Launch Party of International Times
The official launch of the hippy activist International Times happened October 15, 1966, at London’s Roundhouse in the U.K. Pink Floyd appeared along with The Move, Denny Laine, Soft Machine, Yoko Ono, and a local West Indian steel band. They paid Pink Floyd £15 for the event. International Times was the first and longest-running U.K. hippy paper.
Flyers stating “Bring your own poison, bring flowers & gass (sic)”, filled balloons advertised the launch. In Arabian dress, Paul McCartney showed at the event. Admission was 10 shillings (50p) on the door.
The mid-60s had a vibrant artistic community in London. Writers, artists, musicians, and social-political activists who had expressed themselves in alternative or underground magazines in Australia such as OZ, before moving to the UK, and publishing in INK, Frendz, or International Times (IT).
IT Became a Barometer of the 60s and 70s
The paper was a sound barometer of the 60s and 70s British underground political debates, musical creativity, avant-garde theater, and tales of psychedelic experiences.
John Hoppy Hopkins, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes, and playwright Tom McGarth founded IT. The famous logo featured the 1920s American silent film star vamp, Theda Bara. International Times dominated the U.K. underground press until the mid-70s.
First 10 Issues Bold
The first issue of IT was October 14, 1966. The first editorial read, “Every day people pour into London to find out what is happening there”. IT displayed what was going on around in London from the Yoko Ono woman show of “instruction paintings”, to the price of drugs in various cities. They outed undercover cops in a startling column entitled “Interpot”, via the classifieds for those who were looking for transportation, flats, and soulmates.
“The first 10 issues focused on avant-garde art, music, happenings, theater, film and literature, with occasional forays into censorship, personal freedom, the Vietnam War, student protests, and LSD and cannabis price trends in Notting Hill”
IT was anti-establishment. At its peak, the journal was selling 50,000 copies, and its admirers found articles that appeared nowhere else in the newspapers published on Fleet Street.
