Soft Machine: Out-Bloody-Rageous

CONTENTS

Title Page

Reviews of the First Edition

Notes on the Illustrations

Preface

Preface to the Revised Edition

Foreword by Daevid Allen

Foreword by Hugh Hopper

Foreword by John Etheridge

      PROLOGUE: The Revelation

  1  CANTERBURY CRADLE: The Early Years

  2  WILDE TIMES: 1964–1966

  3  A SINGLE-MINDED BAND: 1966–1967

  4  A SOFT UFO AND THE UNDESIRABLE ALIEN: 1967

  5  EXPERIENCING AMERICA: 1968

  6  RESURRECTION: 1969

  7  RESURGENCE: 1969–1970

  8  THE THIRD DIMENSION: 1970

  9  FISSION: 1970–1971

10  FUSION: 1971–1973

11  A NEW NUCLEUS: 1973–1974

12  END OF AN ERA: 1974–1976

13  GOING SOFTLY: 1976–1984

      EPILOGUE: The Lost Legacy

Soft Machine Family Tree

Concert File

Discography

Recording Sessions

Radio, Television and Film Recordings

The Softs After Soft Machine

Websites

Further Reading

About the Author

Illustrations

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SOFT MACHINE

Out-Bloody-Rageous

Graham Bennett

With forewords by

Daevid Allen, Hugh Hopper and John Etheridge

Published by Syzygy

ISBN 978 90 822792 0 7

Text copyright 2005, 2014 Graham Bennett

First published in 2005 by SAF Publishing

Revised and updated edition published by Syzygy in 2014

This ebook is licensed for the buyer’s personal use only and no part may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author.

All lyrics quoted are for review, study or critical purposes.

In some cases it has not proved possible to ascertain or trace original illustration copyright holders. The author would be grateful to hear from the photographers concerned.

Contact Syzygy at mail@syzygy.nl.

Cover photograph: Soft Machine late 1966 (Mark Ellidge).

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SOFT MACHINE: OUT-BLOODY-RAGEOUS

Reviews of the First Edition

The definitive account of Canterbury’s finest  . . .  Bennett gets the whole fascinating story.

MOJO

Slavishly researched  . . .  authoritative work. If you want to get all the facts and figures on Soft Machine, Bennett is your man.

RECORD COLLECTOR

Mr Bennett has really done his homework  . . .  superb book.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ

Bennett’s acute observations capture the feel of those early years precisely. Encyclopaedic  . . .  incredible photo section  . . .  scrupulous attention to detail.

THE WIRE

Mr Bennett has done an incredible job of covering the importance and history of the greatest and most influential of all progressive bands.

DOWNTOWN MUSIC GALLERY

Highly entertaining, deeply insightful and definitive history  . . .  wonderful book. Totally illuminating and thoroughly recommended.

DAEVID ALLEN

A great read.

HUGH HOPPER

An impressive job.

JOHN MARSHALL

Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research

ASSOCIATION FOR RECORDED SOUND COLLECTIONS

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Notes on the Illustrations

The illustrations are grouped together at the end of the book. Each illustration is linked to the relevant part of the narrative and can be viewed by clicking on the respective link in the text. Clicking on the link above the illustration will return the reader to the same point in the text.

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Preface

Of all the really great live bands, Soft Machine are probably unique in never having been the subject of a full biography. There are many good reasons for this omission. Most obviously, Soft Machine were never a seriously commercial venture, even in their popular prime. Worse, the Softs didn’t go out of their way to leave a neatly documented trail for the benefit of future historians. Neither did their management, their record companies or the music press. But Soft Machine were simply too good, too important and too interesting to allow their story to go untold.

The first challenge for any biographer of a band that produced as diverse a range of innovative music as Soft Machine is how to approach their work. So let me start by making two things clear and, hopefully, preventing any unnecessary misunderstandings. First, since I was one of those lucky enough to experience the band many times at their peak, I make no apologies for addressing Soft Machine from a positive critical perspective – although that doesn’t mean, as the reader will discover, that I value equally highly all the music the band ever produced.

I also make no apologies for approaching Soft Machine in the first instance from a rock perspective. To the extent that any jazz aficionados are still reading, let me explain: Soft Machine started out as an underground rock band, and I – in common with virtually all their audiences during the first five years and a substantial proportion in the period thereafter – initially encountered them in a rock setting. That in itself is remarkable since none of the original Softs were rock musicians and they were all decidedly ambiguous about the ambition of becoming a rock band. In fact most Softs would probably turn rather pale at the suggestion that they had anything to do with something as sordid as rock’n’roll.

Yet it was precisely the dialectic between Soft Machine’s rock trappings and their radical ambitions as musicians that inspired audiences with a vision which transcended conventional musical boundaries. Forming a band was a licence to do whatever you wanted to do and call it something saleable, as Mike Ratledge succinctly described Soft Machine’s philosophy. But therein lay the seeds of the perennial frustration among music critics at being unable to stick a neat label on the band’s music – a frustration that often led to them blaming the band for not playing rock or pop or jazz or whatever as it was supposed to be played.

