Henry Cow were an English avant-garde
rock
group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by
multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim
Hodgkinson. An inherent anti-commercial bias kept them at
arm's length from the mainstream music business, enabling them to
experiment at will. They remained in existence for 10 years and
produced a body of music that was challenging, provocative and
influential for years to come.
While it was generally thought that Henry Cow took their name
from Twentieth Century American
composer Henry Cowell, this has been repeatedly
denied by band members. According to Tim Hodgkinson, the name was "in
the air" in 1968,
and it seemed like a good name for the band. It had no connection to
anything.
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Contents
- 1 History
- 1.1 The
beginning
- 1.2 Unrest
- 1.3 Europe
- 1.4 Rock
in Opposition
- 1.5 Legacy
- 2 Music
- 3 Personnel
- 4 Discography
- 5 See
also
- 6 Footnotes
- 7 References
- 8 External
links
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History
The beginning
Fred
Frith met Tim Hodgkinson, a fellow
student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in May
1968. Recognizing their mutual open-minded approach to music the two
began performing together, playing a variety of musical styles,
including "dada"
blues and
"neo-Hiroshima". Henry Cow's first concert was to support Pink
Floyd at the Architects Ball at Homerton College, Cambridge in
June 1968.
In October 1968 Henry Cow expanded when they were joined by
Andy Powell (bass guitar), Dave Attwood (drums) and Rob Brooks (rhythm
guitar). They performed with this line-up until December that year when
Frith, Hodgkinson and Powell split off from the rest of the group and
became a trio. Powell at the time was studying music at King's College under Roger
Smalley, the resident composer. Smalley was influential in
Henry Cow's early development. He exposed them to a variety of new
music from bands and musicians like Soft
Machine, Captain Beefheart and Frank
Zappa. Smalley also introduced them to the idea of writing music pieces
for rock groups. It was at this time that Henry Cow began challenging
themselves by writing music they could not play, then using it to teach
themselves to play the instruments.
As a trio, with Frith on bass guitar, Powell on drums and
Hodgkinson playing an organ Frith and Powell had persuaded him to
learn, Henry Cow performed at a number of gigs on the university
calendar, including the annual Architects' Ball, the Midsummer Common
Festival and on the roof of a 14-storey building in Cambridge. In April
1969 Powell left and the band reverted to a duo again, with Frith
playing violin and Hodgkinson on keyboards and reeds. In October 1969,
after a tryout with philosopher Galen
Strawson, Frith and Hodgkinson persuaded bassist John Greaves to join the
band, and with the services of a couple of temporary drummers and then
Sean Jenkins, Henry Cow performed as a quartet for the next eight
months. In May 1971 Martin Ditcham replaced Jenkins on drums, and with
this line-up they played at several events, including the Glastonbury
Festival alongside Gong in June 1971.
Ditcham left in July 1971 and it was not until September that
year that the drummer's seat was filled again, this time by Chris
Cutler. Responding to one of Cutler's adverts in Melody
Maker, the band invited him to a rehearsal, and it was only when Cutler
joined, that Henry Cow settled into a permanent core of Frith,
Hodgkinson, Cutler and Greaves. The band then relocated to London where they
began an aggressive rehearsal schedule.
After having entered John Peel's "Rockortunity Knocks" contest
in 1971, Henry Cow recorded a John Peel session for BBC
Radio 1 in February 1972. They later went on to record another session
in October that year and a further three sessions between 1973 and 1975.
In April 1972
Henry Cow wrote and performed the music for Robert
Walker's production of Euripides' The Bacchae.
This involved an intense and demanding three week period of
concentrated work that changed the band completely. It was during this
time that Geoff
Leigh on woodwinds
joined and Henry Cow became a quintet.
In July 1972,
the band performed at the Edinburgh Festival
and wrote and performed music for a ballet with artist Ray Smith and
the Cambridge Contemporary Dance Group at the Edinburgh
Festival Fringe. It was Smith who later did the "paint sock" art work
on three of Henry Cow's LP covers.
