Dave Young

News flash - 4 January 2024 - Just heard that Dave Young was involved in a moped accident in Goa, was went back to modest boarding house, experienced breathing difficulties and died.  Survived by his devastated wife Xancari who was with him. What a loss! A modest bearer of real  wisdom, "the best of us" according to Steve Moss

Original Post date: 13-Jul-2020 15:25:43

 Lily Langtree

My old friend Dave Young lived at 54 Alexandra Road in a basement (many a happy day and evening there in the 60s). 

He told me a house opposite and down a bit with a covered walkway up the steps was Lily Langtree's house and the Prince of Wales would come 'visit' her there. This is confirmed https://everything.explained.today/Lillie_Langtry/ - oh and above by Margaret Engler 😀     (Insert - this link no longer works but Margaret also lived in Alexandra Road and knew the history of  Lily Langtree's house - Ed.)

With typical modesty Dave said that the highpoints of his life could be expressed in a sentence, which I said would make a damn good epitaph for the headstone

Got stoned

went to India

got more stoned

But we all know that belies a vast interiority, and a huge array of adventures, both exotic and domestic

Dave's laconic and self-deprecating story in his own write is as follows:

Dave Young: unqualified dilletante cum charlatan.

Spent childhood in Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage mainly running on streets and wandering on Hampstead Heath.

Failed exams in almost all school subjects bar history and religious instruction.

Spent much time bunking off school on Hampstead Heath and Kensington museums the latter often with Les Clackson.

Dave recently (2021) reminisced:

54a Alexandra Road. In my dreams I still seem to live there. I moved there from Belsize Park at the age of 9 just about on my birthday in fact, May 1952. It was a place of a million dreams and nightmares. The nightmares being mainly due to my mother's steady decent into schizophrenic insanity. The dreams came later at the times Steve remembers (See The night I met Old Dave Young - Steve Moss). 

Belsize Park and Hampstead had been my life until then and Swiss Cottage came as bit of a let-down by comparison. But one soon adjusts as a kid and I soon made new friends in the road and the parallel one, Boundary Road. Tom Shonk was from Boundary Road as was Jeff Price and Maddox (John Maddicks) whose parents ran the newsagents. Vaughan O'Leary was my closest friend from there. He went to Hornsey art school where he met Paul Vaughan who introduced us to Paul Ernest and we began to hang at the Witches Cauldron.  For me and many of us the Witches became the centre of the universe or at least the gateway. Pete Blackman's and my place were kind of after-hours appendages to it.

I took Les to the Witches along with Maddox but not Jeff and Tom. They, of course, soon sussed it and came anyway. Tom was a bit rough and had a bit of trouble with the Hampstead lot although Pete Blackman accepted him with equanimity. Tom worked digging up roads for the LEB. He part time hung out with Ernie the Goat and brother John the Fox. They also hung about the Witches particularly Ernie. He was OK. Second hand car dealer cum gangster from Golders Green. Tom was at home with them more than the Hampstead middle classes and led a bit of a double life. Can't remember what year Tom died though I certainly remember the events and that followed from it.

We had been using, me, Les, Maddox, Tom for about 3 months. One day I announced that we should all give up as it was becoming boring and limited our lifestyles. I could see a certain reluctance to the idea particularly by Tom and Maddox. Les and I stopped and eventually Maddox and even Tom. It did not fit in with his life with the Golders Green gangsters who would have cut him right out if they had known.

Tom had real trouble keeping clean for long and had been registered with Lady Frankau. One day he said he was going to go to see her and get a grain and do it all up. " Don't be silly you have been clean too long it will kill you" I said. "I can take a grain easy" He said.  That night I was loudly woken up from a deep stoned sleep at 3am by John the Fox and the boys armed to the teeth with 45 automatics, sawn-off 12 bores and flick knives threatening to kneecap me if I did not get them to Maddox whom they believed, erroneously, to have abandoned Tom to die in the bogs off Wigmore Street. "We just left Tom's cold body on a slab in the morgue" They dramatically announced. Shit, I thought, he really did it. Managed to preserve kneecaps and Maddox but realised very clearly why I had tried to deny Tom access to The Witches.

