Rathbone's Ramblin' - Oz magazine

[wangi]

[rathbone]

With OZ3 Sharp decided that there was no reason why a magazine should be a set number of rectangular pages stapled together. From now on every OZ would be in a different format with no two alike. Some were glossy mags, some were newspapers, some were loose sheets, some were posters. Some were square, some were oblong, some were very large and some were tiny. Typically each issue, one way or another, was about 48 pages in total.

OZ 3 and OZ 4 are my biggest frustrations because I have neither and I have never seen either of them come up for sale. I’ve no idea what happened to my copy of OZ 3. The graphics in OZ 4 were printed in gold ink on purple paper and were so beautiful that they were cut up and pinned on the studio wall. I’ve often cursed myself for destroying that copy. Ironically, our local museum here in Rathboneland has two copies of OZ on display in their ‘60s’ section. They just happen to be OZ 3 and OZ 4. Perhaps a late night break-in .........



OZ 5

This was perhaps the strangest OZ. It just kept folding out and out until it was a giant poster (think of 16 A4 sheets stuck together) by Martin Sharp, with the magazine printed on the back. As a result it is very fragile and not many of them have survived. Those that have are now quite valuable. (One sold last year for £600) My own copy is devalued because while I was at Art College it used to be pinned up on the studio wall beside the cut up OZ 4 and has holes where the drawing pins were and a tear where it got caught once. At one time the tear was repaired with Sellotape. Doing that has taken a couple of hundred pounds off its value.

The magazine side was entirely devoted to what was called “The Great Alf Conspiracy”.

The Alfs were a bizarre cult of grey short-haired nine to fivers who were sweeping the country. They worked as accountants, journalists, bank managers, doctors, lawyers.... in fact they could be anyone.

The aims of the Alfs was to make Britain a fit place for their children to live in. (Not anyone else’s, only their children. Few Alfs would admit they were Alfs, That’s why they were so difficult to help.

Some of the great achievements of the Alfs were custard, Post Office Savings accounts, North Sea Gas and life insurance.

Some Alf do-gooders, called “entrepreneurs” had started shops which stocked basic Alf gear and quaint accessories which were given away to needy Alfs at ‘bargain prices’.

You could answer a questionnaire to determine if you were an Alf, but it did come with the caution that if you attempted to answer any of the questions then you were undoubtedly an Alf. Among the questions was:

Despite this country’s present economic difficulties and the precarious state of sterling, we shall soon be back on our feet. True or false?

[rathbone]

OZ 6 By this time OZ had found its stride. It looked like no other magazine on the stands and the editorial content had moved completely away from Private Eye territory and was firmly promoting an ‘alternative’ lifestyle.

What was refreshing, however, is that it could also see through all the hippy bullshit:
“ What, really, is the flower-power craze all about, apart from being an excuse to act mad and have a good time (which you can do without subscribing to any half-formulated philosophies from America). There are no manifestoes or even clear declarations and aims to argue about. If people want to escape from an ugly world and attain a level of consciousness in which mundane conformity, policemen and politics do not exist, then good luck to them. However, you don’t get change in the world if you attempt to escape from it all the time. If the sincere among the flower people want to establish a loving, beautiful society, the light shows and weird dancing will not help.”

By OZ 6 they were also taking advertising to support the increasing publication costs. The first one was for ‘Suifan’s Kwang Tze’ Solution which was guaranteed to be specially beneficial to men who suffered from premature ejaculation. It was the first time this sort of advertisement had appeared outside porn magazines. This was ultimately to get them into deep water.

[rathbone]

OZ 7 It was with OZ 7 that they hit the big time. Martin Sharp’s cover drawing of Bob Dylan, printed in silver ink on a black and yellow background, became a cult, must have item and magazine sold in its thousands and went into reprint. Even today this edition changes hands for upwards of £250 a copy. Fortunately I didn’t cut this one up, beautiful though it was.

With OZ 7 the magazine started taking on big issues which were not being covered by main stream journalism. The central feature was an article on Michael Abdul Malik and Black militancy.

It was also the start of the negative letters following the Suifan Kwang Tze ad. OZ made a habit of publishing their negative correspondence without comment:

“Dear Sir, I should be glad if you would cancel the subscription to your magazine OZ which my son who is away at school has apparently been foolish enough to order. I hope I know my son well enough to think he did not know the contents of this periodical were quite so money wasting and also that he does not choose to read obscene publications. Please refrain from forwarding any further copies. Yours truly, F.M. Norman-Butler. “

Now, up to this point there had been nothing which could, even remotely, be construed as obscene. But if that was the reputation they were getting ........

[rathbone]

OZ 8 featured a large nude of Richard Neville’s girlfriend Louise Lesser on the cover and had the strapline ‘Playboy’s Dirty Flics’. Cheekily it was sold as a “Double Issue” and charged double the price. In fact the price was the only thing which was double.

OZ 8 was the beginning of the deliberately unreadable phase. Martin Sharp’s graphic approach had become so complex that there were frequently four different images superimposed on each other before you even got to the text. And when you did get there, the printing was orange on pink, or green on blue. Just trying to decipher what you were reading could take the whole month before the next issue came out.

There were two main articles, one on the current state of Russia and how russian communism had failed, and the other by R.D Laing on lateral thinking.

In the advertising columns the chinese elixir had now been joined by Ravensdale Products wonderful ‘Magnaphall”, an a range of items from Pellen Personal Products, along side the ads for Afghan Coats, Lapel Badges and Posters.

[rathbone]

OZ 9 is one of my favourite Martin Sharp covers. As might be deduced, that issue focussed on UFO’s. Much of the content focussed on quotes and extracts from Exodus through medieval, ancient chinese and mayan records, to victorian, edwardian and contemporary accounts of UFOs and Aliens, all of which have a remarkable similarity despite the fact that the authors, until recently, could not have known about each other’s work. I particularly like the quote from Charles Fort that “ In the topography of intellection, I should say that what we call knowledge is actually ignorance surrounded by laughter.”

Given the over the top graphic style which now overwhelmed every page, it was amusing to note from the letters page that Bob Perlongo, School of Journalism, University of Iowa thought that :”As a free-lance writer and, at the moment, also an instructor in magazine journalism, may I say that rarely have I seen a more confused, confusing, botched looking, noxious, sloppy, tasteless or incoherent magazine than yours.”

