I first met Heathcote Williams in the early 1970s when he asked me to design the poster and programme for a touring production of his play AC/DC to be directed by Pam Brighton with V Theatre. We collaborated for more than a decade and remained friends.
In 1974 we set up the publishing partnership Open Head Press and found an office in Notting Hill, London. The building was inhabited by all kinds of countercultural activists: An Index of Possibilities, the Beast, Bananas, the Legalise Cannabis campaign, Knockabout Comics and other like-minded characters.
Our first publication was The Abdication of Queen Elizabeth II, a swipe at the monarchy in the form of a limited edition booklet. Words poured out of Heathcote at a frenetic pace and the press gave him the means by which they could be circulated. We called it “anarchist porn”: magazines, posters, newspapers, postcards, stamps, banknotes and pamphlets.
They were days of, in his words, “nameless wildness”. Our office served as the Embassy of the Republic of Frestonia and became a magnet for radicals of all types from around the world. Heathcote was the prize attraction, and there will never be another like him.
