University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1970 Seattle Helix: An underground looks at the times Howard Aubrey Mills The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Mills, Howard Aubrey, "Seattle Helix: An underground looks at the times" (1970). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 5035. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/5035 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SEATTLE HELIX: AN UNDERGROUND LOOKS AT THE TIMES By Howard A. Mills B*S„, Northwest Missouri State College, 1 Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts UNIVERSITY OF-MONTANA Approved by: Chairman, Boarc(>6f Examiners ^ , CjdL. Dea*f Graduate School UMI Number: EP40499 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. DissertafkH* ftMWsnf UMI EP40499 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 £-JkO-Ho TABLE OF. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE ................... iii I. THE UNDERGROUND PRESS: REVOLUTIONARY MEDIUM OF THE. 1960'S ... ............. 1 II. ANATOMY OF THE HELIX . 12 III. THE "TURNED ON" GENERATION . ..................... 21 IV. A SPIRITUAL MESSAGE FOR THE TIMES . ............. 40 V. THE NEW SEXUAL MORALITY .......... 63 ■■VI.., THE PEOPLE'S PAPER .. .............. 79 VII. THE REGRETTABLE W A R ....................... .. 99 VIII. THE NEW LEFT AND THE SEEDS OF REVOLUTION . 117 AFTERTHOUGHTS ...... ... ............... 164 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................... 170 Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind.— What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy, but he has also work of his own appointed to him.--Thus all things wax and roll, onwards— arts, establishments, opinions; nothing is ever completed, but completing. — Thomas Carlyle PREFACE In a drab, former coin shop at 4526 Roosevelt Way on the evening of March 22, 196?, the underground press came to Seattle. Since early February when the San Francisco intersection of Haight and Ashbury was becoming a household word, members of the Free University in Seattle had talked of starting a paper something like the Berkeley Barb. Among — j— those envisioning a Seattle underground were three carry­ overs from the beatnik era— Paul Sawyer, Paul Dorpat and Lorenzo Milam. Twenty-one-year-old Walt Crowley, long-time Helix writer and illustrator and the paper’s current editor replacing Dorpat in July 1969, described them as "highly charged, very creative individuals, whose,artistic aliena­ tion separated them from established society. Sawyer, then a Seattle Unitarian minister, and Milam, who would later start a Seattle beatnik radio station., helped Dorpat push the idea of an underground paper beyond the brainstorm stage. More than anything else., Dorpat Ts indefatigable desire to publish the paper probably carried the plan to its final stages. A dream was coming true and the underground was about to become a reality. The next task was to adopt a "*Walt Crowley, interview at the Id Bookstore, Seattle, September 5 > 1969- iv name. Finally, after spurning names like "Swamp Fly” and "Peeping Fred,” the word helix popped up. And, as Crowley put it: "Since the name Helix satisfied no one, it yaa immediately•hailed by everyone as the perfect.compromise.n2 With Dorpat as editor, the 2,500 copies of the first edition of Helix were promptly bought at 15 cents each. Circulation mushroomed to 16,000 by late spring, 196?,. when it. was rumored that migrant hippies from. Haight.-Ashbury were to "invade" Seattle.. When the summer arrived and the hippies didn’t , Helix circulation began to ebb.. It looked for a while as if the paper might not thrive without the antici­ pated hippie subculture. The staff los.t enthusiasm and the once-ebullient layout seemed to lose its sparkle. Sales tumbled through the fall until they finally stabilized at 5,000 in early winter. Anxiety and skepticism grew among the staff, it knew its paper was in the doldrums and that the future looked grim. Somehow— perhaps due in part to Dorpat’s tenacity-- Helix survived and lived to celebrate a first anniversary, but not without undergoing striking changes. By the spring of 196S, Helix was no longer solely a spontaneous journalis­ tic and artistic oracle.. The people behind the paper were aware of their powers as a journalistic force, and with this 2Crowley, "Second Anniversary: A Vivisection in Celebration of Life," Helix, March 20, 1969, p. 14. new awareness they felt, a sense of renewed responsibility. Then came the Chicago riots during the summer of 1963. From these disturbances a social mood evolved, triggering in Helix key innovations that established the paper as a volatile political organ. According to C r o w l e y ”Psyehe- delic propaganda in Helix was replaced with polemic and trips had to compete with facts. For the first time Helix .joined in the organization game and became something of a political force, within and beyond the left.”