Gong Wiki

Welcome to the Gong Wiki
The world of the Gong band. Would you like some tea? I've only been doin' this site, in one form or another, for almost a decade. Why? I really want to make a good Gong site.

There must be outer boundaries, though, and thus we find invisible fields rising up in front of some keywords. Hawkwind, for example. No use talking about Hawkwind.

Not that one wouldn't want to.

But join in, please.

About Gong
Australian beatnik and musician Daevid Allen formed Gong in 1967, when he was forced to leave Soft Machine. (The country of England wouldn't allow him across the border!) He and his partner Gilli Smyth, who was a professor at the Sorbonne, formed the core of the band, though they soon found Didier Malherbe living in a cave, and picked him up in their flying teapot. (Other members of the classic lineup included: Steve Hillage on lead guitar, Tim Blake on synthesizers, Mike Howlett on bass guitar, and either Pip Pyle or Pierre Moerlen on drums.)

Of course Daeve really had no need to be a rock star. He wanted to blow the mind of the world open, in his own way. So he made music, and wrote silly lyrics that were serious. After a while, the other crew members started to rebel. "We just want to rock, man," they said. One day, Daeve hit an invisible force field on the way up on stage, and that was it.

At first Steve carried on as leader, then Mike, then Pierre. It rested on Pierre, in the end. He carried the Gong name through the 80s, while Daeve and Gilli did their own thing. First together, in Planet Gong, then she split to be with Harry Williamson, and formed Mother Gong, and he did solo stuff, like New York Gong.

Finally the bits all congealed back together into one cohesive hippie gel, and Gong re-formed to record Shapeshifter in the 90s. They're still together, though the Gong Global Family is morphing so fast now that it's best to just enjoy the havoc.