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The voice on the opposite finish of the cellphone line was optimistic; enthusiastic, even. “I really feel nice. I’m clear. I’m off every thing and I’m trying ahead to getting again to work once more.”
It was Tuesday, Could 7, 1974, and Graham Bond was calling the NME workplace to thank them for just lately printing an previous photograph of his. Throughout a cordial change, the paper agreed to interview him within the subsequent few days, after which he hung up. There was nothing to recommend something amiss.
Twenty-four hours later, Bond was lifeless, crushed beneath the wheels of a Tube prepare at Finsbury Park station. It was two days earlier than the police have been in a position to determine the physique, after which solely from his fingerprints. He was 36. It was an odd, messy finish to an odd, unpredictable life.
In his mid-60s prime, Graham Bond was a real originator and one of many key figures on the British music scene. Because the driving power behind the Graham Bond Group, he dragged trad jazz out of its fusty confines and made it leap with heavy doses of blues and wailing R&B. A raft of expertise handed by the band on the way in which to higher success in Cream, Blind Faith, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Colosseum and elsewhere.
As an organist and alto sax blower, Bond was a primal power. He redefined the function of the keyboard throughout his time with the GBO, his vitality and outsized persona mirrored in his ferocious taking part in and the anguish of his uncooked singing voice. Cumbersome and, throughout his later years, bearded, he was a formidable presence.
“You wouldn’t miss him in a crowd,” says Jack Bruce, who shaped Cream with fellow GBO member Ginger Baker. “He was a vibrant character and a strong man.”
If Bond’s popularity is basically diminished as of late, his affect on his fellow musicians is plain. The likes of Rick Wakeman, Elton John, Steve Winwood and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord have been all indebted to each his musicianship and his showmanship.
“He taught me, palms on, most of what I do know concerning the Hammond organ,” stated Lord.
Bond’s pioneering spirit even marked him out as a harbinger of prog – witness his appropriation of classical music, most notably co-opting Bach for 1965’s Wade In The Water.
“Graham was vital to lots of people,” says Bruce. “He was a one-off. No one might play alto sax and Hammond on the similar time and get that unimaginable sound. The Group was an exceptional band. It was fairly primitive, however that was a part of the fantastic thing about it.”
However that is the place his legacy will get mangled. The nice enigma of Bond’s life and profession was that, regardless of packed homes and plaudits from fellow musicians, he by no means achieved both the celebrity or the riches his expertise deserved. By the point of his dying, Bond was lowered to the function of outsider artist, his inventory in tatters. The report business had lengthy given up on a troubled man liable to matches of erratic behaviour, trapped in an auto-destructive cycle of drug abuse and occultism.
“He was his personal worst enemy,” says drummer ‘Funky’ Paul Olsen, who performed with Bond in his remaining days. “He was supremely clever, however there was simply an excessive amount of occurring in his head.”
The turn-of-the-70s Bond was a world away from the one who gatecrashed the music fraternity a decade earlier. Initially a saxophonist, Bond had studied music on the Royal Liberty Faculty in London earlier than touchdown a job with the Goudie Charles Quintet. By 1961 he’d signed up with the Don Rendell New Quintet, the place his exuberant model and distinctive phrasing introduced him to the eye of the jazz press. Bond’s recorded debut got here on the Quintet’s album Roarin’, launched later that 12 months. In Melody Maker’s year-end jazz ballot, his prowess was such that he was voted second within the New Star class.
The next 12 months was a pivotal one. In addition to taking part in with Don Rendell, he additionally started gigging with the Johnny Burch Octet, a ‘finances huge band’ whose members included double-bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker and tenor sax participant Dick Heckstall-Smith.
“I first met him at one of many all-nighters on the Flamingo,” Bruce remembers. “Graham used to take a seat in with us. His look jogged my memory of Cannonball Adderley, and the depth simply astounding.”
By October 1962, Bond had graduated to Alexis Korner’s Blues Integrated, a hothouse for rising expertise. He doubled up on the sax by pumping out fats Hammond riffs by a Leslie speaker, brokering a brand new model of American-influenced R&B. Bond, Baker and Bruce, additionally within the line-up, started taking part in as a trio throughout intervals.
It’s not precisely clear simply when Bond determined to start out his personal band, though a visit to Manchester in February 1963 seems to have been a turning level. He’d secured a trio gig and travelled up in a employed black Dormobile camper van with Baker and Bruce. The viewers howled their appreciation of their wild, free-ranging strategy. Not lengthy after, Bond advised Korner he was breaking off on his personal, with Ginger and Jack in tow. It was typical of his single-minded bullishness that he by no means bothered to seek the advice of with these two first.