Soft Machine were clever enough to fully exploit rock’s anything-goes culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s and forge uncharted musical territory. But in doing so, virtually all those on whom the band made an impression were rock fans who valued such unorthodox aspirations. With a few notable exceptions, devotees of other genres were mostly hostile or dismissive of the band’s music. Indeed, it was when Soft Machine chose to discard most of their rock identity that, despite the Softs’ exceptional musical proficiency, they found it increasingly difficult to find audiences who were enthused by their work. The significance of Soft Machine as a band extends far beyond such simplicities – as I hope this book will make clear – but the observation is made here in order to explain the context within which I believe the development and impact of their music can best be understood.

Thankfully, having decided to write their long-overdue biography, I was helped enormously by innumerable members, associates and fans of Soft Machine. Although they probably didn’t realize it when they first agreed to my request for assistance, many soon found themselves morally bound to give lengthy interviews, to spend endless hours digging out information, diaries, correspondence, tapes, videos, tour schedules, photographs and clippings, and then to engage in inordinately detailed correspondence on those niggly loose ends which the Softs delighted in scattering far and wide, apparently with the sole intention of annoying their future biographer.

For many of the Softs I was undoubtedly the umpteenth inquirer to arrive with exasperating questions along the lines of, "I read in Woman’s Own that you (or was it Mike?) wore odd-coloured socks at a gig in Preston (although it might have been Huddersfield) in late 1970 or early 1971. Do you remember what colours they were?" But everyone did their best to pretend that they’d never been asked questions like this before and even to sound mildly enthusiastic about dealing with the challenge. That I certainly haven’t succeeded in banishing all errors, filling every gap and identifying the colours of all the socks that the Softs wore on stage is certainly not due to any failings on their part.

In chronological order of their Softness, these heroes are Kevin Ayers (warm and refreshingly self-effacing), Daevid Allen (communicating enthusiastically over a distance of 12,000 miles), Hugh Hopper (supportive, diligent and his humour as sharp as his bass-playing), Brian Hopper (for willing assistance that extended far beyond the call of duty), Elton Dean (open and down-to-earth), John Marshall (seriously supportive and a mine of information), Roy Babbington (obliging and ever modest), John Etheridge (unremittingly effervescent in his recollections and assessments), Ray Warleigh (always helpful and informative), Percy Jones (willingly scouring his memory despite his brief membership of Soft Machine), Ric Sanders (genuinely enthusiastic and encouraging) and Steve Cook (generously spending time and effort to recover his Soft Machine experiences between regular transatlantic excursions). Thanks guys.

I also spoke with Robert Wyatt on several occasions and corresponded with him about his period as a Soft. Robert is appreciative of the fact that the band’s music gave so much pleasure to so many fans but, decades after the conflict that led to his departure from the band, he still feels intense emotions about the estrangement and prefers not to reminisce about Soft Machine. Despite his unease about the idea of a Soft Machine biography, Robert was nevertheless generous enough to discuss his perspective on those events and to give permission to include the lyrics of Moon in June.

Many close associates of Soft Machine were exceptionally helpful in augmenting the contributions of the band members. I am especially grateful to Mark Ellidge for his valuable memories and access to his archive of photographs, Pam Howard for her recollections about her personal involvement with Robert and checking through their old correspondence to confirm certain events, and John Peel for valiantly trawling through his memory of the thousands of sessions that countless bands recorded for his radio programmes in search of the eleven Soft Machine broadcasts.

One of the unanticipated pleasures of researching a book on Soft Machine was to encounter so many enthusiastic fans who generously contributed memories, opinions, photographs, clippings, memorabilia and recordings. Three collaborators deserve special mention. The book benefited enormously from the information, advice, ideas and support provided by Michael King, pioneering researcher on Soft Machine, chronicler of Robert Wyatt’s musical career and an invaluable resource on the band’s work up to 1971. Aymeric Leroy, Soft Machine archivist extraordinaire, compiler of the Calyx website on Canterbury music and moderator of the What’s Rattlin’ forum, willingly corresponded on many issues relating to Soft Machine’s work and spent considerable time helping to clarify dozens of details. Richard Heath of Loughborough Campus Radio, Soft fan from way back, also enthusiastically engaged in a valuable exchange of ideas. As if that wasn’t enough, Michael, Aymeric and Richard cast serious doubts on their capacity for rational thought by offering to read through a complete draft of the book and correcting an inordinate number of errors and typos.

Many other fans and associates also willingly assisted in the cause. These included Rob Ayling of Voiceprint Records, Steve Feigenbaum of Cuneiform Records, Leonardo Pavkovic of MoonJune Global Media, Age Rotshuizen (responsible for the Hulloder Soft Machine website), Gary Lucas, Bob Strano and Erik Engh. Thijs Janssen was kind enough to throw some light on various musty corners of my memories of music theory that I had apparently decided were best left dormant. Thanks also to Jonny Greene of Planet Gong who eventually succumbed to my whining and supplied one of the last available copies of Gong Dreaming 1, Daevid Allen’s personal retrospective on how he experienced his Soft Machine years.

