While Heathcote Williams was indeed primarily committed to the written word, he was equally and superlatively concerned with both the performed, and even the painted word.
Williams was a prime mover, with the King Mob Situationists tribe, of a vigorous spate of diversely calligraphed graffiti on the walls of both downtrodden and well-to-do residences and other buildings around Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove between the late 1960s and early 70s. Thus the school wall on the corner of the Grove and Lancaster Road suddenly declared: “We teach all hearts to break”, and charming dialogue sequences played out from day to day.
When a long crumbling grey wall off Westbourne Park Road was emblazoned with “Hashish is the Opium of the People”, this got repainted shining high white a week later, presumably by order of the wall’s owner – only for this whitewash itself to be re-faced overnight in enormous blood-red capital letters, with: “LOOK – THE WALL IS WHITE AGAIN!”
