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Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending: An Incredible String Band Compendium
A wide-ranging collection of interviews, anecdotes, essays, and ephemera concerning one of the most enigmatic bands to emerge from the 1960s hippy scene.
"Encyclopaedic in scope, passionate in tone, this book is a minotaur's labyrinth of information about one of the most remarkable groups in 20th century music. Be glad, for everything you need to know is here." (Rob Young, The Wire )
First published in 2003 and long out of print, Be Glad For The Song Has No An Incredible String Band Compendium is the definitive book about the ISB. Containing a wealth of interviews, essays, and ephemera from the band's brief but tangled history, this new revised and expanded edition includes two new pieces by ISB member Rose Simpson on Witchseason Productions’ idiosyncratic offices and on recording with the ISB in the Sound Techniques studio, as well as interviews with Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys, folk musician Alasdair Roberts, and Ossian Brown of Coil and Cyclobe.
Contributors include Rowan Williamson (former Archbishop of Canterbury), ISB manager and producer Joe Boyd, Andy Roberts, Billy Connolly, and Raymond Greenoaken.
"Encyclopaedic in scope, passionate in tone, this book is a minotaur's labyrinth of information about one of the most remarkable groups in 20th century music. Be glad, for everything you need to know is here." (Rob Young, The Wire )
First published in 2003 and long out of print, Be Glad For The Song Has No An Incredible String Band Compendium is the definitive book about the ISB. Containing a wealth of interviews, essays, and ephemera from the band's brief but tangled history, this new revised and expanded edition includes two new pieces by ISB member Rose Simpson on Witchseason Productions’ idiosyncratic offices and on recording with the ISB in the Sound Techniques studio, as well as interviews with Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys, folk musician Alasdair Roberts, and Ossian Brown of Coil and Cyclobe.
Contributors include Rowan Williamson (former Archbishop of Canterbury), ISB manager and producer Joe Boyd, Andy Roberts, Billy Connolly, and Raymond Greenoaken.
- GenresMusic
704 pages, Paperback
Published February 20, 2024
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December 4, 2023
“When the Incredible String Band take you on a journey, you have to go where they lead you and trust to their sense of direction…”
…Raymond Greenoaken.
The magazine Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending (known colloquially as Be Glad) – a fanzine dedicated to The Incredible String Band - ran from Autumn 1992, until Autumn 2002, published twice yearly and ultimately comprising 20 issues. It was edited initially by the inimitable Andy Roberts, and then, after 7 issues, co-edited by Raymond Greenoaken and Adrian Whittaker. When the magazine came to its natural close, Adrian curated the Be Glad Compendium – a book intended to contain in one place all the best bits from the magazine. Twenty years later, after much continued work, a new improved edition of the Be Glad Compendium has been released by Strange Attractor Press.
First of all, let’s ask the half-remarkable question: what is the target audience for this richly revised and expertly expanded edition of The Be Glad Compendium? Who are they and what do they need and want and yearn to know? Are they people who are into Psych Folk or Wyrd Folk or Acid Folk and have heard the name ‘The Incredible String Band’ spoken in reverent whispers and are intrigued? Maybe. People who heard a snatch of the music and want to learn more about the band that made it? Perhaps. People who are puzzled by the 1960s and want to try and understand what on earth those crazy hippies were going on about back then? Possibly. People who have heard a couple of Incredible String Band albums, or who have streamed the odd track online, and would like to delve deeper? I wouldn’t be surprised. And, of course, people who have every album on vinyl and CD and would love to explore further the hinterland of it all, and find out the who and the why and the what and the whither? Well, hold your horses, those of you in the latter category, I need to set the scene for the others first.
The Incredible String Band were very popular in the late nineteen sixties. I don’t mean, like, niche popular, or cult popular, or even quirky one-off-chart-hit folk music popular – they were popular popular. They had an album at number 3 in the mainstream album charts. They were lauded by the likes of Paul McCartney, and latterly by musicians such as Neil Tennant, Elvis Costello and Robert Plant…among many others. The movers and shakers in the music world were listening to them and taking notes. They were innovators and they weren’t simply expanding the envelope – their music suggested that there were no envelopes – that all the neat and discrete genres that music had been forced into, could and should and would dissolve. People sometimes say they were the forerunners of what is now called World Music, and there’s something to that – but they were actually at the cutting edge of Fusion. They were pioneers who made music that was a kind of riotous, devil-may-care minestrone into which everything and anything was thrown with wild abandon. The Incredible String Band stirred the soup and ladled out the magical elixir. Some gagged and spat it out, others drank deep and were never the same again.