^ Crowley contends Helix is a psychodrama, not a newspaper: MWhat you see every week is merely a by-produet of a larger process. Helix is a highly charged gestalt, an : i integrated force field generated by a constellation of powerful and hungry egos,"^ In the following pages, this ^highly charged ges­ talt*’ will be reviewed and analyzed to determine how the ”constellation of powerful and hungry egos” sees itself and the world. After having been intrigued by ”hip” papers for some time,.I decided during the summer of 196# to do a thesis on the underground- movement. Warren J„ Brier, dean of the Montana School of Journalism and my committee adviser, liked the idea, but suggested I narrow the topic lest I get 3Ibid., p. 15. Vlbid. vi embroiled in more than I could handle. Heeding this advice, I headed for Seattle during spring break in March 1969, visited the Helix office, and.talked to Dorpat about the possibility of doing the thesis on his paper. He agreed and I proceeded to orient myself to the- task. During the six days I stayed in. Seattle.;, I watched as the March 26 issue was-made up (an all night ritual each Tuesday), visited the Wallingford DistrictOutlook offices (neighborhood newspaper at 42nd. and Woodlawn where Helix rents IBM typewriters.),,, and .got acquainted with the staff . When_I returned to Missoula for spring quarter, I brought with me all 63 issues of the two-year-old paper. That quarter I began to index the papers and to plan the thesis. During September, 19^9, I again visitqd the Helix office for five days.. That time I observed .part of the work on the September 4 issue, looked in on thb IBM’s again, picked up summer back issues and talked with staff members. That visit tied up loose ends from the earlier pne and .. culminated in lengthy interviews with Crowley find the Helix- drama and film critic, Roger Downey. The philosophies of these and other Helix writers. poets, artists and photographers will be described in the following chapters. No thesis is completed without the cooperation of ' many persons. My thanks, especially, to the Helix staff members .who were generous with their time and energy. And, I owe a great deal t© my committee members, Dean Brier, vii Robert C. McGiffert and Gordon M. Browder, for their help throughout the completion of the text. CHAPTER 1 THE UNDERGROUND PRESS: REVOLUTIONARY . MEDIUM OF THE 1960*S. The, tabloids known today as underground newspapers began in 1956 with the Greenwich Village weekly, The Village Voice. Until the advent of the Los Angeles Free Press in 1964, The Voice was the country’s only regularly published anti-establishment newspaper speaking for the *hip genera­ tion.“ Though it spoke well for the beatniks .{“hippies* of the 1950*s}« The Voice today seems almost “straight* compared with the many undergrounds that have: sprung up since the hippie movement caught hold. Seeking a diversity of readers, The Voice became a composite of orthodox and radical philosophies. Although the undergrounds vary in appearance and content, they manifest striking similarities. Usually tabloids, they may contain from four to more than 30 pages and may appear in black .and white.or color. Layouts often are intricate.and- may exhibit an array of imaginative . photomontages and/or freehand art work. Printing procedures range from simple mimeographed copy,to elaborate photo- offset processes. The Wall Street Journal has noted; “In Los Angeles, anyone can run off 5,000 copies of an eight- page paper .at a. local offset print shop for about $U0. Ad revenue at the /L.AT7 Free Press is about $5,000 a week, 2 two-thirds of it from national advertisers, particularly phonograph record companies.”^ For those reasons plus an abundance of volunteer labor, few undergrounds have failed for financial reasons. In the traditional sense, there is nothing very' underground about the underground press. Like the orthodox media, ”hip” papers are hawked on street corners and mailed without incident.