The voice at the different finish of the telephone line was once constructive; enthusiastic, even. “I believe nice. I’m blank. I’m off the whole thing and I’m having a look ahead to getting again to paintings once more.”
It was once Tuesday, Might 7, 1974, and Graham Bond was once calling the NME place of work to thank them for just lately printing an outdated picture of his. All through a cordial change, the paper agreed to interview him in the following few days, and then he hung up. There was once not anything to indicate the rest amiss.
Twenty-four hours later, Bond was once useless, overwhelmed beneath the wheels of a Tube educate at Finsbury Park station. It was once two days earlier than the police have been in a position to spot the frame, after which best from his fingerprints. He was once 36. It was once a peculiar, messy finish to a peculiar, unpredictable lifestyles.
In his mid-60s high, Graham Bond was once a real originator and some of the key figures at the British song scene. As the motive force at the back of the Graham Bond Group, he dragged trad jazz out of its fusty confines and made it soar with heavy doses of blues and wailing R&B. A raft of skill handed throughout the band on the best way to better luck in Cream, Blind Religion, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Colosseum and in other places.
As an organist and alto sax blower, Bond was once a primal power. He redefined the position of the keyboard all through his time with the GBO, his power and oversized persona mirrored in his ferocious enjoying and the anguish of his uncooked making a song voice. Cumbersome and, all through his later years, bearded, he was once a powerful presence.
“You wouldn’t pass over him in a crowd,” says Jack Bruce, who shaped Cream with fellow GBO member Ginger Baker. “He was once a vibrant persona and a strong man.”
If Bond’s recognition is in large part reduced at the moment, his affect on his fellow musicians is simple. The likes of Rick Wakeman, Elton John, Steve Winwood and Deep Pink’s Jon Lord have been all indebted to each his musicianship and his showmanship.
“He taught me, fingers on, maximum 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 song, maximum significantly co-opting Bach for 1965’s Wade In The Water.
“Graham was once essential to numerous other people,” says Bruce. “He was once a one-off. No person may play alto sax and Hammond on the similar time and get that improbable sound. The Group was once a gorgeous band. It was once fairly primitive, however that was once a part of the wonderful thing about it.”
However that is the place his legacy will get mangled. The nice enigma of Bond’s lifestyles and profession was once that, in spite of packed properties and plaudits from fellow musicians, he by no means accomplished both the celebrity or the riches his skill deserved. By the point of his loss of life, Bond was once diminished to the position of outsider artist, his inventory in tatters. The document trade had lengthy given up on a afflicted guy susceptible to suits of erratic behaviour, trapped in an auto-destructive cycle of drug abuse and occultism.
“He was once his personal worst enemy,” says drummer ‘Funky’ Paul Olsen, who performed with Bond in his ultimate days. “He was once supremely clever, however there was once simply an excessive amount of happening in his head.”
The turn-of-the-70s Bond was once an international clear of the one that gatecrashed the song fraternity a decade previous. To start with a saxophonist, Bond had studied song on the Royal Liberty Faculty in London earlier than touchdown a role with the Goudie Charles Quintet. Through 1961 he’d signed up with the Don Rendell New Quintet, the place his exuberant taste and distinctive phraseology introduced him to the eye of the jazz press. Bond’s recorded debut got here at the Quintet’s album Roarin’, launched later that 12 months. In Melody Maker’s year-end jazz ballot, his prowess was once such that he was once voted 2d within the New Big name class.
The next 12 months was once a pivotal one. In addition to enjoying with Don Rendell, he additionally started gigging with the Johnny Burch Octet, a ‘finances giant band’ whose individuals integrated double-bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker and tenor sax participant Dick Heckstall-Smith.
“I first met him at some of the all-nighters on the Flamingo,” Bruce recollects. “Graham used to take a seat in with us. His look jogged my memory of Cannonball Adderley, and the depth simply astounding.”
Through October 1962, Bond had graduated to Alexis Korner’s Blues Integrated, a hothouse for rising skill. He doubled up at the sax through pumping out fats Hammond riffs via a Leslie speaker, brokering a brand new taste of American-influenced R&B. Bond, Baker and Bruce, additionally within the line-up, started enjoying as a trio all through periods.
