Steve Pank tells Glen Sweeney's fascination for the lay lines.

 

TEB first (road) manager Steve Pank writes here  a short piece about Glen Sweeney's fascination for the ley lines...

 

  

"Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English author, self-taught amateur archaeologist, antiquarian and businessman. While standing on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, in 1921, Watkins experienced a revelation; he became aware that the mounds, marker stones and camps that he had been studying and photographing formed networks of straight lines across the countryside.

He saw on the British landscape arrangement of lines positioned along ancient features, like a very ancient mapping system, looking at maps for further investigation Watkins could see these alignments on maps. Further research showed that stone circles and early churches also formed part of the pattern. The mounds seemed to have been placed so that they could be used as siting beacons. Many of the lines passed through places whose names contained the syllabe ‘ley’. He subsequently coined the term ‘leys’ for them, they are now usually referred to as leylines. In 1925, Watkins published a book on the subject called "The Old Straight Track", and formed a group called The Old Straight Track Club to study them.

Glen Sweeney was fascinated by these patterns, and he saw the music of the Third Ear Band as representing the flow of the spirit over the British countryside. This was reflected in some of his titles of the band pieces, like "Stone Circle" and "Dragon lines." When John Michell published his book that dealt with ley lines and other issues called "The view over Atlantis", Glen asked for the band’s first national tour to be called "Atlantis Rising", and publicised John Michell’s book in the programme notes."

Steve Pank, November 2022

 

 

John Michell (1933-2009) is considered a forerunner of the so-called "Astro-Archeology". During the 1960s and 2000s he wrote many books, some about ley lines and the relationships between megalithic structures (such as Stonehenge) and cosmic energy lines.

An agile guide for newcomers to these topics can be found on "A Little History Of Archeo-Astrology. Stages in the Transformation of an Eresy", printed in England in 1977, here in my Italian edition of 2008. 

 

on John Michell,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell_(writer)

on Alfred Watkins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Watkins

 no©2022 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

"The Scene". Rab Wilkie's memories from the past (part one)...

After a first contact by mail, I asked Rab if he could tell something about his meeting with our Holy Band.

Even if with some wrong memories (for example, Dave Tomlin never played a trumpet or a tambourine...), this is a very interesting personal recollection of the climax lived in the end of Sixties/beginning of Seventies. A precious little contribution to the Third Ear Band's story... 

"Hi Luca,

What a pleasant surprise to hear from you! (One never knows what to expect when leaving a message on the internet). I'm not sure I can help you much more with 3rd Band info, but I'll add a few things here, just in case they're

of interest. (I'm more a writer than a talker).

I met the band around August 1967. I was age 21. And hung out with them for several months until April 1968. In May 1971, on a flying visit, I popped in to see them during a recording session for MacBeth. That's about it, as far as in-person interactions go with the main members of the band. But it was a big scene overall, with all sorts of people, artists & musicians, coming & going, and things going on.

I first made the connection to this scene in Toronto, Canada, in 1965 when I roomed in a house in the Yorkville Village area - Toronto's hip version of the East Village in Manhattan. Barry Pilcher was staying in the same house.
He had recently arrived from London where he had played sax with the Hydrogen Jukebox & Dave Tomlin, also with Glen and others. 

 

The following summer I lined up a job for him as a forest ranger on a fire lookout tower in northern Ontario. We each manned a tower (May-September) in the same area, about 20 miles apart; and would chat by radio-phone some evenings. (One night he was almost struck by an incoming meteorite).
That autumn he returned to London, and I flew over to visit relatives in Plymouth, Devon.

In January 1967 I moved to London and met up with Barry again. He was the only person I knew in the city at that time. But a couple of months later I decided to become a monk and spent six months in a Thai Buddhist monastic centre near Richmond. I moved back into the hub of things in mid August where I reconnected with Barry and some of his musician friends, including Glen, Carolyn, and Clive Kingsley who was playing guitar with the band. Barry played sax with them. 

This was just before they decided to call themselves the Third Ear Band, and the band itself had not quite formed. Various musicians came and went, and Barry & Clive apparently did not quite fit. Glen of course was the mainstay, with Carolyn. (Barry & Clive eventually went off to do their own things. Clive ended up in small coastal village in Cornwall; Barry got married and moved to Ireland but continued to play gigs here & there).

