Dominic Sandbrook
When the Lights Went Out
Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia
By Francis Wheen
Fourth Estate 388pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
In the dying days of 1973, two days after Christmas, a long-haired, sixteen-year-old Francis Wheen wrote a note advising his parents that he had run off to join the alternative society and wouldn’t be back for tea. Leaving the note on the kitchen table, he caught a train from suburban Kent to London, and an hour or so later, rucksack and guitar in hand, showed up at the ‘BIT Alternative Help and Information Centre’, a kind of hippy drop-in centre on Westbourne Park Road. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve dropped out.’ Slumped on a threadbare sofa, a ‘furry freak’ peered at him through a haze of hair. ‘Drop back in, man,’ he muttered. ‘You’re too late. It’s over.’
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