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The Incredible String Band

The Incredible String Band (abbreviated as ISB) were a psychedelic folk band formed in Scotland in 1965. The band built a considerable following, especially within British counter-culture before splitting up in 1974. The members of the group are considered musical pioneers in psych folk and, by integrating a very wide variety of traditional music forms and instruments, in the development of world music. The group reformed in 1999 and continued to perform until 2006.

History

Formation as a trio, 1965-66

In 1963, acoustic musicians Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer began performing together as a traditional folk duo in Edinburgh, particularly at a weekly club run by Archie Fisher in the Crown Bar which also regularly featured Bert Jansch. There they were seen in August 1965 by Joe Boyd, then working as a talent scout for the influential folk-based label Elektra Records. Later in the year, the duo decided to fill out their sound by adding a third member, initially to play rhythm guitar. After an audition, local rock musician Mike Heron won the slot. The trio took the name The Incredible String Band. Early in 1966 Palmer began running an all-night folk club, Clive's Incredible Folk Club, on the fourth floor of a building in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, where they became the house band. When Boyd returned in his new role as head of Elektra's London office, he signed them up for an album, beating off a rival bid from Transatlantic Records.

They recorded their first album, titled The Incredible String Band, at the Sound Techniques studio in London in May 1966. It was released in Britain and the United States and consisted mostly of self-penned material in solo, duo and trio formats, showcasing their playing on a variety of instruments. It won the title of "Folk Album of the Year" in Melody Maker's annual poll, and in a 1968 Sing Out! magazine interview Bob Dylan praised the album's "October Song" as one of his favourite songs of that period.

The trio broke up after recording the album. Palmer left via the hippie trail for Afghanistan and India, and Williamson and his girlfriend Licorice McKechnie went to Morocco with no firm plans to return. Heron stayed in Edinburgh, playing with a band called Rock Bottom and the Deadbeats. However, when Williamson returned after running out of money, laden with Moroccan instruments including a gimbri which was much later eaten by rats, he and Mike reformed the band as a duo.

Innovation and success as a duo, 1966-68

In November 1966 Heron and Williamson embarked on a short UK tour, supporting Tom Paxton and Judy Collins. In early 1967, they performed regularly at London clubs, including Les Cousins. Joe Boyd became the group's manager as well as producer, and secured a place for them at the Newport Folk Festival, on a bill with Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.

The duo were always credited as separate writers, maintaining their individual creative identities, rather than working as a writing partnership. Boyd wrote:- "Mike and Robin were Clive's friends rather than each other's. Without him as a buffer, they developed a robust dislike for one another. Fortunately, the quality and quantity of their songwriting was roughly equal. Neither would agree to the inclusion of a new song by the other unless he could impose himself on it by arranging the instruments and working out all the harmonies."

In July, they released their second album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, accompanied by Pentangle's Danny Thompson on double bass and Licorice on vocals and percussion. The album demonstrated considerable musical development and a more unified ISB sound. It displayed their abilities as multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters, and gained them much wider acclaim. The album included Heron's "The Hedgehog's Song", Williamson's "First Girl I Loved" (later recorded by Judy Collins, Jackson Browne and Don Partridge) and his "The Mad Hatter's Song", which, with its mixture of musical styles, paved the way for the band's more extended forays into psychedelia. Enthusiastic reviews in the music press were accompanied by appearances at venues such as London's UFO Club (co-owned by Boyd), the Speakeasy Club, and Queen Elizabeth Hall. Their exposure on John Peel's Perfumed Garden radio show on the pirate ship Radio London, and later on BBC's Top Gear, made them favourites with the emerging UK underground audience. The album went to Number One in the UK folk chart, and was named by Paul McCartney as one of his favourite records of that year.

1968 was the band's annus mirabilis with the release of their two most-celebrated albums, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and the double LP Wee Tam and the Big Huge (issued as two separate albums in the US). Hangman's reached the top 5 in the UK album charts soon after its release in March 1968 and was nominated for a Grammy in the US. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin said his group found their way by playing Hangman's and following the instructions. A departure from the band's previous albums, the set relied heavily on a more layered production, with imaginative use of the then new multi-track recording techniques. The album featured a series of vividly dreamlike Williamson songs, such as "The Minotaur's Song", a surreal music-hall parody told from the point of view of the mythical beast, and its centrepiece was Heron's "A Very Cellular Song", a 13-minute reflection on life, love and amoebas; its complex structure incorporated a Bahamian spiritual ("I Bid You Goodnight") and an adaptation of a Sikh hymn (by "may the pure light within you"). Williamson and Heron in this album had added their girlfriends, Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson to the band to contribute additional vocals and a variety of instruments, including organ, guitar and percussion. Despite their initially rudimentary skills, Simpson swiftly became a proficient bass guitarist, and some of McKechnie's songs were recorded by the band.

