By Anthony Shaw

We are sitting on a rocky dry mountainside outside the entrance to what looks like a network of subterranean passages - a cave, a warren, or is it a den, a lair? The wind is blowing up the slope creating sounds eerie but intriguing as it moves across the landscape. Inside the cave is dark, unknown, but appealing, fascinating too.

Are you still there? Let me declare my motive for this expedition is hardly altruistic - I wish you to see this cave, to investigate its depths and heights, as I have over the last 30 years. It has been a leisurely quest, never threatening the essence of my livelihood, undertaken during leisure hours. But it has led me to aural insights into worlds I've still been unaware of in my late 40's. It is part of my continuing education. I would like to lead you to the same entrance, to offer a limited insight of what you might find - and I suppose actually to convince myself that there are others on similar trails the world over who also value the quality of this cave's contents.

DAEVID ALLEN - FOR WHOM THE GONG TOLLS?

Daevid Allen is by almost any stretch of the imagination venerable. Some would cite his age (62 at the last count), some his height (a 'good' 6 foot in my opinion), and others his imagination. He is a musician of nearly 40 years standing, his track record stretching back to 1963, having worked over the years with many names familiar to those in the modern/experimental music world, from Mark Kramer through Bill Laswell to Terry Riley. His most established claim to fame is as a founder member of the English progressive rock ensemble of the 1960Žs and 70's Soft Machine, regarded by many as the cornerstone of the so-called 'Canterbury sound'. But his most enduring contribution to the world of music is as helmsperson during 30 years of recordings of 'psychedelic, electro-jazz crossover, anarcho-pataphysical, mantra-trance delirium band'- Gong. In addition he has continued throughout this time to work on other projects with a range of musicians as eclectic as his own musical influences, reflecting many of the varied tastes of the late twentieth century.

For someone who is better known as a doyen of the European modern/experimental music scene it is no surprise he has his origins on the other side of the globe in Melbourne, Australia. Citing in a recent interview his first musical memories as: 'nymphs and shepherds chorus' (sic), Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto, You're Adorable (Perry Como), Over the Rainbow (classic version), music of Irish travelling players and bagpipes, and How High the Moon (Les Paul) he was raised by broadly artistically-gifted parents: 'I have childhood memories filled with my parents and their friends sitting round a piano getting drunk and singing their hearts out all night.' Australia of the 1950's was not a country of respect for aboriginals' land rights that some might claim today. It is still a place where maleness is close to macho for the majority. In Allen's youth 'Australia was probably 10 times more redneck than the most redneck place in America. I have always been a freak and a wild card (and) I had the shit beaten out of me endlessly all through my childhood.'

Australia wasn't a country with a burgeoning jazz heritage either, but in the city of Melbourne the circle of artists and musicians were well acquainted with the latest offerings of Coltrane and Davis: 'My first influences were very much musically orientated: Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus, and Eric Dolphy, in that order.' In the late 1950's he had been involved with 'Beat Poetry' and 'Poetry and Jazz' events, but finding people there 'numb, dumb or dead to beauty' he sailed for Europe in the early 1960's to explore his interest in performance poetry and free jazz. In fact a recording of the original Soft Machine line-up of Allen, Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt has recently surfaced, a collection of Allen's poetry accompanied by and across their very free-form music, 'recorded on a single domestic mono mike' in a London club, The Marquee: THE DAEVID ALLEN TRIO - LIVE 1963. Some purists might be deterred by the description of Allen's guitar work from those days as unlike anybody else's, 'a cross between Charlie Christian and George Formby' (Mike Horowitz). The recording reveals a combination of Ginsbergian beat poetry with youthful but dedicated attempts to emulate their bebop mentors, and its liner notes warn: 'Only for committed connoisseurs of Canterbury sounds'. This interest in the integration of free expression of word with music may explain why Allen isn't readily associated with traditional jazz experimentalists, despite an impressive record of musical accomplishments to his credit. It may also be the key to appreciating the enduring appeal of the 'magnus opus', his most enduring project, the uni-conceptual, but multi-dimensional series of albums known as the Planet Gong story, of which 3 albums appeared between 1972 and '74 on the Virgin label, more of which later!

The basis for Allen's inclusion in a list of contemporary 'jazz-fusion' artists could be the work recorded over the years with Gong, a band which has always had space at its center for improvisational work. This is as true in 2000 as it was in my only previous experience of the live band in 1974, both concerts featuring loose structural forms, filled out with extended solos from all members. However the nub of his inclusion is the breadth of the myriad offshoots that he has been involved with down the years, including many strictly jazz focused, as well as those spawned directly from the Gong stable. The longest serving colleague, who continues his association with 2 contributions to the latest album, is saxophonist Didier 'Bloomdido' Malherbe. Malherbe had shared Allen's youthful interest in classical bebop during the late 50's, and in the 1960's had been active in the Parisian experimental jazz scene, playing at the Chat Qui Peche club. Malherbe's interest in Indian and Afghanistan modal music melded with Allen's interest in Yogic philosophy, and the foundations of Gong were laid. How come then that many who know Allen's name classify him immediately under the epithet 'space-rock'? It's a long story.

