Whimsical Scottish hippies pioneered psychedelic folk

This week: The Incredible String Band

THE Incredible String Band – ISB, don’t you know? – were a psychedelic folk group beloved of sundry Beatles, Stones and Zeppelins. A whimsical part of hippie counter-culture, their leading players came from solid, suburban Edinburgh.

Williamson hailed from leafy Fairmilehead and attended George Watson’s College, before leaving at 15 to perform in local jazz bands. After a spell trying London’s folk circuit, he got together with Clive Palmer to form a duo specialising in fiddle and banjo arrangements of traditional Scottish and Irish songs, performed weekly at Archie Fisher’s weekly club in Edinburgh’s Crown Bar.

Palmer had arrived in Edinburgh from London in 1962, after a spell busking in Paris. He was an unconventional banjoist and Jack of all trades, who later became a glove-maker, allegedly producing only single gloves.

Handily, the duo were spotted in 1965 by Elektra talent scout Joe Boyd, who later worked with Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and Fairport Convention. In 1966, Boyd signed up what was now a trio, the Incredible String Band, after Mike Heron joined on rhythm guitar. Like Williamson, Heron was of solid Embra stock, having attended another city day school, George Heriot’s, where his father was head of English.

Their first eponymous album was described by Williamson as a “gipsy, vaudeville, jug band, Celtic mixture”. They didn’t expect much to come of it. Palmer hit the hippie trail to India and fades from our picture. Williamson and girlfriend Christina “Licorice” McKechnie went to Morocco, where they planned to sit under a tree forever.

However, after running out of money a few months later, Williamson returned, laden with ouds, gimbris and Arab flutes, to find their quirky debut LP had caused a stir, winning Melody Maker’s Folk Album of the Year. Even Bob Dylan raved about its October Song, stating firmly that it was “quite good”.

Celtic supporters

WILLIAMSON and Heron reformed the band as a duo, augmenting Celtic folk with Indian and North African influences. After a short UK tour, supporting Tom Paxton and Judy Collins, Boyd secured a place for them at the Newport Folk Festival, on a bill with Joni Mitchell and Leonard

Cohen.

Their second album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, gained further acclaim, even being hailed as “an acoustic Sgt Pepper”. Paul McCartney said it was one of his favourite records of that year (1967). Better was to come with their next two albums,

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter and the double LP Wee Tam and the Big Huge.

Hangman’s reached number five in the UK album charts. Robert Plant said Led Zeppelin just followed its instructions when planning their own acoustic ventures.

Heron said they were trying “to make the kind of music we felt was missing from our lives, that fitted with the hippy lifestyle”. The album included surreal pieces such as The Minotaur’s Song by Williamson, a music-hall parody told from the point of view of the mythical beast. Sample lyrics: “A minotaur gets very sore/His features they are such a bore/His habits are predictableAggressively reliable, bull, bull.” Can’t argue with that.

Heron’s A Very Cellular Song was the centrepiece, though, incorporating a Bahamian spiritual and the philosophical reflections of an amoeba. The outro is a beautiful blessing: “May the long-time sun shine upon you/All love surround you/And the pure light within you/Guide you all the way on.”

For this album, Williamson and Heron had added their girlfriends, Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson, into the mix, on additional vocals and various percussion. Simpson later recalled: “They handed you something, and you’d hit it, ring it, whatever.’’

All about the bass

ON yonder internet, fans recall the “laughingly if charmingly inept” performances, but Simpson became reasonably proficient on bass, while some of McKechnie’s songs were recorded by the band.

Soon, the group were filling major venues, such as the London Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York. The Beatles, Stones, Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan, Zeppelin and Donovan might figure among audience members, many of whom, recalled Billy Connolly, “looked like Charles the First”.

At some point, the band were introduced to Scientology, which some

Even Bob Dylan raved about their debut album’s October Song, stating firmly that it was ‘quite good’

say led to a decline in the quality of their work. If so, that was to come after their second album of 1968, Wee Tam and the Big Huge, which was indeed a big huge success. More conventional than Hangman’s, it still featured eastern influences, and engaged with mythology, nature, serenity and harmony.

At this time, most of the group lived communally at a farmhouse in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where they became interested in mixed media experiments. Peter Neal made a film about them called Be Glad For the Song Has No Ending, which included documentary footage and a zany, costumed fantasy sequence titled The Pirate and the Crystal Ball.

In 1969, the band played Woodstock, but it was a chaotic and forgettable appearance, slotted in among rock bands. In November, they released the album Changing Horses, which was not well received. By late 1969, they were living in another communal set-up near Innerleithen, Tweeddale.

In 1970, Williamson’s fondness for mixing theatrical fantasy with music resulted in U, “a surreal parable in dance and song”, revolving around the letter U representing the fall from a high level of spiritual awareness to a low, before rising again to a final peak.

The show bombed. Joe Boyd described it as “a disaster”.

After that, the group, having risen, now fell. Boyd stopped managing them and returned to the US. Rose Simpson left in 1971 and was replaced by Malcolm Le Maistre.

Bananas split

HERON and Williamson recorded decent solo albums, but, in ISB, their musical disagreements – Williamson more otherworldly, Heron more earthly – had become irreconcilable, and they split up in 1974.

Williamson formed a Merry Band, releasing three Celticthemed albums. His subsequent, much-admired solo output, including humorous stories, amounted to 40-plus albums. He and his wife Bina are due to play the Great Northern Railway Tavern in London in September. Heron formed a rock group called first Mike Heron’s Reputation, then just Heron, and later released several wellreceived solo albums.

In 1997, the two got back together for two concerts, which were warmly received, but solo projects still predominated and they went their separate ways again.

In 1994, Rose Simpson, as you might expect, became Lady Mayoress of Aberystwyth. As for Licorice, she went missing in 1987, last seen hitchhiking across the Arizona desert.