Gong Revised and Updated
Description
Every now and then a band comes along that defies convention, refuses to be pigeon-holed, thumbs its nose at comfy predictability and blows raspberries at commercial wisdom. That band is Gong. From 1970 to the present day, Gong have ploughed a unique musical furrow - part progressive rock, part spacey psychedelia, part proto-punk, ambient trance, drum 'n' bass and absurdist political performance art.
In this revised edition, long-time fan Kevan Furbank examines all the Gong albums from Magick Brother in 1970 to 2023's Unending Ascending and chronicles the stories behind each recording. He examines the songwriting, arrangements and mythology that inspired each track, with new insights from, amongst others, the current fantastic Gong line-up, bassist Mike Howlett, violinist Graham Clark and guitarist Josh Pollock.
...He salutes the many great musicians who have passed through Gong in the last 50-odd years, including guitar hero Steve Hillage, drummer Pierre Moerlen, flute and sax maestro Didier Malherbe and, of course, whimsical visionary and Gong founder Daevid Allen. The author also discusses the off-shoots of the Gong family tree - including Mother Gong, Gongmaison and Pierre Moerlen's Gong.
If you have never heard any Gong, this book is the perfect introduction. If you have, you will want to go back and revisit the glorious music this band has made.
Now happily retired, Kevan Furbank was Managing Editor of Reach Ireland, publishers of the Irish Daily Mirror and the Irish Daily Star and a journalist on local and national newspapers for more than 40 years. He has published books on local history and written stories, articles and columns on practically every subject under the sun. This is his fifth book for Sonicbond. His music tastes encompass prog, rock, folk and jazz and, in his spare time, he likes to pretend he can play, guitar, bass, ukulele, bouzouki and keyboards. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Northern Ireland.
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Content
Magick Brother (1970)
Personnel
Daevid Allen: guitar, bass, vocals
Gilli Smyth: space whisper
Didier Malherbe: flute, soprano saxophone
Rachid Houari: drums, percussion
Additional personnel
Barre Phillips: contrabass on 'Rational Anthem (Change The World)' and 'Princess Dreaming'
Earl Freeman: contrabass on 'Ego', piano on 'Gong Song'
Burton Greene: piano on 'Ego'
Dieter Gewissler: contrabass on 'Mystic Sister, Magick Brother' and 'Gong Song'
Tamsin Smyth: voices on 'Mystic Sister, Magick Brother' and 'Princess Dreaming'
Recorded September and October 1969 at Studio Eta and Studio Europa Sonor, Paris
Producers: Jean Georgakarakos, Jean Luc Young
Executive Producer: Pierre Lattes
Engineers: Dominique Blanc-Francard (Studio ETA), Jean Francois Baudet (Studio Europa Sonor)
Label: BYG Actuel
Released: March 1970
Highest chart positions: Uncharted
Running time: 43:52
Current edition: Snapper SNAP199CD (2004)
What's interesting about Gong's debut album is that it arrived with virtually all the band mythology intact. According to the Planet Gong website, Allen had a vision back in 1966 in which he believed he was ...
... an experiment being supervised by intelligences far beyond his normal level of awareness, that he is later to call the Octave Doctors, seeing himself on stage in front of a large rock festival audience and experiencing a connection with them that had the quality of intense LOVE, while at the same time being surrounded by an enormous cone of etheric light.
The Soft Machine was his first attempt to create a band that could fulfil his aims, but Daevid thought it lacked spiritual integrity - Gong would be his own creation that would reconnect him with his original vision. But he was also canny enough to realise that taking the whole thing too seriously would be a career-limiting mistake, that his philosophical and political points might be better received coated with liberal helpings of whimsy and absurdity.
As well as being a poet and musician, Allen was also a talented artist - the Pot Head Pixies, with little propellers twirling about on top of their pointy heads, came out of cartoon sketches he and Gilli had made. Other ideas came from philosophy and religion - the Flying Teapot a clear reference to the argument by philosopher Bertrand Russell against people making unfalsifiable claims; the 'search for self-understanding' part of many spiritual beliefs. Tea is, of course, a slang word for marijuana but, in Allen's whimsical world, also meant tea.
Much has been made about the influence of Pink Floyd's original frontman and main composer Syd Barrett and there are indeed some similarities, not least in their raw but inventive guitar work and the fact that Syd was singing about gnomes in 1967, creating fairy tale and nursery-rhyme images with psychedelic wordplay. Allen did that too but, unlike Barrett, he always made sure there was meaning behind the madness.
The mythology really only makes one musical appearance on 'Magick Brother' but is more prevalent in Allen's entertaining and extensive illustrations in the gatefold sleeve. There you will find the pixies, Captain Capricorn, Fred the Fish (the one with the chip on his shoulder) and much cosmic explanation of Gong wisdom. Even if you are not a vinyl junkie, it's worth seeking out the original gatefold for the artwork alone (although be prepared to fork out up to £150!).
