Henry Cow

Henry Cow was a British avant-garde rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. An inherent anti-commercial bias kept them at arm's length from the mainstream music business enabling them to experiment at will and not compromise their music for anyone. They remained in existence for 10 years and produced a body music that was challenging, provocative and influential for years to come.

While it was generally thought that Henry Cow took their name from Twentieth Century American composer Henry Cowell, this has been repeatedly denied by band members. According to Tim Hodgkinson, the name was "in the air" in 1968, and it seemed like a good name for the band. It had no connection to anything.

History

The beginning

Henry Cow began as a "dada" blues band in May 1968, but exposure to a variety of new music from bands and musicians like Soft Machine, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa caused a radical shift in direction. Later that year they supported Pink Floyd at the Architects Ball in Cambridge.

Over the next few years the band line-up fluctuated and it wasn't until 1971, when drummer Chris Cutler joined, that Henry Cow settled into a permanent core of Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson , Chris Cutler and bassist John Greaves. The band then relocated to London where they began an aggressive rehearsal schedule.

In April 1972 Henry Cow wrote and performed the music for Robert Walker's production of Euripides' The Bacchae. This involved an intense and demanding three week period of concentrated work that changed the band completely. It was during this time that Geoff Leigh on woodwinds joined and Henry Cow became a quintet.

In July 1972, the band performed at the Edinburgh Festival and wrote and performed music for a ballet with artist Ray Smith and the Cambridge Contemporary Dance Group at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was Ray who later did the "paint sock" art work on three of Henry Cow's LP covers.

Back in London, they started to organise a series of concerts and events under the names Cabaret Voltaire and Explorers' Club at Kensington Town Hall with invited guests, including Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill, Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin, David Toop and Ray Smith. For the first time, Henry Cow started getting some attention from the rock press and the then emerging Virgin Records label. After much negotiations and deliberation, in May 1973 Henry Cow signed a contract with Virgin.

Unrest

Within two weeks of signing the contract, Henry Cow began recording their debut album Leg End (a.k.a. Legend) at Virgin's Manor studios. It took three weeks of hard work, but at the end they knew how to handle the studio themselves, which would prove to be invaluable later in their career. The track "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", sung by the whole group, was Henry Cow's first overt political statement.

To promote its new signing, Virgin organised a UK tour for Henry Cow and Faust, who had also just signed to the label. During this tour, Henry Cow began preparing music for an unorthodox and provocative play, based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Some of this music was used on their next record Unrest.

During a tour of The Netherlands in December 1973, Geoff Leigh left the group. Looking for more unusual instruments to draw them further away from standard rock and jazz, Henry Cow asked classically trained Lindsay Cooper (oboe, bassoon) to join. With hardly any time to rehearse, and Lindsay having just had all four wisdom teeth extracted, they returned to The Manor in early 1974 to begin recording Unrest. It was during this time that they became acquainted with Slapp Happy, a quirky avant-pop trio of Peter Blegvad (guitar), Anthony Moore (keyboards) and Dagmar Krause (vocals), who had just completed their first LP for Virgin.

Recording Unrest was another intense experience, and the strongest period of collective learning since The Bacchae. They only had enough material to fill one side of the LP, and so were forced to spend a good deal of time developing the studio composition process that produced Side 2. The recording session brought out a lot of tensions in the band, and it reflected in the music, but in the end they were pleased with the result and this re-united the group.

In May 1974 they were on tour again around England and Europe with Captain Beefheart. It was during this tour that Henry Cow woke up to the realities of what was happening to them: they were becoming a rock band, playing the same thing night after night. Life was no longer a challenge and they were becoming complacent. After some serious thinking they decided to ask Lindsay to leave and fulfil their last outstanding concert obligations (a tour of Holland) as a quartet. Without Lindsay they were forced to abandon much of their learned material and worked up a 35-40 minute piece unlike anything else they had done before (this later became "Living in the Heart of the Beast" on In Praise of Learning).

In November 1974, Slapp Happy invited Henry Cow to be their band on their second LP for Virgin. The result was Desperate Straights, an almost entirely Slapp Happy composed album that surprised everyone, considering how dissimilar the two groups were. The success of this venture prompted a merger of the two bands.

In early 1975 the merged group began rehearsing for In Praise of Learning in a freezing gymnasium. It was an arduous and extremely demanding time, something Slapp Happy was not prepared for, and it soon became apparent that the merger might not work. Nevertheless, they still went to The Manor and made In Praise of Learning together. But it was only after they started rehearsing with a view to performing live together that it became clear that their approaches were incompatible. Anthony Moore quit and Peter Blegvad was asked to leave, but Dagmar Krause, whose contribution added another dimension to Henry Cow's sound, elected to remain.

