Gilli Smyth
Space Whisper

A Short Bio:

For more than a decade, and in many ways ever after, the partnership of Daevid Allen and Gillian 'Gilli' Smyth was the driving force behind Gong and its many related projects. Initially contributing her distinctive 'space whisper' essentially as an ornament to Gong's music, she developed her unique talents in her own band project, Mother Gong, which existed in various forms from 1978 to 1994. In the last few years, she has of course joined forces again with Gong on several occasions, including the band's 25th anniversary concerts in 1994 and its first-ever American tour(s) in 1996.

Before meeting Daevid Allen in 1964 in Paris, Gilli Smyth was married to an English doctor (or a Dutch buddhist according to an alternate source...), with whom she'd had a daughter, Tasmyn, who was to be involved in early Gong projects such as the Magick Brother album. Hailing from Wales, Smyth worked for some time as an English teacher but had started a parallel career as a poetess, reciting excerpts of her works during shows at London's Roundhouse. It was around that time that she published her first book, "The Nitrogen Dreams Of A Wide Girl".

In the eight years between the beginnings of Gong at the end of 1967 and her departure from the band in March 1975, Smyth - in the meantime initiated to the name of Shakti Yoni by Banana Ananda at his ashram in the South of France - perfected her 'space whisper' technique, which she described thus in a 1971 interview : "I began with poetry, lines of words... Then I started enlarging the sounds that were in the ideas of words, and the ideas became sounds... The aim is to provoke the audience, the get them excited... make them active rather than passive. The main aim of our music is to immerse our audience in a state out of the daily life...".

While in Gong, Smyth gave birth to two sons, Tali and Orlando, which resulted in periods spent away from the band. When she eventually left Gong, she started working on her first solo project, simply entitled Mother, which was produced by Daevid Allen and released in 1978 by Charly Records. At that point, Smyth had broken up with Daevid Allen after guesting on the Planet Gong album and taking part in the Gong reunion in May 1977. In order to promote her solo releases, Smyth assembled a group of musicians which went under the name Mother Gong.

While Allen was in America, Smyth released Fairy Tales, the first album credited to Mother Gong, which featured her narration of three stories to music by Harry Williamson, Didier Malherbe, Dave Anderson and others, produced by Simon Heyworth. In June 1978, Smyth was touring the UK with Mother Gong to promote the Mother album, and playing in the same venues as Nik Turner's Sphynx. Williamson was the guitarist in that band, and Smyth asked him to compose the music for the tales she adapted and read ("Wassilissa", "The Three Tongues" and "The Pied Piper") on the Fairy Tales album. This led to an American tour together in 1979, promoted by Giorgio Gomelsky, with three other bands, and UK gigs with the full group (now with Didier Malherbe in the line-up), including the Glastonbury festival. Williamson's sympathetic guitar and keyboards to Smyth's words was a positive, uplifting mixture - the affinity between them musically also became a personal one, and they were married in 1980.

Which is not to say that Smyth's feminist beliefs, as expressed on Mother, were renounced. The themes of peace, humanism and anti-militarianism continued through Mother Gong's own trilogy, Robot Woman, the story of Beta, a robot woman who malfunctions and is repaired by the Kumkwik repairman, who sets her free from the computerised household to go and have a series of adventures. Smyth's two sons, Tali and Orlando, sailed with Williamson's daughter Bee on their boat, and travelled with them on their 1980/81 tour.

The Robot Woman tour involved Smyth and Williamson and the others (Didier Malherbe and his Bloom colleagues Jan Emeric and Jean-Philippe Rykiel, with Dane Kranenburg and Guy Evans) performing to a backing tape, with a big box of propos - it was very much a performance, and the Glastonbury performance which included most of the first album plus two new songs, "Chinese Puzzle" and "What's Going On", was recorded, and excerpts of that were mixed with studio recordings to form the first album in the Robot Woman series. Mother Gong also appeared at the 1981 Trondheim Festival in Norway.

In 1982, while they were in the process of finishing the Robot Woman 2 album, Smyth and Williamson decided to move to Australia owing to increasing fears of a nuclear war ("Australia" on the Robot Woman Vol.1 is about this), and during the next years released the rest of the Robot Woman series. In 1986, they recorded the Magenta and Stroking The Tail Of The Bird albums with Daevid Allen in Williamson's Melbourne studios. And in 1987, a new Mother Gong band line-up was formed with local musicians Conrad Henderson (bass) and Rob George (drums), plus fellow British expatriate saxophonist Rob Calvert. It was this band that recorded the classic albums Wild Child, Tree In Fish, Magenta/She made The World and Every Witch's Way.

Many of the apparently composed pieces on these recordings were culled from "spontaneous composition" sessions. Smyth would present the group with some poetic ideas and images, and after a short discussion which would establish the parameters for the evening, tapes would roll. Williamson's classical affinity produced structures not often associated with jazz and Wild Child is perhaps the epitome of this elegant and emotionally moving process, recorded in a few wild full moon days in a studio in Wales prior to the 1989 UK tour with the quintet.

In the early 1990's, the band became separated geographically, and the Autumn 1991 US and UK tours were duo affairs by Smyth and Williamson with support from Thom The World Poet, which resulted in the Live 1991 CD. In 1992 and 1993 Smyth did solo tours in the US and UK, using backing tapes from Mother Gong sessions, and in 1994 played the first International Goddess Festival in Santa Cruz. She was later joined by Rob Calvert for another tour of the US and the UK in 1994.

The new decade also saw Smyth reuniting with Gong. In April 1990, she participated in the televised concert by the reformed band, and in 1993 she rejoined the band on a permanent basis. She appeared at Gong's 25th Birthday Party in October 1994 and was featured on the subsequent double CD set.

Her next project was a duo with Gong multi-instrumentalist Steffi Sharpstrings : GLO, short for "Goddesses Love Oranges". They started doing "rave" gigs in the Summer of 1995 and the following year released their debut album Even As We. Another ambient trance album, Goddess Trance, was recorded on New Year's Eve 1996 in Byron Bay (Australia) with Daevid Allen and Taliesin as guests. Goddess Trance is Smyth's North Coast band that she works with when in Australia and includes Orlando Allen (drums), Tony Wandella (bass), Nick Spacetree (synths), Kavin (percussion & flute) and FX Sonic Bloom (effects).

At present, Gilli Smyth spends about half the year touring with Gong and her own projects, the rest of the time writing new material, walking the endless beaches of Rainbow Country and healing dogs. 1999 has been a busy year for her. "In October I recorded a Celtic album in San Francisco, based on Taliesin, and a Gong Matrist album - that's the present day version of Mother Gong with San Fran musicians. We have also been recording more tracks in Australia for Shiatzu 2... The first one seems to have been full of inspiration on all sides but was a bit rushed technically to be finished for the tours...".