Photograph: Richard Bennett Zeff (Caravan), Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns (Kevin Ayers). Illustration: udiscovermusic
On the finish of the 60s, the quaint, historic metropolis of Canterbury grew to become the unlikely breeding floor for an underground music scene outlined by its willful weirdness and its refusal to take itself too severely. In and across the city immortalized by Chaucer within the 14th century, devoted nonconformists like Gentle Machine, Caravan, and Hatfield and the North took mad scientist enjoyment of breeding obscure mutations of jazz and rock templates whereas pulling the rug out from beneath folks’s expectations.
The Canterbury sound blossomed within the 70s as a good-humored variant on progressive rock. The place prog with a capital “P” performed out bigger than life, the Canterbury scene was populated by singers who seemed like they’d be extra at dwelling in a P.G. Wodehouse novel than on an area stage, and by songs constructed on refined idiosyncrasies as an alternative of grand gestures.
For all their musical sophistication, the Canterbury bands developed a rep as rock’s reply to Monty Python. Track titles like Hatfield and the North’s “(Big) John Wayne Socks Psychology on the Jaw” and Caravan’s “If I Could Do It All Again, I’d Do It All Over You” have been the norm, as have been lyrics filled with droll puns, absurdist imagery, and such decidedly non-rock’n’roll topics as chatting up women on golf programs (Caravan’s “Golf Girl”), and impressing ladies with intelligent chord decisions (Hatfield and the North’s “Licks For the Ladies”). A distinctly English model, its closest U.S. equal might need been the next-level instrumental excursions and tongue-in-cheek sensibilities of Frank Zappa.
Offbeat musical adventures
The genesis of the scene sounds just like the plot of the least industrial coming-of-age film ever made: A gaggle of budding bohemian teenagers attend the progressive Simon Langton College within the cathedral metropolis of Canterbury, spend the primary half of the 60s discovering jazz and the avant-garde music collectively, and kit up for their very own offbeat musical adventures.
The magnet for these mavericks-in-training was the 15-room Georgian manse belonging to younger drummer/singer Robert Wyatt’s mother in Canterbury’s neighboring county of Lydden. Wyatt and his schoolmates then shaped native rock/R&B band The Wilde Flowers in ‘64, who would become the root of the entire scene. But the real agent provocateur was beatnik holdover and budding hippie poet-guitarist Daevid Allen, an Australian ex-pat who’d began renting a room from the Wyatts and interesting Robert in free-jazz jams in 1961.
By 1967, The Wilde Flowers had taken a psychedelic flip and splintered into two factions. One facet shaped Gentle Machine with Wyatt singing and drumming, Allen on guitar, Kevin Ayers on bass, and Mike Ratledge on keyboards. The opposite facet shaped Caravan, that includes singer/guitarist Pye Hastings, bassist Richard Sinclair, his cousin Dave on keys, and Richard Coughlan on drums.
Gentle Machine rapidly grew to become a fixture of London’s psychedelic underground, taking part in within the basement-level hotspot The UFO Membership alongside the likes of Tomorrow (that includes a pre-Sure Steve Howe) and Pink Floyd. When Allen was refused re-entry to the UK after a French tour, he stayed in France, the place he later shaped Gong, and Gentle Machine soldiered on as a trio.
Left guitar-less, they edged towards a jazzier method. Ratledge’s organ took middle stage, enhanced by a fuzz pedal, for a brash, buzzy sound that may turn out to be a Canterbury signature. Gentle Machine’s self-titled 1968 debut album grew to become the rallying cry of the burgeoning motion, with madcap tunes mixing Ratledge’s guitar-like organ with Wyatt’s sandpapery vocals and swinging drums, and Ayers’ closely effected bass.
Prog didn’t formally exist but – even early adopters King Crimson and Sure had but to report – however with their reliance on keyboards and their willingness to take prolonged musical journeys like “So Boot If At All,” Gentle Machine helped prime the pump for progressive rock.