Magick Brother is pretty much a Daevid and Gilli production with a bit of help from Didier Malherbe, the sax and flute playing hermit from Majorca, and Rachid Houari, a mad Moroccan drummer from the backing band of French pop star Claude Francois, who co-wrote the original French lyrics of 'My Way'. Bassist Christian Tritsch, another Francois band member, was also recruited but didn't join the sessions in time so Allen plays all the bass parts. The sound was fleshed out with help from three musicians who were also recording for the BYG label, plus occasional Gong collaborator Dieter Gewissler and Gilli's daughter Tamsin from her first marriage.
The material consists of songs Daevid and Gilli had been working on during their stay in Deya but are all credited to Gilli, apparently for legal reasons. It is very clear they are mainly Allen compositions - Gilli's contribution was probably mostly lyrical. Many of them have a simple structure with words that are pretty standard for protest songs at the time, with attacks on 'big, bad' businessmen and exhortations to change the world. They include a track originally recorded as a demo by the Banana Moon Band, the somewhat politically incorrect 'Pretty Miss Titty'.
Contrary to popular belief, the album wasn't recorded on the sound channel of a movie camera - Gong used proper studios in Paris with eight-track equipment - but there is certainly a lo-fi feel, aided and abetted by a guitar sound that's a bit hollow and, occasionally, not quite in tune! The same can be said for some of Gewissler's double bass bowing, while Daevid's playing on both bass and guitar is fairly rudimentary, to say the least.
Indeed, there's a rather primitive feel throughout the album, which lacks some of the musical elements one usually associates with Gong - there's no spacey synthesiser wash and precious little electric lead guitar, the bass takes a modest back seat and the drumming is there as a garnish rather than a main ingredient. But we do get Gilli's space whisper that opens the album and Didier's playful, lyrical sax and flute, although there's not nearly enough of it. You will also hear Allen's glissando, made by stroking the strings of his guitar with the handle of a gynaecological instrument as he tried to reproduce Syd Barrett's slide guitar experiments with Pink Floyd.
The result is a lighter, poppier album than its successors, which has more in common with Allen's late-1970s solo work than the material he would produce under the Gong name. But it has a naive, anarchic charm - there are some interesting songs that bounce along happily, and a sense of random spontaneity in the sound effects and performances. Allen's voice is unique and charming, and the whole thing feels as if the musicians are thoroughly enjoying themselves without getting too hung up on performance or recording quality.
The cover for the original release was printed before the track listing was decided so the liner notes split 'Mystic Sister: Magick Brother' into two tracks and transpose 'Glad To Sad To Say' and 'Rational Anthem', an error that continues through to this day in some digital downloads. It also divided the songs into an 'Early Morning Side' and a 'Late Night Side', although the tracks don't seem to match the concepts. The original release gives Daevid and Gilli as much credit on the cover as the band, no doubt in the belief that their names would be more of a selling point (and BYG's contract was with Daevid, not Gong). That seems to have done the trick as it was chosen as album of the week on a French radio station and the band was able to get a few months of gigs on the back of it.
Some critics regard Magick Brother as Gong's finest album, being more raw, spontaneous and revolutionary. But most would follow the opinion of Allmusic: Interesting but not typical Gong.
'Mystic Sister: Magick Brother' (Credited to Gilli Smyth but really Daevid Allen & Gilli Smyth)
The first Gong song opens with, suitably, a gong. Then Gilli's space whisper, put through various echo and tape effects backed with Allen's Pink Floydian guitar noises, Dieter's bowed bass, and Didier's indistinct flute, soars out of the speakers for about two minutes. That's the 'Mystic Sister' section. Daevid enters with some swiftly but gently-strummed acoustic guitar in a slightly flat D major and you realise it's a folk song really, with lyrics that are part nursery rhyme, part love song and part cosmic tribute to oneness and Krishna. 'You are my Magick Brother/You are the one I love/You are my Mystic Sister/You are the one in love/Welcome to the Aquarian Age', he gently croons. Didier plays virtually non-stop throughout on flute, with some added sax sounds, while the drums are fairly laid-back and unobtrusive. Sadly, someone let Dieter stroke his double bass - it is frequently horribly out of tune, moaning and groaning like a centenarian with severe constipation. Daevid's voice is mostly double-tracked throughout with additional, almost indistinct, vocals from Gilli's daughter Tamsin (by her first marriage to 'a guy with a good job'). After nearly six minutes the song ends on Dieter's double bass and Didier's flute, with gentle tabla drumming and a few random bass notes from Daevid.
On the lines 'Maybe we'll all find out/Just what it's all about' Daevid moves from D to Ab (it's a flattened fifth, in case you're asked). It's the first appearance of a common musical device in his compositions: the so-called Devil's...
