Shadows: Shadows Of

[purchase]

I’ve written about Gong before, a couple of times, and mentioned them in passing. They are a band that I really enjoy, and nevertheless remain pretty obscure. You could probably get a doctorate in the band’s history—it has formed, splintered, reformed, renamed, and changed members more times than one can count. Nevertheless, there’s a website that tries to chronicle Gong's various changes and permutations (as well as other bands from the Canterbury Scene).

I got into Gong through its late 1970s-early 1980s incarnation as a fusion band led by Pierre Moerlen, featuring lots of mallet percussion. The original, spacy, psychedelic version of the band was less interesting to me—although there was brilliance, there was also lots of weird, hard to listen to stuff to wade through. For the most part, the Moerlen-led band was tight, had interesting songs with an unusual amount of percussion and, maybe most importantly, featured incredible musicians, including Allan Holdsworth on guitar. If you don’t know who Allan Holdsworth was (he passed away earlier this year), find his music on the Internet. Days before his death, a 12 CD box set of his solo albums from 1982-2003, entitled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever, was released. The title was taken from a proclamation on the cover of an issue of Guitar Player in 2008, and it isn’t an overstatement. That’s not to say that there aren’t other guitarists who changed the way guitar was played, but he’s certainly one of them. He was the favorite guitarist of Eddie van Halen; Tom Morello and Frank Zappa, among others, have cited him as an influence.

But the main reason that I’m going back to the Gong well for this theme, which has many possible topics, is that I recently had a chance to meet another of the musicians who played on this song, percussionist Mino Cinélu. Cinélu later played drums for Holdsworth, was in Weather Report, played with, among others, Pat Metheny, Peter Gabriel, Miles Davis, Sting, Kate Bush, Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis, and led his  own bands. Mino participated in a panel that I attended recently about copyright law and music, which was led and organized by my friend Heather--who makes her second appearance in SMM--and also featured prominent lawyers and a musicologist who have been involved in some of the most well-known music copyright cases in recent years. Although I’m a lawyer, that’s not my field, and it was fascinating.

Afterwards, we, of course, repaired to the bar for drinks, and I had a chance to chat with Mino, mentioning that I was a huge fan of Gong (particularly the one album of theirs that he appeared on), and Holdsworth, and had participated in an interview with Pierre Moerlen when he, and another formation of Gong, played at Princeton when I was a student. He couldn’t have been a nicer guy, and we’ve been in contact a few times since, most recently to confirm that he, in fact, performed in the live version of “Shadows Of” from the video above, because the Internet shockingly had conflicting information.

It was recorded at the Reading Festival in 1976, and featured Pierre Moerlen and his brother Benoit, also a percussionist, Holdsworth, bass player Francis Moze, percussionist Mirelle Bauer, woodwind player Didier Malherbe and Cinélu. Although the sound quality isn’t great, the performance is, despite the fact that it lacks the amazing acoustic guitar solo of the original, which was a rarity for Holdsworth (or, for that matter, Malherbe's great flute solo).

The Reading Festival that year was a prog-fest, although not exclusively. Other performers included Camel, Phil Manzanera/801, and Brand X. Other non-prog acts included AC/DC (listed in very small type), Black Oak Arkansas, Rory Gallagher (both in very big type), Ted Nugent, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. And, as they say, many, many more.

Leftovers: Ste*--Prog Rock Guitarists Steve Howe, Steve Hackett and Steve Hillage

Yes: Mood For A Day  
[purchase Fragile by Yes]

Steve Hackett: Ace Of Wands
[purchase Voyage of the Acolyte by Steve Hackett]

Steve Hillage: Castle In The Clouds/Hurdy Gurdy Man (Live)
[purchase Live Herald by Steve Hillage]

Ste* was one of the odder themes we had in 2016, and in response, I wrote about brilliant guitarist Steve Tibbetts, a relatively obscure musician whose music, as I said, “exists somewhere in the never particularly commercial intersection of jazz fusion, world music and ambient music.” Thinking about our Leftovers theme, I realized that I was aware of three more guitar virtuosi whose first name is Steve. So, I figured, why not write a little about each of them, in reverse order of their fame.

Despite the fact that all three of them are remarkable guitarists, and have continued to make music for years, I pretty much stopped following their careers years ago. Whether it was a change in their music, or changes in my tastes, or, more likely, a combination of both, I’m really not knowledgeable about their work from after the 1980s, which may well be very good. I do still enjoy the music that they made back in the day.