[rathbone]

OZ 10 saw a radically different approach on the front cover, graphically violent. It provoked a lot of complaints and some outlets like Menzies and W.H. Smith refused to stock it. The issue was devoted to The Pornography Of Violence. Specifically, it devoted over ten pages to atrocities being perpetrated by America in Vietnam, almost the first time criticism of this kind had appeared in the British press.

Someone after my own heart called John Powers wrote to the letters column:” I am writing to you, or rather to all John Peel supporters on an extremely important matter. Radio Luxembourg is planning to completely change its line-up of DJs, giving them much longer shows. Anyone who has ever experienced the ecstatic joy of exiting with the Perfumed Garden will, of course, immediately realise the possible mind blowing consequences of this. Every single person who supports John Peel must write to Radio Luxembourg asking, begging, pleading or demanding John Peel has a regular late night spot, and if all the beloved are faithful to the Perfumed Garden and write, Radio Luxembourg will have to sit up and take notice, and we may well see the return of the Perfumed Garden to the radio! The importance of writing cannot be sufficiently stressed. The Perfumed Garden must return.

The sex aid adverts and the politics were starting to catch up on OZ. “Safe behind their anonymity, little men inflict their prejudices upon the reading public. These are the men who purchase magazines on behalf of newsagents or wholesale distribution companies. Abel Heywood & Sons Ltd. refuse to distribute OZ to provincial retailers because ‘We don’t deal in dirt”. If you can’t get OZ in Exeter, blame Surridge, Dawson & Co. who were outraged that OZ gave space to Michael Abdul Malik.”

[rathbone]

OZ 11 is another victim of my folly and regret. It came in the form of a book of perforated stickers, with Martin Sharp graphics on one side and the editorial on the sticky side. Inevitably these were ripped apart and plastered on the walls of the college. Equally inevitably, copies of OZ11 are now worth a small fortune.




OZ 12 was another big fold out poster with a pull out newspaper stapled into the middle. You had to remove the staples to get the newspaper out and be able to open up the poster, which was another Martin Sharp classic, a very dark depiction of violence in the black community. Remarkably, I have managed to keep both the poster and the newspaper intact.

Most of the issue was devoted to a long essay by Raymond Durgnat on the relative merits of the Conservative and Labour parties’ definitions of Freedom, which were interestingly
similar, namely that freedom is meaningless unless defined in terms of power.

It was after this issue that Richard Neville famously remarked that there is only an inch of difference between Labour and Conservative, but it is in that inch that we must live.

It is interesting that even in 1968 Durgnat could note that “Conservative rhetoric about Britain’s economic crisis comes down to ‘ the workers should tighten their belts out of patriotism while the bankers get their expense account lunches to give them more incentive.’”

Dear OZ, after being subjected to shocked and dirty looks from shop assistants and witnessing the ripping up of my OZ by my enraged father and disgusted, incredulous mother, I am writing to say that I am still an OZ reader.

Dear OZ, I am at present considering whether your magazine is sincere, or just a superficial load of old rubbish. I am at an experimental stage in life and as in any experiment one allows for mistakes, I hope OZ is not one of them.

[rathbone]

OZ 13 Was described as the Agit-Oz edition. It was the edition which came out immediately after the attempted student and workers May revolt in France which had had a ripple effect in the UK, with college occupations and the anti-vietnam demonstrations.



Most of the magazine was taken up with essays on various aspects of revolution and political subversion. “ It is not only the conscious hypocrites that uphold and defend the bourgeois lie that the state is free and that it is its duty to defend the interests of all, but also a large number of people who sincerely adhere to the old prejudices and who cannot understand the transition from the old capitalist society to socialism.” On page 15 there was a call to loot Harrods. There was a two page, somewhat unflattering, report on the Queen’s state visit to Australia.

There was also detailed coverage on the way the Police were reacting to the demonstrations: “ In an anti-vietnam demonstration outside Gloucester Guildhall, 21 year old Paradise Hartley threw a toilet roll, which happened to go through an open window. Hartley was immediately arrested and charged with using threatening behaviour. In court he was tried for the crimes of (i) throwing a toilet roll and (ii) singing protest songs. The magistrates found him guilty and fined him £100. That turned out to be £85 more than the total fines imposed on 3 men with prior convictions for grievous bodily harm who had rolled a drunk outside a pub and £15 more than a drunk driver who killed a four year old child, sentenced in the same court on the same day by the same three magistrates.”

It was probably with this issue that the Government, MI5 and the Police began to take notice of OZ.

Oh, and the cover and format are particularly nice.

[rathbone]

OZ 14 was the first without a graphic on the cover, instead it was a full page advert for The Doors Strange Days LP. It was also the first OZ to feature a review section, something which would become a regular feature.

For the first time, as well, there were articles on the environment and on alternative life styles. In the former case this was possibly the first article I’d read on the need to recycle domestic waste because “there’s too fucking much of it! It’s completely out of control!” Succinctly put and at least thirty years before the Government started to do something about it, and on the latter there were three pages on how to build your own geodesic dome.

Perhaps the most disturbing article was a long exposition (5 pages) explaining the lengths that the authorities were prepared to go to get a school boy, Fabian Douglas, to cut his hair. He was 15 and his hair had grown to just above the collar of his blazer. His headmaster ordered him to get it cut. He refused, so his father was summoned to the school. When the father asked what harm the boy’s hardly excessively long hair was doing, the headmaster’s response was “I will make this boy conform for his own good. I am doing him a favour”. The boy was told “Don’t come back to school until it is cut”. The boy had his hair cut, but began to be bullied. The father took that up with the Headmaster, who referred the boy to an educational psychologist. When the father protested that it was not his son who had a problem he was told “Obey my lawful order or I will suspend the boy. Your views are irrelevant to the case, which is obedience to me alone without question.”
The headmaster then suspended the boy. The father appealed to the Education Authorities, who, perhaps not unexpectedly, supported the headmaster. The father wrote to the Minister for Education. He declined to intervene in what was a matter for the local education authority. The father went to the Council For Civil Liberties who advised that he could take civil action, so he took the Education Authority to court. At that point the Minister of Education intervened, writing to the father to demand that he obey the authority of the headmaster. Ultimately the father had to threaten an appeal to the United Nation’s Court of Human Justice before the headmaster would allow the boy back, and even then the father had to sign a document that he would obey the authority of the headmaster. It is telling that none of that made the mainstream press.