The prime source of the quotations cited in the book were my extended interviews with many of the Softs. Other important sources are Michael King’s Wrong Movements: a Robert Wyatt History, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Mojo (particularly Rob Chapman’s article in the June 1997 issue), Facelift, Jazzwise, Brian Hopper’s Tales of Canterbury. The Wilde Flowers Story: Brian’s Tale and What’s Rattlin’. Incidental quotes have been drawn from The Langtonian, Daevid Allen’s Gong Dreaming 1, The Sunday Times, Marsha Hunt’s Real Life, Zigzag, Brain Damage, Joe McMichael and Jack Lyons’s The Who: Concert File, Andy Neill and Matt Kent’s The Who: Anyway Anyhow Anywhere, Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek’s Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy, John McDermott, Mark Lewisohn and Eddie Kramer’s Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight, Noel Redding and Carol Appleby’s Are You Experienced? The Inside Story of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Guardian Unlimited, www.manzanera.com, www.guitarnoise.com, Mitch Mitchell and John Platt’s The Hendrix Experience, Oor, Time Out, www.sydbarrett.net, Rubberneck Magazine, Gandalf’s Garden, Ken Garner and John Peel’s In Session Tonight: the Complete Radio 1 Recordings, Aymeric Leroy’s interview with Karl Jenkins, Downbeat, www.furious.com, Rolling Stone, Brian Sweet’s Steely Dan: Reelin’ in the Years, Radio Times, Music Now, Jazz Journal, Music Quarterly, Music Review, Joe Jackson’s A Cure for Gravity, The Guardian, www.artistdirect.com, Stuart Nicholson’s Jazz-Rock: a History, Canterbury Nachrichten, Guitar Player, Guitar Extra, Het Parool, www.johnetheridge.com, Q Magazine, Joachim E. Berendt’s The Jazz Book, www.fretlessbass.com, Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees, Sounds, www.drummerworld.com, The Observer, The Irish Independent and the sleeve notes of various Soft Machine LP and CD releases. Some quotes have been very slightly edited to improve their readability.

I was greatly assisted in deciphering and translating the Spanish lyrics of Dada Was Here by Roxanna Dimicco and Paula Krol.

Many Softs, associates and fans were kind enough to provide photographs that are included in the book. I am especially grateful to Mark Ellidge, Brian Hopper, Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, Roy Babbington, John Marshall, Ric Sanders, Steve Cook, Michael King, Richard Heath and John Peel.

Sadly, during the writing of this biography John Peel passed away. Throughout his thirty-eight years on British radio, John consistently championed original music that he was convinced had a special quality, regardless of whether it was seen by record companies as commercial. He not only introduced Soft Machine to millions of listeners, he did the same for countless other bands across every conceivable form of modern music. John’s authentic passion for new music helped make him the most influential DJ of his era. But somehow, despite his fame and his perpetual exposure to the cynicism of the music industry, he remained self-effacing and wonderfully funny. I discovered this myself when I finally met up with him to discuss his recollections of the many Soft Machine sessions that he broadcast on BBC Radio 1. Despite an exceptionally busy schedule, he willingly made two hours available to talk about a band for whom he had had enormous respect. He welcomed me to his home in his uniquely disarming way, talked candidly about how the BBC worked at a time when no-one in a senior position had any conception of what progressive music was all about, and he dug up a zillion unlikely anecdotes. The debt that I, millions of music fans and especially Soft Machine owe to John is immeasurable.

Graham Bennett

June 2005

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Preface to the Revised Edition

The publication of a revised edition of Soft Machine: Out-Bloody-Rageous provides an opportunity to update some of the information on the band. This is particularly the case for the discography which has benefited from a series of new releases, some of which are of great significance. In addition I have been able to refine parts of the biography and correct a few inaccuracies. In that respect I am grateful to Jon Newey, Jeff Sherman, Nick Loebner, John Trimble, Alan Grange and Vasco Pearce de Azevedo for providing further information that enhanced the narrative.

The Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections for Soft Machine: Out-Bloody-Rageous was an unexpected accolade. Although personally satisfying, the real significance of the award is that it shows the professionals at the ARSC recognize the musical importance of Soft Machine’s work. It would be rewarding indeed if the award were to succeed in conveying this message to a broader audience.

On a more melancholy note, it is sad to have to recount that four figures who were central to the Soft Machine story passed away in the period since the biography was first published.

Kevin Ayers was a warm and modest man who took an unyielding sideways stance to music and the world around him. But he was also sharp enough to recognize a one-shot opportunity when it presented itself, as it did on Easter Sunday 1966. Quite simply, without Kevin there would have been no Soft Machine.

Hugh Hopper was one of the most prominent figures in Soft Machine’s history, a musician who remained faithful to his artistic vision. But he was also an exceptionally amiable man, always willing to rack his memory in response to yet another question on an obscure detail from Soft Machine’s history.

Elton Dean arrived later in the band’s career but played a crucial role in driving Soft Machine into new territory. An unusually creative sax player, he leaves a unique musical heritage.

