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Gryphon

A London progressive folk band of Royal College of Music graduates, with bassoon and crumhorn beside electric guitar, who opened for Yes in 1974 and made the chess-themed instrumental album Red Queen to Gryphon Three.

Tiffin Boys' School to Transatlantic

Gryphon formed in London in early 1972, according to Wikipedia, as a four-piece of Graeme Taylor, Richard Harvey, Dave Oberle and Brian Gulland, with Harvey and Gulland graduates of the Royal College of Music. Harvey and Taylor had met at Tiffin Boys' School in Kingston in 1965, and Gulland had been a Canterbury Cathedral chorister and a National Youth Orchestra player. Record Collector dates Oberle's joining to 1970 and calls the earlier trio Spellthorne, which conflicts with Wikipedia. The name comes from the half-eagle, half-lion creature in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. They signed to Transatlantic with Nick Wright as manager, gave their first gig at Stone Parish Church in Aylesbury, and composed music for the film Glastonbury Fayre. A publicist's line was Imagine Henry VIII in a rock'n'roll band, and Toppermost called them the Elizabethan Slade.

Gryphon (June 1973) was recorded in the engineer Adam Skeaping's attic. Midnight Mushrumps (April 1974, recorded in January at Chipping Norton Recording Studios in Oxfordshire) has an 18-minute title track by Harvey, and its music grew from their score for Peter Hall's production of The Tempest. In July 1974 they played the Old Vic, described as the first rock band concert there.

Yes, Harvest and the reunions

Red Queen to Gryphon Three was recorded in August 1974, a month after the Old Vic show, and released in the UK in November 1974 on Transatlantic (TRA 287) and in the US in December on Bell (1316). Rick Wakeman introduced them to Brian Lane, also Yes's manager, and from November 1974 to May 1975 they opened for Yes in the US, Canada and the UK; by the end they joined Yes onstage for encores, and Steve Howe asked them to play on his solo album Beginnings. They recorded a King Biscuit session on the US tour, and BBC sessions are on About as Curious as It Can Be (2002) and Glastonbury Carol (2003). Raindance (1975) followed, then Bennett and Taylor left to form Precious Little, and Treason (1977, Harvest) was their last album before they split that year, having lost momentum to punk and Harvey's outside work.

They reunited for a one-off at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on June 6, 2009 and again in 2015, with a Union Chapel show in May that year; Harvey left in early 2016. ReInvention (September 2018) was their first new studio album in 41 years, followed by Get Out of My Father's Car! (November 2020), a 50th anniversary tour in 2023, and the live double album A Sonic Tonic (September 6, 2024, recorded at The Junction in Cambridge on November 28, 2023). The current line-up includes Rob Levy on bass, Andy Findon on woodwinds and Clare Taylor on violin and keyboards. Classic Rock's Louder said this is renaissance rock taken to such an extreme that it makes Blackmore's Night sound perfectly normal, and Taylor names Yes as their strongest influence. Setlist.fm lists 180 setlists, with "Kemp's Jig" the most played.

Albums

  • Red Queen to Gryphon Three 1974 · Transatlantic

    Their third album: four long instrumentals loosely based on a chess game from Alice Through the Looking Glass, with their first electric guitars.

Songs

  • Opening Move Red Queen to Gryphon Three · 1974

    The nearly ten-minute opening movement of Red Queen to Gryphon Three.

Sources

  1. Gryphon (band), Wikipedia
  2. Dave Oberle interview, Gaudela (1999-01-13)
  3. Origins of Gryphon, World Music Central
  4. Gryphon, Toppermost (2014-07-17)