Neither did what was happening in Vietnam. Page 7 was particularly shocking, being a photograph of four american soldiers proudly displaying the heads of two vietnamese peasants whom they have just decapitated.

[rathbone]

OZ 15 saw the start of a campaign to legalise cannabis.This was becoming an issue because the Police, keen to up their arrest rate, were finding pot users a soft target. Among the examples were

(i) a party which was raided. There were 29 people on the premises at the time. The police managed to find a very small amount of cannabis. Nevertheless they proceeded to arrest 28 of those present. The 29th was a Russian Orthodox priest, who they allowed to leave. The charges against the rest were dropped at committal hearings five weeks later. As the magistrates pointed out, it was technically impossible for all 28 of the people arrested to have possessed the rather small piece of cannabis involved.

(ii) This was the case of Chris and Alfred who were stopped on the street one afternoon and searched by the police, who found nothing, got back in their car and drove away. A few minutes later the police were back and stopped the two boys again, charging them with possession of cannabis resin. In court the police stated that even though they had found nothing on the boys another officer, who just happened to be on the roof of the cinema opposite, had seen Chris drop something on the pavement. When he went over to investigate, he found the cannabis. The magistrates, however, went up on to the roof of the cinema and found that the view of where the boys had been stopped was obscured by a tree. That case was dismissed as well.

[rathbone]

How to describe OZ 16? This was the most extreme of all the 48 issues. It was fifty pages of complete collage, made up of photographs, newspaper clippings, cartoons and text, all intermixed and overlapping. Depending on how you viewed it, it was either entirely meaningless or there were at least a dozen different narratives going on at once. As it said on the cover, entrance was not for everyone. It sold really badly and, in my view regrettably, they did not repeat the idea.

In the following issue there were a number of letters:

“Dear OZ, In reference to your magazine of November, we think it was an out and out con. So far we have enjoyed most copies of your magazine, so we would be very grateful if you would refund our money. Luv, Linda and Jerry.”

“Dear OZ, What a bloody con. What a take. Give me my precious 3/- back. If I were a subscriber I would divorce you. The chorus of rage and incomprehension that greeted Martin Sharp’s ‘Magic Theatre’ must have gratified everyone on OZ except the accountant..........(and so on for a full page) ....

“Dear OZ, In your last edition you said more visually than you could ever have done otherwise. What matters, and makes the ‘Magic Theatre’ the only first class issue of OZ in the last sixteen, is that at last it has broken the mould in a lyrical and decisive way. Yours, John Christopher.”

I’m with John Christopher.

[rathbone]

The inflation factor had already started by OZ 17. In the back issues column they were already charging £1 for the ‘rare’ Oz 1.

This issue saw the start of a regular cookery column: Get to Sainsbury’s early one morning and ask for half a dozen cracked eggs - they sell them cheap and are usually sold out by the afternoon so be warned. Re-crack three of the eggs into a cup and whip with a half cup of milk until creamy. Add a half teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper. Pour this mixture into a hot frying pan which has been greased with a little marg, stirring with a fork until nearly set, then fold over and slide out of the pan. Don’t leave too long before eating - 45 seconds to a minute at the outside. This is called an omelette. Omelette has countless variations: Bacon omelette, Herb omelette, potato omelette. You’ll find you can put almost anything into an omelette, even marmalade.

The main article was on the rising number of homeless and how the Government was doing nothing to address the problem, depending on Shelter and other charities to pick up the pieces. It was estimated that there were at least 12,000 people either sleeping rough or in charity shelters in London alone.

Among the LP reviews was one for ‘Disposable’ by The Deviants. I have to declare an interest here because the lead singer of The Deviants was Mick Farren, who turned out to be my next door neighbour when I moved into the flat in London. I never asked what he thought of this review which said that “The lyrics are for the most part pretentious, artificial, clumsily metered and badly sung”.

Page 4 was the winner of a poster competition they had announced a few months before. By Ron and Karen Bowen, it showed the US Marines on Iwo Jima raising a giant flower rather than the American flag. The poster caught the public imagination and it went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

[rathbone]

OZ 18 was a newspaper and it’s quite miraculous that my copy has survived the last forty odd years. Having said that it does look a bit brown and tatty and the outer pages are pretty fragile. I shall have to invest in a pair of those special white gloves that conservators wear.

The lead item was an interview with Andy Warhol in which he manages to say nothing, beautifully.

Among the other items I particularly like the following election speech by a leading politician: “The Streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. There is danger from within and without. We need law and order. Without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order and be respected among the nations of the world.” ..... Given the date, clearly not David Cameron. Not even Margaret Thatcher, but actually Adolph Hitler in 1932.

Crucially, there was a piece on the News Of The World, which had started a campaign against OZ the previous October, focussing on the adverts for sex products, the ‘dirty’ pictures included in the adverts, and the fact that some of the other small ads were for ‘drug paraphernalia’. As a consequence OZ’s printers refused to print any more copies of the magazine. OZ threatened legal action for breach of contract, pointing out that it had never been prosecuted for anything and always paid its bills promptly. The printer agreed to print the current issue, but would not print any more. “Which will be difficult because most other printers seem to think like our present lot, which is why we’ll probably come out late next time”.

[rathbone]

The front cover of OZ 19 shows Germaine Greer unzipping Viv Stanshall’s fly. Germaine Greer had been a regular contributor since OZ 3. In this issue she had four pages on the phenomenon of Groupies. “You might think it’s a load of old cock, but that’s your hangup.”

Probably the most interesting article is on food production.
“There is too much food in the world and the surplus is growing at a terrifying, uncontrollable rate. Governments try to tackle this crisis by all sorts of restrictions on agricultural output, the most famous of which is the practice of paying farmers to leave their land uncultivated....... When other means fail, the last resort is destruction. Milk is poured down mine shafts, fields of sugar cane are burned, crops are ploughed back into the ground and fruit left to rot..... Every year there are 350,000 tons of excess butter. ...... of course, we all know that there are quite a few hungry people in the world, and for this reason talk of too much food being a problem seems ludicrous and bizarre..... In a buying and selling world, a world which produces for the sake of cash, human needs can go and get stuffed. Money talks. Hunger is dumb. People are starving alright, not because there isn’t any food for them, but because the markets can’t make a profit out of selling it to them.”

