In the past couple of days I’ve found some more online pieces about the death of Chris Gray. I’ve also come across blog talk of a Guardian obituary that was supposed to appear on 21 May; there is no sign of it yet but I guess this may still materialise. The most comprehensive obit so far is by Charlie Radcliffe who was very close to Chris in the 1960s, had little contact with him for more than 30 years after that, then rekindled this intimate friendship seven years ago. Among the many interesting observations Charlie makes at The Void are the following:
“The Acid, published under the pseudonym of Sam by Vision Press this year, is as much a contribution to the politics of the new millennium as it is to psychedelic exploration… For Chris there was precious little contradiction between the one and the other and he saw The Acid as a rational and entirely logical development of his 60s and 70s political agenda… Chris continued his political life through the late 60s, before moving to India in 1969 to join Osho. Chris’ interesting account of this period of his life is in Osho (also by Sam!) His ‘retreat’ to India earned him the opprobrium of the ‘politically committed’ but a close reading of the book is enough to indicate that Chris never turned his back on his political convictions…”
Like Chariie, I can confirm that Chris remained ‘politically committed’ and that the revolutionary transformation of society was the focus of many of his conversations with me and a couple of other people I introduced him to. One time when I was rapping with Chris, he told me the reason he went to India was to finance the revolution. He journeyed east with the explicit intention of mailing dope back to London, so that this could be sold to raise money for political activities. Some gear was intercepted before the post office delivered it to its intended recipient, when Chris got wind of this he delayed his return home. He hadn’t planned on staying away from London as long as he did, but once the British authorities had marked his card, he faced a simple choice between living in India until the heat cooled off or being busted. This enforced stay in the east led Chris to an involvement with Buddhism and ultimately Osho. To the best of my knowledge, Charlie is right to say Chris left for India in 1969, but I would stress it wasn’t until the mid-seventies that he came across Osho (AKA Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). To clarify further, my impression is that Chris had a period back in London after his first Indian trip before returning there and involving himself with Osho.
While I was aware that Chris had a long term involvement with Osho, this wasn’t something that came up in my conversations with him. Nonetheless, Osho was a major part of Chris’ life and an obit appeared on the Sannyas News site on 17 May 2009. This post opens with the following observation: “The main founder of the Sannyasnews website, Swami Paritosh (Chris Gray), usually known as Pari, and who for writing purposes used the pseudonym “Sam”, died in the London Hampstead Marie Curie Hospice (Eden Hall) last Thursday morning (May 14th). He had put up a brave struggle with cancer over the last 12 months. He was 67.”
A few more posts about Chris’ death can be found on the History Is Made At Night, Boredom Is Always Counter-Revolutionary and Artosphere blogs. If you want to read Life of Osho by Chris Gray there is a free download available online. New and used paperback copies of Life of Osho by Sam (Sannyas, London 1997) are still readily available and carry the following International Standard Book Numbering: ISBN-10: 0953153401 and ISBN-13: 978-0953153404; since you can get a new copy for £10, avoid the used book dealers who are charging £25 and more for it. Although I’m not convinced Osho or any other guru is worth following, I still found this book really interesting for the overtly political reading Chris gives of Bhagwan’s teachings, and for the brief account he provides of his own ‘kamikaze’ drug smuggling of the early eighties. The other book Chris wrote as Sam, The Acid: On Sustained Experiment with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, or LSD, was officially published by Vision Press about six weeks ago but no copies appear to have been commercially distributed yet. The Acid carries the following International Standard Book Numbers: ISBN-10: 0956204902 and ISBN-13: 978-0956204905. I assume copies will become available in due course.
Christopher Nelson Gray, born 22 May 1942 in London; grew up in Crosby, Liverpool, and raised by his grandmother. Educated at Repton. Died in London on 14 May 2009.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Boredom Is Always Counter-Revolutionary, Buddhism, Charles Radcliffe, Charlie Radcliffe, Chris Gray, Christopher Gray, Christopher Nelson Gray, Crosby, drug smuggling, Eden Hall, Guardian, Hampstead, History Is Made At Night, India, King Mob, Life of Osho, Liverpool, London, Marie Curie Hospice, north London, Osho, Repton, Sam, Sannyas News, Situationist International, Situationists, Swami Paritosh, The Acid: On Sustained Experiment with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide or LSD, The Void, Vision Press
b, Mr Home has really got to you hasn’t he? His success writing about Situationist works clearly really pisses you off….
But you really are getting your resentful ideological knickers and union jack pants in a twist about nothing — who cares if S.Home did, or didn’t write such and such a book,did or didn’t do what he said he did ?
Who cares if he is toying with, subverting, using the system or playing along with its contradictions?
Who the f*** cares? Haven’t you got better things to do with your time? Lots of good books to read, friends to make, whatever.
Good luck ! There is a whole world out there to explore…..
Blimey!
