INSIDE DOPE: OPERATION JULIE REVISITED

This is the original text of a piece I wrote on the Operation Julie story - Britain's largest LSD bust - as Dick Tracy for the NME (published March 18th, 1978) shortly after the verdicts had gone down. Published over two pages with pics (can you imagine that in the NME now). Additional research by Mike Marten.

It is very much of its time and I think reflects the widespread community/ street feeling that the whole thing had been hyped up to fit authoritarian agendas through the mouthpiece of the national press. Also that the sentences were savage.

OPERATION JULIE

"Never in the history of British crime has the police public relations been so effective and so exaggerated. It has been accepted blindly and blithely by all concerned."

- Defence lawyer

In an incredible display of media hand-holding, the official version of the Operation Julie story has now been splashed across the headlines of the press and featured on primetime TV.

It's a comforting picture of police efficiency smashing an evil international drug network so that the schoolkids of our nation can be protected from the threat of that of "heaven-or-hell" drug LSD. Comforting maybe — but accurate?

Simply put, the police offered the press their version of an exciting story, and they took it hook, line and sinker.

Of course, in a story this complicated, where everyone has an axe to grind, there is no such thing as he "ultimate truth". But in choosing to serve up only the police version of the story, and lace it with biased comment and questionable facts, most of the national media have shown themselves once-again to be unreliable and only too willing to cooperate with the authorities.

What follows is an attempt to show up some of the media inconsistencies, and to provide some alternative views on what the BBC described as "the most sustained and successful police investigations ever carried out."

POLICE POLITICS
In order to fully understand the police's attitude and hence the press's stand on Operation Julie, it is necessary to realise that the whole affair had a great deal to do with internal police politics.

The 28-strong Julie team, seconded from eleven different police forces, worked outside the traditional police structures as an elite crew, and their activities formed the basis for Det Chief Supt Greenslade's vision for a national drug squad.

The team, characterised by the Mirror as "a handful of shabby supercops", were so secretive that, according to The Times, even the Metropolitan Police did not know about the planned raids until the last possible moment.

The Julie squad used every available trick in the book to break the case. At the farm in Wales they used for surveillance, "tons of secret monitoring equipment and scrambler telephones"-— some on loan from the Whitehall security services — were quietly installed. Policemen masqueraded as hippies for months on end, infiltrated festivals, communes and the like in search of information.

Foremost among these was Detective Sergeant Martin Pritchard, described by the Mail as "more hippy than policeman".Interestingly, the Mirror, who published his own story, revealed that they had taken a picture of Pritchard when he had to give evidence after he bust a cannabis racket in 1975. He said:"The Daily Mirror published a rear-view picture of me so that it wouldn't blow my cover."

Even Detective Chief Inspector Lee, the operations expert from the Thames Valley Drug Squad, indulged in fancy dress, posing as "a London businessman recuperating from a major heart problem.” The police's Maigret-like expertise has been widely praised but, according to one defence lawyer, it's a myth. He told Thrills that Julie was a "disastrous operation" and claimed "they never got information as a result of their own investigations. It was all handed to them on a plate.”

The main leads were provided by Ron Stark, a former associate who shopped the others when busted for heroin in Italy.

As the Mail pointed out, Lee knew of the existence of the acid factory at the Welsh Mansion House in Carno for some time before the final raids. According to them: “He knew the drugs from the Mansion House would be distributed throughout the world. He knew they would be taken by young pople whose lives could be ruined – they might even die as a result. He knew he could stop their sale by raiding the house, he decided not to. This the Mail presented not as a criticism but as a picture of Lee’s heroic dilemma

Perhaps as a result of Lee's delay tactics, two key figures — the international dealer American Paul Annabaldi and an Israeli named Zahi — escaped cdespite being under surveillance for some time.

Following their success, real or overstated, Greenslade and others began pushing their idea for a super-police unit – an FBI style national drug squad – who, they claimed, would be able to combat the drug menace more effectively. Many papers took their lead and made their own demands for such a force to be set up – notably the Mirror and the Express.

All the comments on this — including the bitter denunciations by the six members of the Julie squad who have resigned amidst complaints about "penny-pinching" by Whitehall, and their bitching about the police treating them as regular coppers rather than continuing the impetus of Operation Julie into a special force — should be seen in this context: as an attempt to pressurise the Home Office into setting up a special task force which neither they nor most local chief constables deem necessary. Greenslade boasted: "The operation was successful beyond my wildest dreams. This could pave the way for a national police force." Presumably, also in his dreams, with Detective Chief Superintendent Greenslade at the helm.

It was obvious that following the-huge police operation, including dawn raids by 800 police on March 26 1977, that much would have to be made of this case in order to justify the huge expenditure involved.

Greenslade was at pains to point out in the press that: "In two years' operation Julie cost £500,000 - but normal wages, transport and expenses have to be deducted. We hope to reciver enough in cash and property so that it will have cost Britain nothing.” (In other words, kids, your acid outlay is financing this police operation…) It remains to be seen whether Julie breaks even, and whether Greenslade’s lobby will be successful.

THE NUMBERS GAME
Throughout the press reporting on the Julie case, numbers have been thrown about with gay abandon. How much LSD was actually produced?

The Mail claims 15 million doses; the Times 20-60 million, supplying a dozen countries. The Mirror claimed that in 1976 alone the gang’s turnover reached an estimated £200 million — equal to that of the British Homes Stores. This is disputed by the defence lawyer we spoke to - he claimed that the total syndicate take was nearer £700,000:throughout their entire operations.

Then there was the question of what fraction of the total LSD market the syndicate's output represented. The Mirror claimed it was "two-thirds of the world's supply," the BBC News said 90 per cent of Britain's and 60 percent of the world's supply, while-Greenslade told the Express: "In our view 95 percent of LSD in Britain was coming from this source and so was half the world's supply " Of course, these things are impossible to gauge, but the mere act of printing them renders them 'official'. When it came to the street price the estimates were even more diverse. The Express claimed that it was £l a tab when the syndicate was in operation but that, since the bust, the street price had shot up to £5 or even £8 a tab, a fact quoted in court. On the other hand, the Times said: "Last week in London it could be bought for £1 a dose or £40 a thousand."

Release, who are closer to the street than any Fleet Street journalist is ever likely to get, told Thrills that bulk price was now £40 for 4,000 (l0p a tab) with street price at £1. They also claimed that LSD, far from drying up, is now "almost as easily obtainable as cannabis ', putting the lie to the police's claim to have wiped out Britain's LSD market. Of course, this has now led the press to speculate about a new 'Mr Big' who is moving in on the scene — speculation instigated, it should be noted, by Det. Supt. Dennis Greenslade, whose proposed national drug squad would, of course, track down the 'international godfathers' behind the new source.

Other random statistics appeared in print with no hint as to where they came from. An unknown 1973 survey was quoted which suggested that 600,000 people in Britain have tried LSD. Greenslade himself told reporters that he estimated "60 million LSD tablets have been made and swallowed in the last decade." It would be interesting to learn how he arrived at that figure.

LSD PARANOIA
It has been standard practice in the British and American media for many years now to distort the true nature of the drug LSD. Medical research into the subject has been officially frowned on, but nevertheless there is a considerable body of evidence available, enough to refute most of the basic untruths. Needless to say, medical facts were ignored in favour of selling newspapers. Operation Julie provided the press with a field day, allowing them to dust off all the old cliches and trot them out into print.