“I simply confirmed up for rehearsal in the future and Alexis was trying very glum and indignant,” Bruce remembers. “He wouldn’t discuss to me in any respect. Then I discovered that I’d resigned from the band! I used to be very naive in these days, only a child. I ought to’ve stated one thing, however simply went together with it. It was years earlier than Alexis started speaking to me once more.”
Three turned 4 when guitarist John McLaughlin joined from Georgie Fame’s band. The Graham Bond Quartet’s first launch discovered them backing emergent rock’n’curler Duffy Energy on a canopy of The Beatles’ I Noticed Her Standing There.
“Graham’s affect on me was huge,” admits Energy. “He was a pure musician and had a philosophy the place you will need to all the time go for it. That’s what he instilled in me. He was head and shoulders above the opposite Hammond organ gamers. And he was all the time very encouraging in direction of the others: ‘Yeah, Ginger! Yeah, Jack!’. He’d all the time be speaking it up, saying they have been making music for the longer term. Once you stood exterior a membership the place they have been taking part in, the ambiance was simply magnetic.”
McLaughlin was changed by Heckstall-Smith later that 12 months. With the newcomer blowing sax with gusto and ability, the Graham Bond Group turned a fearsome proposition.
“I received the chance to see them play stay lots and completely adored them,” remembers Pete Brown, co-author of Cream classics I Really feel Free, White Room and Sunshine Of Your Love, and a Bond devotee. “There was nothing prefer it. It had plenty of the spirit of jazz however with a ferocious vitality from blues and rock.”
Jack Bruce: “There was hardly any R&B scene on the time – we roughly invented it. Once we began out we’d be doing venues like The Place in Hanley and the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, these actual funky little golf equipment. The audiences went bananas. The type of stuff we have been taking part in was very new for British music, as was the depth.”
The Graham Bond Group’s debut album, The Sound Of ’65, was a stirring try to seize the transcendent thrill of their stay exhibits. So finely drilled have been they at this level that, in keeping with Bruce, the entire thing was recorded in three hours. The album, a mixture of covers and strident unique swingers like Half A Man and Spanish Blues, was doubly outstanding for the truth that it was the primary British launch to function a Mellotron.
“Approach-out blues sounds, bizarre at instances, however all the time fascinating,” raved the New Musical Specific. “Loads of wailing harmonica and raving vocalistics.”
In July the GBO appeared on ITV’s flagship pop present Prepared Regular Go! selling their new single Lease On Love. Bond delighted in bringing alongside his new toy, with the Mellotron’s potential to breed strings, brass and woodwind sounds basically placing him on the hub of his personal mini-orchestra. He made liberal use of it once more on the equally raucous follow-up There’s A Bond Between Us, launched later in 1965. However by then it was clear that each one was not properly.
The GBO have been working onerous, perpetually on the street or within the studio, with valuable little to point out for it.
“Graham’s band flogged themselves to dying for little or no cash and I don’t assume they bought many data both,” says Energy. “And I hate to say this, however Graham didn’t have the persona or seems that would catch on with a younger viewers. It should’ve made him sad as a result of he thought he’d take the music enterprise by storm once I met him.”
Medication have been beginning to derail the band too. Pot had all the time been a communal type of recreation for the GBO [“We were all stoned out of our bonces,” Bruce admits], however now issues had taken a extra sinister flip. Each Bond and Baker had develop into hooked on heroin, making for what Pete Brown calls “the archetypal junkie relationship”. Bond’s burgeoning curiosity in white magic and the occult solely made him extra unpredictable. Plus he wasn’t all the time upfront with the band’s accounts.
“We have been taking part in larger locations however getting no cash,” Bruce remembers. “In principle, Graham was paying us. One evening at a membership in East London, between getting cash from the promoter after which crossing the dance flooring to pay us, it had disappeared. So he wasn’t being truthful, financially. Then Ginger took over because the bandleader, however it solely improved a little bit.”
Actually, rising friction between Baker and Bruce was an element within the latter being sacked from the GBO within the autumn of 1965. Baker’s departure the next summer time was successfully the tip of the GBO.
