NEW FROM PARADISE ROAD

60 years ago, on 15 October 1966, the countercultural newspaper International Times launched with a party at the Roundhouse. Two months later, in December 1966, the UFO club held its first weekly all-nighter in a basement beneath a cinema on Tottenham Court Road. Together, these two events marked the beginning of the UK’s psychedelic underground.

The following year, the world exploded into sonic colour with the cosmic sounds and light shows of Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, the Electric Garden and Middle Earth clubs, OZ magazine, Tomorrow and Arthur Brown, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club and Disraeli Gears, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Legalise Pot Rally, the Arts Lab, and the Love-In Festival and Christmas on Earth Continued happenings. It was the UK’s summer of love – but for some, as the police looked to crack down on the emerging counterculture, it was also a summer of paranoia.

Compiled from on-the-spot memories and recollections, new and unpublished interviews, I’d Love to Turn You On tells the story of the psychedelic underground, complete with over 200 photos, posters, flyers, magazine and album covers, and pieces of ephemera, many never before published.

It’s a glorious tribute to an optimistic, brightly coloured, free-thinking moment in UK cultural history when all things seemed possible.

This is a beautifully designed and produced full-colour book, measuring 256mm x 185mm, with 272 pages containing over 200 photographs, flyers, posters, magazine covers and items of ephemera.

The authors (L-R)

Jon Newey

Jon witnessed the future at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream in 1967, age 16. Following art college, he combined touring/recording as percussionist with Crew, England’s Glory (Peter Perrett’s pre-Only Ones band), Nick Kent’s Subterraneans, Jabba (ex-Cymande), Chris Jagger’s Atcha and J-Sonics with a staff position on Sounds music paper. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Jazzwise magazine. He has written for Mojo, Record Collector and Downbeat among others, and penned numerous album and DVD sleeve notes.

Andrew Humphreys

Too young to experience the psychedelic underground firsthand, Andrew nevertheless benefitted from the counterculture, spending much of the Nineties travelling and authoring guidebooks for Lonely Planet (to Siberia, Central Asia, Syria, Iran and Egypt, among others), followed by eight years writing, editing and launching international franchise magazines for Time Out. He’s the author of Raving Upon Thames: An Untold Story of Sixties London (Paradise Road, 2022) and the founder of Paradise Road publishing house.

Peter Watts

Peter is a journalist and author who has worked in the UK national media since 1993, starting at The Sunday Times, later becoming chief feature writer at Time Out. He has written for publications including Uncut, The Times, Independent and Observer. He is the author of White Elephants and Flying Pigs: The Extraordinary Afterlife of Battersea Power Station (2016) and Denmark Street: London’s Street of Sound (2023), both published by Paradise Road.

Kevin Foakes

A graphic designer schooled at Camberwell School of Art, he was creating happenings with friends in the form of chill out parties in the early 1990s before touring the globe as a DJ with the Ninja Tune label, for which he was also art director for two decades. A keen counterculture collector with an eye for sight as well as sound, he co-created a multimedia night based around analogue projection techniques called Further in 2016. This led to his first book, Wheels of Light (Four Corners Books, 2022), a visual showcase of the UK’s projection wheel designs.

I’d Love to Turn You On: The Psychedelic Underground 1965-70
is published on 16 November.
Pre-order your copy
using the link below.