[kj] Youth recounts his early 80's acid freak-out:

[Daimon Cook]

god bless Youth.

GODDESS too!


On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Rheinhold Squeegee <kjlist at live.com> wrote:


>

> http://jmrhiggs.blogspot.com/2013/10/youths-early-killing-joke-era-acid.html

>

>

>  Writing The KLF<http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1780226551/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1780226551&linkCode=as2&tag=jmrhiggscom-21>was in part an attempt to scratch an itch created by an aborted attempt to

> write a book about Killing Joke. There's a lot of cross-over between those

> two stories, and many of the threads I explored in The KLF would have

> worked equally well in a Killing Joke book - not least of which being the

> money burning (see below).

>

>  Here's a transcript of an interview I did with Youth for that book,

> regarding his "acid flipout".

>

>  *YOUTH:*

>  I was doing acid regularly. I’d done a German tour and I’d hooked up

> with this 21 year old hairdresser-come-acid queen called Heidi.  She gave

> me a little quarter trip before each gig. She was wealthy so she put me up

> in nice hotels and drove me to the gigs in a sports car which pissed the

> rest of the band off.

>

>  So I was doing quite a lot but nothing cosmic had happened.  I was still

> treating it very much as a laugh. I was cocky, I always thought that I’d

> never lose it on acid. I thought that you had to be born a shaman to be

> cosmic or be like Jim Morrison or whatever, and I was too middle class,

> ordinary and normal.

>

>  The rest of the band weren’t really into acid.  Jaz had had a major

> freakout when he was 16. He used to take acid at school but one time he was

> spiked and he thought that his arm had disappeared. He was having The

> Horrors. His mum was an award winning teacher, very progressive.  She

> just sat him down, gave him some rocks to hold, did a bit of research.  She

> was very cool. So, yeah, the other guys weren’t into it, although we did

> take mushrooms together. But we’d rarely take acid. I was the acid head.

>

>  But then there was this one event that pushed me over the edge.  I’d let

> Ralph, this friend of mine, use my squat one weekend while I was away. When

> I came back my TV had disappeared.  I couldn’t get hold of him for ages,

> but then I bumped into him at a club one night. He was there with this

> other guy looking pretty rough.  I said, ‘Oh Ralph, how are you?’ And he

> goes, ‘I hear you think I nicked your TV.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I mean you

> stayed there and it disappeared and I wondered if you knew anything or had

> seen what happened?’  But he didn’t quite get that, he was fixating on

> whether I was accusing him and if I was still his friend.

>

>  Then he said, ‘If you are my friend, take this,’ and he gave me a tab of

> acid. It was this Sorcerer’s Apprentice trip with a picture of a little

> Mickey Mouse with stars going between his hands.  I said, ‘Acid? Oh yeah

> I take acid all the time.’ I took it. I mean he didn’t force me but at the

> same time I was taking it because that’s what he wanted.

>

>  Half an hour later I’m in the attic of the club thinking that he’s going

> to murder me. I went down to the bar and met this Polish ballet dancer. I

> said, ‘You’re going to have to rescue me, I think these guys are going to

> kill me. I’ve been spiked with this acid and it’s freaking me out.’ She

> took me back to Westbourne Grove and shagged me solid for three days. But I

> never quite came down.  I slowly started to come down a bit but it was

> very strong acid.

>

>  I was really upset about the whole thing. I thought my friend had set me

> up. He lived in Croydon with his Nan, so I wrote to him there.  In this

> letter I said, ‘Look that really freaked me out, you should never do that,

> and lets meet and sort it out’.  And then literally a few days later I

> found out that he’d committed suicide and thrown himself off a railway

> bridge.

>

>  He was obviously in a very dark place. But that just totally spun me

> out. By that point I was tripping all the time. I couldn’t quite understand

> how that could be, because I hadn’t taken acid for over a month.

>

>  As it progressed I got more and more out of it.  I started to get all

> the classic delusions of messianic complex. I thought this white van was

> following me around.  I thought the Masons were out to get me because of

> Killing Joke stirring things up. I started to get intrigued by Masonry and

> saw it as this dark conspiracy thing. I was reading Robert Anton Wilson and

> stuff like that. And this just progressed and progressed.  The band

> started to get a bit concerned because I’d always been very cynical about

> things and now I was starting to see Masonic conspiracies in the drain

> covers.

>

>  I remember breaking into the Masonic headquarters in Covent Garden, that

> huge square building. I’m not sure how I got in, it had this scaffolding

> over it and doors going in and I managed to get in a side door somehow.

> This was around 8 or 9 o’clock at night. I went through all these different

> temples and put the crosses down because I thought that they were abusing

> the cross. I ran up to the top of the building to these French doors which

> were locked, and I was banging on these doors. This African guy came out in

> red polka dot shorts. I thought they were going to use him for some

> sacrifice.  I said, ‘Come on! Open the door, I’ll get you out, I’ll

> rescue you.’ And this guy was talking to me in an African accent, saying

> ‘Go away’ or something.

>

>  Then this Welsh security guard turns up. And I showed him this signet

> ring with this crest on that my Dad had said was something to do with my

> family from Llangathen. It had a dolphin on it.  I said, ‘Look, I’m

> Welsh. This is magic. Help me.’ He said, ‘I’m going to arrest you’. I just

> did a runner.

>

>  I ran into this bar opposite which was where *Blitz* had been, or one of

> those New Romantic clubs.  I remember all these Masons were in there, all

> these guys who had come out from some ceremony all in suits. And these guys

> started talking to me, I thought ‘They’re on to me, I’m being followed’. I

> was very paranoid.

>

>  We’d got a five grand advance for something and my dad set me up with

> this bank manager at the Clydesdale Bank. He also tuned out to be a mason.

