Tim Hollyhill's Cadence

Tim Hollyhill’s Cadence

“Enter The Coracle” c/w “Fear Of Trombones”

VIRGIN VS7007

Tim Hollyhill (Guitar, Farfundtarf Mood Organ, Steam Lute, Dulcimer, Pedal Steel Guitar, Flagelot Bag, Angry Gongs, Harpsichette)

It began as a simple experiment with a two-track tape recorder and a Farfundtarf Mood Organ and ended in bitter acrimony.

“If it had not been for the fact he was such a c**t it could have all been so different”. Hilary Tombleson has never been one to mince words and her crude assessment of former partner Tim Hollyhill comes as no shock to most music fans.

“Musical differences had nothing to do with it, he’s just quite simply the biggest c**t on the planet”, says Tombleson, Vicar of St. Peter’s in Winchester, which is in Hampshire which is in Essex, for the past ten years.

We sought a second opinion from producer Gary Gentle who worked with Hollyhill at Trout Tickle studios. He had this to say: “Little Tim? So talented. But a c**t of Titanic proportions”.

Former session musician Guff McFlaherty, king of the pedal steel, concurs: “My livelihood depends on keeping my mouth shut and getting on with the job, but he’s a massive c**t”.

Back to Tombleson: “Imagine a c**t the size of, say, a dwarf star. No, imagine a c**t the size of a galaxy, something in the region of 40,00 parsecs in diameter. Try to visualize that. That’s how big a c**t he was”.

This certainly colours any potentially positive impression of the pastoral folk pop to be found on ‘Enter The Coracle’. Luckily it is an awful, twee piece of work, so it’s easy to empathise with the views expressed above.

McFlaherty describes the session: “Hollyhill had double tracked the Farfundtarf with some wah wah Dulcimer, Cory Normansell played flagelot bag, Francis Drummond from Amethyst Arcade was on steam lute, Paul Hollywood laid down some angry gongs and Sam Bent (Bob Bent’s brother) from Golden Cartwheel freaked out on harpsichette. Behind Hollyhill’s back we called the track ‘Enter The C**t’.”

None of the musicians received a credit. Hollyhill claimed he played all the instruments on this ode to an ancient craft himself. After the session he fired everyone on the spot, even though most of those involved were self-employed session men.

Hollyhill went on to make a considerable fortune in the music business and can count absolutely no-one as a friend; a situation he is entirely happy with. Living in a gold painted villa on the island of Martinique, Hollyhill spends his days shouting at lawyers and shooting trespassers.

The last word goes to his longest serving manager, Lorne Brimmer: “C**t”.

Evan Harris

‘A Slight Tickle (Excerpt)’
Cromothone Records CROM 4
Evan Haris (Hockling), Edgar DeFries (Guitar, Bass, Drums, Piano, Autoharp)
One of the weirdest singles to be released in the early Seventies was ‘A Slight Tickle (Excerpt)’ by engineer turned warbler, Evan Harris. Harris had worked on many complex sessions in the Nineteen Sixties, including getting Humpet Harmony’s customised Hammond organ onto tape.

“It wasn’t like a conventional Hammond”, remembers Harris. “This one was made of straw bales covered in lamb fat”. Humpet had asked Hammond to come up with a lighter version of their famous keyboard and this was the solution.

For his first venture as a singer, Evan chose the unusual route of hocking up phlegm. “I didn’t have much of a singing voice and smoked sixty fags a day”, remembers Harris. “I had a track that Edgar DeFries recorded before he joined Egg Thermometer and I thought up a melody to go over the top”.

It was studio producer Nigel Mermaid who heard Harris coughing up some chesty phlegm into a wastepaper basket and thought the sound “original and quite catchy”.

The single combines an airy, slightly progressive tune, reminiscent of Calked Chimney’s ‘Tool Management In Airdrie’, with the echoey and phased regurgitation of trapped phlegm. There’s no doubt that it was a novelty at the time and its slightly intellectual approach guaranteed it a hearing amongst the hippy set. Listening to it today, without the benefit of mind-altering drugs, it sounds really, really bad.

SCHLANKETTE

SCHLANKETTE
‘Trauma Elektriche’ c/w ‘Futurik Der Zeitgeschlunger’
EINGANG RECORDS EINS 2783.1
Gerhardt Gerhardt (Synthesisers), Manfredd Schnelke (Drums), Heni Brown (Electronics), Rolf-Harische Wubblebodt (Percussion)

At the forefront of the new wave of Kosmiche Musik, Gerhardt Gerhardt and Manfredd Schnelke met at the Schwarzkopff Institute of Hair & Music in Munich.

