01	Flanagan's People						15:57
	02	Nowadays A Silhouette						06:32
	03	Dreams Wide Awake						08:18
	04	Pleaides						10:26
	05	Rhubarb Jam						01:17
	06	Rose Sob						01:46
	07	Play Time						09:38
	08	Squarer For Maude Part 1						05:11
	09	Squarer For Maude Part 2						07:51

National Health - Playtime

Released: 2001
Label: Cuneiform Records
Cat. No.: Rune 145
Total Time: 66:56


Reviewed by: David Cisco, April 2001
Since the advent of the compact disc, many record companies and music enthusiasts have delved deeply into their archives to unearth previously unreleased (and often unheard) works of artists either still performing or lost in the annals of music history. Latest among these is National Health, an English band from the "Canterbury school" that evolved from other such groups, including Soft Machine and the highly-praised Hatfield and the North. Playtime - which draws its name from an Alan Gowen tune - documents two dates from 1979 by the band's last line-up, including a show recorded in France featuring an additional guitarist.

The first four tracks feature the French date with guest guitarist Alain Eckert augmenting the line-up of (the late) Alan Gowen, John Greaves, Phil Miller, and Pip Pyle. "Flanagan's People", the first featured Gowen composition, opens the show at break-neck pace. Keyboardist Gowen drives the song with frantic chords and fireball fills, and guitarists Miller and Eckert trade solos like dueling shootists. The real stars, however, are bassist Greaves and drummer Pyle who always know exactly where they are in the song's structure and provide a sturdy musical foundation for the others to build on. "Nowadays A Silhouette," written by Miller, features Gowen's synthesizer tearing through a swing arrangement built around a seemingly endless set of chord progressions and key changes from Miller. "Dreams Wide Awake" (also by Miller) kicks out the jams with a nice ensemble riff, then Gowen, Miller, and Eckert face off in a three-way shoot-out. Again, not to be overlooked are Greaves and Pyle, who manage to get in some frenetic riffs of their own. "Pleiades," the only solo Pyle composition presented, starts off gently, but quickly becomes a Brand X-style jam, similar to "Malaga Virgen" (minus Percy Jones' insistent bass hook). The guitars take over the rhythm duties and Gowen, Greaves, and Pyle make the most of a keys/bass/drums trio arrangement. Miller and Eckert return for the song's final minutes, but their subdued leads seem more like accents than solos.

Then we're off to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania for the second show (minus Eckert). "Rhubarb Jam," a one-minute atonal sound collage, gives the group a chance to stretch out a bit, then segues into "Rose Sob," a tone poem written by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad, that features the only vocal on Playtime, courtesy of Greaves. From there the band dives headlong into Gowens' "Play Time," a Return To Forever-style heavy fusion workout. The RTF comparison is really driven home by the keyboard/guitar solos and duos of Gowen and Miller, who sound amazingly like Corea and DiMeola in their meatier moments. Greaves and Pyle, however sound nothing like Clarke and White, and it's the rhythm section's unique sound that makes "Play Time" much more than another RTF rip-off. The show closes with two Greaves compositions, "Squarer For Maude, parts 1 and 2." Part 1 resembles a highly-disciplined King Crimson jam and features some nice off-time ensemble interplay between Gowen and Miller. Unfortunately, some nasty static shows up here (probably occurring during the actual taping of the performance), but it only lasts for several seconds. In Part 2, each member of the band tries to out-solo each other within a dangerously incoherent arrangement, which then evolves into a wild (Moraz-era) Yes-style improvisation before screeching to a sudden stop.

Cuneiform Records is to be heartily commended for their fine work on Playtime. Every aspect has been handled as a labor of love, from the packaging and liner notes to the album's production by band members Miller and Pyle. Playtime is a fusion lover's dream, a wonderful archive of a once-great band, and a fitting testament to the memory of Alan Gowen. Another straight-in entry on my Top Ten list for 2001.

More about Playtime:

Track Listing: Flanagan's People (15:57) / Nowadays A Silhouette (6:32) / Dreams Wide Awake (8:18) / Pleaides (10:26) / Rhubarb Jam (1:17) / Rose Sob (1:46) / Play Time (9:38) / Squarer For Maude part 1 (5:11) / Squarer For Maude part 2 (7:51)

Musicians:
Alan Gowen - Keyboards
John Greaves - Bass, Vocals
Phil Miller - Guitars
Pip Pyle - Drums
Alain Eckert - Guitars on tracks 1, 3, and 4

Discography

National Health (1978)
Of Queues And Cures (1978)
D.S. Al Coda (1982)
Missing Pieces (1994)
Playtime (2001)


National Health
Playtime
Cuneiform (rune 145)
United Kingdom 2001

Alan Gowen, keyboards;
John Greaves, bass, vocals;
Phil Miller, guitar;
Pip Pyle, drums;
with Alain Eckert, guitar

Tracklist:
1. Flanagan's People - 15:57
2. Nowadays A Silhouette - 6:32
3. Dreams Wide Awake - 8:18
4. Pleaides - 10:26
5. Rhubarb Jam - 1:17
6. Rose Sob - 1:46
7. Play Time - 9:38
8. Squarer for Maud part 1 - 5:11
9. Squarer for Maud part 2 - 7:51

total time 66:46


jon b

Although together longer than any other variant of the band, this Alan Gowen-led quartet was largely lost to the mists of history prior to this release. It's somewhat ironic that this live album from National Health consists of recordings of a lineup that never actually produced a studio record. Recorded after the release (the first four tracks in France, the rest in the U.S.) of Of Queues and Cures and before the band imploded for good, it was a last gasp for National Health.
The material is taken from various sources, with only a couple of tunes coming from the two previous studio efforts ("Dreams Wide Awake" and "Squarer for Maud"). "Flanagan's People" would appear, in much shorter form, on the Gowen tribute album D.S. al Coda, while "Play Time" actually comes from Gowen's days in Gilgamesh. The other pieces had either been in live rotation for a while or were freshly written but not-otherwise recorded in the studio. Adding to the fairly unique product is the presence of a second guitarist, Alain Eckert, on three of the French tracks.

One certainty that this disc proves is just how good these guys were as players. Gowen's work, in particular, was an eye-opener to me. The complex twists and turns that mark the National Health style were handled with skill and flair. Only truly talented guys could rip through a vastly faster version of "Dreams Wide Awake" than emerged from the studio. That being said, the sum of the parts is somehow not completely fulfilling. Gowen favored a more improvisational approach to the music than did Dave Stewart, and the result is a lot of music that ambles around without any sense of purpose. Yes, the playing is nice, but it doesn't really connect that well. In fact, aside from the material I was already familiar with, only "Nowadays a Silhouette" really sticks to me.

Overall, this is an interesting artifact of this period in the band's history, and it is a fun listen. Fans of National Health, particularly of Gowen's more relaxed style, will enjoy it. I wouldn't recommend it for a starting point for new fans, however.

1-26-03





NATIONAL HEALTH
National Health was one of the last of the great "Canterbury-style" progressive rock bands. By late '70's, the personnel had become Alan Gowen [keyboards], Phil Miller [guitar], John Greaves [bass & vocals] and Pip Pyle [drums]. This version strove towards a more stretched-out, free-er approach. As Phil remembers it, "Basically, we did less writing and more playing." Indeed, this version of National Health did more gigging that any other lineup of the band. However, it never released any studio or live recordings. Alan Gowen died of leukemia in May, 1981. This CD is the first National Health live album to ever be released. It is also the only recorded documentation of the Gowen ,Greaves, Miller, and Pyle version of the band. Recorded at two different shows in 1979 - including one show that features the addition of guest guitarist Alain Eckert [Art Zoyd] - the majority of the compositions on Playtime cannot be found on any other National Health recording. In addition, Playtime includes a 16 page booklet with liner notes by noted Canterbury expert Aymeric Leroy, which tells the story of the last period of National Health with Gowen. Illustrated with rare photos, interviews and comments with all surviving members of the band, this is a fantastic, unexpected, newly unearthed document 20 years later, of a much loved band.
Alan Gowen also appears on Cuneiform CDs with
Hugh Hopper and Gilgamesh.

"A more stretched-out, jam-oriented affair than the original studio recordings, Playtime picks up on some of the furious, frenetic energy of the early fusion movement, when bands like Tony Williams Lifetime and the original lineups of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return To Forever were going straight for the jugular with raw burn, tempered with intelligent writing, strict ensemble playing and audacious, chops-oriented playing. This is first rate, risk-taking jazz rock created in a bygone era by a greatly under-recognized band." - JazzTimes.

