When the original LP by Synanthesia was released in the late sixties, the album cover gave no information about the band: sleeve notes had already become a thing of the past. Happily, the 2006 re-release on CD includes a little booklet which explains a little bit more about Synanthesia, how it came together, and what the group was trying to do.
The late sixties were a time of change in the pop music scene in England. The beat period of the early sixties, when a specifically English beat sound emerged to dominate pop music, came to a close. During the mid-sixties, after the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, itself the culmination of more original ideas flowing into the Beatles' music, flower power took over. This started a wealth of new groups (or as they started to be called, bands), some of whom departed from rock-and-roll and beat, some leaning more towards folk and jazz. At the time, this music became labelled "underground" or "progressive". Among the most successful at that time were bands such as Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, and King Crimson. Three-guitar-and-drums groups gave way to more varied instrumentation, with the introduction of wind instruments, especially sax and flute, and, to a lesser extent, strings.
London had become the centre of a new-style folk scene. Bob Dylan had introduced the idea of the singer-songwriter and inspired a whole range of this kind of artist in London, notably Bert Jansch (later to team up with John Renbourn in the acoustic band Pentangle) and another visitor from America, Paul Simon. The doors were open to music which was original, breaking away from the standard formulas of yesterday. Outstanding in originality was the Incredible String Band. Playing a multitude of instruments, the two musicians in that band, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, drew on all sorts of different traditions, from Scotland to Afghanistan. The music was poetic and romantic. In the sixties, we allowed ourselves to dream.
In 1968 I started working in the small ad section at Melody Maker, at that time London's leading music newspaper. The paper went to press on Tuesday and Monday mornings always saw a never-ending procession of people coming to the office to place last-minute ads, looking for gigs, musicians, etc. Like many bands at that time, Synanthesia came together through the small-ad columns of Melody Maker. Dennis Homes, who brought the three of us together, placed an unusually long advertisement under "Musicians Wanted". What was he looking for? A second guitarist and a flute-player. Unusually, he listed all his musical preferences. I noticed that he was living in the same unfashionable part of London as I was: the working-class East End. We met.
Dennis had already been in the music scene for quite some time, playing bass guitar in a soul band. He played me some of his original songs and I was struck by their complexity and unusual quality (and the fact that they had nothing to do with soul music). I remember him saying that he was interested in doing something really different. Only 18, I was then more or less a beginner on the guitar, but already had a distinct preference for acoustic fingerstyle playing. At that time the only things I could play, like many other players at that time, were songs I had learned listening to records (in those days the more interesting ones were harder to find and much more expensive!) and trying to work out what how the guitarist was getting his sound. I had also started to make up some songs of my own, initially very influenced by the style of Bert Jansch. In this I was inspired by Richard Carlton, a schoolfriend who taught me how to read music and who composed two of the tunes included on the Synanthesia LP.
The third member of the band was Jim Fraser. Jim was from the North of England and had just arrived in London. Unlike us, he was a jazzman through and through and had spent many a night blowing away in jazz sessions. He had an amazing gift for tasteful flute, sax and oboe improvisation around the tunes that Dennis and I played to him. With me on vocals and guitar, Dennis added his guitar or vibraphone, an instrument completely unheard of in "progressive" music. With Dennis on guitar and vocals, I accompanied on guitar or bongos and even ventured out on violin and mandolin.
We set out to be an acoustic band. We recorded a demo and Dennis hawked it around. This resulted in interest from an agency, Chrysalis (later to become a huge record label), and led on to gigs, mostly at colleges and universities. The setting in which we presented our music was not always the ideal one for us. Most of the other groups were amplified and loud. We played music which needed to be listened to: the aim was not to blow people over with a wall of sound. Still, it was an interesting experience.
After one concert, our agent told us that a guy was interested in recording us. The following Monday we were to go to a recording studio in Chelsea, a fashionable part of London. Another interesting experience. A visit to the toilet revealed a part of the studio with shelves stacked with master tapes by musicians I admired: the Incredible String Band, for example. I recall that at our second session (we only did two for the whole album!) we saw the gear that Fairport Convention had left lying around.
The album completed, we had to wait for its release. This proved more difficult. None of the record companies seemed to be interested. It was only after a long wait that we were signed up to RCA and the record came out. Unfortunately, RCA was not prepared to invest much in getting the public's attention. In those days, when the Home Service had recently been re-named Radio 1, local radio was in its infancy. Practically the only way of getting a hearing for our kind of music was by being invited to appear on Top Gear, John Peel's radio programme. We were not invited.
And so, the Synanthesia album flopped. The inevitable followed: we disbanded. It was impossible to keep on doing gigs in faraway towns and continue our day jobs. But we all needed the income from our day jobs.
Over the years, various friends reported that they had seen the Synanthesia LP on sale for 50p at Woolworth. It was only this year, 37 years later, that I suddenly heard the record was being sold on E-Bay for surprisingly large sums of money, that some time ago there had been a bad quality bootleg version, and that Sunbeam Records had been in touch with Dennis about a re-release. And that also, even more unexpectedly, one of the songs from our one and only album had been included on an anthology of British Folk music, called Anthems in Eden, on the Sanctuary label. This is very gratifying, especially in view of the fact that the other artists on that collection include many of those who influenced us.
One big plus about all this is that the three of us are now back in touch. Dennis tells me that up to the end of March 2006, the Synanthesia CD has already sold 632 copies. Not enough for platinum, but also not bad for a 37-year-old album.
by Les Cook, 2006
Tracks
1. Minerva - 4:15
2. Peek Strangely And Worried Evening (Les Cook) - 2:47
3. Morpheus - 5:51
4. Trafalgar Square (Les Cook, Richard Carlton) - 3:02
5. Fates - 2:02
6. The Tale Of The Spider And The Fly (Les Cook) - 5:58
7. Vesta - 4:45
8. Rolling And Tumbling (Les Cook, Richard Carlton) - 3:14
9. Mnemosyne - 5:20
10.Aurora - 3:50
11.Just As The Curtain Finally Falls (Les Cook) - 5:01
12.Shifting Sands - 3:12
Songs 1,3,5,7,9,10,12 written by Dennis Homes
Synanthesia
*Dennis Homes - Vibes, Guitar, Vocals
*Les Cook - Guitar, Bongos, Violin, Mandolin, Vocals
*Jim Fraser - Alto, Soprano Saxophone, Oboe, Alto, Nose, Concert Flute
