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I  There are two million ways to tell this story: through the music, the social arrangements, politically, artistically, subjectively. Certainly every member of the group would have a very different version. I'll just try to give some bones, some significant events, a little background and say, now and then, how, I felt about some of it. Memory is treacherous, so I write this referring as much as possible to contemporary documents and notes. Most what follows is adapted loosely from something I wrote for Andy Ortmann soon after the band broke up. Which explains why the style is sometimes a little odd. A couple of other preliminaries: Henry Cow was first and foremost a performing group; none of the records we released got near to what we were like on stage, and of course, there is a mass of music that we never even tried to record. To a limited degree this has been ameliorated recently (2009) by the double box collection of previously unreleased materials: 9 Cds and one DVD of live recordings, radio recordings and studio recordings. (ReR HCBOX 1, 2, 3) For the bulk of our touring life, there were as many women in the band as men - road crew as well as performers. Henry Cow was a full time project and we pretty much lived on top of each other for about 5 years, either on tour or rehearsing. We lived frugally - all the money we earned went into a kitty to pay for equipment, vehicles, repairs, and travel. Only in the last three-and-a-half years were we finally able to pay ourselves anything (£10, £15, £20 and in the last six months £25 a week). The band fed us - that was my job along with with Maggie Thomas, who came on most of the tours with us and ended up being our sound engineer. John's wife Sarah was also our sound engineer for a long time, and their tiny son Ben travelled with us often, as did Dagmar and Anthony's son Max. The group was run through a combination of formal, minuted, weekly meetings - and assigned personal zones of responsibility - for the accounts, catering, route planning, administration, maintenance, and so on. We wound up in a lot of bizarre places and did some things which, looking back, might appear extremely eccentric - noble - ridiculous - stupid - idealistic, but which seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. There was hardly any outside - so where would perspective come from? I just mention it, since there's no space for any of that in here. Your cue, then, to dip what you read below into a pot seething with failure and achievement, art and psychology, agape, confusion, suffering - and moments nothing could improve upon. And hormones. Lots of hormones. You talk about a revolution? We...eel.. someone else already had the last word on that: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. HENRY
COW
 Henry
Cow, Piazza Navona Concert with Robert: John's bass, CC,
Robert Wyatt, Dagmar Krause, Lindsay Cooper
Around 1970, I put an advert in the Melody maker. Through this I met many of the people who formed the first The Ottawa Music Company (a 22 piece Rock Composers Orchestra I had set up with Egg's Dave Stewart a year or so before), but no permanent group until Henry Cow got in touch. Founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by Tim Hodgkinson and Fred Frith, the band had gone through a succession of styles and extra members until, by the time I joined in 1971, it had settled into the permanent core of Fred, Tim and John Greaves - all of whom were still at Cambridge finishing their degrees. For a while, I commuted, rehearsing and doing the occasional concert. Then university ended and there was some serious thinking about careers and music. Music won. The band relocated to London and started to rehearse in the house I then rented part of (an old shop with a covered outside yard that had been used by David Nash as a sculpture studio). We rehearsed every day from 0900 to 1800, six days a week, slipping away occasionally for a concert somewhere, usually out of London. The band as a whole also joined the Ottawa Music Company and performed at its last series of concerts. It was in Ottawa that Henry Cow met Geoff Leigh (he and I had been at school together) and invited him to play on our second John Peel show. After that, we asked him to join us permanently. He declined, and went to live instead in Holland. When he came back about a year later, we were busy with a production of Euripides' The Bacchae at the Palace Theatre in Watford. This involved commuting from London - we had to arrive by half past eight, to prepare new music and rehearse before the actors arrived - working all day with the cast and director and then staying on afterwards to rewrite and rehearse until about 22.00. Then we drove home to sleep. This was our itinerary seven days a week for three weeks - and it changed us. The director, Robert Walker, was treating the production as a collective process, meaning that we were also involved in endless discussions and struggles over the direction and interpretation of the play, necessitating continual rewriting of the music all the way through to the opening night. (The music Robert Wyatt eventually recorded as Muddy Mouth was in fact the music Fred wrote for the scene where maddened Corybantes tear Pentheus to pieces. Bob had asked for 'hot Bacchic music' here, but our alternative reading eventually prevailed). In all, it was an intense, demanding and concentrated period of work, and after it,we became a qualitatively different band. This band Geoff Leigh did want to join. So Henry Cow became a quintet.
Henry
Cow, Rainbow Theatre, London: Geoff Leigh, Tim
Hodgkinson, Fred Frith, CC, John Graves, Ray Smith
That summer, we were in Edinburgh for a series of repertory concerts at the Traverse Theatre, followed almost immediately by writing and performing music for a ballet with artist Ray Smith and the Cambridge Contemporary Dance Group at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The music for this constituted our fourth John Peel broadcast and part of it survives on Leg End (With the Yellow Half Moon and Blue Star), for which Ray did the cover - the first of his three paint socks). But that came later... Back in London, we started to organise our own concerts under the name of The Cabaret Voltaire, which involved - as well as music - performance art, cookery and a little theatre. The ubiquitous Ray Smith was a regular there, as was writer DJ Perry. Henry Cow played at each concert (varying its programme) followed by our invited guests. We generally ended up all playing together. Printed programmes and refreshments were provided free. In early 1973, we started a second series, this time under the name The Explorers Club with invitees Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill, Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin, The Scratch Orchestra, David Toop, Paul Burwell, and Christine Jeffries, as well as regulars D.J. Perry and Ray Smith. During this series, Simon Draper of the then incubating Virgin Records showed up and after many negotiations offered us a contract. We deliberated, but signed it. Within two weeks, we were at The Manor recording Leg End. It took three weeks and seemed like hard work. Though we were lucky with engineer Tom Newman, who not only remained cheerful and patient but also taught us how to handle the studio ourselves.
