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Out of Our Minds
As the 'winds of change growl through the generation gap', Irishman George O'Brien arrives in 1960s London to an inauspicious debut slaving in a Lambeth pub. Soon sacked and on the street, he finds work in the West End offices of a gas company, proud to be a commuter ('I couldn't get more modern than that'). Before long he is hopelessly entranced by 'a myriad Marianne Faithfulls, convents of Cathy McGowans' and gleefully 'sliding from one self to another'.
Becoming a drummer who can't drum, George embarks on a hilariously ill-fated attempt at pop stardom with his girlfriend Liz (with whom he discovers the 'age of the relationship'). But most of his time is spent dropping out and tuning in to the sounds of Hendrix, the Yardbirds and John Peel's Perfumed Garden. After 'playing the hobo' in Paris, he finds himself at Ruskin College, Oxford - where, charged with the 'electricity of righteousness', he plots the Revolution (over pints, of course) with a motley squad of militants.
Equally on guard against the distortions of hindsight and the swagger of the ego, George O'Brien has triumphantly re-created the 'pure adrenalin, pure purpose' of being young and alive and in England in the swinging sixties.
Becoming a drummer who can't drum, George embarks on a hilariously ill-fated attempt at pop stardom with his girlfriend Liz (with whom he discovers the 'age of the relationship'). But most of his time is spent dropping out and tuning in to the sounds of Hendrix, the Yardbirds and John Peel's Perfumed Garden. After 'playing the hobo' in Paris, he finds himself at Ruskin College, Oxford - where, charged with the 'electricity of righteousness', he plots the Revolution (over pints, of course) with a motley squad of militants.
Equally on guard against the distortions of hindsight and the swagger of the ego, George O'Brien has triumphantly re-created the 'pure adrenalin, pure purpose' of being young and alive and in England in the swinging sixties.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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