January, 30th 1971: on the last issue of "Melody Maker" a fan asked a question about what percussion Glen played on the second album...
Sweeney in a rare photo taken during the sessions for the second album. |
Edited since 2009 by Luca Ferrari
January, 30th 1971: on the last issue of "Melody Maker" a fan asked a question about what percussion Glen played on the second album...
Sweeney in a rare photo taken during the sessions for the second album. |
On the glorious "ZIG ZAG" #9 (January 2nd, 1970) PETER JENNER wrote about the story of KEVIN AYERS' "Joy of the Toy" recording sessions, revealing for the first time the involvement of some musicians (not mentioned on the inner sleeve for copyright reasons) as our PAUL MINNS and PAUL BUCKMASTER. Interesting the fact Jenner said Buckmaster had left the Thirds just before... (December 1969?)
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first
Read below about an old issue of ‘UNCUT’ # 181 from June 2012, one of the self-styled ‘best rock magazines’ around.
A long-time reader from Somerset writes to the letters column run for years by ALLAN JONES and asks that the magazine also cover obscure bands, starting with the Third Ear Band. What happened to Sweeney and co.?
A legitimate question, because the reader, a music lover, is not supposed to know the music scene in depth and asks the expert.
Less legitimate is Jones's (derisive? English humour?) response, which only demonstrates the snootiness, know-nothingness and arrogance of a self-referential world that continues to croak its stale truths unconcerned with what is happening just outside the editorial offices of experts...
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Dave from the video interview "Radical Elders" (2019). |
Dave Tomlin's brother Tony kindly wrote me today:
"Dave was cremated yesterday, an unattended cremation.
Early yesterday morning, around 7AM, I lit 3 candles in our garden, my way of a funeral. They burned all day and the last one was still burning, in the dark, at 7 PM last night.
Dave really didn't want to let go."
For all the people interested to get his wonderful books (apart "Tales from the Embassy" all the others are almost impossible to find), Tony will ask Dave's son Tom what he intends to do, and I will inform everyone here.
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
From the video interview "Radical Elders" (2019). |
Multi-instrumentalist, lyricist, writer and poet, David John Tomlin (1934-2024) was a seminal figure of the British underground. A founder of Giant Sun Trolley with Glen Sweeney in 1967, a collaborator with the Third Ear Band on “Alchemy” (1969), he was a cultural and political agitator since the second half of the 1960s, after a militancy in trad jazz from the late 1950s with Bob Wallis' band. From 1976 to 1991 he directed a commune experience in the occupied Cambodian Embassy in London, rejuvenating the countercultural model of the legendary London Free University of the 60s (from where Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, for example, became known).
Dave Tomlin (right) with Joe Gannon (left) announcing the Notting Hill Carnival, 1966. |
From the early 1990s he began a prolific writing activity, mainly in the online pages of the reborn International Times (read here), publishing several books of an autobiographical nature (e.g., on his experiences in India or chronicling his years at the occupied embassy), poetic, non-fiction with strong political and social characterization (such as the essay "Power Lines").
He acquainted me with the dramatic story of Mike Taylor, helping me with research (with his brother Tony) and the writing of his biography, with suggestions and revision of the text. In 2020 he collaborated on the book I wrote about Glen and the Third Ear Band by sending his memories and giving me this unpublished poem of his from 1967, I decided to use as the epigraph of the book:
"The Giant Sun Trolley is coming
League transversing it globally encircuits
Beneath the eversun
Where lances of pain
Become rays of warmth
Emanating mindwards and on
Till, reaching the epiphany
Of space and time
Flash in ozonic splendour
For Cosmic Man."
A true giant of the British counterculture and underground. Intelligent, sharp, witty, always on the right side of those who claim, especially today, the right to a better world.
From the video interview "Radical Elders" (2019). |
Since very little can be found about him on the internet, I repost here, updated, Dave's bibliography and discography already posted on this archive, willing to supplement or modify it if suggestions are received from you readers.
DISCOGRAPHY
. Third Ear Band – “Alchemy” (LP/CD – Harvest Records, UK 1969) Recorded at EMI Studios in 1969. Dave plays violin in one track composed by him, “Lark Rise”.
. High Tide –
“Ancient Gates” (CD - World Wide Records SPM-WWR-CD-0007, Germany 1990) Dave plays violin and keyboard on all the six album tracks.
. Hazchem – “Star Map Excursion” (CD - World Wide Records, Germany 1991) Dave composed two tracks for the album.