Within two months, we were on tour, co-billed with Faust - which both helped confirm us as a Rock Group (until then much of our work had been in arts centres, theatres and university jazz societies) and marked the beginning of our association with the Virgin concert agency, and it's attendant diminishment of our former self-sufficiency - at least in the field of providing ourselves with work. During this tour, we were simultaneously preparing music for a second play, Shakespeare's The Tempest, for which we nominated our own director, John Chadwick. The play was a success, I think: it was certainly quite unorthodox and provocative - a strong alternative reading of the play. Our musical contribution, though, seemed not really to do it justice. That was my feeling anyway. Perhaps we were over-confident, or just over-stretched? Whatever the reason, we ended up with too little time to do the job thoroughly. Fred's Solemn Music( on side two of Unrest) is the only music that survived. In the middle of a Dutch tour, Geoff decided to leave. We didn't want to replace him but we did want an extra voice, so we started to look round for someone to invite. We were also thinking about finding a more unusual instrument to draw us further away from the standard rock and jazz sonorities. At which point enter Lindsay Cooper (I had seen her some time before in Comus and soon after Geoff's departure, Fred and I went to see her playing with old Cow and Ottawa associate Clive Bell in Ritual Theatre). With hardly any time to rehearse - and Lindsay still bleeding from the extraction of four wisdom teeth - we all went into the Manor to record Unrest. The music we had managed to prepare for this record was too little and appallingly under-rehearsed (it's all on Side 1). As it turned out, this lack was probably a blessing, since it forced us to invest a good deal of time developing the studio composition process that filled Side 2. That was another intense experience, and the strongest period of collective learning since The Bacchae. We needed it too; the group was flying apart at the seams - half of us hardly on speaking terms with the other half, John contemplating leaving and life with Virgin already problematical. (I think Deluge, on side 2 of that record can be heard both as an exquisite encapsulation of the existential state of the group, and the extraordinarily productive potential of the studio composition method which we evolved - under duress). Anyway, we all came out of the studio happy, thinking we had achieved something. I remember, we even organised a special staff listening for Virgin - as if we were all really a big, interested, family. Virgin seemed.... non-plussed, not to say unimpressed. But I think it helped to bring the rest of us back into focus. Almost at once, we were on tour again - with Capt. Beefheart this time - for five weeks around England and Europe. Somewhere along the way, something snapped and we all woke up with a start. Was this it? Locked into the rock circus, staying at Holiday Inns, watching the way Beefheart's managers behaved, doing our 30 gigs in 34 days? We watched Don come off stage and say "that was the worst gig I ever did in the whole of my life - and they loved it". It seemed to be a warning: we were getting lazy. Until now, we had tried to change our programme from concert to concert, write new bridges, vary the material, change things around, now, suddenly, we were just playing the same thing night after night. We decided to come off the road to regroup and rethink. After three months we reconvened, asked Lindsay to leave and toured Holland as a quartet. In the absence of all our learned material (which we couldn't play without Lindsay), we took ourselves to Yorkshire for 10 days, rehearsing in a rented village hall and emerging with a 50 minute piece derived entirely from the first three minutes of an unfinished composition of Tim's (Living In The Heart Of The Beast). At the concerts we'd perform the piece, take a break, and then perform it again. After this, we came back off the road - this time indefinitely.
Henry Cow/SlappHappy: Anthony Moore, CC, Tim Hodgkinson, Dagmar Krause, Peter Blegvad, John Greaves, Fred Frith
Months passed. SlappHappy called to arrange a meeting. They were about to make their second LP for Virgin and wanted to meet us and talk about it. A couple of days later they arrived - armed with a great deal of alcohol - and invited us to be their band for the session. We agreed. It wasn't a hard decision. The two groups had already become entangled: we had met Peter Belgvad playing with Faust on the tour we did together; I had worked on the SlappHappy single Casablanca Moon around the time of The Tempest (another version was released with a more competent percussionist); Lindsay, Fred and John had all worked on the single Europa (not released) and Geoff, Fred and John had been on the famous Slapp Happy John Peel broadcast (with Robert Wyatt and Geoff Clyne) Working on Desperate Straights was eye-opening. By the end of it we had decided to merge the two groups and integrate Slapphappy into our next record for Virgin. So, in the dead of winter, we took ourselves off to a freezing gymnasium at St. Christopher's school to rehearse. At the same time, we were planning a third series of Explorer's Clubs - this time over 7 consecutive nights at the ICA. It never happened: we felt that, nowt that we were signed to Virgin we couldn't in all conscience ask guests to perform with us for nothing, and Virgin - believe it or not - refused to underwrite even basic travelling expenses (to a total of £150) in spite of the fact that half our invitees were also on the label (e.g. Robert Wyatt, Slapphappy, Daevid Allen, Gylli Smythe, Lol Coxhill and Ivor Cutler). We almost froze to death in that gym. The heating was off and playing was hard. By the end of the week, we realised that the merged band wouldn't work. Apart from anything else, I think we all had very different ideas about what conditions we would be willing to work under. And, as it turned out, those conditions would be stringent and extremely demanding. However, we still went to The Manor and made In Praise of Learning together. Afterward, Dagmar stayed with Henry Cow. We had already invited Lindsay back to do the recording (in her absence we realised how indispensable she was) so now we became a sextet and began to prepare for what would become the most sustained and rigorous work schedule of our career - about two solid years of virtually continuous touring in Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Finland. This would be the place to mention Jack Balchin, Phil Clarke, Sarah Greaves and Sula Goshen, the longest serving other members of the group who were with us over that period (driving, road managing, mixing, administrating) whose contribution was critical, but has disappeared - if it was ever on - the record (ref. Who built the seven gates of Thebes?).