On one occasion I joined the Third Ear on stage at a venue in Covent Garden at a "happening". The only instrument I owned then was a bagpipe chanter, so that's what I played. The other attraction was a dance troop, Exploding Galaxy. (My main instrument was alto sax, but it was a while before I could afford even to rent one.. and then I left, returning to Toronto). 

Pilcher and Glen in 1991

So, aside from the meeting at Glen's & Carolyn's flat - which I described previously in my first message to you - where the idea of a name for the band was discussed and more or less decided, I can't say that my influence or interplay amounted to much. And with so many people & things always happening, on the periphery, I'm not surprised that to Glen & Carolyn I've become a forgotten footnote. But at the time, amidst the chaos, they helped many of us - including myself - stay focused. They were always very open and friendly, sharing their enthusiasm and experience with the scene; and

music was at the heart of it.
"The scene" of course involved much more than music, and I became more involved with the literary & mystical side of it. With crazy poets & publishers of the "Underground press". I was involved with Steve Pank and Muz Murray as they planned to start a "mystical scene magazine". The result was two different magazines, Muz with "Gandalf''s Garden" and Steve with "Albion".
I co-edited Albion with Steve, but it did not survive beyond the first issue. (I left a month before it hit the streets).

Meanwhile, poets such as Neil Oram & Harry Fainlight were roaming around Notting Hill and Westbourne Park doing poetry, Ginsberg parachuting in to dance and bop balloons at Chalk Farm, etc; and John Michell was re-writing "The View Over Atlantis" after his first manuscript had gone up in flames. (There had been a fire in his flat when he was out).

But at least we managed to publish in "Albion" John's Caxton Hall talk on Stonehenge & Flying Saucers.

John has been in a slump about the fire. When Barry and I dropped in at a friend's flat on Westbourne Park Grove one Saturday morning in November, John was there, staring into space, sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. It was chilly and the room was unheated... no shillings left for the gas meter. But he seemed not to notice even though coatless.

One of the women offered him a hot mug of tea, which he absently took with a slight nod of his head, and held tightly, warming his hands.

It was a long time before he took his first sip. The mood was morose.
Everyone seemed sluggish. Then Dave Tomlin rattled a tambourine, drums were revealed, and from my pocket I pulled out my chanter.

A moment later, the whole crew had formed a procession and were heading out the door towards Portobello Market, Dave in the lead like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. (Except I had the pipe and he was Tambourine Man).
As we were about to march into the open-air market, a horse in front of us bolted, scared by our loud Janissarian arrival. But disaster was narrowly averted as Dave rushed forward and grabbed the horses reins, calming him almost instantly. (Scientology had worked for Dave. His presence of mind was legendary).
But that wake-up incident pretty well ended our event. It was time to get on with the day and the 'happeners' scattered, going our separate ways.

Barry and I headed back towards Notting Hill Gate.

"Where's John?" I asked. "Did he come with us to the Market?"

Barry was silent, thoughtful. His eyes skewed upward as if looking for a bird in the clouds...". 

(end of part one - to be continued) 

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

"Alchemy", "the consummate essence of the 60s Zeitgeist". A short vision by Sean Breadin, a.k.a. Sedayne.

Folk shaman Sean Breadin, a.k.a. Sedayne, has  just sent me these few lines about "Alchemy", one of the our favourite albums ever...

"Hi Luca - Just wrote this on Sid Smith's call of for great 1969 albums on Facebook & got a few likes... Sometimes you get a clear vision of just what it is about the music you love that appeals to you so much, so here it is: 

Third Ear Band - Alchemy. 

Which somehow manages to catalyse an archetypal sound-magic by being utterly free of technological interference. It's one of those rare occasions when the mystical hype of the sleeve note (...a reflection of the universe as magic play illusion...dualities are discarded in favour of the Tao...each piece is as alike or unalike as trees, grass or crickets...) is matched / transcended utterly by the astonishing reality of the music, which lives and breathes in its timeless vinyl eternity. The elements are simple enough - Glen Sweeney pounding his shamanic bongo over which Paul Minns' oboe & Richard Coff's violin ascend as atonal modal larks along the ley lines that connect stone circles to the pyramids whilst Mel Davis' cello roots it all to the gnomic dark below. This LP is the consummate essence of the 60s Zeitgeist - a soundtrack to Michel's flying saucer vision of Ancient Albion that remains every bit as inspirational as "Bitches Brew". Witches Brew maybe?".

