Gryphon

Gryphon was one of the more unusual of the folk-rock groups to come out of England in the 1970s, mostly because they didn't confine their musical genre-melding to folk-rock. Spawned at the Royal College of Music, they started out making a name for themselves in folk-rock, but their classical training and their approach to composition, recording, and performance soon took them into the much bigger field of progressive rock, and eventually had them playing gigs in front of arena-size audiences. Richard Harvey (winds, mandolin, keyboards), who'd been playing music since age four, crossed paths with Brian Gulland (winds, bassoon, keyboards, vocals) -- Harvey had a growing interest in traditional folk music and had previously played with an ensemble called Musica Reservata, while Gulland had lately begun delving into Renaissance and medieval church music. Together with guitarist Graeme Taylor, an old friend of Harvey's, they began working as a trio, playing a brand of what might best be called archaic folk music on instruments that were decidedly pre-20th century in either origin or sound. This early trio most resembled a cross between Pentangle and Amazing Blondel, but Gryphon's members were more proficient in their musicianship than Blondel's members, who were, to a great extent, learning as they went along in their early days. In 1972, the trio became a quartet with the addition of David Oberle as percussionist, and the following year they were signed to Transatlantic Records, which was then one of the biggest of England's independent labels, with a special emphasis on folk music in their lineup of artists (which included, not coincidentally, Pentangle). Their debut album was taken seriously enough to get them gigs at places like the Victoria & Albert Museum -- where...