Aymeric Leroy's and Pip Pyle's liner notes for Playtime

Thanks to the sorry state of the recording industry at the time (and things haven't really changed for the better since then), both the early years (1975-76) and final incarnation (1979-80) of National Health weren't preserved for posterity on any studio albums. A sad turn of events since both these periods were musically quite distinct to the others. Fortunately, the first gap was filled in 1996 by the archival release Missing Pieces. But until now there was no official document of the Miller/Gowen/Greaves/Pyle line-up, although it existed from February 1979 to March 1980 - a relatively short lifespan but actually longer than that of any of the band's previous formations! Contrary to an idea made popular by such abstract conceptualizations as Peter Frame's legendary 'rock family trees', line-up changes, even in 'Canterbury school' bands, are rarely the sort of arithmetic operation they resemble. At first sight, the band performing on this CD was simply the Of Queues And Cures line-up of National Health, minus the departed Dave Stewart, plus the returning Alan Gowen, who had left in 1977. But musically, things are not so simple, and some historical perspective seems necessary to really understand how National Health evolved into this unique avatar of itself.
Although the European and UK tours of spring 1978 had proved that the new line-up (introducing newcomer John Greaves, once of Henry Cow) was every bit as strong as, if not stronger than all its predecessors, the help of numerous guests was enlisted for the recording of the new National Health album (Of Queues And Cures) in July. These included brass players on 'The Bryden 2-Step', 'Binoculars' and 'Squarer For Maud', but most notable was perhaps ex-Henry Cow cellist (and bassist) Georgie Born's contributions to the latter piece. The band were so pleased with them they immediately asked her to join.
By the time rehearsals started in late September 1978 (at a pub in Southall, West London, owned by a friend of Pip's then wife, Pam), for projected tours of Spain and Italy the following month, Henry Cow had finally split, following completion of their final tours and recordings, so oboist/bassoonist Lindsay Cooper found herself available too. Having contributed her skills to National Health for two special gigs during 1977, at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and Roundhouse, it wasn't surprising that she should eventually join the band permanently, shortly after she and Georgie came back from a series of performances with the Feminist Improvising Group in France.
All went well for about ten days. The new stage repertoire consisted of material from the recently completed album - 'Dreams Wide Awake', 'Binoculars', 'The Collapso' and 'Squarer For Maud' - as well as Pip's newly composed 'Seven Sisters' (in an early incarnation), two new songs by John and Peter Blegvad - 'Silence' and 'The Rose Sob' as well as the title track from their Kew.Rhone album (a favorite of Dave Stewart's, featuring Georgie on vocals), and finally Lindsay's '1/2 The Sky', recorded by Henry Cow earlier that year and included in their Western Culture album. "I remember that piece", comments Pip, "because the rhythmic grouping in one section gave me the idea for the groove of 'Foetal Fandango'...".
Problems began to arise when it appeared that, following cancellation of several dates, the band would be losing money on the Spanish tour unless they severely cut on their own expenses. "The tour was, as ever, on a very tight budget", remembers John, "and we now had a six-piece band, which I thought was really happening. To make it financially possible, we would have had to do it without the lighting rig... I thought getting the band out there working was important, and that we didn't need lights. Dave didn't agree. We clashed, and he left". Dave Stewart offers his perspective on the episode. "Initially our disagreements only concerned the equipment and finances. But when I began to think about it a little more, I realized our opinions differed on a wider scale. It was actually to do with the musical concept and direction of the band. I wanted the music to be clearly defined and precise, whereas under John's, and possibly even more Pip's influence, it tended to go in an increasingly freer direction. I personally favor structured music, so in the end I decided to leave...".
"I'm not sure about the 'increasingly free' direction", John comments. "Maybe that was true to some extent, but with Georgie and Lindsay it was a heavily written set, which was why it was impossible to replace Dave at such short notice". Georgie confirms that National Health certainly wasn't on the verge of turning to 'free form' music: "I see pure improvisation as a specialist thing, really, and I think it meant something different in National Health. It would have been a much more melodic and rock-like kind of improvisation, as opposed to the much more atonal, dissonant and exploratory stuff I was beginning to do with Derek Bailey, the F.I.G. or the London Musicians' Collective. I thought National Health was essentially a very good 'tune' band, so I probably would have favored a mixture... Certainly maintaining some composed and song-based material, because I thought that was what they were good at".
Having called off the Spanish dates, the band were left contemplating various options to fulfill their commitments in Italy. "I had invested a lot of time setting up that tour with Jules Frutos and Jean-Marie Sanzey in Orleans", John explains. "We all went through hoops to get it on. Dave would not budge, so we asked Alan Gowen, who was not available...". Pip also tried to convince Henk Weltevreden, an old friend of the band who had organized Dutch tours for Hatfield and National Health, but was also a keyboard player, to replace Dave. "Pip was sending me letters and calling me on the phone every day", Henk remembers. "But I said, 'Listen Pip, I'm not good enough to join that band. I would love to, but this is beyond my ability'. Also at the time I was getting more and more involved in my studies, philosophy, and I really didn't feel like going back to the rehearsal room. And, perhaps most of all, I couldn't replace Dave. I didn't want to, and I certainly couldn't play the way Dave played... Pip still blames me to this day, tells me how stupid I was not to join...".
The option of dropping the composed repertoire and playing free music instead was discussed among the band before they finally decided to cancel the Italian tour. "This is what Henry Cow would have done", John comments, "but National Health was not an improvising band. It would have been an insult to promoters and audiences to have turned up playing a free set". The band received some criticism for their decision, but as Pip says: "We really tried hard to do the tour. We couldn't find a keyboard player to do it, and we decided we weren't capable or interested in doing it 'free'". John concludes: "We were extremely disappointed, and aware of the enormous efforts made by promoters in impossible conditions, in a fragile 'alternative' domain, but it just wasn't possible".
Subsequently, Phil, John and Pip decided to the revert to the previous quartet format, but finding no suitable keyboard player, contemplated a radical change of instrumentation, with the addition of a second guitarist. The six-stringer in question was Alain Eckert, a French guitarist who had jammed with the band on their customary stop at Jacky Barbier's club in Burgundy, earlier that year. Eckert had briefly joined Art Zoyd, then almost joined Etron Fou Leloublan. He would eventually rejoin the former, but in the meantime he - accompanied by his then girlfriend Patricia Dallio, who would also join Art Zoyd, in July 1979 - came over to England to rehearse with National Health.
Patricia remembers: "We spent about a month at Pip's place. I have this great memory of celebrating my twentieth birthday - on November 3rd, 1978 - at a nearby pub with John, Pip, Alain and Phil. I was mostly there as a tourist, and while they rehearsed I practiced on a piano in another room. I remember playing with them just once, running through a piece of Pip's, which was really great, but that's it". "I think Alain really wanted Patricia in the group too", says Pip. "But at the time she was very young and rather inexperienced, and only played acoustic piano, which wasn't what we were looking for".
"Eventually the idea of Alain joining just kind of evaporated", Pip continues. "It wasn't a completely successful combination with two guitars. Language problems didn't much help, too. Also I don't think John was available for many rehearsals. A lot of the time Phil and Alain played stuff on two guitars".
Indeed, John had other things on his mind. "I recall a desultory atmosphere. I don't think we really knew what direction to take". During December he flew to the United States to play a couple of gigs with Peter Blegvad: one at the Trinity Theater in Washington D.C. with Fred Frith and The Muffins, and another at Giorgio Gomelsky's 'Zu House' in New York, with Lisa Herman, Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, Fred Maher, Michael Beinhorn and Eugene Chadbourne.
The two Greaves/Blegvad songs John would perform with National Health the following year were written, or finished, during that trip. Peter Blegvad remembers: "I think 'The Rose Sob' was one of a bunch of short poems I gave John in New York. We had a piano in the loft we shared in downtown Manhattan and he may have composed the music there. And I seem to remember working on part of the 'Silence' lyric on the train from NYC to Washington DC, to do the concert with The Muffins. But other parts of it were composed in London on specially designed 'angel trap' stationery (paper I had colored and drawn random images on, which I then covered in more or less automatic writing). Even though it's a short lyric, it was probably composed in several installments over several years...".
At that point, National Health had more or less stopped ("not really split up", says John, "just a flat tire"). 1979 began without a new fourth member in sight, yet National Health had committed themselves to a TV appearance on BBC TV's music programme 'Old Grey Whistle Test', on January 9th. Dave Stewart agreed to rejoin for this one occasion. Of the filming in Manchester, Pip remembers: "In principle, Dave was all in favor of making as much of a scandal as possible. We had to practice three times, with white lines indicating where we should stand for camera angles, etc. But when it came to the real show we not only completely ignored the stage positions, we also threw trays of cutlery, plates and other stuff around the stage... John performed a sort of drunk somersault ["I also remember singing into the bass drum mike", adds John] and, aided and abetted by considerable quantities of free hospitality, we even contrived to forget most of the musical content of Dave's tune ['The Collapso'], of which he was rather proud. So he was somewhat irked in the end and felt no doubt he was justified about leaving the group when he did !". As he later said, practically everyone had left his band so he didn't see why he shouldn't!
Soft Heap, the part-time jazz band Pip had formed in early 1978 with Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper and Alan Gowen, had recorded an album later that year (during a break from the sextet rehearsals, in October), and played their only gigs with that line-up on November 22nd and December 4th, at London's Phoenix and 100 Club respectively (Dave Sheen was the drummer on previous dates due to Pip's commitments with National Health). When Hopper decided to stop playing, John Greaves replaced him and the new line-up made its debut at the Half-Moon in Putney on January 28th, 1979. Perhaps in this context it proved easier to persuade Alan to rejoin National Health, which he did, and by February Phil, Alan, John and Pip were back to the rehearsal room, preparing for a major European tour. The line-up debuted at London's Bedford College on March 5th.
In a press release dated March 15th, the new National Health described their artistic ambitions thus: "Although we would like to bring our new album Of Queues And Cures to the attention of the great record-buying public, most of the material we will be playing will be fresh, written by us all specifically for this new formation. The music largely remains composed and intricate, but we feel that we've finally achieved a form which enables each performance to change and develop compositions to the point where the difference between structure and improvisations is imperceptible and irrelevant". The text ended on a humorous note: "Audience members still requesting 'Tenemos Roads' (with no disrespect to the composition) will be (a) disappointed, and (b) requested to leave".
After another one-off performance on March 16th, this time at Oxford Polytechnic as part of a benefit for Lol Coxhill ("Lol had damaged his teeth in a car accident in the States so he couldn't play", John remembers. "But he turned up at his own benefit in a black wig, and played!"), National Health (along with longtime roadie Rick Biddulph) embarked on a five-week tour of Europe, encompassing Holland (March 25th to April 2nd), Scandinavia (April 4th to 15th), Spain (April 17th to 25th) and finally France (April 26th to May 5th). Guest jammers on the French dates included Alain Eckert at Jacky Barbier's club, and Didier Malherbe during the band's 5-night residency at the Paris jazz club Campagne-Premiere (where some of their equipment was stolen). Initial plans to follow these with a major London gig and an American tour either fell through or had to be postponed. There was however a one-off gig in Rome (Italy) during June, where National Health shared the bill with Elvin Jones.
