Dave Tomlin passed away on 2 November 2024. R.I.P. dear friend!

 

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. 

"Tales from the Embassy," published from 2002 in three different volumes, was probably his greatest effort to tell the story of his life in the Cambodian embassy occupied by him and a group of friends to create a kind of free university on the legendary model of the London Free School. Thanks to Dave, in 1987 at the Cambodian Embassy Glen Sweeney brought together for rehearsals the first nucleus of the reborn Third Ear Band with Dave's protégé Allen Samuel on violin.

 

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).

no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

The new TEB's CD will be realised in February 2016.

The next TEB's record produced by Gonzo Multimedia (edited by Luca Ferrari) will be ready at the first months of next year, likely on February 2016.

Titled "EXORCISMS", it will show recordings from the 1988-1989 period, when the musicians involved was Glen Sweeney, Mick Carter, Ursula Smith, Lyn Dobson and Allen Samuel.

The art cover (as for the first two CDs) is by the great Martin Cook. Here below you can see a cover proof of the record based on a Cambodian devil mask...
  

 
no©2015 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)          

New Third Ear Band CD by Gonzo Multimedia out until the end of this year.

Gonzo Multimedia and Luca Ferrari are working on a  new TEB CD planned to be published until the end of 2015. 

It will be titled "EXORCISMS" and it will show recordings from the 1988-1989 period, when the musicians involved was Glen Sweeney, Mick Carter, Ursula Smith, Lyn Dobson and Allen Samuel.

(First hands) Sleeve notes by Luca and art cover (as for the first two CDs) by the great 'pictures wizard' Martin Cook.
no©2015 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)          

"A valuable lesson, but not one that I would ever wish to repeat". A letter from ALLEN SAMUEL, Third Ear Band's violin player, on his experiences with the band.

Quite unexpected, I've received a handwritten letter from Allen Samuel, as you remember the first Italian tour Third Ear Band's violin player.

At that time, living at the Cambodian Embassy of London, he was a Dave Tomlin's friend and it was just Dave to suggest Glen to get Allen in the band: from a young age he was always on the fiddle and it seemed just the right choice.

The first TEB Italian tour, in some way, was a little nightmare, because as the same Allen remembers "Paul and Glen were falling out and Glen was giving me a very hard time. Before we even arrived we were all emotionally drained and physically exhausted from the long car drive from London".

Anywway, as Allen admits, that experience with the TEB "taught me a valuable lesson, but not one that I would ever wish to repeat"...

Here's the original letter, another important tile of this Archive.

 

                           TEB on stage at Umbertide, first Italian tour on September 9th, 1988:  
                             (L-R) Allen Samuel, Mick Carter, Paul Minns and Glen Sweeney.

"Dear Luca,
thanks for your letter, and many apologies for taking so long to reply. In the interim I have managed to lose your letter amid the chaos on my table but I can remember most of your questions I haven’t been sure how to answer them without adding a sour and perhaps unnecessary element. With members of the band now deceased, I didn’t want to add a posthumous unpleasantness. But on reflection, I’m sure you would prefer a truthful account of my experience with the Third Ear Band.
 

                                     The Allen Samuel's letter.
 
There was one thing that I really enjoyed and that was the inspirational playing of Paul. In a way, the rest of the band were a rhythmic background to the stories that he told on the oboe. When I joined the band Glen and Paul were the only original members and the sound was very different from the earlier incarnations of the band. We had just a few play-throughs in my room in London [at the Cambodian embassy] before coming over for our first Italian trip. I don’t think we had enough time to find a new integration between the players, but it could have been a lot worse.
Before joining the band I hadn’t even known of its existence and had no idea of what to expect beyond stories I heard about wild madness an nervous breakdowns during previous tours of the band. Though classically trained, I have always loved making up my own music as I went along. It seemed that the Third Ear Band might be a valuable opportunity to collaborate with others in a spirit of free improvisation. A major problem with the band was emotional dischord between its members. For myself, an emotional harmony between musicians is essential for satisfactory music making. Music is a language of the feelings expressed in sound, and the feelings between the players are the raw ingredients of that language. I don’t enjoy bad feelings between people and I find playing music in such an atmosphere a nightmare. 