Henry Cow, Rome Piazza Farnese: CC, Dagmar Krause, Tim Hodgkinson, Lindsay Cooper (almost) Photo: Sergio Pozzi In April that year (1975) before embarking on our new life, we rehearsed with Robert Wyatt for a concert in Paris to promote his and our new records. It was a wild success - the public applauded for about 15 minutes, forcing Richard Branson to come back and beg us to do something more. Since we didn't know anything else, we went out and played the old Soft Machine song We did it Again. Soon after, we repeated this programme in London and were then invited, with Gong on board, to a giant open-air festival/demonstration in Rome. Italy was a closed territory at that time - because of a famous Lou Reed concert at which an enraged audience had trashed thousands of pounds worth of equipment. They wanted to show that they disapproved of high ticket prices and what they saw as an American/English entertainment mafia (young Italians had a far more robust idea of politics than the British at the time). The result was that promoters refused to send artists to Italy any more. However, our concert was not show business but a manifestation organised by La Stampa Alternativa, (an alternative newspaper). And it was free. 20,000 people showed up. After the concert, while the others took planes home, Henry Cow stayed on. We parked our truck - and our office/mobile home/ bus, in the Piazza Farnese and started to meet people, notably organisers from the Partito Radicale and the PCI (the Italian Communist Party). The PCI immediately offered us concerts at Festa D'Unitas (massive open-air fairs they run every summer all over Italy). We accepted everything; drove and played, drove back and drove and played again. Soon we were making plans for the following year. Out of this single action - made possible in the main by the recent acquisition of our bus/kitchen/home - we returned at least twice a year to Italy from then until the band broke up (indeed, we did our last concert there). We were probably the only non-Italian group able to do this. On this first visit, we also met Stormy Six, joined L'Orchestra Cooperativa (a musicians' co-operative in Milan) and found Nick Hobbs (then working in an Italian pump factory) who eventually became our administrator. 
Henry Cow. Cover of Gong magazine, Italy
In March 1976, while we were rehearsing for a tour in Scandinavia, John Greaves said he wanted to leave. He did his last concert with us on March 26th for Radio Hamburg. Uli Trepte came to this concert (he had been in Faust when we had toured together) and returned to England with us. We rehearsed with him for a while, and with Steve Beresford too, but neither worked out. In the meantime, we were committed to a tour of Scandinavia and decided, again, to do it as a quartet (Tim, Fred, Lindsay and me this time - Dagmar was ill in Hamburg). Again, we took the radical option. Each of us prepared materials on tape (with different but chronological content: the history of Henry Cow (Fred), the music of youth through old age (Lindsay), ethnic to late C20 contemporary (Tim). Each tape was 2 hours long and ran continuously through the piece, silent until made it audible (using a foot pedal). You couldn't know, therefore, where exactly in the tape you might be or what you would get if you let it sound. Sometimes the tapes would hardly be used, but they were always running. Each concert had the following structure: we would improvise for an unbroken 2 hour stretch in the dark (or in candlelight) under a broad but muted linking concept which had something to do with the genesis of music, ritual and western culture. Each concert started with a drum and a flute and each ended with a march written by Fred - and there was always a kind of musical wedding theme (played on tubular bells) somewhere about a third of the way in. Otherwise, we just made it all up as we went along. It was a risk, and it probably cost us some popularity in Scandinavia. But it kept us awake. Just before we left for this tour, we compiled a double LP (Concerts) for a new Norwegian label: Compendium. For the first time, we did everything ourselves: mastering, cover design, cutting, pressing, manufacture - and found out how easy it was. Back from Scandinavia, we continued to audition bass-players until we found Georgie Born - also a classically trained cellist, and an improviser. The compositions grew more complex. We continued to tour, rehearse and tour some more.
Henry Cow rehearsal, Clerkenwell: Fred Frith, Tim
Hodgkinson,CC, Georgie Born. Photo Ake Forsgren Early in l977, it was time to merge again, this time with the entire Mike Westbrook Brass Band and folk singer Frankie Armstrong (as The Orckestra). We played our first (3 hour) concert at the Moving Left Review at the Roundhouse in London and then in an open-air theatre in Hyde Park. After that, we went on to tour together in France, Italy and Scandinavia.
The Orcestra: Dave Chambers, Mike Westbrook, Frankie Armstrong, Lindsay Cooper, Paul Rutherford, Fred Frith, Kate Westbrook, Georgie Born, Phil Minton, CC, Tim Hodgkinson.