The Mirror did not miss a trick in this respect. Their headline story read: "An entire city stoned on a 'nightmare drug — that was the crazy ambition of the masterminds behind the world's biggest LSD factory. They planned to blow a million minds simultaneously by pouring LSD into the reservoirs serving Birmingham." The water supply story can be traced back in the media to at least the mid-'60s and probably before, I have had personal experience of this while working in the information caravan at one of the large Isle of Wight festivals, when I heard an almost identical story being dictated over the phone by a Mirror reporter. It wasn't true then, either.

Most insidious of all was the Express story: ‘All too many young people have experimented with LSD for the thrill. One was 16-year-old June Duggan and it killed her.’ Now for the punchline. ‘It could not be proved that her pill came from the gang sentenced at Bristol, but in view of their huge output it seems possible.’

The piece continued: ‘Her father said: “She liked pop records but many of them by people like David Bowie mentioned drugs. I suppose she didn't want to be square and felt she had to 'try it'.” Other young people who ended up in hospital from an LSD trip have lived — or rather, have not died. They have stayed there staring at the walls, transfixed with a terror they cannot explain and cannot be freed from."

Ironically, in a moment of high comedy, proof of LSD effects were provided by three policemen, who accidentally tripped out while cleaning up one of the acid factories.None of them jumped
out of the windows or became uncontrollably homicidal. Nonetheless, the Police Federation is now backing their claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.

Mind you, the press were only following the lead of the police. In the Guardian a police spokesman said that half the admissions to mental hospitals in the USA were caused by LSD! This apparently referred to a brief period in the 1960s in Los Angeles, but the precise details were not forthcoming. Department of Health and Social Security figures were also quoted to show that 12% of all drug-related admissions to mental hospitals in the UK were “LSD-related”, some 265 cases in 1976. Exactly what the relationship was is unclear.

The police in turn were supported in their attitude by the trial judge, Mr Justice Park, who ignored the expert evidence of Dr Martin Mitcheson, who runs the University College Hospital drug dependence clinic. Mitcheson told the court that LSD carried “relatively small risks compared to other dangerous drugs," and he claimed that any comparison was irrelevant.

Surprisingly only the BBC report by their science correspondent provided an accurate analysis of the drug's effect, pointing out, for instance, that it is not addictive.And nobody at all mentioned the fact that acidheads have gone almost totally underground these past few years — or, at least, acid has become completely unfashionable.

THE DEFENDANTS
The defendants stood little chance, it seems, against the weight of public opinion which, in turn, was shaped by the media. They were variously described as the "international firm of L.S.D. (Unlimited)" and "one of the most educated teams of criminals the world has ever known."

The Guardian said "the flower of British post-war education were in the dock" and, described them as a mixture of evangelists, middle-aged Americans and get-rich-quick merchants, many of them Cambridge educated." Their story, it was said, "sounded like the history of enterprising businessmen, too busy making their venture succeed to worry about a few social casualties."

Christine Bott and Richard Kemp were typically characterised as star-crossed lovers and tarnished idealists but, as Release pointed out, by providing the finest quality acid ever produced, Kemp ... could be claimed to have been providing “community service". His acid was "less likely to have negative effects" due to the fact that the impurities, which often cause the teeth grinding and stomach churning which sometimes lead to bummers, had been removed.

The Leary connection was another interesting aspect of the case's coverage. There was no hard evidence to support this, of course, but mention LSD and you're bound to find California and Dr. Timothy Leary not far behind. One report claimed that the link was "a major strand of the counter-culture, stretching back 10 years to Dr. Timothy Leary and the heady days of the California acid heads." Much play was made of Leary's Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a semi-mythical outfit which ceased to exist years ago; as a fashionable conspiracy theory, it makes 'sexy' (Fleet Street jargon for exciting) copy, but its veracity is questionable.

Even worse was the piece in the Evening Standard headlined: EXPLODING THE MYTH OF POP FESTIVALS. It read: ‘The myth that free pop festivals were innocent happenings where youth did its own harmless thing and sought peace through flower power has been finally exposed by the Operation Julie drugs trials.’ They further claimed that, at the trial, ‘pop festivals and the vast open-air happenings were finally shown up in their true form — as gatherings financed out of LSD manufacturing profits to attract hard-core drug takers with sufficient numbers of innocent fans to cover up the illicit drug trafficking and introduction to the drugs scene of new recruits.’ So much for the Standard's understanding and attitude towards the youth culture.

EPILOGUE
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the whole affair is the lack of support and interest from the 'hip' or head community. International Times editors Max Handley and Lyn Solomon (David'sdaughter) are writing a book on the whole affair, all royalties from which will got to the defendants - most of whom are appealing.

But a few short years ago Kemp and Co would have been hailed as "psychedelic outlaws". Now it seems most people are content to accept the official word on the subject and go back to their Bovril and bedroom slippers. On the other hand, many people I spoke to were beside themselves with anger at the whitewash job performed on the affair.

The only positive aspect of the case is that many lawyers, angry at the sentencing, are planning to push for a new law which would make the appropriate distinctions between LSD and other hard drugs like heroin, and change sentencing policy accordingly. After all, the people involved in the largest heroin ring ever busted in Britain only got maximum sentences of 12 years!

Only one thing is going to change this kind of inconsistency in the law — an inconsistency fostered by the police and perpetrated by the national press — and that's concerted pressure in the face of public witch-hunts such as Operation Julie. Pressure from you.

The republished book 'The Brotherhood of Eternal Love' (see previous post),records what has happened to some of the main protagonists since this story was written.

'Ron Stark was the man who linked the activities of the Brotherhood and the LSD chemists who succeeded them in Britain. He died in a San Francisco hospital in 1984, from heart disease...

'The chemists and dealeers caught in Operation Julie have largely disappeared. David Solomon, who started the English connection, is dead. His chemist Richard Kemp and Kemp's girldfriend Christine Bott, apparently retreated into anonymity after serving their sentences. Henry Todd served seven and a half years of a thirteen year sentence and then followed his love of mountaineering ot Nepal and a career running one of the largest climbing supply companies. By his mid- 50s he had become a ccontroversial legend among climbers in the Himalayas for his no-frills operation based in Nepal. In the summer of 2006 he and two others faced a private prosecution for manslaughter mommounted by the family of a climber who died climbing on Everest but the case was thrown out.

'Dick Lee, the man who put Todd behind bars, left the police to become a freelance journalist and shop-owner. His book on the investigation drew sharp criticisms from former coplleagues who felt he had gone too far in describing police operations such as telephone tapping, not normally discussed publicly at that time.'

LSD and THE BROTHERHOOD

This is an updated reissue of the book which has become a cult classic since its first publication in 1984. Written by the former Sunday Times journalist David May and The Times' crime correspondent Stewart Tendler, it is a textbook example of solid investigative reporting into the history of LSD in general and the underground characters behind its manufacture and distribution during the '60s and '70s in particular.