It’s no longer precisely transparent simply when Bond made up our minds to begin his personal band, even if a go back and forth to Manchester in February 1963 seems to had 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 target audience howled their appreciation in their wild, free-ranging manner. Now not lengthy after, Bond instructed Korner he was once breaking off on his personal, with Ginger and Jack in tow. It was once standard of his single-minded bullishness that he by no means stricken to talk over with the ones two first.
“I simply confirmed up for practice session sooner or later and Alexis was once having a look very glum and offended,” Bruce recalls. “He wouldn’t communicate to me in any respect. Then I came upon that I’d resigned from the band! I used to be very naive in the ones days, only a child. I will have to’ve stated one thing, however simply went at the side of it. It was once years earlier than Alexis started chatting with me once more.”
3 turned into 4 when guitarist John McLaughlin joined from Georgie Status’s band. The Graham Bond Quartet’s first liberate discovered them backing emergent rock’n’curler Duffy Energy on a canopy of The Beatles’ I Noticed Her Status There.
“Graham’s affect on me was once monumental,” admits Energy. “He was once a herbal musician and had a philosophy the place you should at all times opt for it. That’s what he instilled in me. He was once head and shoulders above the opposite Hammond organ avid gamers. And he was once at all times very encouraging in opposition to the others: ‘Yeah, Ginger! Yeah, Jack!’. He’d at all times be speaking it up, pronouncing they have been making song for the longer term. Whilst you stood out of doors a membership the place they have been enjoying, the ambience was once simply magnetic.”
McLaughlin was once changed through Heckstall-Smith later that 12 months. With the newcomer blowing sax with gusto and talent, the Graham Bond Group turned into a fearsome proposition.
“I were given the chance to peer them play are living so much and completely adored them,” recollects Pete Brown, co-author of Cream classics I Really feel Unfastened, White Room and Sunshine Of Your Love, and a Bond devotee. “There was once not anything find it irresistible. It had numerous the spirit of jazz however with a ferocious power from blues and rock.”
Jack Bruce: “There was once infrequently any R&B scene on the time – we kind of invented it. After we began out we’d be doing venues like The Position in Hanley and the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, those actual funky little golf equipment. The audiences went bananas. The type of stuff we have been enjoying was once very new for British song, as was once the depth.”
The Graham Bond Group’s debut album, The Sound Of ’65, was once a stirring try to seize the transcendent thrill in their are living presentations. So finely drilled have been they at this level that, in line with Bruce, the entire thing was once recorded in 3 hours. The album, a mixture of covers and strident authentic swingers like Part A Guy and Spanish Blues, was once doubly exceptional for the truth that it was once the primary British liberate to function a Mellotron.
“Manner-out blues sounds, bizarre now and then, however at all times attention-grabbing,” raved the New Musical Categorical. “Quite a lot of wailing harmonica and raving vocalistics.”
In July the GBO seemed on ITV’s flagship pop display In a position Stable Pass! selling their new unmarried Rent On Love. Bond extremely joyful in bringing alongside his new toy, with the Mellotron’s talent to breed strings, brass and woodwind sounds necessarily hanging him on the hub of his personal mini-orchestra. He made liberal use of it once more at the similarly raucous follow-up There’s A Bond Between Us, launched later in 1965. However through then it was once transparent that each one was once no longer neatly.
The GBO have been operating arduous, perpetually at the highway or within the studio, with treasured little to turn for it.
“Graham’s band flogged themselves to loss of life for little or no cash and I don’t suppose they offered many data both,” says Energy. “And I hate to mention this, however Graham didn’t have the persona or appears that would catch on with a tender target audience. It should’ve made him unsatisfied as a result of he concept he’d take the song trade through typhoon once I met him.”
Medicine have been beginning to derail the band too. Pot had at all times been a communal type of sport 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 turn into hooked on heroin, making for what Pete Brown calls “the archetypal junkie dating”. Bond’s burgeoning pastime in white magic and the occult best made him extra unpredictable. Plus he wasn’t at all times in advance with the band’s accounts.
“We have been enjoying larger puts however getting no cash,” Bruce recollects. “In principle, Graham was once paying us. One night time at a membership in East London, between getting cash from the promoter after which crossing the dance ground to pay us, it had disappeared. So he wasn’t being honest, financially. Then Ginger took over because the bandleader, however it best stepped forward somewhat.”
In reality, rising friction between Baker and Bruce was once an element within the latter being sacked from the GBO within the autumn of 1965. Baker’s departure the next summer season was once successfully the top of the GBO.