Certainly, the closest I have come to being kneecap less.

Take care,

Kneecap Dave.

Dave wrote the text on this site about Les Clackson, which contains the horrifying story of how when he wrote a brilliant essay Les was accused of copying it both by the school and his parents and he vowed never to make any effort in school again. And although exceptionally bright (as indeed Dave is) he never did. (PE)

More on Dave:

One notable success won prize in RSPCA London schools essay competition. Prize: book, Tarka The Otter by Henry Williamson. Lost book.

Started work at 15 and continued for 6 years as laboratory assistant for George Rowney and Co. with no qualifications and little understanding of chemistry.

Did very well there and was offered big promotion, but the firm was moving miles away to the sticks so gave it up. (PE)

Discovered Soho with Vaughan O'Leary hung in coffee bars with him, Les Clackson and John Maddicks. 

Introduced by Vaughan to Paul Vaughan, Gabi Weissman and Paul Ernest and taken by them to Witches Cauldron.

Dropped out and worked for many years as council gardener with no knowledge or interest in gardening.

Dave married Jeri and lived in Alexandra Road for most of the 60s running a very welcoming pad. I first heard Bob Dylan record there, about 1963. Because it was so comfortable a place to be I took several acid trips there with Dave and Tony Barnett around 1965. (Set and setting were so important for good trips). We would spend the first hour rolling on the floor in absolute hysterics about the huge joke that is the pointlessness of life and the amazing ontological miracle that anything exists AT ALL! Then we might venture out to see amazingly funny flora, fauna and mineral life bubbling away all around us! 

Thousand of joints were smoked there in great company including the regulars Les Clackson and John Maddicks. One time, with his permission, I came back there with a pound weight of raw black opium scored in Southall for £70. (Steve droved there and back I think.) There was another guy who put in £17.50 for a quarter and Dave obligingly let us use his scales to divide it - but they only went up to 1 lb. To my joy when I weighed the remainder I found I had 12 1/2 ounces left. Needless to say we all had a bit! (PE)

Went to India seeking enlightenment did not find retreated to Goa spending time lying on beach and sitting in chai shops and bars talking bullshit.

Later took interest and gained some knowledge of birds and flora of the Western Ghats.

After 11 years there came back and spent 13 years as Information officer in company started by Steve Moss without any qualifications in such.

Very successful drug abuser enjoyed all immensely.

Retired broke on welfare in rented flat in Finchley.

Dave was always an exceedingly wise member of the Witches and other social circles of which we were a part. Dave introduced me to many things that had a big impact on me: Under the Volcano by Lowry, The Teachings of Don Juan, Drugs and the Mind by Rovbert S. de Ropp, the practice of Transcendental Meditation, and other classics long forgotten, not to mention Dylan and lots of music. 

Around 1970 I said to Dave I was looking for a nice girl but there weren't any around. He said there was a really nice girl called Jill living upstairs at 42 Warrington Crescent (where he too lived after Jeri ran away with mad Chris and Dave went to and from India) who he saw sometimes. That really nice girl called Jill - reader I married her, and she is upstairs as I write this - over 50 years on! (PE)

Young(ish) Dave Young. Is that the Himalayas, behind him, a bush, an exotic cloth backdrop? Whatever it is - it is the stuff dreams are made of!

Olde(er) Dave Young in 2005 at Dave Steven's party celebrating Tony Barnet and Paul Ernest's 60th Birthdays

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Carthy

Dear Paul,

                  I always thought Martin should be on the Witches site. He often played there in the early years.

Looked him up to find that they do not mention the Witches only the Loft.

Jeri knew his first wife Dorothy in Paris and stayed with her and Martin next to Belsize Park station when she was deported from Paris.

I met her next door at Joe Hennessey's place. I ran but she chased me to the Witches and I never managed to shake her off.

