Psychedelia Britannica 2 – more from the book

This post, the second of two, is another extract from the first chapters of the book.

The Proselytizer, the Chemist and the Fixer: David Solomon, Richard Kemp and Ronald Stark – Part Two

In early summer 1969, David Solomon took his family to a villa he had rented in Majorca. Kemp, Bott and Green visited and spent weeks enjoying the sea and sun until Arnaboldi arrived from his own base on the island at Deia and suggested bluntly that it was about time Kemp and Green got back to work. There were music festivals coming up in the US, notably at Woodstock, and his distributors wanted thousands of LSD trips to sell at them. Kemp and Green returned to Liverpool, leaving Christine Bott behind to continue her holiday. In the Hope Street basement, Kemp resumed production.

According to Andy Munro, a Cambridge chemistry graduate who later joined Kemp’s team, ‘Many of the chemicals used are extremely dangerous, toxic and/or explosive.’ The starting point for manufacture of LSD is to use ergot alkaloids to produce lysergic acid. The alkaloids are toxic and unstable; the acid is more stable, but unpredictable in its reactions with other chemicals. To make diethylamide the organic acid is reacted with diethylamine using a ‘coupling agent’ which binds the lysergic acid and is then displaced by the diethylamine to produce the required diethylamide. Munro writes:

‘I do not propose to go into the nuts and bolts of the whole procedure. It involves ether (extremely explosive) and huge extraction funnels, as well as the need to be done in a dark, dry environment. You can see the potential for failure, never mind death!’

The other danger was contamination and overdose from the finished product. Working alone in the Hope Street basement, after his return from Majorca, Kemp successfully made the acid, but accidently spilled the flask it was in. In attempting to retrieve the spilt liquid he ingested a massive dose and experienced a trip of ‘cosmic proportions’. When he recovered his faculties, Kemp returned ashen-faced to Majorca with what could be saved from the broken flask. He found Solomon and Arnaboldi squabbling over money: Solomon wanted compensation for his investments in THC; Arnaboldi wanted compensation for his trips to Mexico and Canada.

Back in Liverpool, Nick Green, working in the lab on his own, had an epileptic fit and cut himself badly. Noticeably, his behaviour was becoming increasingly irrational and aggressive. Acting on the spur of the moment, Nick eloped with Kim to get married in Scotland, which incensed David and Pat Solomon. Arnaboldi was of the opinion that Green was ‘crazy’. The tipping point came one night in Liverpool when Nick slipped LSD into his mother’s cup of tea. She collapsed, gasping in fear and clutching her throat. A doctor was called and Green confessed what he had done, pleading ‘I did it because I love her. I wanted to turn her on. It’s pure love that I gave her.’ His parents decided not to bring charges, but banned Kemp from the house, and ordered that the laboratory in their basement be dismantled. It fell to Kemp to tactfully tell Green that it was time to wind up their project and go their separate ways.

Kemp had been neglecting his PHD studies at Liverpool University; and his supervisors were becoming restless. Although he wanted to finish his PHD, he felt he was being used just to support the theories of his supervisor, which he had little interest in. He was now tripping twice a week: ‘I was far more interested in exploring the contents of my own head than in pursuing the minutiae of science to their seemingly illogical conclusions.’

In May 1969 in Paris, a student at Cambridge University (name unknown) met 31 years old fellow American, Ronald Stark, at a left-wing demonstration. As fellow ‘heads’ they got round to talking about the politics of drugs. The student mentioned that he was friendly with David Solomon, who was now living in Cambridge. Having first dropped acid the previous year, Stark was very interested in Solomon’s writings and said he would like to meet him in person. When the American student returned to Cambridge he told Solomon all about his meeting with Stark, who had said in all seriousness that he wanted to turn on the world to LSD. As Solomon had a similar ambition, he immediately wrote to Stark, inviting him to visit and discuss their mutual interests. In the summer of 1969, Stark arrived at Grantchester Meadows.