Remembering that tour, Pip comments: "The new line-up was potentially really brilliant. I really enjoyed it immensely. Al was playing so good! He was really playing his tunes the way he wanted to play them, and I think he was very pleased with it. It may not have been so much of a killer group from an audience's point of view, because we were always redesigning ourselves, but from mine it was really interesting. I think you tend to fall into an act when you do lots of gigs, so we were always trying to rediscover the group, reinvent it every night, which is something I always find very exciting".
National Health had become a different band in almost every respect, as Phil remembers. "Basically we did less writing and more playing. Because we were prepared to do things we wouldn't have done in the early days of the band, when it was a large line-up, and Dave probably had a higher standard of what gigs should be done, how long to be away from home and all the rest of it. Whereas we were quite keen to be on the road and go to Finland for two weeks for not very much money, just for the fun of it. Our music was more suitable for smaller venues, and although we did do a few big concerts, in larger halls, it was more intimate music... Things like 'Tenemos Roads' were designed for a bigger room and a bigger audience. When you play that at Jacky Barbier's club it doesn't really work".
Also, whereas up to then National Health had largely been Dave Stewart's band, it had now become a fully cooperative group, and as a result the atmosphere was more relaxed. "There was no leadership", Phil explains. "We just went out and did the gigs, in a way that made it even more enjoyable... There was nothing at stake, really. We just thought of it as yet another nice pleasant occupation to be doing. Pleasant music-making... Although we rehearsed long and hard for those tunes, especially Alan's".
Yet as a result of this attitude there was less of a professionally-minded commitment from the band members, which probably accounts for the lack of a studio album by this incarnation of National Health, although in fact it lasted longer than any previous one. The band repeatedly expressed their intention of going into the studio, but subsequently these plans were postponed from July to September 1979, and eventually January 1980, and in the end never materialized. "We did think about recording, but never got around to it", Phil explains. "Certainly if Dave had been in the band and that material had been there, it would have been recorded, and recorded well, because he was a proper leader: he'd get things done. He doesn't muck around, Dave, he's not just doing it for fun. That's why I enjoyed working with him in National Health, because he has a sense of direction: one thing leads to another, doing a tour, then going into the studio, which has been booked and paid for in advance... Whereas we were always thinking, 'let's wait a little, we'll have even better material', 'we need a couple of new tunes', or whatever...".
New material premiered on the European tour included contributions from all members: Phil's 'Nowadays A Silhouette', Alan's 'Flanagan's People' and 'Toad Of Toad Hall', John's 'Silence' and 'The Rose Sob', and Pip's 'Seven Sisters'. More occasional additions to the setlist were Alan's 'Shining Water' (in Sweden only) and Phil's 'Fourfold', which like 'Nowadays...' would eventually resurface on the Gowen-Miller-Sinclair-Tomkins album Before A Word Is Said. The set was completed by Gilgamesh favorites 'TNTFX' and 'Play Time' (both from 1978's Another Fine Tune You've Got Me Into), and only two pieces from National Health's latest album, 'Dreams Wide Awake' and 'Squarer For Maud'. All in all, there was certainly enough new material for an album. The order in which the pieces were performed varied from night to night, but on this tour the setlist was usually bookended by two renditions of 'TNTFX'.
Plans for a US tour, unlikely though they might have seemed initially, eventually materialized in the autumn of 1979, thanks to the help of American enthusiast Rick Chafen, who since 1974 had been promoting progressive music on his Kansas City radio show 'Her Majesty's Voice'. Chafen had travelled to England the previous year to see National Health open for Steve Hillage at the end of their UK tour. "A few days later, I had a meeting with Dave Stewart at his home in Chiswick and a nearby pub. It was that night when we decided to do a tour of the States. And though he wasn't in the band by the time it happened, it's testament to the level of his commitment that, with the help of his notes from the 1979 Bruford tour, we managed to do it". Dave's lists of venues were a starting point, from which a tour itinerary was slowly designed, although many tentative dates eventually fell through. "The tour was planned for months, but it didn't begin to materialize until two months before, and was still in flux in progress".
"It was daunting at every stage", Chafen further recalls. "I (foolishly) did this tour completely by the immigration laws, and it almost never happened as a result: even after all of this tedious preparation was complete, the band still had to camp out at the US Embassy, awaiting a final telex so they could get on the plane!". Eventually, the tour lasted from November 5th to December 1st, with the band headlining on most gigs (the exception being two shows at the Bottom Line in New York, supporting a comic, Chris Rush!); in Boston (the first date on the tour) and Hartford, French band Etron Fou Leloublan supported; and Peter Blegvad joined in on the second Squat Theater (New York) show, reciting poetry during 'Nowadays A Silhouette' (!) and sharing lead vocals with John Greaves on an impromptu cover of 'Walking The Dog' (a brief snippet of which appears on Missing Pieces), which also featured guest guitarist Michael Lawrence (from the original line-up of Daevid Allen's New York Gong).
Although new material was written (during the summer break) - Phil's 'A Fleeting Glance', and Alan's 'Portrait Of A Shrinking Man', 'Tales Of A Damson Night' and 'Black Hat' - none of it was performed on the tour, which nonetheless featured revised arrangements of 'Seven Sisters' (the original middle section was now replaced by what later became 'Foetal Fandango') and 'Silence' (with a radically changed, almost fusion-like, rhythmic setting).
Both Chafen and the band lost quite a bit of money on the tour, which was however a critical and public success (with even a few big crowds, as in Boston), albeit at the 'underground' level which a band of this kind, regardless of its talent, seemed doomed to remained confined to. "The tour was quite hard", Pip remembers, "and although musically a great pleasure, it was a financial disaster. Alan was the first to say he wouldn't do it again unless he got $150 a gig, which is why we never did the projected West Coast tour". Chafen remembers: "In January, just a few weeks after they'd returned to England, I received a letter from their road manager, Nick 'Main Man' Levitt, asking me to start exploring a second tour [for the spring of 1980], with Kevin Ayers, which ended up being postponed nearly a year, and then Phil Miller called to say that I'd have to stop trying to do a second tour, because Alan was too ill to travel...".
Substantially more lucrative than the US tour was a series of eight Soft Heap gigs in Northern England and Scotland during December 1979. "John, Alan and I literally came back from America and went straight on the road with Elton", Pip remembers. "It was one of those Jazz Centre Society sponsored tours, really nicely paid, staying in good hotels, but no-one in the audience...".
Although it was reported in the UK music press (itself quoting a letter from Pip) in early 1980 that National Health were currently in France recording, there is no evidence of any such thing in either the musicians' memory or in actual tapes. "I think my 'letter' was a reply to a fan letter asking what we were doing", Pip comments. "I don't remember recording in France at all. In any case that would have been at Jacky Barbier's. I don't know, it was possibly a project for the future. God knows, perhaps I just made it up to make it look like the band was really happening!...".
However, by mid-February, National Health were away in Scandinavia for a 12-date tour of Sweden and Finland, organized by local promoter Tapio Korjus. The band's gig at the Stadsteatern in Vanersborg (Sweden) on March 2nd, 1980 would turn out to be their last with Alan Gowen. Although his departure later that month was primarily to do with financial considerations, Gowen was already suffering from health problems at that point. "I think Alan always had the propensity to be very ill", offers Phil. "He had colitis, which is basically a colon that doesn't work. His guts were in a terrible state, and that's probably what gave him the leukemiaeventually... He was a classic case for someone to be ill, Alan, and being on the road, and not eating properly, drinking too much and all the rest of it, eventually takes its toll on you".
During the months that followed, individual members on the band embarked on separate projects. Phil Miller concentrated on writing, while playing the occasional gig with Lol Coxhill and his brother Steve Miller, or fellow guitarist Phil Lee. Pip Pyle joined Dave Stewart in his new venture Rapid Eye Movement, starting with a tour of Spain. John Greaves joined Peter Blegvad in Vermont to unsuccessfully write the follow-up to their Kew.Rhone masterpiece, briefly toured Europe with Peter Gordon's Love Of Life Orchestra, then started work on what became his first solo album, Accident (which included both 'The Rose Sob' and 'Silence' from the National Health repertoire). And Alan Gowen recorded a duo album with Hugh Hopper, the beautiful Two Rainbows Daily.
By the time Phil and Alan reunited in April 1981 to record the Before A Word Is Said album with Richard Sinclair and Trevor Tomkins, Alan had started undergoing burdensome chemotherapy treatments. "Alan felt very, very bad by the end of the sessions", producer Jean-Pierre Weiller remembered in a 1983 tribute article on Alan in 'Keyboard Magazine'. "In fact, he never heard the finished album, because on the last day he was so ill and in such pain that he had to leave for the hospital. Never during the sessions was there a feeling of how ill he was. In fact, Alan was in good spirits, making jokes all of the time, so it was a wonderful time for everybody involved".
After Alan Gowen died on May 17th, 1981 (a mere two weeks after the album was completed), his former bandmates decided to reconvene for a one-off benefit gig at London's 100 Club, to pay homage to Alan's music and talent. Dave Stewart and Pip Pyle returned from a tour in France with Rapid Eye Movement to join Phil and John in rehearsals for the concert, which took place on June 8th and also featured performances by other former musical colleagues of Alan's, not to mention the many friends present in the audience. "My memory is that this gig centered around Pip, Phil and John and myself playing Alan's compositions", Dave Stewart recalls, "but Pip also invited some other musicians along to have a jam. I think we played a couple of sets performing the D.S. Al Coda material, which may or may not have included Elton Dean. There was also at least one unrehearsed jamming set - which I did not participate in - where Nigel Morris, Hugh Hopper and Elton (amongst others) played. I'm afraid I can't remember the other players".
Subsequently, this one-off project was extended, at Jean-Pierre Weiller's instigation, to an album recording, which took place later that year and resulted in the D.S. Al Coda album, released (under the revived National Health banner) in 1982 on Weiller's Europa Records label. At that point the band was no more, but it did reform one last time the following year. By then Phil and Pip had reunited in In Cahoots, John had moved to France and begun his solo career in earnest (although he still played occasionally with Pip in Soft Heap, now with Mark Hewins on guitar), and Dave had followed a couple of surprise hit-singles with what became a long-term collaboration with his singing partner Barbara Gaskin. But when National Health were asked to perform their tribute to Alan Gowen's music as part of the Edinburgh Festival on August 30th and 31st, 1983, they all said yes.
On this occasion, the quartet was augmented by Elton Dean on sax, Jimmy Hastings on flute and Barbara Gaskin on vocals. In addition to most of the D.S. Al Coda material, National Health played some older material. "I know we did 'Binoculars' as Jimmy did a solo", remembers Pip. "I also remember 'Arriving Twice' as a trio with Dave, Phil and Jimmy. We also did 'The Collapso', and exactly the same thing happened as on the TV show. Dave actually stopped us and asked us to play the end section again - which we did even worse than before of course! Dave was so pissed off with us, he refused to play an encore! Maybe we played 'Tenemos Roads', but I'm not sure". Also performed were John's new song, 'Swelling Valley', with vocals by Barbara, the old Kew.Rhone chestnut '22 Proverbs', and 'Above And Below' from Phil's last collaboration with Alan.
As his former colleagues are quick to point out, this CD, while displaying National Health's collective and individual talents in abundance, is essentially a tribute to Alan Gowen's playing, in the same way D.S. Al Coda paid homage to his composing skills. The two concerts from which it has been compiled were simply the best-recorded ones. In artistic terms, it's as if they had been random-picked, and it is indeed a fine testament to Alan's performing genius that he happened to be in such fine form on both.-

