GPD European Tour 1972 (original) (raw)
Greenaway Pils & Doom – Europe 1972
Painstakingly assembled from disparate cassettes found in the personal collections of both Phil and Steve Miller, this is as complete a documentation as possible of the low-key European tour undertaken by the trio of Steve Miller (piano), Lol Coxhill (soprano sax, vocals) and Laurie Allan (drums) in October and November 1972.
The trio, obviously, were a spinoff of Delivery, which after parting ways in 1971 had reformed in the spring 1972 in the form of the proto-Hatfield and the North quartet of Steve Miller, Phil Miller, Pip Pyle (all three having been founding members back in 1966) and Richard Sinclair, at the time Steve’s bandmate in Caravan. After playing a few gigs in the summer, the quartet went their separate ways, with Phil, Pip and Richard continuing with Dave Sinclair on organ, initially retaining the Delivery name, although this was quickly changed for Hatfield and the North.
Steve Miller, who had an ongoing parallel musical partnership with Lol Coxhill, contemplated forming a new Delivery with Roy Babbington and Laurie Allan, but with Roy busy touring with Nucleus, their first gigs were done as a trio, which for reasons long since forgotten was nicknamed Greenaway Pils & Doom. There were dates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, probably arranged thanks to local Matching Mole and Caravan connections, most crucially of course Henk Weltevreden in Maassluis, whose baptism of fire as a promoter had been the Dyble-Coxhill & the Miller Brothers tour in May 1971.
Once the tour was completed, the Delivery name was revived one last time for a BBC In Concert performance in late November 1972 which brought together Phil and Steve Miller, Lol Coxhill, Pip Pyle, Roy Babbington and Richard Sinclair. The Coxhill-Miller duo and its various extensions, of course, continued with many more gigs and a couple of shared studio albums for Virgin’s Caroline label.
The performances are mostly continuous and have been indexed purely for convenience, and to distinguish the themes and songs, either original compositions (like the familiar God Song and Chocolate Field, a.k.a. Caravan’s « Songs and Signs ») or standards that showcase Lol’s well-known talents as crooner (Chicago, Day By Day and God Save the Queen).
Clocking in at nearly 4 hours in total, this is a unique chance to follow a creative trio as it reinvents itself nightly over the course of a tour, and an ideal listen for this unique time when we, unexpectedly and otherwise frustratingly, have a lot of time to do just that – listen. So, in anticipation of a better future, enjoy
Download link now available below the music.