Based on scores of original interviews with many of the key particpants - both lawbreakers and feds - it take us into a clandestine world where visionary chemists linked to the Grateful Dead and the utopian Brotherhood of Eternal Love conspire to produce enough LSD to power a cultural revolution.
The scale of their ambition and activities, inspired by the antics of Timothy Leary (one of the book's central characters), requires their engagement with Hell's Angels, career criminals, professional fantasists and other duplicitous and shadowy figures who often turn out to be undercover agents or intelligence operatives. The links extend to a major LSD production ring in the UK, who were famously brought to trial in the late 1970s by a massive police operation codenamed 'Operation Julie.'

A fresh epilogue in this new edition traces the fate of all the book's main characters up to the present day and provides a valuable historical perspective on a utopian time when it really did seem likely that this 'problem child' (the phrase used to describe LSD by its discoverer, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman) could change the course of history. Certainly it changed the minds of thousands of key creative people during this period.

In a world of half-baked conspiracy theories and loosely researched internet tittle-tattle, in which myth and supposition take the place of documented fact, it is easy to see why this important intensively detailed work continues to maintain its credibility - it's a powerful tale well told, happily devoid of emotional judgments but stuffed with extraordinary tales and characters.

'The Brotherhood of Eternal Love' - by Stewart Tendler & David May [Cyan Books. London]


(Left) Cover of the original version, now a collector's edition, published by Panther Books in 1984 [The Generalist Archive]

Interesting LSD Links:

'Revealed: Dentist who introduced Beatles to LSD' by Ian Herbert (The Independent 9.12.06)

'The trip goes on' - It was the drug that fuelled the psychedelic 60s - and was tested as a weapon by MI6. But whatever became of LSD? Duncan Campbell traces its colourful past, and finds that the acidhead are still out there
The Guardian 28.2.07

Nine drawings done by an artist under the influence of LSD

‘MI6 pays out over secret LSD mind control tests’ - Rob Evans (The Guardian 24.2.06). ‘The Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has paid thousands of pounds in compensation to servicemen who were fed LSD without their consent in clandestine mind-control experiments in the 1950s. MI6 has agreed an out-of-court settlement with the men, who said they were duped into taking part in the experiments and had waited years to learn the truth.’

The full text of Albert Hoffman's book 'LSD - My Problem Child'

Slideshow: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug ? (Wired 16.1.06) Participants from around the globe came to Basel, Switzerland, to celebrate Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday and ponder the future of acid.

‘A dose of madness’ - Johan Jensen (The Guardian 8.8.02) Forty years ago, two psychiatrists administered history's largest dose of LSD. ‘Mystified by the new wonder drug LSD, the psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West and his colleague at the University of Oklahoma, Chester M Pierce, were looking for a new way to investigate the drug in 1962. They came up with an idea so outlandish it could only happen in the world of experimental psychology. Male elephants are prone to bouts of madness; LSD seems to cause a temporary form of madness; perhaps if we combine the two, they reasoned, we could make an elephant go mad. Their research paper about this venture is a tragicomedy of high hopes and lessons not learnt. For only mindless optimism and blind faith can account for the events that unfolded on a hot summer day in Oklahoma City's Lincoln Park Zoo 40 years ago.’

LSD Photographers

LSD Blotter Art Gallery

'Psychiatrist calls for end to 30-year taboo over use of LSD as a medical treatment - Sarah Bosley (The Guardian 11.1.06)

Leonardo DiCaprio to play Timothy Leary?

AUDIO GENERALIST NEW

Two great new exclusive longform interviews have been added to our audio site.

Everett True (below) talks about his new book on Nirvana

Nick Kent (right) talks around the subject of 'The Dark Stuff', his classic collection of rock journalism, recently republished in an updated version.

Enjoy them both at www.thegeneralist.co.uk

WE HAVE WON

Press Release

20 April 2007
Greene King announces reinstatement of Harveys at the Lewes Arms

The reinstatement of Harveys to the Lewes Arms has been announced today. Greene King Local Pubs managing director Jonathan Lawson and regional manager Andrea Greenwood were at the pub today talking to their team and to the regulars, and letting them know of the decision. Jonathan said that the order for the beer had been placed and that following secondary fermentation in the cellar, it should be ready to drink towards the end of next week.

“We are passionate supporters of cask beer, are proud of our own brews and have recognised the intensity of feeling around Harveys at the Lewes Arms.” He said that the history of the pub, including its role as former brewery tap, combined with activities ranging from dwyle flunking to pea throwing made this hostelry very special.

“Now that Harveys is going back into the pub, my team and I are hoping that we can make a fresh start with our customers and are looking forward to helping the Lewes Arms once again play a full role in the local community.”

Greene King chief executive Rooney Anand added, “The Lewes Arms is a very special local pub with a unique place in the life of the town.

“We underestimated the depth of feeling and level of reaction about our initial decision and I believe that the conclusion the team put forward to return Harveys to the bar is the right one. I'm pleased that Jonathan and the team have taken on board our customers’ feedback and hope people will be pleased with the news.” 

LEWES ARMS BENEFIT

Yours truly with son Louis performing a few numbers as part of a crowded bill of bands, musicians and singers of all descriptions, which raised £1300 for the cause. Much merriment ensued. Photo: Andy Gammon.
Read Greene King's latest statement here

PHIL SPECTOR: TEARING DOWN THE WALL OF SOUND

There have been five other biographies of Phil Spector published over the years, (none of which I have read) but I would be surprised if they were able to match this magisterial piece of music journalism.

'Tearing Down the Wall of Sound' developed out of an assignment for The Telegraph's Saturday magazine. Mick had managed to secure the first interview with Spector for an age (and successfully survived the encounter without being threatened or locked in). The same weekend the piece was published in February 2003, Spector was arrested after actress Lana Clarkson was found dead in the hall of Spector's mansion with gunshot wounds. The trial, after much legal prevarication, began on March 19th this year.

The book opens and closes with extracts from Mick’s interview (which can incidentally be heard on The Telegraph website here) together with the latest state of procedural play at time of publication. Expect an update paperback version reporting on the trial and its outcome.

The biggest celebrity trial since pop star Michael Jackson's 2005 acquittal on child molestation charges, it will be shown live on American tv. Spector, now aged 67, is free on $US1 million bail. He denies the charges that he killed Clarkson. He told Esquire magazine in an interview shortly after his arrest that Clarkson "kissed the gun" in a bizarre suicide for reasons he did not understand. Opening statements in the Spector case are likely to begin in late April or early May, with the trial likely to last up to three months.

Spector’s is a complicated tale. Needless to say, he came from a disturbed background, had a supernatural genius as a producer, had lots of guns, turned ugly when on pills and alcohol. The talent and the chaos are mixed up together.

The young Spector’s aural vision of the Wall of Sound, created by the Wrecking Crew, an assemblage of top LA session players, in a relatively crummy studio is fascinating and well evoked as are the stories behind ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ by the Righteous Brothers and ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ by Ike and Tina Turner. The first has now become the most widely played record ever; the latter was a relative flop in the US charts when first released, which broke Spector’s confidence and stellar run of chart successes.

Spector’s personal life makes for depressing reading. His father had committed suicide during his young life. He was dominated for many year's by his mother and sister and had many disastrous personal relationships. He had a dread of women leaving him, which is why he often locked them in his house against their will.

At the launch of this book which 'The Generalist' attended at Daunt’s bookshop in London, Mick said that, strangely, the people who told the nicest stories and said the kindest things about Spector (and there are many in the book) were the ones who were most reluctant to be named.

