*new* Mark Nearly, Watchfield Festival, Robert Woodside and Datura.

The following is a transcript from a series of taped interviews I did with my old good friend Steve Andrews from Cardiff in 1996, which formed the basis of The Last of the Hippies. These stories never appeared in the book.

I met Mark Nearly in 1971. Poncho, long Mark Bolan type frizzy hair. Bangles, and all that, called himself a poet. Had a poetry book out called Lilting Love, which his father had paid for. Dropped out of Oxford University. Got more and more of a bum, always tapping people for cigarettes, drinks, etc. Used to classify people according to how he was using them. He'd use people for accommodation, use people for sex, different things. Any girls that he was ever with were used for some purpose. more>>

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Illustration by Eldad Druks - www.druksgraphics.com

Some press reviews for Last of the Hippies

'Tony Blair was. Half the Cabinet were. And so was your dad, probably. But these days, original hippies are hard to find. Despite the flares, hennaed hands and cheesecloth revival of recent years, only an ashtray-full of die-hards remain. Now C.J. Stone has endeavoured to expose them - and himself at the same time. A professional drop-out for the latter half of his 45 years, Stone's new book, Last of the Hippies, traces the movement to its genesis.' The Times

'A touching memoir .... Stone writes with intelligence, wit and sensitivity about being a working-class, belated hippie who has been hanging out with assorted no-hopers in places like Cardiff and Birmingham. This is a book written from within the hippie phenomenon by someone looking sceptically out.' Times Literary Supplement

'Ambivalence rather than embarrassment is what fuels this engagingly candid memoir ... Much as he likes to protest his disillusion, Stone's commitment to an underfunded life spent in squats, at free festivals and Green Gatherings blazes, or flickers, at least, off every page.' Sunday Times

'In a converted ambulance, Stone traverses a refreshingly uncool landscape (Birmingham, Hull) digging out friends from a quarter of a century ago. They are his counter-cultural characters, but now they are living in council houses surrounded buy pictures of crop circles.' Independent

'There must be reasons why no-one, not even their mothers, likes hippies. It's not their horrible hair or their vile clothes or their dreadful taste in music. It's not even their aversion to soap. The reasons they're a species in decline are their pride in not making an effort, in existing in suspended animation. They defy time, but time has the last laugh, and it's running out for the hippies ... C.J. is surprisingly engaging for a self-confessed hippie. Last of the Hippies is something of a diary of his life from the day he decided to grow his hair (centre parting not optional). You've got to love him just for the way he confesses from the off that the prospect of free love was what really sold it to him.' Big Issue

'Hippies - a word conjuring up a cool, far-out generation, beads and tin bells jangling around their necks, flowers in their tangled hair, the sweet pungency of joss sticks everywhere. Everyone knows, or knew, one - no one wanted their children to grow up to be one. But Where Are They Now? ... Last of the Hippies is a sometimes sad, sometimes funny-whimsical look at a generation.' Yorkshire Post.