. Third Ear Band – “The Magus” (CD – Angel Air Records SJPCD173, UK 2004) Recorded in 1972. Dave plays bass guitar. He writes also the liner notes. A limited edition of 500 copies of 180 gr. vinyl was published in 2019 by Tiger Bay.
. The Bob Wallis & His New Storyville Jazzmen - "Vintage" (CD – Lake Records LACD280, 2010) Dave plays clarinet on some tracks recorded in London, in the Fifties.
. Various Artists – “Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers: British Jazz 1960-1975” (CD – Reel Recordings RR026, UK 2012) Dave plays tenor saxophone on one track, “Phrygie”, recorded at Herne Bay Jazz Club in 1961 by the Mike Taylor Quintet.
. Mike Taylor Quartet – “Preparation” (CD/LP – Sunbeam Records, UK 2021) Recorded at 19 The Common, Ealing (Mike Taylor’s home) in September 1965. Dave plays soprano saxophone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 1 (Iconoclast Press, London 2002)
"Bluebirds" (Iconoclast Press, London 2004)
"Howling at the Moon" (Iconoclast Press, London 2004)
"India Song" (Iconoclast Press, London 2005)
"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 2 (Iconoclast Press, London 2006)
"The Collected Mister" (Iconoclast Press, London 2006)
"Into the Holy Land" (Iconoclast Press, London 2007) with Tony Jackson
"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 3 (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)
"A Hole in the Wind" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)
"Harry Fainlight. From the notebooks. Posthumous pieces" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)
"Harry Fainlight. Fragments of a lost voice" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)
"Power Lines" (Iconoclast Press, UK 2012)
Dave in 1967. |
Dave Tomlin (left) and Steve Pank in London, Summer 2010 (photo: Luca Chino Ferrari) | |
This is a very sad news for all of us!
Sadly Dave passed away today, age 90.
One of a kind will be missed by all who knew him.
With these few words, Dave's brother Tony gave us the sad news in a page of IT-International Times.
I got to know Dave years ago through Steve Pank (cellist Ursula Smith's husband) and I met him in London for some interviews published in this archive. He was a cultured, clever, funny, brilliant person, an inexhaustible source about a lot of countercultural events in the 60's and 70's. His books are unique, fundamental documents for any researchers and lovers of the British underground scene.
Author of countless articles, mainly on the IT web site, he wrote many books. Among them, I love particularly that one he edited on his friend Harry Fainlight, an underrated poet (1935-1982): this book ("Fragments of a Lost Voice," Iconoclast Press, London 2010) is a genial philological-creative reconstruction of two lost fragments of poetry found by chance. Also his autobiographical novel "India Song", published by Iconoclast press in 2005, is a masterpiece of sensitivity and intelligence.
It was Dave who introduced me to the controversial story of piano player Mike Taylor, prompting me to write what to date is the only existing biography ("Out of Nowhere," published by Gonzo Multimedia in 2015). It was only thanks to him and his brother Tony that I succeeded, and I will be forever grateful to them for this extraordinary opportunity.
I will miss him a lot!
Here below the main pages of this archive where Dave is mentioned:
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-edition-of-book-on-poet-harry.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/01/dave-tomlins-lark-rise-origins-cultural.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/07/dave-tomlins-pendulum-real-cameo-in-his.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/02/dave-tomlins-new-book-out.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2013/03/dave-tomlin-analyzes-for-us-two-his.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2019/04/radical-elders-dave-tomlin.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/thanks-to-journalist-andy-roberts-i.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2017/05/dave-tomlins-forthcoming-new-book.html
https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/06/ive-left-my-heart-in-new-orleans-dawn.html
Me and Dave in London, 2010 (photo: Steve Pank). |
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Four b/w photos of Simon House playing violin with the Third Ear Band at the Clitheroe Pop Festival on June 3rd, 1972 are on eBay for £20. You can buy them HERE.
In front of about 3.000 fans, as Glen's close friend and DJ compere Pete Drummond recalled, "Coming on at the freaky hour of twilight, the Third Ear Band bewitched everybody with music from Polanski's MacBeth. With swallows swooping above them they produced a more melodic sound than of yore." The Third Ear Band line-up consisted of Sweeney (drums), Minns (oboe), House (violin), Pauli (bass), and Merchant (guitar and vocals).
Other bands involved that night were MC5, Trees, Bridget St John, UFO and Brinsley Schwarz.
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
A new book of mine on Syd Barrett has been in the bookstores for a few months now. It is called "Scritto sui Rovi" (Written on the Brambles).