-AYMERIC LEROY

This record is the result of several happy coincidences. Steve Feigenbaum had expressed his interest in compiling a sort of tribute album to Alan Gowan to Hugh Hopper (Alan's cohort in many duo and band projects such as Soft Heap, Gilgamesh etc). Hugh mentioned that he had come across a rather badly recorded cassette of a Soft Heap London date that nevertheless had some great playing. Hugh, John Greaves and I were at the time playing at the now almost legendary "A L'Ouest de la Grosne" club which is run by the redoubtable Jacky Barbier and it occurred to me that we had recorded two rather good gigs there way back in 1979 with the last quartet line-up of National Health. This lineup featured Alan who had rejoined the group after Dave Stewart had rather mysteriously left his own group. Jacky unearthed the tapes, which revealed some pretty spirited stuff that I thought good enough to call Steve Feigenbaum about. By chance, he was about to call me about a copy of a tape of a National Health concert recorded by Philadelphia University radio station that had been discovered by a fan of the group in a dustbin about to go in the street after a studio spring cleaning.
I suppose it must be said that at the time it is unlikely that we would have seriously had considered these performances for commercial release. We were always very fussy about sound quality and religiously invested fortunes in good quality recordings at costly studios. Whereas I still adhere to the principal of presenting music in the best possible light technically and artistically, nowadays digital remastering can really help to focus the sound of even a really crude recording. This proved to be the case here; some of the tunes even have a pretty good sound considering they were recorded largely on two mikes. More importantly, I feel this music ought to see the light of day since we never got around to going into the studio to record this line-up playing this material before Alan got ill and tragically died at such a young age. I think Alan was, apart from being a beautiful bloke and mate, also an extraordinarily gifted composer and keyboard player. His output was obviously quite small (although quite prolific for such a short life) and I really think this album does contain some exceptional playing from Alan. After Dave left, the group became much looser and improvised extensively, as you'll hear. To illustrate this point, it seemed only natural given the relaxed and informal atmosphere at Bresse-sur-Grosne to invite Alain Eckert - a fine guitarist whom we had met on a previous visit to the club - to play with us on stage that night. I always enjoy these sorts of situations. Perhaps some of you won't; personally I enjoy written and improvised music equally, especially when, as here, both occur at the same time! Either way, Phil, John and I are all really pleased that this record is finally there for posterity.
Thanks to Steve Feigenbaum for his enthusiasm for this and many other projects; Rick Chafen for organizing the 1979 American Tour from which some of these recordings were made; Jacky Barbier for his hospitality to wild hordes of marauding musicians in his otherwise peaceful club in the Bourgoyne, France over the last thirty odd years; Peter Lemer for his excellent digital editing and mastering; Nick Levitt for tour management; Celia Welcomme, Geoff Davenport and Aymeric Leroy for unearthing photos, facts and sleeve notes.

-PIP PYLE

Playtime
CUNEIFORM RUNE 145




NATIONAL HEALTH - Playtime, 2001 (Cuneiform)

Musicians:
Phil Miller (Guitar)
Alan Gowen (Keyboards)
John Greaves (Bass and vocals)
Pip Pyle (Drums)

Recorded: 27 Apr 1979 - Location: A L'Ouest de la Grosne, Bresse-sur-Grosne (France) - Eng: Jacky Barbier [1-4]
Recorded : 1 Dec 1979 - Loc: The Main Point, Bryn Mawr, PA (USA) [5-8]

We have the US Cuneiform label to thank for rescuing this wonderful album from the unreleased band archives.
The album is basically a live recording of the 'Of Queues and Cures' band without Dave Stewart. The main thing with this new version of National Health is that it decided on a more freer / improvised approach to music than was evident in the Stewart era. Although the tightly arranged composition that Stewart brought to the band is still present the ways of getting from one theme to another are left more open to individual interpretation.

As you will know from David's review of 'Complete' the original structure was built around the duel keyboard themes created by Stewart and Alan Gowen. With two keyboard masters creating nearly all the sound-scape the Bass and Guitar were rarely used as dominant instruments. However take away one keyboard and Phil Miller and John Greeves are left, perhaps for the first time, to shine out brightly.

Although never committed to 'vinyl' before the interesting fact is that this bands reduced line up lasted longer and did more touring than any previous. With that in mind perhaps it is best that if anything is to be released from this period it is in the 'live' environment.

There are four 'new' National Health works on this album (Nowadays A Silhouette, Pleaides, Rhubarb Jam /The Rose Sob and Play Time). Rhubarb Jam and The Rose Sob are perhaps unessential 2-minute jams but the National Health interpretation of Gowen's 'Gilgamesh' era Play Time is worth the price of the entrance alone. Starting with a thudding Greave's bass riff and a dreamy Gowen keyboard backing - Millers guitar soars. As the track continues the traded improvisation that sparks between all the players just makes Play Time (both track and album) possibly the best National Health I have ever heard!

To me, National Health are one of the main bands that have come closest to my own personal music nirvana where the rich structured themes of 'Prog' are mixed with an open framework of 'Jazz'. The required high musicianship required to attain this is taken for granted........