No change there then.

[rathbone]

OZ 20 was the Hells Angels issue. Though the bulk of the magazine was still focussing on social and political issues, what had started as one page of record reviews in OZ 14 had now expanded into 11 pages, almost a quarter of the whole edition. Another 8 pages were taken up with advertising, much of it for LPs. It was clear where the money was coming from to keep OZ afloat.

Four of those music pages were devoted to an interview with The Incredible String Band, (which made a curious contrast with the interviews with Hell’s Angels” only a few pages before).

At one point Robin Williamson observes that :” There’s no reason why a city should not be a garden of joy, but it’s down to thoughts. A city is the colour of the minds that build and use it. A year ago I’d have said I was in touch with the Spirit which wrote all the songs. I would have said I wasn’t responsible for their existence. There is much in Scientology. It is an applied philosophy to make the able more able through the restoration of awareness. It has released the pain in me so that now I am able to play instruments on stage which frightened me before”.
All of which sounded a long way from the Robin Williamson I used to know playing on Portobello beach.

The Hell’s Angels defined self expression a little differently:
”Loser Pete went up to Heston Services on the M4. He got a raw egg, rolled it around on the floor with his nose. Then he broke it, reached up, put salt and pepper on it and sucked it up off the floor. Now that was a mind snapper. It’s a sort of free expression. Showing class is a very little part of being an angel.”

[rathbone]

OZ 21 This was the second (and last) time an OZ cover featured an advert, this time for Elektra records.

As far as I’m concerned this was the most disposable of the OZs. Over a quarter of the issue consisted of cartoons, which were amusing the first time, but don’t bear repeated viewing. An article on black revolutionaries didn’t add anything to the ones which had appeared in earlier issues and, apart from the front and back cover, another ten pages consisted of adverts. The only really interesting part was a lengthy interview with Pete Townshend on the development of free form music.

[rathbone]

OZ 22 is definitely one of my favourite Martin Sharp covers.

Under the heading Visual Wank there was a long article about television - the bankrupt medium. The thrust of the argument was that television didn’t cater for young people. Unless you were a child or over thirty five, there was not a single programme which even acknowledged the existence of the counter culture. “Be very careful when people speak to you about quality in television,especially if they are critics or programme controllers. They are nearly always referring to something that looks good , not on the screen, but in print. When they talk about quality programmes they are actually talking about programmes which they think ought to be on television; that is very different from good television, which is almost impossible to legislate for.”

To go with this there was a report on a remarkable new piece of equipment from Japan. This was a shoulder-pack videotape recorder weighing 13 lbs and a hand held TV camera weighing about 5 lbs which worked off its own internal batteries. A microphone mounted on the camera picked up sound and synchronised sound and vision were recorded on a half inch wide videotape with a running time of 20 minutes. The batteries lasted about an hour and were rechargeable. The cost was £575. “Can I go to a shop and buy this equipment? No. The UK electronics lobby pushed a restrictive law through Parliament to protect the sale of their own inferior equipment. Well, what do you expect from a country whose economy is on its last legs?”

In the music section there were a series of quotes. I particularly like:

“I don’t know anything about music. In my line of work I don’t have to” - Elvis Presley.

“ In the old days you’d drag your old man out on the lawn and you’d kick the shit out of each other and he’d say “ Be home by midnight” and you’d be home by midnight” - Frank Zappa.

“ I had banana in high school” - Bob Dylan.

“ When I perform am I producing art? Am I fuck.” - Terry Reid.

[rathbone]

OZ 23 broached another taboo. This issue was devoted to gay rights. To get that into context it is important to remember that at the date this issue was published homosexuality had only been legalised in England the year before and was still illegal in Scotland.
“When you start encouraging people to be themselves, that is natural for mankind as a whole, you find that homosexuality becomes something natural. You have, in fact, got a cure for “homosexuality”. Whereas most young people have very open minds, when it comes to homoerotocism their homoerotic drive or instinct has already been suppressed by the time they start verbalising and talking about freedom and so on, so that the whole range of erotic freedom tends to be neglected. There is in fact a considerable amount of self consciousness about this even among ‘underground’ people. Almost to a man the possibility that they might be queer has crossed their mind but they’ve just brushed it aside. Men just can’t admit that they love other men. And quite obviously if man is not allowed to love his fellow men it’s easier for him to kill them.”

The music pages were devoted to an interview with Phil Ochs, which was of interest to me because Phil was a mate of mine. Just before the interview Phil “had been tramping the streets of Edinburgh looking for a hotel. To buy. To own. To be master of an ever changing community of one night stand salesmen and their whores, Glasgow Rangers supporters, whisky freaks, haggis heads and assorted kilted fantasies.”...............”The idea of violence has been happening off and on for God knows how many years. So it stands to reason that within the next two fucking years some schmuck in fucking Wall Street is going to start marketing violence.”

[rathbone]

OZ 24 was “the OZ freak show, a gallery of beautiful people whose wildly original world view flows into their life style. Freaks are anti-hypocrites who abolish the barriers between theory and action, fantasy and reality, politics and play, sanity and madness. With the media turning the world into the global village, plugging us into the same experiences, we all risk growing into the same person. In such a world, freaks restore the individual.”

Almost from the start OZ ran a medical advice page called Ask Dr. Hippocrates. This issue the question was :” Whenever I eat in a chinese restaurant the upper part of my body feels numb. I feel weak all over and my heart seems to pound. What could be wrong?” “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome came to light when a Yale gastroenterologist found a connection between chinese food and headaches. Most of the people affected noticed headaches, numbness of the face, palpitation of the heart, sweating and flushed faces. The culprit seems to be monosodium glutamate. Don’t worry too much about it. One or two hours after you stop eating the symptoms disappear and you’ll be hungry again.”

It also contained a large fold out poster of Jailbait Of The Month, the delectable Miss Honeybunch Kaminski.

[rathbone]

OZ 25 was all about Hippy Atrocities. At least, that’s what it said on the cover. Inside there was a truly great article on Sam Phillips and Sun Records, and another, almost as good, on the Bob Dylan Great White Wonder bootleg.