“We study under the great German avante garde composer Julius Eissel”, Gerhardt tells me on the phone from his farm near Dusseldorf. “Eissel was a genius. He tore up the book of rules, starting with conventional compositional structure, then traditional time signatures and eventually destroying the concept of the orchestra, the orchestra arena, the audience and instruments”.

In 1969, in his work ‘Deconstructing Destruction’, Eissel staged a performance during which an entire venue was torn down and burnt as the audience and musicians fled into the night. “Eissel arrived on a steamroller”, remembers Gerhardt. “He had laid out the music sheets in front of him. He conducted the piece as his steamroller crushed the stage”.

The recording of the event was held up as a sacred landmark pointing a new direction for German popular music . Up to that time, it was generally considered to be 'trapped in a whirlpool of bland' as musicians copied the tired grooves of American rock and roll.

“Manfredd and I were in a beat group called The Crazy Boy Guys and released ‘Hey, Look At Me Over Here Please, I’m German and I Am Enjoying The Dancing’.

But their experiences with Julius Eissel changed everything. “We threw away our instruments. In fact, we recorded the sound of us throwing away our instruments. It was a big seller. That helped us forge our new direction. And we also saw the advantages of taking many drugs”.

In 1970 Gerhardt and Schnelke started a commune in Hamburg. “We built a giant vagina out of willow and lived inside the wicker womb with our animals. We tended our livestock and made love to our women. Sometimes vice versa”. They were also introduced to an early version of a synthesiser by electronics genius Heni Brown. Remembers Gerhardt: “It was a machine that made very strange oscillating noises if you looked at it the wrong way. It would not respond to touch. You had to look at it”.

“It would go ‘whoooooowhooooo’ if you looked at it in a sarcastic way. Or ‘brittttttah brittttah’ if you looked at it very quickly and then looked away as if you didn’t mean to look at it”.

With their first synthesiser on board, and having invited the eccentric percussionist Rolf-Harische Wubblebodt to flesh out their sound, SCHLANKETTE became a reality. In 1971 they released the definitive Krautrock epic ‘Drohn’, featuring the insistent driving sound of Schnelke’s drums and the ethereal dream landscapes of Rolf-Harische’s whistling.

A single, ‘Trauma Elektriche’ followed:

‘I need to drill a hole
In the wall I drill a hole
In the wall is a wire
Elektriche trauma’

The band folded in 1972 following a spate of sexually transmitted disease and foot and mouth.

Crimp Hill

Crimp Hill
'Thinking Man's Blues" c/w 'Wake Up And Smell The Pickles'
Epic EPC 78665
Mick Guitar (Bass), Slim Geoffries (Guitar), Harry Bass (Piano), Heston Blumenthal (Drums), Scraps Delaney (Drums), Pete Frame (Piano), Carl Marley (Drums), Billy Hamilton-Hamilton (Piano) plus 68 others.

As with many bands during the late Sixties and early Seventies, Crimp Hill suffered from major personnel upheavals that hampered their chances of success.

Effectively, the entire band left the group before it had even formed. "It was a little odd", recalled original bass player Mick Guitar. "The original band was meant to comprise me and three other guys who were busy on the session scene. We'd been working up at Trout Tickle on some folk rock with the Spendel guys. There was me, guitar player Slim Geoffries, piano player Harry Bass and drummer Heston Blumenthal.

"We'd agreed to form Crimp Hill and booked a rehearsal but we all got better offers, though I think Slim left music to concentrate on claiming benefits. So that left a big hole in the band, what with there being no members".

But Crimp Hill soldiered on as a band without a deal, a manager or any members. That was until Mick Guitar mentioned the band to a young drummer fresh out of Grammar School, Scraps Delaney. "Grammar School had folded because everyone was either on drugs or a power trip" says Delaney." I was left high and dry and Mick Guitar told me there might be an opening in Crimp Hill".

"I asked Simon if he wanted to join", says Mick. "He asked me who else was in the group. I said 'no-one'".

"After the chaos of Grammar School, where everyone was either on a power trip or drugs, it came as a relief", sighs Delaney, these days touring with the reformed Grammar School. "Rehearsals went very smoothly. But then I got an offer to team up with Mustard, Beans & Boogie. As they were the hottest band on the pub rock scene - and followed by some of the muckiest hippy groupies in Notting Hill - I had to join".