What did I learn: well for a start, I hadn’t appreciated that Dennis Hopper had planned to make 'The Last Movie' first and had financial backing from Phil Spector before getting into 'Easy Rider' and then making it later and thus effectively ending his Hollywood career for many years, such was the mayhem it caused.

I hadn’t known that Barney Kessel was the young Spector’s great guitar hero (Spector himself being a bit of child prodigy on the instrument by the age of 12) and actually rose to his defence in Downbeat magazine who hadn’t included him in their Great Guitarist of Jazz poll. Spector’s mother heard that Kessel was recording in LA and arranged for the young Spector to meet him. Kessel took the boy under his wing and taught him the tricks of the trade. Strangely, later in Spector’s life, Kessel’s two sons chaperoned Spector around LA's nightlife for a period; they found Spector's mad and dangerous antics hilariously funny and seemed to have no fear in extreme situations - of which there were many.

I was also unaware of the closeness of the friendship between Spector and Lenny Bruce and interested to read more about his relationship with John Lennon and about his first visit to England, when Andrew Loog Oldham followed him round like an acolyte. It was also surprising to read that Brian Wilson often was to be found worshipping the master, overawed, in the control booth during some of Spector's recording sessions.

This is a well written, researched and crafted book which manages a huge array of complex material and multiple narratives successfully and brings us haunting visions of Spector in the studio, in his darkened mansions, in extremis, in a brief period of blissful parenting before his young son was to died of leukaemia.

It is the extensive original research, which gives Mick's Brown book its authority and authenticity, and his readable style that keeps you firmly in the thrall of the story of this star-crossed life of a tiny genius who produced some of the most powerful and romantic pop music of all time, yet who was cripppled by insecurities, haunted by demons, and may yet be proved to have committed the ultimate crime.

'Tearing Down the Wall of Sound' by Mick Brown (Bloomsbury.£18.99)

LEWES ARMS: The First 100 days

It began with an essay in The Generalist in October last year, [State of the Nation: Think About Your Local), developed into a blog of its own (http://lewesarms.blogspot.com) and attracted national press cioverage,was featured on Radio 4's AM programme and the story was syndicated worldwide through Reuters (being picked up by the Jamaica Gleaner amongst others).

Now The Guardian have picked up the issue again, 100 days into a boycott of the pub that has reduced the Lewes Arms takings by 90%, become a legend in the beer world and has dragged Greene King back into the spotlight.

This story was picked up by Nick Cohen in The Observer who wrote:

'Furthermore: Please raise a glass to Lewes's drinking classes. At Westminster tomorrow, there will be a rally for the Sustainable Communities Bill, an attempt by MPs from all parties to break up the centralised English state by giving local authorities the power to deal with social and environmental grievances. It's a worthy measure, but what sets this initiative apart from many other good causes is the number of boozers who support it. Publicans, small breweries and the Campaign for Real Ale - the vanguard of England's beer-drinking classes, in short - are rallying behind the bill and being radicalised in the process.

'Writing in the Guardian last week, Tim Minogue of Private Eye explained why. He is one of a group of pickets who are turning customers away from the Lewes Arms. The Greene King conglomerate owns the 220-year-old Sussex pub and in December decided to practise restrictive trading by refusing to sell the bitter from Lewes's independent brewery. As with other exploitations of their market dominance by the pub corporations, Greene King's ban had nothing to do with drinkers' wishes, but was an act of commercial spite against a small business rival. Rather magnificently, its customers responded with a mass boycott that has turned the Lewes Arms into a ghost pub. '

'We usually discuss political cynicism in grand terms and talk about globalisation, the judges and the EU undermining democracy. More insidious is the inability of the English to make lives in their localities a bit better. If this bill succeeds, Lewes council will be able to compel Greene King to stock Harvey's Bitter. If it falls, it won't. That strikes me as reason enough for MPs to vote for it.'

Also see follow-up story in The Publican, the leading trade magazine.

STOP PRESS: Business section of today's Evening Standard:

Greene King makes locals more local

Landlords are to be given greater power to run local pubs after a shake-up by Greene King.

The brewer has been under fire in Lewes, West (?) Sussex, for removing guest bitter Harveys from the Lewes Arms. Regulars boycotted the pub and burnt effigies of Greene King management.

Today the company is splittting its managed house operations into local pubs, to be run by Jonathan Lawson and "destination" pubs headed by Jonathan Webster.

Lawson joined from sainbury's where he was director of the convenience store business. Webster was chief executive at Hardy & Hansons. Mark Angela who ran the business befored the split, is lraving with a year's salary of around £450,000.

Greene King said the move is not connected to its Lewes troubles. But chief executive Rooney Anand said: "Managers will be given greater autonomy and flexibility to match individual pub offers to local needs.

Greene King's 510 local pubs will focus on selling beer while its 280 larger "destination" pubs and hotels are to be food led.

JACK MICHELINE: BEAT WRITER

So how does a rare copy of 'In The Bronx and Other Stories', an inscribed copy no less, end up in a second-hand bookshop in Lewes, where I recently purchased it. Micheline is one of the lesser known beat writers and was unknown to me. The inscription, dated 3/28/66 (US style)
says: 'For Jackod! (could be Sackod?), Jack Micheline.' Under this he has written: 'The finest writers of this nation still remain unpublished but known amongst the [looks like lions] in this land. We write and it is a way of life and love.' The book is a first edition published in June 1965 by the Sam Hooker Press, 103 Park Avenue, New York. It is comprised of short pieces of prose that bring to mind both Bukowski and Raymond Carver. The extract I have chosen is from 'Whisky, Madness and Bellvue' and begins 'To be a poet is to be mad. I was a poet....' He describes arriving at a literary party, the kind of event he hated.

'I grabbed the bourbon and beagn to drink. I had come from the streets where I had lived and written and pissed and cried. I drank more bourbon and got drunk quickly and ran upstairs where the food was. I was drunk; I had finished a fifth of whisky. I had remembered the cries in the flophouse the winter before, and the years I had wandered through the streets, the long winters of hell in New York; and the fear and hell and cowardice of our twentieth century; the lips of prostitutes and junkies and mad dogs; the streets crowded in summer with sweat and dreams and fights and families and sirens and bars, fights, cribs and cubicles; the narrow crowded, stinging, smelly city, hard as reality, filled with lost loves and pain and misery; the roar of the beaten, hungry, frightened and afraid. I grabbed the salami sandwi ches and threw them from the balcony out into the street.'

Find out more about him at the website of the Jack Micheline Foundation.

REST AND RECREATION

Three weeks in Sitges and Barcelona cleared my mind and soul. Hola!

(Left): Sitges at sunset

(Below) Graffiti in an area off the northern end of the Ramblas in Barcelona where a cluster of tasty record shops can be found.

MEETING DAVY GRAHAM

The Generalist meets Davy Graham

Dressing room, Komedia, Brighton.
8th February 2007
[Photo Louis May]

Meeting Davy was like making a connection with Neal Cassidy. He is an original beat brother whose massive contribution to British music and guitar playing is still only just being fully recognised.

Notes scribbled on the train home that night, at fever pitch, with added amendments in brackets:

'Arived late. Full house. Young guitarist playing. Ordered a drink by which time Davy Graham is on stage wearing a polka dot shirt, sleeveless puffer jacket, jeans and trainers and a corduroy titfer. His slight figure, bathed in red light, was set against a blank stage with only wisps of dry ice for atmosphere.

