Living in the Heart of the Beast

"Living in the Heart of the Beast" is the title of an extended song written by Tim Hodgkinson in 1975 for the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. It was recorded in 1975 by Henry Cow with Slapp Happy, who had recently merged with Henry Cow after the two groups had recorded a collaborative album, Desperate Straights the previous year.

"Living in the Heart of the Beast" was the first of two "epic" compositions Hodgkinson wrote for Henry Cow, the second being "Erk Gah" (1976), later known as "Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine".^[1]

History

Hodgkinson began writing "Living in the Heart of the Beast" in mid 1974 and presented it a few months later to Henry Cow as an unfinished and untitled instrumental. The group cut the piece up into fragments, interspaced them with improvisational sections, and performed it live.^[2] One such performance, Halsteren was recorded in Halsteren in the Netherlands on 26 September 1974, and appears in Volume 2: 1974–5 of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009). This instrumental suite was also performed in Groningen in the Netherlands two days later, and part of it was released as "Groningen" on Concerts (1976). In early 1975, after a successful collaborative album, Desperate Straights with Slapp Happy, the two groups decided to merge, and Henry Cow, for the first time, acquired a vocalist, Dagmar Krause from Slapp Happy. Plans were made for "Living in the Heart of the Beast" to be recorded for Henry Cow's next album, this time with vocals and lyrics added.

Hodgkinson commissioned Slapp Happy's songwriter Peter Blegvad to write lyrics for the piece for Krause to sing. However, after several attempts, Blegvad (who was soon to be asked to leave the band) admitted that he was "out of [his] depth", and Hodgkinson wrote the lyrics himself.^[2][3] Blegvad presented a slightly different interpretation of this situation in a 1996 interview with Hearsay magazine:

The piece that got me kicked out [of Henry Cow] was "Living in the Heart of the Beast". I was assigned the task for the collective to come up with suitable verbals, and I wrote two verses about a woman throwing raisins at a pile of bones ... Tim Hodgkinson said, "I'm sorry, this is not at all what we want", and he wrote reams of this political tirade. I admired his passion and application but it left me cold. I am to my bones a flippant individual. I don't know why I was created thus or what I'm trying to deny, but it clashed with the extreme seriousness.^[4]

"Living in the Heart of the Beast" was recorded in February and March 1975 and released on In Praise of Learning in May 1975. In his book Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture, Edward Macan described the song as a 15-minute piece that opens with an "atonal, highly distorted electric guitar solo" and closes with a "stately modal march".^[5]

After recording the album, the Henry Cow/Slapp Happy merger ended, but Krause elected to remain with Henry Cow. The final song version of "Living in the Heart of the Beast" was performed live by Henry Cow between 1975 and 1977. In a concert with Robert Wyatt at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on 8 May 1975, Wyatt joined Krause in singing the closing verses. A slightly shorter remixed version of the song appears on Henry Cow's The Virgin Years – Souvenir Box (1991) mixed by Hodgkinson, Fred Frith and Martin Bisi.^[6]

In 1986 "Living in the Heart of the Beast" inspired the title of the Kalahari Surfers' second album, Living in the Heart of the Beast. Former Henry Cow members Chris Cutler and Hodgkinson had toured with the South African band across Europe in the mid 1980s and Cutler's Recommended Records had released several of their albums.

Reception

In a review of In Praise of Learning in New Musical Express in 1975, music critic Ian MacDonald wrote that "Living in the Heart of the Beast" begins well, but despite "a remarkable instrumental interlude", it "run[s] out of cool" towards the end with some pretentious lyrics and "sinks awkwardly to earth beneath the would-be climactic exhortations of the finale".^[7] MacDonald added, however, that Henry Cow's use of a wide range of instruments gives the song a "genuinely orchestral sound" evoking shades of Stravinsky, Varèse, Messiaen and Weill. MacDonald concluded that "Living in the Heart of the Beast" demonstrates that Henry Cow "could be said to be the only genuine rock/classical fusion since [Frank Zappa's] Uncle Meat".^[7]

Live performances

"Living in the Heart of the Beast" was performed by Henry Cow at a number of their concerts between 1975 and 1977, including:

• 8 May 1975 with Robert Wyatt at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France^[8]
  • Released in Volume 2: 1974–5 of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set^[9]
• 21 May 1975 with Robert Wyatt at the New London Theatre in London, England^[8]
• 27 June 1975 with Robert Wyatt at the Piazza Navona in Rome, Italy^[8]
• 25 August 1976 in Vevey, Switzerland for the Swiss TV program, Kaleidospop^[8]
  • Released on DVD in Volume 10: Vevey of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set, the only known video recording of Henry Cow^[9][10]
• 30 January 1976 at the North London Polytechnic in London, England^[11]
• 31 January 1976 at the London School of Economics in London, England^[12]
• 8 September 1976 in Milan, Italy^[8]
• 18 November 1976 at the Salle Rencontres (Concert ATEM) in Nancy, France^[8]
• 16 May 1977 at the Musikforum in Uppsala, Sweden^[8]
• 10 June 1977 at The Queen's Hotel, Southend-on-Sea, England^[8]

References

• Cutler, Chris, ed. (2009). The Road: Volumes 1–5 (book from The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set). Recommended Records.
• Cutler, Chris, ed. (2009). The Road: Volumes 6–10 (book from The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set). Recommended Records.

Footnotes

External links

• Living in the Heart of the Beast lyrics. The Canterbury Website.