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.