Counterculture of the 1960s of Timothy Leary to "Turn on, tune in, drop out", hoped to change society by dropping out of it. Looking back on his own life (as a Harvard professor) prior to 1960, Leary interpreted it to have been that of "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis ... like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots." As members of the hippie movement grew older and moderated their lives and their views, and especially after US involvement in the Vietnam War ended in the
Star Turn on 45 (Pints) Edwards, who had previously appeared in the London performance of "Hair", had a brief career as a solo singer in the late sixties and early seventies, and then moved into song writing and production, and was a co-writer of "Right Back Where We Started From", a UK No. 8 hit, and US No. 2, for Maxine Nightingale. Edwards' experiences of performing at affiliated working men's clubs in North East England, early in his career, was part of the inspiration for Star Turn. Cummings is played by Colin Horton Jennings, who had sung and performed with the groups The Greatest Show