Philip Norman on the 60s: ‘I never took holidays because every day was like one’

As London’s V&A prepares to stage an exhibition assessing the cultural impact of the late 1960s, the Beatles biographer reflects on his experience of the time

• The revolutionary artists of the 60s’ colourful counterculture

When the 1960s began, I was in the sixth form of a run-down private school on the Isle of Wight with no prospect of going to university and no thought that my future could be any less miserable and monotonous than my past. When they ended – literally, in December 1969 – I was on tour with Eric Clapton.

In those days before interviewers were dogged by protective PRs, I travelled with Clapton and his band (soon to metamorphose into Derek and the Dominos), hung out with them between gigs and watched every show from the wings. At the back of the stage, unnoticed by their audience, stood a bearded extra guitarist in a buckskin jacket and Stetson hat. It was George Harrison, whom Clapton had invited on the tour to escape the trauma of the Beatles’ breakup and get used to playing live again after years shut away in the recording studio. Sixties memories like that can still make me close my eyes and whistle through my teeth.

Related: 1960s revolutions to feature in major exhibition at the V&A

Under Godfrey, life was a constant round of champagne parties and dinners and lunches at his favourite restaurants

Related: Paul McCartney: The Biography by Philip Norman – review

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