SOFT
MACHINE
In January 1967, the band's one
and only single ever was recorded : it had two songs on it, "Loves
Make Sweet Music" and "Feelin', Reelin', Squeelin'". Three
months later, a collections of demos was recorded at DeLane Lea Studios
with producer Giorgio Gomelsky, but not officially released until 1971 (on
two compilations on the French Byg label). At that time, Soft Machine
had already become something of a 'cult' band on the London psychedelic
scene, gigging at places like the Roundhouse or the UFO. On April 29th,
1967, they took part in an event set up by the underground paper
'International Times', which also featured the Pink Floyd, and was given
the name, '14 Hour Technicolor Dream'.
During the summer, the band was
involved in an avant-garde theatre project in St.Tropez, on the French
Riviera, and it was on the way back that Daevid Allen was refused re-entry
to England. So he stayed in France, moving on to various projects before
forming Gong two years later, while Wyatt, Ratledge and Ayers decided to
carry on as a trio.
In February 1968, Soft Machine
embarked on a 3-month US tour (opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience),
recording their first album in New York in four days in April, with
production handled by Tom Wilson and Chas Chandler, former Animals bassist
and Hendrix's producer. Although quickly made (most tracks are first
takes) and not particularly well-recorded, "The Soft Machine"
is now considered a classic of the extraordinarily creative
post-psychedelic, pre-progressive, period of the late 60's... and quite
rightly so!
In May, a guitarist by the name of
Andy Summers (also on the earlier Hendrix US tour, backing Eric Burdon...
later in The Police, of course!) joined, for the second leg of the
American tour (July-September), but left mid-tour. Disagreements on the
musical direction began to arise between Ayers and Wyatt-Ratledge, leading
to their parting company after the tour was completed. Wyatt stayed in
Hollywood to work with Jimi Hendrix, while Ratledge and Ayers flew back to
Europe. In December 1968, Wyatt was contacted by Probe, who had just
released the first album, to discuss possible live dates by the band to
promote it. With Ayers unavailable, Hugh Hopper was asked to join (he was
about to sell his bass!), and after a month of rehearsal, the new line-up
made its live debut at the Royal Albert Hall in February, a few days
before entering Olympic Studios to record the second album.
For "Volume Two"
and most of the subsequent gigs, the trio was augmented by Hugh's brother,
Brian, who played tenor saxophone. This was the symptom of the band's
gradual evolution towards jazz, clearly apparent on the album. In the
Autumn of 1969, a permanent brass section was recruited from pianist Keith
Tippett's jazz band : Elton Dean on alto sax, Marc Charig on trumpet, Nick
Evans on trombone. Another sax (and flute) player, Lyn Dobson, was added
following Dean's recommendation. The resulting septet was only together
for a few weeks, recording BBC sessions in November and touring France
quite extensively towards the end of the year; Evans and Charig then left
to pursue successful careers on the European jazz scene (although they
guested on subsequent albums).
During the first months of 1970, Soft
Machine recorded "Third", a double album which
included four sidelong compositions. Hugh Hopper's angular
"Facelift" was a collage of live performances made in January,
and is the only track featuring Lyn Dobson, who had left by the time the
studio sessions for the other four sides had begun. Mike Ratledge
contributed two sides : "Slightly All The Time", a progressive
jazz masterpiece made all the more successful by the inclusion of the
"Backwards" theme (bookended by Hopper's transition theme "Noisette")
from previous live medleys; and "Out-Bloody-Rageous", which
showcased the band's use of tape loops and featured strong group
interplay. Finally, "Moon In June", Robert Wyatt's side, was
something of a farewell to Soft Machine's original style, the last
piece by the band ever to feature vocals; it was actually a montage of
several old songs, some of them dating back to the 1967 Gomelsky sessions,
but superbly linked together (Wyatt had recorded a demo of the suite in
the USA in 1968). A good indication that the rest of the band weren't too
keen on pursuing that kind of direction was that, although uncredited as
such, "Moon In June" was largely a solo performance by Wyatt,
who played organ and keyboard bass as well as drums and vocals. Hopper and
Ratledge only appeared for a brief instrumental extravaganza at the end of
the main part; Wyatt didn't even ask them to play on the rest.
So by mid-1970, Soft Machine
had become a purely instrumental band; Wyatt being the only member wanting
vocals in the music, the majority won... During the summer, Wyatt recorded
his first solo album, "The End Of An Ear", on the sleeve of
which he described himself as an 'out-of-work pop singer'... But a
collection on pop songs the album was not : no lyrics, no conventional
singing, rather a very experimental collection of mainly improvised
material (the titles of the tracks referred to several Canterbury figures
: "To Caravan And Brother Jim" etc.) except for a cover of Gil
Evans' "Las Vegas Tango", with the voice used as an instrument
and heavily treated, mostly through tape speed alterations. The results
were, depending on one's taste, unlistenable or startlingly original and
unique.