The distinction, nevertheless, was apparent from the beginning. Mainstream proggers counted classical music as a key affect, however the Softs have been extra into jazz. As a substitute of the fantastical, poetic imagery of lyricists like Crimson’s Pete Sinfield and Sure’s Jon Anderson, Gentle Machine’s maiden voyage provided up the self-referential absurdity of “Why Am I So Short?” and the Dadaist minimalism of “We Did It Again,” which consisted fully of the title phrase repeated over and over, which as soon as acquired the band booed offstage by impatient patrons.
A motion blossoms
Initially of 1969, Caravan launched its personal self-titled mission assertion. Their wry perspective was obvious even within the album artwork, which confirmed the members atop pedestals in mock-dramatic poses. Whereas extra song-oriented and fewer anarchic than early Gentle Machine, the primary Caravan LP bears quite a lot of ‘Machine similarities, from the organ-dominated arrangements to Pye Hastings’ lyrical japery “Cecil Rons” is principally about urinating in somebody’s backyard, “Grandma’s Lawn” is stuffed with strains like “hair on chest, itchy vest,” and “Magic Man” goes as far as to name-check Gentle Machine. However Softs commonalities apart, in brief order, Pye Hastings and his buddies could be cultivating the Caravan genome in all its irreducible glory.
One other piece of Canterbury’s musical legacy fell into place when budding guitar hero Steve Hillage left post-psych/proto-prog band Uriel to return to highschool and the remainder of the band – keyboardist Dave Stewart, singer/bassist Mont Campbell, and drummer Clive Brooks – continued with out him as Egg. Regardless of being one other organ-based trio, Egg was one of many few teams related to the Canterbury faculty to toss some classical taste into their sonic cocktail, amid all of the jazz and rock.
Campbell’s droll lyrics on their 1970 debut album have been utterly according to the Canterbury spirit, as he prosaically recounted the band’s current historical past on “A Visit to Newport Hospital” and solid aspersions on the sensationalism of the UK Sunday papers on the sardonic “Contrasong.” After Egg disbanded within the wake of their second album, Stewart joined Hillage within the short-lived Khan. Their lone album, 1972’s Area Shanty, blended jazz, classical, psychedelic, and prog influences for a lighthearted however virtuosic sound that discovered the long run Gong guitarist unleashing the facility of his lysergic licks in all their brain-frying glory.
Gentle Machine had headed in a jazzier route by this time, having acquired saxophonist Elton Dean and new bassist Hugh Hopper. Hopper’s distinctive fuzz bass sound – concurrently fluid and slicing – grew to become one other Canterbury hallmark. Like Ratledge’s fuzzed-out organ, it might sound like a sax or a guitar, and at occasions Hopper and Ratledge’s riffs even appeared to swap roles. Wyatt left in late ‘71 to start the similarly styled Matching Mole, whose line-up included Caravan’s David Sinclair on keyboards and ex-Supply guitarist Phil Miller.
In the meantime, Caravan was actually discovering its stride at this level. On the band’s third album, the Canterbury traditional Within the Land of Gray and Pink, the impeccably British whimsy and pop hooks of the aforementioned “Golf Girl” and the advanced – however approachable – 23-minute prog suite “Nine Feet Underground” solidified the odd duality that may outline the band.
A brand new period
June 1, 1973, introduced tragedy to the Canterbury scene. Robert Wyatt, who had a couple of too many at a celebration, fell out of a fourth-floor window and completely misplaced the usage of his legs. He titled his 1970 solo debut The Finish of an Ear, however the accident actually introduced concerning the finish of an period for the scene, despite the fact that Wyatt would reinvent himself as a broadly revered singer-songwriter.
The post-Wyatt Gentle Machine had absolutely embraced its jazzy facet, adopting an all-instrumental modus operandi and changing into a full-on fusion crew. However a brand new batch of bands cropped up within the mid-70s that have been clearly impressed by what Gentle Machine and Caravan had already achieved.