There was also a two page spread extolling the virtues of this pretty little place in the sun that was out of touch with the rest of the world. “One little post office, a general store, a couple of bars, maybe one bus on the whole island so that you have to walk. Very much your beautiful people scene. It’s a bit crazier, the hair is longer, the dressing’s a bit freer, naked swimming , not many tourists. The peasants have a nice thing going - they fill your skirts with almonds and things.”................this was Ibiza, and we all know where that led.

Probably the best article was a tour round Scunthorpe. “Scunthorpe’s the only town I’ve ever cased thoroughly in four and a half hours. It took a lot longer to get there........” What they were trying to find out was what a normal weekend was like for young people who lived outside London.....” There seemed nowhere to eat. The cafes were shut. The rockers, bored out of their heads stumbled across the road bumping cars, or sat on railings outside the pub waiting to be moved on by the cops who obviously went through this ritual every weekend...... ‘How about live groups?’, I asked the girl in the fish shop. “Well we had the Seekers, or is it the Searchers? And someone very famous last week but I can’t remember who.’.....In a doorway I talked to a kid waiting. He worked as a moulder in a factory, was 17 and grooved on soul and blues. Didn’t have his own pad. Hardly anyone did. Everybody lived with their parents. Went part time to the technical college. ‘Any activities there?’ ‘Not that sort of college, you just walk in, do your course and split.’ He was keen to leave Scunthorpe and live in London. Said kids like him were called mods - still.”

All of it was so familiar and it was salutary to realise that Portobello and Scunthorpe were the norm, not swinging London.

[rathbone]

OZ 26 focussed on Women’s Lib. “Men are the enemy. They know it. At least they all know there is a sex war on, an especially cold one. They have no perverse desire to remain enemies, but sexual assemblies vote overwhelmingly in favour of a new definition of women’s role, for if women liberate themselves, they will also free men of their neurotic dependence and the fearful inauthenticity of sexual relationships......The 1969 second wave of women’s liberation movements were very much a manifestation of those sinister forces in our society which we call the media. While pulling in millions of pounds by brainwashing women into demanding the emulsified fats, perfumed deodorants and disinfectants, liver corroding analgesics and other consumer products which are as necessary to keep our economies on an even keel as the threat of war or anarchist insurrection, the newspapers kept up their circulation by inventing a new sensation, Women’s Liberation.”

Dear OZ, My friend and I are baffled with regard to OZ 25. You have added yet another gem to your sick, sadistic publication. We feel that a trip to the local psychiatrist for sadistic tendencied people is called for. I hope and I know my friend and many others would agree undoubtedly that you should be sued until this ‘underground’ shit is no more. Please don’t get the idea that I am an aging fuddy duddy spinster with hang ups about the underground press. I am a 19 year old, perfectly healthy reader and enjoy most of the current progressive bands. I am, and I speak for my friend, thoroughly and utterly disgusted. Your record reviews were good. Hippocrates was interesting, small ads were informative, but we now will stop reading your toilet paper which would be an insult to our arses and wish you every downfall in the new year. I have deleted my address from this letter as I am not quite sure if you can take action for such insulting behaviour via me and my pal. P.S. I agree entirely with my friend. You lot are sick, just sick. It was just filthy, barbarism, shit and I hope you wallow in your own sick. Sadists! Irene.

Tucked away in the issue was an advert asking young people under 18 to get in touch if they would like to produce a copy of OZ.

[rathbone]

OZ 27 concerned itself with LSD, including long extracts from the Psychedelic Convention.

“A few years ago heroin was a medication of choice to which many adolescents looked for an anaesthetic revelation of their desires. We hypothesised that these young people sought from heroin a temporary relief from the falterings of an imperfect civilization. The situation was relatively uncomplicated. Quickly a much younger population seized on the inhalation of glue fumes and similar substances for the relief of their special turmoil, forcing a modification of prior hypotheses. One could still adhere, however, to the view that drug misuse was the predilection of a relatively small number of deviants in our society without risking professional scorn.Then, as everyone knows, LSD use spread among middle class youth, across ages, classes, ethnicities, cities and subcultures. The ‘problem’ reached epidemiological proportions. ............

The difficulties in judging the dangers of acid arise partly from the fact that acid does not have intrinsic effects. A bad acid trip may be due to bad acid and it may be to due to the extreme difficulty of estimating the dose .....

It is very misleading to suggest that LSD is a cause of violence. The evidence points in the opposite direction. I would like to have comparative statistics for violence and self destruction on LSD and alcohol.”

[rathbone]

OZ 28 turned out to be the nemesis issue.

In actual fact it was the Schoolkids issue. OZ had advertised for people under the age of eighteen to produce an issue of the magazine. The ‘kids’ had complete editorial freedom.

The issue they produced isn’t, by a long way, the best OZ issue, but it became the most famous. It is all you would expect from a bunch of adolescents. The thirteen boys and four girls focussed on running exposes on what was happening in their schools, exam blues, what they got up to at the weekend, pop music, smut and a spot the ball competition.

The damage was done by the Headmaster Of The Year profile on page 12 and the cartoon on page 14

The headmaster in question was Mr. Robinson of Bradford Grammar School. Needless to say this was a negative profile, which I won’t summarise for reasons which will become apparent. The reason for Mr. Robinson’s success was his efficiency at expelling any pupil which he considered to be a corrupting and subversive influence. Mr Robinson did not bask in the glory of his win. Instead he sued the magazine for defamation.

The cartoon was the work of 16 year old Viv Kylastron. It showed everybody’s favourite childhood character, Rupert Bear sporting a somewhat unfeasibly large erection. This proved too much for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who charged Richard Neville, Felix Dennis and Jim Anderson, the directors of OZ, and Viv Kylastron of producing material of gross indecency. At the resulting trial they were found guilty and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.

[rathbone]

OZ 29 came courtesy of Inspector Luff of New Scotland Yard. It was another Women’s Lib issue, with a very easy to follow crochet pattern for a willy warmer on page five, and lengthy articles by Germaine Greer, Anais Nin and Kate Millet.

Tucked away in the middle was the announcement that Neville, Dennis and Anderson were also going to be charged with the corruption of minors.

