What Was So Incredible About the Incredible String Band? – PopMatters

Ididntdiscoveruntilafter a long while following the career of the Incredible String Band that the members of thisEdinburgh-basedScottish groupdidnt choose their name because they set out from the start to forge a reputation for original and amazing music, but simply because theyperformed regularlyat the Incredible Folk Club in Glasgow in the mid-1960s.I see why I was mistaken.Whether or not one liked them, it was soon clear that they were doing something new in popular music. The Beatles declared their admiration, as (surprisingly) did the Rolling Stonesand Led Zeppelin:all threebands were influenced by them, and their musical experimentation was inspired by the Incredible String Band.Later(and even more surprisingly),Neil Tennant ofthePetShop Boys and David Bowie both sang their praises.

Their reputation stands or falls based on their four first albums. Each is worth serious attention. True, there are impressive songs on later albums, but as the band changed its form and its focus, it never quite captured the magic of their early work.

Their first album largely consisted of music in the recognisable folk idiom.However, their three members Robin Williamson, Mike Heron, and Clive Palmer demonstrated their skill with various instrumentsand showed a flair for lyricaloriginality. An outstanding trackwas Williamsons October Song, which drew the attention of Bob Dylan, who rated it highly. Here the vocal delivery(to be maintainedthroughoutlaterwork)is that of a Celtic bard or even Druid priest rather than the average folk-club performer, and the lyrics exploreamystical dimension.

There isserenityinthis verse: The fallen leaves that jewel the ground / They know the art of dying / And leave with joy their glad gold hearts / In the scarlet shadows lying.There isaudacityinthis: For rulers like to lay down laws / And rebels like to break them / And the poor priests like to walk in chains / And God likes to forsake them. It was obvious that here was a new voice, a new perspective conveying both a love of nature and ataste for metaphysics.If Gram Parsonswas soon to proclaim that he wasforging a cosmic American music, the the Incredible String Bandhad alreadyforgeda cosmic British music.

Mike Herons contributions to the albummight best be described asenchanting, and in one or two cases, they address the theme of enchantment. The Tree is representative in its concern with how the adult all too often experiences a fall from the grace of childhood. The song affirms the power of nature to heal the fallen soul. I had a tree in the dream hills where my childhood lay, and there the sun was shining brightly and the sky was smiling.Thencame the fall, when theworld had put me in its tomb. Only by returning to the tree and letting his mind be shrouded inits green leavescouldhebe reborn.Essentially, this is a song celebrating pantheism, a recurrent theme in the Incredible String Bands oeuvre.

No sooner had the firstalbum been released than thebandtemporarilybroke up, with Palmer wanting to pursue a more traditional folk format and Williamsongoing offtravelling in search of musical sounds that might inspire himto even more adventurous music.When he returned, he brought various instruments from foreign lands: Afghanistan, Morocco, and Bulgaria. He and Heronbeingthe only membersnow, the Incredible String Band was re-launched with a strikingly alternative quality. Their second albumwas soon to belauded as one of the definitive musical works of the 60s being singled out for praise by Paul McCartney.As for the intriguing title: my hunch is that it is meant to suggest aspiritualmystery running deep through the natural world though there are those who claim its simply a cosmic joke.

Its opening track,Mike Herons Chinese White,is certainly one of the most unusual compositions of the time thanks not only to the audacious instrumentation but also to the imaginative lyrics: The bent twig of darkness / Grows the petals of the morning; / It shows to them the birds singing / Just behind the dawning. Apprehensions of old age and death follow, but they areresolvedin the chorus with speculation about rainbows and Christmas trees.Somehow, it works

In the album, both Heron and Williamson explore diverse forms of mysticism without any impression of merely dabbling.However, were not presented with asuperficialeclecticism. One particularly striking song has some very dark riddling fromWilliamson:I am the question that cannot be answered,/ I am the lover that cannot be lost,/ Yet small are the gifts of my servant the soldier,/ For time is my offspring:pray, what is my name? The answeris given in the titleMy Name Is Death and isareminder of somethinghuman beings find so hard to accept, unlike those graceful leaves mentioned in October Song.

If this was hippie music, it was more than a drug-fuelled diversion. However we judge the Incredible String Band, ithas always beena very hard phenomenon to pin down.Commentators have come to identify it as psychedelic folk.Certainly, the Incredible String Band pioneered that genre. More broadly, Heron and Williamson effectivelypioneeredwhat we now callworld music: rather than trying toturn Indian, East European, Arabic, or Celtic sounds into three-minute hit wonders, they allowed their influences lots of room to breathe while they drew on them at daringly experimental length.

