Incredible String Band

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The iconic cover of the band’s second album designed by The Fool
The iconic cover of the band’s second album designed by The Fool

The Incredible String Band (or ISB) is a Scottish acoustic band which, (in the words of one of their early songs) "way back in the 1960s" built a popular following within British counter culture, and the group is considered psych folk musical pioneers. The group reformed in 1999 and continued to perform until 2006.

Contents

[edit] History

"The Incredible String Band" was formed in 1965 by Scottish folk musicians Robin Williamson, Mike Heron and Clive Palmer, taking its name from an all-night folk club (Clive's Incredible Folk Club) run by the band in Glasgow. They were signed by their future manager Joe Boyd, then working as a talent scout for the influential folk-based label Elektra Records, and recorded their first album, titled "The Incredible String Band", in 1966. It was released in Britain and the United States and consisted mostly of self-penned material, showcasing their playing on a variety of instruments. In a 1968 Sing Out magazine interview Bob Dylan praised the album's "October Song" as one of his favorite songs of that period. The band broke up after recording the album, but reformed within a year without Palmer who had left for Afghanistan. In the meantime Williamson visited Morocco from where he returned laden with Moroccan instruments including a gimbri, which was, much later, eaten by rats.

In 1967, Heron and Williamson recorded a second album, “The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion” which demonstrated considerable musical development, displaying their abilities as multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters and gaining them much wider acclaim. Joined by Pentangle's Danny Thompson on double bass, the album included "The Hedgehog Song" and "The Mad Hatter's Song", the latter of which paved the way for the band's more extended forays into psychedelia. Enthusiastic reviews in the music press, appearances at venues such as London's UFO Club and Savile Theatre, and exposure on John Peel's Perfumed Garden radio show on the pirate ship Radio London made them favourites with the emerging UK underground audience. The album went to Number One in the UK folk chart.

In 1968 the band released “The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter”, which reached the top 5 album charts on release. A departure from the band's previous albums, the set relied heavily on keyboards and a more layered production, and is often seen as their greatest work. As well as featuring songs like Williamson's "The Minotaur's Song", a surreal music hall parody told from the point of view of the mythical beast, the album's centrepiece was undoubtedly Heron's "A Very Cellular Song", a 13-minute rumination on the life of an amoeba.

By the release of 1968's "Wee Tam and the Big Huge", Williamson and Heron had added their girlfriends, Rose Simpson and Licorice McKechnie, to the band to contribute a variety of instruments, including organ, guitar and percussion. Despite their rudimentary skills, Simpson swiftly mastered the bass guitar to a very proficient level, and some of McKechnie's songs were recorded by the band. From 1968, the Incredible String Band left behind their folk club origins, performing to larger audiences in concert halls, such as the Royal Albert Hall, and at open-air festivals. In 1969 they played at Woodstock later than planned, having refused to perform in the pouring rain the previous day. Due to this, they were not included on the iconic movie documenting the festival, and did not go down well with the crowd, used to the more hard-hitting psychedelic rock of Hendrix and his ilk.

In 1970, Robin Williamson attempted to fuse the music with his theatrical fantasies in a quixotic multi-media spectacular at London's Roundhouse called “U” which he envisaged as “a surreal parable in dance and song”. Critical response was mixed, with some harsh reviews from critics who had in some cases acclaimed their earlier work. It fared little better in New York, a planned US tour of "U" having to be cancelled after a few performances at the Fillmore East.

Nevertheless, they continued to tour and record; Mike Heron took time out to record a well-received solo album, 'Smiling Men with Bad Reputations', which, in contrast to the ISB's self-contained productions, featured a host of session guests, among them Pete Townshend, Ronnie Lane, Keith Moon, John Cale and Richard Thompson. In addition, a film about the ISB, 'Be Glad For the Song Has No Ending', was released. Originally planned for the BBC's arts programme Omnibus, it featured documentary footage and a fantasy sequence, 'The Pirate and the Crystal Ball', illustrating their idyllic communal lifestyle in 1968-69. It made little impact at the time, but reissues on video and DVD have contributed to the recent revival of interest in the band.

After that they lasted another four years, although there was a gradual decline in their status after 1970. Joe Boyd stopped managing them to return to the US, and Rose Simpson left in early 1971. Line-up changes such as the addition of Malcolm Le Maistre, formerly a dancer in "U" with the Stone Monkey troupe, and then Gerard Dott, an Edinburgh jazz musician and friend of Heron, reflected moves toward a more conventional group, eventually with a rock rhythm section. Their final albums, for Island Records, were received disappointingly, and the label dropped them in 1974. By then, disagreements between Williamson and Heron about musical policy had become unbearable and they split up.