Another bonus, with this release, that should be mentioned is the inclusion of a 16 page booklet telling the story of this last National Health lineup. This includes interviews and track comments by all the surviving members.

All in all Play Time becomes the first BoA essential purchase of 2001.


Ian Oakley February 2001






National Health - Playtime

Release Date: 2001

Track Listing
1) Flanagan's People (Gowen) - 15:57
2) Nowadays a Silhouette (Miller) - 6:32
3) Dreams Wide Awake (Miller) - 8:18
4) Pleaides (Pyle) - 10:26
5) Rhubarb Jam (Gowen/Greaves/Miller/Pyle) - 1:17
6) Rose Sob (Blegvad/Greaves) - 1:46
7) Play Time (Gowen) - 9:38
8) Squarer for Maud, Pt. 1 (Greaves) - 5:11
9) Squarer for Maud, Pt. 2 (Greaves) - 7:51


Member: Prog Owl

Musicians:

Phil Miller - Guitar
Alan Gowen - Keyboards
John Greaves - Bass, Vocals
Alain Eckert - Special Guest Villain, er I mean, Guitarist
Pip Pyle - Drums, Liner Notes


Kudos once again to our friends at Cuneiform Records and to the members of National Health themselves for after all these years, allowing us to hear the band in a live setting and a lineup of NH that was never really well documented before.

During a period of uncertainty on many fronts, Dave Stewart left NH in 1979, largely due to disagreements over the band's direction, business matters and more. Nonetheless determined, the remaining three lads decided to carry on, and eventually convinced Allen Gowen to rejoin. Two ex-Henry Cow members (cellist Georgie Born and woodwind maestro Lindsay Cooper) came on board but only temporarily. Setbacks mounted one after another, but finally, the above lineup managed to hit the road in Europe and a few US East Coast dates.

With Allen Gowen back in the fold, the band's sound changed somewhat, and tilted more towards open improvisational flavored material, in addition to the intricately scored music that had been their trademark. This disc is culled from two concerts, one in France and a US performance, and features a fair amount of newer material and pieces from the members other bands (like Gilgamesh and In Cahoots), plus very ferociously snarly renditions of "Squarer For Maude" (one of my very favorite NH pieces, the closest that the band ever got to the RIO genre', but go figure, it was ex-Henry Cow bassist John Greaves that wrote it) and "Dreams Wide Awake" from Of Queues and Cures (which gets played with an intensity rivaling that of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in its prime).

The high points are numerous here, not one bad piece, but my personal faves are of course "Squarer For Maude", "Flanagan's People" and the short quirky vocal piece, "Rose Sob".

The recording quality is at times dodgy, but the ferocity and commitment of these performances more than makes up for that flaw. The band is tight and really connected with each other, and the presence of guest guitarist Alain Eckart (from the French avant band Art Zoyd) actually enhances the pieces, helping the band to maintain a very thick full sound. Allen Gowen's unique brand of sonic textures is key here, lots of chiming and clangourous Rhodes piano and unique synth sounds make it a delight to hear. One could surely miss the presence of Dave Stewart's fuzz organ and everything else, but approaching this with an open mind will surmount that obstacle. Guitarist Phil Miller is in fine form, spinning off angular and witty melody lines right and left. John Greaves just roars out at you with his thick fuzzy bass (he might've been a good candidate for Magma) as Pip Pyle just gives it everything he's got from behind the drums. No mistaking these guys for a Holiday Inn lounge band playing sappy Chicago love ballads!

In addition, the liner notes are a great part of the package, chronicling the behind the scenes dramas that the band endured. It must also be noted that this disc was also intended as a tribute to Allen Gowen, who lost a battle with leukemia in 1981. Even though Allen was ill at the time of these recordings (1979), his genius and wit spoke through very loudly!

Should this be an immediate addition to your library? This Owl hoots resoundingly, YES!!