Bond was present process myriad adjustments. He’d left his spouse, grown out his hair, taken to sporting multi-coloured cloaks, develop into fascinated with tarot playing cards and begun dropping acid. As Baker famous in his autobiography, Hellraiser, Bond “was stepping into the realms of the very bizarre certainly… Gone was the comfortable musician – he had been changed by an odd, unsmiling mystic”.
Jon Hiseman was introduced in as Baker’s substitute, however the on the spot impression of Cream had a profound impact on Bond. “What upset him most was the way in which Jack and Ginger went into Cream and virtually instantly had chart singles,” says Hiseman. “Each time he heard one he bodily shrank and commenced to really feel endlessly betrayed.
He was changing into more and more pissed off by the truth that lots of the musicians he had labored with on the way in which up have been changing into way more profitable than him, and he merely couldn’t perceive it. In his self-belief, no person was pretty much as good as he was. And all his pent-up anger was working alongside a critical heroin dependancy. A lesser man would have crumbled, however such was the power of his persona, no person might assist. He would simply not allow you to in.”
By 1967, the GBO had cut up altogether. Hiseman and Heckstall-Smith performed briefly with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers earlier than forming profitable prog-jazzers Colosseum. It was a special story for Bond. Immersing himself in occultist lore, he was more and more liable to bouts of delusion. He started telling individuals he was the misplaced son of The Nice Beast himself, Aleister Crowley. It was an concept that took maintain after Bond learn that one in all Crowley’s companions had given beginning in 1937, the identical 12 months he was born, and left the infant in an orphanage. To Bond, a Barnardo’s little one who was adopted at six months previous, the symmetry made excellent sense.
“He felt that very deeply and would typically muse about what his background truly was,” Bruce says. “He thought he was Jewish, for some purpose. However he simply didn’t know. It have to be a horrible factor, to not know who you’re. I’m certain it performed a big half in the way in which his life went afterward.”
“Within the early days he did appear comparatively properly adjusted,” says Pete Brown, “however when the heroin took maintain, he received slightly devious and troublesome. Individuals who’ve had addictions and handle to cease them discover that the ritualistic side of it must be changed. So when the smack was gone he felt he wanted an influence supply. Nevertheless it simply turned atrophied and went dangerous. Aleister Crowley simply appeared like a fucking creep to me. Graham began off with so-called white magic, then I don’t know the place it went. Individuals make some dangerous decisions.”
The rest of Bond’s profession was a procession of ever-diminishing returns. In early 1968 he set out for America, although his failure to safe a piece allow put a crimp in his recording plans. Ultimately he went into an LA studio and lower Love Is The Regulation, a pulsating set of organ-led blues, made with Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine, that mirrored his religious obsessions – the title was one in all Aleister Crowley’s occult dictums.
There was additionally session work for Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Dr John, the latter’s affect palpable on the gumbo funk of Stiff Necked Hen, from Bond’s subsequent album for the Pulsar label. Each data provided vivid proof that, regardless of how precarious his private state, Bond’s musical and compositional abilities have been nonetheless intact. Alas, it was an indication of the report firm’s indifference that the title of the second LP was misspelt as Mighty Grahame Bond. Neither shifted many copies.
Undeterred, he returned to England in late 1969 and shaped the Graham Bond Initiation together with his new spouse Diane Stewart. Not that it did him a lot good. Bond was promptly arrested on the eve of a comeback gig and carted off to Pentonville on a two-year-old chapter cost [Jack Bruce would rescue him by paying his bail].
There have been two additional albums: 1970’s Holy Magick and the next 12 months’s We Put Our Magick On You. The previous was an incantatory blow-out recorded with Stewart, who shared his magickal beliefs, that consisted of meditations and rites in Egyptian and Altantean, backed by honking jazz-rock freakery. The sleeve confirmed the pair, arms raised in supplication, in opposition to a druidic backdrop of Stonehenge.
Across the similar time, Bond started taking part in sax in Ginger Baker’s Air Pressure. The band, which included Steve Winwood, Denny Laine, Ric Grech and Chris Wooden, proved too unwieldy to maintain. He additionally loved a short tenure as organist within the Jack Bruce Band, though, as Bruce factors out, ‘loved’ in all probability isn’t the proper phrase.
“It was terrifying attempting to be the bandleader of Graham Bond,” he winces. “We have been taking part in someplace in Europe one time and he went out on to the roof. He was in tears about his drug use. He couldn’t appear to recover from it. I vividly bear in mind firing him in Milan. He infuriated me a lot by taking part in one thing or different that I truly ripped a sink off the wall and smashed it on the ground. He was that kind of a man.”