At more or less the same time, we were involved in setting up Music for Socialism (also in London) and its May Festival (at which we played and disputed vigorously with Cornelius Cardew and Peoples Liberation Music). With all this activity in London (it had been 3 years since we had done more than one concert a year in our own country) we thought we should try to break the curious ring of apathy that seemed to be discouraging anyone from wanting to put us on. So, we tried to organise a small alternative tour ourselves, the first half with Red Balune (Geoff Leigh's group at that time) and the second with Etron Fou Leloublan, whom we invited over from France. After 11 concerts, we ended up with a loss, and no progress at home. By now, we had been negotiating with Virgin for about a year to end our contract. It had become a millstone around both our necks: theirs because they weren't making any money out of us - and anyway had long since dropped the experimental groups in favour of the commercial ones - and ours because none of our records was licensed or distributed in the countries in which we spent all our time playing. So long as we were contracted to Virgin, we had no other options - and by now we wanted to record again while Virgin preferred, understandably, not to waste their money. Stuck at this impasse, it occurred to us that insisting on the fulfillment of our contract might be the easiest way to terminate it. So we went to Virgin and told them we were ready to make our next LP, as per our agreement, and please to book us a month at The Manor. They refused. We pointed to the contract (they wrote it: one month at a first class studio) and after a short negotiation, they agreed to let us go. By September, Dagmar's health, which had been getting poorer and poorer, was in such a weakened state that touring became impossible. Two months later, she decided to leave. She wanted, however, to sing on our new record - which we had already booked to record at the beginning of 1978 at Sunrise (in Switzerland). Dagmar
 Just days before we left, there were serious disagreements about the material we were about to record - leaving us with a studio booking and no music. I was deputised to try to produce new texts for Tim's piece (which eventually appeared 19 years later in its original form as Hold to the Zero Burn on his CD each in their own thoughts). New texts were, of course, impossible in the week or so in which they would have to be done. So I wrote some short song texts instead and proposed that we make a song CD. In the absence of anything else, this is what we did, working on the material en route to Switzerland and then in a rehearsal room when we arrived - and on throughout the recording process itself. However, when we returned to London, Henry Cow, at another meeting, decided that this work was not what Henry Cow should be doing - and therefore that we should not release the record. Fred and I offered to pay the studio costs for the songs and release them under our own names. The Henry Cow tracks: Viva Pa Ubu, Slice and Half the Sky were retained by the group and the rest, plus four extra songs (recorded a few months later at David Vorhaus' Kaleidophon Studio), appeared as the first Art Bears LP: Hopes and Fears (it was also the first release on my own Re Records label). At the same meeting, we agreed to disband Henry Cow as a permanent group - and not to announce the fact but continue for another six months with a complete set of new material and revisit for the last time, all the places that had supported us over the years. In a way, it was the last crucial point in our collective development, from which the material for Western Culture - and Lindsay as a primary composer - emerged. 
Henry Cow Roadside Picnic, our uncomplaining bus in the background Chronologically, these were the last days of Henry Cow: First, and against all the odds, came a short tour of theatres and art centres in England, organised and paid for by the Arts Council. Nick Hobbs miraculously mediated this, as well as a moderate grant to cover some of our accumulated debts. Then, in March, we organised and played at the first Rock in Opposition Festival in London, inviting four European groups: Univers Zero (Belgium), Etron Fou Leloublan (France), Samla Mammas Manna (Sweden) and Stormy Six (Italy) to play at it. We had already known them all for along time, and had worked with each of them individually before. It seemed ridiculous to us that they were unknown outside their own countries and that their records were not distributed or reviewed anywhere but in local outlets (not being American or English meant not being for the English speaking world). This festival was intended as a graphic counter to British rock chauvinism - and as a move toward recognising a de facto international community of experimental musicians. It ended up grounding a temporary organisation whose aim was to represent and promote its members on a European scale, an organisation which, although short-lived, did help to identify and cohere a general tendency in music. Once done, it could never be undone. This was also when Recommended and Re Records were born - the first a global distribution network and mail-order, the second my own label. After the RIO festival, Henry Cow left to tour Scandinavia with the Orckestra - and immediately afterward down to Spain for a series of concerts on our own. Phil Minton (from the Westbrook Brass band) decided to come with us to Paris. Half way there, the bus broke down and Fred detoured to take it back to England on a boat from Bremenhaven. Arranging to meet him in Barcelona, the rest of us took trains to Paris. When we arrived, Georgie Born and our sound engineer, Jack Balchin bailed out, both never to return. Lindsay went back with them to England - in her case for domestic reasons (she rejoined us two weeks later) and the rest of us were left somehow to honour the group's engagements. Rapid conferences. Phil Minton agreed to play with the remaining trio, and while we tried to contact Fred to tell him what was going on, the truck and all our equipment hit the motorway for Barcelona. Tim, Maggie Thomas and I took a night train. Once there, we set the PA up as usual, and in the absence of Jack, Maggie, took over as sound engineer, a job she continued to do until the end. Fred arrived shortly before the concert, still pretty much in the dark about what was going on and we put a set together in the dressing room half an hour before the show (a bit of Cow, a bit of Westbrook, a lot of extemporising). It went fine. Why not? So did the rest of that short tour, in which we became, for a.week or so, The Lions of Desire. Back in England we regrouped without Georgie and Jack - and with more new music, much of it written by Lindsay for the new line-up, and headed off to Paris for a week-long residency with The Art Ensemble of Chicago. Fred was playing bass now as well as guitar and we finished our engagements in France and Italy as a quartet - again (Fred Tim Lindsay, me) - and occasional invitees: Yochko Seffer (saxes), Henry Kalser III (guitar) and Anne-Marie Roelofs (trombone and violin). We had met Anne-Marie the Xmas before in Amsterdam at a gig shared with Red Balune; now we asked her to do all the remaining concerts and to play on the record we had booked to make at Sunrise when it ended. That was Western Culture.  lindsay & irene schweitzer at sunrise photo veit stauffer
Our last concert was in the Piazza del Duomo, Milan on July 25th, 1978.
Note:
There is a lot more information in the two fat books
that accompany the Henry
Cow 40th Anniversary Box sets,
written by all members of the band.