My greatest claim to fame Martin and Dorothy were going to dinner with Dylan and invited Jeri and I. Jeri went, but I did not want to be a groupie so did not go.

Maybe a brief mention of Martin on the site.

Take care,

Dave.

Delete, hide or report this - Who said that? Is it you Mr Zuckerburg?

 · Reply · Message · 1w · Edited

Delete, hide or report this

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(Re Dave Stevens' review of Hippie - see his page)

Oh harsh words indeed for the 'children of the revolution'.

We were all there at ALLy Pally with the exploding galaxy

for the bliss of mrs blossom!!!

Well Dave, I disagree. I was there at the beat hotel in

1961 and saw Burroughs - Corso was also staying there - but

I never bumped into him on my way up to my room,  the

uppermost garret. Gabi stayed with me, as did Tony J. It

was Roger Silverman who introduced me to it - he had stayed

there in Summer 1960, when he was 15. Tony B and I went

back in 1962 and scored magical mescaline from the guy in

room number 1, which we took in Barcelona as is

commemorated in Gabi's painting on your wall! (Gabi was too

mean to buy any himself!!)

But when the hippie movement exploded around us

-- what was

the name of that NZ artist with a goatee who brought the

first acid to London in 1966? - Tony B and I used to supply

him with grass in Paris in 1963 (he was in some underground

fim with a title like chappaquiddick - with Ornette Coleman

soundtrack)  --

        -- John Esam was the NZ poet/dealer (Ed.)

well it was great - the new clothes, the new music, Tibetan

Buddhism, Alistair Crowleymania, the Summer of Love - it

wasn't a challenge to our adolescent hipness - it was a

great cultural revolution - and we - the baby boom

generation who lived through the 1960s (and several didn't:

Tom Shonk, Alan Shoobridge, etc) -- still feel the nostalgic

surge of idealism and love through our battered veins

Don't forget that 'hip' came from sores on the hips from

lying down and habitually smoking O

The hippies were great - it was a time to tear down the old

barriers - to protest against normality, convention, and

the Vietnam war, to grow your hair long, paint your body,

and wear lovely bright clothes

We all had to grow up - but many of our generation retain

that youthful idealism

.....

All you need is love ....... (and a good cure!)

Love is the law ...  love under will

Paul

To: Ernest, Paul; Dave Stephens <unus.mundus@xxxr.co.uk>

Cc: alan <pattersonal50@xxx.com>; bigal@supaman.com; bridgetherbert@gmail.com; Charles Marsden <charleshmarsden@hotmail.com>; dave Biurski <d.buirski@blueyonder.co.uk>; ed <eddie.ellis@ntlworld.com>+27 others

Tues 5 July 2006

Dear Paul et al,

The name of the guy with the goatee was John Esam. Not quite sure of the

spelling.  Went to see him in Kensington somewhere and they were doing that

stuff that gave you a twenty minute trip, name escapes me. [DMT]

I scored my sugar cubes and he said: You could be 'The Man' for Hampstead

which scared the life out of me. I remember the first 'experience' with you

and Tony wandering around Swiss Cottage and the Finchley Road and Tony

having

a fit of hysterical laughter in a greengrocers. What a place for a first

trip.

The authorities were so pissed off with John Esam they busted him but had

to

let him go as it was still legal.

I remember that beat hotel in Paris. It's quite famous now. I had taken far

too much Nostroline inhaler and instead of checking in I wandered off around

Paris and flipped out.

What wonderful innocent days they were.

I have a whole other explanation of hip somewhere in my files at home. Can't

remember it though my old, over used or abused brain, is too weakened, will

look it up.

Love to all of you,

Dave Young.

TO PAUL

26/03/2002

I remember your centre parting Paul and a very earnest conversation about it

whilst cruising speedily along the Finchley Road, during which you opined

that you thought the centre parting superior to all others.

I was stunned by the pic of Maggie. God! was she not gorgeous. I can feel

her presence still.

Love, Dave.