Having guested on both the Henry Cow/Slapp Happy albums, Lindsay Cooper rejoined in April 1975 and Henry Cow became a sextet and began preparing for what would become the most sustained and rigorous working schedule of their career: two solid years of virtually continuous touring in Western Europe.

Europe

Henry Cow's music was challenging and uncompromising and this often lead to them being accused of deliberately making their music inaccessible. As a result they were virtually ignored in their own country. Even Virgin Records, who had started dropping experimental groups in favour of commercial ones, was now showing little to no interest in Henry Cow. This lead to the group having to continuously make decisions as to whether to continue or not (there certainly were no economic inducements). To continue required political decisions to survive, and these decisions often reflected in their music. Henry Cow's anti-capitalist stance was brought on partly out of necessity rather than choice. They began working outside the music industry and doing everything for themselves. They abandoned agencies and managers and stopped looking for approval from the music press. Henry Cow quickly became self-sufficient and self-reliant.

Virtual exiles from their own country, they made mainland Europe their second home where they (and their music) were well received. After a concert in Rome in July 1975, Henry Cow remained behind with their truck/bus/mobile home and began meeting local musicians, organisers and the PCI (Italian Communist Party). It was the PCI that offered them concerts at Festa D'Unita (large open-air fairs that run every summer all over Italy). Each contact they made lead to more contacts and soon doors opened for Henry Cow all over Europe.

While rehearsing for an upcoming tour of Scandinavia in March 1976, John Greaves left the band to start working on a project with Peter Blegvad, and Dagmar Krause withdrew due to ill-health. Committed to the tour, Henry Cow had to perform as a quartet (Tim, Fred, Lindsay and Chris) and adjust their music accordingly. They took the radical option and abandoned composed material completely in favour of pure improvisation.

In May 1976 Henry Cow compiled a double LP Concerts for a new Norwegian underground label Compendium (re-released later on the budget Virgin sub-label Caroline). For the first time, they did everything themselves: the mastering, cover design, cutting, pressing and manufacturing. The album included three concerts with Robert Wyatt from 1975.

Still without a bass player, Henry Cow auditioned until they found Georgie Born, a classically trained cellist and improviser. Their new compositions grew even more complex.

They returned to London in early 1977 to set up Music for Socialism and its May Festival. It had been three years since Henry Cow had performed more than one concert a year in their own country. In an attempt to break the apathy that seemed to be discouraging anyone from wanting to put them on, they tried to organise a small alternative tour themselves, but abandoned it after 11 concerts when they started losing money: clearly nothing had changed.

Their contract with Virgin Records had now become a burden to both Henry Cow and Virgin: none of Henry Cow's records were licensed or distributed in the countries in which they spent all their time playing, and Henry Cow was not making any money for Virgin. Henry Cow needed to record again but Virgin (understandably) refused to give them studio time at The Manor. When Henry Cow referred to the contract ("one month at a first class studio"), Virgin Records (in October 1977) agreed to cancel it.

By now Dagmar's health had deteriorated to such an extent that touring became impossible for her and she decided to leave the group, although she still wanted to sing on Henry Cow's next album, to be recorded in January 1978 at the Sunrise studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland. However, in the weeks leading to the sessions, strong musical differences emerged between band members: Fred and Chris were in favour of song-oriented material, while Lindsay and Tim wanted purely instrumental compositions.

As a compromise, two separate albums were made. The songs were recorded as Hopes and Fears under the name of a new group Art Bears, consisting of Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause with the rest of Henry Cow credited as guests, and the instrumental material was released, with additional recordings made later that year, as the final Henry Cow album Western Culture. However, this decision effectively meant the end of the band.

Rock in Opposition

Henry Cow agreed to disband as a permanent group, but did not announce the fact immediately. They continued for another six months, creating a new set of material (recorded later to complete Western Culture) and revisited for the last time, all the places that had supported them over the years.

In March 1978 Henry Cow invited four groups from Italy, France, Sweden and Belgium to come to London and perform in a festival Henry Cow had organised called Rock in Opposition or RIO. Throughout Europe, Henry Cow had encountered many "progressive" groups refusing to bow to the hegemony of American and British rock music. Instead they drew on non-American music sources, such as local folk music and 20th century "classical" or "art music", and often sang in their own languages. As was the case with Henry Cow, these groups struggled to survive: record companies were not interested in their music. Although these groups and Henry Cow were musically diverse, what they had in common was: (1) their independence and opposition to the established Rock business; and (2) a determination to pursue their own work regardless.

After the festival, RIO was formalised as an organisation with a charter whose aim was to represent and promote its members. RIO thus became a collective of bands united in their opposition to the music industry and the pressures to compromise their music.