WHAT'S IN A NAME? What indeed. We were asked many times, a lot of people thought there was a connection to the American experimentalist Henry Cowell, inclding his wife, who wrote us a charming letter about it. But there wasn't. It was just a name. You might even say a silly name. But it encapsulated the gender contradiction, it was memorable, it was strange... and eventually It became us. ON RECORD LEGEND Virgin LP UNREST Virgin LP IN PRAISE OF LEARNING Virgin LP DESPERATE STRAIGHTS, with SLAPPHAPPY Virgin LP CONCERTS Caroline and Compendium double LPs - All the above have been reissued, remastered, by ReR Megacorp on CD. as well as THE HENRY COW 40th ANNIVERSARY BOX SET 1 The Road Volumes 1-5 Rer HC40 THE HENRY COW 40th ANNIVERSARY BOX SET 2 The Road Volumes 6-10 ReR HC41 THE HENRY COW 40th ANNIVERSARY BOX SET 3 The Studio Volumes 1-5 ReR HC 42 (contains all the studio recordings above) LIVE IN STOCKHOLM released alone but also in BOX 2 CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. Extra CD of unreleased materials given to subscribers to the 2 boxes. REMIX of BITTERN STORM OVER ULM on THE LAST NIGHTINGALE (released to raise money for the National Union of Miners during the great stike) BOOK THE HENRY COW BOOK Assembled by Chris Cutler and Tim Hodgekinson, November Books, 1984, and long out of Print. CODA - Fairly comprehensive list of Henry Cow's concerts, taken from one of the 40th Anniversary Box booklets. Henry Cow Concerts. For
completists, here's a list I compiled for the
40th Anniversary Box of outr concerts: May [Band formed by Tim & Fred
with Andy Spooner (harmonica), Rob Brooks
(guitar), Joss Grahame (bass), and David
Attwooll (drums). Plays
various local gigs throughout the rest of the
year, including one
on top of a 10 storey building somewhere
in Cambridge, and another at the Cambridge Corn
Exchange during which John Tchicai can be heard
jamming with us from backstage] Homerton
College 1969 Revelation Fayre Trinity College Cambridge May Ball Peterhouse College May Ball Chetwynd Room Kings College Common Room
Cambridge Midsummer Pop Festival, with Edgar Broughton Band, The Deviants, Tuesday's Children Trinity College May Ball (with Led Zeppelin, Ten Years After, Roy Harper, Fairport Convention, among others) Peterhouse May Ball (with Deep Purple,
Bonzo Dog Band, Champion Jack Dupree, (with whom
Fred played bass) & Marc Bolan, among others).
September
[Andy
Powell leaves. John Greaves joins. There follow
a succession of drummers: Frank Perry (we
auditioned him, or the other way around, but we
never rehearsed or performed together) Ashley
Brown (a college friend, again, I don’t think we
actually ever performed with him) and Sean
Jenkins (who was in a group called The Elastic
Band, and commuted from Wales to play with us.]
June 15.Pembroke
College, Cambridge July 21 Cambridge County School
October
20
Dorothy Ballroom, Cambridge, with
Velvet Underground. 1972 February 10 Essex University (benefit) [Henry Cow joins the Ottawa Music Company, an already existing 22-piece rock composer’s orchestra founded by Chris Cutler and Dave Stewart.] 25 St. Martin's College of Art, London as part of Ottawa Music Company26 Emanuel School, Outer London as part of Ottawa Music Company 28 London, Playhouse Theatre. Recording three pieces of Fred’s: Teenbeat, Rapt In A Blanket and I Came To See You Today for the John Peel show (Broadcast Mar 14). March 6 Redhill, Market Hall as part of Ottawa Music
Company April 1 –13 Watford, Palace Theatre [Write, rehearse and perform music for Robert Walker's production of Euripides'The Bacchae, with performances 8-13] 17 Isleworth Polytechnic30 Watford, Palace Theatre (One-off programme with members of the Ottawa Music Company) [Geoff Leigh joins] May 8-13
Cambridge Arts Theatre The Bacchae June 22/06
Parish Hall,
Roehampton, as part of Ottawa
Music Company July 25-30
Edinburgh, Traverse Theatre [2
different programmes in repertory: A Metaphysical Introduction To Hollywood Thibet and Guider
tells of Silent Airborne Machine]
August 11
London School of Economics, Old Theatre
November 17
Kensington Town Hall (Cabaret
Voltaire) with invitees
Jack Monck, Lady June, Anthony Marshall and Tony
Wilkes December 5 Kensington Town Hall (Cabaret Voltaire) with invitees The Ottawa Music Company 1973
January 6 Kingham Hall, Watford 19 Isleworth Polytechnic February 2 London, London School of Economics 23. Swansea University Arts Festival March [We establish The Explorer’s Club at the London School of Economics Old Theatre] 6 Shaw Theatre, Camden Festival,
London, with Principal Edwards' Magic Theatre 9 New Theatre, Watford Boys Grammar School 11 London, Roundhouse "The Changing Face Of Jazz/Rock", with Keith Tippett's Ovary Lodge and Terry Riley "In C" by Paul Buckmaster, Morris Pert and Peter Robinson 14 L.S.E. Explorer’s Club #1 Explorer’s Club with invitees Derek Bailey and Lol Coxhill. 24 Architect’s Association with Portsmouth Sinfonia
April
[7.
