When was Caravan formed? Whendid it split up? When did it reform?

Caravanwas formed in January 1968. It split in April 1978, and hassince re-formed several times, in 1979-83, 1990-92 and since1995.

What was Caravan's originalline-up? What is the current line-up?

The founder members of Caravan were Pye Hastings on guitar and vocals, Richard Coughlan ondrums, David Sinclair on keyboards and Richard Sinclair onbass and vocals. The bass player was going to be Dave Lawrence,formerly of the Wilde Flowers with the first three, but RichardSinclair was chosen instead. Other major members in later years wereGeoffrey Richardson, John G.Perry, Mike Wedgwood andJan Schelhaas.

The current line-up includes originalmembers Pye Hastings and RichardCoughlan, longtime memberGeoffrey Richardson, and more recent recruits Jim Leverton (since1995), Doug Boyle and SimonBentall (the latter two since 1996).Jan Schelhaas returned as keyboard player in October 2002following the departure of Dave Sinclair. Saxophonist/flautistJimmy Hastings, brother of Pye, still plays with the band from timeto time ; he contributed frequently to the latest studio album, The UnauthorisedBreakfast Item, released in September 2003, and sat in at the band's 35th anniversary concert in London in late 2003. (Note: Bentall has become an occasional member of the group, and wasn't present at most of the recent shows).

How did the original members ofCaravan meet? Had they worked together previously?

The roots of Caravan were in theseminal Canterbury group The WildeFlowers, of which all foundingmembers has been members at one point or another. Richard Sinclair, aguitarist at the time, was an original member in 1964-65.Pye Hastings and RichardCoughlan both joined in 1965.David Sinclair (Richard's cousin) joined in 1966, originally onbass then on organ. When the WildeFlowers folded in 1967, the latterthree decided to carry on as Caravan and werejoined by the returning Richard Sinclair.

Why did they choose the nameCaravan ?

The "Caravan" monickerwas forced on the other members of the band by Pye Hastings - it wasmeant to be representative of the concept of a "caravan of musicalideas", a continuous process of musicians with similar aims but witha diversity of tastes and influences.

How many albums did Caravanrelease ?

Caravanreleased 12 studio albums of previously unreleased material : Caravan (January 1969), If I CouldDo It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You (September 1970), In The LandOf Grey And Pink (April 1971),Waterloo Lily (May 1972), For GirlsWho Grow Plump In The Night (1973),Cunning Stunts (1975), Blind Dog AtSt. Dunstans (1976), Better By Far(1977), The Album (October 1980), Back ToFront (June 1982), The Battle Of Hastings (1995) and The Unauthorised Breakfast Item (September 2003).

The live albumCaravan Live With The New Symphonia (1974) includes three compositions unavailable onany studio album. The CD CoolWater (1994) consists of previouslyunreleased demos recorded in 1977-78 for the planned follow-up toBetter By Far, as well as demos recorded in 1978 by Pye Hastingsfor an unfinished solo project. AllOver You (1996) and All Over You Too (1999) consist of newrecordings of re-arranged classics (no new compositions) from the1968-77 period. In 1998 Hux Records released a series of two CD'scompiling Caravan's performances for BBC radio shows in the 1970's :Songs For OblivionFisherman, covering the period1970-74, and EtherWay, covering the period1975-77.

Additionally, several live albums haveofficially been released : The BestOf Caravan Live (1980), aFrench-only double album consisting of an August 1974 performance inCroydon; BBC Radio 1 Live InConcert (1991) which offersCaravan's performance at London's Paris Theatre in March1975; Live 1990 (1993), a CD containing most of Caravan's one-offgig for Central TV's "Bedrock" concert series; Canterbury Comes To London - Live From TheAstoria (1997), recorded atCaravan's London gig of September 19th, 1997;Back On The Tracks (1998), a limited edition double CD issued by theDutch fanclub CoCaCamp*, recorded in Utrecht a few days later, butoffering the band's complete performance; Surprise Surprise, a document of the Blind Dog tour in 1976 with special guest Jimmy Hastings; and finally Live UK 1975 (MLP Productions), from a December 1975concert.

