Bomb Culture

by Jeff Nuttall

Jeff Nuttall's exploration of radical 1960s art, music, and protest movements. "Bomb Culture is an abscess that lances itself. An extreme book, unreasonable but not irrational. Abrasive, contemptuous, attitudinizing, ignorant and yet brilliant." - Dennis Potter.

Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture has achieved legendary status as a powerful, informative, and spirited exploration of 1960s alternative society and counterculture. Nuttall's confessional account of the period investigates the sources of its radical art, music, and protest movements as well as the beliefs, anxieties, and conceits of its key agitators, including his own. Nuttall argued that a tangible psychic dread of nuclear holocaust pervaded both high and low cultures, determining their attitude and content, much as the horrors of World War I had nourished the tactics and aesthetics of Dadaism.

Accompanying the original text is a new foreword by author Iain Sinclair, who was closely acquainted with Jeff Nuttall and participated in the turbulent underground culture described in Bomb Culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music, History, Cultural Studies, Art, Sociology

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

'Performance artist, poet, novelist, jazz musician, teacher, theorist, painter and sculptor, Jeff Nuttall is the only all-round genius most of us are likely to meet in our lifetime. And let the sceptic beware: this is no exaggeration. His talents usually control at the limits of human exuberance. His skills are both highly local and deeply embedded in European twentieth-century arts. In a culture exemplified by tepidly isolated skills, greed, pop repetitions and art trivia, Jeff Nuttall's work is bracing and joyful, celebrating another world of values, ones that last.'
Eric Mottram (Notes for CALDERDALE LANDSCAPES exhibition at ANGELA FLOWERS GALLERY, London 1987)

Reviews

[Nathalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A partly autobiographical account of the growth of the counter-culture, in which Nuttall argues that a generation growing up with the threat of nuclear extinction could not be expected to think or behave as if it had a future ahead of it.

In 1970, when the House of Commons debated the behaviour of the youth of the day, 'Bomb Culture' was cited as evidence.

Here's a quote: 'There was a frisson for us all to savour as there had been at the first Aldermaston - and the Underground was suddenly on the surface, in open ground with a following of thousands… After the Albert Hall event I wrote to Klaus Lea crying: ’London is in flames. The spirit of William Blake walks on the water of the Thames, sigma has exploded into a giant rose. Come and drink the dew.' Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, 1968

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeff Nuttall was an artist, teacher, and sometime jazz musician who was active in the London counterculture of the 1960s. Not only was he present in the mid and late Sixties as the movement was reaching its peak, but as someone born in 1933 he was old enough to have participated in in the earliest days of that new wave of activism – things like the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament – and to have observed cultural developments like the Mods from early on. He also knew several of the Beat Generation writers personally and was, along with Barry Miles, a key link between the London counterculture of the 1960s and that American movement of the previous decade.

The manuscript for Bomb Culture was completed in the autumn of 1967 and aimed to present the counterculture and all the zany art and political activism associated with it to a mainstream, “square” reader. The title derives from Nuttall’s insistence that the development of the atomic bomb was surely part of this wave of cultural change, because the youth of the 1960s were people living as if they had no future.

But in fact, Nuttall’s suggestion that contemporary society had taken a distinct turn out of fear of atomic holocaust is quickly set aside in order to point out how the Sixties counterculture was only expressing the same youth and bohemian rebellion that appears perennially throughout history . A considerable portion of this book consists of an exhaustive list of previous artists and stylistic movements from the Renaissance on. Readers today might find this tiresome, as if Nuttall were only pointing out how well-read he is, but at the time figures like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and even Apollinaire or the Marquis de Sade were probably unfamiliar to most British readers, and so this book certainly served a purpose.

For readers today, the most interesting part of the book will no doubt be Nuttall’s accounts of various cultural figures, counterculture venues, and events in London. He also describes events in the USA, and it is interesting that by autumn 1967 he could already tell that the West Coast hippie scene was essentially over; I would not have thought communications across the Atlantic moved so fast.

In spite of Bomb Culture’s reputation as a classic, I personally find this a less satisfying book on this remarkable era. Part of the problem is that Nuttall is not a terribly objective witness of it. For example, jazz is repeatedly praised as the key musical movement of the counterculture just because Nuttall himself was so obsessed with it, and consequently the book lacks a real look at rock 'n' roll which – other sources tell us – was the truly relevant musical force by the mid-to-late 1960s. Jonathon Green’s collection of oral histories Days in the Life gives a more multifaceted view of the era. When it comes to books actually produced at the time, even Richard Neville’s oft-criticized Playpower is preferable because Neville was younger than Nuttall and probably more in tune with the contemporary population he describes; Nuttall, in his mid-thirties at the time and married with children, has been accused of already being somewhat aloof from some of the scene he so celebrates.