“ If this means giving kids an effective means of self expression; enabling them to ridicule everything from headmasters to the Schools Action Union; to attack exams, the combined Cadet Force and the Underground; to defend love, Jeff Beck and Rupert Bear, to create cartoons, collages; learn a little about magazine production, if it means to discover other possible futures than the one offered by the school careers officer, to share in the vision of a generation experimenting with new ways of living, and being victimised for doing so, then we admit it. OZ corrupts minors. We just hope it sometimes reaches adults”.

Dear OZ, The schoolkids issue was just like smelling a flower. Fresh and just natural. That’s what OZ was. It really done something to my mind. It was true expression. You should do it more often. The article by Allan Clayson called Xam Blues was so good. It put in words what I’ve been thinking about exams. I will lift it out of OZ and use it. Love, Al.

[rathbone]

OZ 30 This is the tattiest of my copies, badly creased, torn at the top of the cover and loose on its staples. I’ve no idea why it has had such a bad life.

There was an interesting interview with a guy whose real name was not Jim.
“American technology has developed and manufactured small aircraft equipped with sensitive instruments which can spot things from an altitude of two or three thousand feet. These aircraft are capable of destroying on detection. They have already been used in Mexico and will be used in other parts of the world soon, if they’re not already being deployed as you read this......machines are being installed at international airports in America to detect things in luggage at customs control...... The CIA make few direct arrests, operating instead through local police forces in a delicate relationship in which the cops take the blame.........when an American agent on a secret assignment needs cash in any currency he goes to an unspecified government office and identifies himself with a code, telling the clerk how much money he needs. No explanation necessary, and agents do not carry identification for obvious reasons. The money is put on the counter. (We would like to know the code and if we ever do.....) .... You are being used as an american political pawn. It doesn’t matter if you are English, French, German or Dutch. America plays international politics and is going to have its way....... I am going to be watching you. We are going to be watching you. We are going to find out who you really are”. Good luck to them. It’s a question I’ve been trying to solve for years.

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

Dear OZ, I read the letter about the skinheads wanting the same goal as us long haired intellectuals. The night after, we went to a disco and the skin head bastards proceeded to beat the fuck out of five of my long haired friends and I. To clinch it the bouncers threw us out for causing trouble. Yours painfully, E. Grindle.

[rathbone]

OZ 31 In case you can’t read the fine print on the cover, it says “He drives a Maserati. She’s a professional model. The boy is the son of the art editor of Time magazine. Some revolution!”

This issue dealt with the hypocrisy of people who took the ‘alternative’ life style and exploited it for gain.

“ In the formative stages of the counter culture it was possible to draw inspiration from the behaviour of Albion’s children. It was tempting, if naive, to hope that a qualitative change in the conduct of human relationships might develop. But now affectation suffocates reason and arguments lose their conviction. The advertising campaign has been an abounding triumph, but there is nothing inside the wrapping paper.”

“Mick Jagger was on television the other night and said he was an anarchist. An anarchist? Mick Jagger is currently staying at the Georges Cinq hotel. If he wants caviare the waiter says yes sir Mr. Jagger and sends someone off to Russia..... We can’t rely on the stars to change the system for us any more..... The kids at the Isle of Wight were being totally controlled and manipulated. They had to pay exorbitantly for their own music and they became completely exhausted, sleeping in the lavatories, hungry, so weary they were pissing over each other.”

“One of the promises of the new lifestyle was the abolition of false criteria for judging human beings. Today hip symbols and fashionable rituals count for more than ever. Venereal disease may even be a new status symbol, but the gonococcus germ unfortunately hasn’t heard of women’s lib.”

“One night, on arriving at Newcastle station, I noticed two artsy laby types surrounded by British Rail authorities. The uncomfortable pair caught my eye and asked for help. British Rail were refusing to accept their proferred cheque. Naturally I accepted it and purchased tickets on their behalf. A few days later the cheque bounced.”

“Who represents the greater threat to the power structure of England, the Kray Twins or the White Panthers?”

[rathbone]

OZ 32 Just before this issue the OZ offices, Jim Anderson’s flat and Richard Neville’s house were raided. Consequently the letters column began with : ” Several letters were seized by Inspector Fred Luff during his celebrated pre-Christmas raid on the OZ offices and do not therefore appear. If you want your letter back, call on Fred. Then again, he may call on you.”

Three pages in the magazine were devoted to a blow by blow description of the raids .”Having just stepped out of the shower, I was baby powdering when Detective Frederick Luff burst through the bathroom door. After a strained exchange of courtesies, I hurried to dress and to admire the calm with which six other plainclothes men and two dogs were ravaging my home. “What’s your name”, I asked the man who was disabling the telephone. “Get stuffed”, he replied...... The labradors were hilariously hopeless. While these ill trained hounds gnawed needlessly through the back of a decaying harmonium, their masters ransacked my library, my personal letters and files. Few, if any of these objects are likely to be returned. No receipt has been forthcoming. I will probably never know in detail exactly what was commandeered.... I produced a sony cassette and began recording the mounting pandemonium. It was immediately wrested from me and taken apart ‘ to search for drugs’. They even confiscated the hand written notes which Louise started making to keep a record of what they were taking. ....... I have no previous convictions yet Frederick Luff categorised me (at the court) as a dangerous criminal, resulting in me being refused bail and banned all visitors.......This means that our editorial hand is forced. If the magazine is to survive we are now compelled to conduct editorial decisions in a way which we have always previously avoided. Until we defeat the charges we must strive to elude a further prosecution. Oz has never been solely sexual, but just as few girls remember the face of the man who exposes himself on a train, likewise, out of a 48 page OZ our more repressed readers will recall only the two pages of small ads.”




p.s : Today is my birthday and I've just treated myself to a copy of OZ11 (the one with the stickers) off E-bay, so that will feature, out of sequence, in the near future.

