If you were to be driving along the Bagshot Road into Bracknell Town Centre in the early evening on the 12th April 1975 there would have been a good chance that you would have driven past groups of long haired hippies wearing conical hats with plastic windmills on top making their way to the Sports Centre, this is a clear memory for me nearly 50 years later, such was the impact this had on the 15 year old me. The reason for this was that they were all converging to see their heroes Gong perform with support from Global Village Trucking Company, tickets for this cost £1.00.
The world of Gong is a world of Flying Teapots, Pothead Pixies and Space Whispers who are still going to this day and have a strong cult following. The group was formed in Paris in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen and English vocalist Gilli Smyth and were best known at the time for their Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy of albums Flying Teapot, Angel’s Egg & You. I hadn’t heard much by them at the time and was really looking forward to seeing Gong perform live… turns out though that I didn’t.
I went along with my brother Ken and his friends, when we arrived at the venue on a warm Spring evening there was a long queue of people waiting outside to get in. I remember there were two people close by who started laying slices of processed meat in a large circle on the ground which drew a crowd of people to see what they were doing, it turns out that this was a ruse to draw people out so that their friends could queue jump.
Once we were inside the support band Global Village Trucking Village Company took to the stage, known as The Globs to their fans they were a collective who lived in a commune in Suffolk and were prevalent at Festivals and Gatherings in the 1970’s and featured in a BBC Documentary at the time. Co-founder of the band James Lascelles is second cousin to King Charles III.
When Gong finally took to the stage they gathered in a huddle as if they were deciding what to do and although at the time we didn’t know what they were doing, history tells us that founder of the band Daevid Allen quit the band the day before, what we got instead of a Gong performance was guitarist Steve Hillage performing his first solo album Fish Rising in its entirety which was released the day before and featured fellow Gong Band members and ended up being more successful than previous Gong Albums entering the UK Chart at number 33. Although I did buy a copy of Gong’s second album Camembert Electrique at the concert for 50p which even in those days was a bargain, so at least I heard Gong afterwards.
Over the years when I have discussed music with friends I have been asked if I had ever seen Gong perform live and I have always said yes “at Bracknell Sports Centre in 1975”, it turns out I was wrong, what we did see was the launch of what a lot people describe as a classic album from the mid1970’s.
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