Any comments to this would be  greatly appreciated!

no©2014 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)  

"Alchemy": an esoteric record for initiates.

As a powerful musical/visual/conceptual device, “Alchemy” stands as a really unique work in the Popular Music history.

"Alchemy" CD booklet cover (Drop Out Records 1999)

As on a recent essay Italian writer, Antonello Cresti writes, “this album is full as ever of musical invitations (all the tracks are instrumental) to take a more deep and conscious form of spirituality up” (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/01/tebs-cultural-sources-on-italian-book.html).

Absolutely right, but probably it’s much more.

Because if it’s quite easy to discover some elements of cultural suggestions just based on the tracks’ titles, linked to the feelings of its time (the epic Sixties…), in my opinion, “Alchemy” was thought as a strong summa for an alternative life. A philosophic (music) treatise for a New Age.

Also for this, this album seems to transcend its time…

I’ve already written about the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” in this archive (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/08/tebs-egyptian-book-of-dead.html) as a piece of incredibly scary sounds intended for going with the dead through his death. Music composed to remember us our ephemeral life and the responsibility to live with an ethical approach to human things.

But what about the album's other tracks?

Druids painted by Charles Knight (1845)

It's easy to state that “Alchemy” (1969) is conceptually more complex than “Third Ear Band” (1970), even if for music critics the second is generally considered better than the first. Anyway, here we have a stone circle and a druid, surely alluding to the pagan druidic ancient tradition; the direct quotation of the ancient Book of the dead (Egyptian history related); the dragon lines, as Cresti explains in his book, “a clear musical transposition of pioneer theories of John Michell, who had transposed Chinese tradition of "Lung Mei" on English culture and told about "Dragon Paths". These "Lung Mei" (an expression we can in fact translate as "Dragon Paths") are energetic lines discovered by ancient Chinese; from the heart of a dragon, usually laid in a valley among the hills, springs of energy have radiated, as it occurs with the "Ley Lines"".

In "Alchemy" we have also Dave Tomlin's “Lark Rise” (based on Flora Thompson’s book “Lark Rise to Candleford”) that celebrates a vanished bucolic utopia as documented elsewhere here (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/01/dave-tomlins-lark-rise-origins-cultural.html).

Swinside stone circle (West of Broughton in Furness)

And we can listen also to three apparently more obscure tracks - “Ghetto Raga”, “Mosaic” and “Area Three” - all related to the idea of space: a space to protect (thanks to the snakes on the cover...), a ghetto, a place for Hermetics where to practice alchemy (the cover concept) and turn the poor metals in gold (Prima Materia).

 Asking Dave Tomlin about this idea of space (January 24th, 2012), he writes to me: "I could speculate a little. "Area three" comes I think from the film world. It is a forbidden place; maybe dedicated to government secret experiments on... humans? There is a place like that in the Russian film 'Stalker' - Tarkowski, I think -, which would tell you all.
I think they used "Ghetto Raga" just because it sounds good. Ghettos are run down areas where poor people, usually of the same race live (Jews etc.). So Ghetto gives a rough type image, and raga is another racy word, although it's doubtful if any of the band studied Indian music. So together the two words create an interesting effect. No more than that...".

Byzantine mosaic (Galla Placidia Mausoleum - Ravenna, Italy)

But a ghetto of raga, where religious musicians play ragas besieged by the (post) modern world, could be the same area three (three as the TEB musicians?), a place for (musical) alchemic experiments...

Thus a record as a clear powerful metaphor alluding to turn bad music in good music, a superficial/commercial listening to a deep one, a materialistic life to a spiritual one…

I think “Alchemy” is a coherent, integrated device of ideas related to a definite conception of life - very distant from the usual Sixties Egyptian ephemera of fashion.

The best work ever produced by the band and one of the best albums of its time (no Egyptian junk, please!).

Maybe an alchemic product itself!?

A detail of the egg (the Great alchemic Opera) from "Alchemy" front cover

As Glen Sweeney said about the TEB music, "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 unlike as blades of grass or clouds" (from the original 1969 Isle of Wight concert programme).