Wow, I didn’t realize blogging was such a blood sport! With ‘Yo Momma’ insults and everything. No doubt there’s some personal history there. Great info on Chris and King Mob and some great links, especially johnnyvoid’s International Times link. However, I still have a few questions –
Why is it so important for Stewart Home to have written the Belle de Jour blog? Is there some significance that I’m missing if he did write it? Is there some sort of reward or prize if we can prove who in fact is the Belle? Does anyone actually care about this anymore?
Why does it matter that Felix Dennis is Jewish?
Did anyone send Ricardo some lysergic acid diethylamide? If not, Rick check out page 23 of the copy of Los Detectives Salvajes that will “magically” appear on your doorstep …
Why does b have a crush on Stewart Home? (and I mean that creepy, stalker-type crush.)
Why does b sound suspiciously like my girlfriend? (and if b is my girlfriend, I will take out the garbage LATER, ok.)
Well, I think that’s it for now …
@b: ‘Transpontine – have you written anything yet on how the rise of the “rave” culture was brought about by gangsters, to build up the market for their ecstasy? Is it too touchy a subject that they were (and are) Israelis?’
Yes, I did write recently about the role of gangsters in dance cultures:
http://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com/2009/02/club-uk-in-wandsworth-love-ecstasy-and.html
I think it is a bit more complex than dancing proles being manipulated by gangsters though. As for the Israeli connection I know nothing at all about this, would be interested in knowing more, have you written about it anywhere.
“As for the Israeli connection I know nothing at all about this, would be interested in knowing more, have you written about it anywhere.”
I agree, and I’d like to know more too.
Just did a quick search re: Israeli connection. Very interesting; I had no idea about this before. Here are a couple of links to articles I ran across:
From Jewish Journal -
http://www.jewishjournal.com/health/article/how_cookie_crumbled_20010803/
From Haaretz –
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280827&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
B…or Nick?… Shut up. Go and pester poor Rowan again. BdJ was not Showerhead’s trip.
BdJ was not Showerhead’s trip.
…………………………
?
They call me Stewart ‘Showerhead’ Home because of the scattershot effects of my prose. Berlin Underground magazine “Super! Bierfront” put it this way in a 1990s feature they ran on Neoism:
“Stewart Home. Wants to destroy the avant-garde, anarchist and occult scenes. Uses situationist tactics against the situationists. This non-stop producer is considered an egomaniac by all those he attacks: the KING MOB oldies Dave & Stuart Wise, cyber hippie Hakim Bey, all the other Neoists, pro-situ-bystanders like John Zerzan and Bob Black, members of the British literary establishment such as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie etc. There’s hardly a day on which this industrious hooligan doesn’t piss people off and spread false rumours for tactical reasons. After three years on Art Strike (1990-1993), Home sold both his archive and his bed to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For Home, one of the best things about his success as a provocative political pornographer is the fact that he now has a harem of seventeen year-old girlfriends.”
For an English translation of the full article go to:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/neoism/neobier.htm
And it is probably obvious to you Howling Wiz, but just in case it isn’t, Bdj = Belle de Jour!
This is the impact of a big-time recuperator like Home – young people who could be thinking and doing useful things feel they have “permission” from those whom they see having a good time in the media spectacle (which includes 99.999% of publishing) to say things like “long live bullshit” when they’re confronted with genuine social criticism… Home’s work is shit, fandom is shit, Bhagwanism is a lump of dogshit, and maybe just one or two people reading this might wise up some time in the next decade or two without thinking that anything to do with “communist critique” is deadly because it reminds them of artists (and yes, Home, you are a fucking artist from the top of your stupid haircut to the tips of your toes), posers, and…people who say “long live bullshit”.
Home has been involved in many anonymous and pseudonymous efforts, from “Wombat 92″ to “Crown Against Concubine”, from “Green and Brown Anarchist” to that stuff praising the Leninist party and going on about the Situationists that I can’t be bothered to look up, one of the aims of which was to wind up Alex Callinicos.
You know what the most pathetic thing is? It’s when you mention some of this to someone who’s in a scene that is being targeted, and they can’t get their heads round the idea that someone would do THAT to THEM. Or perhaps it’s when you mention it to someone who “vaguely” knows Home, has maybe met him five or ten times, who says no it can’t POSSIBLY be true, because they’re his close confidant and he’d definitely have told THEM. God almighty, the naivety of some people. Ain’t that right, Stewart?
But Home, some of us have been onto you for years. Not everyone is as stupid as your best-known opponents, whom you enjoy picking fights with, always to your own financial advantage, such as Larry O’Hara. Say what you like about LO’H (or I will: he is pathetically unable to comprehend the layers of disinformation that are apparent in the 911/77 “truth movement), but at least he isn’t in the fight with you for the money. He’s sincere.
I noticed that you cuntishly said the Wise brothers were “rude” to you in their material on King Mob. Aw diddums. You can give it but you can’t take it? You didn’t mention that as far back as your book Assault on Culture you were pouring shit on them, and a few years later you lyingly called them “entrepreneurs”. Imagine dirt like you calling someone else something like that!