Mark Ellidge – Robert Wyatt’s half-brother – supported the band in establishing itself in 1966 and 1967 and crucially, as Soft Machine’s unofficial photographer, created an invaluable visual record of the band throughout that formative period. He would go on to build a distinguished career through his work for The Sunday Times, specializing in the performing arts and portraits of famous figures.

Kevin, Hugh, Elton and Mark were enormously helpful during the writing of this book and will be sorely missed.

Graham Bennett

July 2014

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Foreword

by Daevid Allen

Little credence is given to spiritual visions by rational beings in the current clime, and since my premonitions of my own involvement with Soft Machine are covered in Gong Dreaming 1, I would like to begin here somewhat differently.

For me, the idea of Soft Machine was creatively seeded in the Wilde Flowers. It was given a certain practical reality by Kevin’s song-publishing deal with Animals’ manager Mike Jeffery and primarily funded by the American businessman Wes Brunson. This was followed by the loan of a house in which to live and rehearse by Kevin’s ex-squeeze Jane Aspinall (wife of John Aspinall of casino fame) and followed by our eventual somewhat disastrous signing to Jeffery in return for a tiny percentage and a meagre weekly wage.

Clearly much of the initial practical impetus revolved around Kevin’s energy and persistence and his beautiful songs. His enthusiasm was infectious and he single-handedly turned me on to pop music via Giorgio Gomelsky’s production of the Yardbirds’ title Still I’m Sad, which had a strong Indian modal feel.

Suddenly I realized that the climate in the UK was such that stylistically we could do whatever we wanted (possibly even free jazz!) and it could conceivably be a hit without compromising our integrity. We might also make money! I wrote my first songs with Kevin and we dropped acid to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. This did the trick and I was hooked.

These days, the fashionable Life Coaches preach that one achieves success by acting as if it were already achieved. Back then this is exactly what we did, but quite naturally. From that time on, Kevin and I were famous in our own bathrooms and eventually it worked. Well, sort of.

Once we were funded by Wes and arrived in the UK with money to buy new gear, Robert arrived with his drums, voice and uniquely surrealist attitude. His songs were innovative and new. His presence was strong. There followed a brief but unsuccessful flirtation with the inclusion of Californian guitarist Larry Nowlin in a quintet, which subsequently stabilized into the quartet which included Kevin on bass, myself on lead guitar, Robert on vocals and drums and Mike Ratledge, down from Oxford, on organ.

By the time I was refused re-entry to the UK in August 1967 the playing had dramatically changed. But this was nothing compared to the extraordinary musical evolution that lay ahead. Compare Jet-Propelled Photographs with Soft Machine 5 and see if you can follow the umbilical cord of common ground between them.

I am happy to have been involved in the early history of Soft Machine, although it was rather like a very long bad day on guitar. In retrospect, as Gilli Smyth has said, Soft Machine was like a boat that, once we each got out of it, we pushed back out into the river and on it sailed. Many other musicians from differing traditions subsequently got in and out and it is still going.

Bon voyage amigos!

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Foreword

by Hugh Hopper

By the time the eighties rolled around you couldn’t give Soft Machine records away. The Boring Old Fart Syndrome . . .  But in the last few years, thanks to Steve Feigenbaum at Cuneiform Records in the USA and Rob Ayling at Voiceprint Records in the UK (both Softs fans from way back), there has been a sudden resurgence of interest in those ancient dinosaurs. Well OK, we’re still not driving around in Maseratis or living on the Côte d’Azur on the record sales, but when you look at the various reissues, archive CDs and Soft-revisiting bands like Polysoft, it’s heartening to think the music hasn’t disappeared forever.

And the books, fanzine articles and film documentaries keep arriving: first Mike King’s biography of Robert Wyatt (Wrong Movements) and now Graham Bennett’s equally seriously researched work. It’s interesting to read what others involved with the band remember and misremember. You have to realize it all started forty years ago, in a haze of smoke and musical egos . . .

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Foreword

by John Etheridge

When I joined Soft Machine in April 1975 there was a lot of controversy in the music press about the relationship of this band to earlier incarnations and whether it could justifiably carry on bearing the name.

There was no dilemma for me personally as I was a fan individually and collectively of the musicians who constituted the current Soft Machine. These were some of my jazz heroes and I had seen the band at the Rainbow opposite Larry Coryell and had been impressed. I was therefore really pleased and somewhat daunted to join them on the departure of Allan Holdsworth. There was a lot of emphasis on the guitar and I really felt the challenge of meeting the requirements – although I did feel that I understood the milieu and was up to it.

What I remember most were some truly storming gigs in front of huge crowds, particularly in France and Italy, and that, fired by the inspiration coming from the other players and despite – or because of – tensions within the line-up, I played more forcefully than I’d ever done and reached a first plateau in my playing. I really appreciated my time in this band and felt it a shame that its demise occurred so soon.

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PROLOGUE

The Revelation

The Royal Albert Hall, London, 18 February 1969.

