'All this world is but a play...' by Peter Leyland

'All this world is but a play...

 

Alan, an old friend from Liverpool who featured in a piece I wrote for AuthorsElectric in 2023, took this photograph at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in September this year. Yet when I asked more recent acquaintances, do you rememberThe Incredible String Band? I was met with blank looks, and I found that nobody did remember them much at all. I think that on reflection they were a musical phenomenon which happened in the late sixties, appearing as if from nowhere, making a few cherished albums, and then disappearing like shooting stars, their force all spent. Or was it? At the Celebration of the Incredible String Band last month, I met up with Alan at the performance and we sat together afterwards discussing the concert and old times. I then thought I would put together my own retrospective of what they meant to me at the time and in some respects still do today. 

 

I’ll start with Alan’s comments about the 'Celebration' which he circulated to our original friendship group:

 

The Queen Elizabeth Hall was packed and there was a strong sense of anticipation from the audience which covered a surprisingly large age range. It was obvious that a huge amount of work had been put into the concert….There were up to 14 musicians on stage at any one time, sometimes just two, playing a wide variety of instruments including star, tabla, fiddle, acoustic guitars, flute and penny whistle…There were very few song announcements, they just played the music and played it well, with respect.

 

At the beginning of the second half Joe Boyd came on and talked about when he’d first seen them and how it led to him managing and producing them. He talked about the optimism of their music and of the times, the movement they were part of and how he felt then that the world was changing. He specifically mentioned the concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic in 1968 as being special…The performance ended with '...may the long time sun shine upon you/ all love surround you/ and the pure light within you/ guide you all the way home'. I think everyone was on their feet by then. There was great emotion. I've never been to a concert like it.

 

I had attended that Liverpool concert in 1968 and was amazed at the band's laid-back musical style. Mike Heron and Robin Williamson wandered around the philharmonic hall stage picking up instruments to play, only to put them down and pick them up again, while girlfriends, Rose and Licorice, sat cross-legged on the floor beating out rhythms on bells and on tablas. I preserved the printed handout.

 

Shortly after that concert I was eighteen and a few months later I completed my A’ Levels and secured a London University place to read English. This involved much travelling on the London Underground and one day I was on the Northern Line between Tottenham Court Road and Hendon Central when I looked up to see Mike and Robin strap-hanging at the other end of the carriage. They were clearly excited to be in London and had already penned a song about the underground travel called “Mercy I Cry City” on the album, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. I was at that time deeply immersed in Beowulf, andThe Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and was struggling to translate Piers Plowman by William Langland, so when I saw them on that tube train, I was looking for some respite. I noted that they were down to play at The Royal Albert Hall in November of that year and so I immediately bought tickets. There they played an astonishing set from their recently released double album, Wee Tam and The Big Huge. Words from the song “Maya” have given me the title for this piece.

 

And so, like me, Robin and Mike were in the big city. They had originally developed as Scottish Folk Singers around the clubs in Edinburgh. There in the early 60s Robin and another musician, Clive Palmer, began mixing traditional folk and blues. They were joined by a local musician, Mike Heron, and The Incredible String Band was born.They recorded a self-titled album in 1966, and Bob Dylan said that the track “October Song” was a favourite of his. Listening to that song, some remarkable lines remain in my memory:

 

The fallen leaves

That jewelled the ground

They know the art of dying

And leave with joy their glad gold hearts

In the scarlet shadows lying

 

By 1967 Clive Palmer had left the band, but Mike and Robin continued and recorded the mesmeric 5,000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion of which I still have a vinyl copy. It contains a magnificent array of songs in the groundbreaking style of ‘psychedelic folk’, a term that was given to this music. Standout tracks are “First Girl I Loved” and “Painting Box”, songs which featured as an accompaniment to my own romantic life both then and many years later. The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter which followed was a tour de force in a new musical style. “A Very Cellular Song” from that album is described by Melanie Xulu in the concert programme as 'legendary'. She goes on to mention their disappointing appearance at Woodstock in 1969: What happened I discovered was that a rainstorm caused them to shift their performance from the Friday night to the Saturday, where sandwiched between the heavy rock of The Keef Hartley Band and Canned Heat, their delicate sound simply died.

 

Melanie Xulu goes on to say that, although their musical style waned during the seventies they had made a lasting mark: ‘they approached music as a form of exploration offering something deeper than genre or style’. She says that the unrelenting spirit of the band returns to the Southbank Centre with songs that are capable of ‘changing shape, mood, and meaning’. They ‘never really belonged to their time, that’s exactly why they still matter now’.

 

In an advertisement for the 'Celebration', I read that Robin Williamson wasn’t interested in performing for this concert, so Mike Heron had to carry the burden of the legacy himself, which he did magnificently at the age of 83, sometimes helped across the stage between songs by his daughter, Georgia. She is also a musician and joined in with performing her father’s songs. I did a bit of research about what happened to Robin Williamson and discovered through Facebook that he had moved to Cardiff in the 1990s with his wife Bina, and that they had developed a musical and spoken word project, incorporating Sikh, Christian, Celtic, and Jewish ideas. They play at village halls and arts centres throughout the country in the tradition of travelling performers, singers and storytellers.

 

                                                                        ...become the joyful player'

As Robin sings on “October Song”, ‘I met a man whose name was Time/ And he said I must be going’: 900 people in that audience at The Queen Elizabeth Hall did still remember them, and I will leave these memories here.

 

References

The Half-Remarkable Celebration of The Incredible String Band Companion: Broadside Hacks, Moof Magazine

Something more

My article on The Companionship of Books is now on the Fusion Magazine Website, FusionMagUK