A strangely impressive track on the same album isThe Mad Hatters Song. Like the Beatles I am the Walrus,itis indebted to the nonsense writing of Lewis Carroll. Here the idea of the song is to use the paradox and hyperbole of theAlice in Wonderlandbooks to invite the listener toward a moment of revelation.The dominant civilisation, based on materialism, is rejectedas a source of insanity: Within the ruined factory is the normal soul insane. The aim is the beatific vision, which is here figured in explicitly Zen imagery: I am the archer, and my eyes yearn after the unsullied sight, / Born of the dark waters of the daughters of night, / Dancing without movement after the clear light. / In the rumbling and trundling rickshaw of time / Hooked by the heart to the kingfishers line, / I will set my one eye for the shores of the blind. Profane time and space may be transformed into sacred time and space by virtue of apprehension of natural beauty and an overcoming of false duality.

Not all the tracks on the album are quite so experimental. Herons contribution includes songs of childlike charm: The Hedgehog Song, for instance, posits that humble animals have a great deal to teach despondent humans: I can see by the sadness in your eyes that you never quite learned the song. Again,You Know What You Could Be is unashamedly uplifting.Itclearly communicates how we too often choose to live and how we can change. Listen to the song of life rather than limit yourself to what you read about life:It gurgles through the timeless glade / In quartertones of lightning. / No policy is up for sale / In case the truth be frightening.Curious images of nature turn out to be oddly reassuring.

The third albumhas atitleequally intriguingas the second one. I think it is meant to signify life coming out of death a recurrent preoccupation of the Incredible String Band. Musically and lyrically,the albumis so diverse that its hard to recall that this album is the creation of two young Scottish folksingers,aided by the traditional folk musicians Shirley and Dolly Collins.Instruments include guitar, gimbri, whistle, pan pipe, piano, oud, mandolin, sitar, organ, dulcimer, harpsichord, and harp.

The words that accompany the weird and wonderful sounds are unforgettable. Heres a distillation of the story of Eden from the Book of Genesis in terms of the Buddhist teaching of the illusory nature of the ego: Earth water fire and air / Met together in a garden fair,/ Put in a basket bound with skin:/ If you answer this riddle / Youll never begin.The riddle suggests Zen Buddhism specifically the master posing akoanto test the sharpness of the monks insight.

The four linesform the chorus of the opening trackby Williamson,Koeeoaddi There (a titlederived from numerology). It consists of a sequence of recollections, mainly of childhood, each one opening out into mystical speculation.The natural world is celebrated as asource of spiritual reflection: The natural cards revolve, ever-changing:/ Seeded elsewhere, planted in the garden fair./ Grow trees, grow trees:/ Tongues of the sheer wind./ Setting your foot where the sand is untrodden:/The ocean that only begins.

Along with this organic flow of thoughts, the music seems to develop spontaneously, moving in accordance with the mood. Whatever ones response to this kind of composition, it certainly supports the case for the total originality of the Incredible String Band. In effect, itredefined what a pop song could be. Hereafter, there are no artificial limits to what could be said and how it might sound.

Heron provided his own long, reflective contribution to the album: A Very Cellular Song. The Incredible String Band have rightly been hailed as prophets of pantheistic mysticism, and that is certainly demonstrated here.He takes us deeper into the natural world, right down to the level of the amoeba. Nature is permeated by spirit, and the music is so intriguing and affecting that you spontaneously grasp its meaning.

The musicalambitionis remarkable, with various instruments deployedharpsichord, and pan pipes in particular.The Bible and a Bahaman spiritual (I Bid You Goodnight) are invoked. Nobody listening to this song would think that the Incredible String Bands mysticism was confined to Indian religion. All opportunities for spiritual uplift are taken. As with the opening song, the music follows its organic path, as does the lyric. Lasting nearly a quarter of an hour, this Cellular Song offers an imaginative journey that is still exceptional in popular music. From childhood memories to the science of bodily being and the power of the sacred Word, all brought to resolution by an affirmation of the healing power of nature: that is a remarkableprogressionindeed. Herons final refrain is a powerfully effective way of bringing the song to spiritual fruition: May the long-time sun shine upon you, /All love surround you, /And the pure light within you/Guide you all the way on.

Asongthat is immediately engagingbut encourages speculation is WilliamsonsThree Is a Green Crown. It demonstrates how deeply this Scottish band was immersed in Celtic religion. The title suggests the ancient goddess, who some scholars believe to have taken the tripleform ofyouth, maturity, and age.The chorus celebrates her power: For all that is moving is moved by her hands:/ She is mirrored forever in the life of the lands,/ In the building of thoughts, in the shifting of sands. This celebration merges with the celebration of the natural world in all its diversity: Let the cracked crystal raindrop be merged in the sea,/ Silent, shining, thoughtless, free./ But close your eyes to find the golden flower / And open them to see the sunshine shower,/ Where the flowers are free and the fishes ask / Ah, what can water be? The music is insistent, and the meaning is clear, despite the playful paradox.