Bond was once present process myriad adjustments. He’d left his spouse, grown out his hair, taken to dressed in multi-coloured cloaks, turn into thinking about tarot playing cards and begun losing acid. As Baker famous in his autobiography, Hellraiser, Bond “was once entering the geographical regions of the very bizarre certainly… Long gone was once the satisfied musician – he have been changed through a peculiar, unsmiling mystic”.
Jon Hiseman was once introduced in as Baker’s substitute, however the quick have an effect on of Cream had a profound impact on Bond. “What dissatisfied him maximum was once the best way Jack and Ginger went into Cream and nearly in an instant had chart singles,” says Hiseman. “Each time he heard one he bodily shrank and started to really feel perpetually betrayed.
He was once turning into an increasing number of pissed off through the truth that lots of the musicians he had labored with at the manner up have been turning into a lot more a hit than him, and he merely may no longer are aware of it. In his self-belief, no person was once as just right as he was once. And all his pent-up anger was once operating along a significant heroin habit. A lesser guy would have crumbled, however such was once the power of his persona, no person may assist. He would simply no longer allow you to in.”
Through 1967, the GBO had break up altogether. Hiseman and Heckstall-Smith performed in short with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers earlier than forming a hit prog-jazzers Colosseum. It was once a unique tale for Bond. Immersing himself in occultist lore, he was once an increasing number of susceptible to bouts of myth. He started telling other people he was once the misplaced son of The Nice Beast himself, Aleister Crowley. It was once an concept that took hang after Bond learn that one in all Crowley’s companions had given delivery in 1937, the similar 12 months he was once born, and left the newborn in an orphanage. To Bond, a Barnardo’s kid who was once followed at six months outdated, the symmetry made highest sense.
“He felt that very deeply and would on occasion muse about what his background in fact was once,” Bruce says. “He concept he was once Jewish, for some reason why. However he simply didn’t know. It should be a horrible factor, not to know who you might be. I’m positive it performed a big section in the best way his lifestyles went in a while.”
“Within the early days he did appear rather neatly adjusted,” says Pete Brown, “but if the heroin took hang, he were given somewhat devious and hard. Individuals who’ve had addictions and arrange to forestall them to find that the ritualistic side of it must be changed. So when the smack was once long past he felt he wanted an influence supply. But it surely simply turned into atrophied and went dangerous. Aleister Crowley simply gave the look of a fucking creep to me. Graham began off with so-called white magic, then I don’t know the place it went. Other folks make some dangerous alternatives.”
The rest of Bond’s profession was once a procession of ever-diminishing returns. In early 1968 he set out for The united states, even though his failure to safe a piece allow put a crimp in his recording plans. Ultimately he went into an LA studio and minimize Love Is The Regulation, a pulsating set of organ-led blues, made with Wrecking Workforce drummer Hal Blaine, that mirrored his religious obsessions – the identify was once one in all Aleister Crowley’s occult dictums.
There was once additionally consultation paintings for Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Dr John, the latter’s affect palpable at the gumbo funk of Stiff Necked Hen, from Bond’s subsequent album for the Pulsar label. Each data introduced vibrant evidence that, regardless of how precarious his non-public state, Bond’s musical and compositional talents have been nonetheless intact. Alas, it was once an indication of the document corporate’s indifference that the identify of the second one LP was once misspelt as Mighty Grahame Bond. Neither shifted many copies.
Undeterred, he returned to England in past due 1969 and shaped the Graham Bond Initiation together with his new spouse Diane Stewart. Now not that it did him a lot just right. Bond was once promptly arrested at the eve of a comeback gig and carted off to Pentonville on a two-year-old chapter price [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 once an incantatory blow-out recorded with Stewart, who shared his magickal ideals, that consisted of meditations and rites in Egyptian and Altantean, sponsored through honking jazz-rock freakery. The sleeve confirmed the pair, palms raised in supplication, towards a druidic backdrop of Stonehenge.
Round the similar time, Bond started enjoying sax in Ginger Baker’s Air Drive. The band, which integrated Steve Winwood, Denny Laine, Ric Grech and Chris Wooden, proved too unwieldy to maintain. He additionally loved a short lived tenure as organist within the Jack Bruce Band, even if, as Bruce issues out, ‘loved’ most likely isn’t the fitting phrase.
