GVP #123 - Matt Sergiou : London Counter-Culture, Part 2

The counter-culture scene of the 1960s, sponsored by those nice folks in Langley, Virginia, is a much-told story of recent years. The dubious background detail of the Human Be-In, LSD, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Stewart Brand, the Grateful Dead, the birth of Feminism, Jim Morrison and his dad and many other aspects of this scene, have been pored over by many researchers. A story far less told, however, concerns what was playing out on the other side of the Atlantic during these very same times. London had a counter-culture scene all of its own. It was less stepped in psychedelic rock than in the avant-garde art scene, along with the Carnaby Street/ ‘Swinging Sixties’ fad that helped to usher it all in. The fingerprints of the social engineers were present every step of the way. Today’s guest is Matt Sergiou, proprietor of the Conspiro Media and Occult Beatles blog sites. He returns to walk us through some of his extensive research into this London scene, to which the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were intrinisically connected. In particular, we dissect one of Matt’s mammoth articles anchored around the notorious Christine Keeler/ Profumo scandal of 1963, to which the Beatles have some curious links. Along the way the chat encompasses, (among many others,) the Kray Twins, Jimmy Savile, Joe Meek, Jimmy Page, Syd Barrett, Jane and Peter Asher, the Tavistock Institute and Cambridge University. There’s a lot to this one, so the chat has been split into two parts, for ease of digestibility. Part 1 can be located here - https://www.spreaker.com/user/markdevlin/good-vibrations-podcast-vol-123-matt-ser_1