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51.
THE LONG HAIR TIMES (London: Lovebooks Limited, April 1966).
Ed. Miles and John Hopkins (‘Hoppy’). 7 oblong sheets (20.3x33cm.), side-stapled (14pp.), printed offset litho in black and red.
SIGNED in pencil on the front page by both Miles and Hoppy.
The fourth printed publication from Lovebooks Limited, assembled in March 1966 and published in early April. Its full title, THE GLOBAL moon edition Long Hair TIMES, originated from Hoppy clipping the masthead from The Times newspaper and combining it with the title from an unused front cover of Long Hair magazine, then adding various slogans by hand, such as “Don’t Be Fooled This is Route 66” and “Fuck For Peace”.
The contents include various letters and flyers accumulated by Miles, as well as responses to the flyers sent out by the editors in March 1966 requesting contributions for their new “monthly anti-newsletter”.
Most famously, it prints a competition with a twenty-guinea prize sponsored by Paul McCartney to find “the missing link” for his experimental film script, with answers to be sent to “Ian Iachimoe, c/o Indica Books & Gallery” (the use of his backwards-tape pseudonym coincided with the Beatles’ reversed sounds experiments for their songs “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Rain”, both of which were recorded in April 1966). McCartney later told Miles: “Twenty guineas was a lot of dough! I was very interested in making films. I used to have a few images that I stored to use if I ever did make a film. I suppose I was thinking of New Wave French directors, or New Wave Polish in this case” (Many Years From Now, p.298).
Other contents include Harry Fainlight’s anonymously-written text, beginning “Schizophrenia is a double agent”; Ed Sanders’ newsletter about his recent Peace Eye Bookstore bust; a statement from the Timothy Leary Defense Fund; “Jazz Happenings” by Hoppy’s flatmate and Guardian jazz critic, Ron Atkins (ending with his recommendation to “go and hear” AMM at the Royal College of Art, “it is an unforgettable experience”); an acid-infused cartoon strip called ‘Sugarman’; a letter from a La Jolla Pump House Gang surfer (including a reference to Tom Wolfe); a column by Hoppy (the first under his Burroughsian pseudonym, ‘Bradley Martin’); “The Gate”, the first of Hoppy’s London Free School Newsletters; a letter to Miles from John Wilcock in New York, opening: “Just got back from trips to Ann Arbor and Rutgers with Andy Warhol and his group The Velvet Underground”, the first known mention of The Velvet Underground in a British publication (he goes on to describe their use of “lights, films, rock & roll & all kinds of turn-on stuff”, and mentions Warhol’s upcoming [Silver Clouds] “show at Ferus Gallery in LA”); a mysterious reference on the back page to “Haverstock Hill gun running Situationist mobsters”, and news of “an Eat-In, Paint-In and manifestation of love… in Parliament Square on Easter Monday”.
Hoppy printed the paper overnight on Lovebooks’ offset litho press, and it was first offered for sale during the Easter weekend CND march to Trafalgar Square from High Wycombe (the last march from Aldermaston was held in 1964). About 300 copies were sold (from a print run of approximately 500), priced at a shilling each (the sellers were primarily Hoppy, Kate Heliczer, Miles, Sue Miles, Harry Fainlight, Julie Felix and Michelle Poole), and the remaining copies were either sold elsewhere (many of them by Hoppy’s Rastafarian friends), or given away.
Though more of a newsletter than an actual newspaper, The Long Hair Times was a pop-up prototype that paved the way for the homegrown underground press that followed, and the immediate precursor of International Times.
Very slight creasing, with paper a little rippled, o/w an excellent copy of this rare item, more so signed by its co-creators.
