Canterbury Music
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Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Stumpenhuson-Payne, Alan (2018) Popular Music in Canterbury Between 1965 and 1971 and Theories of Scene. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. DOI Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/82019/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Popular Music in Canterbury Between 1965 and 1971 and Theories of Scene Alan Stumpenhuson-Payne Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Music (Research), University of Kent, School of Music and Fine Art, July 2018 Total words: 80,121 Pages: 254 Abstract This thesis examines the phenomenon and lasting influence of what has come to be known as the Canterbury Scene. It argues that the Canterbury music scene is best understood through an investigation of the scale and diversity of live music in the city in the 1960s, the nostalgia and interest it still evokes and the sense of popular music heritage which it contains. It adds to the relatively small body of literature about the Scene by examining academic and theoretical writing on the subject and using this and other paradigm examples to cast further light on the relationship between the music and its perceived location. My original contribution to knowledge is a detailed account of the state of musical performance and the performative features in Canterbury between 1965 and 1971, in particular. Through this, an assessment of the importance of the music to the canon of progressive rock may be made, and new insight gained into the extent to which the Canterbury of fifty years ago might be said to have been the locus of a scene or, at least, have given some support to a network of musicians - albeit musicians in bands with little economic co-dependency. The work draws on first-hand accounts of the music making of the time as well as local media accounts, fan magazines and online materials and attention is paid both to the translocal nature of the scene and musicians for whom Canterbury and East Kent remained the geographical focus of the musical practices. 2 Acknowledgements I could never have contemplated undertaking a thesis of this nature at the start of my seventh decade without the support and friendship of many people. Dr Ben Curry, my supervisor, has provided outstanding and detailed academic guidance and given his time with overwhelming patience throughout and always when it was most needed. My debt to Ben for developing my skills and understanding throughout my doctorate is enormous. My second supervisor Professor Kevin Dawe and the staff of the University of Kent’s School of Music and Fine Art have given me the benefit of long experience and expertise and provided focus when it was frequently lacking. I acknowledge the goodwill and patience of my interview subjects, especially Brian Hopper a true Canterbury musician and outstandingly nice man. Professor Shane Blackman and Dr Asya Draganova of Christ Church University College, Canterbury, were kind enough and had enough confidence to allow me to present in a day conference on the Canterbury music scene. It is as a result of this and a meeting with Professor Andy Bennett that ideas from Chapter 3 of this thesis will be published as a chapter in Emerald Books’ The Canterbury Sound: People, Place and Myth during 2020. I am deeply grateful to my friends, and to the musicians with whom I meet and play, especially Sandra Skeffington, for keeping me grounded and providing relaxation. Suzanne Davies has kindly given much of her time to help me with presentation. 3 Finally, many thanks and much love to my mother, Joyce Hails, without whose support I would never have got this far. It is to her, in particular, that this work is dedicated. 4 Contents Introduction 7 Methodology 18 1 Introduction 18 2 Interviews 20 3 Archival Research 22 4 Literature Review 23 5 E-fieldwork 26 6 Participant Observation 28 7 Conclusion 29 Chapter 1 – Situating Progressive Rock 31 1.1 Origins and Precursors 31 1.2 San Francisco, the Counterculture and Psychedelia 34 1.3 Performances 37 1.4 Dissemination 41 1.5 Rock, the Counterculture and the United Kingdom 45 1.6 The Cultural Significance of Sgt Pepper and the Concept Album 58 1.7 Changes in Consumption 67 1.8 Conclusion 69 Chapter 2 – Conceiving Scene: theories, debates and practices 72 2.1 Introduction 72 2.2 The Nature of the Canterbury Scene 80 2.3 The Scene and the Sound 96 2.4 The Canterbury Brand 102 2.5 Conclusion 106 Chapter 3 – ‘Canterbury Music’ and Music in Canterbury 1965-1971 108 5 3.1 Introduction – Key Issues and Perspectives 108 3.2 The Early 1960s 115 3.3 1965-1967 123 3.4 The Bands 1968-1971 151 3.5 Conclusion 175 Chapter 4 – The Virtual Construction of the Canterbury Scene 179 4.1 Introduction 179 4.2 The Contemporary Mythscape 184 4.3 The Canterbury Music Fanzine Facelift 186 4.4 The Online Community 198 4.5 Canterbury Sound Podcasts 212 4.6 Conclusion 220 Chapter 5 – Conclusion 222 Bibliography and Appendices, including map 229 6 Introduction This thesis examines the phenomenon of what is often termed the Canterbury Scene. It seeks to position this example of local music making as an aspect of late twentieth-century cultural heritage and to examine the extent to which its legacy remains a field of interest.1 The study provides a rich opportunity to consider and evaluate an orthodoxy which seeks to locate Canterbury at the centre of a local, translocal, international and virtual web and to write comparatively about the bands which played within what was later established as the Canterbury cultural brand. The idea of a Canterbury sound needs to be questioned as both a local geographical phenomenon and musical style. The music is frequently perceived as being whimsical, keyboard-driven,2 drawn from the sensibilities of a small English cathedral city and a bucolic landscape and to have a creative basis in the work of a small number of local musicians who drew attention to their work by rapidly moving away from local venues, thereby building a more extensive network and attracting commercial deals which attracted a far wider audience. These are views examined throughout the thesis. I both acknowledge and share Andy Bennett’s point of view that any consideration of music and local identity must 1 It is Andy Bennett who argues forcefully in particular for popular music to be included as cultural heritage and that rock is ‘firmly embedded in the cultural memory of an ageing baby-boomer generation.’ (Bennett 2009: 477-8 and Bennett and Janssen 2016: 2). 2 Composer, saxophone virtuoso and Canterbury resident John Harle told me in an interview that ‘Soft Machine and Hatfield and the North seemed to cram all the jazz I liked into a popular music format and that, of course is what the Canterbury Scene was’ (Interview March 20 2017). He cites Hatfield’s jazz funk track ‘Overdub’, from The Rotters’ Club (1975) as an example of the sound. Different paradigms will be considered throughout the thesis. Gong’s bass player, Mike Howlett, considers the archetypal sound to be ‘basically Caravan and Hatfield, it was more intellectualised with clever time signatures.’ (Interview March 16 2016). Conversely, an academic viewpoint, and many views and perceptions of scene are included in the approach of this thesis, provides at least one foil to the idea of a sound by drawing attention to a different idea ‘People make music within communities without creating (or wanting to create) a distinct ‘local’ sound, but learn from and work with each other, sharing bills and practice venues, and even musicians and songs, not so much as a subculture, but simply as people who enjoy the same music.’ (Connell and Gibson 2003: 115). This viewpoint resonates particularly well with Canterbury music in the mid-1960s. 7 take proper account of the dynamic processes involved (Bennett 2000: 195). Academic frames of reference are sought throughout in order to focus the discussion. The research is topical and particularly relatable to contemporary printed and broadcast media which have recently sought to provide a climate in which to set an extended discussion of the state of musical performance and the performative features of Canterbury-based music. Media interest in progressive rock music has been significant recently. The story of progressive rock has recently been retold in a popular narrative form by David Weigel, a Washington Post reporter, who locates his narrative of the music as ‘a response to the throwaway three minute pop song’ (2017: 52) and includes biographical and musical detail of Canterbury practitioners. The 2015 film Romantic Warriors III embraces the zeitgeist of 1960s Canterbury, the importance of its physical landscape, its musical legacy and some topographical connections, but moves rapidly to the idea that the bands had to go abroad to find audiences.