In the autumn, following a
controversial appearance at the Royal Albert Hall for the famous
'Promenade Concerts' in August, the 'classic' line-up of Wyatt , Hopper,
Ratledge and Dean recorded "4", in fact their first and
last studio album as a quartet, although this incarnation would more or
less survive for one more year. This effort carried on in the vein of
"Third"'s instrumental tracks (with a welcome return to the
septet format on the extraordinary "Teeth" and
"Virtually"), and in this respect was an impressive achievement,
although the complete lack of vocals made some listeners wonder if the
band could still go on under the name Soft Machine... If only
they'd known how many changes of personnel and musical direction were
still ahead of them!!!
1971 was a year of
experimentation, as one can tell from listening to the radio sessions
recorded on this period. Several musicians (various brass players,
string-bassist Roy Babbington and drummer Phil Howard) were sometimes
added to the basic quartet, furthering the evolution towards jazz. That
same year, Elton Dean released his first solo album, in much the same
vein, with his own Elton Dean Band musicians (Howard and bassist Neville
Whitehead), and Ratledge among the guests.
When Wyatt finally left in July,
later forming Matching Mole, Phil Howard was a natural choice as
replacement, but he rapidly left, midway through the sessions of the "5"
album - his style was considered too 'free' by Hopper and Ratledge... and
a good majority of the audiences who had seen the band play that autumn.
He was in turn replaced by John Marshall, one of the very best drummers in
Britain, formerly of Nucleus among other bands. With Marshall in, Soft
Machine rapidly moved away from the straighter jazz feel of
"5", into more 'jazz-rock' territory, which apparently wasn't to
the taste of Elton Dean, who left in May 1972. He subsequently worked with
mainly acoustic jazz ensembles, although he was also (quite surprisingly)
involved in the Dutch 'progressive rock' band Supersister in 1973-74.
Ex-Nucleus pianist/reeds player
Karl Jenkins wasn't really a replacement for Dean, as his multiple
talents, including that of composer, rapidly made him the co-leader of Soft
Machine with Ratledge. With the impressive Hopper/Marshall rhythm
section at their disposal, the pair could allow themselves any level of
complexity and musical variety. "Six Album", released in
early 1973, was a double half-studio, half-live set. The latter showcases
the interplay between the four musicians, while the former is more
experimental, focussing on Jenkins and Ratledge's dual keyboard patterns
and the use of Echoplex, most notably on the hypnotic "The Soft Weed
Factor".
In May 1973, Hugh Hopper decided
that four years in Soft Machine was enough and that it was time to
move on to pastures new. He had just released his first solo album,
"1984", and went on to release several others, and work with
countless jazz and progressive bands throughout the decade, and again from
the mid-eighties onwards after he stopped playing for five years. Roy
Babbington, who had guested on a couple of Soft albums a
double-bass player, was a natural replacement, except for the fact that he
now concentrated on his 6-string bass guitar. The resulting line-up
recorded "7", a natural progression from the studio album
of "Six Album", with shorter compositions and even less jazz
influence.
Perhaps sensing that, for the
first time in the band's existence, Soft Machine's music tended to
repeat itself, it was decided to add guitarist Allan Holdsworth to the
line-up in December 1973. The resulting quintet (which toured North
America in early 1974) was a fusion powerhouse, with possibly the best
British drummer and guitarist at that time. Consequently, the music took a
decidedly 'rocky' character, as documented on "Bundles",
recorded in the summer of 1974 but only released in the spring of 1975.
This was the first Soft album not to bear a number, a sign that
times were surely changing : the band had left CBS for EMI/Harvest, and
also left the underground scene for a more mainstream approach at a time
when American fusion bands were a dominant force (and reached their
commercial peak).
Holdsworth left shortly after the
release of "Bundles", and recommended fellow guitarist
John Etheridge as a possible replacement. This proved satisfactory and in
the summer of 1975 Soft Machine embarked on an ambitious, but
ill-fated, package tour of European arenas with the likes of Caravan and
the Mahavishnu Orchestra. From then on, the band's popularity waned as it
failed to sustain the momentum initially gathered by its new orientation.
Ratledge, the last remaining founding member, left in March 1976, leaving Soft
Machine's reins in the hands of Jenkins and Marshall. "Softs"
appeared later that year, with Alan Wakeman (the cousin of famous keyboard
wizard Rick) on saxophone; a shortlived addition as he left after less
than six months, to be replaced by a violin player, Ric Sanders.
Babbington also left after a last appearance in Edinburgh, and was
replaced first by Brand X's Percy Jones, and finally Steve Cook (ex-Gilgamesh/Mirage).
The live album "Alive And Well, Recorded In Paris" (1978)
documented a series of French gigs in July 1977. Soft Machine
subsequently ground to a halt, perfoming its last gig in Bremen in
December 1978.
Soft Machine was active again for one more album - the purely studio affair, "Land Of Cockayne" (1981), with an all-star line-up featuring Allan Holdsworth and Jack Bruce alongside Jenkins and Marshall, but a rather uninspiring mixture of American fusion and orchestral 'muzak' - and a series of gigs at London's Ronnie Scotts club in the summer of 1984, with a line-up of Jenkins, Marshall, John Etheridge, Dave MacRae and bassist Paul Carmichael. Plans for further studio and live projects never materialized and indeed probably never will, as Karl Jenkins has found far more lucrative activities in the field of library, TV and advertisement music, most notably with his Adiemus project.
