Largely to raise funds for IT, Hoppy and Joe Boyd start UFO – London’s first weekly psychedelic nightclub. First night December 1966. Quickly becomes legendary hang out. All major players on Underground scene frequently in attendance, including luminaries Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney.
With UFO and IT both successfully advocating ‘alternative’ anti-establishment lifestyles, Hoppy’s court case from December 1966 bust comes up. Electing to defend himself and be tried by jury proves disastrous as Hoppy is sentenced to 9 months imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs. Judge calls Hoppy: “a pest to society.”
In response to Hoppy’s imprisonment, Paul McCartney pays for full-page advertisement in The Times calling for legalisation of marijuana, signed by many illustrious names – including all four Beatles and future Tory Cabinet member Jonathan Aitken. Despite being a major cause celebre, it does not get a day knocked off Hoppy’s sentence.
“As for summer 1967, the view in prison was monochrome and the people walking round London with placards saying ‘Free Hoppy’ had little effect on my situation, magical or practical, but people sent me lots of books. So I had the opportunity to read up on cybernetics, McLuhan, Buddhism etc., and to meet (again) Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for a few minutes before they got out (they had better lawyers than me). I also got my head around Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Godel’s incompleteness theorem. As someone said (Guevara?) ‘a revolutionary in prison is not a revolutionary’. Stay out of jail !!”
Hoppy reminisces in 2005
