She wore a string of flowers in her long hair and a floaty dress as her ethereal voice captivated an audience of half a million people at the legendary Woodstock festival.
And Licorice McKechnie’s mesmerising performance with The Incredible String Band at the most celebrated concert of the decade turned her into a sixties icon.
The Scottish band, in which McKechnie’s dreamy vocals were a crucial component, became an international sensation after the 1969 hippie festival and were hugely influential for years to come.
The Beatles were great fans, as were the Rolling Stones; Bob Dylan listed their October Song as one of his favorite ever tracks and the biggest rock band of the seventies, Led Zeppelin, later admitted that she and they had been a crucial inspiration.
Licorice, whose real name was Christina, appeared on nine Incredible String Band albums between 1967 and 1972, one of which Paul McCartney described as the ‘acoustic Sgt. Pepper’.
But then, some time in the late 1980s, McKechnie simply vanished.
Christina ‘Licorice’ McKechnie wore a string of flowers in her long hair and a floaty dress as her ethereal voice captivated an audience of half a million people at the legendary Woodstock festival
McKechnie became an international sensation after the 1969 hippie festival and were hugely influential for years to come. But then sometime in the 1980s she simply vanished
McKechnie’s dreamy vocals were a crucial component to the success of the hit 1960s Scottish band – The Incredible String Band
The legendary Woodstock music festival where The Incredible String Band were among the acts who performed
An aerial photograph of Woodstock Festival. Other acts that performed included Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix
Now the Daily Mail can reveal that Licorice McKechie is very much alive – if somewhat tetchy, and now lives in complete obscurity in Sacramento in the north of California
Of course reclusive pop stars are nothing new – there have been countless who have suddenly craved anonymity rather than fame – but McKechnie’s case was somewhat different: she seemed to disappear off the face of the earth.
Even her own family and husband had no idea where she had gone – and she stopped collecting the lucrative royalties the band’s album sales continued to generate.
The result was decades of speculation among fans and music enthusiasts about what had happened to the singer – and whether she was alive or dead.
One persistent rumour had her getting lost while hitchhiking alone in the Arizona desert.
But now, nearly 40 years after she first went missing, the Daily Mail has finally solved the biggest and longest running mystery in rock music history.
And the solution is…this rather unlikely grumpy older woman in a puffa coat smoking a cigarette outside a high-rise affordable housing block for the elderly.
Because, we can reveal, Licorice McKechie is very much alive – if somewhat tetchy, and now lives in complete obscurity in Sacramento in the north of California.
Her existence today is certainly a far cry from the heady days when she sang in sold-out arenas around the world.
Home today is a small 10th-floor, one-bedroom apartment in low-income sheltered accommodation for the elderly in a stark downtown high-rise.
On a chill and gloomy weekday November morning, she emerged hesitantly with the help of a walking aid to enjoy a smoke with just her thoughts for company.
She appeared deep in contemplation as she puffed away with her hair tucked beneath a knitted hat and scarf.
When a fellow smoker politely asked for a light for their cigarette, she snapped: ‘Leave me alone.’
Later, approached by our reporter, she responded to the name Likky – turning her head and flashing a stare – but firmly declined to comment on where she has been for the last four decades.
We launched our investigation into the true fate of Licorice McKechnie when her 80th birthday last month sparked a fresh round of publicity and speculation over her now notorious disappearance.
And when we finally located her, we discovered that, rather than her famous stage name, she now goes by her former marital name.
But with perhaps a residual nod to the quirkiness of her hippie era persona, she pronounces Christina to rhyme with ‘angina’ rather than ‘arena’.
This week the ex-husband Brian, 72, was astonished when told by the Daily Mail that his former wife had finally been tracked down.
‘Yeah, that’s her,’ he said when shown pictures of the woman he hadn’t seen since the 1980s.
Brian, who also lives in California, in Ventura, some 400 miles south of Sacramento, then struggled to sum up his shock at our discovery: ‘Wow…Wow…It’s been 40-something years..
‘I’m amazed that she’s still alive after all this time.’
As he examined our photographs, he then observed: ‘Her face looks like she’s had a tough life.
He went on: ‘She did not live a healthy life…She smoked all the time.
