The Free Spirit

Domestic Storm, 1968 (Part Three)

"All muted and misty, so drowsy now. I'll take what sleep I can. I know that I miss you but I don't know where I stand..."

On the first day of September, the Noble Steeds released their most renowned album, St. Eliud's Trinity, which enhanced the psychedelic sound of the day. I had helped arrange many of their songs, alongside Elton Macfadyen and Ginger McAllistor, as well as singing with Ginger on 'Once I Had A Sweetheart', and even helped them name the album. They didn't have a name picked out until June, before my own album had come out. "Well, I called mine that'll be released soon 'Dog Rose' because the dog rose is the national flower of Romania, and I am Romanian by birth," I said to the five members of the Noble Steeds as they sat around coming up with titles.

"I didn't know you was Romanian," Charlie Williams, the Poplar lad that I had introduced to the band back in 1966, said to me in his Cockney accent. Charlie Williams was a very handsome young man with long brown hair, a beard and yellow tinted circle-rimmed glasses that were more for fashion rather than aiding his vision. He often dressed rather extravagantly, and is said to have been the diva inspiration for Freddie Mercury later on by the man himself.

"I was born there quite a while ago," I said to him. "Anywho, perhaps you lot should come up with a title that discusses the Noble Steeds' roots. You lot are Welsh, aren't you?"

"Elton and I are, but not the rest of them," Ginger replied sweetly.

"We go' our star' out in Cardiff though," Murphy chimed in in his Scottish brough. "I migh' no' be Welsh, bu' the Steeds are a Welsh band."

"It's kind of leaving out Charlie and James, though, isn't it?" Ginger asked the group.

"Not really, we kind of joined in a bit late, didn't we?" said James Knight, who was a West Ender. James had pin straight dirty blonde hair cut in a longer version of the Beatles' famous haircut from 1964 and he wore thick-rimmed glasses similar to those of Peter Asher's. he was born into a wealthy family and tended to dress more on the stylish side of hippie fashion, as opposed to Charlie's often garish costumes.

"All righ', then... Wha' are some Welsh symbols?" asked Murphy to the group.

"The flower is the Daffodil, but we already did that in 1965 with Daffodils," said Ginger, referring to the Steeds' last album with Eccleston back in 1965 called Daffodils.

"Oh, right, I kind of forgot about that one," said Elton. "The first part of 1965 is a bit of a blur to me, so pretty much everything with Eccleston in it."

"Oh, be nice," Ginger said. "There's a dragon on our flag."

"We can't call our album something about dragons, that isn't very psychedelic," said James, who wasn't exactly in tune with psychedelia outside of being a drummer in a psychedelic band.

"The saint of Wales is St. Eliud," said Elton, and that gave Ginger an idea.

"I like that... and if we're looking back at our roots... Three of us are original members of the band... What about..." she began, and Elton finished her thought.

"St. Eliud's Trinity?" he asked, and Ginger smiled.

"That's the one," she said. And so that became the album that went down in history as the one Noble Steeds album that many say was one of history's all time greatest albums, and I proudly wrote a few songs for it. I wrote 'I Don't Know Where I Stand', 'Further Reflections' and 'Time Will Show The Wiser' for the Noble Steeds, while Elton and Ginger provided the lyrics for the rest of the songs that weren't folk songs, like 'Lyke-Wage Dirge', a traditional old English ballad, and 'Once I Had a Sweetheart', another English ballad. Not to toot my own horn, but the songs that they wrote didn't quite have as strong of an impact on their listeners as the ones that I wrote did. Perhaps it was because news of my speaking out against censorship of the word 'pregnancy' and all of its forms on television was still fresh, as well as news of my participation in protests against war, inequality and more. I was certainly popular among the young, and hated among the old.