Back in London,
they started to organise a series of concerts and events under the
names Cabaret Voltaire and Explorers' Club at Kensington
Town Hall with invited guests, including Derek
Bailey, Lol
Coxhill, Ivor Cutler, Ron
Geesin, David
Toop and Ray Smith. For the first time, Henry Cow started
getting some attention from the rock press and the then emerging Virgin
Records label. After much negotiations and deliberation, in May 1973 Henry Cow signed
a contract with Virgin.
Unrest
Within two weeks of signing the contract, Henry Cow began
recording their debut album Leg End (also known
as Legend)
at Virgin's Manor Studios in Oxfordshire.
It took three weeks of hard work, but at the end they knew how to
handle the studio themselves, which would prove to be invaluable later
in their career. The track "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", sung by
the whole group, was Henry Cow's first overt political statement.
To promote its new signing, Virgin organised a UK
tour for Henry Cow and Faust, who had also just signed to the
label. During this tour, Henry Cow began preparing music for an
unorthodox and provocative play, based on Shakespeare's
The Tempest. Some of this music
was used on their next record Unrest.
During a tour of The Netherlands in December 1973, Geoff Leigh left
the group. Looking for more unusual instruments to draw them further
away from standard rock and jazz, Henry Cow asked classically trained Lindsay
Cooper (oboe,
bassoon)
to join. With hardly any time to rehearse, and Cooper having just had
all four wisdom teeth extracted, they returned
to The Manor in early 1974
to begin recording Unrest. It was during this time
that they became acquainted with Slapp Happy, a quirky
avant-pop trio of Peter Blegvad (guitar), Anthony
Moore (keyboards) and Dagmar Krause (vocals), who had just
completed their first LP for Virgin.
Recording Unrest was another intense
experience, and the strongest period of collective learning since The
Bacchae. They only had enough material to fill one side of
the LP, and so were forced to spend a good deal of time developing the studio
composition process that produced Side 2. The recording session brought
out a lot of tensions in the band, and it reflected in the music, but
in the end they were pleased with the result and this re-united the
group.
Henry Cow with Robert Wyatt performing at the Piazza
Navona, 1975. Left to right: Lindsay Cooper, Robert Wyatt, Dagmar
Krause, Chris Cutler.
In May 1974
they were on tour again around England and Europe with Captain
Beefheart. It was during this tour that Henry Cow woke up to the
realities of what was happening to them: they were becoming a rock band,
playing the same thing night after night. Life was no longer a
challenge and they were becoming complacent. After some serious
thinking they decided to ask Lindsay Cooper to leave and fulfil their
last outstanding concert obligations (a tour of the Netherlands)
as a quartet.
Without Cooper they were forced to abandon much of their learned
material and worked up a 35-40 minute piece unlike anything else they
had done before (this later became "Living in the Heart of the Beast"
on In Praise of Learning).
In November 1974,
Slapp Happy invited Henry Cow to be their band on their second LP for
Virgin. The result was Desperate
Straights, an almost entirely Slapp Happy
composed album that surprised everyone, considering how dissimilar the
two groups were. The success of this venture prompted a merger of the
two bands.
In early 1975
the merged group began rehearsing for In Praise of Learning
in a freezing gymnasium. It was an arduous and extremely demanding
time, something Slapp Happy were not prepared for, and it soon became
apparent that the merger might not work. Nevertheless, they still went
to The Manor and made In Praise of Learning
together. But it was only after they started rehearsing with a view to
performing live together that it became clear that their approaches
were incompatible. The merger ended in April 1975, when Anthony Moore
quit and Peter Blegvad was asked to leave. However, Dagmar Krause,
whose contribution had added another dimension to Henry Cow's sound,
elected to remain, which effectively spelt the end of Slapp Happy as a
band.
