Gong Albums Ranked
Consuela Ellett
Gong are a psychedelic rock band that incorporates elements of jazz and space rock into their musical style.[3] The group was formed in Paris in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen and English vocalist Gilli Smyth. Band members have included Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Steve Hillage, Mike Howlett, Tim Blake, Pierre Moerlen, Bill Laswell and Theo Travis. Others who have played on stage with Gong include Don Cherry,[4] Chris Cutler, Bill Bruford, Brian Davison, Dave Stewart and Tatsuya Yoshida.
Gong's 1970 debut album, Magick Brother, featured a psychedelic pop sound.[5] By the following year, the second album, Camembert Electrique, featured the more psychedelic rock/space rock sound with which they would be most associated.[1] Between 1973 and 1974, Gong released their best-known work, the allegorical Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, describing the adventures of Zero the Hero, the Good Witch Yoni and the Pot Head Pixies from the Planet Gong.
In 1975, Allen and Smyth left the band, which continued without them, releasing a series of jazz rock albums under the leadership of drummer Pierre Moerlen. This incarnation soon became known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong. Meanwhile, Smyth formed Mother Gong while Allen initiated a series of spin-off groups, including Planet Gong, New York Gong and Gongmaison, before returning to lead Gong once again in 1990 until his death in 2015. With Allen's encouragement, the band decided to continue as a quintet comprising guitarist Fabio Golfetti, bassist Dave Sturt, woodwind player Ian East, guitarist and vocalist Kavus Torabi, and drummer Cheb Nettles. They released the album Rejoice! I'm Dead! in September 2016,[6] followed by The Universe Also Collapses in 2019 and Unending Ascending in 2023.
In September 1967, Australian singer and guitarist Daevid Allen, a member of the English psychedelic rock band Soft Machine, was denied re-entry to the United Kingdom for 3 years following a French tour because his visa had expired.[7] He settled in Paris, where he and his partner, London-born Sorbonne professor Gilli Smyth, established the first incarnation of Gong (later referred to by Allen as "Protogong"[8]) along with Ziska Baum on vocals and Loren Standlee on flute.[9] However, the nascent band came to an abrupt end during the May 1968 student revolution, when Allen and Smyth were forced to flee the country after a warrant was issued for their arrest. They headed for Dei in Majorca, where they had lived for a time in 1966.
In August 1969, film director Jrme Laperrousaz, a close friend of the pair, invited them back to France to record a soundtrack for a motorcycle racing movie which he was planning. This came to nothing at the time, but they were subsequently approached by Jean Karakos of the newly formed independent label BYG Actuel to record an album, and so set about forming a new electric Gong band in Paris, recruiting their first rhythm section of Christian Tritsch (bass) and Rachid Houari (drums and percussion) and re-connecting with a saxophonist called Didier Malherbe whom they had met in Dei.[10] However, Tritsch was not ready in time for the sessions and so Allen played the bass guitar himself. The album, entitled Magick Brother, was completed in October.
The re-born Gong played its debut gig at the BYG Actuel Festival in the small Belgian town of Amougies, on 27 October 1969, joined by Danny Laloux on hunting horn and percussion, and Dieter Gewissler and Gerry Fields on violin, and was introduced to the stage by bemused compere Frank Zappa.[11] Magick Brother was released in March 1970, followed in April by a non-album single, "Est-Ce Que Je Suis; Garon Ou Fille?" b/w "Hip Hip Hypnotise Ya", which again featured Laloux and Gewissler.[12] In October, the band moved into an abandoned 12-room hunting lodge called Pavillon du Hay, near Voisines and Sens, 120 km south-east of Paris. They would be based there until early 1974.[13]
Houari left the band in the spring of 1971 and was replaced by English drummer Pip Pyle, whom Allen had been introduced to by Robert Wyatt during the recording of his debut solo album, Banana Moon. The new line-up recorded a soundtrack for Laperrousaz's movie, now entitled Continental Circus, backed poet Dashiell Hedayat on his album Obsolete, and played at the second Glastonbury Festival, later documented on the Glastonbury Fayre album.[14] Next, they began work on their second studio album, Camembert Electrique, later referred to by Allen as "the first real band album".[15] It established the progressive, space rock sound which would make their name, leading, in the autumn, to their first UK tour. However, by the end of the year Pyle had left the group, to be replaced by another English drummer, Laurie Allan.[16]
Gong went through increasing line-up disruption in 1972. Laurie Allan left in April to be replaced by Mac Poole, then Charles Hayward and then Rob Tait, before returning again late in the year. Gilli Smyth left for a time, returning to Dei, Majorca to look after her and Daevid Allen's baby son, and was replaced by Diane Stewart, who was the partner of Tait and the ex-wife of Graham Bond. Christian Tritsch moved to guitar and was replaced on bass by former Magma member Francis Moze, while the band's sound was expanded with the addition of synthesizer player Tim Blake in late 1972.