first major article by Ian MacDonald appears in
NME, under the heading "3 promising bands"]. 27 Explorers Club #2 with invitees Rain in the Face (David Toop &Paul Burwell), Scratch Orchestra[1], Ray Smith and DJ Perry May 4 Explorers Club #3 with invitees Ron Geesin, Mont Campbell Wind Quartet, Ray Smith, DJ PerrY5 London, Westway Theatre, with Sniff and Tears. On a stage set up under the Motorwa [10. Sign Virgin contract] 11 Explorers Club #4 with invitees Derek Bailey, Christine Jeffries, RaY Smith and DJ Perry 12-14 Start recording Leg end at the Manor 15 Fisher House, Cambridge? 16-17 continue Legend recording 18 Explorers Club #5 with invitees Ivor Cutler, Lol Coxhill, DJ Perry anD Ray Smith. 30 Holbourne Museum, Bath (Bath International Festival) June
2 Roehampton, Parish Hall (Benefit for
the Servile House Home for the physically
handicapped) with
Hatfield and the North 3-08 Recording continues at Manor 9 London/Shepherd's Bush, Magic Roundabout with Gong [10-14 Recording continues at Manor]16 Greenhead Park, Huddersfield (expenses) 17 York Arts Centre, York 18 Forum Theatre, Manchester [25 Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson, Geoff Leigh and John Greaves participate in the first performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells at the QEH, London] July 8
Harrow, Headstone Manor Park
with Global Village Trucking Company, Mantra,
Byzantium and Half-Human Band August 5 Dingwalls Dancehall, Camden, a Greasy Truckers Benefit concert with The Global Village Trucking Company and Camel. It was supposed to have been recorded for a live release, but the organisation was so awful and the show ran so late that we never actually got to play. (but we told ZigZag that played for 15 minutes at the time) The date is not certain either... 6 Harrow Tech 9 Fisher House, Cambridge [31. Leg End Released.] September 8. Commonwealth Institute, Kensington, London, with Kevin Coyne. TOUR
WITH FAUST: 21 Reading, Town Hall with Faust END of tour with Faust.
November
1 - 17 Rehearse and perform Shakespeare's with director Jon Chadwick at the Palace Theatre, Watford. [4 Filmed by a French TV crew as part of a documentary on Virgin Records while we recorded our side of the Greasy Truckers compilation at The Manor]. 21 Dingwall’s, London 22 Reading Arts Exchange 24 Bracknell, Sports Centre, with Man 25 Chipping Canmden Folkshop 26 Chelmsford Prison December 1 De Toverbal, Maassluis 6
Vakschool, Schoonhoven (morning concert) then
to Zwolle (evening concert) 1974 January [Lindsay Cooper joins.] 19 London, Isleworth Polytechnic
(lunchtime concert), then to Surrey University for
evening concert
February
8 Hemel Hampstead, Arts Centre 13 St. Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, with Gong 18 Nottingham University (with Global Village Trucking Company) 19 Birmingham
University (with Return To Forever) [Unrest continues, 23/03-02/04]
April
Tour with Kevin Coyne: 10 Brest 13 Mont-de-Marsan 25. BBC Langham Studio 1, London record Pigeons, Ruins, Half Awake, Half Asleep and Bittern Storm Over Ulm for John Peel Show (broadcast May 9)
May
1 Midsummer Common Free Festival, Cambridge 8 Woolwich, The Tramshed 10 St. Albans College of Education [14 Slapp Happy recording session at Nova Studio] 15 Reading Town Hall benefit 18 Bryanston School Dorset Tour
with Captain Beefheart: 23 Patinoire, Reims, France [27 Unrest released] 30 Loughborough University, UK
June
1 Leeds University 3.Town Hall, Birmingham 4 City Hall, Newcastle 6 Caley Cinema,
Edinburgh 12 North East London Polytechnic 20 Ancienne Belgique,
Brussels 23 De Doelen, Rotterdam End
of Beefheart tour July 6 Technical College, Ewell September
13-17 rehearse at Skipton Village Hall, Yorkshire Dutch tour as a quartet, without Lindsay. 19 Doornroosje, Nijmegen Paard von Troje, Den Haag 22 De Toverbal, Maassluis 25 Technische Hogeschool Twente,
Enschede 27 De Piek, Vlissingen 29 De Eland Delft October 10 Winchester College of Art 12 Manchester, Polytechnic with Hatfield and the North
November [6 Chris and Fred’s first ever duo concert at Reading University] [11-26 Recording Desperate Straights at The Manor after merging with Slapp Happy] December [10 Chris and Fred play with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra as soloists in David Bedford’s ‘Stars End.’] 1975
January [The newly merged Henry Cow/Slapp Happy rehearse material for their second LP and possible concerts in the gymnasium of St. Christopher's school. They un-merge as a permanent group but agree to make a second LP together. Lindsay returns. Dagmar joins Henry Cow.] February/March [Recording In Praise Of Learning at the Manor Desperate Straights released] April [Rehearsals start with Robert Wyatt for our combined concerts.]
May
8 Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris,
with Robert Wyatt 17 Palais des Sports, Grenoble with
Magma and Etron Fou Leloublan. ?? Helsinki
June
Tour with Gong, Magma, Hawkwind and Man: 18 Bruxelles. 19 Gradignan, Bordeaux. End of tour 27 Piazza Navona,
Rome, with Gong (and last of concerts with
Robert Wyatt)
July 20
Palermo 25. Høvikodden Arts Centre, Oslo. August 5. BBC Maida Vale Studio 4, record London Beautiful As The Moon…, Nirvana For Mice, Ottawa Song, Gloria Gloom.., Terrible As An Army With Banners for John Peel show (broadcast Aug 18).
