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Fact #105872

When:

Short story:

London's psychedelic venue The Night Tripper changes its name to The UFO, and quickly becomes the in place for rock artists like Pete Townsend of The Who. Pink Floyd play live.

Full article:

Peter Jenner (co manager, Pink Floyd] : During the early UFO days, before Syd went crazy, we thought we were doing what was happening on the West coast, which we'd never heard. And it was totally different.

Roger Waters (Pink Floyd] : There wasn't anything 'grand' about it. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn't play at all so we had to do something stupid and 'experimental'.

Peter Jenner : Attempting to imitate when you don't actually know what you're imitating leads to genuine creativity and I think that's what happened with the Floyd.

Nick Mason (Pink Floyd] : We could clear halls so fast it wasn't true. I mean they were outraged by what came round on the revolving stage and they lost very little time in trying to make this clear, and the only place we played with any sort of success, or real interest, was UFO, and the various 'underground' clubs and occasions.

Jeff Dexter (DJ) : UFO grew out of the London Free School over in Notting Hill Gate, and they were actually community based projects like the black housing project, after the riots. It actually grew out of them trying to do good things for the local community over there.

This woman called Ronnie Vlazelt had the community services in her house and Hoppy [John Hopkins] and a few people helped her set up that carnival, through the London Free School and out of that developed UFO really.

Hoppy was a photographer, and he'd been out photographing demonstrations and protests. He worked for the Melody Maker at that time, as well, and was seeing other things; other bands. Who else was around then? Andrew King, Peter Jenner, who managed the Pink Floyd. There'd also been a couple of alternate shows at The Marquee. Mixed-media stuff. ? ?They didn't try and copy anything. They were just making their own little thing. Of course, the Acid Tests were coming over. All the underground poets were arriving.
I wasn't part of the original set up at all. Lots of people think I was.

There was no DJ as such. There was no-one would announce records. There was a guy called Jack Henry Moore who was an American electronics whiz. They had the record player, the amplifiers, the lighting equipment, generators and stuff, and he was a sort of mad boffin and he had TV screens with fuzzy images on them. And he played the records. Just records they had around at the time. Electronic music, stuff like the Grateful Dead. And there were bands: Arthur Brown, Soft Machine. It wasn't really a record club.

Jack had this sort of scaffolding area where he kept all the electronics and stuff and records would just be popped on to the deck. There was no thought of mixing. He also had loads of stuff on tape. It wasn't just a question of records. There were the light shows. So everything was bathed in a wash of colours.

I started to go that winter and I was doing all my shows at Tiles then. When I started to go I was well received by Mick Farren who was the doorperson, along with Richard Vickers. And I befriended Jack and I used to bring along all the new records I got every week and tell him which ones were hot for me. And he introduced me to things I was totally unaware of. Really weird American stuff.
?It was totally unstructured. It was a free-for-all. There was no presentation as such, it just happened. For me, coming out of the straight world of ballroom showbiz, this was a brave new world. It was just built around the people who were there.
?People did dance, yeah. It wasn't like a ballroom or a club where everyone just rushed in and took their coats off. They spent more time talking to each other and dropping acid, reading books. There was a head shop in UFO where you could buy... strange things! Little sparklers, sparky wheels, defraction gradings, funny glasses that made everything look strange.
(Source : http://www.djhistory.com/interviews/jeff-dexter)

Pete Townshend: I used to frequent the UFO Club which is where I met Mike Mclnnerney and (future wife) Karen and all that lot, everybody. We used to get that Swiss stuff (acid), which was real Sandoz stuff, which is really incredibly pure.

Craig Sams (macrobiotic restaurateur) : UFO was every other weekend, so on a lot of the alternate weekends (painter) Michael (English), his girlfriend Angela, and Pete Townshend and Karen, his girlfriend, and me would get together at Karen's place in Eccleston Square and trip the night away. We had our own little UFO. That gave us something to do on the alternate Fridays.

Once we were all walking down the street just past the Victoria Coach Station, it was really freezing cold but Townshend had stripped down to his shirt -'Cold is just a state of mind, man' - and we were all barrelling along, just full of our own incredible strength, and some car pulls up. The classic scene: a head comes out and somebody says, 'Hi, Pete Townshend. I think your last album was fucking great!' and then the guy drunkenly heaves all down the side of the car.

Suddenly you realised the huge distance between where we were going, into spiritual realms, and fifteen pints of lager, which was where a lot of the mods had gone. But we'd all come from the same roots - soul, dancing and mild pharmaceuticals.

(Source : not known)