By early 1968 the group were capable of filling major venues in the UK. They left behind their folk club origins and embarked on a nationwide tour incorporating a critically acclaimed appearance at the London Royal Festival Hall. Later in the year they performed at the Royal Albert Hall, at open-air festivals, and at prestigious rock venues such as the Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York. After their appearance at the Fillmore East in New York they were introduced to the practice of Scientology by David Simons (aka "Rex Rakish", once of Jim Kweskin's Jug Band). Joe Boyd, in his book "White Bicycles - Making Music in the 1960s" and elsewhere, describes how he was inadvertently responsible for their "conversion" when he introduced the band to Simons who, having become a Scientologist, persuaded them to enrol in his absence. The band's support for Scientology over the next few years was controversial among some fans, and seemed to coincide with what many saw as the beginning of a decline in the quality of their work . In an interview with Oz magazine in 1969 the band spoke enthusiastically of their involvement with it, although the question of its effect on their later albums has provoked much discussion ever since .

Their November 1968 album, Wee Tam and The Big Huge, recorded before the US trip, was musically less experimental and lush than "Hangman's" but conceptually even more avant-garde, a full-on engagement with the themes of mythology, religion, awareness and identity. Williamson's otherworldly songs and vision dominate the album, though Heron's more grounded tracks are also among his very best, and the contrast between the two perspectives gives the record its uniquely dynamic interplay between a sensual experience of life and a quest for metaphysical meaning. The record was released as a double album and also simultaneously as two separate LPs - a strategy which lessened its impact on the charts. But it is invariably the favourite album in polls among the ISB hard-core following.

Change and experiment, 1968-70

At this time most of the group lived communally at a farmhouse near Newport in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where they developed ideas for mixed media experiments with Malcolm Le Maistre and other members of David Medalla's Exploding Galaxy troupe. There, a film was made about the ISB, Be Glad For the Song Has No Ending. Originally planned for BBC TV's arts programme Omnibus, it featured documentary footage and a fantasy sequence, 'The Pirate and the Crystal Ball', illustrating their attempt at an idyllic communal lifestyle. It made little impact at the time, but reissues on video and DVD have contributed to the recent revival of interest in the band.

The band toured for much of 1969, in the USA and the UK. In August they played at Woodstock later than planned, having refused to perform in the pouring rain on the opening evening. Their slot was taken by Melanie, whose performance inspired her song "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)". As a result, the ISB were not included in the iconic movie documenting the festival; their performance was re-scheduled, and they did not go down well with the crowd, used to the more hard-hitting psychedelic rock of bands such as Canned Heat who had preceded them on the day. In November 1969 they released the album Changing Horses, which was generally seen as a disappointment after their earlier work. By late 1969, they had established a communal base at Glen Row near Innerleithen, and the relationships between Mike and Rose and Robin and Licorice had ended. In April 1970 they released the album I Looked Up.

The ISB's performances were more theatrical than those of most of their contemporaries. In addition to the spectacle of their exotic instruments and colourful stage costumes, their concerts sometimes featured poems, surreal sketches and dancers, all in the homegrown, non-showbiz style characteristic of the hippy era. In 1970, Robin Williamson (with little input from Heron) attempted to fuse the music with his theatrical fantasies in a quixotic multi-media spectacular at London's Roundhouse called "U", which he envisaged as "a surreal parable in dance and song". It combined the band's music with dancing by the Stone Monkey troupe (which had evolved out of Exploding Galaxy), the letter U representing a transition from a high level of spiritual awareness to a low, then returning to a final peak of awareness and communication. Although ambitious, critical response was mixed, with some harsh reviews from critics who had in some cases acclaimed their earlier work. It fared little better in New York, a planned US tour of "U" having to be cancelled after a few performances at the Fillmore East. Joe Boyd described the show as "a disaster".

Diminishing returns, 1971-74

After that the group lasted another four years, although there was a gradual decline in their status and commerciality after 1970. Joe Boyd, whose skilful handling of the band had contributed much to their international success, stopped managing them and returned to the US. The group left Elektra Records and signed for Island, for whom they recorded five albums. The first was a soundtrack to the "Be Glad..." film, and this was followed by the eclectic Liquid Acrobat As Regards The Air, regarded as their best album for some time.

