CityLife

Interview: Gong

Gong

Academy - September 10, 2010

We tend to think of the Rolling Stones as the wrinkliest of rockers. But psychedelic veterans Gong boast a front man who could give Mick Jagger a few years.

Daevid Allen is 72 years old, and yet, as Gong prepare to hit the road again, he is still feeding a reputation for the most bizarre stage garb.

“Daevid has got a stack of special outfits, costume changes galore,” says guitarist and fellow Gong mainstay Steve Hillage, a relative youngster at 59.

A bit like Shirley Bassey then.

“Yes, Daevid Allen and Shirley Bassey, cut from the same cloth,” the guitarist sniggers.

“Daevid puts an amazing amount of energy in when he performs. He’s not getting any younger, but at 72, Daevid Allen has got the energy of a teenager. He’s unbelievable.”

Gong’s roots go right back to 1967 when Australian-born Allen, a member of prog rock pioneers Soft Machine, was denied re-entry to the UK after performances in Paris. Allen remained in France and formed the first Gong with London-born Sorbonne professor Gilli Smyth.

That first incarnation fragmented during the 1968 student riots, and Allen and Smyth fled to Majorca, where they found saxophonist Didier Malherbe living in a cave. Gong went on to play the second Glastonbury festival in 1971, signed to the embryonic Virgin records and began a body of work including Camembert Electrique and the Radio Gnome trilogy – three albums whose narrative included pixies in flying teapots. Gong mythology is said to stem from a vision Allen had during the full moon of easter 1966.

Hillage was a mainstay of the band through this fertile early Seventies period, but Allen, then Hillage left, and Gong has been an on-off affair ever since. When Gong produced their 2032 album last year, it was the first Gong album featuring both Allen and Hillage since 1974.

“We’ve maintained a fraternity all the time,” Hillage says of his relationship with Allen. “Gong’s not a band where you leave, it doesn’t break up – it’s an odd sort of thing. We have a deep bond together and it’s pretty observable that all the individual projects by the individual members… there’s an element of Gong in there.”

So how do you define the music of Gong?

“If you look at it historically, Gong was part of the second wave of psychedelia, contemporary to bands in Germany such as Can and Neu!. It went right back to the source of UK-based psychedelia because of Daevid’s time with Soft Machine and his connection with the Canterbury music scene, which is obviously where I came in as well.

“It’s got a special cocktail going. We play in an unusual way; we’ve got a blend of funk rhythms, which was quite ahead of its time in the Seventies, and then this spacy glissando sound. We were one of the first psychedelic bands to heavily feature synthesisers.

“We’re not a prog-rock band; there’s a whole humour element as well.”

In the considerable number of years out of the past three decades when he has not been Gonging, Hillage and partner Miquette Giraudy have made dance music through their System 7 project, putting them in front of younger audiences.

Gong and Hillage’s work has been cited as an influence by  The Orb and Massive Attack, the latter inviting Gong to play Meltdown when Massive Attack curated the London festival in 2008. All of which means Gong has picked up some new fans of late.

“It depends on the country,  but in the UK and France, it’s an interesting spread,” says Hillage of Gong’s audiences. “You have a strong contingent of veteran Gong supporters, people in their late 40s and older, but a big percentage of younger people who weren’t alive when we were in our heyday in the Seventies.

“That’s quite extraordinary, and we like it. We don’t see ourselves as a classic rock band. We enjoy what we do and have a lot of fun, and that appeals to people of all age groups and styles. People into dance music like Gong because there’s a psychedelic feeling that’s been influential.”