National Health - The Inside Story

[ 01 ] National Health is the name of the British free health care service and also a weird kind of pop group I was in from 1975 to 1979. I am myopic, but my memory is good, and I remember clearly that the band was named after my spectacles (cheap 'National Health' round frames, now wildly popular in Japan for some reason) in that cheery way musicians have of celebrating physical defects. God knows what the band would have been called if I'd had a hernia or worn an artificial limb...
[ 02 ] As organist and founding member of National Health it falls on me to say a few words about the band's history. 1975 was a difficult year to be a thinking rock musician - the halcyon years of 'progressive' rock, when musicians were actually encouraged to be creative and original, were over, and the music industry had gone into a horrid kind of 2 year gestation period which was to end with the birth of 'punk'. In other words, at the exact point when the British rock business and media were beginning to turn their backs on decent music and gearing themselves up to promote instead some of the most crass, simplistic, brutal, ugly and stupid music imaginable, in an atmosphere where an admitted inability to play one's instrument was hailed as a sign of genius, my friend/fellow keyboardist Alan Gowen and I decided to form a large scale rock ensemble playing intricate, mainly instrumental music. You can be sure we weren't doing it to be fashionable.
[ 03 ] Our original grandiose ideas for National Health, formulated over the course of several drunken evenings at Alan's flat and based to some degree on a previous enjoyable collaboration between our former groups Gilgamesh (Alan) and Hatfield and the North (me), were for a nine piece band, 2 keyboards, 2 guitars, 3 vocalists, bass & drums. Alan was to play electric piano and synthesizer (the latter an instrument on which he showed astonishing prowess despite not actually owning one) and myself Hammond organ, electric piano and planet. We would both compose, and the band would attempt to blend my heavily scored music with Alan's more improvisational pieces. We both wanted to include the guitarists from our previous bands, and I invited the bassist/composer from my first professional band Egg to join as well. This, in July 1975 gave us the nucleus of National Health Mk.I:
[ 04 ] Dave Stewart - Keyboards
Alan Gowen - Keyboards
Phil Miller (ex-Hatfleld) - Guitar
Phil Lee (ex-Gilgamesh) - Guitar
Mont Campbell (ex-Egg) - Bass
[ 05 ] I wanted to add vocalists Amanda Parsons, Barbara Gaskin & Ann Rosenthal too, but circumstance, and the intervention of a small amount of common sense (almost certainly not supplied by me) dictated that only Amanda could join - a 7-piece, then.
[ 06 ] "Drummer wanted. Must be able to play well in unusual time signatures" ran our ad in Melody Maker. I'll say - or at least, play. Looking back at the amount of trouble we had finding a suitable drummer for the group still surprises and depresses me. The obvious choice would have been Pip Pyle, (ex-Hatfield and The North drummer) but I wanted to do something different with National Health and was concerned that with three ex-members it would turn into Hatfield Mk.2. So, we advertised. It was hell. After receiving the usual barrage of calls from senile percussionists seeking gigs on cruise ships, guitarists, (not quite unable to read, but wondering whether we needed a guitarist as well) axe murderers, contortionists and trapeze artists, and having resisted the temptation to scream obscenities down the phone at an insanely confident 14 year old who called me every day for a week pleading for the gig, we auditioned 25 or so applicants, some of them 'names.'
[ 07 ] They were all absolutely pathetic. I was amazed at how any of them had acquired any sort of reputation, as they all seemed to be completely thrown by our music and unable to play along with it in even a rudimentary way. I guess the time signatures, which shifted constantly, were the biggest stumbling block - to me and the other embryonic Healthsters they seemed totally natural, but they reduced most of the visitors to our rehearsal space (Alan's front room in Tooting) to a flailing mess of uncoordinated limbs, quivering flesh and dropped sticks.
[ 08 ] One drummer, however, made a big impression. For a start, he was almost 2 feet shorter than me, but more impressively, had sewn yellow satin triangles into the bottom of his trouser legs to convert them into 'flares'. This was the man for the job! Despite my giving him an absolutely precise, explicit and unambiguous lecture over the phone about the status, ambitions and current requirements of this group, he arrived from the North of England convinced that National Health was the name of some kind of West End musical, and asked a bewildered Phil Miller when the show was going to open.
[ 09 ] To ease the general air of discomfort, we attempted to break him in on one of our 'easier' sections, a riff from a piece called Elephants over which Alan used to play a serpentine Moog solo. It was in 25/8. The short chap was not a bad drummer, but this was beyond his musical experience. After a few minutes of floundering (which sounded like the riff from Elephants accompanied by a free form percussion concerto) we stopped, and I explained how the 25 quavers could be subdivided into 3 sixes plus a seven. This made no audible difference (riff from Elephants accompanied by air raid) so I further explained how the sixes could be regarded as half time bars of 3/4. This was a mistake. At the mention of "3/4", the drummer's eyes brightened, and before I could count in, he launched like a madman into a brisk waltz beat, punctuated at random intervals by a deadly even, robotic 7 beat torn fill in a different tempo. We tried to join in, but it was chaos - the resulting musical carnage is beyond my descriptive powers.
[ 10 ] In the midst of this mayhem, looking around the room at the other musicians' concerned expressions, it suddenly occurred to me that the whole situation was becoming cartoon-like, and I had to try desperately hard not to laugh. The same thought had obviously struck Alan, because when I turned to look at him for some kind of moral support or guidance, he had slipped out of sight down behind his Fender Rhodes, and was lying on the floor wheezing, weeping and convulsed with suppressed laughter.
[ 11 ] This was typical of Alan's qualities of leadership, which I came to admire tremendously.
[ 12 ] Fortunately, someone at Virgin Records had given Bill Bruford my phone number, and after dragging a wary Alan Gowen along to a couple of meetings wherein Bill explained to me and my suspicious partner why it was O.K. to have been in a group that sold a lot of records, we arranged to have a play together. The first rehearsal went very well - Bill could read music, so our complex arrangements held no terrors for him. We liked his confident style and complete absence of flared trousers, and he seemed to appreciate that we could all more or less get a tune out of our instruments. It was never going to be a permanent arrangement, as Bill had other commitments and was looking eventually to form his own group, but at least we had a drummer to complete the first line-up of National Health.
[ 13 ] We had absolutely no idea how we were going to earn a living (in fact, we never did) but at least we had a band now. Encouraged, we began to rehearse a plethora of new compositions. I had written a daft, insanely long piece called The Lethargy Shuffle (actually named after a stupid dance Pip Pyle and I had devised in a Belgian disco one evening) which parodied Glenn Miller and rock'n'roll while maintaining Stravinskyan overtones, plus a more lyrical song in Hatfield style, Clocks and Clouds. Alan wrote the delicate, mobile Brujo which, unlike my pieces, had opportunities for group improvisation, and another complex piece called Bells.
[ 14 ] Mont Campbell, who had been out of the music scene for a while, dusted off his composer chops and rattled out Paracelsus (with beautiful contrapuntal sections), Agrippa (which sounded like the soundtrack to a mad film in which gigantic mud creatures trudge through primal estuaries), and the demented Zabaglione, which is probably the hardest piece of music I've ever played live, and which I shall not attempt to describe.
[ 15 ] Not to be outdone (You want complex? I got complex!), I wrote Tenemas Roads, an epic about ancient civilizations on the planet Mercury inspired by The Worm Orouborous. The Ramones we were not.
[ 16 ] Armed with this fearsome repertoire (and a few others such as Trident Asleep by Alan Gowen and Starlight on Seaweed by Mont Campbell), we set out in January 1976 to terrify the youth of Britain in technical college canteens, leisure centre gymnasiums, and all the other unsuitable venues which in this country pass for auditoria. But first, before even stepping on a stage, we ran into the first of the 8 billion or so problems that seemed to dog the band throughout its life. Phil Lee, sensing perhaps my residual hostility to bebop solos, pronounced himself unwilling to continue, and departed to undertake a tour backing Trench singer Charles Aznavour (promptly and cruelly christened "As No Voice' by the rest of the band.). Fortunately we were able to call in old mate Steve Hillage on strategic dates to play his parts, but this left us with a temporary drummer and very temporary 2nd guitarist. And, for a while, no singer - Amanda Parsons caught flu and missed most of the gigs, including our first London concert.
[ 17 ] After the first tour Mont Campbell left, having been forcibly reminded of the things that had first caused him to quit the rock scene in 1973 (the essentially unspiritual nature of motorway food...the jam sessions at soundchecks where everyone plays a lot of crap...my terrible jokes in the van...). Bui that was now the least of our worries. We were now ready to record our first L.P., find though the press rapturously received our winter gigs, we had run into a wall of Indifference from British record companies. Alan & I had thought that finding a record deal for this band would be easy. How wrong we were....
[ 18 ] After countless refusals and rejections from other companies, things reached a head when Virgin records, a company who had to some extent built their reputation on progressive music and with whom we had close ties, turned us down. I had a furious argument with some wretched A&R individual over the reasons...apparently, our music was old-fashioned and "unoriginal."
[ 19 ] "What do you mean, 'unoriginal'?" I screamed. "Tell me who else is playing this kind of thing?'
[ 20 ] "Er, plenty of people. It just sounds like what a lot of other bands have done."
[ 21 ] "Name one."
[ 22 ] "Er...it just sounds like, er... lots of other people."
[ 23 ] Oh yeah. What Virgin had rightly divined, of course, was that this band had MUSICIANS in it, and by some unspoken inter-record company edict that persists to the present day, had decreed that musicians were bad news, and bands which sported them were NOT TO BE SIGNED. Far better to sign up some good looking front person who's not particularly interested in music (like the record company) and replace the band, if there is one, with session players or MACHINES. Then you can get down to the real business of making a HIT RECORD without all that music stuff getting in the way.
[ 24 ] Anyway, we couldn't get a deal, but continued to hunt for gigs. They were in pretty short supply, too. We replaced Mont Campbell with the youthful Neil Murray, (another member of Alan's old band Gilgamesh) re-enlisted Bill as dep. drummer, and for the rest of 1976 continued to rehearse and play whatever gigs we could get - about 14, according to my accounts book. But morale was low, and livings had to be earned.... Alan got a job playing in a West End sex so-called 'comedy' musical called 'Let My People Come', returning home every evening a gibbering wreck after his nightly dose (pardon the expression) of bare buttocks and horrible show music. Amanda Parsons was doing a 'straight' job in Kew Gardens, while I was eking out a living writing lead sheets (ironically) for Virgin Records, immortalizing in neat musical script the ravings of bands deemed more worthy of release than National Health, such as Slaughter and The Dogs...a humbling experience, and complete waste of ink.
[ 25 ] By 1977 Bill had fled the fold to form U.K., but we found a permanent drummer, Pip Pyle, who graciously accepted the post despite my initial misgivings on the subject, for which he had the good heart not to ridicule me. Much. We now dropped all Mont Campbell's material and embarked on a European tour in February, culminating in a concert at London's Victoria Palace sans Amanda Parsons, the next to abandon ship. Alan Gowen left shortly afterwards, fed up with all the personnel changes and general lack of progress. The band had never really developed along the lines he planned for it, which in truth was probably something more steeped in jazz than the kind of rock orchestra I had envisaged. Either way, this left the band in the sort of shape neither of us would have wanted originally - it had become a rock 4-piece.