After Syd's death on 7 July 2006 and all that followed (estate auction, sale of the house, an attempt to normalise his figure by means of the website run by his nephew Ian, Rob Chapman's biography/textbook and the recent TV movie ‘Have you got it yet?‘, a book on the alleged Asperger's syndrome...) I felt it my moral duty to take up my long-standing thesis on the fate of the English musician: Syd consciously withdrew from the rock scene because he was uninterested in becoming yet another music biz star and ‘society of the spectacle’ (see Guy Debord).
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Here's the press release circulating in the first half of 1969 for promoting TEB's music, just before Paul Buckmaster left and Ursula Smith joined the band.
Quite interestingly, the text is based on Glen Sweeney's manifesto written in 1968.
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Glen smoking pipe at the Isle Of Wight festival, August 26, 1990. (photo: C. Looker) |
"Third Ear Band music is a reflection of the universe as magic play illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else. Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound, or explain the alchemical repetiton seeking and sometimes finding archetypal formes, elements and rhythms...".
(Glen Sweeney on "Alchemy", Harvest Records 1969)
"The music is the music of the Druids, released from the unconscious by the alchemical process, orgasmic in its otherness, religious in its oneness communicating beauty and magic via abstract sounds whilst playing without ego enables the musicians to reach a trance-like stage, a "high" in which the music produces itself. Each piece is as alike or unalike as blades of grass or clouds".
(From the 1969 Isle of Wight concert programme)
“The trouble is that you can't be mystical without being called pseudo-mystical, and it's the fault of our previous education. I'm at Glastonbury most of the time, but we're all completely honest about it. We'll even use it honestly to make money, because the ancient Egyptians who were into it all said that you had to be rich because only then can you resist temptation”.
(Glen Sweeney to Richard Williams, “Melody Maker” June 1970)
“I've always felt that music should be pure. If you have lyrics, you are preaching in a way. Somehow words are a block to communication. It's almost impossible for me to explain exactly how I feel about this, that's why I'm a musician. The only way to really understand what I mean, is to firstly listen to a pop group and then listen to us, and then I hope you will know what we're trying to say."
(Glen Sweeney to Muz Murray, 1969)
“No announcements, numbers lasting 15 to 20 minutes, art form or con?
This might be valid criticism of (A) Thunderstorm (B) a cricket (C) Third Ear Band.
Their approach to music is different because there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control, did the moon ask to be reflected in the water? If it wasn’t for the trees would the wind know when it was blowing? Paul Minns says there are some very beautiful forests in Hyde Park, trying to put titles to music is rather like trying to answer the question where does my hand when it becomes my fist”.
(From the Al Stewart-Third Ear Band 1970 tour programme)
"The Centipede was happy, quite, until a Toad in fun said: "Pray, which leg goes after which?".
This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a ditch considering how to run".
(Third Ear Band, 1970)
“We'd rather people called us a pop group. We do ragas, that aren't really ragas at all, and unless we get a turned on promoter, we get into some weird scenes. At Norwich once, when the promoter saw the audience sitting down and closing their eyes to our music, he accused us of putting them to sleep! Complete paranoia. So I imagine we wouldn't do too well on the Pop Proms”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
“It's just a question of advertising. We've stayed very much Underground - no photos - and I think this was necessary so people wouldn't put us in a bag. We'd rather the just came up and heard us without ANY preconceived ideas. I suppose it is a bit shattering to see violins and cellos”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
"I'd say ninety per cent of our music is improvisation. It's not really Indian music, although we use a drone instead of the usual bass line riffs. The music draws from everywhere.
"I think our appeal is that audiences can draw their own thing from us. We make no announcements and none of the numbers have titles. People in colleges we play come up after and say they can get fantastic images in their mind when they listen. We can offer a complete dream. The old Celtic bards used to have the same ability".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
“Third Ear Band’s new album “Magic Music” is about music as pure vibrations, as such it can be linked with colour because colour is vibration. It can even be linked to the music of the spheres which states that the vibrations of the planets can be heard with the third ear (silence). The free ragas that we play are modal, each note can be heard as a sound-colour that produces its own mood. Our rhythms come from all over the world, and we use these ideas and many others to try to make a new world music”.
(Glen Sweeney, notes on the “Magic Music” inner cover, 1990)
"We once had eight drunk rugby players yelling dirty songs at us. We played quieter and quieter. In the end they seemed ashamed and shut up. But I still don't think they dug the music!".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)