Daevid Allen & Gong

Gong – Flying Teapot

(1973 – included on the album “Radio Gnome Invisible: Flying Teapot”, Columbia, 1973)

One of the visionary geniuses of rock music who most deserves to be remembered, Daevid Allen was born in Melbourne in '38. His first great achievement was founding, alongside the other giant of English progressive music, Robert Wyatt, and later the no less remarkable Kevin Ayers, the first incarnation of Soft Machine. His truest and most heartfelt visionary streak, however, was still to come.

Probably a mix of legend, self-indulgence, hallucinogens, sci-fi worship, but above all imagination and creativity, Gong was for Allen a cathartic epiphany. Together with his legendary partner Gilli Smyth, already a narrator, monologist and poet, Allen invented the Gong saga after a few interesting underground releases, culminating in the release of “Camembert Electrique”, the moniker's first official offspring, and a classic of British progressive rock.

But Allen's true masterpiece, the real zenith and perhaps the very reason for Gong's existence, is and will remain the so-called “Gnome Trilogy” (1971). Truth be told, at the outset this freak, no longer so young, wasn't quite sure where he was heading. All that appeared to him was a planet, Planet Gong, and its inhabitants, the gonghiani. They travel about in strange UFOs, flying teapots, the Flying Teapots. They send out envoys, toxic marijuana pixies, Pothead Pixies, to announce the coming of the gonghiani to planet Earth, directed from home base via a special frequency, Radio Gnome Invisible.

This little cluster of fantastical notions seemed enough for Allen to already produce a first chapter, namely “Radio Gnome Invisible: Flying Teapot”, officially released in 1973. And it's precisely the title track, “Flying Teapot”, the ultimate cosmic circus of galactic ringmaster Allen, that arguably represents his greatest artistic peak.

His touchstones, Zappa and Barrett, have just been invoked – as muses, so to speak – in the opening track, manifesto and prelude “Radio Gnome Invisible”, another splendid carousel that ranks among Allen's other inspired creations. Then we arrive at the operetta within the operetta, the twelve minutes of “Flying Teapot”.

It all kicks off with a chant of glissandi and dissonance, a chant that keeps mutating, as if trying to find a shape and a meaning for its wandering. Finally, as if transformed by some superpower, it turns into a kind of interstellar fusion ride. Here, in this acid vortex, Allen's psychedelic formula takes hold. Up to this point the listening experience is actually quite laid-back, as if the composer had merely sketched out a general dress-rehearsal saraband.

Here, though, the prodigious skills of the individual musicians enlisted by the ringmaster kick in — musicians renamed, moreover, with the most evocative sci-fi nicknames or, following the Canterbury principle, pataphysical ones (Stevie Hillside, High Tea Moonweed, Shackty Yoni, Lawrence The Alien etc). What unfolds first is a shaggy concert, in the form of a para-jazz jam, of horns rising and falling. At this point the ship crashes into chaos, but quickly resumes its ride, this time surrounded by an exorcism of mysterious spirits, ghostly wails, terrifying scenarios, all sketched out and then conducted by Smyth alone (probably her masterpiece). This is the grand climax of the whole track's arrangement.

After this unusual jumble of light and dark, evanescent spirits and massive cadences, the flying teapot's journey runs into sidereal silence, a metaphor for the darkness of approaching the new planet. From here begins the second instrumental gem, the percussive one, courtesy of the pair standing in for the legendary Pip Pyle, namely Pierre Moerlen and Laurie Allan (a drummer who would go on to contribute to nothing less than “Rock Bottom”). In a normal bebop jam, this is where the iconic drum solo should kick in, its musical worth resulting from the drummer's talent, skill and feel for interplay. But here too, Gong go further. Rather than tackling a straightforward solo, however daring, the two dive into a jungle of tribal gestures and a dizzying relay of phrasing that opens up a whole new creative and stylistic front, weaving between Indian touches, Persian dances, Noh drumsticks. Another gem that serves as a metaphor for the madcap universalism preached by Allen's crew.

The blissful stellar pataphysics of the album and of the band's whole poetics owes a great deal to this timeless track. A wonder of the album and of the entire Canterbury scene, if the progressive operetta of “Radio Gnome Invisible” and the rest of the trilogy (“Angel's Egg”, the second chapter, and “You”, 1974, the third) works and hits so hard, it's precisely thanks to feats like this. In it there's a perfect, evocative balance — perhaps also a reckless one — between circus, narrative, cosmos and sheer weirdness. It's a double, or rather a triple manifesto, of Allen and his creation: on an artistic level, on an aesthetic-narrative level, and on a personal one. Honour and glory to Daevid (1938-2015 R.I.P.)

If you feel belief hi Pete

I got a story to tell you

Of a band of little green men

From a far away planet

If you want to know about love

Then ask the wee geezer

He can teach you telepathy

He can read your mind backwards

If you try to do the cat in

You can only be a loser

Paranoia never touch him

He’s got ways of laughter

Baby don’t you bring yourself down

Got to catch you up later

If you want to know about love

You can ask the wee geezer

He can teach you telepathy

He can read your mind backwards

If you try to do the cat in

You can only be a loser

Paranoia never touch him

He’s got ways of laughter

Baby don’t you bring yourself down

I’ll catch you up later

Give him a bit of your love you get it back later…

Give him a bit of your love you get it back

Later

…Hear me now from the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet…

Have a cup of tea, have another one, have a cup of tea

High in the sky, what do you see?

Come down to Earth, a cup of tea

Flying saucer, flying teacup

From outer space, Flying Teapot

Ride the wave of great music

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06/03/2026