I’d come for Jimi Hendrix, along with five thousand other fans. It was to be my third and – although I didn’t know it then – my last opportunity to see the master. But first we’d all have to sit through the support – Traffic sans Steve Winwood and some obscure outfit called Soft Machine.

I remembered Soft Machine as a psychedelic band that had been given a season ticket to UFO and Middle Earth a couple of years back. Despite being a Londoner, I’d somehow never seen them during those heady times. A faint memory of the Softs playing at the Christmas On Earth Continued all-star spectacular in December 1967 lurked somewhere in my mind, but I’d arrived late that night and I must have missed them. Anyway, this was 1969: psychedelia was dead. What could they have to offer?

I whiled away the time by scrutinizing the occupants of the chic boxes encircling the first tier of the auditorium, despising and envying them simultaneously for their well-heeled good fortune. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the lights dimmed – and within a minute I couldn’t give a damn about applying theories of Marxist class struggle to my fellow patrons. No-one had prepared me for this.

Soft Machine’s keyboard player was in the middle of an odd, off-centred intro that had nothing to do with the progressive music that I knew anything about. Then a shock wave hit me – a vicious, grinding blast of sound that chain-sawed my soul in two. Blinking into the darkness to locate the source of the attack, it seemed that the only possible culprit could be the bass player. Having witnessed Cream and the Who, I thought I knew something about heavy bass playing. I didn’t.

This totally impassive, bespectacled figure simply hammered the auditorium to smithereens without even so much as batting an eyelid, laying a foundation of searing fuzz bass that seemed intent on reducing the Victorian auditorium to a pile of rubble. Refocusing my attention, I was just in time to hear the drummer reciting lyrics that, if I hadn’t known better, sounded remarkably like the letters of the alphabet. His stammered welcome to the show – Anyway, hello – was followed by more stomach-wrenching fuzz bass, and then the organist decided that it was his turn to cause some grievous bodily harm. I had heard plenty of Vox Continentals and I’d once seen Keith Emerson demolish his Hammond. But this was instrumentation of a totally different order – a strange bass-pedalled affair with the volume cranked up to Maximum Damage and then fed through a fuzz box. God it hurt. But it also taught me what musical masochism was all about.

No-one had prepared me for the music either. The regulation guitarist had gone AWOL. Instead it was the organ that led, intertwining swirling arpeggios with circular figures, never allowing even a momentary pause between the notes. The bass player alternated between laying down rock-solid riffs and building bridges with deliberately played but quirky phrases. Like the bassist, the drummer had a key role in colouring the sound, sometimes underpinning the melodic passages with rock rhythms, then playing around the figures with a loose, improvising style, all the time driving the music forward with frenetic energy and a sound that was as sharp as a rattlesnake’s.

The drummer was also the band’s vocalist, but not a singer with any ambitions of eclipsing Paul McCartney. I heard instead melodic conversations from someone who told strange tales of touring with Jimi Hendrix, who insisted that if something’s not worth saying you should still say it, and who concluded that living in the US is fine if you’re white and like getting a suntan. These weren’t songs with instrumental bridges so much as instrumentals with lyrical interludes.

The stage act was also remarkable – that is to say, the total absence of an act. No Who-like pyrotechnics from these guys. Instead, the band just played, the organist withdrawn behind Roger McGuinn shades, the bass player hunched over his Fender Precision, the drummer, even when singing his crazy lyrics, surprisingly serious. With this band it was the music that talked, not the antics of the musicians.

It was Soft Machine who haunted my soul that night, not Hendrix. That might sound like heresy, even allowing for the fact that it wasn’t one of Jimi’s best gigs. But I’m confident that, when it gets to the final reckoning, my Maker will remember how Soft Machine played that Tuesday evening and not judge me too harshly.

More than thirty years later, the exhilaration of that first encounter remains, hardly tarnished by the passage of time. And I’m not alone. Because that’s how hundreds of thousands of other fans discovered Soft Machine when they were performing at their peak – live, because Soft Machine didn’t fill the airwaves with hit singles and never succeeded in capturing anything like their live sound on disc. Extraordinary instrumentation, a unique style and no compromises to the rules of pop trivia. At the core of the band were musicians who threw down a challenge to the prevailing musical conventions of the day; who succeeded in becoming one of the prime influences in psychedelic rock, progressive rock and jazz-rock; who, as if terrified of becoming too popular, always insisted on reinventing their music with each successive album; who became surrounded by a veil of mystique even when performing to audiences across Europe and America; who never received anything like the recognition they deserved for their innovative work.

This book is an attempt to put the Soft Machine story together in a coherent form and to place their music in the context of its time. Yet that is easier said than done. For if there is one overriding feature of Soft Machine, it is that they worked exceedingly hard at avoiding the limelight. They were an enigma in their prime and they remain an enigma to this day.

Over the years, Soft Machine took on a multitude of incarnations, gaining and losing personnel with bewildering abandon and supplementing their core sound of keyboards, bass and drums with a constantly changing array of instruments – guitar, brass and wind, even violin. With this evolution came new musical styles and artistic philosophies. The energy and impudence of Soft Machine’s adolescence gave way to a more measured, cerebral musical vision.