October
12. Palazzo Dei Marmi, Pordenone
November
2. Salle
des fêtes de Fontgrande, Carmaux. ?. Carcassonne 29. Manchester, University?? December
2. South Harrow? 5. Strathclyde University, Glasgow.
1976
January
21. Kingston, Polytechnic 30. North London Poly
26. NDR Jazz Workshop, Hamburg. John Greaves’ last concert with Henry Cow [John Greaves leaves]. May
Second quartet tour, this time with Tim, Fred, Lindsay and Chris. (Dagmar is ill). 12 Tavastia Club, Helsinki 13. Konsettitalo,Turku 16. Oslo 18. V-Dala, Uppsala
June [14. Georgie Born joins.] August [7. Booked for the Amphitheatre, Arles, with Pierre Moerlen, Archie Shepp, Van Der Graaf Generator, Terry Riley, and Sun Ra. There were riots and it was cancelled]. 20. York? 21. Folkstone 25. TV recording, Vevey 27. Lausanne September
4. Sapinhaut 8. Milan 10. Torino 16. Trieste [17. Udine concert cancelled because of earthquake] 18. Bologna 23. Benuvento 24. Taranto? 26 Palermo 28 Rome?? 29 Padua
October
1. Vicenza 2. Venice 23. Goldsmiths College, New Cross,
London? [31. First performance of the Feminist Improvising Group, with Lindsay, Georgie, and Dagmar at the Almost Free Theatre in London.]
November
09. Salle Fontaine d'Houche, Dijon
December
1. Grenoble with Zao ? 14. Maison pour Tous,
Sainte-Quentin-en-Yvelines?
1977 February
1. Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge March
1. Vicenza 2.
Cremona
5. Udine 6.Mestre [Formation of the Orkhestra integrating all members Henry Cow and the Mike Westbrook Brass Band and singer Frankie Armstrong] 13. Roundhouse, London (Moving Left Revue). First Orkhestra performance. 21. Brive 22. Bordeaux 23. Poiters 25. Orleans 26. Rennes 27.Paris 28. Clermont Ferrand
April
20. Liverpool Eric’s Club 24. De Toverbal, Maassluis 26. De Muze, Antwerp 27. De Bottehommel, Bergen op Zoom 30. Mariahisse, Stockholm. May
2. Uppsala 6. Huset, Aarhus 8. Festsalen, Ludvika 9. Stockhom Radio concert.
11. Tarastia Club, Helsinki 15. Folkestius, Oslo 16. Musikforum, Uppsala 19. De Piek, Vlissingen 28/29. Battersea Arts Centre Music for Socialism festival, with Carol Grimes, Red Square, Leon Rosselson, Frankie Armstrong, Lol Coxhill, People’s Liberation Music, (Geoff Leigh’s) Red Balune, Tim Souster… 30. Solent Suite, Southampton, with
Red Balune June
1. Plymouth, with
Red Balune 3. Cardiff, Temple of Peace, with Red Balune 12. Guildford, Civic Hall,with Etron Fou Leloublan 14. Leeds [22-24 Rehearse with Orckestra] 25. Festival du Château, Sierck-les-Bains with National
Health,
Surya, Faton Cahen, Carmina July
[31.
Tim
Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper (as part of a wind
quintet led by Jimmy Hastings) join National
Health for a gig at the Queen Elizabeth Hall,
London] September
9. Piscina Communale, Arzignano (Zona Festival) 10. Cremona 19. Casa Del Popolo, Firenze 22. Verona 23. Teatro Palladium, Lecco (Como Festival) 24. Lugano Festival, with John Cage, Dieter Schnebel, Christian Wolff 25, Palazzo Sport, Cantù with Stormy Six (Como Festival) 27 Mestre with Etron Fou Leloublan 28. Rome with Etron Fou Leloublan October
2. Napoli [19. Our contract with Virgin is terminated.] 15. Nancy Jazz Pulsations Nancy, Chapiteau de la Pépinière with The Orkhestra 31. Nottingham University November
1. Leeds, University 9. Bourges 10. Salle Beaurepaire Angers 18. UCL, Woluwé-St.Lambert, with Univers Zero 20. Hippodrome (Fête du Nouveau Populaire de Paris with The Orkhestra. With National Health) [20. Dagmar
Krause leaves] December
2 Freiburg 3. Munich [5 & 6 visit
and book Sunrise Studio in Kirchberg] 14 Maison pour Tous, Paris suburb 16. Melkweg, Amsterdam with Red Balune and guests Annmarie Roelofs and Geoff Leigh 1978 January
10. Geneva 14. Kunstmuseum, Luzern [15-29 recording at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg with Dagmar Krause for new Henry Cow LP, most of which turns into the first Art Bears LP Hope & Fears after HC decide it’s not really Henry Cow material. Lindsay’s Half the Sky (later to appear on Western Culture) and Slice are also recorded, as well as Tim’s Viva Pa Ubu.] February
Arts Council Contemporary Music Network Tour: [Fred has a letter from an Arts Council officer of the time who came to see us: “I came to your concert in Sheffield, a most depressing experience if I may say so”] 2. Aston
University Birmingham 11.
