sic]… INDICA will open…”, probably the first announcement of the new gallery and bookshop to appear in print (the limited company, known as MAD, was incorporated on October 20, 1965). A nice, tight copy of an item prone to falling apart at the spine.
Together with: a separate, untrimmed cover, featuring Miles’s handwritten advertising rates for the planned second issue. Though it didn’t materialise, a further handwritten note from him lists the names of the proposed contributors: “Ginsberg, Burroughs, Sommerville, Brown, Ableman, Breton, Hopkins on Brane Report” [sic], ie. the Brain Committee Report on Drug Addiction, “80pp. printed by off-set lithography in an edition of 1000 copies. Sold in England, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco.”.