Some people say you had to be there to appreciate their music, and it’s true that they are part of that whole artistic flowering that took place back then, budding in the early sixties, finding full bloom in the latter years of that decade, and quickly withering away after Altamont. You can’t re-create that wide-eyed faith. You can’t these days, kid yourself that if enough people formed a circle, they could levitate The Pentagon or put an end to war by lying in bed for a couple of weeks. But what the ISB touched was not only a time – it also touched a mental landscape – the questing, yearning, joyous mind that seeks the arcane, the gnostic and the spiritual – and the mind that doesn’t baulk or shrivel when it learns that the answer to the riddle is that there is no answer to the riddle. If you answer this question, you’ll never begin. The quest is all. The journey is more important than the arrival. The lyrics might make sense if put to the analytic test, but they don‘t need to, you can just gorge yourself on the gnomic smorgasbord of the words; the music sweeps in from every point of the compass, wriggling and writhing and stretching and twisting, mutating as it careens along with two wheels off the road, a song morphing from a caterpillar to a rocking horse to a unicycle to an amethyst galleon to a butterfly before your very ears. People with minds open to that kind of thing are being born all the time…you didn’t have to be there to be there, you can just as easily be here till here is there.
Were you to create a Venn Diagram, incorporating almost every global form of music-making, going back to when our ancestors, hip-deep in sacred moonlight, thrashed a shamanic drum while the acolytes whirled and chanted…then follow it down the long pulse of the mellifluous ages right up to…say…1974, when the Incredible String Band dissolved for the first time, it’s likely that at the heart of the diagram, where every circle intersects, you’d find Robin Williamson and Mike Heron. Heron grinning like the Cheshire Cat on acid; Williamson staring straight through you with eyes that see other planes of existence as though it were quite the normal thing.
And what of those of you who think you already know the ISB through and through? I can guarantee that you will be informed, enlightened and delighted by this new expanded edition; and make no mistake, this is the authoritative version, the last word, the ultimate go-to reference book on all things String. Adrian Whittaker, custodian, investigative journalist, writer and editor, has been working on this for quite a while, drawing in others to rewrite, update and expand on topics that were previously only half-explored, or left out altogether. He made use of the Covid lockdown to beard certain becalmed parties in their dens, exploiting their enforced idleness to great effect, gleaning more and deeper details, harvesting and winnowing the results so that, even if you have the original version (now 20 years old), you will find plenty here to fascinate, delight and satisfy.
So, what’s in it for you die-hard Stringheads who bought the original? Well, the old version, published twenty years ago, was a mere 450 pages – this new edition runs to just over 700 pages.
There is new information about the early years when Mimi and Mouse danced along to the music. Adrian has delved deeper into the memories and impressions of past members and of enthusiastic and noteworthy listeners. He even managed an interview with Neil Tennant, during the Pet Shop Boys’ enforced idleness, and learned that Mr T’s first band was a folkish quartet with two boys, two girls and the curious sobriquet “Dust”…taken from the first word of the Williamson song Maya. There are deeper musings on Scientology, for those wondering how that controversial dogma affected both the members and the music. There’s a piece on the ill-fated deal with Neighborhood Records, which was certainly a factor in the break-up of the band. There are two lovely monographs by Rose Simpson, detailing her impressions of Witchseason’s head office in Charlotte Street, and of time she spent in Sound Techniques. (Anyone who has read Rose’s ‘Muse, Odalisque and Handmaiden’, knows how insightful and illuminating her writings can be). There are interjections by such ‘wyrd folk’ luminaries as Alasdair Roberts and Ossian Brown, and a profile of drummer John Gilston and of fiddler Stuart Gordon (Who almost became Likky’s replacement). There are many more pictures and a detailed index. And within its pages, you will learn which member of the Incredible String Band played on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Yes. Seriously. So, in short, if you want to investigate the questions that cannot be answered, you’ll find it’s all writ down in the Be Glad Compendium.
…Raymond Greenoaken.
The magazine Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending (known colloquially as Be Glad) – a fanzine dedicated to The Incredible String Band - ran from Autumn 1992, until Autumn 2002, published twice yearly and ultimately comprising 20 issues. It was edited initially by the inimitable Andy Roberts, and then, after 7 issues, co-edited by Raymond Greenoaken and Adrian Whittaker. When the magazine came to its natural close, Adrian curated the Be Glad Compendium – a book intended to contain in one place all the best bits from the magazine. Twenty years later, after much continued work, a new improved edition of the Be Glad Compendium has been released by Strange Attractor Press.
