1967

How I Got There and Why I Never Left

By: Robyn Hitchcock

Narrated by: Robyn Hitchcock

1967 explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive/compulsive boy who is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school as he reaches the age of 13; just as Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band explodes.

When he arrives in January 1966 Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for his green Dalek sponge and his family's comforting au pair, Teresa. By December 1967 he's mutated into a 6 ft 2 inch rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really stoned and move to Nashville.

In between - as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside - Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester (think Gormenghast via Evelyn Waugh), threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid - a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. And his home life isn't any more normal...

At the end of 1967 all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?

Critic reviews

***** It's funny and sparkling with a wild, questioning energy . . . One of the joys of this charming and compulsively perceptive work is the way the past loops, fountain-like, into the present and back; and how sharp his sense of the source remains. It is a kind of time-travel (Nicola Shulman)

Delightful . . . Dense with time-travel reminiscence and sharp musical analysis, 1967 comes closer than most to showing how music can switch on the lights, switch on a life (Victoria Segal)

Wonderfully surreal turns

One could never accuse cult UK songwriter Robyn Hitchcock of being boring, and throughout 1967, he constantly surprises . . . poignant yet affable'

Hitchcock skilfully brings to life the turning point, for the younger generation at least, which was 1967 as post war Britain with its slightly curled egg and cress sandwiches took flight on psychedelic wings. Like a hipper version of Anthony Buckeridge's schoolboy hero, Jennings, he adroitly describes the faintly
homoerotic undertones of boarding school life while his accounts of the records and musicians he discovers vividly capture the excitement and adventure of the music of the time. That he does so in his unique style, droll and with the occasional whiff of whimsy and surrealism, familiar to anyone who has seen him live, is the icing on the cake. One can easily picture him telling any of these tales in between songs on stage . . . a delightful read

Witty

1967 is evocative and eccentric. Even non-fans would find it entertaining . . . When it comes to
writing a page-turner, Hitchcock passes the exam with flying colours

1967 is written in the bright, avuncular, conversational tone familiar from Hitchcock's stage patter at live shows, his social media presence and his Patreon page - the latter well worth investigating as for a reasonable sum patrons are given access to unreleased tracks, exclusive videos and assorted illuminating ramblings. This approachability results in a light read whose effect is nevertheless profound, urging the reader to evaluate their own relationship to time and consider fresh ideas regarding how it might be processed and catalogued