International Times
Encyclopedia
International Times (it or IT) was an underground newspaper
Underground press
The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....
founded in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1966. Editors included Hoppy
John Hopkins (political activist)
John "Hoppy" Hopkins is a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, and "one of the best-known underground figures of Swinging London" in the late 1960s.-Life:...
, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles
Barry Miles
Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subject of the 1960s London underground. He has written numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in left-wing papers such as The Guardian...
, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath
Tom McGrath (playwright)
This article is about the Scottish playwright. For other people named Tom McGrath, see Thomas McGrath.Tom McGrath was a Scottish playwright and jazz pianist....
. Jack Moore, avant-garde writer Bill Levy and Mick Farren
Mick Farren
Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the UK Underground.-Music:...
, singer of The Deviants, also edited at various periods.
Within a short time of the first issue, the name International Times was changed to IT after litigation threats from the London Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. The paper's logo was a black-and-white image of Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...
, vampish star of silent films. The founders' intention had been to use an image of actress Clara Bow
Clara Bow
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex...
, 1920s It girl
It girl
"It girl" is a term for a young woman who possess the quality "It", absolute attraction.The early usage of the concept "it" in this meaning may be seen in a story by Rudyard Kipling: "It isn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just 'It'."...
, but a picture of Theda Bara was used by accident and, once deployed, not changed. Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
donated to the paper.
History
The Roundhouse
The Roundhouse is a Grade II* listed former railway engine shed in Chalk Farm, London, England, which has been converted into a performing arts and concert venue. It was originally built in 1847 as a roundhouse , a circular building containing a railway turntable, but was only used for railway...
at a gig featuring Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
. The event promised a 'Pop/Op/Costume/Masque/Fantasy-Loon/Blowout/Drag Ball and featured Soft Machine
Soft Machine
Soft Machine were an English rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene, and helped pioneer the progressive rock genre...
, steel bands, strips, trips, happenings, movies. The launch was described as "one of the two most revolutionary events in the history of English alternative music and thinking. The IT event was important because it marked the first recognition of a rapidly spreading socio-cultural revolution that had its parallel in the States" by Daevid Allen
Daevid Allen
Daevid Allen , sometimes credited as Divided Alien, an Australian poet, guitarist, singer, composer and performance artist is co-founder of psychedelic rock groups Soft Machine and Gong .-Biography:In 1960, inspired by the Beat Generation writers he had discovered...
of Soft Machine.
From April 1967, and for some while later, the police raided the offices of International Times to try, it was alleged, to force the paper out of business. A benefit event labelled The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream took place at Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
on 29 April 1967. Bands included Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things
The Pretty Things
The Pretty Things are an English rock and roll band from London, who originally formed in 1963. They took their name from Bo Diddley's 1955 song "Pretty Thing" and, in their early days, were dubbed by the British press the "uglier cousins of the Rolling Stones". Their most commercially successful...
, Savoy Brown
Savoy Brown
Savoy Brown, originally known as the Savoy Brown Blues Band, are a British blues rock band, formed in 1965, in Battersea, South West London...
, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown is a psychedelic rock album by Arthur Brown and his band The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, released in 1968. Considered a classic of the late-1960s psychedelic scene and a significant influence on progressive rock, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown includes covers of...
, Soft Machine, The Move
The Move
The Move, from Birmingham, England, were one of the leading British rock bands of the 1960s. They scored nine Top 20 UK singles in five years, but were among the most popular British bands not to find any success in the United States....
, and Sam Gopal Dream.
In response to another raid on the paper's offices, London's alternative press on one occasion succeeded, somewhat astonishingly, in pulling off what was billed as a "reprisal attack" on the police—prompting the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
headline Raid on the Yard. The paper Black Dwarf
The Black Dwarf (Ali)
The Black Dwarf was a political and cultural newspaper published between May 1968 and 1972 by a collective of socialists in the United Kingdom...
published a detailed floor-by-floor guide to Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
, complete with diagrams, descriptions of locks on particular doors and snippets of overheard conversation in the offices of Special Branch
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
. The anonymous author, or "blue dwarf," as he styled himself, described how he perused police files, and even claimed to have sampled named brands of whisky
Whisky
Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Different grains are used for different varieties, including barley, malted barley, rye, malted rye, wheat, and corn...
in the Commissioner
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the head of London's Metropolitan Police Service, classing the holder as a chief police officer...