Finally, like any band, the years took their toll. The creative fire, for many years shining like a beacon, lost its intensity. Other bands followed in their path, jazz-rock became a genre and publicity departments throughout the music business thought that if they labelled jazz-rock fusion and stripped it of its essence, it might become a marketable commodity. Soft Machine suddenly looked as if they were simply another – if exceptionally competent – jazz-rock band. They struggled on for a few years although, with all the members now engrossed in other projects and finances becoming shakier by the day, their energy became too diffused to drive the band to new heights.

In 1984 Soft Machine finally succumbed to the inevitable. But the band’s spirit, when it had soared, had given us some of the most remarkable music of an era. And that is how Soft Machine will be remembered.

This is their story.

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1

Canterbury Cradle

The Early Years

There was great love in the family, great warmth, support for what we did, interaction. That was a wonderful experience, living in that house.

Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys has always been proud of being a traditional English school in a traditional English town. Nestling in the historic tranquility of Canterbury, the establishment has served many generations of respectable families from the city and its surrounding towns and villages.

As a community, Canterbury represents everything that is typically English. A small medieval city fifty miles southeast of London, it is dominated both physically and culturally by its imposing eleventh-century cathedral. As the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury – the head of the Anglican church – the city is steeped in its traditions and presents a dignified, conservative face to the world. It is a community that prefers to savour its rich heritage rather than advancing into an uncertain future.

Canterbury’s conservatism might be an anachronism today, but in the 1950s it was far less out of step with the world. Then, Simon Langton shared in most respects the British educational ethos of the time – at least, that part of the ethos that applied to the more able portion of the nation’s eleven-to-eighteen-year olds for which a grammar school was designed to cater. The establishment’s overriding goal was to shape its pupils for careers in academia, the professions or politics. Failing that, some form of employment in a respectable managerial function would be tolerated, if grudgingly.

Despite this conservative world-view, Simon Langton wasn’t an extreme example of a British secondary school. Canterbury parents with a highly developed sense for proper education sent their boys to King’s School or, if they could afford it, one of the more exclusive (and expensive) public schools. Nevertheless, any modern observer of Simon Langton who was not familiar with the peculiar character of Britain’s post-war educational culture would find it exceedingly difficult to comprehend its complex rituals. The school’s population of five hundred pupils – entirely male in the conviction that contact with young girls would offer adolescent boys too many distractions from the serious business of learning – were dressed identically in maroon blazers, white shirts, striped ties and grey trousers. Investigating further, it would be discovered that the pupils were organized into four houses – Guild, Chapter, Glebe and Manor – membership of which was intended to foster the notion of identity and service to a group. This was manifested in such activities as inter-house sports competitions in which each boy was encouraged to perform well in unselfish service to his house team (or, for some, to devise devious ways of avoiding any such involvement).

The male part of the teaching staff – that is to say, the entire staff save for a couple of stray spinsters – were dressed without exception in jackets and ties that, by assiduously displaying a total absence of sophistication with respect to cut, colour or cloth, conformed in every respect with that peculiarly British perception of style. Many habitually tried to conceal this distressing countenance by donning black gowns that, on special occasions, would be supplemented by the traditional mortarboard.

If Simon Langton took the business of learning seriously, it also had clear ideas about the cultural development of its pupils. Like any secondary school of the time, serious artistic pursuits were encouraged through a large number of societies and clubs. These included not only such arcane pursuits as the Ship Recognition Corps but also a school orchestra and a choir. Concerts were regular events, as were productions of Shakespeare’s plays, and it was through these kinds of activities that the more creative pupils were stimulated to take an interest in art, theatre and music.

In keeping with the times, school life was regimented and offered negligible opportunities for normal adolescent preoccupations. Alcohol, popular music and fashion simply didn’t exist as far as this educational philosophy was concerned, let alone sex. Viewed from the perspective of the twenty-first century, discipline was strict, although Simon Langton certainly wasn’t in the top league by the standards of the time. Nevertheless, for minor breaches of school rules such as talking in class or wearing an item of clothing that did not comply with the regulations, a sharp rap across the knuckles with a ruler, a couple of firm blows with a slipper or detention after school were considered to be appropriate forms of correction. For more serious offences, administering several strokes with a cane to the unfortunate boy’s buttocks was judged to be a just and effective remedy.

The effect on adolescents of a regime that emphasized rigid social and cultural norms over individual development was profound. As a humane and balanced preparation for adulthood, it was of course entirely inappropriate. To give but one example – though one that is of enormous consequence in Britain – girls, with whom there was an almost total absence of day-to-day social contact, were regarded by most schoolboys as a species from another planet so that any normal communication, let alone intimacy, was impossible to conceive.

The reactions of the boys to such an environment varied. For those who accepted the system and were academically proficient, the traditional rewards of university, a good career and social respect beckoned. For the significant number who found difficulty in empathizing with such an ethos it had a deadening effect, engendering an attitude of passive compliance, an obsession with avoiding punishment and simply striving to get out at the other end without suffering too much discomfort along the way. But for those who were either perceptive enough to understand the narrowmindedness of the system or simply not prepared to accept its oppressing rules, it instilled rebellion. In most cases, any manifestation of recalcitrant behaviour was immediately repressed, if necessary by tough measures or – the ultimate disgrace – expulsion from school.