‘And she didn’t eat well either. She just ate a lot of donuts and coffee.
‘But she had a really strong will – when she made up her mind to just leave she did a good job of it.’
Another person who was astonished by our findings was McKechnie’s former brother-in-law in Scotland.
David Harding, 88, is related to the singer through marriage.
‘There are no contacts,’ he said at his home in Glasgow, of the missing singer who had been a bridesmaid at his wedding in 1962.
‘She removed herself from family life and chose another path.’
McKechnie left the Incredible String Band in 1972 and the group split up two years later
McKechnie existence today is certainly a far cry from the heady days when she sang in sold-out arenas around the world
David said he came to accept Licorice’s decision to cut herself off completely from her family – and from everyone else who knew her – and had made no great efforts to find her.
But Harding had suspected she was still alive somewhere in California Sacramento, saying his sons had at one stage attempted to find her, following what leads they could find – which led them to the possibility that she might be in Sacramento, the state capital.
McKechnie left the Incredible String Band in 1972 and the group split up two years later.
Like the other members, she had become immersed in the teachings of Scientology, the controversial and often bizarre religion founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and later espoused by celebrities like Tom Cruise.
After leaving the band, she stayed on in the US but shunned the spotlight, moving to Los Angeles before eventually becoming more or less a recluse, sinking into obscurity.
It’s unclear when precisely the last confirmed sighting was – but it seems to have been some time between 1987 and 1990.
Mr Harding last saw her sometime in the late 1980s when he had visited his mother-in-law in Edinburgh and was surprised that Licorice was there, visiting Scotland from America.
‘Frances’s mother begged me not to let Frances know that she had been in touch,’ he recalled. ‘Strange human behavior really.’
But that visit to Europe was presumably her last – and after returning to the US, she then apparently severed all contact with anyone she had hitherto known.
And then gradually, but increasingly loudly, family, friends and eventually fans began to wonder just what had happened to their beloved waif-like Licorice.
There were endless rumours – and false reports and dubious sightings – over the years.
The most recurring was that she had disappeared while hitchhiking in the Arizona desert in 1987 – and perhaps died there alone.
Others clung to the belief she was living ‘off grid’ somewhere in the United States.
Other reports – which we now know turned out to be closer to the truth – said that she was living in Northern California among homeless people as one of their number.
But as time passed, more and more concluded that wherever she had gone she must by now have died.
Former band member Rose Simpson summed up the uncertainty around her fate recently, saying: ‘She is either not alive – or not part of any society that relies on money.
‘I know people claim to know her and I have even been sent a supposed photo, but I can’t say I recognized her.’
Not recognising her is the same reaction among her neighbours today – none seem aware that they live in the same building as a famous singer who is the subject of global speculation.
The name she became famous under, Licorice McKechnie, – often affectionately shortened to Likky – came from a nickname derived from her habit of smoking hand rolled cigarettes using licorice flavoured paper continually
To them she is just an unassuming and not especially friendly woman they know only as ‘Christina’ – the only hint of her past being the lingering trace of her original Scottish accent.
One told the Daily Mail this week: ‘She’s very quiet and private.
‘She doesn’t go out much.
She mostly keeps to herself and is often difficult to get hold of.’
And indeed the mobile phone number linked to the intercom and routed to Christina’s apartment is disconnected.
Lambert – who had been at Woodstock and was a fan – met Licorice through Scientology and a mutual love of music. It’s so long ago that he can’t now recall whether this was in 1976 or 1977.
But he does remember that he and ‘Likky’ decided to marry within a couple of days of meeting.
Perhaps unsurprisingly in the circumstances, the union didn’t last – they split after just three-and-a-half-years.
He recalls now: ‘I had to leave. She wasn’t very stable. She needed professional help and I could not do it,’
McKechnie performs on stage in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1971
‘The more she gravitated towards Scientology and its answers for problems, the more difficult things became for her.
‘She heard voices, listening to things in her head that weren’t there.
‘She was starting to really lose her mind.’
But despite her deep-seated issues, he insists they remained close even after the divorce – which was wholly amicable with Licorice paying the $90 filing fee.
‘We were still pretty friendly at the end,’ he says. ‘Even during our divorce, we were friendly.
