Of all the bands that emerged from the psychedelic and political revolutions of the late 1960s, none have enjoyed such a long and tangled career as the anarchic and eccentric Gong, whose extensive discography has given rise to a complex, cosmic and comical mythology of modern day contactee-ism, involving Zero the Hero, the Good Witch Yoni, flying teapots and Pot Head Pixies from the Planet Gong…

Co-founder Daevid Allen left his native Australia for Paris in 1960, hanging out with William Burroughs and Terry Riley, moving on to Canterbury to become part of the early Soft Machine and then returning to Paris in 1967, where he met Gilli Smyth, an English lecturer at the Sorbonne. The pair married, and gave birth to the first incarnation of Gong in the run-up to the explosive events of May ’68. Further adventures included discovering soon-to-be band member Didier Malherbe in a cave on Majorca and playing the second Glastonbury Festival in 1971 – introducing the band to British audiences and leading to a signing with the newly established Virgin Records.

The ‘classic’ Gong line-up, which now included space guitarist extraordinaire Steve Hillage, cut a trio of legendary early ‘70s albums – the ‘Radio Gnome Trilogy’, consisting of Flying Teapot, Angel’s Egg and You – before fragmenting into a host of other offshoots and projects for the next three decades. Now, 40 years on, the classic Gong line-up is back, with a new album called 2032 which brings the Planet Gong mythos up to date (and, indeed, into the future – 2032 will be the year when Planet Gong makes full contact with Planet Earth!) and a major UK tour this November.

FT caught up with Daevid Allen (or Divided Alien, if you prefer) before the band flew off on the European leg of the 2032 tour.

 

FT: How influenced were you by the ‘ Canterbury scene’ that Gong was sometimes a part of, and why do you think you’ve outlasted most of the others?

Daevid Allen: Canterbury is where I fortuitously found myself in 1960 when I first arrived from Oz. A classified ad for artist’s digs in the New Statesman located the charmingly bohemian family home of Robert Wyatt’s mum. Despite a marked difference in years, Robert and I had identical jazz record collections, always an instant sign of affinity. I was seen as the beat poet from Australia who scandalised the neighbourhood and led the schoolboys astray, a role I have been slowly perfecting all my life (tea hee!).

FT: If we go back to the late 60s/early 70s we find a lot of cosmic musical mythologies about flying saucers and space ships and so on – Magma in France, Hawkwind in Britain. Why do you think ‘space was the place’ at that moment in musical history? And did you have any personal experience with flying teapots?

DA: In 1958 before I left Melbourne for the UK I discovered a battered LP in a used album bin called SUN RA COSMIK ARKESTRA and though intellectually I understood it not, something subtle clicked in to my psyche that I possibly never recovered from.
Certainly at age seven, I was already under the impression that my personality had been over-ridden by an “imaginary friend” who knew more than I about the ways of the worlds. At a much later stage, this impression returned, gifting me a certain additional understanding of a civilization far more tolerant and forgiving than this crazy world of opposing extremes. But rather than be taken too seriously and thus seen as a threat to the status quo, it suited me to act the village loony and thus show me true knickers only to musicians, poets, wise women and seers.
In my long life there have been various sightings of “flying teapots” and/or something looking like that, but what do we want me to do? Prove it scientifically? Alas I can only prove this in a dark room amongst consenting adults. Maybe.

FT: Gong’s musical mythology is more complicated, more cosmic, far funnier and much longer-lived than any other from that period. It’s hinted at in your early recordings, comes to the fore in the Radio Gnome Trilogy and then sends ripples through much of your later work – and that of other ex-Gong members like Steve Hillage. Why is that?

DA: Rather than creating an imposed teaching story I sought to create a hidden teaching structure (imagined in the form of an invisible double helix spiral) with which ingenious men and wo-mendicants could hatch their own peculiar teaching story. This presumed an outcome self-tailored to each individual and the avoidance of the guru trap.
It’s an attempt to let the mythology be hinted at in your terms rather than fleshed out on my terms. Yet, apparently, it remains a potent influence on our approach to communicating a deeper meaning to our glorious madness.

FT: A lot of visionary mythologies seem to have their origin in some sort of epiphany or moment of revelation – like Alfred Watkins’ discovery of ley lines or some of Jung’s insights into the unconscious. Did the Planet Gong mythos arrive fully formed as some sort of mystical revelation? If so, what was the occasion?

DA: Yes, it did. Suffice to say, on Easter Sunday 1966, this humble (?) poet on a mountainside in Deia, Mallorca, witnessed an unlikely career in psychedelic rock unfold in a spectacular vision that also gave me a  preview/glimpse of a light show before I knew what the hell it was. The story is told in the books GONG DREAMING 1- 1965-69 and GONG DREAMING 2 - 1969-75. (The latter has just been published in the UK by SAF and is available at www.planetgong.co.uk)

FT: It wasn’t until 1992 that the whole Planet Gong mythos really took centre stage in your work again with the Shapeshifter album. Why the long interval? What was going on that kept you away from the Pot Head Pixies – or kept them away from you – and what brought you back?