's office. A day or two later The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
announced that the "raid" had forced the police to withdraw and re-issue all security passes.
IT first ceased publication in 1972, after being convicted for running contact ads for gay men, and for a longer period in 1974, but merged with Maya, another underground publication, and was revived in 1975, continuing until 1982. It resurfaced in 1986... into the 1990s. There have been a total of 209 issues. It was a contemporary of other radical underground
Underground press
The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....
London magazines, Oz
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...
, Friends
Friends (magazine)
Friends magazine was launched in London in winter 1969 as a direct result of the closure by its US parent of the short-lived UK edition of Rolling Stone....
and Ink.
Contributors
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
, poet and social commentator Jeff Nuttall
Jeff Nuttall
Jeff Nuttall was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist sympathiser and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall.-Life and work:Jeff Nuttall was born in Clitheroe,...
, occultist Kenneth Grant
Kenneth Grant
Kenneth Grant was a British occultist, novelist, and poet, who with his partner, the artist Steffi Grant, headed the magical order previously known as the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis but which is now referred to as the Typhonian Order.-Occult background:Grant's occult experiences began in 1939...
, and DJ John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
. There were many original contributions from underground writers such as Alexander Trocchi
Alexander Trocchi
Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...
; William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
.
Leading editorial contributors to the late 1970s IT were Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams is an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror...
, Max Handley, Mike Lesser
Mike Lesser
Mike Lesser is a mathematical philosopher and political activist.The youngest member of the Committee of 100, he was sent, aged sixteen, to Wormwood Scrubs Prison along with most of the Committee...
, Eddie Woods
Eddie Woods
For the English footballer see Eddie Woods Eddie Woods is a poet/prose writer, editor and publisher who lived and traveled in various parts of the world, both East and West, before eventually settling in Amsterdam, Holland, where in 1978 he started Ins & Outs magazine and two years later founded...
(Amsterdam editor), and Chris Sanders.
In 1986 IT was relaunched by Tony Allen
Tony Allen (comedian)
Tony Allen is an English comedian and writer. Best known as one of the original "alternative comedians" Tony Allen's artistic career had taken many radical turns before he temporarily abandoned his Speaker's Corner "Full-Frontal Anarchy Platform" in May 1979 for the stage of London's Comedy Store...
and Chris Brook. After two issues (Volume 86; issues 1,2) Allen left, and Brook continued with a reinvigorated editorial group for two more issues (Volume 86; issues 3,4). After various one-off issues into 1991, 2000 saw Brook and others create a web-based presence—initially through the alternative server 'Phreak', circa 1996.
There are currently two archive sources online: 1) The International Times Title site and 2) an archive scanned by previous contributors and editors.
International Times archive
International Times (IT) Archive is a free online archive of every issue of the International Times. It runs from a precursor to IT, The Longhair Times, released on April Fools Day 1966 to an erroneously labelled 'last issue'—a Xeroxed single sheet issue in 1994. The continuum of this journal, in fact, includes issues and web presence from the last editorial group (IT#4 Vol 1986) until the present day: see http://www.international-times.org.uk.The IT Archive was launched on the 16 July 2009 at the Idea Generation Gallery.
The IT Archive was founded by Mike Lesser
Mike Lesser
Mike Lesser is a mathematical philosopher and political activist.The youngest member of the Committee of 100, he was sent, aged sixteen, to Wormwood Scrubs Prison along with most of the Committee...
supported by fellow contributors and editors of IT such as including, Mick Farren
Mick Farren
Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the UK Underground.-Music:...
, John "Hoppy" Hopkins, Dave Mairowitz, Pete Stansill and Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams is an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror...
amongst others.
External links
- Original International Times Site
- International Times Archive
- John Hoppy Hopkins IT Page
- Obituary of Ed Barker
- Quotes from a talk by Barry Miles on International Times
- Allen Ginsberg interviews the Maharishi International Times, 26 February 1968
- Tribute to Tom McGrath
- Obituary of Tom McGrath
- Dugald Baird, How International Times sparked a publishing revolution, The Guardian, 17 July 2009
- Photo of John Lennon reading IT in 1967.
- Miles - The International Times - 1967 Interview London Miles talks about the founding of IT (1967)
- Jim Haynes, Barry Miles & Jenny Fabian in discussion with John Cavanagh Miles talks about the founding of IT (2009)
