Your Bicycle Day Read - The Origins of Psychedelia Britannica
LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love
It’s Bicycle Day again (19 April) and Albert Hofmann’s ‘Problem Child’ is now an octogenarian.
Dr Albert Hofmann, in his experiments with alkaloids of rye-fungus, synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). On 19 April 1943 he accidently ingested some and then got on his bike to ride home. He described his wobbly trip as an ‘amazing and beautiful’ experience. On this 80th anniversary I am posting abridgements of the first chapters of LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.
The book tells how in 1968 an expatriate American Beat writer and two Liverpool chemistry students launched a conspiracy to illegally manufacture LSD. It grew into a global industry, supplying the festival-going youth of the 1970s with tens of millions of trips. It took the police several years to realise what had been established under their noses: laboratories manufacturing LSD; supply-chains for ingredients; and distribution networks which resembled the structure of terrorist cells. In 1977, 'Operation Julie', complete with a team of undercover 'hippie cops', carried out the 'biggest drugs bust in British history'. The hippies wanted to bring about mass psychedelic enlightenment, but their idealism was compromised by the exigencies of running an organised crime group. Their prosecution was weaponised in a culture war to uphold ‘traditional’ values at the very time Margaret Thatcher was presenting herself as their enforcer.
See Part One below(Part Two is posted separately)
The Proselytizer, the Chemist and the Fixer: David Solomon, Richard Kemp and Ronald Stark – Part One
The ‘Acid Adventure’ – as Christine Bott would later call it –began innocently enough. In the last weekend of July 1968, science-graduate Nick Green hitch-hiked 200 miles from Liverpool to attend the Cambridge Folk Festival, which that year featured the Pentangle, Odetta and Roy Harper. Nick was an enthusiastic pothead, partly because his medication for epilepsy made him unable to tolerate alcohol. As was common in those days, dopers tended to find one other, and Nick, with his scouse charm, hit it off with two young American sisters, Lynne and Kim Solomon. Their father, they proudly told him, was famous in the US for his best-selling books on marijuana and LSD. Lynne and Kim invited Nick to come home with them after the gig and meet their hip parents. Nick, rapidly falling for Kim, eagerly accepted the invitation. At the Solomon home in nearby Grantchester Meadows, Nick was introduced to David and Pat Solomon. David was looking for a chemist.
David Solomon, born in 1925, grew up in New York. Enlisting in the army in World War II, he was excluded from combat duty after his two brothers were killed flying bombing missions over Germany. Transferred to Military Intelligence, he rose to the rank of sergeant. After his discharge in 1946, he studied English Literature at Washington Square College, New York and went on to a successful career in journalism. From 1956-1960, Solomon was an assistant editor at Esquire magazine. One of Esquire’s regular contributors was Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. Solomon, who regarded Huxley as a psychedelic ‘guru extraordinaire’, tried — unsuccessfully as it turned out — to get Esquire to publish Huxley’s writings on how pharmacological innovations might facilitate a much-needed spiritual/ethical revolution.
In 1960 Solomon, a keen jazz enthusiast, left Esquire to take over the editorship of Metronome, a venerable but ailing jazz magazine. Under his editorship, Metronome soon acquired the reputation of being the dopers’ jazz magazine in contrast to Downbeat, which was mainstream and ‘straight’. Solomon commissioned writers of the avant-garde ‘Beat Movement’, including LeRoi Jones, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. But the new hipness of Metronome failed to reverse its decline in circulation. Solomon was sacked in summer 1961 after putting a stripper on the cover of the magazine. The magazine folded a few months later.
Psychedelic aficionados have always emphasised the importance of 'set and setting' in the psychedelic experience. 'Set' is the 'mindset' of the subjective experience; ‘setting’ is the physical and social environment in which experience happens; as Huxley put it, ‘experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.' As a psychedelic proselytizer Solomon ran tripping sessions for those he thought could benefit from it, especially jazz musicians. By this time, Solomon had a good stash of LSD (which was still legal) that he kept in a safe deposit box at a Manhattan bank. Solomon took a keen interest in Dr Timothy Leary’s psychedelic research. With LSD, Leary entered a mode of being in which, he said, ‘nothing existed except whirring vibrations and each illusory form was simply a different frequency’. It was, Leary said, ‘The most shattering experience of my life... Since that time I have been acutely aware that everything I perceive, everything within and around me, is a creation of my own consciousness.’ In April 1963, Leary and his colleague Richard Alpert were sacked by Harvard University, and transferred their psychedelic program to Millbrook, a mansion on a 2,000 acre estate near Poughkeepsie, New York State. This was owned by William Mellon Hitchcock, a scion of the super-rich Mellon family. Hitchcock rented the main house at Millbrook to Tim Leary and his associates at a nominal rate.
