HELLO GOODBYE
They began by building a new psychedelic world. But repression ended the dream.
Rose Simpson remembers her time in The Incredible String Band: “It was complete freedom!”
HELLO WINTER 1967
It wasn’t a case of joining the group, it was a lifestyle. How long was it from first setting eyes on them to actually living with them as my life? You could say it was the day that Robin [Williamson] came to see me, when I was studying in York, and then I came to London. I was already fairly cut off from mainstream society, so it was easy to fall into another free-floating life.
Robin and Mike [Heron] made a hell of an impression. They were the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen – they looked so fantastic, the way that they spoke, that ability to just pick up an instrument and sing and make music, it was so entirely different from anything I could imagine. I was quite a serious girl, I sort of lived through books – you know, with the sort of Jane Austen heroines that get carried off because they’d read about it in a gothic novel. I now tend to see myself a bit in that light. And Licorice [McKechnie] was amazing, a total enigma to me. I never had a discussion with Licorice in my life, and we were virtually living together for three years.
It was a new world. Suddenly there was all this possibility, where no one cared – you could do what you liked, you could wear bright colours, you could, I dunno, you didn’t have to wear socks and shoes. It was complete, total freedom. They blew my mind, the people, without the drugs, but of course, the drugs helped it on the way.
I was definitely and publicly a member of The Incredible String Band, playing music, at the Royal Albert Hall [June 29, 1968]: I genuinely did just wander on, because that’s what was happening. It was super-exciting. You play an instrument and sing, and everyone claps? No one told me what to do. And I was totally in love with Mike. It was the most amazing fun, like living in a kaleidoscope.
GOODBYE JANUARY 1971
I thought Scientology [which the group were introduced to in New York in 1968] was another new thing. We moved through them pretty fast, usually – we’d read Aleister Crowley, the Maharishi, did all the meditating, read about Buddhism and Dao, on a very superficial level, I’ve got to say. I couldn’t see what attracted them to it, why it was a good idea to move from a life that had been all about freedom and loveliness into something that looked like repression, repression, repression. Money doesn’t motivate me but I’m not that keen on giving it away either. I thought it was daft. But if you’re with people, you lose yourself in their ideas to some extent, particularly if you’re enjoying the lifestyle.
The last shows [in North America] were fun. Off-stage it was a bit stressy occasionally, but I think we all enjoyed that time on-stage. Though coming back from that tour was just not nice. It was that feeling that, somehow, I didn’t belong there any more. I’m sure we did all the things you do at Christmas, but very much without any joy in it.
It wasn’t a plan. I was intending to do the next tour. I can feel myself standing in my cottage in the Glen [their communal base in the Scottish Borders], and thinking, I can’t do it. I’ve got to go, I’m going. I just went, to London, and left all my stuff there. I suppose it might have been nice if we’d had a discussion, but maybe it was irretrievable.
I went to see them in Croydon 18 months later, which was weird. I felt I had to, to face it again. It didn’t feel quite real. I went backstage and it was peculiar. It was very polite – “Oh, hello,” “I enjoyed the gig,” “Thank you” – and you just got out as quick as you can. I never saw them perform as a band again.
It was like a dream, but wasn’t I lucky to have had it? All of it was a golden moment. It probably went very, very fast. We were trying to live a timeless life, and to some extent it worked. It never stopped being fun for me. If I could be on-stage with them tomorrow, I’d be there.
Rose Simpson’s memoir Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden: A Girl’s Life In The Incredible String Band is published by Strange Attractor Press.
“It was amazing fun, like living in a kaleidoscope.” ROSE SIMPSON