[rathbone]

OZ 33

“Let’s take for granted that socialism is preferable to capitalism, for no-one among us could argue that inequality is better than equality. I want to ask : How can we be sure that capitalism is digging its own grave? Will socialism be ready to step in and take over? And is it helpful to be told over and over again that this is what should happen without telling us how? The great depression of 1929 was said to herald the end of capitalism, but as Roosevelt pointed out, it was his administration which saved the system of private profit and free enterprise after it had been dragged to the brink of ruin. The end of the second world war was going to usher in a new age, yet never has capitalism flourished as strongly as in the countries that defeated fascism. Undoubtedly things are getting worse. Unemployment is going up along with inflation. The quality of everyday life in general is declining as steadily as the purchasing power of money. The number of poor and disaffected people grows daily.”
That was 1971, but still resonates in 2012.

So does the article on The Anarchist’s Cookbook, which was all about making home made bombs. “Just as the first duty of the revolutionary is not to get caught, the anarchist’s first duty is not to blow himself up” consequently there are lots of safety rules for storing, making and handling your dynamite, gunpowder and plastic bombs. In the highly unlikely event that I would want to make a pressure plate detonator or sabotage a suspension bridge I don’t think I would rely on this.

Mary Twissell got off today. She had bumped into another woman when coming out of the Albert Hall. ‘Piss off!’ said the other woman, making a rude gesture. ‘Fuck off!’ responded Miss Twissell, who was immediately arrested for indecent language. Presumably the arresting officer made a value judgement between the two statements. The case was dismissed.

[rathbone]

OZ 34 The front cover was a parents guide to drug abuse. This was a ruse. Almost the entire issue was given over to a discussion of the way in which multi-national companies were proliferating and the pernicious effect they were having on the development of third world countries.

In Britain today we have a crisis of identity. We don’t know who we are, where we fit into world history, or what we should be doing politically. The social identities that define the immediate horizons of our daily life are more and more the only identities we have. Without a wider view, or an interpretation of existence beyond this immediate horizon, we become prisoners of the present, captives to our immediate surroundings. The implications are profound because without a wider interpretation of the meaning of our lives, we lack the perspective and the ideas that alone can enable us to make coherent criticisms and real changes.

The hard financial core of world capitalism is composed of not more than 60 firms, partnerships or corporations, owned or controlled by 1000 men. In fact recent forecasts claim that in 25 years 200 multinational firms will completely dominate and account for 75% of the total corporate assets of the world.

Uganda, for example, threw out the British in 1962 and then proceeded cautiously to build a new nation. But the British skillfully rearranged their relationships with Uganda. Instead of having a direct political and economic stranglehold, the British entered the phase of neo-colonialism where their bankers and businessmen began to infiltrate. Uganda became the East African headquarters for large British firms like Barclays, Grindleys and other insurance, manufacturing and construction companies.....as a result the people became poorer and poorer at the expense of the country’s natural and labour resources. Historic events don’t occur by accident; they are the product of historical forces. In Uganda’s case they were the result of the designs of imperialism.

Dear Germaine,
Having been recently bombarded with news of your exploits and theories in various woman’s magazines and newspapers, I feel prompted to ask if it is really true. Whatever happened to the sweet young girl I once knew. Monica and I are still happily married and now have five children. My brother Denis was finally married three years ago and to date has produced only one masterpiece! I work as a plant pathologist where I am researching on various diseases of stone fruit trees. I worked for 14 months at the University of California in 67/68 and our youngest son was born there. Since we returned to Australia, Monica has returned to school teaching (it’s the rising cost of living) at the local parish school, about 400 yards from our home. I spend most of my Saturdays helping with cleaning the house and specialize in cleaning toilets. Monica gets very tired at times, but we survive ...........

[rathbone]

OZ 35 Was a special pig issue in commemoration of the Obscenity Trial which started at the Old Bailey on 22 June.

The subscriptions page noted : “Subscribe to OZ, the magazine of fun, trouble, adventure and court cases. OZ is mailed in plain, flat, brown envelopes. Subscribers’ names and addresses are protected from the interest of the Special Branch and other police agencies by a coded, computerised retrieval system. (Apologies for late deliveries of the last issue - the GPO are claiming OZ is not registered as a newspaper and insisting on extra postage.”

Special t-shirts were on sale for £1.25p each. One sold on e-bay last month for £2,900.

As part of the defence fund initiative, numerous high profile members of the counter culture donated either money or items for auction. These included David Bailey, Alan Aldridge, Michael English, Terry Gilliam, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman and many others.

On the other hand:
Dear OZ, Your magazine is getting fucking worse, filling it with bullshit about the wogs and niggers abroad rather than the fuck-ups in this country. You would think it was our fault that the fucking GIs were fighting. If you feel so sympathetic with the vietcong why don’t you fight with the motherfuckers? In Bradford the scene is so far under that they warm their hands off the core of the earth, so why can’t you come up here and do your fucking preaching and leave the wogs and niggers alone. Perhaps that will help the scene. Yours, Jack the Ripper, Bradford.

As a supplement there was a very full and detailed wall chart on drugs, including nicotine and alcohol, covering how you use them, what the short term effects are, what the long term effect were, physical dependency, psychological dependency, what the mode of death would be from overdose and what the antidote is.

[rathbone]

OZ 36 This issue came out at the beginning of the obscenity trial and, understandably, devoted a fair bit of space to the issues involved.

What is obscenity? What is pornography? The great debate goes on and it’s boring. Sterilized, polite, predictable arguments about the right of artists and playwrights to say fuck in public, in an ethical manner of sociological importance. The vast majority of working people have been saying fuck in public in an entirely unethical way for years. They don’t have to go to the theatre for that.

The judges who presume to weigh our actions in the scales of justice are known to take a very serious view of obscenity. In our society the ruling values are always the values of the ruling class, based on the familiar double standards traditional to British rulers. Holier than thou attitudes about depraving and corrupting innocent people.

Power is not deterred by the sight of a bare nipple. In fact they know, and we know too, that the whole obscenity rap is really a highly convenient camouflage which they are using to stalk the menacing and illusory ghosts of freedom of speech and of the press. (Freedom being defined here as anything that doesn’t agree with them.)

A direct and total attack on all the conditions that oppress us should have clear goals, otherwise our protests will remain what they are already, a permanent sore on the arse of an equally permanent establishment. In demanding the right to live our lives unexpurgated by any authority except our own, we have to demand this right, not just for ourselves, but for everyone who wishes to lead a free life.

[rathbone]

OZ 37 The Angry OZ was the first after the trial.

