Drummer
Pip Pyle had been involved with so many Canterbury scene bands that one interviewer asked the entirely valid question, "How is it you never managed to play with
Soft Machine?" ("Well, I never got asked, I guess" was
Pyle's reply). He wasn't there at the beginning, but
Pyle was
Gong's drummer when they solidified a lineup around 1971. A year of the communal life with his
Gong bandmates was enough for
Pyle, but the drummer would occasionally drop in on the band throughout his career and has always had kind things to say about
Gong's leader,
Daevid Allen. In 1972, he formed
Hatfield and the North with
Richard Sinclair and
Phil Miller. Critically loved but without any commercial success, the band ground down to a halt in 1975. After the short-lived
Shortwave with
Hugh Hopper,
Miller and
Pyle started a new band with
Alan Gowen, the beloved
National Health. Although the proggy band was slow with the output,
National Health had a loyal following until they dissolved in 1982.
Pyle and
Gowen had also taken a break from the band in 1979 to reunite with
Hopper for another short-lived band,
Soft Heap, while later
Pyle rekindled his musical relationship with
Miller for his '80s-and-beyond band,
In Cahoots. The early '90s found
Pyle back in
Gong for the "Shapeshifter Gong" era and its resulting
Shapeshifter album. By the end of the decade, the drummer looked to front his own band and ended up with two. The
7 Year Itch album from 1998 was a solo
Pyle affair, but 2000's Equipe Out was released under the name Pip Pyle's Equipe Out with
Hopper,
Elton Dean,
Didier Malherbe, and
Sophia Domancich rounding out the group. His other band, Pip Pyle's Bash!, with Patrice Meyer,
Alex Maguire, and Fred Baker, premiered with 2004's
Belle Illusion on Cuneiform. Equipe Out returned in 2005 with Instants on the Canterbury-loving label Hux. 2005 also saw the reunion of
Hatfield and the North. The group toured up until
Pyle's death on August 28, 2006. ~ David Jeffries