However, for a small number of the more free-thinking spirits, this kind of educational culture served to inspire a creative form of rebellion. It is no coincidence that a large proportion of the radical figures in British art, music, acting and literature over the past decades have emerged from precisely this kind of educational background – either the grammar school or, in the case of the offspring of more affluent parents, the equivalent if more extreme environment of the boarding school.

The official photograph of the Simon Langton school choir from 1958 shows fifty-six uniformed boys posing in serried ranks around their music teachers, the youngest boys in their short trousers sitting cross-legged at the front, the more senior boys seated in the middle row, the others standing at the back. The fact that over a tenth of all the school’s pupils participated in the choir is a good illustration of how seriously Simon Langton took its music.

Standing in the back row are the thirteen-year-olds. Fifth from the right is a rather resigned-looking, blonde-haired boy called Robert Ellidge. Standing next to him on the right is the innocently laughing face of his friend Hugh Hopper. Seated second and third from the left in the second row are two fifteen-year-old friends: Hugh’s stern-looking elder brother Brian and a confidently smiling Michael Ratledge – to all intents and purposes, four well-bred boys at one of Britain’s more respectable schools. Yet Robert, Hugh, Michael and Brian were soon to display habits that, judged by the standards of the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, were decidedly improper. For they would soon set out on a path that, in total contradiction to everything their school stood for, was to lead to the formation of a band that would be identified more than any other with the thoroughly disreputable world of the psychedelic counterculture.

Photo: The Simon Langton school choir

In the comfortable world of post-war middle-class England, you couldn’t get much further removed from the social standards of Simon Langton than George Ellidge and Honor Wyatt. To be sure, George had graduated in law from Liverpool University and then gained a masters degree in English and music at Christ’s College Cambridge, while Honor was a journalist and broadcaster. But any resemblance to prim English respectability ended there.

George and Honor had both been married before, George to Mary Robertson Burtonwood and Honor to Gordon Glover. Out of both marriages came children. George was father to two boys and a girl – John (who was born in Majorca but died in 1943 when he was ten), Julia (born two years later) and Mark (who was born in 1939). Honor had a son, Julian (born in 1935 and later to become a successful actor), and a daughter, Prudence.

During the 1930s, Honor and Gordon Glover lived for a few years in Deià on the Balearic island of Majorca. They were friends of Robert Graves, the writer who was later to become an internationally renowned poet, novelist and critic. Graves’s works included an autobiography of his experiences during the First World War, Goodbye to All That, and two historical novels that he wrote in 1934, I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Other visitors to his house at the time were George and Mary Ellidge – Mary was working for Graves typing the manuscripts of the Claudius novels.

When George and Honor first met, George was working as a journalist and reviewer. But with the onset of the Second World War he joined the army, serving in Signals and becoming a captain stationed in France, Algeria and Italy. Meanwhile, Honor, Julian and Prudence had moved to Bristol where Honor worked for the BBC as a scriptwriter for schools radio programmes at the department’s wartime location. By this time, however, George and Honor’s relationship had blossomed into intimacy. Honor became pregnant, and on 28 January 1945 their son Robert Wyatt Ellidge was born. Because George was still living with Mary at this time – at a house in Oxford where Mary had moved during the war – Robert lived with Honor, first in Bristol and then, when the BBC’s Schools Department returned to the capital in 1946, Dulwich in South London. There she shared a house with the Palmer family.

George was an intelligent, popular man with a good sense of humour. More significantly for Robert’s future, George loved music, playing piano and listening to a surprisingly wide range of music. This included the modern classical works of composers such as Shostakovich, Hindemith and Bartók, but also opera and jazz.

George and Honor were unusual not only in their personal liaison, they were exceptional for their political and social views. Robert once remarked that his parents didn’t believe in God but they were very religious. He meant that they were serious socialists. However, they also shared a very liberal philosophy and intellectually they were always open to new ideas. One of Robert’s friends clearly remembers that you could talk to them about anything and they were always interested in what we were doing.

On returning to Oxford after the war, George went back to studying, this time for a diploma in psychology at the University of Oxford, and he and Mary moved to a houseboat nearby on the Thames. On gaining his diploma George found a job at a local hospital for mentally ill patients, but this lasted just four months: their houseboat sank and it was at this point that George and Mary decided to separate and divorce. Mark was sent to boarding school, spending the vacations with his mother in Hastings where she had found work as a teacher. George moved to Long Eaton, near Nottingham, where he had successfully applied for the post of vocational officer at an industrial rehabilitation unit.

Despite their separation, George and Honor saw each other as often as was possible in the circumstances, given that the public morals of the time were very clear when it came to the propriety of such relationships. It was therefore with great relief that George found a job in 1951 at a new rehabilitation centre in Watford on the northwestern outskirts of London. George and Honor could finally marry and set up home. They did this together with Julian, Prudence and Robert, buying a semi-detached house in Dulwich close to where Honor had been living.

