There’s an old saying about the 60’s that suggests if you can remember it, then you weren’t there. Well, Patrick Campbell-Lyons was definitely there and can remember a great deal of it very well indeed. Thankfully, he decided to sit down and record those memories in a new book called Psychedelic Days.
Patrick is a hugely talented musician and songwriter and was half of the symphonic-rock band Nirvana, who formed in London during 1967 and went on to cult fame, even being credited with releasing the first true concept album that recorded the life of Simon Simeopath.
The book looks back on those heady days of the 1960’s music scene and is written in a frank but wonderfully descriptive style with honest recollections about the music, the people and even the drugs.
Rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Mickie Most, the book becomes a veritable road trip as he guides the reader, in his own beautifully Irish way, from London to Morocco and on to Brazil, and during the ‘trip’ the text is laced with brilliant anecdotes about the good, the bad and the downright ugly side of the 60’s scene, including some interesting memories about the origins of Island Records, who signed Nirvana, and how the group made a crazy television show with Salvador Dali in Paris.
This is how Patrick himself describes his work:
In early July 2008 as I started to write some songs about my life and times in 1960’s London and beyond, something happened which I would describe as, “crystal karma vision.”  I was remembering in great detail those “psychedelic days” of forty years before when I navigated my way on a voyage of music, freedom, adventure and self-discovery. The past had no distance and I was living it all over again. Thrill’s and pill’s rhythm and blues, the legendary Ealing Club, Island Records, Chris Blackwell Nirvana in Tin Pan Alley, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Guy Stevens, Mickie Most, Paris with Salvador Dali, Rio De Janeiro with Jimmy Cliff, The Star Club in Hamburg, Stockholm, Belguim, Tangiers and the “happenings.”   When I stopped writing four months later I had a book.
I had been there and lived to tell the story. Today so many years on people fantasize and wonder about those crazy days and often ask me, “What were the ‘sixties’ like?  It must have been a crazy time! I wish I had been there.”  Well my story is for you and it is also for those who were there and did not make it to the other side.  Have a good trip.
Whether you were around in those heady times and want to know what your heroes were really like, or whether you missed it completely, but want to know how the way was paved for just about every rock band you hear today, and have heard in the last 40 years, this book is a must. Go on, be groovy, Man and make a far-out purchase to blow your mind!
Go to www.psychedelicdays.com or Amazon and find out how to purchase a bit of real 60’s history.