Steve Howe (who was already the subject of a Ste* post), of course, is best known for his work with Yes. Born in 1947 in North London, he made his first recording, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” in 1964 with the Syndicats, and played in a number of other bands, including Tomorrow and Bodast. Check out this Bodast tune, “Nether Street,” part of which was later used in Yes’ “Starship Trooper.” After passing on the chance to join the Nice and Jethro Tull, once it was clear that Bodast was not going to get a deal, he agreed to join Yes, replacing Peter Banks. Howe’s eclectic influences, including classical, jazz, and rock helped to create the distinctive Yes sound during their best and most iconic period.

He left Yes when it broke up in 1981, wasn’t asked back for the reformation of the band (so, he didn’t play on “Owner of a Lonely Heart”), and reunited with most of the “classic” Yes lineup in Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe. He has participated in some, but not all, of the various Yes lineups over the years. I really stopped listening to Howe after he left Yes the first time. I never really paid much attention to his solo albums (including the ones he made while still in the band), or any of the later Yes efforts that he appeared on. There were a few good songs on the first Asia album, but I felt that the band was less than the sum of its parts, and his project with Steve Hackett, GTR, also failed to interest me. Howe continues to record with Yes and in a jazz trio featuring his son on drums, and to perform.

Steve Hackett, Howe’s GTR bandmate, is best known for his work with Genesis. Born in 1950 in central London, he was a self-taught guitarist. After gigging with a few bands, in 1970, he joined Quiet World with his brother John, a flutist, and appeared on their only album, before leaving the band. Hackett put an ad in Melody Maker magazine for musicians "determined to strive beyond existing stagnant music forms." Peter Gabriel answered the ad because his band, Genesis, had lost their original guitarist, Anthony Phillips. Like Howe, Hackett wasn’t the first guitarist in the band which made him famous, but was part of the band’s best, and best known, lineup.

Over time, Hackett began to feel marginalized by Genesis which gradually put less of his music on its albums. After the tour supporting the Wind And Wuthering album in 1977, Hackett left the band. I followed Hackett’s solo work for a while. His first solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte, recorded while he was still in Genesis, featured the band's drummer Phil Collins, who also sang on one song (before he was the lead singer of Genesis), and bassist Mike Rutherford, along with John Hackett, and is probably a minor prog rock classic. I was also a big fan of 1979’s Spectral Mornings, and continued to listen to, and enjoy Hackett’s solo work, to a somewhat diminishing degree, through the mid-1980s.

One of Hackett’s big problems is that he is a great guitarist and a bad singer. So, when he writes songs with lyrics, he either has to bring in outside vocalists with varying success, or sings himself, usually with the assistance of significant processing, and mostly unsuccessfully. After that, I again pretty much lost track of Hackett’s career—occasionally listening to some of his studio and live Genesis “revisited” work, but ignoring most of his varied output, which has ranged from classical, to world music, to blues, to prog and rock. Hackett also continues to record, as a solo artist and with others, and to tour as a solo act, and with a mostly Genesis-based show.

Steve Hillage, the youngest and least well-known of the trio of Steves, was born in 1951 in northeast London. Hillage played in a number of bands as a teenager, a couple of which even recorded and released albums. While attending university in the Canterbury area starting in 1969, Hillage began to play with other musicians and bands in the Canterbury scene. In 1971, he formed Khan, which released one album of psychedelic prog, before breaking up. Hillage then joined Kevin Ayers’ band before becoming a member of Gong in 1973, as the band was starting work in its “Radio Gnome” trilogy. But when Gong inevitably disintegrated, Hillage began a solo career.

I was introduced to Hillage while at WPRB, almost certainly from hearing his great live, spacy cover of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” from the 1979 album Live Herald, which led me to the rest of his solo work. I will admit that my immersion into the Gong world focused mostly on the later, Pierre Moerlen-led albums which were almost entirely Hillage-free, and it was only much later that I spent any time listening to the bizarre Daevid Allen era band’s eclectic psychedelia that featured Hillage.

Just as I was getting into Hillage’s music, he began to move away from the prog rock guitar heroics that I liked, and into ambient dance music, which I didn’t, so I basically stopped paying attention to his career after the late 70’s. Over the years, Hillage produced albums for a variety of acts, including Simple Minds (pre-Breakfast Club fame) and continues to focus on performing and recording dance music under the name System 7 and Mirror System with his long time musical and personal partner, Miquette Giraudy. He also occasionally participates in Gong reunions. And, for some reason, he appeared on this Elton John cover “sung” by William Shatner.