> I deposited this money in and said, ‘I want to borrow another five grand on

> top of this.’ He asked why and I said ‘Well I want to do my shamanic

> training, study kung fu and do all this stuff.’ He said, ‘Listen son, I’m

> not going to lend to you five thousand pounds. You’ve got to learn the

> value of money,’ And I said ‘I know what the value of money is’, and I took

> a five pound note out and set fire to it, there in his office. I said,

> ‘Look that’s the value, it’s just paper.’ The guy freaked out, cleared his

> desk and threw me out of the bank.

>

>  I just kept doing more and more crazy things like that. I was starting

> to tap into stuff, some powerful energy.  I remember getting the band to

> sit round and put their hands out and we’d focus on something, and we’d

> make something happen.  I could say to Geordie, ‘look, if we focus our

> minds on that streetlamp, it will go out. Or at least flicker on and off.’

> He’d say, ‘Really? Okay, come on let’s do it.’  And we did, and it worked.

> And other psychic phenomena stuff was occurring.

>

>  And, yeah, it just got progressively more and more crazy. Then one day I

> woke up at my step-mum’s. She’d just had a baby with my dad but my dad was

> in prison at the time so he wasn’t there, just her and this Spanish nanny.

> And I remember looking out of the window and thinking, ‘Oh the sky’s going

> green. This is it. It’s the end of the world. I’m going to the river.’

>

>  I just had this pair of swimming trunks on and a kimono. I started

> walking from Brompton Road to Chelsea. And I started going into these fruit

> and veg shops and going to people, ‘Look, you want some money?  Have some

> money!’ They would say ‘No thanks’ but I kept on at them. I was saying

> ‘Look it’s just money, I’ll start burning it’. Which I did.  And I

> immediately got arrested.  And shipped off to a mental hospital.

>

>  It was very strange. I remember in the ambulance on the way, if you

> looked out the front window it was like normal, if I looked out the back

> window I thought it was the future, and everything was underwater. I

> remember going past Tooting Bec tube and there was gondolas parked up

> outside it.

>

>  I was taken to Springfields Hospital, near Tooting Bec. I’d been put

> into a sort of flashers’ ward, which was odd in itself, with all these guys

> who were flashers because I was in a kimono.  And I was going, ‘I’m not

> mad, you’re all mad’, which of course makes them think ‘Oh he’s definitely

> mad’.

>

>  They gave me Largactil, which I think is supposed to make you compliant

> but it just spun me out even more.  And they gave me ECT

> [Electroconvulsive Therapy, also known as Electroshock Therapy], like in *One

> Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest*. They still use it. I must have had two or

> three sessions of that. They put a wooden thing or something in your mouth,

> it’s all very Victorian.  I don’t remember it being difficult or

> anything, I just remember this white light.

>

>  And I just felt we were totally underwater. I remember my Dad coming to

> the hospital and sitting with him and seeing utter shock on his face. This

> was when Dad was doing time and he got let out to see me in the hospital,

> which probably didn’t do him any good. I said, ‘Isn’t it weird Dad, we can

> sit here and have this conversation and we are underwater.’

>

>  But there was one point where I thought the hospital was on fire. And I

> remember running away in the middle of the night and leaping over this

> fence, and stabbing my hand on the spike of the fence, running a few miles

> to where my Dad had been living, which was the Coach House on the other

> side of Wandsworth Common. He was in prison but his friend and his

> girlfriend were there. I was completely spaced out. I said, ‘Look’, showing

> them the wound on my hand, ‘I’m the one! I’ve got stigmata!’ I thought I

> was Jesus, that the whole world was all on my shoulders.

>  They let me stay the night and my step mum came by the next day and

> said, ‘Look you’ve broken out, the hospital didn’t burn down, there was no

> fire, you’re hallucinating. If you don’t go back they’ll slap a section on

> you and you won’t be able to leave’. So she persuaded me to go back.

>

>  While I was in there this guy called The Wizard used to come up every

> day to visit me.  The Wizard lived in the church near Lyndhurst Road with

> twenty feral cats. He had a seven pointed star tattooed on his face. He’d

> never wore shoes, he was very much a nature magic person. This is the guy

> who used to come to the early Killing Joke gigs and blow fire and do

> circles and make ceremonies, he was our shaman basically. The whole

> ‘ceremony’ aspect to Killing Joke was there from very early on, it came out

> of the community we were living in really.

>

>  The Wizard came to visit me and gave me this crystal. I remember

> meditating with this crystal in the hospital and seeing these stars, like

> lights. These were my spirit guides. They talked to me and told me what to

> say and do. They said, ‘Look you’re going to come up to a panel of doctors,

> you’ve got to say ‘I’ve just had some LSD and I feel really tired and I

> want to go home and see my Mum’, and they’ll let you go. Don’t say, ‘I’m

> not mad you’re mad’.

>

>  And so I came up before this panel and that’s what happened. I was

> released from the mental hospital because I did what the spirit guides in

> the crystal told me do. They let me go and I went up to Wales with the

> band. I was in there for about two weeks overall.

>

>  It took me a good eight years or so, until I was about 29, before I

> would go near psychedelics again. I still smoked pot a bit but I kind of

> almost stopped that for a bit. It took me that time to rebuild my ego and

> get my confidence back, and find a good anchor again.

>

>  But what’s amazing is, I came back. I was watching that Syd Barrett

> documentary recently, and the Peter Green one, and I did achieve going to

> the place that they went to. But I managed to come back, which is very

> rare. And that is an amazing thing, I think.

>

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> Gathering mailing list

> Gathering at misera.net

> http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/gathering

>

>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://four.pairlist.net/pipermail/gathering/attachments/20131001/e22080d9/attachment.html