Winter blog Part 12 . Krypton Tunes, Operation Julie, Hawkwind rumours and a gig with Ronnie Lane

1976 saw quite a few changes for me and even bigger changes for some of my friends. I was spending time away from the shop, playing drums occasionally with  Giles' band “Chaos” but was most engaged with the venture with John. His house was now pretty habitable, he had friends living in the barns, he was as busy as ever but he had gone back to one of his passions, which was song writing, He’d been inspired by the new wave of punks and new music and was writing songs about social issues and psychology, we would give the songs titles like “be your own hero” “sex and money” “behind your smile” and try not to draw on anything in particular. ‘thinking punks’ music’

It was very much John's thing, with me helping out, passing bass players and more ideas than we could manage. We had a few local venues that a mixture of local hippies, art students and travellers would come together at, I played with Chaos  and eventually borrowed a guitar player ( January) from Jester , met Dave Bass and started playing with John as Krypton Tunes.

It was the year that “Operation Julie” took both Russ and Smiles away. Apparently the biggest ever international drugs bust of its kind, to date, which included secret labs, in the nearby mountains producing LSD for export to the states and a huge distribution and cash laundering network. I can put my hand on my heart and say I had no idea that either of them was involved in this, but I do know that it started as a way to “Turn On” the world and spiralled out of control. We discovered that for years they (and indeed we, by association) had been under surveillance by special branch and had been followed to and from London and Llandewi Brefi, (I can never forget, on one of our return trips to London, that Russ needed to pick up a spare wheel for his Land Rover in Reading, from Leaf’s garage, while Leaf was out town, it was definitely the wrong size for Land Rover ..). But that is very much their story. One that is recorded in books and documentaries and I hear that Smiles has his biography in draft for publication later this year (2021) and there is both a stage play and a Netflix series in the making. To be honest I dread the portrayal of us all and the sensationalism that is bound to be attached to dramatisation for a mass market. The stage play is based on the book that one of the CID officers cashed in with. Suffice it to say that Jan and Mary had a very a very difficult year. My girlfriend visited Russ on remand and later in prison and I was in touch with Jan throughout and still, to recently.

It transpired that the locum GP I had chatted at length with, previously (part 9,) was part of the chemistry team.

There are plenty who, like me , would argue that this was  the final death throw of  an important part of the 1960s counterculture that spawned so much liberation and creativity and marked a sea change in who was in charge of illicit drug production. Moving from dedicated idealists into the criminal underworld where it is today, with the associated organised criminals and violence. The end of another softer, more idealistic era.

Jester played a song entitled “Julie” which had a chorus of “we believe in freedom, peace and love and liberty” which helped sum up many of the emotions that the whole affair threw up for people on the periphery, probably the only anthem they ever penned.

I was still running the shop in terms of stock and maintenance but it was increasingly managed, day to day, by Phil and Tina, who will have their own anecdotes to tell at some time. We were a happy crew, there were so many threads to the shop experience and the central role it played in so many peoples lives. A point of contact for just about every fringe group in the area. It shone like a beacon.

Nik Turner and Giles wanted to put on another free festival, more in the spirit of the first Meigan Fayre and local to them, it was. I think. called, ‘Crymych fayre’, to be held in Cenarth and Nik was to loan his original “pyramid stage” from the first Glastonbury, for the event. There were a large number of musicians in the area but very few bands. More usually people just came together ad-hoc and played for their own amusement and for their immediate circles of friends, I never really felt comfortable playing in those situations but met lots of good people who did, Shelley, Thomas and Paulinda will know more of that than I do, but many of us stayed in touch and definitely felt a sort of brotherhood stemming from those days.

Nik Turner's original pyramid stage, as used at Cenarth

The Cenarth Fayre was a seminal moment for me personally, Krypton Tunes was to play one of their first gigs and I was also going to play with Giles’s Chaos. A little before the event I discovered I was also going to deputise with Jester in its 'roots blues' format, as they were a man down for the event. While it was a small local festival, the people involved had lot of pedigree and rumours abounded about who was going to be on the bill. It was standard that Hawkwind were rumoured, Nick* and Thomas’s history with the band were legendary and Nik was probably the most revered of the local muso’s with the possible exception of Ronnie Lane who had moved into the area more recently and had based his Gypsy caravan community on some land nearby, Declan and other friends had stayed there. The Ronnie Lane Roadshow was infamous for arriving by horse drawn caravan at local events and usually just comprised of him and a small entourage.

I went and stayed on site for a few days, just hanging out, great little event again, possibly because it was a smaller closed circle of people, great weather good company. Days spent playing or listening to bands and watching performance events, nights accompanied by ( I think?)the now infamous Steve Hillage on Celestial Synthesiser. The last afternoon I was to play with Jester , Ronnie Lane's Caravan lumbered onto the site without any fanfare, they lit a fire cooked some food and suggested that he could do a few numbers with Jester as backing band, if we knew the songs roughly. I think we all knew parts of some of them, but no one was going to pass up the opportunity and we figured we could just bluff our way through following him. It was fine, he was a true pro, turned to face the band for a few bars so people could get the chords and rhythm and then delivered some of his best-known songs to the immense pleasure of the assembled crowd. He decided to finish with a song I’d never heard before “man smart, woman smarter” from one of his recent albums and I had no idea what was going on (vaguely calypso, offbeat sort of rhythm) and was probably doing a four to the bar type of drum beat (as quietly as possible) and he walked over the stage and turned to me with a puzzled look and shook his head, emphasising the off beat on his guitar, I died a thousand deaths and just twiddled with my high hat for the remainder of the song.

Ronnie Lane, Gypsy caravan days. West Wales.

  True to his nature though, he laughed with me about it afterwards and he talked and demonstrated some early calypso and new Jamaican Reggae styles that he has experimenting with. A man with a huge talent, a big heart and no perceivable egomania.

 

·         Nik's book : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28867732-the-spirit-of-hawkwind-1969-1976