The band continued to tour and record. Rose Simpson left in 1971, and was replaced by Malcolm LeMaistre, formerly of the Stone Monkey troupe. Mike Heron took time out to record a well-received solo album, Smiling Men with Bad Reputations, which, in contrast to the ISB's self-contained productions, featured a host of session guests, among them Pete Townshend, Ronnie Lane, Keith Moon, John Cale and Richard Thompson. The following year, Licorice left, and was replaced by Gerard Dott, an Edinburgh jazz musician and friend of both Heron and Williamson who had contributed to Smiling Men... Williamson also recorded a solo album, Myrrh, which featured some of his most extraordinary vocal performances.

The group's changing line-up, adding Stan Schnier (aka "Stan Lee") on bass, Jack Ingram on drums, and Graham Forbes on electric guitar reflected moves toward a more conventional amplified rock group. Their final albums for Island were received disappointingly, and the label dropped them in 1974. By then, disagreements between Williamson and Heron about musical policy had become unbearable, and they split up in October 1974.

Solo careers, 1974-1999

''See main articles: Robin Williamson and Mike Heron.

Williamson soon formed Robin Williamson and His Merry Band, which toured and released three albums of eclectic music with a Celtic emphasis. Within a few years, he went on to a solo career, moving increasingly into traditional Celtic styles. He also produced several recordings of humorous stories. Heron formed a rock group, called first Mike Heron's Reputation, then just Heron, and later released occasional solo albums.

Reunion and final separation, 1999-2006

In 1997, Williamson and Heron got back together for two concerts, which were warmly received. This was followed by a full reunion of the original three members plus Williamson's wife, Bina, and Lawson Dando in 1999. However, they did not recapture the high reputation of the original ISB, playing mostly small venues to mixed critical and audience responses. In March 2003 it was announced that Robin and Bina Williamson had left. Heron, Palmer and Dando, and new member Claire "Fluff" Smith continued to tour regularly around the United Kingdom and internationally. Heron, Dando and Palmer toured the US in 2004. Their last concert together was at the Moseley music festival in September 2006.

Cultural placement

Those who believe in a cultural crossover between a particular axis of British hippie culture and an older, more spiritual idea of Britain have increasingly come to see the ISB as the focus of this unexpected crossover. This began in 1994 when Rose Simpson, a former member of the band, became Lady Mayoress of Aberystwyth, and reached a new level in the autumn of 2003 when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, wrote a foreword for a full length book about the band , describing them as “holy” (he had previously chosen the ISB track “The Hedgehog's Song” as his only piece of popular music when he appeared on “Desert Island Discs”). Some have seen this as proof of the late Ian MacDonald’s claim that “much that appeared to be profane in Sixties youth culture was quite the opposite”.

Before the revival of interest in the ISB in the 1990s, however, the band were, as Joe Boyd put it, seen as representative of a side of the hippie 1960s which many preferred to forget. This was due to the unfashionability of their image in the post-punk period and the materialistic 1980s - flower-power clothes, acoustic instruments, a fascination with myth and mysticism, but it also owed something to the fact that Williamson, Heron and other band members were, for a time, associated with Scientology. At a time when many young hippies were being drawn into authoritarian groups of dubious "spiritual" nature, this became a controversial issue.

The music of the ISB ranges from quite conventional folk songs to innovative “art song” and hybrid forms that were a precursor to World Music. In 1967-8 they were sometimes described as part of pop music's "avant-garde", which had emerged in the wake of the more adventurous work of The Beatles, with whom they were compared. Indeed, Williamson claimed that, as both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones used to come to see them play before they recorded Sgt. Pepper and Their Satanic Majesties Request respectively, the ISB influenced them directly.

Although they lacked The Beatles' broad pop appeal, the ISB showed a similar interest in extending the boundaries of their music. Both Mike Heron and Robin Williamson would break apart a traditional song structure, inserting seemingly unrelated sections in a way that has been described as "always surprising, laughably inventive, lyrically prodigious While at times this resulted in a lack of conventional unity, it also opened up the song musically and thematically to allow greater depth and exploration. This aspect of their music, combined with Williamson’s soaring melismatic vocal ornamentation (perhaps influenced by Islamic chanters heard during his visit to Morocco, as well as by the Scots-Irish traditional singing with which he had grown up) made for music that still sounds fresh forty years later.