Daevid Allen
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Daevid Allen (actually Christopher David Allen , born January 13, 1938 in Melbourne ; † March 13, 2015 in Australia ) was an Australian rock musician who is considered an important representative of the Canterbury sound and as the founder of the bands Soft Machine and Gong , but also through his solo work gained importance.
biography
Allen worked in a bookstore in Melbourne and was inspired by Beat Generation writers to move from Australia to Europe. He came to France via Greece, where he initially lived in Paris in the Beat Hotel in the former room of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky . While still in France he had contact with the young Terry Riley and made experimental music with him. In 1961 he went to England, where he looked for bands as a guitarist and singer. In 1963 he founded the Daevid Allen Trio in Lydden with the son of his landlord, the drummer Robert Wyatt (* 1945), and the bassist Hugh Hopper (1945-2009) , from which in 1966 the band Soft Machine emerged . Supported by the producer Giorgio Gomelsky , the band recorded several demo pieces and in 1967 made some appearances in Germany, Holland and France. When returning from this tour, Allen was denied re-entry to Great Britain as an Australian because his visa had expired.
So he initially stayed in France, where he lived with his partner Gilli Smyth (1933-2016) on a houseboat in Paris. There he took an active part in the student protests. Soon afterwards he went with Gilli Smyth to Deià on Mallorca , where the couple lived in the vicinity of the writer Robert Graves and founded the band Gong with the saxophonist Didier Malherbe (* 1943) , which got their first record deal with the BYG Actuel label . With the support of the percussionist Rachid Houri , the trio recorded the debut album Magick Brother in 1969 , with Allen playing and singing all stringed instruments. With Malherbe's varied interludes on woodwind instruments and Smyth's peculiar, often electronically alienated chant with moaning and sighing elements ("Space Whisper"), Gong differed significantly from the no less experimental Soft Machine from the start , although the sound that was later still characteristic of Gong was not found. The contract with BYG also included the production of a film soundtrack and the production of Allen's first solo album Banana Moon , on which Archibald Legget played bass and Robert Wyatt from Soft Machine mostly played drums. Not least because Allen's solo album also includes a composition by Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper sung by Wyatt, Allen's first solo album is much closer to Soft Machine's early work than Gong's debut. Pip Pyle (1950-2006) also played the drums on a piece of the solo album , who then joined Gong, who formed a band lineup with bassist Christian Tritsch for the soundtrack of the racing film Continental Circus and their second album Camembert Electrique from 1971 had found.
Allen's work in the early 1970s was initially determined by his work with Gong, which came under contract with Virgin Records after BYG ended in 1972 and was again produced there by Gomelsky. From his other pupils Magma the bassist Francis Moze joined Gong. At that time the band lived as a kind of rural commune in France. Allen and Smyth temporarily withdrew to Mallorca in 1973 due to the birth of their first child, while Gong was able to take over from guitarist Steve Hillage (* 1951), drummer Pierre Moerlen (1952-2006), bassist Mike Howlett (* 1950) and keyboardist Tim Blake (* 1952) reorganized. By 1974 he had produced five albums and a longer film soundtrack in rapid succession with Gong. Especially in the 1973/74 Radio Gnome trilogy from the Flying Teapot , Angel's Egg and You albums , Allen created a humorous mythology about flying teapots, friendly witches and extraterrestrials, lyrically and with the record covers he designed graphically. which became the classic motif of gong. Allen was the composer and lyricist of most of the pieces, which, based on solid jazz rock, were also acoustically eccentric with Malherbe's oriental-inspired saxophone and flute playing, Smyth's Space Whisper and Blake's futuristic synthesizer sounds. Der Spiegel described Gong's music as "art rock of the particularly free-spirited kind" , which although delighted the critics, with which Allen also deliberately avoided commercial success.
After the birth of the second child, Gilli Smyth withdrew completely from the band Gong for the time being. Allen also dropped out a little later and released his second solo album in 1976 and his third solo album in 1977, with musicians from the Mallorcan band Euterpe accompanying him. Acoustic instruments are predominantly used on these records, and rock drums have been completely dispensed with in favor of other percussion.
The band Gong became a purely instrumental jazz rock project without everyone and after several line-up changes under the direction of Pierre Moerlen as Pierre Moerlens Gong , and as such they presented a few albums until the 1980s. Allen has meanwhile continued the classic gong motifs in various other projects, which can be subsumed as Daevid Allen's gong . In 1977 he organized a one-time gong reunion and performed together with the English festival band Here & Now as Planet Gong , with pieces from Here & Now as well as from Allen in the repertoire. In the late 1970s he separated from Gilli Smyth, who, together with other Gong musicians, remained connected to their solo projects as Mother Gong , in which their new partner Harry Williamson (* 1950) was also involved.