Have Caravan's albums beenreissued on CD ? On which labels?

With the notable exception ofBetter ByFar (but this is about to change - see below), all Caravan studio albums have been reissued on CD.

• French label Mantra reissued If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You, In The Land Of Grey And Pink, Waterloo Lily and For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night in 1988.
• These were later reissued (with liner notes by John Tracy) by their original label Deram, as well as Cunning Stunts, between 1989 and 1992 (note that Deram's reissue of In The Land Of Grey And Pink is to be avoided due to a mastering default which results in the first chord of "Nine Feet Underground" being truncated).
• Cunning Stunts and Blind Dog At St. Dunstans were reissued by German label Repertoire in 1994.
• The whole Decca back-catalogue was reissued in February 2001 by Decca/Universal. The original albums were remastered and complemeneted with extended liner notes and a wealth of bonus material. In particular, For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night includes 25 minutes of studio recordings by the never-before-heard line-up with Derek Austin and Stuart Evans from late 1972. And Caravan And The New Symphonia restores the entire concert, including the opening set by Caravan without orchestra and the encore, "A Hunting We Shall Go".
• The albums The Album and Back To Front have also been reissued by Kingdom Records in 1991. Enhanced reissues are expected in early 2004 on the Eclectic Discs label, along with the first-ever CD reissue of Better By Far.
• Caravan's debut album was finally reissued on CD by HTD Records, the current label of Caravan which released The Battle Of Hastings, All Over You and Canterbury Comes To London, and also reissued Cunning Stunts and Blind Dog At St. Dunstans.
• A new reissue of the debut album was released in February 2002, containing both the (remastered) stereo and mono versions, plus a bonus track (the single version of "Hello Hello"), simultaneously with the repackaging of the live album formerly known as The Best Of Caravan Live, now titled Live At Fairfield Halls, Croydon, 1974, remastered with one bonus track ("Chance Of A Lifetime").
• New, improved reissues of the Kingdom-era albums, The Album and Back To Front, are expected in the spring 2004, as is the first-ever CD release of Better By Far, on the Eclectic Dics label

Why were particular titleschosen for albums and compositions?

• "Place Of My Own" - "I'd just managed to get a flat of my own; up until then I'd been sharing other people's houses and rooms. At last I was standing on my own two feet and this song was a reflection on that" (P.Hastings)
• "Cecil Rons" - "This was a play on words. I knew this girl Cathy Ross who hung around the Beehive Club. She came from Folkestone. We got on really well and I used to spend hours talking to her. She was involved in organising gigs at Folkestone Town Hall and she wrote to Hugh Hopper offering the Wilde Flowers a date there. The signature on the letter looked exactly like 'Cecil Rons' rather than Cathy Ross. For some reason we all found the name Cecil Rons rather amusing and it inspired me to write this nonsense song for the first Caravan album a short time later. I ended up marrying Cathy of course!" (P.Hastings)
• "Where But For Caravan Would I" - "The point of the title was that I had an active band that seemed to be going places. Without this band, where would I be?" (P.Hastings)
• "If I Could Do It All Over Again..." - "The title came from a chance remark by our road manager at the time. I spotted the innuendo which appealed to me and decided that it was a great title for a song I had just completed. By the way, the 'over you' actually means 'because of you' and not the obvious..." (P.Hastings)
• "Martinian" - a play on words based on the names of Martin Wyatt and Ian Ralfini who signed Caravan to Robbins Music/MGM
• "Only Cox" - an allusion to Tony Cox, the producer of the first album.
• "Asforteri 25" - "a little dig at Terry King our manager - the original title was "Asforteri's 25%" ["as for Terry's 25%"] but naturally he took exception to this being written down for the world to see... and quite amusingly took the '%' off the title as he said he was entitled to it anyway !" (P.Hastings)
• "Nine Feet Underground" - allegedly composed by David Sinclair when he was living in an apartment nine feet under ground level... Pye Hastings : "Dave wrote it as separate tunes and fitted them together as one long piece. We rehearsed it as one and then recorded it as one".
• "Nigel Blows A Tune" - a pun on the name of Nigel Blow, a cousin of David Sinclair's.
• "Waterloo Lily" -
• "L'Auberge Du Sanglier" - the name of an guest house in Albi, South of France, where the band used to stay when touring in that region in the 70's.
• "Cunning Stunts" - well... a pun !
• "Back To Front" - means "with the back placed where the front should be", obviously a pun with both "front" in the military sense (foremost line of an army) and the location of the studio where the album was recorded (Herne Bay Front).
• "The Battle Of Hastings" - "The title relates to the 'battle' between me and record companies down the years in my quest to do my own album : I never made it! The relationship between Julian, brother Jimmy and me comes into it somewhere...".