“It was once terrifying seeking to be the bandleader of Graham Bond,” he winces. “We have been enjoying someplace in Europe one time and he went out directly to the roof. He was once in tears about his drug use. He couldn’t appear to recover from it. I vividly take note firing him in Milan. He infuriated me such a lot through enjoying one thing or different that I in fact ripped a sink off the wall and smashed it at the ground. He was once 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 a laugh making that document,” says Brown. “Graham was once enjoying in point of fact neatly and we toured so much. Through that point he was once somewhat broken and hooked on Dr Collis Browne’s [a cough mixture and painkiller], which had opiates in it that it is advisable to extract or simply down the whole thing. He lived with me for just about six months, which was once roughly tough. However I cherished the man. I owe him so much. The beauty of Graham was once that he inspired other people. He’d at all times make you ship one thing past what you concept you have been able to.”
There have been additional plans, too, leader amongst them being Magus, shaped with people singer Carolanne Pegg. However the band break up through the top of 1973 with no need recorded a word. Bond however cast a friendship with Magus’s drummer, Paul Olsen.
“My female friend and I had somewhat flat in Barnes, and Graham stayed with us for some time,” Olsen says. “He were given arrested for drug ownership and spent six weeks at Springfield psychological house, this giant outdated Victorian position in south London [it’s thought that Bond had schizophrenia]. They’d an outdated upright piano there that was once so out of music. However I take note Graham sitting there, mapping all of the keys in his head, then enjoying it. He had everyone status round him, smiling.”
Bond satisfied the personnel to permit Olsen to herald the entire band so they may play for the sufferers. “That gig was once improbable. They have been the most efficient target audience I’ve ever had. There have been tears of their eyes.”
Duffy Energy recollects seeing Bond at a TV display with Alexis Korner. “Graham couldn’t even get himself a drink,” he says. “I had some pep capsules with me, however he wasn’t prepared to get stoned like he used to. He was once very down.”
Paul Olsen: “He was once so depressed at one level that we spoke back an advert for Chingford Organ Studios, who have been in search of a demonstrator. For a person of his historical past and capacity to be diminished to that intended he was once at all-time low. He’d simply blotted his copybook with too many of us too repeatedly.”
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 no longer going to do the rest influenced through that any longer’. Then a couple of days later he was once useless.”
There was once no proof of foul play in Bond’s loss of life. Nor was once there a suicide word. Some have speculated that he was once chased into Finsbury Park station that afternoon through individuals unknown, in all probability drug sellers whom he owed cash. However with out a witnesses coming ahead on the inquest, the coroner was once left to document an open verdict. It’s in all probability that his dying was once self-inflicted.
“His loss of life surprised me,” confesses Jack Bruce. “I went to his funeral and performed this superb elegy at the organ there. A large number of other people have been very moved through it. And I in point of fact felt that I used to be getting messages from him. I felt his spirit and was once interweaving numerous his topics. It was once very stunning.”
Graham Bond was once no saint. Even in spite of everything those years, Bruce sums him up as “fairly a personality and fairly tough”. Drug habit and booze best accentuated his much less savoury characteristics. And, on an altogether extra aggravating stage, it was once 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 status amongst his friends is immense.
“There was once by no means any query concerning the song,” affirms Bruce. “The Group was once a powerhouse. It was once an amazingly hip band for the time.”
Paul Olsen contends that Bond’s over-the-top behaviour and persona have been each his largest weak spot and his largest energy. “A large number of English uptights kept away from him. And he was once a free cannon. However other people like that enrich lives. When he walked right into a room, no person else mattered. He had a type of naturally giant personalities. After I first noticed him on the Roundhouse in 1970, he was once a monster on level. He had on his gowns, his lengthy, flowing issues, and all his pentagrams.”
For Pete Brown, Bond’s affect hasn’t ever waned. “A large number of his showmanship and concepts–the multi-keyboard factor, the issues he wore and performed – were given ripped off through individuals who made much more cash. The prog rock other people for sure took so much from him. The GBO weren’t beautiful boys preening round – it was once actual musicians with actual soul. Even supposing there have been 4 terrific brains concerned, it wasn’t simply cerebral song. It was once frame song as neatly, robust and horny and groovy. And that’s what song will have to do to you. He was once a vintage case of somebody by no means absolutely preferred in his personal time.”
This option at first seemed in Vintage Rock 185, printed in July 2013.