Once again, Crimp Hill had to carry on without any members.

Overall, seventy six different musicians passed through the ranks of the band in its nine year history. "It was the one Rock Family Tree that Pete Frame gave up on" says Guitar. "Even though he was in the group at one point".

Despite the constant comings and goings, the band did manage to release one legendary 45; the wonderful slice of rock, 'Thinking Man's Blues'. No-one knows who played on it or how it got released but it is now valued at £125 in the collector's market. Seek a copy out if you can!

Me & He

Me & He
'Marjoram Marjoram' c/w 'Toes In The Brook'
Butter Discs Butter 06
Sebastian Grant (Guitar, Vocals), Noel Grant (Guitar, Vocals)

Rising from the ashes of The Compact 8, this acoustic duo (twin brothers Seb and Noel Grant) brushed the fringes of the chart in 1972. When it comes to bands like The Kinks or Oasis, brothers can make great music even if they hate each other. With the Grant brothers, the opposite was true. They loved each other dearly but their music was appalling.

It was down to Alan Franklin (of The Alsations) to come to their rescue. Franklin supplied Me & He with 'Marjoram Marjoram', a ditty about the joys of one of the lesser-known garden herbs. But it proved a struggle in the studio.

"Harmonies were impossible", says Franklin. "They could barely manage to sing the same words never mind the same notes".

It was left to Franklin to pick up the pieces. "I just buried them in the mix. I used echo, reverb, 150 backing singers, harpsichette, phased nockatinas, the lot. I think I multi-tracked seventeen autoharps. Eventually I told the boys to just go down the pub and wait for me. I rang up Dorian Peacock and he did the vocals. I never told the boys but I did buy them each a drink. On that fateful night...bless 'em, they were like the closest brothers you've ever met. They would have died for each other, those two".

Which is exactly what happened. On that warm September's evening in 1972, after a long and happy night's drinking, Sebastian Grant saved his brother's life by pushing him out of the way of a speeding lorry. Seb was killed in the accident. Sadly, Noel also died. The force from Seb's push sent Noel headlong over a railway bridge and into the path of an oncoming train.

Clap In Irons

Clap In Irons
'Pale Pale Legs' c/w 'Point At Some Flutes, Sandra'
Released February 12th 1975. KITSCH 'N' SYNCH KICKS 00294
Duffy Marchant (Vocals, Drums), Maynard "Wheels" Kent (Keyboards), Mazz Mansfield (Bass), Bernie Mumbles (Guitar), Bob Chard (Guitar)

Clap In Irons was the first and only Seventies pub rock band comprised entirely of people with disabilities. Confronting society's prejudices in the most courageous and direct way possible, the members of Clap In Irons wore their disabilities as badges of pride.

Maynard Kent had been playing pubs round Maidstone with a Farfisa organ strapped to the top of his wheelchair. "He played a lot of Mose Allison numbers", remembers his son, Truth. "He'd hare round the stage doing spins. Pints and customers went flying. It was wild".

While at Deptford Art School Kent teamed up with Duffy Marchant, a bearded sculpture student and drummer with no hands. “Duffy had two hooks - with a drumstick in each”, recalls Truth.

Mazz Mansfield was generally considered to be the best bass player in the area. Having contracted polio as a child, Mazz was only four foot five. His boyish good looks and blue jumper meant he was often mistaken for an old-fashioned charity money bank. Says Mazz: "Because of my intermittent narcolepsy I'd sometimes fall asleep at bus stops and the like. People would try to put coins into the top of my head".

Bernie Mumbles made up the first incarnation of Clap In Irons. Mumbles was a Welsh alcoholic. He was also blind and had a stammer. "It never held him back though", says Mazz. “He claimed seven different kinds of benefit and bought a Jag. He used to drive it around Greenwich. Never had an accident”.

With the nucleus of Clap In Irons in place, Kent and Marchant decided that an additional guitarist would help fill out their unique sound. "The only problem was we couldn't find any more disabled people in the area that could play well", admits Mansfield. "We tried out a bloke with toes for thumbs but the magic wasn't there".

The band decided to remain a four piece until, quite by accident, they stumbled across Bob Chard. "Bob was perfect. He had three arms. Me and the boys had gone up to the fairground on Grove Common and they had a sideshow called 'The Human Octopus'".