In October they were one of the first acts to sign to Richard Branson's fledgling Virgin Records label, and in late December traveled to Virgin's Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, England, to record their third album, Flying Teapot.[17] Towards the end of their recording sessions they were joined by English guitarist Steve Hillage, whom they had met a few weeks earlier in France playing with Kevin Ayers. He arrived too late to contribute much to the album,[18] but would soon become a key component in the Gong sound.
In March 1973, exhausted by Gong's 1972 tour and the recording of Flying Teapot, Allen and Smyth left Gong and returned to Dei to take care of their baby Tally. Then drummer Laurie Allan and bassist Francis Moze also decided to depart. Tim Blake, Steve Hillage, Didier Malherbe, Venux De Luxe and the rest of the Gong family decided to continue as the short-lived band Paragong who enlisted drummer Pierre Moerlen and bassist Mike Howlett but existed only two short months, March and April 1973, and only ever played live in France. The only recording documenting Paragong live is the (22-minute) short album Live '73 released in 1995 which consists of the two lenghty tracks "Camembert Psilocybin Flashback" and "Porquoi Dormons Nous? (The Gnome Rock Dispensation)".[19]
Flying Teapot was released on 25 May 1973, the same day as Tubular Bells, and was the first instalment of the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, which expounded upon the (previously only hinted at) Gong mythology developed by Allen. The second part, Angel's Egg, followed in December, now featuring the 'classic' rhythm section of Mike Howlett on bass and Pierre Moerlen on drums. In early 1974 Moerlen left to work with the French contemporary ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg and Smyth left to give birth to her and Allen's second son. They were replaced once again by Rob Tait and Diane Stewart, and the band moved from its French base at Pavillon du Hay to an English one at Middlefield Farm, near Witney, Oxfordshire.[20] Moerlen, and later Smyth, returned in order to complete the trilogy with the album You, but by the time of its release, in October 1974, Moerlen was back with Les Percussions de Strasbourg and Smyth had settled permanently in Dei with her young sons. Prior to touring in support of You, Allen visited Smyth and the boys in Dei, while the rest of the band, including the departed Moerlen, recorded the basic tracks for Hillage's first solo album, Fish Rising. Moerlen was initially replaced in Gong by a succession of stand-ins (Chris Cutler, Laurie Allan and Bill Bruford) until former Nice and Refugee drummer Brian Davison took the job in early 1975.[21] Smyth had already been replaced by Hillage's partner Miquette Giraudy.[22]
In June 1974, Camembert Electrique was given a belated UK release by Virgin, priced at 59p, the price of a typical single at the time; a promotional gimmick which they had used before for Faust and would use again for a reggae compilation in 1976. These ultra-budget albums sold in large quantities because of the low price, but the pricing made them ineligible for placement on the album charts. The hope was that new fans would be encouraged to buy the groups' other albums at full price.
Increasing tension and personality clashes led to Tim Blake being asked to leave in February 1975 during rehearsals for a tour. He was not replaced. Then, at a gig in Cheltenham on 10 April, the day before the release of Steve Hillage's Fish Rising album, Daevid Allen refused to go on stage, claiming that a "wall of force" was preventing him from doing so, and he left the band. The others decided to carry on without him.[23]
In August, Pierre Moerlen was persuaded to return, replacing the unhappy and alcoholic Davison, and the band now also added Mireille Bauer on percussion, Jorge Pinchevsky on violin and Patrice Lemoine on synthesizer and, for the first time in Gong, keyboards. They toured the UK in November 1975, as documented on the 2005 release Live in Sherwood Forest '75, and worked on material for their next album, Shamal. Hillage, however, was increasingly uncomfortable without Allen, and with now being seen as the band's de facto leader. With a solo career beckoning, he and Giraudy decided to leave before Shamal was completed, participating in it only as guests. Howlett took over as lead male vocalist and Sandy Colley, Lemoine's partner and the band's cook, became his female counterpart. The album was released in February 1976 and they toured in support until a crisis was precipitated in May when Pinchevsky was refused entry to the U.K. for carrying marijuana. Ex-King Crimson violinist David Cross was tried out as a possible replacement, but before any progress could be made with this new line-up, the band split into two camps: Howlett wanted to keep vocals, but Moerlen and Bauer wanted the music to be entirely instrumental, with Malherbe undecided. Virgin Records executive Simon Draper chose Moerlen's way and Howlett left, quickly followed by Lemoine and Colley.[22]
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