Celtic, Chistian,Hindu, Buddhist:the range of references in their music is remarkable.Just as they were pioneers of world music, so too were the Incredible String Band pioneers in their exploration ofwhat we now callworld religion.

Later in the same year asHangmancamethisdouble album.Here the Incredible String Band is augmentedboth vocally and musicallybyWilliamsons partner Christina (Licorice) McKechnie and byHerons partner Rose Simpson. The Scottish origin of the band is evidentin theidiom of thetitle.Wee Tam is the humble individual gazing up at The Big Huge, the vastness of the universe.

One of the most powerful invitations to ponder the infinite is Maya byWilliamson.The wordmayainVedanta is usually defined asthe sense-world of manifold phenomenawhichconcealsthe unity of absolute being: in other words, illusion. Instead of realising that all opposite entities in this sphere of existence are aspects of cosmic unity, they are taken as permanent and immutable. What is often forgotten is that once one awakens to what is going on, it becomes possible to enjoywhat Alan Watts callsthecreative power or magic show by which Brahman manifests itself. This is certainly how Willamson uses the term.Invoking both the Upanishads and Shakespeare,Williamsonfeels movedto proclaim: All this world is but a play / Be thou the joyful player.

The song moves through several phases, one, in particular, outlining the sort of life one who has understood the nature of the cosmic game might live, culminating in this affirmation: God is his soul,/ Infinity his goal,/ The mystery his source / And civilisation he leaves behind./ Opinions are his fingernails.One has to concede that thelyrical audacityis even more impressive than previously.

With Jobs Tears, Williamson shifts attention from Hindu cosmologyto the Judeo-Christianreligion.The song might be seen asa meditation on the nature of suffering, as presented in the Bible.We think ofJob,tormented physically and spirituallydue toSatans wager with God.We think of Jesus,proclaiming a new kingdom but finallycrucified by the Roman authorities as a criminal and a troublemaker, memorably crying out from the cross, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

One link betweenJobandJesus, besides their suffering, is that they could be seen as representatives of patriarchal religion, rejectingthe natural cycle celebrated in the matriarchal religion that it sought to replace.However, while the song focuses exclusively on Jesus, he is here largely identified with a kind of folklore Christianity rather than that espoused in the Gospels. Hisvoluntarysacrifice takes placeon the cross of the earth, representing the natural cycle. Reason condemned him, butThe grave was empty where they had laid him: not with any suggestion of being raised to heaven but reminding us of the power of the great goddess of fertilityas opposed to patriarchal rationality.

As Jobs Tears states at the beginning: Were all still here: / No one has gone away and I hear my mother calling suggestive of eternal return. This is endorsed when the singer later declares: Oh, I remember it all from before.What does he remember? Why heroes die at sunrise,/ Why the birds are arrows of the wise,/ Why each perfumed flower,/ Why each moment has its hour. It all is due to an unidentified spiritual force addressed simply as you; moreover, its all true. The wisdom to be gleaned is simple: Stranger than that, were alive.

When the song addresses the theme of salvation, Williamson opts for the body of Bahaman spirituals that Heron had drawn from in A Very Cellular Song. This is folk Christianity,not abstract theology. Here threeBahamansources are identifiable: We Will Understand It Better By and By; Wont That Be a Happy Time(Over yonder in that fair and sunny clime); and Sheep Know When Thy Shepherd Calling (John saw a golden angel with a crown with a book in his hand).

Compare Jobs Tears:Well understand it better in the sweet bye and bye:/ All will be one, all will be one,/ You wont need to worry and you wont have to cry / Over in the old golden land. In the golden book of the golden game / The golden angel wrote my name./ When the deal goes down Ill put on my crown / Over in the old golden land.(I am here indebted to Raymond Greenoakens reading of the song in Adrian WhittakersBe Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium.)

The old golden land is Biblical, but in this song,the promise is already fulfilled in the folk imagination. Though the singer refers to the future, the song is a celebration of the earth we know, which is in full glory.

Remarkable as Maya and Jobs Tears are, HeronsDouglas Traherne Hardingis equallyambitious, informed as it is by Christianity, Zen Buddhism, and pantheism.Heron invokes two mystics, one from the 17th century and one from the 20th, with added support from the Gospels. It is a bold synthesis, but he carries it off with intriguing, slightly disorienting music that defies Western conventions.(To my untutored ear, it is reminiscent of Bulgarian folk music.)