"It wasn't really an extra arm - it was a small fleshy protrusion", says Chard. "But it got me work at the circus and then in Clap In Irons. You've got to make things like that work for you, haven't you?"

With Chard on board the five piece, eleven-armed band hit the road. Their popularity on the pub rock circuit got them a record contract with Kitsch 'n' Zinc records. Their first single was 'Pale, Pale Legs', a love song which Maynard Kent had written about his immobile lower limbs.

"For a while we ruled the roost and packed out pubs everywhere", remembers Chard. "People saw beyond our supposed afflictions and constant inebriation and really dug our tunes".

An album 'Roomful of Raspberries' followed, but it marked the end of an era for the band. "’Roomful' sold fairly well and this meant that I could afford to fly to LA to have my third arm removed", admits Chard. "Unfortunately, the rest of the guys didn't think much of this. Maynard ran over my feet with his wheelchair. We never spoke again".

Church Gathering

Church Gathering
'Teeth' c/w 'Jennifer Smells'
Released 19th May 1967. ARC AN 4199
Spencer Charles (Lead Vocals), Kevin Gabriel (Lead Guitar, Sitar), Oliver Marchbanks (Bass Guitar, Chimes), Peter Korda (Harp, Tenor Sax, Tabla), Geoffrey Tollington (Percussion, Paintings)

The five members met at Canterbury Choir School in 1962 where they formed Jackie James & The Rockerberries. After three years pretending they were The Shadows, the group hit the London club scene as The Modonauts, having a small hit with 'If You're So Rich, Buy Me Pills' on the Clutch label before pupating into the legendary psychedelic group Church Gathering in '67.

The group claimed to be amongst the first to take acid in the UK. "Peter Korda had been to California where his father owned a small town", remembers Geoff Tollington. "He left us a Mod and came back with flowers in his hair. We thought he'd fallen over in a florists or something, but it was down to the acid and West Coast vibes. He had a washbag full of the best Owsley acid. Within a week, the Mod suits were in the dustbin and most of us were walking around Chelsea wearing tie-dyed sheets and finger cymbals".

The group proceeded to gather together as many unusual instruments as possible. "I was so high, I tried playing a tree", says Peter Korda. "But it was impossible to tune. Instead, I stuck to harp, tabla, the occcaroon, muslin harmonium and a selection of gamelan nockotinas".

While the band created long, Indian inspired improvised dirges, Tollington would paint psychedelic canvasses on the floor of the group's Kensington squat. "It wasn't strictly a squat as Kevin Gabriel's dad owned the property. But it wasn't cool to have money. I had to open my Coutts bank account in a different name."

Tollington, who is now one of the country's most respected gallery owners, has a huge collection of memorabilia relating to Church Gathering. "I have posters that are now worth several thousand pounds, and the original vinyl copies of our album 'Body of The Common Man' are worth three hundred pounds each. I keep things ticking over on Ebay. It helps finance the wine collection and keeps me in meals at The Waterside Inn!"

Ollie Marchbanks joined the short-lived Hump in 1970.

Pim Keats

Pim Keats
"Listen To The Voices Of The Void"
Pim Keats (Guitar, Vocals)

Marlborough student, reader of runes, artist, cricketer, philosopher, model, mathematician and poet, Prometheus Hemmingsley Mather Keats-Wondering was the greatest folk guitarist of his generation.

Keats was born in Rangoon. His mother, a delightful actress and painter named Emily, returned to England with the infant Prometheus after his father Lord Poseidon Keats-Wondering died during a particularly strenuous meal.

Keats was placed at Marlborough where his talents brought him to the attention of Headmaster Norris McWhirrter. "Pim was good at everything. He excelled in all disciplines. This lead to him being universally loathed by both his peers and teachers".

The raven-haired Keats went up to Oxford, driving there in a car he built himself. In the back seat, a Martin guitar given to him by his devoted mother. Within weeks Keats had mastered the instrument, writing touching folk ballads in complex tunings and time signatures. "I invented several tunings of my own", Keats revealed at the time. "Including the very complex E, G, E, G, B, K, B, D# tuning".

Despite having only played once for friends in the college refectory, young American producer Palmer Butter immediately signed Keats to his Wicked Wimple label. "I gave Pim complete control of his publishing and a majority share of all profits. He was so gifted it would have been a crime not to".