Having guested on both the Henry Cow/Slapp Happy albums,
Lindsay Cooper rejoined in April 1975 and Henry Cow became a sextet and began
preparing for what would become the most sustained and rigorous working
schedule of their career: two solid years of virtually continuous
touring in Western Europe.
Europe
Henry Cow's music was challenging and uncompromising and this
often lead to them being accused of deliberately making their music
inaccessible. As a result they were virtually ignored in their own
country. Even Virgin Records, who had started dropping experimental
groups in favour of commercial ones, was now showing little to no
interest in Henry Cow. This led to the group having to continuously
make decisions as to whether to continue or not (there certainly were
no economic inducements). To continue required political decisions to
survive, and these decisions often reflected in their music. Henry
Cow's anti-capitalist stance was brought
on partly out of necessity rather than choice. They began working
outside the music industry and doing everything
for themselves. They abandoned agencies and managers and stopped
looking for approval from the music press. Henry Cow quickly became
self-sufficient and self-reliant.
Virtual exiles from their own country, they made mainland Europe their
second home where they (and their music) were well received. After a
concert in Rome
in July 1975,
Henry Cow remained behind with their truck/bus/mobile home and began
meeting local musicians, organisers and the PCI (Italian Communist Party). It
was the PCI that offered them concerts at Festa D'Unita (large open-air
fairs that run every summer all over Italy). Each contact they made lead to more
contacts and soon doors opened for Henry Cow all over Europe.
While rehearsing for an upcoming tour of Scandinavia
in March 1976,
John Greaves left the band to start working on a project with Peter
Blegvad, and Dagmar Krause withdrew due to ill-health. Committed to the
tour, Henry Cow had to perform as a quartet (Hodgkinson, Frith, Cooper and
Cutler) and adjust their music accordingly. They took the radical
option and abandoned composed material completely in favour of pure improvisation.
Henry Cow performing in Fresnes, France, 16
November 1975.
Left to right: Tim Hodgkinson, Lindsay Cooper, Dagmar Krause, John
Greaves, Chris Cutler and Fred Frith.
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In May 1976
Henry Cow compiled a double LP Henry
Cow Concerts for a new Norwegian
underground label Compendium (re-released later on the budget Virgin
sub-label Caroline). For the first time,
they did everything themselves: the mastering, cover design, cutting,
pressing and manufacturing. The album included an excerpt from one of
several concerts performed with guest artist Robert
Wyatt in 1975.
Still without a bass player, Henry Cow auditioned until they
found Georgie Born, a classically
trained cellist
and improviser.
She joined the band in June 1976 and their new compositions grew even
more complex.
They returned to London in early 1977 and another merger took place with the
entire Mike Westbrook Brass Band
and folk singer Frankie Armstrong as The Orckestra. They played their first
concert at the Moving Left Review at The
Roundhouse in London and then in an open-air theatre in Hyde Park, and
went on to tour together in France, Italy and Scandinavia. At more or
less the same time they set up Music for Socialism and its May
Festival. It had been three years since Henry Cow had performed more
than one concert a year in their own country. In an attempt to break
the apathy that seemed to be discouraging anyone from wanting to put
them on, they tried to organise a small alternative tour themselves,
but abandoned it after 11 concerts when they started losing money:
clearly nothing had changed.
Their contract with Virgin Records had now become a burden to
both Henry Cow and Virgin: none of Henry Cow's records were licensed or
distributed in the countries in which they spent all their time
playing, and Henry Cow were not making any money for Virgin. Henry Cow
needed to record again but Virgin (understandably) refused to give them
studio time at The Manor. When Henry Cow referred to the contract ("one
month at a first class studio"), Virgin Records (in October 1977) agreed to cancel
it.
By now Krause's health had deteriorated to such an extent that
touring became impossible for her and she decided to leave the group,
although she agreed to sing on Henry Cow's next album. The recording of
this album was to begin at Sunrise studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland
in January 1978.
However, a group meeting one week before threw into question the
material planned for it. Cutler and Frith hurriedly wrote a set of
songs which, along with some of the planned material was duly recorded.