And again, just around the period when "Alchemy" was recorded: "We are beginning to move into some strange musical areas, doing a piece we call Druid. Once or twice when we've played this thing, we've gone into a weird sort of experience we call a 'Time-shift'. Nobody really knows what it is. The whole Druid piece is repetitive and extremely hypnotic and yet you have some of the instruments doing far out things so that a fantastic tension is built up. It's like alchemy. The alchemical emphasis is on the endless repetition of experiments, doing the same thing over and over again, and waiting for some sort of X-factor to appear. This is more or less what we do when we play. And our X-factor is this time-shift thing".

"It happened once at the London Arts Lab, and as we played, it seemed as if time had slowed down and we had drifted into a completely different dimension. And when we finished, nobody moved at all. They were kind of stuck there. So I felt that perhaps it had happened to them too. So that's the thing we are trying to get into. Although it can be quite a strain during a public performance, like living on the edge of a cliff, since nobody knows what might happen. To be on stage and feel it happening can be quite frightening. You go out of yourself, and when you come to, you discover yourself on stage with hundreds of people staring at you. You get this split-second thought: 'Have I been playing? Have I ruined the whole thing?' In a way, it's very similar to meditation and mantra chanting, which is why I feel what we are doing has a very religious depth" (from "Gandalf's Garden" #4, 1969, interviewed by Muz Murray).

Tomlin clarifies me (January 30th, 2012) that "in the mid-Sixties, there were many different influences. One was the legend of King Arthur's Court. Another was the Aliens - flying-saucers - messages from the stars. Also Blake's "Jerusalem", the Ley-Lines, Ramana Maharishi. And the mysterious arts of Alchemy.
There was an Alchemical saying of the time: 'When the sound of the music changes the walls of the city shake', which the Third Ear used at one time. Glen was very much drawn to the Alchemical myth. In fact a few years before he died he kept an ex-WWII torpedo-boat on a north London canal. Its name was 'ALCHEMY', he and Carolyn used to roar around the canals in it and everyone had to get out of the way; they were the terror of the waterways. I sometimes visited them on the boat and when Glen died she took the compass from the boat and gave it to me (this compass came from Glen Sweeney's boat Alchemy)...".

As in the past, people used to write books for initiates, in modern times, musicians play records to open the mind and soul of people ("Happy new ears!" John Cage wrote): Third Ear Band has left us a beautiful, scary record of magic/esoteric/philosophic music for the everyday life & death... 
Also for this reason sometimes we return to it as a sort of breviary, listening to little drops of it as a thaumaturgical magic potion!

"Alchemy" CD back cover (Drop Out Records 1999)

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

TEB's cultural sources on the Italian book about esoteric English folk music written by Antonello Cresti.

As announced some months ago (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-italian-book-about-english-folk.html), on the last new book about esoteric English folk music written by Italian researcher & journalist Antonello Cresti a place is also reserved to the Third Ear Band in the chapter  titled "The Sixties: light and shade of the "Age of Acquarius".

There are an interview with the editor of this archive (for the author, "after the Glen Sweeney's death, we think he's the authority to refer to" - surely a too generous appellative) and an essay on the TEB's music cultural sources edited by Cresti himself.

If through the interview with me I've tried to focalize some themes already exposed somewhere here (i.e. the files in the essay section of this archive...),  very interesting is the Cresti's recognization about the philosophical sources of TEB's music, probably the best and deepest attempt to propose a study about it.
He states: "(...) The name selected [for the band] is particularly pregnant and it lends itself to several interpretations, more or less all fascinating: if the great wizard-philosopher Paracelsus (1491/3-1541/44) referred to the Third Ear, there are several cultures that link it to insight and clairvoyance...".

"(...) So, to use this expression one could allude to new ways to listen, a ritual active interaction between musician and listener; to listen with the Third Ear can mean to inaugurate a new phase of musical consumption where you cannot measure a track using the traditional aesthetic criterion, but it's the sound by itself to take predominance, meant to independent medium of journey, transcendence and change". In Cresti's opinion, a way already choosen by Terry Riley with his masterwork "A rainbow in curved air" published in 1968.