Solomon edited the best-selling book, LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug , to which Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts contributed along with several other ‘big names’. Solomon’s preface reads in part like a psychedelic version of a revolutionary Situationist manifesto: what Guy Debord called the ‘Spectacle’ Solomon called the ‘Social Lie’. To the ‘entrenched political establishments’ psychedelics were indeed a ‘dangerous subversive agent’:
‘By their action of swinging wide ‘the doors of perception’ the insights they potentiate frequently enable one to see through the myriad pretensions and deceits which make up the mythology of the Social Lie. Thus to the extent that the power structures rely on the controlled popular acceptance of the Lie to shore up and stabilize their hegemonies, psychedelic substances do indeed represent a kind of political threat. Fortunately, however, only the most static, repressive society needs worry about psychedelic subversion. Consciousness-expanding chemicals, in reality, present no threat, but rather offer hope and encouragement to a democratically oriented social structure.’
In 1966, Solomon left the US and moved to Europe with his wife and two daughters. They lived in Palma, Majorca, until he was arrested and prosecuted by the Spanish police for possession of LSD. Without paying the fine, he moved on to England. In London, he attached himself to the milieu of like-minded radicals such as the psychiatrist, RD Laing, and his colleagues at the Philadelphia Association; and the researchers of SOMA (the Society for Mental Awareness, which campaigned for the decriminalization of cannabis use). In late-1967, he settled with his family in Grantchester Meadows, Cambridge.
David Solomon, introduced to Nick Green by his daughters, was a hospitable host. As David had plenty of dope to smoke, Nick settled in and talked about his degree in oceanography from Liverpool University. David was pleased to hear that Nick had studied chemistry. In fact, he was looking for someone with chemistry training to work for him as a researcher. He believed that with the right technology and chemistry it might be possible to synthesize the active principle of marijuana, Tetra-hydro-cannabinol (THC), and put in on the market. Such an enterprise, he assured Nick, would be perfectly legal under existing English law. Nick keenly took up the job offer; knowing that the perks included his blossoming romance with Kim as well as access to David’s hash.
David Solomon purchased equipment and chemicals, set up a laboratory just outside Cambridge at Waterbeach, and rented a cottage for Nick Green to live in. As Green perused the scientific research papers Solomon had collected he learned that making THC would require the precursor Olivetol, an organic compound found in certain species of lichen, otherwise known as 5-n-Amylresorcinol. As Nick’s own knowledge of practical chemistry was limited he decided he needed expert advice. Wondering about who he could turn to, he immediately thought of Richard Kemp, a brilliant PHD student he had known at Liverpool University.
Kemp, who had graduated in 1965, was now doing research work for a PHD on ‘the nuclear magnetic resonance of fluorinated molecules’. Green telephoned Kemp at the chemistry department and suggested they meet that evening as he had something to discuss he thought Kemp might find interesting. When they met at the Philharmonic Hotel on Hope Street, Green explained that he was doing scientific research work for an American business enterprise and that he had some xeroxed scientific papers which Kemp might like to look at. Also, he had some cannabis to smoke; something Kemp had never tried before but was curious about. Kemp read over the findings of the Israeli scientists Gaomi and Mechoulem, who had managed to produce THC with a synthesis of olivetol and the chemical compound verbenol. This caught Kemp’s eye because he knew that that verbenol was being made by a fellow student in the university research lab. Another paper explained how to synthesize olivetol. Puffing on his first joint, Kemp told Green he was reasonably certain that olivetol could be prepared in a laboratory with the right equipment. Green told Kemp about the lab in Waterbeach and invited Kemp to come down and take a look at it.