In their conversations, Solomon confided in Stark that he had a brilliant chemist working for him on his long-term project to produce THC. Not only that, his chemist could make LSD, for which Solomon, had access to starting materials. Stark was keen to meet the chemist, so Solomon telephoned Kemp and urged him to come to Cambridge straight away and meet someone ‘really important’. When Kemp arrived, the three of them spent the weekend discussing LSD and THC production. Stark invited Solomon and Kemp to meet him in London at the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall, where he had convinced the management that he had been to Harvard University (he hadn’t) and thus qualified for membership. At the meeting, Stark proposed that Kemp come and work in his state-of-the-art Paris laboratory, which was housed at the PACS chemical company in the 13^th Arrondissement.

Kemp had become aware that Solomon and Arnaboldi regarded themselves as his agents, entitled to a transfer fee plus a percentage of whatever he got from Stark. Stark was not keen on the idea of a transfer fee for someone not legally bound to his employment; and he didn’t like percentage deals as they were open to double-crossing. What was finally agreed was that Kemp would work in Stark’s lab in Paris on the THC project and that Solomon and Arnaboldi would be supplied with Stark’s LSD at the very cheap price of 900 dollars a gram.

Just after Christmas 1969, Kemp travelled to Morocco to spend time with Stark and his British assistant, Simon Walton. For several days in Casablanca they relaxed, smoked Kif and discussed future plans. Kemp, who had been refused sabbatical leave by his university, was persuaded by Stark to abandon his PHD and sign a legal contract with him to synthesize THC, for which he would be paid living expenses and get a percentage of the royalties on sales. The three of them travelled on to Switzerland and Kemp placed the contract in a safe deposit box at a bank in Geneva. Kemp returned to Liverpool and told his supervisor of his decision to abandon his PHD.

In January 1970, Kemp reported for work in Paris, where Stark introduced him to the people he had billeted together in a roomy apartment on the Left Bank, near his laboratory. According to Christine Bott, they were ‘a sexually ambiguous group of people’: Stark’s British boyfriend, Simon Walton; Stark’s girlfriend, Henrietta Kaimer, ‘who was a prostitute with a small clientele who were high ranking members of the government’; Stark’s American chemist, Tord Svenson, who had operated an LSD lab in Boston which was busted in 1967; and another American, David Linker, also gay, who had performed in the Paris production of the musical, Hair. Bott recalled that Linker, who was also a chemist, ‘helped Richard cope with the excesses and insanities that surrounded Ron’.

Stark told Kemp he had a few hundred grams of ergotamine tartrate he wanted converted into LSD on order to complete his latest production run. Kemp expressed unease about this, as he understood that he been hired for making THC, not LSD. Stark reassured him; claiming that under French law, making LSD in bulk was legal, providing it wasn’t converted into individual doses. Kemp wasn’t entirely convinced by this assurance but went along with it anyhow. After another batch of LSD was produced at the lab, Kemp resumed work on the THC project, trying crack the synthesis, using the Olivetol/Verbenol route. He managed to make a crude active amount but was still unable to produce pure, stable THC.

Stark sent Tord Svenson back to the US to organise tableting and distribution of LSD. When he got an order for a large consignment, another production run got underway in Paris using 8 kilos of ergotamine tartrate (ET). The team, Kemp included, worked at night when no one else was on the premises of the PACS chemical company. Because the purified LSD became light and dusty, there was a danger that the air could dose anyone in the building who wasn’t kitted out with a mask and protective clothing.

One night Kemp put a flask containing his muddy synthesis of LSD in the freezer. Unexpectedly the contents bloomed into white crystals of almost pure LSD. Kemp had accidently discovered that the purification process could be speeded up without using chromatography. Within two weeks they produced 1,240 grams of LSD, enough for six million trips.