He played eastern pieces, medieval folk, bach. Sang folk and work songs (people clapped along), played a couple of other guitar pieces and left the stage. [His complete set I estimate was not more than about 30-40mins.]. After a sustained attempt to gain an encore, the applause stopped and then, at the last moment, Davy returned, recited a Brooklyn poem [along the lines of that famous one: Der spring has sprung/der grass has riz/i wonder where dem boidies is] and left the stage.

[His whole set had been punctuated by people walking out and as the crowd as whole left, it was clear that very few people were happy at what they had seen. There must have been 2-300 present. The place was virtually sold out.

We [son Louis and I] headed for the dressing room, where his young manager stood guard. I said I was a friend of Shirley Collins come to pay my respects and gained entrance. Davy and his mate were drinking an orange juice and we immediately fell into conversation. We talked about his 1962 albums, his esatern music, Brian Jones and Brion Gysin's Joujouka recordings. I asked him about Ken Colyer and Ramblin' Jack Elliot ('a good picker' he recalled).His friend played some ragtime. Lots of young people came and went, seeking autographs. I gave Davy a big hug, which is what I been wanting to do as soon as I first saw him, and we left him and his young admirers [and went out into the night, both saddened and elated.]

Then I started this short pome:

Wounded Bird
On meeting Davy Graham

I couldn't believe
How beautiful he looked with his guitar
In his beat Bukowski splendour
How he looked like a sailor on a whaler
Happy sitting amongst the coils of rope
Completely at ease
He appeared to have long arms
And his agile fingers were beautifully shaped
And appeared to have a mind of their own
As they danced over the fretboard
A large reefer ('old style') on a white plate
Circulated in the narrow dressing room
After a gig notable for being both
Brief and unexpected
Both a triumph and a disaster
This wounded bird
Touches my heart

For more on Davy Graham see previous postings:

Further Folk Adventures: Martin Carthy & Davy Graham

Musical Roundup: This contains review of Will Hodgkinson's book 'Guitar Man', lots of links and details about Davy Graham.

THE 200TH POST

There comes a time in every person's life when their Mum dies. From that moment, it seems as if someone has drawn a big line in the sand and all one's past begins to float gently, like an ocean liner packed with freight and passengers, down the river to the ocean. One can still visit it in a rowboat and spend time there, at least for a while, but the main challenge is to now face forward and embrace a new life, new opportunities and possibilities. My Mum was 93 and is now at peace. This is the poem i wrote the night before her funeral.

Release of the Spirit

(For Grace: 2 Dec 1913 – 15 December 2006)

The roses are still blooming

In the mild winter air

But the gardener whose delight they were

Is no longer there

The piano sits in silence

In the bungalow’s still air

But the pianist who made the music

Is no longer there

The dollies all stare sightless

Dressed up like ladies fair

But the girl who so adored them

Is no longer there

The ornaments on the mantle

Are arranged with artistic flair

But the dresser who carefully placed them

Is no longer there

The wandering cats of the street

Found love and comfort there

But the woman who loved them dearly

Is no longer there

The apple tree still stands

Its fruit gone, branches bare

But the woman who ate the crispy Cox’s

Is no longer there

The southern downland still survives

Full of memories beyond compare

But the dreamer who loved its stories

Is no longer there

The spirituals, hymns and carols

Once used to fill the air

But the singer who raised her joyous voice

Is no longer there

The restless sea is surging

Waves crested with mermaid’s hair

But the swimmer who surfed the shallows

Is no longer there

The colours of the rainbow

Imagine them if you dare

But the artist who employed them

Is no longer there

*

This lady was called Grace

Kathleen Lovegrove May

Her body may have left us

But her spirit is with us today

So

Fly sweetly

Dear heart

Into the bright light

Be at peace

For evermore

Safe and sure

In the knowledge

That your work

On earth is done

And your time

In heaven is at hand

John May

Written on the night of the 7^th January 2007 and read for the first time at Grace’s Memorial Service at Steyne Gardens church in Worthing on the 8^th.

TONY TYLER TRIBUTE

We are sorry to report the passing away of our dear friend and colleague Tony Tyler. What follows is a small tribute to him, a series of posts reflecting different parts of his life and times, his talents, his range, his intelligence, his humour - all of which we will miss greatly. [Pictures from the wake at The Royal Oak in Pett by Anna Chen]

To begin, two fine obituaries from colleagues Charles Shaar Murray and Chris Salewicz, in 'The Independent and The Guardian respectively:

James Edward Anthony Tyler, writer and editor: born Bristol 31 October 1943; twice married; died Hastings, East Sussex 28 October 2006.

In his time on the New Musical Express, Tony Tyler was one of those rare, inspirational editors who can see every element of a story in a one-sentence description, and commission it on the spot: lengthy lunches discussing the piece held no interest for such a meteoric, extraordinarily intelligent and encouraging mind. Besides, only half of his teeming brain was focused on the job, as Tyler feverishly moonlighted at home on The Tolkien Companion, published in 1976 under the name of J.E.A. Tyler, which intermittently funded him for the rest of his life.

Always hilariously funny in his writing, as a human being and in his editorial roles on the increasingly surreal NME in the mid-1970s, he arrived with a romantic past. "He was the only journalist on the music press who had carried a weapon in war," said Michael Watts, a rival editor on Melody Maker. Tyler used to love telling the story of how he had been wounded in the shoulder by a bullet from an ancient musket whilst serving in the Army in Aden: half-cut, he was carrying a beer-case and didn't realise he had been shot until another private noticed blood.

He had enlisted in the Royal Tank Regiment via a circuitous route. His father, from an upper-middle-class family, had been a fighter ace in the First World War. The experience had turned him into an alcoholic. Giving up drink, he married his nurse, who was much younger than him. Their only child, James Edward Anthony Tyler, was born on Hallowe'en night in 1943 in Bristol, during a thunderstorm punctuated by a German air-raid.

Tony Tyler grew up in Liverpool, where he attended Liverpool College, at the age of 16 turning on prefects attempting another of their habitual beatings, and leaving before he could be expelled: he had one O-level, in English Literature. His mother died the next year. He became a police cadet, but quit when told his stammer was so extreme he would never be able to give evidence in court. (When people asked him later what cured his debilitating stutter, Tyler would reply, "Acid.") He found more stimulating employment as a trainee reporter on a Merseyside paper.

But Tyler had decided to become a beatnik. His best friend Tim Craig (later the father of the actor Daniel Craig) was a merchant seaman. Tyler stowed away on his Hamburg-bound ship, aware that the Beatles - whom he vaguely knew - were resident in the German port. Tyler's Bohemianism resulted only in starvation; Gerry Marsden (of Gerry and the Pacemakers) bought him the occasional meal.

After he was hospitalised with pneumonia, Tyler was sent home in 1962 by the British consulate. Noting the healthy demeanour of squaddies, he decided to enlist - after first failing in his attempt to join the French Foreign Legion. A guitarist since he was 13 - he once played in a skiffle-group with Richard Stilgoe - he was promoted to the regimental band.