On returning to London, another meeting was convened to question the
predominance of songs on the album. The group agreed that the songs
would be released separately by Cutler and Frith, while the
instrumentals would be released later by Henry Cow. This decision,
however, spelt the end of the band. Cutler, Frith and Krause released
the songs, with four extra tracks recorded at David Vorhaus'
Kaleidophon Studio in London, as Hopes and Fears
under the name Art Bears, crediting the rest of
Henry Cow as guests. Later that year Henry Cow returned to Sunrise, by
then without Dagmar Krause and Georgie Born, to record their last
album, Western Culture,
an instrumental.
Flyer for the 1st RIO festival, 12 March 1978,
The New London Theatre, London. The ticket below the flyer reads: "THE
ROCK SHOWS THE RECORD COMPANIES DON'T WANT YOU TO HEAR."
Rock in Opposition
-
Main article: Rock
in Opposition
Henry Cow agreed to disband as a permanent group, but did not
announce the fact immediately. They continued for another six months,
creating a new set of material (recorded later to complete Western
Culture) and revisited for the last time, all the places that
had supported them over the years.
In March 1978
Henry Cow invited four groups from Italy, France, Sweden and Belgium to come to London and perform
in a festival Henry Cow had organised called Rock
in Opposition or RIO. Throughout Europe, Henry Cow had encountered many
"progressive" groups refusing to
bow to the hegemony of American and British
rock
music. Instead they drew on non-American music sources, such as local folk music
and 20th
century "classical" or "art music",
and often sang in their own languages. As was the case with Henry Cow,
these groups struggled to survive: record companies were not interested
in their music. Although these groups and Henry Cow were musically
diverse, what they had in common was: (1) their independence and
opposition to the established Rock business; and (2) a determination
to pursue their own work regardless.
After the festival, RIO was formalised as an
organisation with a charter whose aim was to represent and
promote its members. RIO thus became a collective of
bands united in their opposition to the music
industry and the pressures to compromise their music.
Henry Cow's last concert was held in Milan on 25th
July 1978.
In August they returned to the Sunrise studios to compete Western
Culture after which the band officially announced their
break-up in the press, stating that "… although the group as a
commodity, as a name, ceases to exist the work of the group will go on
…"
Western Culture was released on Henry Cow's
own Broadcast label. Shortly afterwards, Chris Cutler launched Recommended
Records, his own independent label and non-commercial record
distribution network.
Legacy
The legacy of Henry Cow and its work continues to live on long
after its demise. It was a groundbreaking group that launched the
careers of many of its members, and they have kept in touch,
collaborating in numerous projects over the years, including (to name a
few):
In spite of these collaborations, Henry Cow have never
reunited. Frith remarked in a 1998 interview, "Forget it! We're all
much too busy."
The closest to a reunion occurred in 1993 when Hodgkinson, Cutler,
Cooper and Krause came together to record "Hold to the Zero Burn" for
Hodgkinson's solo album, Each in Our Own Thoughts.
Then in December 2006, Cutler, Frith and Hodgkinson performed together
at The
Stone in New York City, only their second concert performance since
Henry Cow broke up in 1978.
The first was in London in 1986.
Music
Henry Cow's repertoire included elaborately scored pieces
(often with complex time signatures), tape
manipulations, free improvisation and songs. It
incorporated elements of jazz, rock, classical music and the avant-garde.
Dagmar
Krause's vocals added another dimension to their sound, giving it a
dramatic, almost Brechtian flair.
Their music was often experimental,
making classification all but impossible. However, the following styles
(amongst others) are often associated with Henry Cow:
-
- rock (too general and therefore
inadequate)
- progressive rock
- art
rock
- avant-progressive rock
- avant-rock
- chamber rock
- experimental rock
- free improvisation
- Rock in Opposition (strictly not
a style of music but rather a collection of like-minded musicians/bands)
Some of these styles may come closer to describing their music
than others, and often it contained elements of all of the above, but
in reality, Henry Cow simply remains one of those unclassifiable groups.