DA: From 1980-87, after all my future royalties were stolen by major labels (sob!), I returned to my home country, Australia, where at least I could rejuvenate awhile courtesy of the dole cheque. I spent a significant period in that type of full-time ashram known as a Mystery School in the mountainous rainforest back of Brisbane. Here I learned a great deal about spiritual, and thus musical, transformational techniques both ancient and very new/experimental. This was a fascinating and empowering period which gave me the juice to come back refreshed in 1988, just in time for the dance party revolution.

FT: To what extent is the mythology and its developments autobiographical? Does it reflect real people and actual events in your life and the band’s history?

DA: Sometimes yes but mostly no.
I did rebel and take off from my middle class Melbourne family and become to them, the prodigal son, the useless wanderer who amounted to zero.
But in a context where dream and reality interweave, everything that happens is an allegory for a parallel act, which may accidentally include what we laughingly refer to as “normal reality”.

FT: Looking back to the time of the original Gong albums, there was a confluence of things happening in British counterculture – the Free Festivals, wide interest in UFOs, a turning toward Eastern thought and mysticism, a discovery of psychedelics, a rediscovery of the power of landscape, megalithic cultures and ley-lines – all of which we find in the books of the late John Michell. Many of these elements also find their way into your music and the whole Planet Gong mythology…

DA: England from 1965 to 1969 experienced a five star cultural and spiritual revolution, which is today being denigrated by its burned out materialistic rearguard. Nevertheless, it was engraved into my essence in the process of my visionary blast of Cosmic Consciousness in 1966 and I felt I was, and still am, living the dream.
 
FT: What makes Gong’s take on it unique, though, is the way a lot of serious themes are transmuted through humour both silly and surreal. It’s quite different from the sometimes pompous utterances of prog rock or the po-faced pronouncements of New Age gurus. Was that deliberate? And is there a serious point underlying that humour?

DA: A stock Gong gag is that the whole catastrophe is far too serious to be serious about. Spike Milligan (who I met chez Robert Graves in Deia) was a huge influence on my mode of humour as was Spike Jones (and his City Slickers) and Ivor Cutler of Y’Hup.
My belief is that absurdism is the most evolved form of humour, basically because it relies on absolute silliness, doesn’t heavily rely on sex or genitalia and is fundamentally victim-free.
In our case, when allied to serious philosophical ideas, it is an excellent defence against the inflations and destructive projections of guru-ism.
Gong has endured without selling out due to this filter, which only an absurdist will know how to penetrate with point intact.
 
FT: You could argue that there’s a sort of Buddhist allegory behind the Trilogy and the more recent additions – does the mythology represent a spiritual/cosmic journey presented in comic form?

DA: Yep.
 
FT: Is there a unifying idea behind all the many different incarnations, spin-offs and relatives in the sprawling Gong ‘family tree’?

DA: We each spontaneously laugh at it all, mostly on inappropriate occasions. At the moment we are proud to have a sound engineer named Lord Trout.

FT: Why is the ‘classic’ Gong line-up back with an album and tour at this particular moment in time?

DA: I perceive Gong as a community of bands, a circle with the classic Gong band of the moment at its tribal centre.
The classic line-up to us means “a seven piece band featuring the best instrumentalists of the tribe at the present moment” playing a mix of newly inducted compositions together with the classic power songs such as MASTER BUILDER that have been psychically proven over time to invoke spiritual uplift. Master guitarist Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy (futurist synthesiser) returned last year following the 2007 GONG UNCONVENTION at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. Steve played the classic material with Gong for the first time since 1976 and had a blast! This inspired him to invest some of the funds gained from the System Seven experience in the Gong 2032 project with genuinely excellent results. Is this not good karma in action?
 
FT: Tell me a bit about the new album. Most people are getting their knickers in a twist about 2012 – so what’s the significance of 2032?

DA: It should be a very good year for both wine and cannabis crops, so be prepared! Meanwhile, it may well be that by 2032 we have survived some rather trying times – however the really good news is that 2032 will be a year of enormous potential for spiritual/social/political transformation. Sorry Mister de Mille! No catastrophe is likely unless those 365 days pass by without being positively taken advantage of. That’s all.

FT: Finally, what are your plans for the future?

DA: To remain in the presentiment, and walk on a deserted beach.