The last chapter of Bomb Culture ends on a very optimistic note; in 1967 Nuttall believed that a bright future surely awaited if Britain’s idealistic and convention-flaunting population could simply work together. Anyone who reads Bomb Culture should immediately afterward get a hold of Roger Hutchinson’s High Sixties, as in the last chapter of his book Hutchinson interviews Nuttall in the early 1990s. The older Nuttall looking back on the Sixties strikes one as a poignant figure. He admits to losing all optimism by 1973, because he saw that capitalism had co-opted the cultural rebellion in order to sell its earnest hopes and dreams as mere fashion accessories. Furthermore, Nuttall identifies some flaws within the Sixties counterculture that ultimately led to its demise, but which were still blind spots for him when he wrote Bomb Culture.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Bomb didn't go off in the end. But Jeff had a blast.

[Harley Lond · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compendium of square vs hip, aboveground vs underground, a call-to-arms to change the world. Written in 1968 -- on the cusp of so-many "revolutions" -- this book charts the rise of the counter-culture -- in art, music and political protests -- as a result of and set against the post-Hiroshima shadow of the H-bomb.

"The people who had passed puberty at the time of the bomb found that they were incapable of conceiving of life without a future. Their patterns of habit had formed—the steady job, the pension, the mortgage, the insurance policy, personal savings, support and respect for the protection of the law, all the paraphernalia of constructive, secure family life. They had learned their game and it was the only game they knew. To acknowledge the truth of their predicament would be to abandon the whole pattern of their lives. They would therefore have to pretend, much as they had pretended about ecstasy not being there, and they proceeded to pretend as cheerfully as ever. In any case, to look the danger in the eye might wreck the chances of that ultimate total security their deepest selves had contrived death by H bomb.

The people who had not yet reached puberty at the time of the bomb were incapable of conceiving of life with a future. They might not have had any direct preoccupation with the bomb. This depended largely on their sophistication. But they never knew a sense of future. The hipster was there. Charlie Parker's records began to be distributed. The hipster became increasingly present in popular music, and young people moved in his direction. They pretended too, but they did not enter the pretense at all cheerfully. In fact, they entered the pretense reluctantly, in pain and confusion, in hostility which they increasingly showed. Dad was a liar. He lied about the war and he lied about sex. He lied about the bomb and he lied about the future. He lived his life on an elaborate system of pretense that had been going on for hundreds of years. The so-called "generation gap" started then ..." (Page 13-14)

[Michael Bully · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Bomb Culture' , published 1968, seems no longer read. Jeff Nuttall ( 1933-2004) maintained that his generation of young people were the first of their kind ; they were aware that with the rise of nuclear weapons the whole of humanity could be destroyed. Moreover, with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the generation above them had lost the moral authority to govern. ( I understand that the concept of the bomb culture was inspired by the writing of Norman Mailer. )
The idea of the 'bomb culture' is one of instinctive rebellion, strangely creative and destructive. It is not surprising to see Dada influences. Nuttall casts himself as a follower of William Burroughs. But takes in 1950's juvenile delinquency, Rock n Roll, Teds, modern Jazz artists such as Charlie Parker, Rockers of the motorcycle variety, , Allen Ginsberg, CND particular the more radical wing, British beats such as Alex Trochi, towards the end R D Laing and the 'anti-psychiatry ' movement appear. There's a great emphasis on 'happenings' , underground magazines, outrageous art exhibitions . Obviously psychedelia is starting to creep in though one feels that Jeff Nuttall was too much of a Rocker to be won over by the Flower Children. He was also canny enough to realise that 'dropping out' usually meant living on 'straight' society's material excesses,. Jeff Nuttall may simply have over emphasised the importance of this 'underground' counter culture and the fact that 'Bomb Culture' was out of print for decades arguably showed its lack of wider relevance. But for all its indulgences and contradiction, I am glad that 'Bomb Culture' is back

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting memoir of the "underground" art and music scene in the period leading up to the early 70s, people growing up in the shadow of nuclear destruction. Of course this was my era, so I enjoyed linking (or not) my memories with his. Great stories of avantgarde writing, the Beat Generation, International Times, the UFO club and the music of Pink Floyd etc. Of course lots of these memories don't sit happily in our present age, women are mostly only tangentially involved and then usually noted only for their attractiveness or their ability to mother everyone. At one stage four couples meet to consider their new movement; the men go up to the office to discuss, the women stay downstairs...

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

jeff nuttall bringin us the vibes from the time and they seem to be right though the fear of the bomb does sound like a bummer the idea of many lit mags and people trying to change the world is kewl.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but somewhat theoretical overview of early sixties counter culture in the UK. Would recommend to those with a specific interest in that stuff.