Steve Hillage
“In many ways it’s the best band I’ve ever been in”
WHAT’S it been like “curating” Love From The Planet Gong?
We finally got the privilege of going through the complete Virgin Gong tape archive, and that’s what I was particularly involved in, going through the tapes and selecting what we’d use. There have been other Gong boxsets, but they’ve never had access to the Virgin archive. But now we’re finally putting the record straight – we’ve got the first proper CD release of Flying Teapot from the original masters on here.
You were a fan of Gong before you joined, weren’t you?
Yeah, I saw them as keeping the torch alive from the ’60s. It had all gone a bit funny at the end of the ’60s, beginning of the ’70s, and I was seeing Gong as a second wave of psychedelia. I was too young to be part of it in the mid-’60s, but obviously Daevid [Allen] and Gilli [Smyth] were right in it.
What was a normal day like in Voisines?
Ha ha! The time in Voisines was pretty chemically enhanced, so I think you’d put “normal” in inverted commas. Nothing was ever really normal! People would wake up at different times, go in the music room at different times. But at certain times everybody would be playing together, then we’d be going off doing gigs and having various adventures. We’d cook food, a lot of vegetarian stuff, though Gilli used to like meat. There was cheese, baguettes, we’d go down to Sens to the supermarket every so often and get supplies.
Eventually you were forced to leave France – what happened?
One of the reasons we had to leave was that we had a bust, which wasn’t all to do with drugs. In France they have what’s called the flying customs, who come and do customs inspections not at the border. They thought there was equipment that had come from the UK that hadn’t been properly documented. Everything got dealt with in a reasonably benign way, but the landlords didn’t want us to live there any longer. By that time Virgin were giving us their full backing, so we decided we’d move the whole operation to England. But it kinda lost something – when Gong was based in France there was something special. It took on a new aspect when it came to England. We found a house in Witney in Oxfordshire, which was quite near Manor Studios, so it was quite convenient. The writing sessions for You were mostly done at a cottage in Little Bedwyn, near Marlborough. We had some great creative moments there. It was first used by Robert Wyatt when he did his Rock Bottom record.
There’s such a mix of styles across Gong’s music. How did that come about?
It was just a natural thing. Daevid managed to put together a really interesting combination of people – he didn’t necessarily select them, but he created a beacon and people gravitated towards it. Daevid was never a leader, saying, “You’ve gotta do this, you’ve gotta do that”, and we wouldn’t have accepted that anyway. We were a rebellious bunch! Basically the band at that time was a bunch of very strong personalities who all had their own style – quite a combustible mix. You could say it was doomed to disintegrate because there were so many strong personalities involved, but while it was happening it was amazing.
Was the trilogy always designed as such?
I think it gradually evolved. I never thought of Flying Teapot as anything other than the next Gong album, which I was happy to be a part of as a new member. When we got to Angel’s Egg, I think Daevid started talking about it being part two of a trilogy, but it wasn’t a big deal. When we got to You, it was quite a big deal, in that these three albums were three peas in a pod. It kind of works, particularly because Angel’s Egg and You have the same lineup, a particularly good lineup. In many ways it’s the best band I’ve ever been in.
Judging by these live sets, there was a lot of improvisation going on.
No-one was telling anybody what to play, it just seemed to fall into place nicely. Sometimes it would fall apart. That was one of the faultlines of the group – some of us felt it should be more arranged, some of us felt it should be more improvised in a jazz way.
How did the band react to Daevid’s mythology?
We used to have debates about it. As far as I was concerned this was a central part of Gong; that was how it was when I joined the band, and I wouldn’t presume to wish to change it. [But] it was a subject of debate. I think Pierre Moerlen was the least keen.
According to the story, there’s only 13 years until Planet Gong appears…
too soon! Yep. And not a moment
What happened when Daevid Allen left in April 1975? Was it a surprise?
It was a big surprise. But it had been preceded by quite a few months of chaos and difficulty. I wasn’t expecting it to happen at all, though. It was really weird – we went on stage to do a gig, then everyone looked around: “Where’s Daevid?” And he’d scarpered [laughs]. He claimed that there was some force stopping him from going on stage. I can’t verify that!
Do you think he believed that, or do you think he was just being absurd?
Probably a bit of both. I will say that Gong was a pretty odd band, and we had a lot of odd things happening – that was probably was one of the oddest.
“The time in Voisines was pretty chemically enhanced. Nothing was ‘normal’. We’d be off having adventures”