 

                            Cremona (September 1988), first Italian tour: L. Ferrari, Glen Sweeney,
          Allen Samuel, Mick Carter, Paul Minns, Kathryn Ade (Minns' wife) and Elena Blasi.

In our first tour in Italy, Paul and Glen were falling out and Glen was giving me a very hard time. Paul was so distressed that he left the band.
Before we even arrived we were all emotionally drained and physically exhausted from the long car drive from London. We arrived at the hotel at dawn and got no sleep. I have no idea how we were even able to stand up, let alone play, in the first gig. We were ill-prepared in every sense, and the most I can say in that my experience with the Third Era Band taught me a valuable lesson, but not one that I would ever wish to repeat.
I was never the less glad to meet you and appreciated your kindness and enthusiasm. All I can say is that I am sorry this is not a more positive reply to your questions. I am still playing and engaged in some unusual and interesting musical projects.
All best wishes, 

Allen”.

          Samuel with the TEB at Vinci (Florence),  July 2nd, 1989 (photos by  Lucia Baldini).

no©2013 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first) 

New edition of the book on poet Harry Fainlight edited by Dave Tomlin.

A new edition of the book on the English poet Harry Fainlight originally edited by Dave Tomlin in 2008 is out now thanks Iconoclast  Press of London.

Harry Fainlight

Titled "Fragments of a lost voice" (67 pp.), it's dedicated to the eccentric iconoclast poet Harry Fainlight, dead in 1982 after a 47 years very troubled life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fainlight).

The book can be obtained making a cheque of 6 pounds to Dave Tomlin at:   1a, Princess Court, 68, Pilgrim's Lane, London NW3 ISP.

Phil Baker on a recent review of it published by "Times Literary Suppliment", the most prestigious literary newspaper in England: "One of the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness, Harry Fainlight was also the finest poet to emerge from the 1960s underground scene in Britain, transcending it and being much admired by Ted Hughes as well as Allen Ginsberg. For the present, however, he seems doomed to be remembered largely for his performance at the International Poetry Incarnation, a poetry happening with Ginsberg that packed the Albert Hall in 1965. It was filmed as Wholly Communion, in which Fainlight can be seen reading poetry that is too serious for his audience and becoming distressed when they begin to heckle. It was a characteristically troubled moment in a life spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals; at one point Faber and Faber offered to publish him, at Ted Hughes’s suggestion, and he responded by putting a petrol-soaked rag through the firm’s letterbox".

"In 2008, twenty-years after Fainlight's dead in a field from hypothermia, a suitcase was found in a Welsh barn that contained writings in his hand, notably the unfinished drafts of two poems, "City I" and "City II". Difficult to decipher, they are preserved in Fragments of a Lost Voice, in which twenty-two poets attempt to offer transcriptions and write short pieces of their own in response. The writers, all of whom have some personal link with Fainlight, are mostly unknown... 
The poems are concerned with air and earth: a warm evening (planes descending like "brinking brain seeds") and the underground ("thro' the transparent mirror/prehistoric strata flicker"). Fainlight is one of the few poet who could make "ripe overcooked radios" something more than word salad, and amid the unresolved ambiguities the peculiar finesse of his work shines through, with its distinctive spatial qualities and co-extention of mind and environment.
The transcriptions, with their many variants, have the fascination of Chinese whispers ("the first delicate weight" or "the first deluxe night"?) and the form of this little book is probably unique. It has been admirably put together by Dave Tomlin, who describes himself not as "editor" but "curator", reflecting the "archaelogical" nature of the project".

Between the 26 poets, apart the same Tomlin, give their contribution also Steve Pank, Ursula Smith and Allen Samuel, as we know very involved into TEB's story.