First of all, let’s ask the half-remarkable question: what is the target audience for this richly revised and expertly expanded edition of The Be Glad Compendium? Who are they and what do they need and want and yearn to know? Are they people who are into Psych Folk or Wyrd Folk or Acid Folk and have heard the name ‘The Incredible String Band’ spoken in reverent whispers and are intrigued? Maybe. People who heard a snatch of the music and want to learn more about the band that made it? Perhaps. People who are puzzled by the 1960s and want to try and understand what on earth those crazy hippies were going on about back then? Possibly. People who have heard a couple of Incredible String Band albums, or who have streamed the odd track online, and would like to delve deeper? I wouldn’t be surprised. And, of course, people who have every album on vinyl and CD and would love to explore further the hinterland of it all, and find out the who and the why and the what and the whither? Well, hold your horses, those of you in the latter category, I need to set the scene for the others first.
The Incredible String Band were very popular in the late nineteen sixties. I don’t mean, like, niche popular, or cult popular, or even quirky one-off-chart-hit folk music popular – they were popular popular. They had an album at number 3 in the mainstream album charts. They were lauded by the likes of Paul McCartney, and latterly by musicians such as Neil Tennant, Elvis Costello and Robert Plant…among many others. The movers and shakers in the music world were listening to them and taking notes. They were innovators and they weren’t simply expanding the envelope – their music suggested that there were no envelopes – that all the neat and discrete genres that music had been forced into, could and should and would dissolve. People sometimes say they were the forerunners of what is now called World Music, and there’s something to that – but they were actually at the cutting edge of Fusion. They were pioneers who made music that was a kind of riotous, devil-may-care minestrone into which everything and anything was thrown with wild abandon. The Incredible String Band stirred the soup and ladled out the magical elixir. Some gagged and spat it out, others drank deep and were never the same again.
Some people say you had to be there to appreciate their music, and it’s true that they are part of that whole artistic flowering that took place back then, budding in the early sixties, finding full bloom in the latter years of that decade, and quickly withering away after Altamont. You can’t re-create that wide-eyed faith. You can’t these days, kid yourself that if enough people formed a circle, they could levitate The Pentagon or put an end to war by lying in bed for a couple of weeks. But what the ISB touched was not only a time – it also touched a mental landscape – the questing, yearning, joyous mind that seeks the arcane, the gnostic and the spiritual – and the mind that doesn’t baulk or shrivel when it learns that the answer to the riddle is that there is no answer to the riddle. If you answer this question, you’ll never begin. The quest is all. The journey is more important than the arrival. The lyrics might make sense if put to the analytic test, but they don‘t need to, you can just gorge yourself on the gnomic smorgasbord of the words; the music sweeps in from every point of the compass, wriggling and writhing and stretching and twisting, mutating as it careens along with two wheels off the road, a song morphing from a caterpillar to a rocking horse to a unicycle to an amethyst galleon to a butterfly before your very ears. People with minds open to that kind of thing are being born all the time…you didn’t have to be there to be there, you can just as easily be here till here is there.
Were you to create a Venn Diagram, incorporating almost every global form of music-making, going back to when our ancestors, hip-deep in sacred moonlight, thrashed a shamanic drum while the acolytes whirled and chanted…then follow it down the long pulse of the mellifluous ages right up to…say…1974, when the Incredible String Band dissolved for the first time, it’s likely that at the heart of the diagram, where every circle intersects, you’d find Robin Williamson and Mike Heron. Heron grinning like the Cheshire Cat on acid; Williamson staring straight through you with eyes that see other planes of existence as though it were quite the normal thing.
And what of those of you who think you already know the ISB through and through? I can guarantee that you will be informed, enlightened and delighted by this new expanded edition; and make no mistake, this is the authoritative version, the last word, the ultimate go-to reference book on all things String. Adrian Whittaker, custodian, investigative journalist, writer and editor, has been working on this for quite a while, drawing in others to rewrite, update and expand on topics that were previously only half-explored, or left out altogether. He made use of the Covid lockdown to beard certain becalmed parties in their dens, exploiting their enforced idleness to great effect, gleaning more and deeper details, harvesting and winnowing the results so that, even if you have the original version (now 20 years old), you will find plenty here to fascinate, delight and satisfy.
