THE PROG INTERVIEW
Every month, we get inside some of the biggest names in prog. This issue, it’s John Greaves. The bassist joined Henry Cow in the autumn of 1969 and remained a constant in the band until his departure in ’76. He also played with National Health and Soft H
John Greaves joined the legendary Henry Cow while still at university and he’s also worked with National Health, Soft Heap and Peter Blegvad, as well as establishing his own solo career. Here he lifts the lid on his wonderful musical journey.
John Greaves grew up in Prestatyn in north Wales and his musical path might have taken a different direction had it not been for the death of a bass player in his father’s dance band, The Ray Irving Orchestra. At that point the 13-year-old Greaves had taken piano lessons and was able to read music, so his father bought him a bass guitar, telling him, “Bass is dead easy, you can learn this in a month.”
After this early musical education, Greaves declined his father’s offer of a permanent place in the band and instead went to Cambridge University in 1968, where he met the members of
Henry Cow and promptly joined the group. He also had stints with the Ottawa Music Company, a rock composer’s orchestra whose members included Steve Hillage, Mont Campbell and Dave Stewart of Egg.
Henry Cow signed to the nascent Virgin Records in
1973 and quickly established themselves as one of the most inventive, challenging and politically motivated groups of 70s progressive rock. They recorded Desperate Straights in 1974 with Slapp Happy, a trio of Dagmar Krause, Anthony Moore and Peter Blegvad. After recording In Praise Of Learning,
Greaves left Henry Cow in 1976 and teamed up with Blegvad to record the acclaimed Kew. Rhone.
in 1977. He enjoyed spells in National Health and, throughout the 80s, in Soft Heap.
Greaves’ later groups include The Lodge with Jakko Jakszyk and Anton Fier, and he still plays in the Peter Blegvad Trio. In recent years he’s played on Robert Wyatt’s 1974 album, Rock Bottom,
with the North Sea Radio Orchestra and vocalist Annie Barbazza, both in concert and on the 2019 release Folly Bololey.
He moved to
Paris in 1984 and established himself as a songwriter of rare invention on the albums Songs (1994), Chansons (2004) and most recently Life Size (2018). At the moment he has a number of releases in the pipeline.
How important was it for you playing in your father’s dance band?
It was absolutely important. It was the post-war generation meeting the beat music scene and not really knowing how to deal with it. We’d do dances where we’d begin and people were dancing around in their frilly frocks and their dress suits, and then Freddie And The Dreamers would come on.
By the time I was 15 or 16 I was doing arrangements of James Brown tunes and Otis Redding with the St Bernard Waltz, and the military two-step. It helped me have an open mind towards music and my father was very influential. He’d take us to the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and I saw Duke Ellington, Count
Basie and Woody Herman, and at the same time The Scaffold were playing in The Philharmonic, a pub across the road. It was a great time.
You joined Henry Cow as a teenager at Cambridge University in 1969. How did that come about?
I was a young innocent from north Wales suddenly in this wild and wacky world of Cambridge, which was like a Disneyland of academia. That was quite a shock. In the second year [guitarist]
Fred [Frith] walked into my room and asked me to join this band, Henry Cow. That was another pivotal moment – there are times when you see something or hear something and don’t understand what the fuck is going on but you know that you would like to be part of it.