When his father died in 1966, Tyler came into an inheritance, which he quickly burnt through. First buying himself and two friends out of the Army, he purchased an AC Cobra off the stand at the motor show, totalling it on his way home. Taking a job in a London musical instrument shop, he found himself playing Hammond organ in a soul group based in Italy, the Patrick Samson Set; they had a No 1 there with a cover of "A Whiter Shade of Pale".

Back in London in 1969, after writing an article for a competition run by Beat Instrumental, a music trade paper, he was offered the job of editor. Soon he became publicist for EG Management, who cared for the careers of T. Rex, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

He was brought into the NME in 1972 by the editor Alan Smith, who was re-launching the pop paper; Tyler's zest, hilarious verve and formidable energy made him a pivot of an editorial team that included Nick Logan, who succeeded Smith in 1973 and went on to found The Face, Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent and Ian MacDonald. With MacDonald, he formed a double act that informed the paper's humour. It was Tyler, who adored to debunk pomposity, who, when confronted with Bryan Ferry's latest sartorial extravagance, came up with the headline "How Gauche Can a Gaucho Get?"

In 1975, his first book was published, The Beatles: an illustrated record, an astute and amusing analysis of every recorded song by the group, a collaboration with Roy Carr, another NME editor. The next year Tyler, by now NME assistant editor, advertised for "hip young gunslingers" (his own phrase) and hired Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons. Two years later, when he learned he had both The Tolkien Companion and The Beatles in the New York Times Top Ten, he decided to give up journalism and be a full-time writer. His guide to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth was issued in new editions as The New Tolkien Companion (1979) and, again revised and updated, as The Complete Tolkien Companion (2002).

In 1982, Tyler married, as his second wife, Kate Phillips, an NME staff writer: at the time of his death they had been together for 31 years, with one of the happiest marriages any of his friends knew. He and Kate bought a house overlooking the sea outside Hastings.

Fascinated early on by the very notion of computers, Tony Tyler plunged into that emerging world, trying to bring the same sense of NME absurdity to Big K, a computer magazine he started in 1983, but which folded. He celebrated his new fascination with technology with I Hate Rock & Roll (1984). He began to write columns for the magazines MacUser and MacWorld. These were only intended to fund his efforts to be a fiction writer. He completed several novels, none of which was published. "They were so intelligent," said his agent Julian Alexander, "with incredible flights of fancy, that I don't think they were easily understood."

Tyler, who viewed life as a cosmic joke, was wryly philosophical about the failure to place these books with publishers. As he was when confronted with his cancer, diagnosed only 11 days before he died. "Shit happens, but I'm completely cool with this," he said, phoning his friends to come and visit him. He was annoyed, he said, that he would never get to see Casino Royale, starring his godson Daniel.

"I want you to know, for when your time comes," Tyler told his wife, her sister and mother two days before he died, his curiosity about the mysteries of life and death undiminished, "that this isn't really too bad. It's quite dealable with."

Chris Salewicz

Tony Tyler

NME talent spotter, Tolkien expert and computer pundit

Charles Shaar Murray

Wednesday November 1, 2006

If some of the New Musical Express's prominent writers were the faces of the 1970s paper, and editor Nick Logan and the late assistant editor Ian MacDonald functioned as its brain, then Tony Tyler, who has died of cancer aged 62, was its heart and soul. Features editor and later assistant editor during the early 70s, Tony, "the looming boomer", 6ft 5in in height with a resonant, drawling baritone, contributed irreverence and absurdist humour to the forging of the NME's identity.

Article continues

He was also an author who once had two radically different books, The Tolkien Companion (1976) and The Beatles: an Illustrated Record (1975) - the latter a collaboration with his NME colleague Roy Carr - appearing simultaneously in the New York Times best-seller lists. A gadget freak, he became the founding editor of Britain's first computer-gaming magazine, one of the earliest adopters of the Apple Macintosh and the liveliest, wittiest pundit in Macintosh journalism.

TT, as he was almost universally known, led a rich existence. During a spell in the army, he was the last British soldier to be wounded by a musket-ball. As a teenage stowaway to Hamburg, he was in an all-night card-game with a drunken, speeding pre-Beatlemania John Lennon. While working for a London musical instrument dealer in 1966, he accompanied a rented Hammond organ to the Royal Albert Hall, where he was backstage to see Bob Dylan, paralysed with stage fright, virtually thrown on stage for his legendary appearance with the Band. The same year, feeling that his Gibson Les Paul guitar deserved to be played by a better musician, he sold it to Peter Green, who had just replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Blues Breakers and later founded Fleetwood Mac. Green sold it to the young Irish guitarist Gary Moore, who used it until last year. During his final week, TT was amused to learn that his old guitar was informally valued at $2m. His greatest triumph as a musician was to enjoy an Italian number-one hit the summer of 1967 as organist with the band who cut the Italian-language cover of Procol Harum's song A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

He was also godfather, albeit informally, to Daniel Craig, the new James Bond: TT had known the actor's father, Tim Craig, since they were seven years old. Since Ian Fleming was, along with PG Wodehouse and JRR Tolkien, one of Tyler's favourite authors, it was a major disappointment to TT to realise that he would not live long enough to see his godson play 007. "I'll never go to the cinema again," he said, "and I won't be around when the DVD comes out."

TT was born in Bristol, but raised around Liverpool. He attended Liverpool College but left at 16 with a single A-level. His adored mother died of cancer at the age of 39 when TT was 17, and his father, a veteran of the first world war Royal Flying Corps, not long after.

Feeling cast adrift, he signed up as a police cadet, but was told that his chronic stammer would prevent him from giving effective evidence in court. After stowing away to Hamburg on a merchant navy vessel, he hung out with soon-to-be-famous Liverpool bands such as the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers, before contracting pneumonia and being shipped home by the British embassy. After recovering, he joined the Royal Tank regiment and was wounded in action in Aden. Because of his size, the army built him a bespoke bed, which dutifully followed him from posting to posting, but never caught up.

Back in civilian life, he sold instruments by day and played guitar and organ in groups at night, until an Italian band kidnapped him for several years on the European club circuit. On his return to London, he met and married an American student and moved to San Francisco, where he had a job as a piano salesman for 18 months, despite never selling a single piano.

Returning to London, he briefly edited the magazine Beat Instrumental before becoming a publicist for Emerson, Lake and Palmer - "I make no apologies," he later said, "though I would if I thought apology was sufficient " - but, finding both public relations and ELP uncongenial, he took the opportunity to join NME, then just about to start the radical rethink that transformed it from pop-picking chart fluff to a salon for gadflies. At the NME, Tyler demonstrated a keen eye for talent both musical and journalistic: an early champion of Roxy Music and Dr Feelgood, he was instrumental in the hiring of such writers as Nick Kent, Neil Spencer, Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill, Paul Morley, Vivien Goldman, Paul DuNoyer and Kate Phillips, with whom he fell in love and who subsequently became his second wife.

In addition to his NME duties, he wrote (as JEA Tyler) his Tolkien Companion, a massive concordance of all the people, places and things in The Lord of the Rings and its associated texts. The success of this and the Beatles book, co-written with Roy Carr, enabled him to leave the NME and retreat, with Kate, to a remote riverside cottage, which he soon filled with early personal computers. He became besotted with all things Macintosh, and his witty, anarchic punditry for magazines such as MacUser and Computer Shopper helped to keep him in fine wines and electronic keyboards for the remainder of his life.

