The above eye grabbing 1971 cover of the leading American underground newspaper , the Berkeley Barb , included Australian controversial journalist, anti Vietnam War campaigner , editor Pete Steedman, of Melbourne , Nigerian model Mina Bird , and young Dante Hughes , son of the art critic and author , Robert Hughes.
The top trio had originally appeared on the cover of the iconoclastic London Oz magazine in what had been a send up of what was then regarded as radical chic . The Oz caption read something like he drives a Maserati, she's a model and the boy is the son of the Time magazine art critic. In 1971 Steedman ran the Oz office while the principals, Richard Neville, Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis , were fighting obscenity charges in court .
The heading pointer on the Berkely Barb cover refers to notorious Harvard psychologist Professor Timothy Leary, the so called guru of psychedelic , who urged people to turn on , tune in and drop out .
In Melbourne university magazines during the l960s , Steedman had been a leading campaigner against Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and the conscription of youths based on a lottery draw, receiving death threats . At one stage the government seriously considered bringing in special legislation to charge him with subversion.
In Berkeley University, California, there was also strong opposition to the war and Steedman was contacted by activists there, one an Australian , the suggestion being he come to America and address students. However, a member of the United States Information Service, in Melbourne , believed to be in the CIA, informed Steedman , over a beer , there was no way he would be allowed into the US.
The Berkeley Barb was kicked off by Max Scherr, who wrote and produced much of the paper , on August 13,1965 . Wikipedia states he relied on a large, youthful, low paid and politically left staff. The Barb for a few years in the late 1960s was the popular voice of counterculture Berkeley, speaking for and to a generation intent on change. It mixed radical politics with counter-culture social values, celebrating opposition to the war in Vietnam, and the cocktail of “sex, drugs and rock' n' roll.”The civil rights movement was also supported.
Both irreverent and serious, in 1967 it ran a hoax claiming that bananas contained a psychoactive substance released when the skins were smoked. The cartoonist Joel Beck and ground-breaking sex-advice columnist Eugene “Doctor Hippocrates” Schoenfeld were two high-profile presences in the paper.
Most sales were made by street vendors who bought the paper for a nickel(five cents) and sold it for fifteen. One of those who flogged the Barb in the financial district of San Francisco from 1967-69 was none other than Underground Comix identity , Bucklee Bell , the subject of several recent posts in Little Darwin.
"Didn't really pay the bills," commented Bucklee , recalling those wild days . He did not meet Leary, described by President Nixon as the most dangerous man in America , but saw him several times at happenings in the Frisco Bay area. With an inimitable way of expressing himself, Bucklee described the LSD taking scene in those days thus:
At the time the West Coast versus East Coast approach to taking acid started out quite different. West was spike their Kool-Aid and don't bother to tell them. Ha,Ha,Ha. East was put some Ravi Shankar on the juke box and let your guide lead you through the labyrinth of your mind.
He went on to say he had recently read a history of the hippy-freak-longhair outbreak in the
British Isles, the Oz magazine and Steedman. These guys, he said , were every bit "balls
and pussies to the wall" as their American counterparts.
WARNING : Fleeing the annual ice age in Melbourne , Steedman plans to thaw out in North Queensland in the near future and has indicated he will be available to show students at James Cook University , Townsville , how to turn their tame publication , Bullsheet, into a ripsnorting and powerful read , unfortunately resulting in the entire campus being banned from setting foot in the US of A .
WARNING : Fleeing the annual ice age in Melbourne , Steedman plans to thaw out in North Queensland in the near future and has indicated he will be available to show students at James Cook University , Townsville , how to turn their tame publication , Bullsheet, into a ripsnorting and powerful read , unfortunately resulting in the entire campus being banned from setting foot in the US of A .