Thomas Traherne is the author ofCenturies of Meditations(1699), which includes the following reflection: You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars. In being at one with nature, we are at one withthe divine: that is, the One.

Douglas Hardingis theauthor ofOn Having No Head(1961), an account of a Zen-like awakening that he experienced. Suddenly, where he thought he had a head an ego, a fixed centre of perception and conception he had rather a state of selfless awareness: there was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world. This, in turn, may remind us that Jesus famously declared: The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Matthew 6:22).

Impressively, Heron manages to make a coherent song out of this diverse material. It culminates in the invitation to the listener: But if youre walking down the street/ Why dont you look down to the basement?/ For sitting very quietlythere is a man who has no head:/ His eye is single and his whole body also is filled with light. This is effectively an invitation to awaken to the profane worlds sacred dimension, which may manifest in the most unlikely places.

The basement detail perhaps echoesJackKerouacsThe Subterraneans. The image of headlessness specifically comes from Harding but also confirms the Zen ideal of spontaneously losing all sense of separation. Such an awakening brings an awareness of the perennial philosophy, that mystical wisdom which lies buried in all the major religions (One light), as evinced by the allusion to Jesus words. To complete the picture, the song ends with an a cappella rendition of the words of Traherne quoted above. This is the beatific vision, not only articulated but placed in the perspective of the visionary tradition.

The final song is Williamsons The Circle Is Unbroken, his riposte to that old, other-worldly hymn Will The Circle Be Unbroken? He memorably declares that Seasons they change but with gaze unchanging, invokingthe rhythm of the natural cycle to demonstrate the dialectic of permanence and possibility that underlies everything. Similarly, past and future are reconciled in the quest for that which is always:Come let us build the ship of the future / In an ancient pattern that journeys far./ Come let us set sail for the always island / Through seas of leaving to the summer stars.

Musically, the song is understated: an organ and an Irish harp create a sense of serenity.The mysticism is closer to folk wisdom than to religious doctrine. The singer addressesthedeep eyed sisters who presumably represent Celtic matriarchy: Within your fingers the fates are spinning/The sacred binding of the yellow grain./Scattered we were when the long night was breaking/But in bright morning converse again.

Such lines are as memorable as any poem: they could even be read as a reply to Sailing to Byzantium,inwhichYeats expresses his desire to transcend the natural cycle and attain the eternity of artifice: Once out of nature I shall never take/My bodily form from any natural thing,/But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make/Of hammered gold and gold enamelling/To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;/Or set upon a golden bough to sing/To lords and ladies of Byzantium/Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

That may be a bold claim for a song on an album by a band often referredtodismissively as a passing hippie phenomenon. I hope to have shown here thatitswork merits serious attention, both lyrically and musically. In doing so, Ivemade the case that the Incredible String Band was incredible.

Ahumble Scottish folk groupgreatly influenced some major pop artists.It played a key rolein the development of world music,anditdemonstrated theimportance ofworld religion. Pantheism informed its mysticism, anditscelebration of the natural worldremainsconsistent and convincing.

Ultimately, though, what is most incredibleabout the Incredible String Band is that20 years ago,thethenArchbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, was moved to endorseits achievementin print (as the foreword to Whittakers aforementioned 2003 book,Be Glad). This in itself is one of the mostremarkabledocuments in church history.Asking himself first what the function of poetry is, Williamsproposesfour of its tasks thefirst twoof whichare the most relevant to our discussion. Firstly: It should take us into the realm of myth that is, of the stories andsymbols that lie so deep you cant work out who are the authors of them, the stories that give points of reference for plotting your way in the inner and outer world.Secondly: Its meant to celebrate; to clothe ordinary experience with extraordinary words so that we see the radiance in the ordinary, whether it in landscape or in love or whatever. He goes on:

Perhaps for a lot of us growing up in the late Sixties and earlySeventies, there was a gap in the heart where this very traditional bardic, even shamanic, sense of poetry was looking for expression; and the ISB did just that. Forget the clichs about psychedelic and hallucinogenic vagueness: this was work of extraordinary emotional clarity and metaphorical rigour an unusual combination.

For those of us who fell in love with the Incredible String Band, there was a feeling of breathing the air of a very expansive imagination indeed. Itwas simplyadiscovery of poetry; and as suchrisking the embarrassment that so regularly goes with my particular vocationId also have to say that it was a discoveryof the holy; not the solemn, not the saintly, but the holy, which makes you silent and sometimes makes you laugh and which above all makes the landscape different once and for all.

Theres nothing to add to that.

Works Cited

Whittaker (ed).Be Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium.Helter Skelter. 2003

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What Was So Incredible About the Incredible String Band? - PopMatters