Caravan

Two bands came out of the Wilde Flowers when that Canterbury group broke up. One became Soft Machine and went towards free jazz. The other became Caravan and went towards the song — melodic, funny, faintly rude, and built on an organ sound nobody else had.

The short version

Caravan formed in Canterbury in 1968 around four musicians who had all passed through the Wilde Flowers at one point or another: Pye Hastings on guitar and vocals, his cousin-by-association Dave Sinclair on keyboards, Richard Sinclair on bass and vocals, and Richard Coughlan on drums. They were the first British act signed to the American label Verve, and the self-titled debut appeared towards the end of 1968. Over the following decade they made the run of albums that defines the melodic wing of the Canterbury scene, split in 1978, and have reformed and continued at intervals ever since.

Out of the Wilde Flowers

The Wilde Flowers had run in Canterbury from 1964 as a rhythm-and-blues group with a jazz inflection, and almost everyone who mattered to the scene passed through it: Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Kevin Ayers, Brian Hopper. Richard Sinclair was an early member and left in 1965 to study; Hastings replaced Wyatt as singer and Coughlan replaced him on drums when Wyatt and Ayers went off to form Soft Machine. Dave Sinclair joined in late 1966. The group ran out of momentum and broke up in October 1967, and the four who were left started Caravan the following year.

The organ and the song

What separates Caravan from the rest of the scene is that they never stopped writing songs. The jazz vocabulary is there — extended instrumental passages, unusual metres, solos that go somewhere — but it is wrapped around verses and choruses and two very English voices. The sound of the early records is Dave Sinclair’s Hammond A-100 put through a fuzz box, a texture nobody else was getting, and Pye’s brother Jimmy Hastings adding flute, clarinet and saxophone as a permanent guest. Critics writing about the Canterbury sound tend to use Caravan as the accessible entry point and Soft Machine as the difficult one.

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Grey and pink, and after

The band moved from Verve to Decca and made In the Land of Grey and Pink in 1971, the record most listeners and most writers name first. Dave Sinclair left after it was finished and the group came apart the following year. Hastings and Coughlan rebuilt it, and the most consequential arrival was Geoffrey Richardson on viola in 1972 — an instrument that gave Caravan a second lead voice and a sound distinct from every keyboard-led band around them. Richard Sinclair went off to Hatfield and the North; Dave Sinclair returned twice more.

Album by album

Seven albums from the first decade, each with its own guide. Tap any title to read it.

The players

Hastings and Coughlan were the two constants, running the band from 1968 to the end of the 1970s and through every reformation after. Dave Sinclair came and went across three separate stints and wrote a good deal of the material listeners remember, including ‘Nine Feet Underground’ and ‘For Richard’. The bass chair passed from Richard Sinclair to John G. Perry, then Mike Wedgwood, then Dek Messecar, and Jan Schelhaas held the keyboards through the later 1970s. Jimmy Hastings appears on almost everything.

Where to start

In the Land of Grey and Pink, without much argument — it has the best-known songs and the long Dave Sinclair suite that closes it, and it is the record everyone else is measured against. If it lands, go backwards to If I Could Do It All Over Again for the rawer version of the same band, then forwards to For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night for the Richardson-era line-up at full strength.

Why they still matter

Caravan never had the influence Soft Machine had, and they charted in Britain only once in their first six years. What they have instead is a catalogue that has stayed in print and stayed liked, which is rarer than it sounds. They are the proof that the Canterbury sound was not only an experiment — that the same jazz-informed harmony and the same fondness for the long instrumental could be pointed at melody and produce records people play for pleasure rather than for study.

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