Henry Cow's music was challenging, not only to the listener,
but also to the band themselves. They often composed pieces to
challenge their own capabilities. Some of their music was scored beyond
the conventional ranges of their music instruments necessitating that
they "reinvent their instruments", learn how to play them in completely
new ways. And yet their music may not have been as good as it could
have been. Henry Cow conducted their affairs as a committee, having
regular, minuted meetings with no decisions being made unless approved
by the group. This included their music. Band members brought their
ideas to the table and sometimes they ended up being changed as a
result of the collective process. It is impossible to say if these
changes were for the better or if they dampened the composer's personal
visons.
While their music is a decided "acquired taste", there is much
to recommend in it, for although it is often dissonant and challenging,
it is also rich and exciting, and yields more insights upon repeated
listening.
Personnel
A number of people passed through Henry Cow over the years,
including:
- Dave Attwood – drums
- Peter Blegvad (Slapp Happy) – guitar
- Georgie Born – cello, bass
guitar
- Rob Brooks – rhythm guitar
- Lindsay Cooper – bassoon,
reeds
- Chris Cutler – drums,
percussion
- Martin Ditcham – drums
- Fred Frith – guitar, violin,
bass guitar, piano, xylophone
- Joss Graham – bass guitar
- John Greaves – bass guitar,
piano
- Tim Hodgkinson – keyboards,
reeds
- Sean Jenkins – drums
- Dagmar Krause (ex-Slapp Happy) – vocals
- Geoff Leigh – flute, reeds
- Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy)
– keyboards
- Andy Powell – bass guitar, drums
- Anne-Marie Roelofs – trombone, violin
- Robert Wyatt - voice,
percussion
Discography
Albums
These are the albums Henry Cow made showing the year they were
first released:
- 1973
Leg
End (also known as Legend)
(LP Virgin
Records, UK)
- 1974
Unrest
(LP Virgin
Records, UK)
- 1975
Desperate Straights
(with Slapp
Happy) (LP Virgin Records, UK)
- 1975
In Praise of Learning
(with Slapp
Happy) (LP Virgin Records, UK)
- 1976
Henry Cow Concerts
(2xLP Caroline Records, UK)
- 1979
Western Culture
(LP Broadcast, UK)
Bootlegs
The following are some of the bootleg
recordings made showing the year they were first released:
- 1995
Industry (CD no label, Japan)
- 1995
Ruins (2xCD Canterbury Dream, Japan)
- 2000
In the Name of a Freedom (3xCD Le Matango, Japan)
- 2001
Culture de L'Ouest (2xCD Peace Frog, Japan)
- 2003
Kaleidoscope (2xCD Hickory, Japan)
- 2003
Early Demo Tapes 1973 (CD Hickory, Japan)
- 2003
NDR (CD Hickory, Japan)
- 2003
Unknown Sessions (CD Hickory, Japan)
See also
Footnotes
References
- Cutler,
Chris and Hodgkinson, Tim (1981). The Henry Cow Book.
Third Step Printworks. ISBN
0-9508870-0-5.
- Cutler,
Chris (1993). File Under Popular. Autonomedia. ISBN 0-936756-34-9.
- Henry Cow. Chris Cutler
home page.
External links
| v • d • e Henry Cow |
Lindsay Cooper
• Chris Cutler
• Fred Frith
• Tim
Hodgkinson • Dagmar
Krause
Georgie Born
• John Greaves
• Geoff Leigh
Dave Attwood • Rob Brooks
• Martin Ditcham • Joss Graham
• Andy Powell • Sean Jenkins
|
| Discography |
| Leg End
(1973) • Unrest
(1974) • Henry
Cow Concerts (1976)
• Western Culture
(1979) |
| with Slapp
Happy: Desperate
Straights (1975)
• In
Praise of Learning (1975) |
| Related
bands and movements |
| Art Bears • Rock
in Opposition • Slapp
Happy |