Williamson soon formed “Robin Williamson and His Merry Band” which toured and released three albums of eclectic music with a Celtic emphasis. Within a few years, he went on to a solo career, moving increasingly into traditional Celtic styles. He also produced several recordings of humorous stories. Heron formed a rock group, called first "Mike Heron's Reputation", then “Heron”, and later released occasional solo albums. In 1997, the pair got back together for two concerts. This was followed by a full reunion of the original three members plus Williamson's wife Bina and Lawson Dando in 1999. In March 2003 it was announced both Robin and Bina Williamson had left. Heron, Palmer and Lawson, and new member Fluff continued to tour regularly around the United Kingdom and internationally, until their last concert together at the Mosely music festival in September 2006.

[edit] Cultural placement

Those who believe in a cultural crossover between a particular axis of British hippie culture and an older, more spiritual idea of Britain have increasingly come to see the ISB as the focus of this unexpected crossover. This began in 1994 when Rose Simpson, a former member of the band, became Mayor of Aberystwyth, and reached a new level in the autumn of 2003 when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, wrote a foreword for a full length book about the band [1], describing them as “holy” (he had previously chosen the ISB track “The Hedgehog's Song” as his only piece of popular music when he appeared on “Desert Island Discs”). Some have seen this as proof of the late Ian MacDonald’s claim that “much that appeared to be profane in Sixties youth culture was quite the opposite”. [2]

Before the revival of interest in the ISB in the 1990s, however, the band were, as Joe Boyd put it, seen as representative of a side of the hippy 1960s which many preferred to forget. This was due to the unfashionability of their "image" - flower-power clothes and acoustic instruments - in the post-punk period and the materialistic 1980s, but also owed something to the fact that Williamson and Heron were at one time associated with Scientology. Joe Boyd, in his book "White Bicycles", describes how he was inadvertently responsible for this; during an American tour in 1968 he introduced the band to an acquaintance who, having become a Scientologist, persuaded them to enrol in the cult in his absence. In an interview with Oz magazine in 1969 the band spoke enthusiatically of their involvement with it, although the question of its effect on their later albums has provoked much discussion ever since.

The music of the ISB ranges from quite conventional folk songs to innovative “art song” and hybrid forms that were a precursor to World Music. In 1967-8 they were sometimes described as part of pop music's "avant-garde", which had emerged in the wake of the more adventurous work of The Beatles, with whom they were compared. Although they lacked the Beatles' broad pop appeal, the ISB showed a similar interest in extending the boundaries of their music. Both Mike Heron and Robin Williamson would break apart a traditional song structure, inserting seemingly unrelated sections in a way that has been described as "always surprising, laughably inventive, lyrically prodigious"[3] While at times this resulted in a lack of conventional unity, it also opened up the song musically and thematically to allow greater depth and exploration. This aspect of their music, combined with Williamson’s soaring melismatic vocal ornamentation (perhaps influenced by Islamic chanters heard during his visit to Morocco, as well as by the Scots-Irish traditional singing with which he had grown up) made for music that still sounds fresh 40 years later.

[edit] Limited discography (LPs)

Mike Heron also made a successful album entitled ‘Smiling Men with Bad Reputations’ in 1971, backed by members of The Who on a rocky track entitled ‘Warm Heart Pastry’. Robin Williamson released over 40 records post-ISB, including 'Wheel Of Fortune' (1995, with John Renbourn), which was nominated for a Grammy award.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Williams, Rowan (Foreword), Boyd, Joe (Foreword), Whittaker, Adrian (Editor) (2003) Be Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium , Helter Skelter Publishing ISBN 1-900924-64-1
  2. ^ Revolution in the Head - The Beatles' Records and the Sixties Ian MacDonald, Pimlico books, 2005 – ISBN 1-84413-828-3
    in the opening sequence -
    "It was hard for (Christopher) Booker, or Malcolm Muggeridge, or Mary Whitehouse to understand that much of what appeared to be profane in Sixties youth culture was quite the opposite ..."
  3. ^ Chris Cutler, "File Under Popular", Autonomedia (1985/1991) p.118

Boyd, Joe : White Bicycles. Making Music in the 1960s. London: Serpent's Tail. 2006

[edit] External links

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