When was the band formed? Whendid it split up?

Hatfield and the North was born in October 1972, although its seeds were planted during the preceding months, notably with the reformation of Delivery in the late Summer of 1972 by ex-Caravan members Richard Sinclair and Steve Miller, with Matching Mole guitarist Phil Miller and ex-Gong drummer Pip Pyle. Hatfield's first gig under that name was at Folkestone's Leas Cliff Hall in November 1972. The band split up in June 1975. It briefly re-formed in March 1990, and again in 2005-06.

What was the band's originalline-up? Who is in the current line-up?

The band's original line-up included Phil Miller on guitar,Richard Sinclair on bass and vocals, Pip Pyle on drums and DaveSinclair on keyboards. The latter was replaced by Dave Stewart inJanuary 1973 and doesn't appear on any recordings.
Hatfield and the North reformed for a couple of weeks in March 1990. It included original members Phil Miller, Richard Sinclair and Pip Pyle, and keyboard player Sophia Domancich. In January 2005, Miller, Sinclair and Pyle revived Hatfield once more, this time with Alex Maguire on keyboards; the new line-up toured all around the world for the next two years, but its existence was tragically cut short by Pyle's death in August 2006 - although it fulfilled its outstanding commitments, with Mark Fletcher on drums.

How did the original membersmeet? Had they worked together previously?

Pip Pyle : "Phil [Miller] and I have known each other since wewere kids - I've known Phil since I was six. We'd been playingtogether in a band called Delivery before. So that was the link withPhil, and we met Richard [Sinclair] via Steve, Phil's brother, whowas playing with Caravan, and we were very impressed with him... We'djust heard Dave Stewart from Egg and figured he could play organ, andwe were looking for an organist after Dave Sinclair threw his annualwobbler...".

Richard Sinclair : "Hatfield started with Pip Pyle, Phil Millerand I. We were living in East Sheen on the South Circular Road inthis flat, and Pip was there with his family and Phil and this blokeBenj, who was a Soft Machine roadie, so lots of Soft Machine gear wasaround... and old P.A., that sort of thing".

Why did they choose this bandname ?

The name was inspired by the first road sign on the M1 motorway going North from London. The idea originated from Mike Patto, who was going to use it for his own band, but when he settled for Dick and the Firemen, he passed it on.

How many albums did the bandrelease? On which labels?

Hatfield and the North released two studio albums, Hatfield And The North (1974) and The Rotters' Club (1975). A single, "Let's Eat (Real Soon)" c/w "Fitter Stoke Has ABath", was released in 1974. A compilation album, Afters, wasreleased in 1979. Along with various tracks from the first twoalbums, it incorporates the first single (including a version of "Fitter Stoke..." different to the one found on Rotters'Club), an edit of "Halfway...", and some hitherto unheard livetracks from 1974-75 : "O Len's Nature" (an anagram and re-working of"Nan True's Hole") and "Lything and Gracing" (a.k.a "RighteousRhumba"), two Miller compositions from his Matching Mole days.

A live CD, Live 1990, was released in 1993 on DemonRecords, followed by a DVD version in 2002. Both include the edited version of the March 30th 1990 reunionconcert for Central TV's "Bedrock" series; the CD adds an extra track,"Underdub". The show included compositions thathave all since appeared in different incarnations on albums by the Sophia Domancich Trio("Blott On The Landscape", on 1993's Rêve De Singe), PipPyle's Equip'Out ("Cauliflower Ears", on 1991's Up!), RichardSinclair's Caravan Of Dreams ("Going For A Song"), Phil Miller ("5/4 Intro"is actually the intro from "Speaking For Lydia" on Phil's album Digging In) and Pip Pyle ("Shipwrecked", on his solo album 7 Year Itch). Several songs performed on the show were notbroadcast, including "Chinese Whispers", also re-recorded for PipPyle's 7 Year Itch album, "Keep On Caring", re-done thefollowing year by Richard Sinclair on his Caravan Of DreamsCD.

