beggar’s banquet

The Rolling Stones’ beggar’s banquet, 5 December 1968 at the Gore Hotel in Kensington – complete with medieval setup, serving wenches and custard pie fight.

Iggy Stooge, by Dustin Pittman

the doors of perception

Jim Morrison in New York, 1968, by Elliott Landy

Jim Morrison: “I think the highest and the lowest points are the most important ones. All the points in between are, well, in between. I want freedom to try everything – I guess to experience everything at least once.”

little texan

Sam Andrew: “It just happens that way. She had a huge appetite for life. Part of life is drinking and taking drugs and all that. It doesn’t have to be, but, it was for her. She had a big appetite for that. That’s something that’s wrong. As far as dying, you said before I lucked out, and that’s the truth. It’s just luck. It could’ve been the other way around. Insecurity was one thing that was wrong with her. But, we shouldn’t get sidetracked. She was a very happy person. She had a good time a lot of the time. She enjoyed life too. It was just an accident. She came so far in her life from this little town in Texas where people made fun of her and then all of a sudden everybody loves her. Anyone who thinks a lot (and she really thought a lot), is gonna question that and wonder if it’s all gonna disappear, which it could.”

Janis Joplin at the Golden Gate Park, after her performance with Big Brother & The Holding Company, 1968

primal scream

Roky Erickson – the 13th floor elevator who turned on, tuned in, dropped out, and lived to tell the tale – in Texas, 1975, by Stephanie Chernikowski

black angel’s death song

“Perhaps it’s just that the Woodstock Nation has been brainwashed by the narcissistic, vibe-ey albums of groups content to serve as PR squads for the youth culture’s “beautiful gentle people” hype, and fails to see that art doesn’t necessarily support darkness by treating it. In any case, the first Velvet Underground album is as solid a documentation of the last decade’s malaise as we’re going to see. ‘Heroin’ is a classic testament that stares death in the face and comes back poetic if unresolved. But all the Velvets’ songs mark the progress toward that resolution, toward life and joy achieved honestly, outside all the counterfeit wisdom and popular shortcuts to salvation which have failed so miserably. The drug song that corrupts most is the one that advertises any chemical as the mechanism of ultimate self-realization. If heroin is the absolute alternative to enlightenment, it at least makes no false claims, and those who would use this music to score their own self-destructive programs will find no support from the Velvets.”
- Lester Bangs, Dead Lie the Velvet Underground! R.I.P. Long Live Lou Reed, 1971

The Velvet Underground and Nico at LA’s The Castle, 1966, by Lisa Law

Gregory Corso in his Paris apartment, 1957, by Allen Ginsberg

Suze Rotolo: “Gregory listened attentively to my reasoning and then, for some perverse reason, tried to talk me out of quitting in the first place. He began an animated riff about the pleasures of smoking but somehow covered the history of the world, too. Then he veered off down the street in search of a place to buy a pack. By then we had reached my door and I waved goodbye and went upstairs. After a few minutes I heard Gregory calling me from the sidewalk. He had bought two packs, he yelled, one for me and one for him, and because he didn’t want to climb all those stairs he was going to throw mine up to me. I leaned out as far as I could from the fifth floor window, but it was impossible to catch. He seemed to enjoy the game. The pack took a beating. He left it for me inside the front door, but when I got downstairs – which wasn’t right away – it was gone.”

blowup

David Bailey and his one-time muse (and lover) Jean Shrimpton, circa 1963, by Terry O’Neill. Together, David and Jean created waves and made statements in ’60s chic – all of them timeless. Their rep as a power duo was cemented when they arrived in New York in 1962, stepped into the Vogue offices and had the magazine’s then-editor Diana Vreeland declaring, “Stop everything! The British are here!” Indeed they were.

David Bailey: “She was magic and the camera loved her too. In a way she was the cheapest model in the world – you only needed to shoot half a roll of film and then you had it. She had the knack of having her hand in the right place, she knew where the light was, she was just a natural.”

Following their split, Jean went on to date David’s pal Terence Stamp, and following that, settled into a life of domesticity. David was later immortalised in Antonioni’s Blowup, and has generally enjoyed a lifetime’s worth of fame and infamy.

rock garden

Patti Smith in London, 1978, by Denis O’Regan

i got you babe

Marianne Faithfull and David Bowie performing “I Got You Babe” on the Midnight Special TV show at the Marquee Club in London, October 1973, by Jack Kay. Out of irony and bloody-mindedness, Marianne had donned a nun’s habit, the back of which had an open panel that exposed her bum. David came as himself.