Smiling Men With Bad Reputations: The Story of the Incredible String Band, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron and a Consumer's Guide to Their Music

by Paul Norbury

The Incredible String Band lit up the late 1960s music scene with their groundbreaking LPs The 5000 Spirits..., The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and Wee Tam and the Big Huge, and were one of only five British acts at Woodstock. Their core duo Robin Williamson and Mike Heron then created further significant work both together and apart that was fêted by Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Robert Plant, amongst many others, and this book uncovers the story and comprehensively examines all of the just short of one hundred original recorded works of what is the great lost band of the 1960s.

240 pages, Paperback

Published November 28, 2016

Reviews

[Philip Dodd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good book for anyone who likes the Incredible String Band. I found it to be an absorbing, always interesting book to read. I particularly enjoyed reading its author's reviews of each album produced by the Incredible String Band between the years of 1966 and 1974, and of the solo works of Robin Williamson and Mike Heron after they had parted company. I have loved the songs of the Incredible String Band ever since I bought their double album, Wee Tam and the Big Huge, after seeing them in concert in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, in 1968, when I was sixteen. I saw them there again in 1969 and for the last time at the Liverpool Stadium in 1970. One of the good things about the book is that it made it clear how unique their music was and why I liked them and still do.

[Kevin A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Norbury has two objectives. The first is to rescue The Incredible String Band from being tarred as just relic of the hippie drug culture. The second is to rescue them from the assertion that they went rapidly downhill after becoming Scientologists.

Of course, the ISB is indeed guilty by association in both cases, but their music transcends their time and they’re really hasn’t been anyone else like them before or since. In particular, “The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion,” “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter,” and “Wee Tam & the Big Huge” deserve to be heard by future generations.

Norbury is a smart but not especially fluid writer, so this is probably for the already converted and not a good introduction.

A little sadly, Norbury encountered some hostility from one of the principals (Robin Williamson) about some of his critical evaluations contained within what is obviously overall a celebration of their music. Proving once again that artists aren’t always the best custodians of their own legacy. Hopefully this hasn’t soured the author too much on what was obviously a labor of love.