Within the case of Hatfield and the North, the Caravan affect was solely pure, since Hatfield’s first iteration featured each David and Richard Sinclair from Caravan, and Richard would stay the band’s singer and bassist all through their regrettably brief run. Each 1974’s Hatfield and the North and its follow-up, The Rotters’ Membership, would turn out to be Canterbury classics. On the latter album’s opening monitor, “Share It,” when Richard sings “Please do not take it seriously” in his patented plummy, tongue-in-cheek tone amid a sea of artful chord modifications and swirling synth strains, the band’s uniquely Canterburian mixture of breezy wit and brainiac chops swiftly leaps into focus.
After Hatfield reached the top of their run, Stewart and guitarist Phil Miller based Nationwide Health, which picked up the place Hatfield had left off, however expanded the imaginative and prescient additional due to some cracking visitor musicians, together with singer Amanda Parsons and keyboardist Alan Gowen. The pair of albums they churned out in 1978 are among the many best late-period Canterbury items. Standing tall towards the rising tide of punk primalism, they crafted dazzlingly intricate mini-symphonies with the virtuosity of fusion, the clever movement of classical music, and a few amplifier-blowing rock ‘n’ roll chew.
Gowen’s personal band, Gilgamesh, had shaped in 1972 however didn’t get round to releasing its first album till three years later. On each Gilgamesh and 1979’s One other Nice Tune You’ve Received Me Into, the instrumentally oriented band confirmed itself to be probably the most explosive of the scene’s fusion warriors. Sadly, the second actual Canterbury tragedy occurred in 1981 when Gowen’s sensible flame was extinguished by leukemia. Nationwide Health regrouped to pay tribute with their album D.S. Al Coda, consisting fully of Gowen compositions.
Going world
You may not count on a sound as singular as Canterbury’s to translate to different nations but it surely unfold throughout Europe within the 70s, particularly with the assistance of individuals like BBC tastemaker John Peel, who championed the Canterburians and introduced nearly all of them in for radio classes that despatched the music on an excellent wider trajectory.
Transferring Gelatine Plates, for instance, emerged because the French reply to Gentle Machine, embracing that band’s fuzztone fusion sound and including a soupcon of Gallic spice. On 1973’s Voici La Nuit Tombeé, their countrymen within the band Travelling sounded equally inclined, their keyboards/bass/drums format often echoed each early Gentle Machine and Egg.
Round that very same time, a number of of the previous Canterbury crewmembers have been mixing it up with like-minded French musicians. Daevid Allen had, after all, began Gong in Paris in 1969. By ‘73 the group was peaking with Flying Teapot and a line-up that included guitarist Steve Hillage (Uriel/Khan) and drummer Laurie Allan (Supply/Robert Wyatt). As the primary quantity of their legendary Radio Gnome trilogy, the album sprinkled good-natured stoner-utopian philosophy that concerned an alien race of “pothead pixies” over a roiling mattress of jazz riffs and trippy vibes befitting the person who helped get Gentle Machine going.
Elsewhere on the continent, Wigwam was working up their variation on the recipe in Finland. Their 1975 album, Nuclear Nightclub, managed a feat no Canterbury band ever matched: reaching No.1 within the artists’ homeland. In the meantime, over within the Netherlands, Supersister was busy bringing a Canterbury vibe to The Hague with a jazz-rock sound that typically appeared to separate the distinction between Gentle Machine and The Moms of Invention. Their 1970 debut album, A Current From Nancy, made them a prog presence to rival their countrymen Focus.
With the assistance of historical past’s hindsight, we glance again on the Canterbury sound of the 70s via a unique lens at this time. Robert Wyatt is taken into account a nationwide treasure, Caravan is counted as one of many nice British prog bands, and the affect of the scene has filtered via to a brand new era. Present artists like The Winstons and Homunculus Res in Italy, and British bands Guranfoe, Kopp, and Schnauser are all carrying the off-kilter Canterbury spirit proudly into the 2020s.
All in all, the Canterbury tales didn’t prove too badly for the scruffy batch of bookish hippies who gave the 70s rock institution a sweetly sardonic kick within the pants.
On the lookout for extra? Uncover the Biggest Prog Rock Albums Of All Time.