[ 26 ] This was kind of tough on me, as most of our material was written for two pairs of hands, and my one pair was already getting enough damage through pounding walls after conversations with record companies. However, around about this time, some good stuff happened. We met a guy called Mike Dunne who was custodian and engineer of a mobile studio called the 'Mobile Mobile', property of a FAMOUS ROCK STAR. While the FRS battled to find musical inspiration in the Bahamas, Mike set about recording groups he liked at very reasonable rates, such as nothing. With the Mobile Mobile (what a stupid name, eh?) set up in a rehearsal room in Victoria, London, we were able to sneak in between or after paying clients' sessions and record our first album. A certain Mr. O'Duffy and his father always seemed to be in the studio overrunning on their session when we arrived, hence their credit for "musical inspiration" on the L.P. sleeve. Thanks to Mike, and aided by the return of the prodigal Alan Gowen & Amanda Parsons (who gladly re-joined as temporary recording guests) we finally got to make our first L.P., in March 1977.
[ 27 ] No one wanted to put it out, of course, but at least we had a tape. Then another good thing happened. We were invited to play at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, as part of a series of concerts entitled 'Really Cultural Rock Music played by Serious Men with Beards', or something.... I was impressed, and excited to get the opportunity to play at what I then considered a prestigious venue. Eager to justify the gig as high art, and fill in some of the gaps in our sound left by Alan's departure, I set about scoring some of our pieces for woodwind quintet. We also invited Richard Sinclair to sing with us, and began a week's rehearsals, all for this one gig.
[ 28 ] Subsequent events served to underline just how shiftily Britain (.in treat its musicians, even (or especially) the really cultural serious bearded ones. My first problem was getting someone to tell us what time we weir supposed In play at the QEH. At rock gigs, it doesn't matter - you just go on when everyone's drunk enough, but at a concert like this, with the audience ushered in with little gongs 5 minutes before the concert begins and 10 musicians preparing to go on & off stage in a cultural fashion, a starting time is essential. We called the agency who'd booked us. They said they would write the playing time into the contract. It arrived 2 days before the gig, with no playing time. We rang the agency. They said they would call us back. They didn't.
[ 29 ] I arrived at the QED having guessed what time we would go on from a poster I saw in a railway station. When I got there I found that our lighting engineer was being refused access to the lights, and that no-one had out lighting plan (which we had sent in 2 weeks previously). Having been assured we would have the full co-operation of the QEH by the agency, this made me pretty angry. Finally, after our soundcheck, a guy from the agency approached me , and told me we were due on at 7:30. It was 7:10; I'd sent the woodwind players away to get some food, assuring them we weren't on until 8:00; the guy from the agency had been sitting in the hall ALL AFTERNOON (unknown to me) while we soundchecked, and only now did he reveal our playing time. What was it, classified information'''
[ 30 ] We stalled until 7:45, but finally had to go on. When I went on stage, the woodwind players had not returned from their meal, and I had no way of knowing if they would make it back in time for their first number. But the SHOW MUST GO ON! (Why? HOW?) We started the set. When it came to the time for the woodwind stuff, I said to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, for the next tune we were supposed to be joined by 5 woodwind players. Due to the incompetence of the agency that booked us, they left the building some time ago, and I don't know I they've come back. But let's see what happens." Bless their hearts, they all walked on stage dead on cue, having come back early from their meal. And not one of them was still eating.
[ 31 ] It might seem like a little thing to you, but if the woodwinders hadn't showed up I think I might easily have soiled my trousers in front of 1,000 concert goers. Anyway, this particular clothing disaster averted, the rest of the gig went very well. The audience was great - one guy told me he'd come from America just to see the show. I told him it was a good job the agency hadn't shifted the playing time forward three hours. The woodwind players played superbly, though occasionally forgetting to blow their instruments into the microphones. (Indigestion?) Never mind, 3 part harmonies are often more effective than 5. At the end, the crowd demanded an encore, stamping and whistling. But having gone on "late," we had "overrun" by 15 minutes. Horror! Outrage! The QEH staff said we could not do an encore. They turned all the lights out on stage, but we went on anyway. Fuck them. I groped my way to the front of the stage and found a microphone. "Please turn the lights on," I shouted. Nothing happened. So, with the audience screaming and cheering, we began to play our encore in PITCH DARKNESS, with our road manager shining a torch on flautist Jimmy Hasting's music so he could negotiate his way through Phil Miller's Underdub, hard enough to play even in broad daylight. After 2 minutes, the lights came back on, to a great roar from the crowd - but the psychological damage had been done.
[ 32 ] Important concert? Prestigious venue? BOLLOCKS. I've played some shit venues in my time, including the Zoom Club in Frankfurt, where there are no doors on the toilets to discourage heroin users from shooting up, the Mobileritz in Antwerp, frequented mainly by transvestites who ignore the band but cheer the blue slide show on afterwards. I've played at really dodgy pubs and clubs in London and once, in France, in a disused abbatoir, but NOWHERE have I ever been this badly treated. But worse was to come. No doubt feeling that we had not yet been sufficiently humiliated, the agency withheld our fee because of 'offensive' (ie., truthful) remarks I had made on stage, and to cover the 'extra fees' due to the QEH because of our late start. AAAARGH!!! No wonder Britain invented punk music - the sound of guitars hitting booking agents and civic hall employees in the face.
[ 33 ] We repeated the experiment of augmenting the quartet with 5 woodwinds and a guest vocalist at the Roundhouse in London later that year, but this time no-one went out of their way to sabotage the gig. And we got some more good news. Joop Visser of Charly Records heard our tape and LIKED IT - he even listened to it all the way through without making any phone calls. We did a deal for the L.P. to be released on Charly's 'Affinity' label, and with our advance paid Mike Dunne back just in time - the famous rock star had returned from his holiday and wanted his studio bills settled. The L.P., entitled National Health (a cunning pun on our name) came out in early 1978.
[ 34 ] Of course, this was all a bit too good to be true, so almost immediately Neil Murray left the group. After all, no-one had left for a while, and Neil didn't want this bi-annual ritual to fall into disuse...also, he had been offered a gig with Whitesnake, a rock band who went on to become enormously popular (much to our surprise). Luckily, we were able to replace him speedily with John Greaves, an old mate from the good old days at Virgin Records when Henry Cow and Hatfield & The North were on the label, before the terrifying Night of the Accountants (Wankernacht) when smart young men in suits ran amok through Virgin's roster, smashing and burning anything tainted with the forbidden, word MUSIC.
[ 35 ] John, having spent a portion of his youth playing bass in his dad's show band, could read music. Oh joy, oh bliss. He actually sight read parts of Tenemos Roads while listening to a cassette of the tune, which pleased me no end. After a few gigs in Belgium which acclimatized him musically & socially (we got through about 8,000 bottles of wine) we set off on our most intensive touring period ever.
[ 36 ] First we toured France for the whole of March, which was great. By now we had reverted to the old Hatfield democratic style of everyone contributing compositions, so we played Dreams Wide Awake by Phil Miller, Twins & Trios by John Greaves, and Pip's song about T.V. boredom A Legend in His Own Lunchtime, later retitled Binoculars to avoid some obscure copyright problem. We were still playing Tenemos Roads & Borogoves, and had recently mastered The Collapso, which we played with great verve, huge volume and occasional accuracy.
[ 37 ] A certain theatricality began to creep into our stage presentation during this tour, perhaps because of the prolonged exposure to excitable Gallic audiences. Normally slightly shy of microphones, I found myself increasingly eager to address the crowd in my appalling French, turning short announcements into long, crazed anecdotes that nobody understood. We introduced a spot in the show called The Unconventional Musician Of The Year Competition' in which Pip, John and myself would vie with each other to play our instruments in the most ludicrous manner. (Phil was exempted because his basic playing style was so eccentric anyway). Pip would pour bags of marbles over his cymbals; John would attempt to eat his bass guitar; I would climb up on top of my Hammond organ and walk around all over my keyboards. I went off this competition a bit when John got a touch over-exuberant one night during his zany contribution and smashed my plug board with his bass.
[ 38 ] The French have a fine old tradition of trying to get into gigs without paying. Some of them regard rock music as The People's Music, which should be free like running water or oxygen. This is a fine theory, but disregards economic realities like the price of Hi-watt amps and cost of British Rail car ferry tickets. It's also a promoter's nightmare - halfway through the gig, 50 people in leather jackets who have been lurking around outside will suddenly attempt to shoulder past the people at the door without the necessary exchange of francs. Lots of shouting, arm-waving and sometimes fisticuffs ensue, usually in the middle of a really quiet number. This, coupled with the inevitable confrontation in the afternoon when the band's fierce Glaswegian road manager points out that the wavering electricity supply is about 100 volts short of the contracted minimum, tends to get French promoters a little jittery when show time comes around.
[ 39 ] One has to feel sympathy, then, for the woman who promoted one of the gigs on this tour. It was in a small French town not particularly near anywhere, whose complete lack of posters did not bode well for a huge attendance. This didn't bother John Greaves, however - he'd spent much of the previous night in silent communion with a bottle of Schnapps and was still unconscious in the back of the car. We presumed he'd come round by show time, but he woke up (as people so often do) seconds after the last piece of heavy equipment had been carried into the hall. There was no sign of the promoter, so we started our soundcheck. But first, John had to deal with a mysterious physical phenomenon - whether real or imagined, I'm not sure to this day - that was disturbing him. He became increasingly agitated, and finally, with a shout of "What's that terrible smell?" began to undress, much to the band and road crew's amusement.
[ 40 ] I am a hardened enough veteran not to be particularly disturbed when one of my band starts tearing his trousers off at a soundcheck, in fact most days I probably wouldn't even notice. Unhappily though, the lady promoter (a young, extremely nervous girl wearing lots of make-up) walked into the hall at this point to find John standing naked on stage wildly sniffing his clothes, while the rest of us guffawed and jeered. She'd been sitting in a back office plucking up the courage to come out and meet le group Anglais, and this was not the ideal introduction. Her worst fears were not calmed by our well meaning, smiling attempts to translate 'terrible smell' into French, but someone carted John off to the public baths and the crisis was averted. We soundchecked (something of an anticlimax after John's performance - why couldn't he have saved it for the Unconventional Musician spot?) and retired to the dressing room to find clean teeshirts and await our audience.