Who were the band's maincomposers ?

Vocalist/guitarist Pye Hastings has writtenmost of Caravan's material with the notable exceptions of the albumsIn The Land Of Grey AndPink, most of which was composed byeither David or Richard Sinclair, and Cunning Stunts, halfof which was written by David Sinclair and the rest split betweenHastings and Mike Wedgwood. David Sinclair also provided the lengthy "For Richard" suite on If ICould.... On Better By Far,The Album and Back ToFront, the writing is split equallybetween band members. The last two albums, The Battle Of Hastings and The Unauthorised Breakfast Item, mostly comprise Pye Hastings songs with a few songs by other band members.

How much, and where, did theband tour ?

A chronology of Caravan's tours isavailable on this site.

Caravantoured Europe extensively throughout the 1970's, especially in Franceand the Netherlands.

They also ventured a few times to moredistant shores : in Australia andNew Zealand in January/February 1973 (with Slade, Lindisfarneand Status Quo), and in the UnitedStates in the autumn of 1974 (50gigs in 9 weeks) and again in the autumn of 1975.

The first gigs outside England since 1980(the last European tour), apart from a one-off festival appearance inItaly in June 1991, took place in September 1997 : two gigs in theNetherlands, in Utrecht andGroningen. In November 2000 Caravan played at the Bataclan inParis, they first French concert for twenty years. InJanuary 2002, Caravan played in Japan for the first time ever, and later that year returned to North America for the first time since 1975. A proper Japanese tour took place in April 2003. European tours are now organised on a regular basis.

What were the reasons formembers departing?

• David Sinclair, on his departure in 1971 (from a 1975 interview) : "I felt the whole thing was going a bit stagnant and that I needed inspiration from different people...". He went on to join Robert Wyatt's new band Matching Mole, while at the same time developing a songwriting partnership with John Murphy. He rejoined Caravan in February 1973, before leaving again two and a half years later.
• Richard Sinclair, on his departure in 1972 : "I decided I wasn't playing enough music in Caravan and I wanted to leave. I'd do something else if the band weren't playing enough music - it was quite hard for us all to survive. I thought I'd move to London and see if I could carry on with music and really go for it up there and develop my musical thing rather than whatever it was in Canterbury I was doing. So I moved up and formed a band with Pip [Pyle] and Phil [Miller], and called it Hatfield and the North, in the end".
• John G. Perry, on his departure in 1974 : "Around the Springtime of 1974, some of the other guys in Caravan who were there before me were looking on moving the direction slightly. There were fundamental changes of management and producer... And also at the same time, I'd started doing a lot of sessions in London with Rupert Hine as producer, and working for some extremely good artists, being produced by Rupert and various other people. So one of the reasons I left Caravan in actual fact was, we created Quantum Jump, that whole gang of us who were doing sessions together. Before that we'd been doing a lot of jamming together, and then we decided - what, as well as playing on other people's music, why don't we do some of our own, why don't we take it a little bit further? And out of that came Quantum Jump".
• David Sinclair, on his departure in 1975 (from a 1997 interview with Ralph Cross) : "There were legal problems with the band. We were being ripped off right, left and centre. The typical thing of naive musicians who just want to play their music. I was concerned that the new manager Miles Copeland was trying to get royalties which were due to me from Terry King. My sollicitor advised me to get out for a year until contracts had expired. It was a bad time for me and the band".
• Geoffrey Richardson, on his departure in 1978 (in a 1996 interview with Ralph Cross) : "I'd begun to find time to play with other musicians and was earning proper session money. John Perry and Rupert Hine had put work my way. I decided to leave Caravan and on April 14th 1978 I told Pye that I was going. There was nothing personal and I hadn't fallen out with the band : the time seemed right".

