I had slept for a few hours under Brighton pier in 1964 with my art-school friend, the pretty, strawberry-blonde Liz Reid. We had been together for a riotous night at the Aquarium Ballroom after our gig on the night of a Mod–Rocker street battle on the seafront. Walking along the beach in the dark, under the pier, trying to stay out of the drizzling rain, we’d come across a group of Mod boys in their anoraks. They were giggling as the tide came in, getting their feet wet. We sat with them for a while. We were all coming down from taking purple hearts, the fashionable uppers of the period.