I’d love to be able to tie this up with some clever ending, but like a post-Thanksgiving turkey, cranberry and stuffing sandwich, it is sometimes better just to be happy that things work together, without overthinking why.

Suites and Medleys: Supermarket

Pierre Moerlen’s Gong: Supermarket
[purchase]

Great, another opportunity for me to reach into my pretentious prog rock collection and dredge up another long-winded suite. Well, I sort of went there, but not exactly. Bear with me for a bit, for some exposition/history about some obscure, but interesting music. I’ll keep it short, because you can easily find more detail on the Internet if you want—especially because this is the kind of music that has long fascinated rock snobs and obsessives.

We start with the “Canterbury Scene” of the late 1960’s-70’s, centered around a group of musicians with some connection to Canterbury, England. The music is a mix of jazz, rock, prog rock, and general spaciness, and the musicians seem to create new bands, with different combinations, on a daily basis. I’d hazard a guess that various mind expanding substances were also involved.

Probably the most famous band to be considered part of the scene is Soft Machine. A founding member of that band, Daevid Allen, an Australian, and early “hippy”, is refused reentry to England in 1967 due to a visa issue, so he stays in France and forms a band called Gong. (Aside--and there are many to be had with this crowd—one brief replacement for Allen in Soft Machine is Andy Summers, who later becomes the guitarist for a somewhat popular band, The Police).

Gong is, basically, insane. Spacy, jazzy, crazy music, the band members adopt pseudonyms like Bloomdido Bad de Grasse and create a band mythology with characters named Zero the Hero, the Octave Doctors, and Flying Teapots. Remember, this was the 1970’s.

The band is a revolving door of musicians, including a brilliant, classically trained French drummer and percussionist named Pierre Moerlen, who joins, leaves, returns, ultimately takes over leadership of the band and moves it toward somewhat more conventional jazz-rock. Over time, the various members of Gong create a series of ever shifting spinoff bands, usually with the word “Gong” in the name; the one led by Moerlen becomes known, cleverly, as Pierre Morelen’s Gong. If you are interested in more detail on the Gong family tree and their inspired looniness, there is way more information than you need at this website: [Planet Gong]

As I said, Moerlen is an incredible percussionist, and his version of the band focuses on more conventional late ‘70s fusion, but with an emphasis on mallet percussion (vibraphone, xylophone, marimba, etc.). In my book, as a drummer, he is in the same league as Bruford, a subject of an earlier post, and who also spent a brief period in Gong. Alan Holdsworth, who played guitar in Bruford’s bands, also played with Moerlen.

The subject of this post is supposed to be Suites or Medleys, and the Pierre Moerlen’s Gong album Time is the Key, opens with a four track suite. At WPRB in 1980, we were big fans of these guys, and arranged to bring them to campus for a concert that was pretty amazing. My daughter still wears the t-shirt. We got to interview the band, which included guitarist Bon Lozaga, a very talented player, who was a Holdsworth disciple, and strong bassist Hansford Rowe. One or both of them lived in New Jersey, and would call the station occasionally, and we supported one of Lozaga’s projects, Boji. (Another aside—I just found a download of a Boji gig from 1981 at Trenton’s City Gardens. Here’s the opening song, and I’m pretty sure that is me doing the intro. Which shocked the hell out of me.) Boji: Katalpan Rise

I think during the interview, Moerlen said that he wrote the first side of the album on the vibraphone, and the other on the drums. Or maybe I read that somewhere, but the sound of the two sides is very different. I have linked to the third track from the suite on side one, “Supermarket,” which is fun, and playful, and has a great vibe solo. It is a little New Age-ish and sounds a little like Mike Oldfield (the “Tubular Bells” guy), which is not surprising, since Moerlen toured regularly with Oldfield. If you can track down a copy of Time is the Key, I think you will enjoy it. It isn’t the best Gong album, or even the best of the Pierre Moerlen led Gong albums (I’m a fan of Expresso II, but a case could be made for Gazeuse a/k/a Expresso), but I still like it.

Moerlen retired his version of Gong not too long after they appeared at Princeton, but tried to revive it later, with other musicians and little success. Lozaga and Rowe performed and recorded for a while as Gongzilla, creating another branch on the Gong tree. Unfortunately, Moerlen died in 2005, in his 50’s, of natural causes, ending the career of an unappreciated artist.