Incredible String Band
The I. S. Band's first Album of 1966 showing (l to r) Clive Palmer, Robin Williamson, and Mike Heron
Background information
Origin	Edinburgh, Scotland
Genre(s)	psych folk
Years active	1965 –present
Label(s)	Elektra Records, later Island Records
Website	[1]
Members
Robin Williamson, Mike Heron and Clive Palmer + Bina Williamson and Lawson Dando
Former members
Robin Williamson, Mike Heron and Clive Palmer, + Rose Simpson and Licorice McKechnie
Notable instrument(s)
gimbri, sitar

The Incredible String Band (or ISB) is a Scottish acoustic band which, (in the words of one of their early songs ) "way back in the 1960s" built a popular following within British counter culture, and the members of the group are considered psych folk musical pioneers. The group reformed in 1999 and continued to perform until 2006.

History

"The Incredible String Band" was formed in 1965 by Scottish folk musicians Robin Williamson, Mike Heron and Clive Palmer, taking its name from an all-night folk club (Clive's Incredible Folk Club) run by the band in Glasgow. They were signed by their future manager Joe Boyd, then working as a talent scout for the influential folk-based label Elektra Records, and recorded their first album, titled "The Incredible String Band", in 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. In a 1968 Sing Out! magazine interview Bob Dylan praised the album's "October Song" as one of his favorite songs of that period. The band broke up after recording the album, but reformed within a year without Palmer who had left for Afghanistan. In the meantime Williamson visited Morocco from where he returned laden with Moroccan instruments including a gimbri, which was, much later, eaten by rats.

In 1967, Heron and Williamson recorded a second album, “The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion” which demonstrated considerable musical development and a more unified ISB sound. It displayed their abilities as multi-instrumentalists (accompanied by Pentangle's Danny Thompson on double bass) 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, appearances at venues such as London's UFO Club and Savile Theatre, and exposure on John Peel's Perfumed Garden radio show on the pirate ship Radio London 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'. 'Hangman's' reached the top 5 in the UK album charts on release 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, Rose Simpson and Licorice McKechnie 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.

'Wee Tam And The Big Huge' was musically less experimental and lush 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. 'WTBH' was released as a double-album and also simultaneously as two single records - a strategy which lessened its impact on the charts. But it is invariably the favourite album in polls among the ISB hard-core following.

The iconic cover of the band’s second album The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion’’, designed by The Fool (1967)

After "Wee Tam and the Big Huge"1968, the Incredible String Band left behind their folk club origins, performing to larger audiences in concert halls, such as the Royal Albert Hall, prestigious rock venues such as the Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York, and at open-air festivals. In 1969 they played at Woodstock later than planned, having refused to perform in the pouring rain on the opening evening. Owing to this, they 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.

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 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”. 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.

Nevertheless, they continued to tour and record; 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. In addition, a film about the ISB, 'Be Glad For the Song Has No Ending', was released. 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 in 1968-69. It made little impact at the time, but reissues on video and DVD have contributed to the recent revival of interest in the band.

After that they lasted another four years, although there was a gradual decline in their status after 1970. Joe Boyd, whose skilful handling of the band had contributed much to their international success, stopped managing them to return to the US, and Rose Simpson left in early 1971. Line-up changes such as the addition of Malcolm Le Maistre, formerly a dancer in "U" with the Stone Monkey troupe, and then Gerard Dott, an Edinburgh jazz musician and friend of Heron, reflected moves toward a more conventional group, eventually with a rock rhythm section. Their final albums, for Island Records, 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.

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 “Heron”, and later released occasional solo albums. In 1997, the pair 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 both Robin and Bina Williamson had left. Heron, Palmer and Lawson, and new member Fluff continued to tour regularly around the United Kingdom and internationally, until their last concert together at the Moseley music festival in September 2006.

Cultural placement

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter album by The Incredible String Band, Hannibal (HNCD 4421) UK 1968.
Robin Williamson (seated centre) and Mike Heron (standing, far left) plus friends.

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 Mayor 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" - flower-power clothes, acoustic instruments, a fascination with myth and mysticism - in the post-punk period and the materialistic 1980s, but 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. (It also coincided with what many critics see as the beginning of a decline in the quality of their work.) Joe Boyd, in his book "White Bicycles", describes how he was inadvertently responsible for their "conversion": during an American tour in 1968 he introduced the band to an acquaintance who, having become a Scientologist, persuaded them to enroll in the cult in his absence. 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.

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. 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 40 years later.

Limited discography (LPs)

• The Incredible String Band (1966)
• The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (1967)
• The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1968)
• Wee Tam and the Big Huge (1968)
• Changing Horses (1969)
• I Looked Up (1970)
• U (1970)
• Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending (1970)
• Relics
• Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air (1971)
• Earthspan (1972)
• No Ruinous Feud (1973)
• Hard Rope and Silken Twine (1974)
• Seasons They Change (1976)
• BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert (1992)
• The Chelsea Sessions 1967 (1997, CD)
• nebulous nearnesses (2004, CD)

Mike Heron also made a successful album entitled ‘Smiling Men with Bad Reputations’ in 1971, backed by members of The Who on a rocky track entitled ‘Warm Heart Pastry’. Robin Williamson released over 40 records post-ISB, including 'Wheel Of Fortune' (1995, with John Renbourn), which was nominated for a Grammy award.

References and notes

1. "Way Back in the 1960s" (Williamson) – On The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion 1968.
2. Williams, Rowan (Foreword), Boyd, Joe (Foreword), Whittaker, Adrian (Editor) (2003) Be Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium , Helter Skelter Publishing ISBN 1-900924-64-1
3. Revolution in the Head - The Beatles' Records and the Sixties Ian MacDonald, Pimlico books, 2005 – ISBN 1-84413-828-3

   in the opening sequence -

   "It was hard for (Christopher) Booker, or Malcolm Muggeridge, or Mary Whitehouse to understand that much of what appeared to be profane in Sixties youth culture was quite the opposite ..."
4. Chris Cutler, "File Under Popular", Autonomedia (1985/1991) p.118

The best source of information on the ISB is Whitaker, Be Glad...,op. cit.

See also:

• Boyd, Joe : White Bicycles. Making Music in the 1960s. London: Serpent's Tail. 2006

• Green, Jonathon : Days In The Life: Voices from the English Underground, 1961-71. London 1988 (ISB-related contributions from Joe Boyd and Steve Sparkes)

• Unterberger, Richie: Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock. San Francisco/London, 2003 (especially the interviews with Williamson and Boyd. Also has informative chapters on the British folk scene)

• Harper, Colin : Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and The British Folk and Blues Revival. London: Bloomsbury 2006 (plenty on the Edinburgh folk scene of the early 1960s, from which both Jansch and the ISB emerged)

External links

• Official site for the band. Includes news, tour dates, photographs, reviews, and press coverage.
• Fan Site
• Be Glad for the Song Has no Ending
• Beat-Club performance of "Everything's Fine Right Now" (1970)
• Review of "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" on outsideleft.com)
• The 1969 Oz interview.
• The story of U and its place in the ISB's career.