‘She really wanted to just leave everything, which was kind of amazing because she loved her friends.
‘The fact that she didn’t contact [us] just means that she really wants to have that firewall between herself and her past.’
He never forgot her though: ‘The ‘Likky’ saga is deeply etched in my world,’ he says.
Brian last saw her, he thinks, in 1983.
He doesn’t know for certain what happened to his troubled ex next – but believes she may have lived as homeless for a period on vacant lots in Los Angeles.
Then she drifted around taking occasional short term jobs as a waitress while never revealing her former fame to anyone.
And then he stopped getting any updates at all.
So what would he like to say to his ex wife if they could talk today?
With a spontaneous laugh, he says: ‘Where the hell have you been? The whole world’s been wondering where you are!’
‘And I would just make sure that she’s all right.’
Simpson, that former bandmate, previously wrote of McKechnie: ‘Whatever her troubles, she overcame them to be a glowing presence in many people’s imagination and a lot of real lives too.
‘She should be thought of for that, not made to carry a legacy of sadness. And she always was mysterious to me, even though we lived so close.’
And speaking in 2020, Simpson said: ‘I doubt if she would have chosen, as she got older like me, to entirely cut herself off from her family.
‘Even if she chose that as a young woman, age makes these things seem more precious and I think she would at least have been in contact.’
Meanwhile, there are said to be ‘significant’ unclaimed music royalties waiting for Licorice from her years with The Incredible String Band.
Licorice grew up in Edinburgh’s Gilmore Place and in her teens she began hanging around the local folk clubs and reading her poetry.
There was an early romance with influential Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch and even plans for them to marry – but those were abandoned when he travelled without her to Morocco in 1963.
McKechnie then became involved with another musician, Robin Williamson, a some-time flatmate of Jansch in Edinburgh.
It was Williamson and another local musician, Mike Heron, who later became the core of the Incredible String Band.
The Incredible String Band’s style is variously described as ‘psychedelic folk’ or ‘acid folk’ and they were known for their mystical songs about ‘far out’ subjects like amoebas or minotaurs.
By the time they recorded their second album in 1967 – The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion – Licorice, as she was then known, was contributing on vocals and percussion.
The following year Heron drafted in his then girlfriend, Yorkshire-born Rose Simpson, and the ‘classic’ line up was complete.
Together the four lived the hippie dream, finding remote rural properties in which to live as a commune.
In 1968 it was a farmhouse in Pembrokeshire, Wales. By 1969 they had decamped back to Scotland, to Innerleithen in Tweeddale.
When they were taken up by Joe Boyd of then fashionable Elektra Records, they had a well-connected manager and producer – and they came to be revered by many of the biggest music acts of the day, even if they never came close to matching their sales.
Though they never had chart success with singles, their influential album The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter was nominated for a Grammy in 1968.
And then came Woodstock in 1969.
The band toured extensively in the wake of that Woodstock exposure, packing out some of the most prestigious venues in the US, including the Fillmore auditoriums in both San Francisco and New York.
And in Britain they played the Royal Albert Hall and counted names as varied as Billy Connolly (himself once a name on the Scottish folk scene) and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams among their fans.
But while enjoying this increasing success three of the four – McKechnie, Williamson and Heron – were drawn into the teachings of Scientology.
They would go on to become highly influential recruiters for the movement, particularly in the UK, in the culturally febrile early 1970s when widespread LSD use, radical politics and interest in mysticism and fringe religions coalesced.
‘Stringheads’ – as devotees of the group were known – now lament that the Scientology years apparently heralded the band’s artistic decline and ultimate break-up in 1974.
By then, McKechnie had already begun to disappear from public view.
McKechnie in a puffa coat smoking a cigarette outside a high-rise affordable housing block for the elderly
She left the band in 1972 shortly after she and Williamson had ended their romance and shortly before meeting Lambert.
So enduringly popular are the band that there was even an evening devoted to them at London’s prestigious Queen Elizabeth Hall in September.
The name she became famous under, Licorice McKechnie, – often affectionately shortened to Likky – came from a nickname derived from her habit of smoking hand rolled cigarettes using licorice flavoured paper continually.
It seems that her fondness for smoking – unusual for an octogenarian – is the one strand of her former life that she still retains.