And to think you used to live with someone who was a mate of theirs… Doubtless all the time gathering ammunition against these people whose integrity makes them a target for you and your posy art projects. The difference between you and Patti Smith is that you have access to proper radical stuff…which just makes you a more successful bastard in your recuperative work…
It has also been claimed I wrote the complete works of Shakespeare, but personally I don’t believe it.
Dear “b”,
could you please scan and email me (dave9_22@hotmail.com) the photo of Leonard Plugge with Charlie Radcliffe & Chris Gray? This I must see!!!
Thanks,
Dave.
from Dave Edwards (dave9_22@hotmail.com)
Dear Messrs “b” & this site’s webmaster,
I take it then that there never was a photo of Leonard Plugge with Chris Gray and Charlie Radcliffe?
Dave, I have no idea whether this photo exists but whether it does or doesn’t exist doesn’t really interest me. If the alleged photo exists one would need to know the context to make anything of it; it might – for example – have been faked using photoshop or whatever. But even if Chris Gray and Charlie Radcliffe were once in the same space as Plugge what does it mean? Nothing much in all probability. I once met Dave & Stuart Wise in a pub but didn’t learn who they were until after I left – I didn’t like them and had a political argument with them. What does that prove? Very little as far as I can see. “B” strikes me as a Trolling 2.0 type and if you look thought the comments here you can see s/he’s cut a very poor figure. The comments in relation to Foucault and Derrida on the Yvonne Rainer blog show s/he either hadn’t read or hadn’t understood that one properly, and one could go one and on. But why bother. S/he’s a troll. Which also means “B” might come on here and leave comments under all sorts of names, including of course yours, Dave Edwards.
As pseudonymous, scabrous and Jesuitical virtual screeds go, anyone would think this site was a wacky English-language mirror of Jean-Pierre Voyer’s “M. Ripley s’amuse” at http://pagesperso-orange.fr/leuven/ !!
It turns out Paul Sieveking’s piece on Chris was not for “The Guardian” but for “The Void” blog. That has been up online for a few weeks now: http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/chris-grey-rip-part-2/#comment-1507
I don’t know if the rumoured “Guardian” obit is just a rumour, or if it will appear at some point…
dave9_22@hotmail.com – for fuck’s sake – I’ve got the photo of Plugge with Radcliffe and Gray but it’s in one of about 25 boxes of, er, “archives” in my loft. I can’t be bothered to spend 2-3 days digging it out. I’m not exactly the only one around who knows of the role Plugge played. Email Charlie and ask him whether he knew Plugge if you want. That poser Barker knew him too.
Home – I’ve never posted anything anywhere about Foucault or Derrida. I’d have thought such wank (oh, I mean “criticising” it) was your department.
“Home – I’ve never posted anything anywhere about Foucault or Derrida. I’d have thought such wank (oh, I mean “criticising” it) was your department.”
Do I have to rephrase it for you dumbo? Here’s what I said: “The comments in relation to Foucault and Derrida on the Yvonne Rainer blog show s/he either hadn’t read or hadn’t understood that one properly, and one could go one and on.”
I do not say you posted comments about or even mentioned Foucault and Derrida, there were a series of comments about the blog and Foucault and Derrida and you were involved in that thread:
http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=1686#comments
You send me to sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Actually dimwit, I wasn’t involved in that thread. What on earth gave you that idea? Or are you just checking?
You said: “B” strikes me as a Trolling 2.0 type and if you look thought the comments here you can see s/he’s cut a very poor figure. The comments in relation to Foucault and Derrida on the Yvonne Rainer blog show s/he either hadn’t read or hadn’t understood that one properly, and one could go one and on.”
Maybe your writing ain’t as skilled as you think? Given that most of the contributors here are your dickhead fans, it’s obvious I’m going to cut a poor figure among such fools. But y’know, what if someone’s lurking who ain’t a fan? Eh? Or turned up here after searching on Gray stuff, even if your whole oeuvre and shtick makes them want to vomit? The Plugge info for one thing might be well appreciated.
“Actually dimwit, I wasn’t involved in that thread. What on earth gave you that idea?”
The server ID that is identical to yours (which I can see as admin); but I guess you’re the type of person who might claim that the secret state break into your pad while you’re out and come on here to leave comments.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Nope – wasn’t me.
Just found the following on the net —
“Stewart Home is a genius — if you don’t like his books I will follow you around and annoy you — forever. Starting now. ”
http://www.timeout.com/london/books/features/4312/1.html
7 comments Posted by Villlon on 02 May 2009 05:40
Stewart Home is a genius — if you don’t like his books I will follow you around and annoy you — forever. Starting now.
Thanks Howling Wiz, and either B is sharing their computer with someone else who is also commenting on here or s/he is suffering “black-outs”…. maybe it is one of his/her split-personalities….
I’m wearing my bikini for my bois. Hott!