His third book - a hilariously splenetic rant called I Hate Rock And Roll (1984) - was rather less successful, but remains a cult classic.

Outside his professional achievements, he will be remembered as a formidable autodidact who became expert on ancient and military history; as a right-wing libertarian who preferred to be surrounded by liberals and lefties "because most people who share my views are staggeringly unpleasant"; as a gourmet, oenophile and chef; as a genial host with unquenchable joie de vivre, determined to make sure everybody had fun; and as a man who remained urbane even on his deathbed. His last words, addressed to his 86-year-old mother-in-law, were: "I just want you to know, for when it's your turn, that this [dying] isn't actually so bad."

He is survived by Kate.

· James Edward Anthony Tyler, journalist, born October 31 1943; died October 28 2006

TONY TYLER TRIBUTE; ROCK JOURNALISM

ROXY - REMADE, REMODELLED
Roxy Music/ Manchester Free Trade Hall

Tony Tyler, NME, 3rd November 1973

THERE'S NOW not much doubt that when Roxy Music and the delicate Eno parted ways, Roxy lost a talented poseur but gained a gifted musician. Curiously enough, this exchange - seemingly to the advantage of the Roxettes - is not totally so: Eddie Jobson's kills on keyboards and (especially) violin are substantial. But, although he tries hard to compensate visually for the breathtaking presence of Mr. E., his more lightweight aura ( this isn't meant unkindly; Eno had years of a decadence apprenticeship) robs the stage lefthand comer of the lurid posturings so much a part of the earlier Roxy image. That being said, Jobson played really well when The Roxies took the boards at Manchester's Free Trade Hall on Sunday.

I've never really seen the band go down as well as they did with any audience, and it can only be a measure of the new stature they've attained since Bryan Ferry re-grouped his shell-shocked battalions around him after the Eno departure. On they came, dead on time, and several things were instantly obvious. Firstly, as Bob Edmands reported last week, the band have ditched the articulated rhinestone look in favour of a more individual approach to haute couture. The trash element - an important part of Roxy's earlier breakthrough is now Out Of Favour with Mr. F.; suitings and clothings ranged from Ferry's own Lower Deck Lothario Look (a cruise ship white tux ensemble) to Jobson's March Hare tailcoat. Both Phil Manzanera and the current stand-in bassist sported soft leathers, garnished with slightly effeminate studs, while the Great Paul Thompson (as Ferry introduced him) favoured his suede-'n-cloth look as of yore. Andy Mackay appeared in a baritone sax and a distinguished suit of broadcloth with a string tie that gave him an undeniable air of fried chicken emporiums.

Throughout the set - which began well and built to a tremendous climax, Ferry showed how much he now firmly believes in his own talent and charisma. He can now stagger Strandily between mike and piano, catching the spot just in time to wheeze out his next phrase. He's now an undoubted visual attraction -with one exceptional circumstance: when Ferry occupies stage right, as he must for his piano work, the rest of the visuals seem strangely empty without another real posturer to grab the retina the way Eno succeeded in doing. Ferry is now The Man in Roxy; both Manzanera and Mackay are too accomplished as musicians to unwind sufficiently. Thompson? It's not in his nature. Jobson? Trying, but he's too new and still an unknown.

Nonetheless, Jobson was, for me, the surprise of the night. His approach to electronics is more technical and less individualistic than Eno's (his mutation of the Phil Manzanera power smashes during "Ladytron" were feeble and left Manzanera somewhat out on his own with an empty chord ringing embarrassingly in his sideboard-smothered ears). But Jobson's violin work, used too sparingly until the encore, added a new force to Roxy's musical approach. His solo on "ReMake, Re-Model" exactly paralleled Manzanera's own in spirit and I foresee a formidable musical partnership between the two. Jobson's piano work, too, enabled El Ferry to cavort more than before (no doubt another reason for Ed's inclusion) -- but, then again, almost everybody in that band gets to play keyboards at one time or another. Even Andy Mackay whose sax suffered from dumpy sound - played organ on a new "Psalm", a reverent bolero type number that displayed instant powers of attraction with the Mancunians.

Sound quality throughout was grim, several different varieties of feedback dominating much of the set. The onstage footlight monitors were (I later learned) also on the blink, so there was an imbalance between Ferry's voice, which needs - and got - all the help it can get, and the potential thunder of this new, beefed-up Roxy. All too often the band merged into a noisy porridge and I feel a re-think of sound techniques is essential if the band are successfully to conclude that transition from effeminate glitzkriegers to A Band In Their Own Right. But it was quite an immaculate gig, all found. The older numbers were joyously received and the newer tunes politely listened to. Towards the end, Emerson Lake and Palmerama took over with row upon row of misbegotten youth swaying to the hypnotic sighs of Mr. F. and raising their hands in sincere salutation. Some even rushed the stage. I suppose it was easily predictable, now I come to think of it.

http://www.manzanera.com/RoxyArchive/manchesternme31173.htm

See our previous posting about Tony's classic cult book
'I hate Rock and Roll'

TONY TYLER TRIBUTE: MacUser

Tony was an earlier enthusiast for Apple Macs and began writing a regular column for MacUser magazine. His first column appeared in Issue 2 and he was still at it 22 years later. His last column, written for the magazine's October 2006 issue is reproduced below with the kind permisson of the publishers.

Shutdown: Talking shock

Forget bugged employees and exploding laptops - the real shocker is Woz giving a talk to business students. Or is it?

Which of the following recent news items concerning the IT world do you find the most disturbing?

HP chairman Patricia Dunn gets caught bugging her fellow directors in order to find out which of them is leaking to the IT press. Makes usual statement of semi-contrition and resigns.

Across the world, laptop batteries are catching fire, with consequently huge crash programme recall operations by major manufacturers.

A recent report (by think-tank Reform) claims that the 'iPod Generation' - 20- to 35-year-olds - will be caught in a fiscal trap composed of huge tuition fees and ever-higher income tax and as a result will never, ever get rich.

On 23 October at the Saïd Biz Centre at Oxford University, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, will give a short talk on the company's history.

Let's take these shock-horrors in order. In my opinion, Ms Dunn is a cruelly wronged woman. What could be more natural, if you fear one of your colleagues is sabotaging your company, than to slip a little something extra into his mobile phone? It might even be said to be caring in the best sense. There's no suggestion she did it for her own profit. J Edgar Hoover, that great American icon, bugged President Roosevelt. President Nixon bugged himself. We are, therefore, dealing with a fine old US tradition. Ms Dunn should be reinstated forthwith.

The brouhaha about exploding laptop batteries has also been overstated. Everything in the modern world catches fire from time to time - planes, cars, houses - and the procedures for dealing with conflagrations are well established. In any case, it's not claimed the things go off like hand grenades. Apparently, they smoulder gently, giving off an acrid smoke until some joker says, 'Hey, your computer's on fire!' whereupon it's simplicity itself to park the laptop in the nearest sinkful of water and wait for the fumes to disperse. The only real danger I can see is if the phenomenon takes place, say, on a tube train. It only takes one person to yell: 'Watch out! Suicide Photoshopper!' and within a few seconds, you may find yourself riddled with bullets, courtesy of a Metropolitan Police hit squad.