So, what’s in it for you die-hard Stringheads who bought the original? Well, the old version, published twenty years ago, was a mere 450 pages – this new edition runs to just over 700 pages.
There is new information about the early years when Mimi and Mouse danced along to the music. Adrian has delved deeper into the memories and impressions of past members and of enthusiastic and noteworthy listeners. He even managed an interview with Neil Tennant, during the Pet Shop Boys’ enforced idleness, and learned that Mr T’s first band was a folkish quartet with two boys, two girls and the curious sobriquet “Dust”…taken from the first word of the Williamson song Maya. There are deeper musings on Scientology, for those wondering how that controversial dogma affected both the members and the music. There’s a piece on the ill-fated deal with Neighborhood Records, which was certainly a factor in the break-up of the band. There are two lovely monographs by Rose Simpson, detailing her impressions of Witchseason’s head office in Charlotte Street, and of time she spent in Sound Techniques. (Anyone who has read Rose’s ‘Muse, Odalisque and Handmaiden’, knows how insightful and illuminating her writings can be). There are interjections by such ‘wyrd folk’ luminaries as Alasdair Roberts and Ossian Brown, and a profile of drummer John Gilston and of fiddler Stuart Gordon (Who almost became Likky’s replacement). There are many more pictures and a detailed index. And within its pages, you will learn which member of the Incredible String Band played on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Yes. Seriously. So, in short, if you want to investigate the questions that cannot be answered, you’ll find it’s all writ down in the Be Glad Compendium.
November 4, 2023
In a wicked world this is a perfect thing. Well if you like the Incredible String Band, that is. If you don’t, you might be in for a trying time.
I read this at breakneck speed because for a dyed in the wool fan this is like a huge slab of Christmas cake, or a 700 page helping of chicken tikka masala, or both stirred together with a layer of tiramisu on the top.
For those who don’t know the unique joys of this band, they existed between 1965 and 1974, and recorded 12 albums of which 2 are double albums, plus two solo albums during that time. This all adds up to them knocking out an albumsworth of material every 6 months or so for the full 9 years.
Was it all beautiful, extraordinary, like nothing before or since? No, but about half of it was.
Mike Heron and Robin Williamson were the two main guys, everyone else revolved around them. And they are still with us, aged 79 and 80. It’s quite extraordinary how many great musicians are 79 and 80 right now –
Paul McCartney
Brian Wilson
Roger McGuinn
Al Jardine
Bob Gaudio
Sly Stone
Diana Ross
Mick Jagger
Jimmy Page
Joni Mitchell
Keith Richards
Randy Newman
Roger Daltrey
John Sebastian
Gloria Gaynor
But I digress
As this book is 700 unsmall pages long no aspect of the ISB’s weird career is left unpondered. The elephant in the String Band's bedroom is addressed very frankly, which is this - after being the all time acid folk hippies they became converts to what one might describe as the polar opposite of acid folk hippies, Scientology; a cult which had a terrible reputation back in 1969 and, well, still does. Gradually, out went the inspired chaos, in came memos, rehearsal times and haircuts. Mike Heron was interviewed in 1973 and gave a poignant account of what in Krishna’s name happened :
Our communication was down, we couldn’t organise ourselves and we were hopeless with chicks [sic] and we couldn’t put anything together, from handling money to doing interviews… we were completely saturated in drugs and we realised we were screwing up and going out of our minds
L Ron Hubbard stepped in and smartened them up in no uncertain terms; so they became much happier people, and much more efficient, and their lives were back on track, and the music went down the drain. Well, it’s an old story. Miserable artists make much more interesting work than happy well adjusted artists. I get that, but still : scientology?!! Eventually they all left the cult but that was long after the band broke up.
This book is the nearly twice the size completely rewritten second version of a book originally published in 2003. The dozens of chronologically arranged articles are written by fans, for fans, and nobody is grandstanding with fancy pants prose. The only complaint I could possibly scrape up is that I really don’t like the cover! Oops! Out of all the images of this good looking group you chose a psychedelic poster from 1967 in which the artist decided to portray Robin as somebody else entirely, he never looked like that in his life. (The image GR is showing is not what's on the cover of my advance copy.)
Never mind!
This is another Xmas present alert, for any partners of ISB fans – look no further.
