Violinist Simon House passed away yesterday at 76.

Bad news for all of us!

Great violin and keyboard player Simon House, a true giant of the underground, old collaborator of the Third Ear Band (1971-1974), passed away yesterday at 76 (the bad news HERE and HERE or HERE).

A founder with guitarist Tony Hill and bass player Peter Pavli of the seminal band High Tide at the end of Sixties, he was a permanent member of the Hawkwind, between 1974 and 1978, playing with David Bowie on his albums "Stage" (1978) and "Lodger" (1979). 

Apart two solo albums (1994 and 2000), one with Rod Goodway (2002), and two with Spiral Realms (2004 and 2005), he worked with a lot of musicians including  Robert Calvert, Japan, David Sylvian, Thomas Dolby, Mike Olfield, Judy Dyble, Nik Turner, Adrian Shaw, Nektar, Spirits Burning, Magic Muscle...

Through Glen Sweeney, I met him two times in London, where he lived, and he seemed to me a shy and reserved person, interested only in playing music and refractory to any self-indulgence and protagonism typical of the rock environment. 

We later did an interview by phone, but he was very tight-lipped and not very willing to recall the past.... You can read it here:

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/01/brief-phone-conversation-with-simon.html

 

Other files in this Archive related to Simon House:

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2012/03/italians-like-weird-stuff-old-interview.html

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2020/09/extraordinarly-amazing-teb-tv.html

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2024/11/four-rare-1972-photos-of-simon-house-on.html

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2019/10/peter-pavli-interviewed-on-its.html

 

   Simon House performing live with DanMingo at DAYUM Club, London, December 2005.

 no©2025LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Extraordinarly amazing TEB tv appearances in October 1972!

These two video tracks are the last nuggets emerged from the Web. British YouTuber Nuthatch (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-VZ_N8KLdwJhobRHGRtm8Q) posted these extraordinary videos of the TEB from a TV appearance in October 1972 taken from ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) archive. 

The peculiarity of these excerpts is that this is the only existing video thing of Mike Marchant and Peter Pavli with the band.

The line-up consisting in fact in Glen Sweeney - drums; Paul Minns - oboe; Peter Pavli - electric bass; Mike Marchant - vocals and Simon House - electric violin & VCS3.

Introduced by Brian Kenny, the first track is titled "The Magus" and it's the boring vocal song taken from the eponymous album the band recorded in December 1972; the second one it seems to me a rendition of "Air" and it's much more interesting for the improvisations by House  and Minns on violin and oboe.

After a gig at Kingston Polytechnic, on 18 March 1972, Glen Sweeney announced to the press the new TEB line-up, explaining to Roy Hollingworth ("Melody Maker"): "I think us changing in a natural way - and not just for the sake of it - is far more rewarding. I know we will be a far more rational band - giving out something which everyone can enjoy. After three months of rehearsing, we are now capable of playing a varied menu for more than two hours. You wouldn't have got more 45 minutes a year ago".

Even if without a recording deal (after "Macbeth" EMI-Harvest fired the band), through the following months the musicians played live in England (most of all in London), with an appearance at the third edition of "Clitheroe Festival" (Clitheroe Castle of Clitheroe).

Then, on 16 November, thanks to Blackhill's manager Peter Jenner, who has placed The Sharks to Chris Blackwell's label, TEB signed a contract with Island Records for a new album, based for the first time on proper songs composed and played by Marchant, who got inspiration from the Tarot. The agreement scheduled this track-list: "Cosmic Wheel", "I the Key", "Hierophant", "Magus", "New Horizon" and "Tent Dimensional Landscape".

Sweeney to Hollingworth ("Melody Maker", 1972): "Mike has been hanging around the group for some while. We heard the songs, and well, it seemed only natural that he should come in. It's a tremendous jump for us, I mean, we've never done songs before. It's right to say that Thirdies are feeling a little schizophrenic at the moment. I mean, there's that album out from Macbeth, and that's totally avant-garde, and there's us playing songs".

"So what of these songs?" - asked the journalist. "Well, at the start, we teated them in a sort of Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen type of way. But we became dissatisfied with the limitations of eight bars, 16 bars. We decided that we really wanted to open out. They certainly aren't pretentious songs, there's no pseudo rubbish about them. There's no Lucy in the Sky with feedback. But they are songs that fit the Third Ear".

"They are all based around the Tarot, and they are purely descriptions of the cards and their meanings. It's meant a lot of work, changing from a purely instrumental band, but it really seems to be working. And people certainly like it".

The album, despite of all the enthusiastic anticipations, would be "disastrously recorded at Island and rejected" (Paul Minns to me in 1996) and it's been realised by Angel Air just in 2004 as "The Magus". 

Later, Sweeney had strong opinions about it: "(...) At the time I was surrounded by idiots who were hoping I had a few quid! They dragged me in there - even now that Simon House swears it's a masterpiece - I had this rodie, Ron Cort, whose father was a hire car wallah, rolling in it - Ron really went to town on that album - he got acetates made, he got a single made. It was crap - even I didn't know what I was doing - the singer was terrible, we had vocals. All the songs were based on the tarot, but strangely enough, his father [vocalist Mike Marchant's father] was a vicar and all the songs were based on hymns" ("Unhinged", Spring 1990).

I don't know what do you think about, but for myself Glen was right and these video tracks are surely interesting (of course!) but not comparable to the deep dowsing research done for "The Dragon Wakes", recorded two years before by Sweeney, Minns, Bridges, Buckmaster, Coff and House...

no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Peter Pavli interviewed on "It's Psychedelic Baby" magazine.

High Tide bass player PETER PAVLI had a very intriguing interview with Klemen Breznikar for "It's Psychedelic Baby" magazine. You can read the full interview  at https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2019/10/high-tide-interview.html

Peter Pavli at 20

As everyone knows, after a very fertile period with the High Tide (two great records in 1969 and 1970!), with violin player Simon House Pavli played for some months with the Third Ear Band, around the end 1971-beginning 1972 (he played on a documented BBC radio programme in January 1972).

On the interview, he quoted "our" band telling that after the High Tide split, "we all went back to London and went our separate ways. Later Simon joined the Third Ear Band, which I also joined. That lasted for about a year. It was a very vague, period for us all. I think that was the last serious band I was in."
  

High Tide

 no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Old 1972 TEB ad found...

My friend Mirco Delfino, who runs the exclusive interesting TEB Italian Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Third-Ear-Band/156660855584?v=info), sent me this old ad taken from the great Mike King's "Wrong Movements", a chronological history about Robert Wyatt.

The benefit concert was on January 23th, 1972 at the legendary Chalk Farm Road's London "Roundhouse" and the Thirds played there with  Paul Buckmaster.

Two days later the band played at the BBC a classic "John Peel session" with this strange line-up: Denim Bridges (guitar), Simon House (violin), Mike Marchant (guitar & vocal) and Peter Pavli (bass), and it's difficult to know if it was the same musicians who played at the Roundhouse even because at the time Buckmaster was in & out from the band...

no©2016 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)