[ 41 ] No-one came. The doors opened at 8:00, but there was nobody outside. By 8:15, 6 or 7 people came in, but they weren't coming too near the stage in case we suddenly appeared and outnumbered them. Come 8:30, another 4 or 5 had shown up, and they milled around uneasily, trying to look like a crowd. We were right about the posters - this was going to be a fiasco. We tried to interest the promoter, who was now chain-smoking and glaring angrily at the empty seats, in the idea of abandoning the gig and going off somewhere and having a meal with the audience instead, but she insisted that we had to play or she wouldn't pay us. Not fancying our chances in a court case where the Terrible Smell episode would no doubt be brought up as circumstantial evidence against us, we resigned ourselves to a miserable evening rocking and rolling in front of 12 embarrassed French people. But before embarking on this tedious ritual, we figured we'd have a quick look around to see if any other potential audiophiles could be enlisted.
[ 42 ] We were not particularly surprised to find about 20 people standing outside, presumably waiting for their opportunity to barge into the hall free of charge.
[ 43 ] "We are National Health," we greeted them. "Why don't you come inside?" They looked unconvinced. Who were these guys speaking really bad French? One surly youth finally answered, "It is too expensive. Are you Mike Ratledge?"
[ 44 ] "No, I'm not - look, how much do you reckon it's worth to get in?" "Quoi?"
[ 45 ] "If we let you come in for 20 francs, will you pay?"
[ 46 ] There was a general murmur of agreement, and a shuffling of feet towards the door. Suddenly, a big coach came roaring round the corner and screeched to a halt in front of the hall. 80 or so people spilled out of it, and the first group shouted out to them, "Let's go in! It's only 20 francs!"
[ 47 ] The whole lot of them then pushed past us to get into the cheapest gig within 300 miles, leaving us standing out in the street bemused & dazed. After that, the promoter refused to speak to us any more.
[ 48 ] Coming back to England after this delightful craziness was a bit of a bringdown, but we'd arranged to play the support slot on Steve Hillage's spring tour of the U.K. (April/May 1978). This turned out to be a financial disaster for us - we had to pay to get on the tour, but convinced Charly Records to advance us the money, reckoning the exposure would help sales of our album. The reverse was true - the album was selling pretty well until we started the tour, but as soon as we did the first date, sales miraculously stopped dead. Moral to young bands: Don't do what we did. It works much better if people pay you to play.
[ 49 ] Though the tour with Steve had its dreary aspects, (majority of audience in bar when we came on; psychotic bouncers at great venues like Portsmouth Top Rank Suite determined to give us a hard time; only being allowed use of some of the lights because we weren't the top band) it had the advantage of enabling us to sharpen up our material, and as soon as the tour was over we began plans to record our second album. The Mobile Mobile was now immobilized at Ridge Farm Studios, then a rehearsal room, and after a few glib promises of payment to Mike Dunne we slipped in and began recording Of Queues and Cures.
[ 50 ] Not all the material on this album was rehearsed: Squarer for Maud was more or less written in the studio, a process which made me uneasy at the time but which was totally vindicated by the magnificent final result. Most of the other tunes were laid down pretty quickly - I think we did The Collapso in one or two takes, with no stops. As Ridge Farm was situated in a beautiful rural area in Surrey and it was a hot summer, we did a fair bit of recording outside in the open air. Most of Georgie Born's cello overdubs were recorded on the lawn outside the studio, and if you solo her track on the master tape you can hear planes flying overhead.
[ 51 ] As it says on the liner notes of Of Queues..., we were so pleased by Georgie's contribution to the album we asked her to join the band, along with her ex-Henry Cow colleague Lindsay Cooper, who played woodwinds & sax. I was very pleased with the second album, which had the great advantage (unlike the first) of being recorded when the material was fairly fresh, yet well rehearsed - a hard combination to achieve. However, paradoxically enough it was at this time that I began to lose my faith with the band, and before too long I was to leave.
[ 52 ] Towards the end of '78 we did some very promising rehearsals with Georgie and Lindsay, supposedly to prepare for a tour of France & Italy. Some of the stuff we did was great, including part of a Lindsay Cooper piece called Half The Sky (originally recorded by the Art Bears) which I loved. But, as I saw it, an element of musical anarchy began to creep in, which I perceived as destructive. The band was really keen to play at least some 'free' music, which I've never liked - it all sounds the same to me, and in my opinion is more riddled with cliches than other, more strictly organized forms. Then there was the strong feeling that everyone should write something for the band, and the band should play it as a matter of principle - I alone wanted right of censorship or refusal, having a strong idea of what I felt National Health should sound like. Rightly or wrongly, I felt it was my band, and I wanted a lot of control over the noise it made.
[ 53 ] The final straw was none of these potentially solvable musical problems, but an argument about organization. A couple of weeks before the tour was due to begin, I heard from the agent that half the dates had fallen through. This was nothing new, and the dates were probably imaginary anyway, but the financial effects were disastrous. It meant that we could only afford to take one roadie, who would have to double as sound man, and no lighting equipment. Pissed off at the agent and the world in general for making it so bloody difficult to keep this band going, I voted to call off the remaining dates and find ourselves another agent...but here again I found myself a minority of one. The others wanted to go.
[ 54 ] When you're really in love with a band and its music, you will go anywhere and do anything for the chance to play. In Egg I used to sometimes travel to gigs lying across my organ pedals in the back of the van - we once drove 400 miles to play a gig for J25 in a venue called the Dead End Club (attractive name, eh?) Earlier in the Health's career, we would quite happily go for 2 or 3 days without sleep to get to a European gig without incurring hotel bills. But for me, the affair was over. I quit. I just didn't think it would ever get any better.
[ 55 ] There were some angry words wafted in my general direction which I returned with interest, but nothing of any lasting significance. The worst thing was that Georgie and Lindsay had done about a month's work for nothing, and we never got to show off the fruits of those rehearsals. Oh well... I guess finally it was O.K. for me to leave my own band, because after all, everybody else had!
[ 56 ] I did one last gig with the Health in January 1979 on a TV show called The Old Grey Whistle Test' (who names these things?). The show had been booked for months and it would have looked bad if I'd not done it. We did an extremely approximate version of The Collapso, during the introduction of which John finally clinched the Unconventional Musician All-comers Cup by hurling a box of cutlery across the stage. Pip & I were too stunned to put up a challenge. Of Queues & Cures was released in January by Charly Records, and the band set out to find a replacement for me. This proved fairly easy - Alan Gowen was ready to get involved again, and by February the new quartet (sans Lindsay & Georgie) had a new set rehearsed and was ready to tour Europe and Scandinavia once again. Quick work.
[ 57 ] Talking to the roadies about this tour when they came back a month later, I was kind of glad to have missed it. Apparently they drove from Helsinki to Barcelona (a drive no sane mind could contemplate) just to do one gig, were treated like scum in Scandinavia, misbooked into discos, and had equipment stolen from a dingy club in Paris. Sounds like loads of fun. I, meanwhile, was penniless and back on the hated lead sheets (Virgin were now releasing a lot of reggae albums, impossible to write out) but somehow sensed I had done the right thing in leaving.
[ 58 ] As it turned out, the Health's days were numbered, but there was one last mountain to climb - AMERICA. The band had never made it to the U.S.A., but had a strong cult following over there bordering on the maniacal. I only became fully aware of the depths of these lunatics' devotion when I went there in summer 1979 with Bill Bruford. At every show, people would scream out "Tenemos Roads!" and "Paracelsus!", as if expecting us to drop our set and suddenly launch into a 4 year-old Mont Campbell composition. One guy came up to me after a gig and said, "Uh...is it true that Pip Pyle is, uh...entirely made of metal?" Jesus. I assured him that this was in fact absolutely true, Pip was made of zinc alloy due to a childhood accident at a steelworks, and he went away looking satisfied.
[ 59 ] Given the almost mythological status of the band, it was relatively easy for me to cobble together half a dozen contacts who could work on fixing up a small U.S. tour for them. To my delight, this became reality towards the end of the year. Though Pip had to practically sell his children into slavery to raise the money for the fares, and as usual, half the dates fell through at the last moment, I was proud to see them go off in November 1979 to "go down a storm in the States," as we used to say. Give them hell, lads.
[ 60 ] It would seem that no quarter was asked, and none given in the Health's last lunge at the big time. Readers of tender sensibilities will thank me for not revealing the full details of the merry-making, but I understand that the Man of Zinc and his 3 trusty cohorts managed to severely deplete the country's alcohol reserves and play a lot of good music into the bargain. Towards the end of the tour, a little short of material, they were encoring with a berserk version of the Rolling Stones Walk The Dog. I wish I'd been there - I like that tune.
[ 61 ] It remained to see out the decade, and do one more tour of Scandinavia in May 1980, though why they would want to go back there beats me. Afterwards, that was it - Alan had had enough, for good this time, and in March he split, closely followed by the band. Pip & John both had other musical projects by this time, and Phil - the only original member who NEVER LEFT - had been in the band for nearly 5 years. I hereby award him the D.S. gold medal for group loyalty - it's 1990 now, and he & Pip are still playing together. What of the others? Amanda Parsons works for a television company, Mont Campbell was planning to go off around the world recording folk music the last time I spoke to him, John Greaves now lives in Paris and is working on solo projects, and Neil Murray is currently on tour with Black Sabbath. I'm serious!
[ 62 ] I wasn't looking forward to writing this bit, but in May 1981 Alan Gowen died of leukemia. His death shook us all up, and in the weeks that followed we got the band back together to play a small gig. Ostensibly it was to raise money for the funeral, that kind of thing, but it became something more. We played some unreleased material of Alan's, pieces he'd carefully arranged & notated but never recorded. It seemed natural to go on and record an L.P. of this stuff, as it all sounded so good. In October 1981, with financing from Jean Pierre Weiller, (an old friend of Alan and his wife Celia) we recorded D.S. Al Coda, a memorial to Alan and his music. We took the liberty of adding "by National Health" to attract our small but devoted band of admirers - such as yourself, oh good & kind reader. Thanks for your support over the years.
[ 63 ] So it was that National Health, an extremely unconventional rock and roll band named after a pair of spectacles, somehow got to record the 3 L.P.'s which are now immortalized on these discs in the form of lots of little digital numbers. That's about it, except to thank the people who helped this music to get heard - and there aren't too many of them.
[ 64 ] GIGS
Richard Hermitage
Henk Weltevreden
Jean-Marie Sanzey
Jules Frutos
Brigitte Leman
Tapio Korjus
Rick Chafen
Yolande Rubiales
Jordi Garcia
[ 65 ] RECORDS
Mike Dunne
Joop Visser
Jean LucYoung
Phillip Page
Charles Summers
Jean Pierre Weiller-Letourneur
Robert Simonds

[ 66 ] SUPPORTIVE JOURNALISM
Chris Welch
Phil Sutcliffe
Steve Lake
Russ Summers
[ 67 ] Dave Stewart, London, Oct. '89