I read this at breakneck speed because for a dyed in the wool fan this is like a huge slab of Christmas cake, or a 700 page helping of chicken tikka masala, or both stirred together with a layer of tiramisu on the top.
For those who don’t know the unique joys of this band, they existed between 1965 and 1974, and recorded 12 albums of which 2 are double albums, plus two solo albums during that time. This all adds up to them knocking out an albumsworth of material every 6 months or so for the full 9 years.
Was it all beautiful, extraordinary, like nothing before or since? No, but about half of it was.
Mike Heron and Robin Williamson were the two main guys, everyone else revolved around them. And they are still with us, aged 79 and 80. It’s quite extraordinary how many great musicians are 79 and 80 right now –
Paul McCartney
Brian Wilson
Roger McGuinn
Al Jardine
Bob Gaudio
Sly Stone
Diana Ross
Mick Jagger
Jimmy Page
Joni Mitchell
Keith Richards
Randy Newman
Roger Daltrey
John Sebastian
Gloria Gaynor
But I digress
As this book is 700 unsmall pages long no aspect of the ISB’s weird career is left unpondered. The elephant in the String Band's bedroom is addressed very frankly, which is this - after being the all time acid folk hippies they became converts to what one might describe as the polar opposite of acid folk hippies, Scientology; a cult which had a terrible reputation back in 1969 and, well, still does. Gradually, out went the inspired chaos, in came memos, rehearsal times and haircuts. Mike Heron was interviewed in 1973 and gave a poignant account of what in Krishna’s name happened :
Our communication was down, we couldn’t organise ourselves and we were hopeless with chicks [sic] and we couldn’t put anything together, from handling money to doing interviews… we were completely saturated in drugs and we realised we were screwing up and going out of our minds
L Ron Hubbard stepped in and smartened them up in no uncertain terms; so they became much happier people, and much more efficient, and their lives were back on track, and the music went down the drain. Well, it’s an old story. Miserable artists make much more interesting work than happy well adjusted artists. I get that, but still : scientology?!! Eventually they all left the cult but that was long after the band broke up.
This book is the nearly twice the size completely rewritten second version of a book originally published in 2003. The dozens of chronologically arranged articles are written by fans, for fans, and nobody is grandstanding with fancy pants prose. The only complaint I could possibly scrape up is that I really don’t like the cover! Oops! Out of all the images of this good looking group you chose a psychedelic poster from 1967 in which the artist decided to portray Robin as somebody else entirely, he never looked like that in his life. (The image GR is showing is not what's on the cover of my advance copy.)
Never mind!
This is another Xmas present alert, for any partners of ISB fans – look no further.
April 5, 2024
I read the first edition of this book back in December 2003. This edition is an expanded version 704 pages as compared to 445 pages.
I have been a fan of the Incredible String Band since 1970 and saw them several times back in the day. I also enjoy the albums Clive Palmer, Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Malcolm Le Maistre recorded after the the band split up. I have also been lucky enough to see all four perform this century and I even went to see Malcolm with Stan Schnier and Graham Forbes perform as "Not the Incredible String Band" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival some years ago!
This is a very good read for anyone interested in the Incredible String Band.
I have been a fan of the Incredible String Band since 1970 and saw them several times back in the day. I also enjoy the albums Clive Palmer, Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Malcolm Le Maistre recorded after the the band split up. I have also been lucky enough to see all four perform this century and I even went to see Malcolm with Stan Schnier and Graham Forbes perform as "Not the Incredible String Band" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival some years ago!
This is a very good read for anyone interested in the Incredible String Band.
August 30, 2025
It certainly is exhaustive! Every word that has ever been uttered about the Increds. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, as a total ISB fanatic since Hangman’s!
It certainly emphasised what most ISB fanatics know - that after the magical run of early albums up to and including Wee Tam & The Big Huge, things went downhill fast - chiefly as a result of Scientology which got its grip on the band (except Rose).
It becomes a bit of a sorry tale after that. Depressing for those like me who totally bought in to their magical, mystical, sweet innocence, alternative living, early days.
However, every ISB fan should read it and get the whole story!
It certainly emphasised what most ISB fanatics know - that after the magical run of early albums up to and including Wee Tam & The Big Huge, things went downhill fast - chiefly as a result of Scientology which got its grip on the band (except Rose).
It becomes a bit of a sorry tale after that. Depressing for those like me who totally bought in to their magical, mystical, sweet innocence, alternative living, early days.
However, every ISB fan should read it and get the whole story!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews