2020-10

Tonite Let's All Make Love in London: The Films of Peter Whitehead

Peter Whitehead was an innovative English writer and filmmaker who documented the counterculture in London and New York in the late 1960s.
 His film Wholly Communion captured The International Poetry Incarnation, a groundbreaking event at The Royal Albert Hall in 1965 that was to prove pivotal in the evolution of the underground  scene. The film featured poetry readings by Beat poets including Allen Ginsberg, Michael Horovitz, Adrian Mitchell and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and established Whitehead as the London counterculture’s 'Man With a Movie Camera’.
 
Film event producer Marek Pytel walks us through Whtehead's life and work including the iconic 'Tonite Let's All Make Love in London’ documentary that helped define the "swinging London" scene of the sixties with psychedelic performances and interviewees including Pink Floyd, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Vanessa Redgrave, Lee Marvin, Julie Christie, Allen Ginsberg, Eric Burdon, Michael Caine and many others.
 
We hear how Whitehead went onto film with The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix and to make provocative work about the countercultural protest movement in late 60s New York before making an extraordinary career swerve.
 
For More on Marek Pytel's work see www.realityfilm.co.uk
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
 

The Mysteries of T. C. Lethbridge

One our foremost living writers on the esoteric, Gary Lachman, enters the Bureau purportedly to talk about one of our most important, if rather forgotten, dead  writers on the esoteric, T C Lethbridge.
 
We do get around to exploring Lethbridges's various incarnations as a rogue psychic archaeologist, dowser and parapsychologist but only after some serious digressions into Gary’s various incarnations including his time playing bass for Blondie in mid 70s New York.  We hear how he was escorted out of David Bowie’s loft apartment by two glamorous bodyguards after a disagreement over Lethbridge, delve into the meaning of ‘Counterculture’ and dip into the subject of precognitive dreaming before finishing up with a story about a hedgehog.
 
In other words, there’s something for everyone..
 
For more on Gary Lachman and his work
https://garylachman.co.uk
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
 
 

Helter Skelter: Charles Manson and the CIA

Journalist Tom O Neill, author of 'Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties’, joins us to reveal the truths, untruths, secrets and conspiracies behind the most famous crime of the 60s.
 
The Tate-Labianca murders and the subsequent trial of 'The Manson Family' were among the events that marked the turning of the countercultural tide and the darkening of the hippy dream.
 
Tom tells how a straightforward 1999 magazine commission to write an anniversary piece on the murders turned into a 20 year investigative odyssey that revealed a devastating story of corruption, deception, lying and abuse - and that was just from the authorities.
 
Was Manson a CIA asset gone rogue?
We are not fans of conspiracy theories but Tom's research reveals an extraordinary and deeply worrying web involving the CIA, the Beach Boys, LSD, hypnotism, doctors, psychologists and bent lawyers.
 
For more on Tom and the book:
https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/tom-oneill/chaos/9780316477574/
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
 

The Divine Rascal - Hollingshead Pt.2

We return for the second part of our trip through the terrific, tortuous and terrible times of Michael Hollings(acid)head with psychedelic historian Andy Roberts.
 
We reconnect with Hollingshead as he is returning to England to set up the London Psychedelic Centre in Chelsea. He has introduced Timothy Leary to LSD and thus played a momentous part in the history of the counterculture in the USA.
 
But that was just one event in a picaresque life involving 'turning on' various celebrities including Paul McCartney, Donovon and a cold war spy, living in Scottish communes, the back-stabbing of various friends, being beastly to women and taking more and more LSD.
 
Hollingshead goes on the run - on acid. Hollingshead defends himself in court - on acid. Hollingshead serves a prison sentence - on acid. 
 
Andy, whose biography, Divine Rascal, is the first full account of the man, leads us to the end of the labyrinthine life of a character who was one part psychedelic, one part psychopathic.
 
For more on Andy Roberts and ‘Divine Rascal'
 
http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/divine-rascal/
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com