The fiscal nightmare awaiting the iPod Generation is only a nightmare if you happen to be in that age group and just starting university. I'm neither and, according to the MacUser Readership Profile, neither are you. So we can afford to laugh lightly and uncaringly at this one, especially as we're the ones who benefit. The reason these callow freshmen are to be taxed and fee'd until their eyes water is to pay for our pensions. The reason the Government desperately wants to pay us our pensions is that we are the largest voting group. The fact that there's no money for this is why the iPod Generation are going to be smitten hip and thigh. Seems all right to me.

Last, we come to Steve Wozniak among the dreaming spires. At the beginning, I thought this was a cruel joke. The only time I ever heard Woz speak it was something on the lines of 'Wow, that's, like, really far out, man. Totally outasite, you know?' However, I gather he must have improved since then, as his website says he's available for 'selected keynote presentation, panel and open Q&A appearances'. He also has a book out (iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon). He no longer lives in the desert changing his shirt once a fortnight, but is a big wheel in the Southern California charity circuit. He has also, according to his website, 'given away 14 laptops and never asked for one of them back.'

But how does this gifted, saintly person get to be a breadhead's ideal after-dinner speaker? From their point of view (not mine), he's done just about everything wrong. Left Apple at the wrong moment and for the wrong reasons. Gives stuff away...

Personally I think that this is an exceptionally cunning booking. If, at vast cost, the SBC procured the Other Steve to lecture the boys and girls, they would learn absolutely nothing about how he did it. But by engaging Woz, the schedulers are employing a man whose business autobiography could fairly be entitled 'How I Blew It'. Blowing It is the big fear among suits. As such, they'll learn more, in an inverse sense, from Woz, than from all the raging success stories on the planet. They'll deduce that genius and loyalty aren't enough: you have to be a dedicated a**hole to get really rich.

Since this is what they think already, I predict he'll get a big hand. Now, that I find depressing.

TONY TYLER TRIBUTE: TOLKIEN & TREES

Priory Tree, Lewes. Photo: John May. For more Lewes pictures see Lewes Light

One of Tony's other great loves was the works of Tolkien. He was the author of the best-selling book 'The Tolkien Companion' (revised and updated twice as 'The New Tolkien Companion' (1979) and 'The Complete Tolkien Companion' (2002). Featured below is the piece he was kind enough to write for Tree News, the magazine I edited for five years. Having settled the commission on the phone, I had cause to call him some 30 minutes later about some second-thoughts I'd had about the piece and he told me he'd already filed the copy - the fastest turnaround I'd ever come across. Sure enough, there was the copy which, barring a couple of tweaks, went in unedited.

‘A lovely morning dawned on us... Leaves are out: the white-grey of the quince, the grey-green of young apple, the full green of hawthorn, the tassels of flower even on the sluggard poplar.’
- Letter to Christopher Tolkein, 18^th April 1944 (‘The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien’ [Unwin, 1981] )

All his long life J. R. R. Tolkien was in love with trees. It has been said that the leading character in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is not one of the many elvish, mortal, dwarven or hobbit personalities, but its landscape; its mountains, rivers and particularly its trees. They grace nearly all his descriptive passages, and in several places play a major part in the tale itself.

There are the gentle ‘ English’ woodlands of the Shire, where the adventure begins; the deep, scented pine woods that surround the enchanted valley of Rivendell, the ancient and beautiful holly trees that mark the borders of a vanished elf-kingdom, and the Golden Wood of Lothlorien, where the silver-barked golden-flowered forest giants are of a genus (mallorn) unknown elsewhere in Middle-earth— these trees are so tall and strong that the Elves build their houses in them.

In fact, trees of one kind or another are nearly everywhere in the Ring landscape, and when they are not, it is because something terrible has happened there— like the Brown Lands, or the desolation before the Black Gate of Mordor. These are evil deserts, shunned by all life.

Tolkien’s view of trees was by no means confined to a benign sentimentality. In Middle-earth, you hug some trees at your peril. There are enormous, dark, coniferous forests where evil creatures thrive while ‘the trees strive one against another and their branches rot and wither.’

There is the Old Forest, where the hobbits have their first real adventure, a terrifying encounter with sentient, malevolent and limb-lithe trees, ‘ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords... But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow.’

Most memorably, there is Fangorn, as old as the Old Forest and far greater, though, as Elrond of Rivendell reveals, in the deep past the two were parts of a single immense primaeval wood. ‘Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard’ (i.e. over a thousand miles).

Fangorn is the last abode in Middle-earth of creatures called Ents, and to explain Ents we must invoke Tolkien’s own cosmogony, his ‘alternative Book of Genesis’.

Middle-earth is not really an imaginary world. As Tolkien was always at pains to stress, it is our world in an imaginary time, and comes fully furnished with creation myths, ancient history and legends— an enormous mass of material which represents his life’s work.

In this myth cycle, the world (Arda) is created by The One (God), but in all matters of detail is embellished, shaped and added to by delegated angelic powers (Valar). Yavanna is the name of the Vala who peoples the earth with growing things, including trees, at the beginning of Time before either Elves or Men have appeared. But her foresight tells her that her creations will be in danger--mainly from things that go on two legs, armed with axes--and so she obtains, as a dispensation from God, the power to send spirits to dwell in, and with, the trees, to act as their shepherds and defenders.

These giant creatures (something like the Green Man of English myth) are the Ents. Treebeard is their chieftain and, at the time of the Ring adventure, the oldest of all living things. At Treebeard’s instigation, the Forest of Fangorn itself— or a good part of it— arises in anger (at centuries of axe-abuse) and marches to war, like Birnam Wood in ‘MacBeth’ but in a far more terrifying manner: an entire goblin army is annihilated by the vengeful trees, while the Ents overthrow the citadel of their master, the wizard Saruman.

But the War of the Ring is fought, not only to defeat the eponymous evil Lord, but to restore the rightful King of Gondor to his throne. As a reader gradually discovers, the history of Gondor is very ancient, the kingdom having been founded three thousand years earlier by survivors from Nümenor (Atlantis).

The symbol of this ancient and high royal line is a White Tree, itself a descendant of the White Tree of the Valar in Paradise. It is therefore the holiest of trees (cf. The Glastonbury Thorn) in the world and its recent death was thought to presage the fall of the kingdom. Luckily, after all is done and the victory won, the restored King of Gondor finds a surviving sapling growing in a high mountain-pasture--the symbol of a direct continuity with the deepest past, and the best of all omens for the future.

The most poignant tree-moment of all in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ occurs near its end, when the hobbits ride home to the Shire--to find it horribly vandalised in their absence by Saruman’s agents. When Sam, in many ways the most heroic of all the hobbits, discovers that a particularly beloved tree in the field behind his home has been wantonly cut down, he bursts into tears.

Later, of course, after much labour, most of the damage is put right and the fallen ‘Party Tree’ is replaced by a single Mallorn, the only one in the world ‘West of the Mountains and East of the Sea’. So the trees win— this time.

But despite the heroism of its protagonists, and the success of their quest, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is, at bottom, a sorrowful book; and when one of the characters asks Gandalf that, even if they should win the victory, ‘may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful may pass for ever out of Middle-earth?’, the wizard has no words of comfort for him.

Tolkien himself was far from sanguine about the ability of trees to defend themselves against ill-wishers. Writing in 1962 to his elderly aunt Jane Neave, he recalled ‘a great tree--a huge poplar with vast limbs--visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs... and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled. Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate.’