Keats' first album, 'Tree of Bruised Leaves', featured the cream of the British folk scene - Bryn Featherman, John 'Crumps' Crumplingham, Diddy Stack, Shelley Gosh, Anthony Worrell-Thompson, Speedy Trickleton and Keith Strangle.

But the album was not a success. His songs moved one critic to describe the album as "a collection of dreary folk ballads by a gravelly-voiced public school ponce".

For the first time in his life Keats was faced with failure. "Up to that point he was better at everything than anyone else around him", says Butter. "Despite his amazing playing and singing, the album only sold one hundred and fifty seven copies. Ithink most of them were bought by his mother".

Despite this setback Keats travelled to Dusty Ivy's Trout Tickle studios in Wiltshire to record his second album, 'Death Is On My Footpath'.

"No-one realised Pim was suffering from a very deep depression", says Ivy. "It was only when we recorded 'I Shall Soon Take My Life' that I even had an inkling. He told me he was a bit 'fed up' and 'cheesed off' with it all. He even kicked my dog, which was a bit rum".

Keats attempted suicide in 1974, just four years after the release of the psychedelic-tinged 'Listen To the Voices of The Void'...

However, it turned out that suicide was something else Keats wasn't terribly good at. "I tried throwing myself off Hammersmith Bridge but fell onto a passing longboat carrying mattresses to the Harrod's Depository", says Keats.

"As I lay there, bobbing down the Thames on an extremely well made pocket-sprung mattress, I realised I should give up making records and stick to things I knew I could do extremely well".

Keats became the managing director of a small company involved in high-risk technology. "Basically, I got into computers and became rather successful at it".

Pim Keats received an MBE for services to British Industry in 1987. A major contributor to the Tory Party, he has since gone on to fund several Internet launches, including Google, and his many companies are involved in the production of leisurewear, mobile phones, armaments and computers.

SINGLES
BUTTER DISCS CUP76 ' Listen To the Voices of the Void'
BUTTER DISCS CUP 78 'Shed Of Sorrow'
BUTTER DISCS CUP 714 'Mournful Moonglow'
BUTTERTONE LOFAT CDS 3 'Listen To The Voices of the Void (Arthur Baker remix)'

ALBUMS
BUTTER DISCS SPREAD 5 'Tree Of Bruised Leaves'
BUTTER DISCS SPREAD 14 'Death Is On My Footpath'
BUTTERTONE LOFAT CD6 'Wreck Of the Desperates' (Best Of 3 CD box set)

Bombay Feeling

Bombay Feeling
'Experiment With My Love' c/w 'The Swastika & The Lily'
Released October 27th 1967. BER MM69
Simon Children (Lead Vocals, Harp, Assorted Fruit), Cadenza (Gyrations)

"I wanted our work to be a series of art events, eschewing all traditional forms of music performance. I demanded the unexpected". This was the theory behind Simon Children's 'Bombay Feeling', legendary for their Artfreakertainments - if not their music.

The group contained a rolling cast of thirty different hippy musicians, each instructed by Simon to only turn up if they felt the vibes were right. "This meant that, some nights, we'd have twenty seven hairies wailing and freaking, while on others there would just be me and a roadie", says Children. "But that was cool. I'd strip off, stand in a bucket and rub myself with warmed honey. I would recite one of my tone poems while my roadie hit the side of the bucket with his belt".

A key member of Bombay Feeling was dancer Cadenza. This exotic, full-chested Asian beauty would gyrate like an epileptic on speed - which she was - as Children threw pieces of fruit at a full size harp. Sometimes he would set fire to the harp "to make it sound better".

Children took his unorthodox performance methods into the recording studio with disastrous results. "The first session at Trout Tickle Studios was a shambles because I issued an edict that no-one should turn up. I imagined music could be created out of space and machine with no human intervention. I am sure it would have worked, but there was no one there to press the record button on the tape deck".

The second session was more successful. Children and his troop of art freaks assembled at Denmark Street's Pop Sounds under the direction of hit producer Mickey Smacke. "There were thirty two people and a burnt harp crammed into a studio fifteen foot by eleven", remembers Smacke. "They had one guitar and a rusty harmonica which they took turns playing. Children sang over the top, hitting his harp while dressed as a silkworm".

The resulting single, 'Experiment With My Love' became a minor hit in Germany. An album 'Exploding Distance Woman/Chronophasm Palladium Man' was never released after Gerald Putney of BER described it as "the sound of some lunatic hitting the side of a bucket with a belt for half an hour" - which it was.