Bridgwater Arts Centre 13. Warwick University Arts Centre, Coventry 14. Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton with Red Balune and Alvaro [CC goes to USA to do concert research, paid by HC, in spite of the band no longer existing] March
8. Aberdeen, Arts College 9. Edinburgh, George Square Theatre 12. New London Theatre Drury Lane,
London, Rock In Opposition Festival, with Univers
Zero, Stormy Six, Samla Mammas Manna and Etron Fou 14. Phoenix Theatre, Leicester Rock
Festival, with
Stormy Six [15-18 Chris, Fred and Dagmar record 4 more songs for Hopes and Fears at Kaleidophon Studios, London] 18. London, Middlesex Hospital Medical
School Benefit for Other Cinema, with
Red Balune 28. Kulturhuset, Stockholm. Radio concert with The Orkhestra 29. Linkoping 30. Musikforum, Norrköping with The Orkhestra 31. Folkets Park, Kalmar
April
1. Lund with Samla Mammas Manna 2. FFS,Gothenburg with The Orkhestra 4. Chateauneuf, Oslo with The Orkhestra [Although Henry Cow have concerts in Spain and France booked after the Orckestra tour, Georgie and our sound mixer Jack Balchin leave the band at this point and return to London. Lindsay also goes back, but for personal reasons, she will be back. Fred has to take the Bus back to the UK from Bremerhaven for repairs, so Tim asks Phil Minton if he would like to join them for the remaining concerts. Maggie Thomas steps into the sound mixing job and Phil Clarke takes the truck with Phil Minton and all the equipment to Spain while we contact Fred - to get him to fly out to Barcelona - and try to get hold of enough cash (borrowed from George Leton) and deliver it to Phil at a service station en route to Spain so that they can complete the journey. Chris, Tim and Maggie get on a night train to Barcelona where Tim, Fred (just arrived), Chris and Phil Minton knock a set together in the dressing room before the concert. The following concerts are done under the name of The Lions Of Desire.] 9. L’Alianca, Barcelona 13-14 Valencia 15 Madrid 20 Paris - session for Radio France. [Back in England, Lindsay Cooper rejoins and Henry Cow recoups. Fred plays bass as well as guitar from now on and we play as a quartet with Annemarie Roelofs (trombone and violin) joining for most of remaining concerts, and also playing on Western Culture. Yochk'o Seffer, Chris Wangro and Henry Kaiser III also join in now and then.] May
[15. Art Bears' "Hopes And Fears" independently released] 17. Hippodrome de Pantin, Paris, with
the Orkhestra. 24. Salle des Fêtes du Grand Parc,
Althagore Festival, Bordeaux with Terje Rypdal and
Yochk'o Seffer
June
3. Salon-de-Provence 3500F 6.Bellay.
8. Rock'n'Roll Mops, Lyon,
with guest Henry Kaiser
July
7.Festival Della Gioventu, Milan 14. Parco Sempione, Turin 15. Football Stadium, Piacenza 17. Festa D’Unita, Brescia 20. Rome ? [27- August 8, recording sessions for "Western Culture" at Sunrise, Kirchberg.] August [We are supposed to perform one last concert in England, at a multi-band festival at Battersea Arts Centre but, as a result of incompetent organisation on their part, we ended up not playing.] [1]
Far from the free-ranging, experimental
ensemble we were expecting, this turned out
to be Cornelius Cardew, Keith Rowe and a
couple of cohorts performing political
songs, with “relevant” lyrics set to classic
tunes of 50 years earlier. Stiff,
humourless, and poorly executed, it was
extremely peculiar and, for me, deeply
disappointing! FF [2]
Unlikely
though
it may seem, given our general poverty, at
around this time we visited - and
contemplated buying - a giant dairy complex
near Stevenage. It had been built, we were
told, earlier in the century by an eccentric
millionaire for his mistress, a vast oval
building with a football-pitch-sized open
courtyard in the center, an imposing pair of
towers either side of its entrance and a
winding covered way leading out into the
fields behind. From the air it was designed
to look like a cow. I wouldn’t dare make
this up. For money we were planning to use
the generous fee in prospect for composing a
third of the soundtrack to Alexandro
Jodorowsky's planned film adaptation of
Frank Herbert’s 'Dune'. Jodorowsky had come
to the Rome concert in the Piazza Navona
with Michel Seydoux, his Parisian backer and
had told us (as Tim remembers it) that we
were the most advanced musicians, he was the
most advanced director, and we were going to
do something great together. He came to see
us again in Paris. The project started to
look serious. Now Virgin got involved. At
the beginning, each of the three planets in
the story would be represented musically by
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Henry Cow and Magma
respectively. Then Stockhausen pulled out
- well, I don’t know what really
happened but suddenly Pink Floyd were to be
planet three. That’s where it all started to
go wrong - from our point of view. Maybe six
months into the story I had to go to see
Jodorowsky at the Savoy Hotel. I was in the
middle of seeing if I could go a year
without wearing shoes at the time and, to
get into the place I had to borrow Richard
Branson’s shoes (and a tie). Richard waited
in the car I think. We were told Pink
Floyd’s management were pushing hard to get
Magma and us booted off the project so that
Pink Floyd could do all of it. It dragged on
for a while longer but nothing got past talk
and hustle until, eventually, the whole
project was dropped, the rights were sold on
and, after Ridley Scott had taken up and
then abandoned it, David Lynch made a
lackluster, forgettable version of the
story. I still have the original – lavish –
promotional book with highly exotic costume
designs, plot resume and storyboard
extracts; it would have pipped Star Wars to
the post. Salvador Dali was booked to play
the Emperor of the Universe. [3]
CC.
We
met an agent, Carol X, who said she would
book a tour for us in the UK. We said great,
since the Virgin agency had been pretty
useless. As it happened several of us had
become homeless around this time, and we
stored all our worldly goods in Carol's
basement before we went off again on tour.
Over the next few weeks we got regular
reports and before we returned there was a
pretty impressive itinerary booked. Signed
contracts were waiting for us on our return.
A week before the first concert VIrgin took
an advertisement in the music press to
promote Unrest, and listed all the
UK dates. On the day of publication one of
the universities we were booked to play at
called us, they'd seen the Virgin ad and
were perplexed - they knew nothing about it.
We said: ‘But we have signed contracts’.
They said: ‘no one here signed them’. Then
we checked the rest of the dates. Nobody
knew anything about any of them. It turned
out that the whole tour, contracts,
signatures…. was a hopeful fiction. We never
got to the bottom of this story, though we
moved our stuff out of Carol’s basement that
week, storing it in Virgin's Warehouse where
some of it disappeared and some was eaten by
mice. But that's another story. After that,
British concert promoters stoically
continued not to book us.
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