Antonello Cresti (2011)

Analyzing the track's titles, the author writes: "This album ["Alchemy"] is full as ever of musical invitation (all the tracks are instrumental) to take a more deep and conscious form of spirituality up: (...) if "Druid" obviously alludes to Druidism, (...) more astonishing is a sequence of less attended allusions to their contemporary scene: "Stone Circle", probably the more extraordinary album's track, a sort of ecstatic circular dance lead by lines of oboe, it's a clear tribute to the mythical Albion lost in the mists of time, a scenario also evoked by "Dragon Lines", where gongs from Eastern tradition have

John Michell

 juxtapose with a climax evoking in some ways some Medieval profane music. It's a clear musical transposition of pioneer theories of John Michell, who had transposed Chinese tradition of "Lung Mei" on English culture and told about "Dragon Paths". These "Lung Mei" (an expression we can infact translate as "Dragon Paths") are energetic lines discovered by ancient Chinese; from the heart of a dragon, usually laid in a valley among the hills, springs of energy have radiated, as it occurs with the "Ley Lines"".

A rare picture of a Druid Initiation ceremony at Glastonbury Tor in 1967.

At this point Cresti writes a digression about the Druid tradition rooted in England from the end of 1700, stating that it was in the Sixties that it started to influence the English culture.

Ross Nichols

"In this process", he writes, "an important date is doubtless September 22th, 1964, when the "Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids" was constituted, probably the most important organization devoted to the diffusion of the ancient knowledge of Druids, born in England thank to Ross Nichols - poet, artist, historian (...) - one of the key figure of the Druidism...".
"Just while the Third Ear Band is publishing its first record, Nichols spread all over England a Jean-Baptiste Pitois's book titled "History and Practice of Magic", a text had a strong impact on youth in this period, above all for who was interested into the reading of Tarots...".

"The incredible cultural background of Sweeney & C. shows to be much more wide than one could imagine: for example, on "Lark Rise" the band tribute to one of the most influential character of pastoral revival, the composer Vaughan Williams, author of the legendary "The Lark Ascending"".

Writing about "Third Ear Band", the 1970 second album, Cresti states that the group "proposed a reference to one of the most influential tòpoi of the ancient Greek philosophy, from Thales onwards. To talk about the four elements as the unique constitutional principle of reality was expecially philosopher Empedocles (492-430 BC), who asserted the original elements, or "roots", of all things was four - fire, air, earth and water; they are unchangeable  and indivisible, they don't born and don't die, but  join together and divide each other, originating all things. (...) The birth is just the mixing of the elements, the death is their separation".

Heraclitus

Talking about the album's tracks, Cresti tries to set all the band's musical influences up: from "Air", in his opinion "probably the most harsh and unpredictable track of the album", near to contemporary avant-garde music of Penderecki and Lutoslawski; to "Earth", "the more 'earthly'", "even akin to the Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"; references to the Heraclitus's norm of Panta rhei ("everything flows") are expecially on "Water": "reality is not something of static but a flow keeps trasforming".

Paracelsus by P. P. Rubens

After positive considerations about the last phase of the band's history, at the end Cresti admits that "even if English scene has been so fertile, it will have many problems to produce something of so blowing up and radical as Third Ear Band have done".

Anyway, apart the pages dedicated to the Third Ear Band, Antonello Cresti's book is a great and fasciating guide to the English underground/esoteric/mystical music produced in the last century. An important, esclusive contribute to the knowledge of just a rarely investigated area of interest (above all in Italy) with a lot of original stuffs (as, first of all, the interviews with important protagonist of the scene...).

Antonello Cresti - "Come to the Sabbat"
Tsunami Edizioni (pages 384, € 22,00)
 (http://www.tsunamiedizioni.com).

The author can be contacted on Facebook at:
http://it-it.facebook.com/antonellocresti.

SOME INTERESTING SOURCES IN THE NET TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SOME THEMES AND CHARACTERS QUOTED IN THIS FILE

Paracelsus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus  (Wikipedia)
http://www.alchemylab.com/paracelsus.htm

Jean Bapriste Pitois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Pitois
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/History_and_Practice_of_Magic 

John Michell

http://www.johnmichell.com/  (the official Website)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell_%28writer%29 (Wikipedia)
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/obituaries/1692/john_michell.html(an obituary by Bob Rickard)
http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org/news/item/memorial_john_michell_1933_to_2009/

Ross Nichols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Nichols (Wikipedia)
http://www.druidry.org/obod/theorder/rossnicholsnuinn.html

Vaughan Williams

http://www.musicweb-international.com/Programme_Notes/rvw_thelark.htm (about "The Lark Ascending")

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