In January 2005, a self-released compilation of unreleased recordings, Hatwise Choice, saw the light of day, with distribution handled by Burning Shed. It contains a mixture of BBC radio sessions and excerpts from live tapes. A second volume, Hattitude, followed in late 2006, including superior quality live material taken from recently unearthed master tapes.

Have these albums been reissuedon CD? On which labels?

Both albums were reissued on CD in 1990 by Virgin in Europe. BothCD's include the additional material found on Afters : bothsides from the 1974 single on the Hatfield and the North CD,the live material on The Rotters' Club. The onlyHatfield tracks not yet available on CD are the "YourMajesty.../Oh What A Lonely Lifetime" medley from Virgin's V sampler, and the version of "Halfway..." originally found on the Over The Rainbow sampler, which had a slightly longerintroduction.

Why were particular titleschosen for albums and compositions?

• "The Stubbs Effect" - named (and actually "composed", in spite of the credit) by Dave Stewart after an old school friend of his.
• "Calyx" - from the dictionary, "a ring of leaves enclosing an unopened flower-bud". Orignally entitled "For Cyrille".
• "There's No Place Like Homerton" -named by Egg bassist/composer Mont Campbell after his then town of residence
• "Fol De Rol" -an English word meaning "nonsense"; its nonsensical lyrics were contributed by Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge
• "Fitter Stoke Has A Bath" - Pip Pyle : "The title came from my daughter Alice when she was trying to get her mouth round the English language. She came up to me one morning and seemed to be saying 'Fitter Stoke Has A Bath'... She was probably asking me to make her a bit of toast or something! It seemed like a good title for a tune".
• "Underdub" - Dave Stewart : "...so called because it was the only track on The Rotters' Club not to be buried under 4,000 overdubs...".
• "Mumps" - "a virus disease that causes painful swellings in the neck"
• "Your Majesty Is Like A Cream Donut" - "comes from a Monty Python skit from the same time period.... At a party, Oscar Wilde, James McNeil Whistler, and George Bernard Shaw are engaging in a battle of wits (jazz musicians would call it a sort of cutting contest) when England's reigning monarch joins them. In a display of one-upsmanship, they compare him to, variously, a cream donut, a stream of bat's piss, and a dose of the clap" (Rick Mealy submitted this one)

Who were the band's maincomposers ?

The writing was democratically split between the members. DaveStewart was the main writer, composing about half of each albumand notably the epic "Mumps" on The Rotters' Club. PipPyle also wrote a lot, including most of the band's lyrics.Phil Miller mainly wrote short, highly melodic instrumentals.And Richard Sinclair brought sketches of songs, most of whichwere re-worked by the band, with lyrics added by Pyle in most cases("Let's Eat (Real Soon)", "Share It").

How much, and where, did theband tour ?

A chronology of Hatfield's toursis available on this site.
Hatfield and the North toured Europe extensively in 1973-75 :at least three tours of France, and two each of Belgium and theNetherlands, where the Soft Machine family was very popular. Aftersigning with Virgin, Hatfield toured the UK several times, notablywith Gong, Stomu Yamash'ta's East Wind and as part of the Virgin/NMEtour.

What were the reasons formembers departing?