In the meantime, Kemp was booked to attend a chemistry conference on nuclear magnetic resonance in Coimbra, Portugal. The trip proved to be part of Kemp’s political awakening. The radical students of Portugal had been inspired by the May/June Revolts of 1968 in France, but the fascist-leaning regime was intolerant of any dissent. The atmosphere in the country was tense, with troops and armoured cars on the streets. Kemp was struck by the contrast between the poverty he saw in the country and the luxurious treatment laid on by the government for the scientists at the conference, which was held under the auspices of NATO.
Shortly after Kemp returned to Liverpool he was again contacted by Green. At his next visit to the lab in Waterbeach, Kemp was introduced by Green to David Solomon. Invited back to the Solomon family home, Kemp found Solomon fascinating company and got properly stoned for the first time on David’s prime hash. As Solomon listened to Kemp speaking about his chemistry studies he realised that he was meeting a major scientific talent, who was potentially very useful to him. Kemp told Solomon that the equipment at Waterbeach was inadequate for the task in hand, so it might be better if he were to try and do the syntheses at his Liverpool research lab in his spare time. Solomon agreed enthusiastically. Kemp returned to Liverpool and got to work. As this research was perfectly legal, he was quite open about it with colleagues in the chemistry department and didn’t care about the raised eyebrows. Kemp came up with the goods. He sent small quantities of olivetol and verbenol to Green, who imitated the Gaomi/Mechoulem method to couple them together and produce THC. Green telephoned Kemp to say his experiment had been successful. Unfortunately, he couldn’t actually prove it because he hadn’t set aside a sample for Kemp to inspect and had smoked it all himself. Kemp was exasperated. It seemed that Green was more interested in getting stoned on David’s hash and courting his daughter, Kim, than doing serious chemistry work.
On New Year’s Eve 1968, Kemp attended a party hosted by David and Pat Solomon at Grantchester Meadows. He explained to David that making THC in any viable quantity would require a lot more investment in materials and equipment. Solomon agreed and came up with an idea for getting the project properly funded. He suggested to Kemp that he might try his hand at making lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which could be sold for a tidy profit and provide the needed investment money for making THC. Of course, he pointed out, making LSD would be illegal and Kemp would have to think about it very carefully.
David Solomon was motivated by the prospect of making a lot of money. But, as a disciple of Timothy Leary and as a well-known author, he was now one of the leading figures of the psychedelic ‘spiritual mission’. Richard Kemp and Nick Green found his enthusiasm and commitment infectious. As Solomon could procure the necessary ingredients to make LSD from Germany, Green suggested moving the chemistry equipment from Waterbeach to Liverpool, where they would be able to set up a laboratory in his parents’ house. The respectability of the household – Nick’s father was a music professor; his mother the manager of an exclusive dining club for academics – would conceal the illicit goings on in the basement. Solomon thought this was a great idea. Kemp agreed to work in the new lab.
In January 1969, Kemp and Green travelled to London for a meeting with Solomon and his American business partner, Paul Arnaboldi who like Solomon, Arnaboldi was a veteran of Timothy Leary’s psychedelic funhouse at Millbrook. At a meeting at the Great Eastern Hotel on Liverpool Street, it was agreed that Solomon and Arnaboldi would supply the starting materials plus equipment, and Kemp and Green would produce the LSD.
Arnaboldi procured 40 grams of the starting material, ergometrine maleate, from a Mexican company in Basle, Switzerland, and sent it to Solomon in sellotaped packets hidden inside a rolled-up magazine c/o an American Express office in London. In Green’s Liverpool lab Kemp used this material to make a modest quantity of LSD using the Garbrecht method of synthesis. Kemp then organised a ‘sampling’ of his dark syrupy acid with his girlfriend, medical student, Christine Bott, and Green. Although not of the best quality, the acid, sampled on blotting paper, was effective; all three of them tripped and became LSD devotees from that moment on. Green and Kemp passed the acid to Solomon, who in return gave them a down payment in the form of a large lump of hash. The LSD from a second production run was sent to Arnaboldi in Canada, where he was setting up North American distribution networks.
(To be continued in the next post)