In August 1970, Stark suddenly decided to move production from Paris to Orleans. He set up a lab in the outhouses of a medicine firm and rented a residence for the crew in nearby Cléry-Saint-André. Stark insisted that the move was necessary because he had received of a warning that the Paris lab was in danger of being raided at the behest of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). According to Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain in Acid Dreams:

‘While pursuing his exploits as an LSD chemist, he [Stark] communicated on a regular basis with American embassy personnel, and on numerous occasions he hinted at ties with the intelligence community. At one point he told an associate that he shut down his laboratory in France on a tip from the CIA’. (This alleged connection will be explored in later chapters of this book).

As David Linker was spending less time at the lab, Kemp was left doing most of the work. Although he was now able to isolate THC, the product decomposed immediately, so he couldn’t produce a stable batch. Stark was paying Kemp’s living expenses and keeping him supplied with hash, but Kemp wanted his working relation formalised regarding salary, tax etc; and Stark seemed to be in no hurry to sort it out. When Stark decided on another huge production run of LSD, Kemp decided to quit; not because he didn’t want to make LSD, but because he didn’t want to work under anyone, especially Stark. Kemp recalled:

‘I said that I was willing but I felt that I should be paid well for doing it, which I certainly had not been up to that time. The truth of my employment with Ron Stark is that when I left I had less money than when I went there. Ron and I had several pretty bad rows over the next few weeks. I felt that his security was very bad, and that lots of people knew about me, who I was and what I was doing, but I was completely in the dark about what was happening... I decided to quit.’

Solomon and Arnaboldi, on hearing of Kemp’s decision, came to Paris to see him and suggested that he return to England and work with them to set up their own lab. Stark gave Kemp severance pay in the form of 200 grams of LSD. David Solomon wanted 240 grams of LSD as a pay-off for recruiting Kemp less 20 percent of it to be paid to Arnaboldi for supplying ergotamine tartrate. Solomon put his case during a meeting at Stark’s favourite Chinese restaurant in Soho, London. Stark at first exploded in anger, but then agreed.

In 1971, Kemp had enough equipment and materials supplied by Solomon and Arnaboldi for a ‘mobile lab’. His initial modus operandi was to rent a property somewhere in London, set up the lab, do a production run, then move to another house. Kemp travelled the country picking up various pieces of equipment and found a suitable location for a lab on a run-down housing estate in Liverpool.

Meanwhile, Stark moved out of Orleans and set up a new lab in La Clocheton, Belgium which was tucked away in the premises of Louvain-le-Neuve University. It seemed like a perfect cover: university staff thought Stark was a genuine scientist; and that the lab was making legitimate chemicals for export to Switzerland. Michael Randall, of the US Brotherhood of Eternal Love, travelled to La Clocheton under an assumed name and stayed in the town with his family. Randall’s order for LSD was shipped to New York concealed in a Jaguar car belonging to Stark.

Stark made no secret of his dislike of Solomon and Arnaboldi, and no doubt tried to dissuade Kemp from working with them. Stark and Kemp continued to meet socially throughout 1971, including at the Glastonbury Festival, which was well supplied with their acid. In December 1971, Stark made one last attempt to get Kemp to come and work with him now he had moved out of Orleans and set up a new lab in Belgium. Kemp turned down the offer and never saw Stark again.

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If you have enjoyed the story so far, the rest of it is in LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love by David Black. It’s available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon Books, as is Psychedelic Tricksters: A True Secret History of LSD.

CONTENTS OF LSD UNDERGROUND

Preface

1 – The Proselytizer: David Solomon

2 – The Chemist: Richard Kemp

3 – The Fixer: Ronald Stark

4 – Tetra-Hydro-Cannabinol

5 – The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and its British Connections

6 – Transatlantic Antics

7 – The French Connection: Paris and Orleans

8 – Ronald Stark and Ronald Laing

9 – The British Microdot Gang

10 – The Split in the Microdot Gang

11 – Richard Kemp’s Laboratory in Wales

12 – Operation S.T.U.F.F.

13 – Operation Julie

14 – Downfall

15 – Trickster

16 – The Greening of Microdoctrine?