A great underrated visionary poet, Harry Fainlight, I have to admit it. Enough to read this fragment, taken from "From the notebooks", a transcription of a 1979 reading edited in 2006 by Tomlin:

"39

This is about cemeteries and death... about the philosophy of death as it presents itself today:

The miniature housing estates of nothing but tiny stone doors; as if everyone’s relatives had done some kind of Alice on them that nobody had ever really written up, and there was nothing else to show for it but these funny little stone doors indicating somewhere they had gone. For certainly the vast majority of the population had now gone over to the ‘little stone door theory’, and the cross idea had become some kind of minority cult. To adopt the cockney saying: ‘Put your religion where your monument is’, something with which any respectable archaeologist would concur; or were we only entitled to adopt the viewpoint of archaeology having reached the final means of these nowhere doors." 

London, early June, 1965. In town for International Poetry Congress at Royal Albert Hall. Poets sit on steps of Albert Memorial. Top Left: Barbara Rubiin. Back row L-R: Adrian Mitchell, Anselm Hollo, Marcus Field, Michael Horovitz, Ernst Jandl. Front row: Harry Fainlight, Alex Troicchi, Allen Ginsberg, John Esam, Dan Richter (photo: John 'Hoppy' Hopkins).

"Wholly Communion"(parts 1-4), the 1965 Pete Whitehead short documentary: in the very first sequences you can see Harry Fainlight reading his poem... Then, at 9.36, you can see Fainlight makes the integral reading with some interjections by the audience...).

A DAVE TOMLIN 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) edited by Tomlin

"Harry Fainlight. Fragments of a lost voice"  (Iconoclast Press, London 2008) edited by Tomlin

"Power Lines" (Iconoclast Press, London 2011)

A DAVE TOMLIN DISCOGRAPHY

The Bob Wallis and His New Storyville Jazzmen (UK 1959) Played soprano sax "Pendulum" - Mike Taylor Quartet (EMI, UK 1966) Played soprano sax and designed the album sleeve "Alchemy" - Third Ear Band (Harvest, UK 1969) played violin on a track ("Lark rise") composed by him  "Ancient Gates" - High Tide (World Wide Records, Germany 1990) Played violin, keyboards and bass "Strange Attractor" - Hazchem (World Wide Records, Germany 1990) Played violin, bass, keyboards and guitar in some tracks "Star Map Excursion" - Hazchem (World Wide Records, Germany 1991) Composed two tracks for the album "Magus" - Third Ear Band (Angel Heart, UK 2005) Played bass and edited the CD booklet liner notes

             August 2010: Dave Tomlin (on left) with Steve Pank in London (photo: L. Ferrari)

Follow Dave Tomlin on International Times Web site at: http://internationaltimes.it/

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)   

"A voice from the past"... A letter from ALLEN SAMUEL, TEB (80's) violin player.

"Dear Luca,

here's a voice from the past. I played violin with the Third Ear Band on a couple of visits to Italy in the 80's. Dave Tomlin has given me your address, saying you would like to get in touch. I'm a bit old fashioned, without computer or e-mail.

I'm living in Cornwall, still playing violin and exploring the magic world of music with various people here. Thank you for all the support you have given to the 3rd Ear Band, even now in  its memory.

I was something of a novice to such a musical environment, but I have a great love of free improvisation and all the challenges it brings.

The Third Ear Band was an experiment  in breaking the rules of decorum in music and in life, and produced some interesting music and some bad behaviour, as you probably noticed.

I'm still experimenting with all kind of music, some of it very mad, some  of it more enjoyable. You have to be in the right mood  for the mad stuff.

Anyway, I hope all is well with you. I shall be away for a few days, but  back before the end of the month.

Best wishes,

Allen Samuel."

(Written on 18-03-2012, this letter  could prelude to a proper interview with Samuel. So, if you've some questions to ask him, please contact me through my personal e-mail...)

TEB at the Vinci Museum: Allen Samuel is the first on left (photo by Lucia Baldini).

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)