• Steve Miller, Phil's brother, was involved in the preliminary stages of Hatfield (July-September 1972), but left before the name was actually chosen. Richard Sinclair : "Phil couldn't get on with Steve, who decided he wasn't going to be in the band". The Miller-Miller-Pyle-Sinclair quartet did play one gig, billed as Delivery (with Lol Coxhill guesting) at the City Of London festival on July 21st 1972.
• David Sinclair left in February 1973 to rejoin Caravan. Richard Sinclair : "He couldn't handle Phil Miller's guitar playing, he just doesn't like the sounds Phil comes up with. This is why he wasn't considered when Dave Stewart didn't want to do the Bedrock TV show in 1990". "Dave decided that he'd got other things to do. It was too stressful to keep coming up and down to London to play with Phil, Pip and I, and he wanted to do other stuff anyway...".
• The main factor in Hatfield's split was Richard Sinclair, whose difficulties in his daily life (he lived in a squat with his wife and baby at the time) made it too hard for him to cope with the constraints of band life. This led to tension within the band, and its eventual breakup. Sinclair : "I'd had enough cause it was so extreme with that band. The other three had a lot of music and although I did too, theirs was much stronger than mine, so I didn't really take part anymore. I had trouble at home, with my family, not having enough money to play music. It's always money things that stop people playing their music together cause they can't find the time to get enough money to eat and play music... So I decided to leave". Sinclair elaborates further on his problems at the time : "I wasn't actually homeless at that time. I was living at Sheen with Pip and Phil, and that meant there were two families, sometimes three, in quite a small flat. Dave Stewart lived just around the corner, and we used to play music every day, wherever we could. Then we moved out of Sheen, and I remember having to squat down at Croydon, and my wife having to go to hospital before we'd actually moved into the squat... There wasn't a lot of money about. We were living off Social Security or assistance money. In the end I'd definitely had enough and was finding that my actual concentration had gone. The last three months of Hatfield were pretty stressful for me, travelling around with everybody where you can't really take part... Our last gig was at the Winning Post. They decided not to use the name. It was all pretty stressful for them too, that I'd decided to leave the band at the time, because I think that we were just about to get bigger concerts and more money. Of course we'd been signed to Virgin and Virgin weren't particularly interested [in National Health] because it had lost some of that human element - it had gone more instrumental than the vocal type thing...".
• Phil Miller and Dave Stewart kept on playing together in National Health, of which Pip Pyle was almost a founding member. In 1977, Miller, Stewart and Pyle were re-united, and Richard Sinclair guested on vocals with National Health at a few gigs and radio sessions in London that year.

Where are they now?

• Dave Stewart formed National Health with Alan Gowen in 1975. After leaving in 1978, he joined Bruford, then in 1980 the shortlived Rapid Eye Movement. In 1981, he started a solo career which evolved into a duo with his partner, former Northette Barbara Gaskin. Their new album, 18 years in the making (!), is expected for early 2009.
• Phil Miller joined National Health in 1975. He stayed until the band's demise in 1980. In 1982, he formed his own band In Cahoots, which is still going. He also been playing with Short Wave and in a duo with Fred Baker both since 1991. In Cahoots' latest album Conspiracy Theories was released in October 2006.
• Richard Sinclair formed a series of Canterbury-based, informal, gigging-only line-ups in the late 70's. In 1977 he joined Camel for a couple of years. In the early 80's and 90's, he was involved in reformations of the original Caravan line-up. Between 1991-94, he led his own band Caravan Of Dreams, and between 1994-96 the more unstable RSVP. In 1996 he moved to Harlingen (Netherlands) for several years, returning to Canterbury in 2000. He kept quiet for the latter half of the 1990s then performed regularly again from 2002-06, but has now moved to Italy and is largely inactive again.
• Pip Pyle joined National Health in 1977 after freelancing for a couple of years on the British jazz scene. He stayed until the band's demise in 1980. In the meantime, he was a founding member of Soft Heap in 1978, a band which occasionally toured until 1988 and is now in limbo. Since 1982 he has been a fixture in Phil Miller's band In Cahoots. In 1984 he formed his own jazz band, L'Equip'Out, which gigged occasionally until it ground to a halt in the mid-1990's. He moved to France in the mid-1980's and in the next decade worked with Patrice Meyer, Emmanuel Bex, John Greaves and Gong. He was also a member of the occasional all-star band Short Wave (1991-96). In 1998 he finally released his long-awaited solo album Seven Year Itch, which featured all ex-Hatfield members. He also toured and recorded with the American avant-prog trio Absolute Zero, drumming on their Crashing Icons CD. After leaving In Cahoots in 2002, he formed a new group, Bash, with Patrice Meyer, Fred Baker and Alex Maguire, who released their debut album Belle Illusion in May 2004. He sadly died in August 2006, while involved in a reunion of Hatfield and the North.

Last updated : October 2008