Just before moving into their new house, Honor’s contract with the BBC Schools Department ended and she became a producer with the radio programme Woman’s Hour. George and Honor’s new life seemed to have found its footing. Tragically, however, their new idyll was soon shattered with the diagnosis that George was suffering from multiple sclerosis, a chronic debilitating disease of the central nervous system. During his service in Algeria George had started experiencing double vision, which he attributed to a sight problem. After a few years, however, he also found difficulty in walking. At that time, medical understanding of the disease was still in its infancy and it was not until 1952 that George’s condition was correctly diagnosed. A few years later, George and Honor would relate their experience of living with the disease in their book Why Pick On Us?.

Fortunately George was still fit enough to work, even if he had to be cautious in his movements. A year later he was transferred to another industrial rehabilitation centre, this time in Egham, near Windsor. The couple decided to move to the town, prompting Honor to resign her position as producer which she had discovered was a vocation that did not suit her talents. From then on she would work as a freelance journalist and broadcaster.

Inevitably George’s condition deteriorated further, and in 1956 he and Honor decided that he could no longer continue working. Honor’s father had recently died, however, and with her inheritance George and Honor were now in a position to buy a home where they could spend their final years together. After several months of searching, they eventually found what they were looking for in the form of Wellington House – a dilapidated fourteen-room Georgian property in the village of Lydden, four miles northwest of Dover.

Photo: George Ellidge, Honor Wyatt, Robert and Honor’s daughter Prue at Wellington House

Photo: Wellington House

Having virtually completed his junior school education, Robert was sent to stay with a family in France for three months while George and Honor set about renovating their new home. Before departing, however, Robert sat the eleven-plus, the examination that determined the type of secondary school for which each pupil was eligible. For most children dependent on the state education system, this was either a grammar school for the more academically proficient or a secondary modern school for those of less ability. Robert did well in the examination, being marked down for a grammar school – even being labelled as U, meaning of university potential – and the choice of George and Honor fell on Simon Langton School in Canterbury, despite the fact that this required a daily journey by bus of about forty minutes.

However, soon after starting at his new school Robert began developing certain personality traits that were to create increasing tensions with the traditional values so carefully nurtured by Simon Langton. Within a year he had formed a skiffle group with some friends. Skiffle was a short-lived British craze initiated by Lonnie Donegan with his 1956 hit single Rock Island Line, although it had originally evolved during the American Depression when extreme poverty forced amateur musicians to play music on makeshift instruments, drawing their inspiration from folk and the blues. For Britain’s youth it had the great advantage that it involved little more than three chords and could be played on guitar, double bass (or, for many amateurs, the tea-chest and broomstick fitted with a solitary string) and drums (or, again for under-capitalized adolescents, a washboard). Robert and his friends duly patched together various instruments and practised enthusiastically in the basement of Wellington House. Interestingly, Robert’s brief affair with skiffle did not lead to any serious interest in rock’n’roll as it did for so many other budding musicians of the era. Instead, it was the jazz records played at home that really sparked his love for music that was to become a passion. From his father Robert first heard Virgil Thompson and Charlie Parker, from his half-brother Mark he discovered Stan Kenton. As Robert later recalled, It just exploded in my head.

With a grand piano in the living room, it was natural for Robert to try his hand at the instrument in an attempt to emulate his jazz heroes. He then discovered that a teacher and one of the boys at Simon Langton had formed a school jazz club. The club met regularly during the lunch breaks to discuss jazz music and play any records that the boys could get their hands on. Up to thirty pupils met in this way – a surprisingly large number given the traditional culture of the school. More importantly for Robert’s future, his interest in jazz had somehow become known to one of the senior boys who was himself just discovering these radical musical horizons, and particularly the innovatory piano of Cecil Taylor. Desperate to hear all he could of his new hero, Mike Ratledge approached Robert and asked if he could borrow one of his Cecil Taylor records. Robert lent him At Newport: the Gigi Gryce-Donald Byrd Jazz Laboratory and the Cecil Taylor Quartet. I was very honoured – a sixth-form prefect deigned to talk to one of us!

When Mike Ratledge first spoke to Robert Ellidge in 1960, he was seventeen and two years ahead of Robert at school. As a senior boy with a good behavioural record, he had also been appointed a school prefect, a position that brought with it certain responsibilities such as assisting in house activities and helping to maintain order among the younger boys, with the authority to impose punishments if necessary. In the hierarchical world of a grammar school, that meant that social contacts between Mike and Robert would normally be very limited. Mike’s request, indicating as it did a musical interest that fell outside the accepted norms of the school, therefore made an impact on Robert.

Michael Ratledge was born in Maidstone, Kent, on 6 May 1943 into a far more traditional family than that of Robert. His father became headmaster at a secondary modern school in Canterbury, and the family – Mike had two younger sisters – then lived in a semi-detached house in Whitstable Road to the north of the city centre. Mike was a musical child and took lessons in piano and music theory at a young age. At home he