Like many readers of AAJ, in the 1970's I was not doing the same rounds, digging the same trenches as now. I was listening to Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, and generally expanding the boundaries of my perceived consciousness. As many another young Londoner of the times, I had had my fill of the Beatles, and even the Stones were pretty much passé. So when a friend played a band that mixed in French lyrics with its panoply of psychedelic sounds and non-standard polyrhythmic signatures, woven together with a Hindu-derived mysticism, I was hooked. Soon I discovered that the same Mr Allen had been instrumental in the start of Soft Machine, but after being barred by British customs officials from entry for the UK tour, had returned to continue his craft in France, never again to be filed under 'Softs'. He had continued working in Paris and after a period of experimental work with the likes of Terry Riley and William Burroughs, started recording with Welsh poet and 'vocaless' Gilly Smyth, who was to be his partner and foil in the group soon to be known as Gong. With the addition of Didier Malherbe, English drummer Pip Pyle, and the variety of French musicians, recordings were commenced, interrupted by 'Les Evènements' on the Parisian streets in summer 1968, continuing with the band based in a hunting lodge outside Paris. The initial recording on Byg of the first LP CAMEMBERT ELECTRIQUE was picked up by Virgin Records, and the band relocated to England to record the next 3 works - the Trilogy.

Their story line is a mix of allegorical inner adventure, spiced with heady meditative visionary insight, was in its initial years a polemical investigation of the aspirations and exasperations of a hippie everyman, Zero (the Hero), on his search for self discovery and enlightenment. Guidance came from the 'mysterious green planet Gong and its inhabitants the Pot Head Pixies' whose telepathic transmissions were communicated to earthlings via the music of the Gong band. What was in many products of those times a sincere but often solemn self-absorption became in Allen's hands a whimsical and witty, but also sincere tale of this hapless seeker's experiences of doubt, desperation and ultimate growth, tempered with a very earthy and humorous eroticism. Hence the timely 1970's veneration of search for The Unknown or Unknowables universally recognized in The Dark Side of the Moon, was leavened by Allen to become tracks such as The Other Side of the Sky, and Sold to the Highest Buddha. The story line of the trilogy was forged by Allen and his many colleagues, incorporating as many disparate styles and themes, from French street-café, atonal classical percussion, Be-Bop, Sufi and Indian raga. Recorded between 1973 & 74 they are titled: FLYING TEAPOT, ANGEL'S EGG and YOU. Unlike many products of the era they still bear scrutiny in the 21st century, incorporating new studio techniques with their own tape loop tricks and Allen's 'glissando guitar' to create a multi-layered 'stratified' sound, and although the transcendental theme can be seen as a quirk of those heady years I contend it also validly depicts elements of an eternal spiritual search. With Allen the musicians on these 'Classic' albums are Smyth, Malherbe, Steve Hillage - guitar, Pierre Moerlen - drums, Mike Howlett - bass (Christian Tritch on FLYING TEAPOT) and Tim Blake - synthesizer. Details of these times are well described on the band's support website at planetgong.co.uk .

At the same time as Gong achieved considerable commercial success with the trilogy, Allen sought avenues for expression of a quieter style, possibly in reaction to the hype as well as the chemically induced euphoria of life on the road, retreating to his home in Deya, northern Spain, to produce 2 solo albums of supreme delicacy. The 1974 Virgin financed GOOD MORNING saw him link up with local Spanish acoustic musicians Euterpe to produce a startlingly light counterpoint to the increasingly sombre jazz-rock fusion of the continuingly active Gong under percussionist Pierre Moerlen. This album and its 1977 successor NOW IS THE HAPPIEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE (on Affinity) are remarkable for being produced at home on Allen's 4 track TEAC, but also for their ability to evoke similar themes of individual integration and confusion that had been handled in Gong, but without their increasing complexity of format or instrumentation. Both of these albums are available on CD now, and stand up to rigorous digital scrutiny admirably. Artistically they are pearls.

One crucial departure in the Daevid Allen story is the interlude between 1978 and 1980 spent in the US. Following their departure from Gong, he and Gilli Smyth had joined up with Here and Now, a space-punk free festival band, playing around Britain and Europe. The philosophy of the band fitted well with Allen's and Smyth's own wishes to break away from the stereotype roles of deified Artist and Performer that had evolved with the success of the Trilogy, despite their efforts to thwart that process with the use of multiple alter-ego's on record & stage. (Bert Camembert, the Alien Australian for Allen and Shakti Yoni for Smyth are my favorites.) This band are on a live recording from Toulouse in 1977 under the name Planet Gong playing FLOATING ANARCHY, and when compared with the products of the continuing Allenless Gong under the leadership of Malherbe and Moerlen, are distinctly rough, but do capture the exuberant spirit of punk that was then breaking conventional rock categories.

