*Ø* Blogmanac| Tripping the light fantastic
Peter Hill's memoir of his time as a hippie lighthouse-keeper in the early Seventies is full of rock'n'roll, surreal characters and dark tales of suicide and singed eyebrows. Adrian Turpin meets him
"In the summer of 1973, while much of Britain's youth was busy taking drugs and marching against the Vietnam War, one of its number stood on a godforsaken rock on the west coast of Scotland and wondered what he'd given up. The words of the last person he'd seen on the mainland, the tractor-man who'd driven him to the boat, rang in his ears. 'Don't tell me they've sent another hippie. Hop on then, John Lennon. We'll make a man of you yet.'
"Even at the time, Peter Hill made an unlikely lighthouse-keeper. 'My hair hung well below my shoulders. I had a great set of Captain Beefheart records." The 19-year-old Hill resembled, in his own words, 'a miniature version of Neil Young'. His new colleagues 'probably shared a vision of the light first ceasing to turn then gradually fading to darkness as I lay stoned on the upper rim of the light listening to Van Morrison on my battery-powered cassette recorder while the Oban fishing fleet crashed into the rocks below' ..."
Book review at The Independent
Peter Hill's memoir of his time as a hippie lighthouse-keeper in the early Seventies is full of rock'n'roll, surreal characters and dark tales of suicide and singed eyebrows. Adrian Turpin meets him
"In the summer of 1973, while much of Britain's youth was busy taking drugs and marching against the Vietnam War, one of its number stood on a godforsaken rock on the west coast of Scotland and wondered what he'd given up. The words of the last person he'd seen on the mainland, the tractor-man who'd driven him to the boat, rang in his ears. 'Don't tell me they've sent another hippie. Hop on then, John Lennon. We'll make a man of you yet.'
"Even at the time, Peter Hill made an unlikely lighthouse-keeper. 'My hair hung well below my shoulders. I had a great set of Captain Beefheart records." The 19-year-old Hill resembled, in his own words, 'a miniature version of Neil Young'. His new colleagues 'probably shared a vision of the light first ceasing to turn then gradually fading to darkness as I lay stoned on the upper rim of the light listening to Van Morrison on my battery-powered cassette recorder while the Oban fishing fleet crashed into the rocks below' ..."
Book review at The Independent
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