When Cambridge teacher John Gerard abandons all to sing with an avant-garde rock group, his ailing Catholic mother is less than delighted. When she sadly dies, her house becomes a commune for John and friends. His increasingly experimental life-style is soon adorned by live-in girlfriend Sarah, rather more than the bit of skirt he at first takes her for. When the band splits on the last day of recording, our hero, child as much of the Middle Ages as of the waning sixties, must choose between slinking back to his old career, and striking out in even more adventurous directions.