However Allen was not content with their direction for long, and on breaking up with partner Smyth he transferred his activities to New York. N'EXISTE PAS! was a solo album recorded in 1978 with Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler and others, a mixture of free jazz art-rock, with bagpipes and bluegrass banjo! Listening 20 years later it doesn't sound as disparate as it did at the time. The mixture of free-form poetry, rant and improvisation with lyrical melody and song can now be traced back to much earlier work too. More extraordinary though was the PLAYBAX 80 album, created by Allen working alone in a solo studio in his back garden in Willow, New York, using tape loops from the recordings made earlier with New York Gong. This band had included Chris Cutler on sax, Mark Kramer on bass, Bill Laswell, Cliff Cultreri and sometime Michael Lawrence on guitar, and saxophonist George Bishop who had also worked on N'EXISTE PAS. The band played a limited number of gigs around NY during 1978-9, before Allen decided he preferred to pursue solo efforts, and resorted to his own studio. The creative process involved cutting excerpts of various bar lengths from recorded rhythm tracks, and splicing them in various sequences onto a new master. Titles such as Well, Bell, Boon or Froghello were the perverse products of this time, and reflect a disparated, disassociated soul, maybe typical of many 70's performers whose artistic foundations had been so disrupted by the punk revolution. However when placed alongside Allen's continued collabortions with Kramer later in the 90's (HIT MEN and WHO'S AFRAID) and on Brainville's 1999 release (THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE with Hugh Hopper and Pip Pyle) the strivings to find new musical and rhythmic forms seem to have born rich fruit. Indeed PLAYBAX seems to highlight the consistency of Allen's repeated efforts to tackle the theme of individuals' alienation from and integration with fellow humanity, efforts which veer from the sublime sweetness of earlier solo work (e.g. Spirit on GOOD MORNING) and Gong's lyrical masterpieces (e.g. Selene which appears on each of the first two albums), to the demented strife of PLAYBAX's Gay or Brainville's aLPHaVILLE bEaCh (sic).

Consistent with the demands of continued creativity, the 1980's were years of instability for Allen, emotionally and spiritually as well as geographically. His work was divided between the US, Britain and Australia, where he returned after 21 years' absence in 1981 to find his father on his deathbed. Having been living in Europe for many years as a 'minor prince of rock and roll', he was reduced to grafting for his living, spending time as a Melbourne taxi driver and market trader, before retiring to the tranquillity of northern New South Wales to pursue his interest in re-birthing in the artistic community around Byron Bay. The period was not without its artistic rewards, as he worked on composing a series of 7 single note 'drones' for use as aids for meditation, as well as the LP Ex:STOP/DONT (Hai 202)recorded with performance artist David Tolley. In 1988 he rejoined Gilli Smyth and her new partner Harry Williamson, who had also relocated to Australia, to record the evocative STROKING THE TAIL OF THE BIRD (on Voiceprint). This in turn lead to his return to Britain, picking up the threads of his former contacts, which he admits he was surprised to find received him so enthusiastically after 10 years' absence. Initial touring with musical 'playshops' developed in 1989 into a reunion with Malherbe and the assemblage of a new band soon known as Gong Maison (French for 'house'), named partly with 'reference to house music, house jazz, but mostly to the sorts of houses we find ourselves in, which are like lunatic asylums of hermits who are trying to live together.' Reunited with Here and Now's Keith Bailey on bass and Steffi Sharpestrings' guitar, joined by original colleague Pip Pyle, and supplemented by the violin of new associate Graham Clark and Shyamal Maitra on percussions, the band recorded the SHAPESHIFTER album in 1991.

Based now in Britain, Allen developed associations with a number of musicians with whom he still works today, and the 1990's have proven fertile times indeed. On the heels of the success of Shapeshifter, interest in the original Gong line-up prompted a regathering of this team (excepting only Steve Hillage replaced by Steffi Sharpstrings, and Moerlen replaced intermittently by Pyle, but including Tim Blake on synths and Mike Howlett on bass) to perform a 25th reunion concert in London's Forum Club in October 1994. This was recorded and released by GAS, the eponymous Gong Appreciation Society, and is testament to the continued vivacity of the music and interest of the audience. Following this success the band of 6 original members undertook successful tours of the US and the Far East, playing concerts which fused the new material with classic tracks. The lineup had however changed somewhat by the time for recording of the latest studio CD ZERO 2 INFINITY (SNA CD 824)in autumn 1999, bringing in new drummer Chris Taylor, and saxophonist Theo Travis (as well as ex-Zorch synthesizer Gwyo Zepix for live work). This material is the collective product of all band members, although again Allen contributes the major share. The story of Zero is updated to included some astral experiences on Mars, as well as continued struggles with reality, though now of the virtual kind. Although it lacks the tight integrity of the earlier Gong albums, the material fuses superbly in live performance with the classic material of the Trilogy, compounding a performance of historical depth with contemporary excitement. The album's style is musically much funkier than the previous SHAPESHIFTER, with a story line that continues the hapless hero Zero's adventures in search of awareness combining with Allen's humorous verbal jinks. Typical is the track 'Bodilingus', telling of his new-found relationship with his virtual body:

Ah my body is talking to me!