Henry Cow's last concert was held in Milan on 25^th July 1978. In August they returned to the Sunrise studios to compete Western Culture after which the band officially announced their break-up in the press, stating that "… although the group as a commodity, as a name, ceases to exist the work of the group will go on …" [1] (http://calyx.club.fr/bands/henrycow.html).

Western Culture was released on Henry Cow's own Broadcast label. Shortly afterwards, Chris Cutler launched Recommended Records, his own independent label and non-commercial record distribution network.

Legacy

The legacy of Henry Cow and their work continues to live on long after their demise. The former band members have kept in touch and collaborated in numerous projects over the years, including (to name a few):

• Art Bears
  • Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause (1978 – 1981)
• Rags (Lindsay Cooper solo album)
  • Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Georgie Born and others (1979 – 1980)
• News From Babel
  • Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Georgie Born, Dagmar Krause and others (1983 – 1986)
• Duck and Cover (commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival)
  • Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Dagmar Krause and others (1984)
• Each in Our Own Thoughts (Tim Hodgkinson solo album)
  • Tim Hodgkinson, Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Dagmar Krause and others (1993) – the track "Hold to the Zero Burn" was a Henry Cow piece performed by the group in 1976 – 1977 (as "Erk Gah") but never recorded before
• Live improvisitions
  • Fred Frith and Chris Cutler (1979 – 1999)
  • Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson (1990)

The music

Henry Cow's repertoire included elaborately scored pieces (often with complex time signatures), tape manipulations, free improvisation and songs. It incorporated elements of jazz, rock, classical music and the avant-garde. Dagmar's vocals added another dimension to their sound, giving it a dramatic, almost Brechtian flair.

Their music was often experimental, making classification all but impossible. However, the following styles (amongst others) are often associated with Henry Cow:

• rock (too general and therefore inadequate)
• progressive rock
• art rock
• avant-progressive rock
• avant-rock
• chamber rock
• experimental rock
• free improvisation
• Rock in Opposition (strictly not a style of music but rather a collection of like-minded musicians/bands)

Some of these styles may come closer to describing their music than others, and often it contained elements of all of the above, but in reality, Henry Cow simply remains one of those unclassifiable groups.

Henry Cow's music was challenging, not only to the listener, but also to the band themselves. They often composed pieces to challenge their own capabilities. Some of their music was scored beyond the conventional ranges of their music instruments necessitating that they "reinvent their instruments", learn how to play them in completely new ways. And yet their music may not have been as good as it could have been. Henry Cow conducted their affairs as a committee, having regular, minuted meetings with no decisions being made unless approved by the group. This included their music. Band members brought their ideas to the table but often they ended up being watered down as a result of the collective process, rather than strengthened, and many of their best ideas may not have been fully realised. Who knows what Henry Cow might have produced had individual members been given more free reign.

While their music is a decided "acquired taste", there is much to recommend in it, for as it is often dissonant and challenging, it is also rich and exciting, and yields more insights upon repeated listening.

The personnel

A number of people passed through Henry Cow over the years:

• Peter Blegvad - Guitar
• Georgie Born - Cello, Bass
• Lindsay Cooper - Bassoon, Reeds
• Chris Cutler - Drums, Percussion
• Fred Frith - Guitar, Violin, Bass, Piano, Xylophone
• John Greaves - Bass, Piano
• Tim Hodgkinson - Keyboards, Reeds
• Dagmar Krause - Vocals
• Geoff Leigh - Flute, Reeds
• Anthony Moore - Keyboards

The recordings

All of their records have been re-released on CD, often with extra tracks not found on the original LPs. Here are the original LP track listings.

See also

• Rock in Opposition
• Avant-progressive rock
• Slapp Happy
• Art Bears
• News From Babel
• Fred Frith
• Tim Hodgkinson
• Chris Cutler

Sources

• Template:Book reference
• Template:Book reference
• Chris Cutler home page (http://www.ccutler.com/bands/group02.shtml). Henry Cow.

External links

• Unofficial Henry Cow Site (http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/staff/dc/hcow/cow.html). Ruins.
• The Canterbury Website (http://calyx.club.fr/bands/henrycow.html). Henry Cow.
• Perfect Sound Forever (http://www.furious.com/perfect/henrycow.html). Henry Cow.
• The Rough Guide to Rock (http://www.roughguides.com/music/rock.html). Henry Cow. (a little navigation is required)
• Perfect Sound Forever (http://www.furious.com/perfect/cutler.html). Interview with Chris Cutler (March 1997).
• Chris Cutler home page (http://www.ccutler.com)
• Fred Frith home page (http://www.fredfrith.com)