Bond’s final concerted effort got here in 1972, when he and Pete Brown teamed up for Two Heads Are Higher Than One. “We had nice enjoyable making that report,” says Brown. “Graham was taking part in rather well and we toured lots. By that point he was a little bit broken and hooked on Dr Collis Browne’s [a cough mixture and painkiller], which had opiates in it that you could possibly extract or simply down the whole thing. He lived with me for almost six months, which was type of troublesome. However I cherished the man. I owe him lots. The beauty of Graham was that he inspired individuals. He’d all the time make you ship one thing past what you thought you have been able to.”
There have been additional plans, too, chief amongst them being Magus, shaped with folks singer Carolanne Pegg. However the band cut up by the tip of 1973 with out having recorded a be aware. Bond nonetheless cast a friendship with Magus’s drummer, Paul Olsen.
“My girlfriend and I had a little bit flat in Barnes, and Graham stayed with us for some time,” Olsen says. “He received arrested for drug possession and spent six weeks at Springfield psychological residence, this huge previous Victorian place in south London [it’s thought that Bond had schizophrenia]. They’d an previous upright piano there that was so out of tune. However I bear in mind Graham sitting there, mapping all of the keys in his head, then taking part in it. He had all people standing round him, smiling.”
Bond satisfied the workers to permit Olsen to usher in the entire band so they might play for the sufferers. “That gig was unimaginable. They have been the very best viewers I’ve ever had. There have been tears of their eyes.”
Duffy Energy remembers seeing Bond at a TV present with Alexis Korner. “Graham couldn’t even get himself a drink,” he says. “I had some pep drugs with me, however he wasn’t eager to get stoned like he used to. He was very down.”
Paul Olsen: “He was so depressed at one level that we answered an advert for Chingford Organ Studios, who have been on the lookout for a demonstrator. For a person of his historical past and functionality to be lowered to that meant he was at all-time low. He’d simply blotted his copybook with too many individuals too many instances.”
Pete Brown: “Proper on the finish, Graham stated to me: ‘I’m giving all of the magic stuff up and I’m simply going to play. I’m not going to do something influenced by that any extra’. Then a couple of days later he was lifeless.”
There was no proof of foul play in Bond’s dying. Nor was there a suicide be aware. Some have speculated that he was chased into Finsbury Park station that afternoon by individuals unknown, maybe drug sellers whom he owed cash. However with no witnesses coming ahead on the inquest, the coroner was left to report an open verdict. It’s almost certainly that his demise was self-inflicted.
“His dying shocked me,” confesses Jack Bruce. “I went to his funeral and performed this superb elegy on the organ there. Lots of people have been very moved by it. And I actually felt that I used to be getting messages from him. I felt his spirit and was interweaving plenty of his themes. It was very lovely.”
Graham Bond was no saint. Even in any case these years, Bruce sums him up as “fairly a personality and fairly troublesome”. Drug dependancy and booze solely accentuated his much less savoury traits. And, on an altogether extra disturbing degree, it was claimed in Harry Shapiro’s definitive biography, Graham Bond: The Mighty Shadow, that he even sexually abused his stepdaughter. Bond by no means admitted it, nor did he deny it. However as a musical entity, his standing amongst his friends is immense.
“There was by no means any query concerning the music,” affirms Bruce. “The Group was a powerhouse. It was an amazingly hip band for the time.”
Paul Olsen contends that Bond’s over-the-top behaviour and persona have been each his greatest weak spot and his greatest energy. “A number of English uptights shunned him. And he was a unfastened cannon. However individuals like that enrich lives. When he walked right into a room, nobody else mattered. He had a type of naturally huge personalities. Once I first noticed him on the Roundhouse in 1970, he was a monster on stage. He had on his robes, his lengthy, flowing issues, and all his pentagrams.”
For Pete Brown, Bond’s affect has by no means waned. “A number of his showmanship and concepts–the multi-keyboard factor, the issues he wore and performed – received ripped off by individuals who made much more cash. The prog rock individuals positively took lots from him. The GBO weren’t fairly boys preening round – it was actual musicians with actual soul. Though there have been 4 terrific brains concerned, it wasn’t simply cerebral music. It was physique music as properly, highly effective and horny and groovy. And that’s what music ought to do to you. He was a basic case of somebody by no means absolutely appreciated in his personal time.”
This function initially appeared in Traditional Rock 185, printed in July 2013.
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