Uh oh! My flesh is stressing! Distressing!

It's creeping! It's crawling! My bones are knocking.

They're clicking. They're clackety clacketing!

My feet are very under-standing!

My knees are very knowing!

They argue… they debate!

My kneecaps…my old school kneecaps!

Are scoffing! They're quaffing! They're scuffling!

The late 1990's were particularly productive, with projects in the US, Japan, Europe and Britain, revealing the value of Allen's escapades outside the arena of the Gong flagship. The Brainville album and the second University of Errors work have both been released in 1999, and feature Allen on guitar, playing his trademark ethereal glissando style, but also highlighting a punchy sometimes raunchy lead guitar style, that is truly light years away from his more rhythmic style with the earlier Gong. In a recent interview he praised the power of U of Error's guitarist Josh Pollock, while expressing hopes to hear released their live performance from Chicago - something to look out for. On the other hand, and in addition to the soulful solo work DREAMING A DREAM of 1996, Allen has continued his work in a neo-acoustic style, with 2 musicians from the Shapeshifter era, Graham Clark and Mark Robson, working in Britain and Europe under the name Magick Brothers, playing a mixture of all 3 artists' work, but particularly Allen's more delicate solo output. Additionally GAS has released a number of glissando albums, the latest entitled 22 MEANINGS (GLISS CD 005), exploring instrumental areas using his floating ethereal slide style. The new millenium looks set to continue this level of productivity with the release in October of Gong's LIVE 2 INFINITEA (SNA CD 834) a selection of funky/spacey tracks mainly from the Zero 2 Infinity CD, recorded in London(at Subterranea) and Bergen Norway at the start of an extended 3 continent tour, featuring the Studio CD's line-up playing, and mixed by veteran Switch Doctor David ID.

However even more intriguing for aficionado's of his traditional work, and more interesting for more classically orientated jazz listeners would be the release of an album recorded in Los Angeles in 1998 of covers of works from his earlier mentors including Parker, Gillespie and Gershwin. Under the ludicrous title EAT ME BABY I'M A JELLY BEAN (GasCD 016) the album is dedicated 'to the culture and roots of black and white American jazz, with all the love and gratitude of one whose path was lit and life inspired by the passion for and dedication of these musicians to their art.' Allen describes this as a work of 'pure nostalgia', where his trademark 'aluminum croon' vocals accompany Malherbe on alto sax, Eugene Maslov piano, Ndugu Chancler drums, and Larry Steen on bass. What more justification for inclusion in this collection, and what more proof of Allen's depth of sensitivity than this work of delicate classic be-bop, including I Can't Get Started, It Ain't Necessarily So and more.

The story of Daevid Allen is the tale of a life lead in tenacious adherence to ideals of what are often considered 'hippie visionary', but are also a reflection of a desire to go beyond goals of personal glory or financial success: 'I've always had a very particular conception of music. In my point of view, there is no reason for making so-called 'popular music' simply for personal glory or financial reasons. That is not enough of a motivation for me, I need higher aspirations. I need to feel that my music helps society and the human race in general to move forward.' This has lead sometimes to loss of copyright revenue in return for retention of artistic integrity. The result of this scant disregard for material accretion may be a further incentive for him to pursue such an active performance schedule, but from conversation you feel is more the source of energy for an ever-expanding orbit of creativity. Here is an artist whose productive years span most of the later twentieth century, but whose capacity for subsuming new forms, while retaining his own whimsical surreal style, seems bound to continue unabated well into the next. In recent conversation he alluded to the possibility of release of work commenced in Japan with former colleagues Hugh Hopper & Chris Cutler under typically teasing title Oft So Machine. One can only speculate how this man's continued work will continue to outcircle the distant orbits of his accomplishments to date.

And remember: 'Whatever Gong may mean to you, it's well possible that it means the very opposite to someone else.'

Thanks to Jason Rubin for his Internet Interview 1991, to Johnny Greene at GAS for initial leads and CD supply, Aymeric Leroy at What's Rattlin (Canterbury sounds on-line newsletter) and to Daevid Allen himself for phone and email time - and all those gongful albums. Anthony Shaw