They published the headlines from the mainstream press, who seemed to realise too late that the precedent set by the prosecution of OZ could also apply to them:
Fury Over OZ Jailings. Angry MPs join the wave of protest -- The Sun.
Outcry As OZ Editors Are Jailed --Daily Telegraph.
OZ: Obscene! But Why The Ferocious Sentences? -- Daily Mirror
OZ Sentences - MPs Sign Protest -- Daily Express
MPs Condemn OZ Gaolings As Establishment Revenge -- The Guardian
Demonstrations And Protests Against OZ Jail Sentences -- The Times
Storm Over OZ Sentences -- Daily Mail

The page containing these pretty hypocritical and self serving articles was headed “God Save Us”.

The OZ Obscenity Trial at the Old Bailey was the longest and most expensive trial of its kind in legal history. It encompassed more than a million spoken and reco rded words and cost the British taxpayer in excess of £75,000 (probably several million at todays rates).

With Richard Neville, Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis now convicted, there had to be a new editorial team. In fact 44 people were listed as editors, including “Detective Inspector Luff and all the boys on the squad.”

Among the many articles on other prosecutions of publications and organisations that the Government didn’t like, there was one on Upper Clyde Shipyards, which was in the process of being wound up by the Department of Technology. The Government report into shipbuilding actually said “We could put in a government butcher to cut up UCS and to sell, cheaply, the assets of the UCS to minimise upheaval and dislocation.” As OZ pointed out “Glasgow, after all, was a working class town, used to poor housing, poor recreation facilities, poor education, a high alcohol problem, a high suicide rate. Racial and religious problems were acute. Street gang warfare was at an emergency level. And, of course Glasgow has always been an invincible Labour stronghold.” The implication being what damage would a little more misery make to a Glasgow which was obviously disposable to the Conservative Government. In the event, orders worth £90 million were blocked by the Tories, contracts placed withdrawn and given to shipyards in England and 20,000 jobs lost, 8,000 directly in UCS and a further 12,000 in the ancillary industries which served the shipyards.

[rathbone]

OZ 38 led on Survival.

“ This planet is dying fast. In the last three decades man has changed the delicate patterns of life on this planet in ways which would have taken millions of years to occur naturally, not the most of them would ever occur naturally. These changes have been executed bit by mindless bit with absolutely no consideration for life. It is hardly surprising that already life on this planet is on the way out. Evolution has been thrown into reverse..... Whole species are becoming extinct at an absurd rate. The variety of living things is being reduced..... The news gets worse and worse every day. Because our slide to extinction is reported in such a piecemeal uncomprehending fashion it is difficult to realise just how far up against the wall we have pushed ourselves. The media are interested in local rather than global catastrophes. Cute furry animals rather than the more critically important phytoplankton...... Some seas are at death’s door right now. Vast areas of the Baltic Sea contain nothing longer than an inch. They used to be rich in fish...... The entire atmosphere is fucked. It’s far more serious than local, visually obvious messes such as the Los Angeles smog might indicate....... Man has removed two thirds of the planet’s forest cover. Together with the phytoplankton these are the planet’s main source of oxygen....The dinosaur plods on regardless of its pending doom. Bits of it mutter about dirt, filth, blue whales, the cost of cleaning up pollution and so on, but it seems to have no complete conception of the gravity of the situation or any plans for remedial action.... It seems that the dinosaur would do anything rather than die quickly and quietly. It will drag on slowly, messily and stupidly until we get something better together.”

Dear OZ, I don’t know if I am writing this letter to the write place, but your dreadful magazine does not say where to write letters to. I hope if you have any feeling at all that you will print my letter so that some young children may understand what you and people like you are doing to them. At least give them a chance to realise right from wrong. I have not given my address and refuse to gi ve my name because I don’t want to be related to people like you in any way. If young people were kept to their religion others would not be pregnant 16 year old girls and nineteen year old long haired layabouts who have no idea of life at the age of even nineteen. There should be no such thing as sexual intercourse until the age of 21 and then it should be in the laws of matrimony. I should like to know what I am going to do about my daughter’s baby and what I am going to say to my friends and the rest of my family. This is something that my wife and I are never likely to forget. I would be most grateful if the letter has not been addressed to the write place that it is put into the proper hands, thank you. Please excuse the writing and spelling. Yours truly, a struggling parent.

[rathbone]

OZ 11 arrived yesterday, so here it is, out of sequence. Given that it is 44 years old it is remarkable that all of the stickers are intact, even if the adhesive has gone funny.

It raises the question of who was the rebel, the person who bought this copy or me? On page three is the clear instruction ”The cover is perforated and gummed. Please help us by posting your OZ stickers prominently.” I was a good little rebel and did just that. The original owner of this copy was even more rebellious, and didn’t.

Most of this issue is focussed on politics, particularly the upcoming American Presidential elections. However, I found the following most interesting:

“ It’s ironic that the Conservative party, which proclaims itself as the party of individual enterprise and freedom, appears to the ordinary person as the authoritarian party, while the left, which advocates planning, control and bureaucratic centralisation, is preferred by the majority of libertarians. The paradox is resolvable, of course. The Conservative idea of freedom is freedom for power and money to have full rein. It stands for freedom for top people. The others must be kept disunited and weak and other power structures must be discouraged. Conversely the Socialist argument is that in a democracy bureaucracy enables top people to be controlled by those below. Thus more control of the powerful few means more freedom for the many with less power. So the great battle in British politics is for the centre, for those who can’t decide. Before 1800 the Tory party had a monopoly of political power. They were challenged first by the rising industrialists, the Whigs, and then a second major adjustment in the present century when the workers formed the Labour party. Now we have the pattern that Labour get in to power, struggles to change things, then an economic crisis arrives. The Conservatives take over, makesLabour carry the can for all the problems, loses its nerve before it can reap the conservative success it has sown, and gets booted out by an angry populace until just before the next big financial crisis, when everything happens all over again.

One of the most enjoyable parts of OZ was the medical column, Dear Dr. Hipocrates:

I am 45 years of age, unmarried, an in excellent physical condition, which I maintain by working out weekly. My problem is that every so often while doing chin ups I have an orgasm. This prevents me from finishing my workout. I this physically harmful?

Aside from being unable to continue your workout, no physical harm seems possible, but you should consult your own physician who may wish to refer you for psychiatric consultation.