In 1979 Daevid Allen released N 'Existe Pas! again a mostly acoustic solo album, on which the percussionist Chris Cutler and the saxophonist George Bishop can also be heard. In the same year, however, on the advice of Gomelsky, he also recorded the album About Time with Bill Laswell (* 1955), Fred Maher and other young musicians from New York as New York Gong , which was clearly influenced by punk and new wave . The formation New York Gong did not last due to musical differences, from it the band material quickly emerged without everyone . Allen remained connected to the New Wave with the remix album Divided Alien Playbax 80 , where he also used loops and drum machines for the first time . He kept this style for a while after his return to Australia in 1981. In 1982 he even announced the end of the rock era with the album Death of Rock and Other Entrances . Allen spent the following years up to 1988 rather withdrawn in Australia, where only a few simple recordings were made with changing musicians, which he published on the 1990 compilation The Australian Years .
In 1988 Allen returned to England and soon afterwards formed the Compagnie d'Opera Invisible de Thibet with Didier Malherbe, whose project name and repertoire took up the classical phase of Gong from the early 1970s and was soon renamed Gongmaison . Harry Williamson and violinist Graham Clark also joined them. In 1989 the formation released an album of the same name under the name Gongmaison . With Williamson, Smyth and Australian musicians, Allen then formed the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet of almost the same name , which was later continued by young Australian musicians around guitarist Brian Abbott, to whom Allen remained on friendly terms and as guest musicians until the end. With Clark and the didgeridoo player Mark Robson, Allen also formed the trio The Magick Brothers from 1991 . In 1991 Allen appeared again with Here & Now as Planet Gong .
In 1992 Gongmaison was renamed Gong again. After a concert for the 25th anniversary of the gong in 1994, the classic gong line-up was finally reunited with Allen, Smyth, Malherbe and Howlett, who released two new studio albums by 2001 and completed numerous tours. After that, the band officially stopped their tour activities, but appeared again and again in the following period, also with Steve Hillage and on smaller tours. Over the years, the line-up was replaced by younger musicians except for all. a. Allen's and Smyth's son Orlando Monday Allen took the place of drummer. In 2014, the last studio album, I see you, was released.
Despite the Gong reunion, Allen also released other solo albums after 1990, which initially continued in the tradition of his folk-heavy albums of the late 1970s. On his 1999 album Eat Me Baby I'm a Jellybean , he recorded interpretations of jazz standards. His album Soundbites 4 Tha Revelation from 2012 contains spoken and sometimes alienated texts about sound collages.
Allen devoted himself to numerous other projects in his later years. In 1999 he founded the band University of Errors , which released several albums and re-recorded old Soft Machine tracks. Since 2003 Allen has also appeared with Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers Temple and at times with his son Orlando Allen as Acid Mothers Gong . Allen has also recorded several albums with Mikey Cosmic since 2003, most of which contain meditative music and in which several other musicians from Gong or von Allen's other projects were involved.
Daevid Allen was on stage with various projects until 2014, before cancer made further appearances impossible. On February 5, 2015, he announced that he had six months to live and that he was convinced that he would let things take their course instead of undergoing further complicated operations. He made his last public appearances on February 27 and March 1, 2015 in Byron Bay , where he recited short poems on the occasion of celebrations, already severely affected by illness. Daevid Allen died on March 13, 2015 at the age of 77 in his homeland, Australia. His son Orlando wrote an obituary, which he began with cues from Allen's texts and pseudonyms: And so dada Ali, bert camembert, the dingo Virgin, divided alien and his other 12 selves prepare to pass up the oily way and back to the planet of love. In an obituary, the Guardian praised Allen as the original anti-establishment hippie and as a crazy diamond , who has sold around 20 million records with the various incarnations of his band Gong .
According to his last will, his ashes were scattered in the sea by his sons outside Byron Bay on March 21, 2015.
Album releases (selection)
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Filmography
- 2015: Romantic Warriors III: Canterbury Tales (DVD)
Web links
- http://planetgong.co.uk/ - Website of the Gong family of musicians
- Daevid Allen at discogs.com
- Daevid Allen at allmusic.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/13/daevid-allen
- ↑ Christoph Dallach: Free spirit musician Daevid Allen: The gong show . In: Der Spiegel, December 26, 2014.
- ↑ Only live recordings of the Magick Brothers have been released. A studio album that was in preparation was never completed. The American techno musician Fred Giannelli , who later used didgeridoo recordings of the sessions for his release The Acid Didj , was also involved in the studio sessions .
- ↑ http://planetgong.co.uk : Message from Daevid Allen, February 5, 2015: “I am not interested in endless surgical operations and in fact it has come as a relief to know that the end is in sight. I am a great believer in "The Will of the Way Things Are" and I also believe that the time has come to stop resisting and denying and to surrender to the way it is. "
- ↑ http://planetgong.co.uk/ Communication of March 3, 2015 and March 18, 2015.
- ↑ Peter Keepnews: Daevid Allen, Guitarist, Singer and Founder of Gong and Soft Machine, Dies at 77. In: The New York Times, March 16, 2015 (accessed March 17, 2015).
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/13/gong-founder-daevid-allen-has-died-aged-77
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/13/daevid-allen-gong-soft-machine-remembered
- ↑ http://planetgong.co.uk/ Communication of March 18, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Allen, Daevid |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Allen, Christopher David (birth name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian rock musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 13, 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Melbourne |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 13, 2015 |
| Place of death | Australia |