Crumhorns, bassoons and recorders next to electric guitar and drums: the Gryphon band brought medieval and Renaissance music into progressive rock. Formed in London in 1972 by two graduates of the Royal College of Music, it made five albums in the 1970s, opened for Yes on a transatlantic tour, and came back decades later with two more.

The short version

Gryphon is an English progressive folk band formed in London in early 1972. Richard Harvey and Brian Gulland, both graduates of the Royal College of Music, started it as an acoustic group mixing English folk, contemporary rock and early music; guitarist Graeme Taylor and drummer Dave Oberlé joined shortly after. The self-titled debut came out on Transatlantic in 1973, followed by “Midnight Mushrumps” and “Red Queen to Gryphon Three” in 1974, “Raindance” in 1975 and “Treason” on Harvest in 1977. The band stopped in 1977, reunited for a concert in 2009 and has been active again since 2015, releasing “ReInvention” in 2018 and “Get Out of My Father’s Car!” in 2020, its seventh studio album.

Early music, rock instruments

The first gig took place at Stone Parish Church in Aylesbury, promoted by the Friars club. The debut album was recorded in the attic of engineer Adam Skeaping and added electric guitar, keyboards and winds to the acoustic line-up. Publicist Martin Lewis, who worked with the band, summed up the idea by asking people to imagine Henry VIII in a rock and roll band.

Lewis also opened an unusual door. He arranged for Gryphon to write and play the music for the National Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, directed by Peter Hall, which opened at the Old Vic in April 1974. “Midnight Mushrumps”, recorded in January 1974 at Chipping Norton Recording Studios and released the same month as the play, took its name from a phrase in the play, and its direction was shaped by the theatre work. In July 1974 Lewis organised a Gryphon concert at the Old Vic, the first by a rock band in that theatre.

On tour with Yes

“Red Queen to Gryphon Three” was recorded at Chipping Norton in August 1974 and released in the UK by Transatlantic, and in the US by Bell in December 1974, the band’s first American release. It holds four long pieces, “Opening Move”, “Second Spasm”, “Lament” and “Checkmate”, each between eight and eleven minutes, and the original British LP credits no vocalist; bassist Philip Nestor had joined that year. Rick Wakeman, a former Royal College of Music student himself, introduced the band to Brian Lane, the manager of Yes, and from November 1974 to May 1975 Gryphon opened for Yes across the US, Canada and the UK, sometimes joining the headliners on stage for encores. Malcolm Bennett, on bass and flute, replaced Nestor during the tour.

“Raindance” (1975) leaned more towards songs, with Oberlé singing as well as drumming. Afterwards Bennett and Taylor left to form Precious Little; guitarist Bob Foster and bassist Jonathan Davie came in, and Alex Baird took over the drum kit so that Oberlé could concentrate on vocals. That line-up made “Treason”, a more rock-oriented record released by Harvest in 1977, with lyrics credited to Tim Sebastion. The band then came to a halt.

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Album by album

Seven studio albums: five from 1973 to 1977 and two since the reunion, in 2018 and 2020. The live album “A Sonic Tonic” and the BBC session collections stay outside the grid. Tap any title for its guide.

The players

The founding four were Richard Harvey on keyboards, recorder and crumhorn, Brian Gulland on bassoon and crumhorn, Graeme Taylor on guitar and Dave Oberlé on drums and, later, vocals. Philip Nestor (1974) and Malcolm Bennett (1974–1975) played bass in the first period, and Bob Foster, Jonathan Davie and Alex Baird joined for “Treason”. In 2009 Harvey, Gulland, Taylor and Oberlé played a one-off concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, 32 years after their last show, with Davie and Graham Preskett alongside them. Harvey left in early 2016. On “ReInvention”, released in 2018 on the band’s own label, Gulland, Taylor and Oberlé are joined by Andy Findon on flutes, reeds and crumhorn, Rory McFarlane on bass and Graham Preskett on violin, mandolin and keyboards; Taylor also produced it. “Get Out of My Father’s Car!” was made by Taylor, Gulland, Oberlé and Findon with two new members, Rob Levy on bass and Clare Taylor on violin and keyboards, the six musicians who make up the current line-up.

Where to start

I would start with “Red Queen to Gryphon Three” (1974), the four-part album the band took on the road with Yes. Then step back to “Midnight Mushrumps” (1974), the record shaped by the National Theatre’s “The Tempest”, and to the self-titled “Gryphon” (1973), the debut recorded in an engineer’s attic. If you want the reunited band, “ReInvention” (2018) was its first new studio album in 41 years.

Why they matter

Critics still single out how far Gryphon took the meeting of early music and rock: Classic Rock Magazine described its approach as Renaissance rock taken to an extreme, one that makes Blackmore’s Night seem ordinary by comparison. The link with Yes, through Wakeman, Brian Lane and the 1974–1975 tour, gave the band its breakthrough in large venues, and the wider story of that era lives on my British Progressive Rock page. If Gryphon is your way into prog, I put together a list of prog albums for Gryphon listeners. Elsewhere in my Progressive Folk section, Horslips did something comparable in the same years with Irish tradition and Irish legend.

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