What have the band members beendoing since Caravan ceased to exist as a permanent band?

• Richard Coughlan is the landlord of the 'Walnut Tree', a pub in Adlington. He was also involved for some time in his own soul outfit, Moving Target.
• Jimmy Hastings is a professional musician. He is currently playing with the Humphrey Lyttelton Jazz Band and doing some live work in London and a few sessions. He is again featured on Caravan's latest CD "The Unauthorised Breakfast Item".
• Pye Hastings works as a plant hire managing director for an engineering firm, Molequip (that deals with road equipment and makes pipe work on the roads) and lives in Canterbury.
• Dek Messecar is living in London and runs his own carpentry business.
• Steve Miller reformed his band Delivery after leaving Caravan, then mainly worked in duo with Lol Coxhill, before and after an eight-year hiatus to unlearn old playing habits and facilitate totally free expression. In 1998 he was diagnosed ill with pancreas cancer, and a benefit concert took place on June 28th where he played with many of his former bandmates. Sadly, his medical treatment was unsuccessful and he died on December 9th, 1998.
• Geoffrey Richardson is a professional musician. In the last few years he has recorded and toured with artists such as Rupert Hine, Murray Head, Renaud, Rachid Taha, Elsa and (until Simon Jeffes' untimely death in December 1997) the Penguin Café Orchestra. Apart from Caravan, he also gigs with fellow caravaner Jim Leverton as the 'Jim & Geoff' duo. He has also released a solo album, Viola Mon Amour.
• David Sinclair once owned a restaurant in Canterbury, but now runs a piano workshop/showroom (Avenue Pianos) in Herne Bay. Since leaving Caravan in August 2002, Dave has resumed his solo career and in December 2003 released his first proper album, "Full Circle", with guest appearances by Richard Sinclair, Jim Leverton and assorted members of Caravan and In Cahoots.
• Richard Sinclair is living between Harlingen (Holland) and Canterbury, working as carpenter and interior designer (doing kitchen fitting and making speaker cabinets among other things), as he has frequently done over the the years. He is not musically active at the moment. Between 1991 and 1994 he led his own band, Caravan Of Dreams, releasing an eponymous album with that line-up in 1992, and in 1994 he released the album R.S.V.P. on his own Sinclair Songs label. His last public appearance for more than five years was in late 1996. In 2000 he returned to live in Canterbury and has been at work on a new album project. Since 2002 he is again touring on a regular basis, mainly with David Rees-Williams and Gong sax/flautist Theo Travis.
• John G. Perry writes and performs library and advertisement music in London. As of a few years ago, he was running his own company, Prop.agenda, and had plans for another solo project in the future.
• Jan Schelhaas had no visible musical activities during most of the 1980s and 1990s, working mainly as an instructor (or examiner) for the British School of Motoring... until his unexpected return to Caravan in 2002.
• Mike Wedgwood released his first solo album, Places Like These, in 1993. Since leaving Caravan in 1976, he had been living in the United States and Alaska. Since returning to England, he has gigged with ex-King Crimson vocalist Gordon Haskell and recorded with Todd Dillingham. More recently he has built his own home studio in Denmark and is currently working on a new solo project.

Last updated : April 2004