UK TOUR DATES
Gong: Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage, Gilli Smyth, Miquette Giraudy, Chris Taylor, Theo Travis, Mike Howlett
Plus: The Steve Hillage Band on all UK dates

Bristol O2 Academy (Nov 19)

Exeter Lemon Grove (Nov 20)

Manchester Academy 2 (Nov 21)

Edinburgh HMV Picturehourse (Nov 22)

Sheffield Leadmill (Nov 23)

Leamington Spa Assembly (Nov 25)

Cambridge Corn Exchange (Nov 26)

London HMV Forum (Nov 27)

Oxford 02 Academy (Nov 28)

Brighton Corn Exchange (Nov 29)



Ticket Hotline: 08700 603 777,
Book Online: www.seetickets.com, www.ArtistTicket.com

For more, go to: www.planetgong.co.uk

GONG MYTHOLOGY
Gong mythology is a collection of recurring characters, themes, and ideas that permeate the rock albums of Daevid Allen and Gong and to a lesser extent the early works of Steve Hillage. The mythology is hinted at through all of Gong's earlier albums but is not the central theme until the "Radio Gnome Trilogy (1973-1974).


Flying Teapot (1973): Radio Gnome Trilogy, Part 1
The story begins on the album Flying Teapot (1973) when a pig-farming Egyptologist called Mista T Being is sold a "magick ear ring" by an "antique teapot street vendor & tea label collector" called Fred the Fish.  The ear ring is capable of receiving messages from the Planet Gong via a pirate radio station called Radio Gnome Invisible. Being and Fish head off to the hymnalayas of Tibet where they meet the "great beer yogi" Banana Ananda in a cave. Ananda tends to chant "Banana Nirvana Mañana" a lot and gets drunk on Foster's Australian Lager.

Meanwhile, the mythology's central character, Zero the Hero, is going about his everyday life when he suddenly has a vision in Charing Cross Road.  He is compelled to seek heroes and starts worshipping the Cock Pot Pixie, one of a number of Pot Head Pixies from the Planet Gong.  The pixies are green with propellers on their heads, and they fly around in teapots.

Zero is soon distracted by a cat which he offers his fish and chips to. The cat is actually the Good Witch Yoni, who gives Zero a potion. This concludes the first album of the Radio Gnome Trilogy.
 

Angel's Egg (1973): Radio Gnome Trilogy, Part 2
The second album Angel’s Egg begins with Zero falling to sleep under the influences of the potion and finds himself floating through space. After accidentally scaring a space pilot called Captain Capricorn, Zero locates Planet Gong, and befriends a prostitute who introduces him to the moon goddess Selene.

Zero's drug-induced trip to the Planet Gong continues, and the Pot Head Pixies explain to him how their flying teapots fly (a system known as Glidding). He is then taken to the One Invisible Temple of Gong.

Inside the temple, Zero is shown the Angel's Egg; the physical embodiment of the 32 Octave Doctors (descendants of the Great God Cell). The Angel's Egg is the magic-eye mandala that features on much of the band's sleeve-art. It is also a sort of recycling plant for Pot Head Pixies.

A grand plan is revealed to Zero. There will be a Great Melting Feast of Freeks which Zero must organize on Earth. When everyone is enjoying the Feast, a huge global concert, the Switch Doctor (the Earth's resident Octave Doctor, who lives near Banana Ananda's cave, in a "potheadquarters" called the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet (C.O.I.T.) and transmits all the details to the Gong Band via Bananamoon Observatory) will turn everybody's third eye on, ushering in a New Age on Earth.

You (1974): Radio Gnome Trilogy, Part 3
In the third installment You, Zero must first return from his trip.  He asks Hiram the Master Builder how to structure his vision and build his own Invisible Temple. Having done this, Zero establishes that he must organize the Great Melting Feast of Freeks on the Isle of Everywhere, Bali.

The event is going well, and the Switch Doctor switches on everyone's third eyes except for Zero's. For Zero is out the back, indulging in Earthly pleasures (fruitcake).

Zero has missed out on the whole third eye revelation experience and is forced to continue his existence spinning around on the wheel of births and deaths and slowly converging on the Angel's Egg in a way which, to a certain extent, resembles Buddhist reincarnation.

Continuations
In episode four in the album Shapeshifter (1992), Zero meets an urban shaman who agrees to take Zero to the next level of awareness on the proviso that Zero spends nine months on an airplane, travelling where he wants but not using money or eating anything other than airline food. Zero eventually dies in Australia under mysterious circumstances.

The last installment in the album Zero to Infinity (2000) sees Zero's spirit enjoying a body-free and virtual existence. During the course of this he becomes an android spheroid Zeroid. With the help of a strange animal called a gongalope, he learns that all the wisdom of the world exists within him and practices Lafta yoga and tea making. He becomes one with an Invisible Temple and has a lot of fun.