A Short Bio:
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The
son of a Welsh dancehall bandleader, John Greaves
was born in 1950 in Prestatyn, a small village in the
North of Wales, near the seaside resort of Rhyl, but
grew up in Wrexham, the native town of his mother. Very
soon, he was initiated to music by his father, who
offered him a bass guitar for Christmas at age 12. Six
months later, John was playing every night with
his orchestra, and spent four years doing it. A year
before he left to study litterature in Cambridge, his
younger brother Michael, an aspirant drummer, also
joined. By that time, Greaves had acquired the
necessary skills, both as a musician and an arranger.
The very varied mix of musical styles played by the
orchestra, playing every night from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.,
and the opportunity to open for pop groups like the Big
Three and Gerry And The Pacemakers proved an invaluable
context for learning quickly!
Once
in Cambridge, in 1967-68, Greaves discovered
politics, canoeing and... cricket! In 1969, he met the
members of Henry Cow, which he joined. For two years,
following which he received a Master of Arts from the
university, he combined these different activies, before
concentrating on his work with Henry Cow, recording and
touring with the band until his departure in early 1976.
Having
developed a strong collaboration with Peter Blegvad
during the shortlived (but very creative) Henry
Cow/Slapp Happy amalgamation in 1974-75, Greaves
flew to New York with him to work on the Kew Rhône
project with funding from Virgin. The pair spent three
months putting words to Greaves' compositions,
then jumped on the offer of Carla Bley and Michael
Mantler to record these in their Woodstock studio. Many
musicians guested on the album, which was eventually
credited to Greaves, Blegvad and singer Lisa
Herman.
Back
in England, John Greaves spent a year working
for theatre, both as composer/arranger and actor (!).
Then, in early 1978, he accepted an offer to join
National Health, staying until the band's demise in the
spring of 1980. Meanwhile, he'd also joined part-time
jazz band Soft Heap, with Elton Dean, Pip Pyle and Alan
Gowen (later replaced by Mark Hewins), a line-up still
active to this day.
The
80's were the decade of many solo projects and one-off
collaborations. First was the The Lodge project with
Peter Blegvad, which took seven years to materialize in
the form of the "Smell Of A Friend" album. Then his
first solo album, "Accident", recorded in Paris
in 1981-82, and released in 1983 on Jean-Pierre
Weiller's independent Europa label. In 1984, he settled
in Paris, and formed a touring band which included
Kristoffer Blegvad (vocals), François Ovide (guitar),
Denis Van Hecke (cello) and Mireille Bauer (percussion).
This line-up was featured on his second solo album,
Parrot Fashion (1985, Europa).
At
this point, Greaves was already in demand as a
session player, and worked extensively with the Michael
Nyman Band, also meeting ex-Flying Lizards frontman
David Cunningham, with whom he started a long-term
musical association.
A
short European tour with an all-star Michael Mantler
Band (which featured Jack Bruce, Rick Fenn, Don Preston
and Nick Mason) in 1986 preceded the formation of a new
The Lodge line-up, which toured around Europe during the
next three years (and recorded the above-mentioned
album).
In
the late Eighties, John Greaves started working
on a third album, which he recorded in Paris in 1989-90
with a band that consisted of François Ovide (guitar),
Sophia Domancich (piano) and Pip Pyle (drums). "La
Petite Bouteille De Linge" (1991, La Lichère)
('the little bottle of laundry'...) was a critical, if
not commercial, success. The band that toured in 1992
sometimes included Paul Rogers (double bass) and
Mireille Bauer (vibraphone/percussion). Almost
simultaneous with the release of "La Petite
Bouteille...", John's first collaborative album
with David Cunnigham, "Greaves-Cunningham" was
issued on the Japanese Wave label (and more recently
reissued by Voiceprint).
In
1993, a more improv-oriented John Greaves Band,
with Elton Dean (sax), Jean-François Pauvros (guitar)
and Pip Pyle (drums), played a few gigs. Greaves
also started work on a new project which consisted of
new, acoustic/jazzy arrangements of songs from his
various albums. Knowing Robert Wyatt had liked the
"Kew.Rhône" album very much (to the point of buying two
copies of the album when it originally came out, just in
case the first got worn out!), Greaves asked him
to sing on a few tracks, which he did. The core of the
band was now Ovide (acoustic guitar), Domancich (piano)
and Rogers (double bass), and the cast of singers
included Kristoffer Blegvad, Susan Belling (a.k.a.
S'Ange) and French radio/TV/pop star Caroline Loeb.
Finished in 1994, the magnificent result, "Songs"
(Resurgence/Voiceprint), was only released in the autumn
of 1995. In the meantime, new collaborative efforts with
Peter Blegvad (leading to extensive touring in Europe,
the USA and Japan since 1996) and David Cunningham had
been issued.
The
autumn of 1997 saw the CD reissue of Greaves'
first two solo albums, Accident and Parrot
Fashions on Voiceprint, and the release of
Michael Mantler's new work The School Of
Understanding, on which he was one of the
featured vocalists. In January 1998, Greaves
gave two rare solo voice/piano performances at Paris'
Hôtel du Nord, followed by more in Japan in June of that
year (a CD recorded during that tour has been released).
In
May 2001, Greaves at last released his new
studio album, The Caretaker, on which
he'd been working since 1998 with François Ovide
(guitars) and Manuel Denizet (drums). Although its
working title was Songs 2, it is very
different to Songs - largely electric, and
featuring him on lead vocals and, of course, on bass. In
keeping with the album's sparser instrumentation, Greaves
stuck with the trio format for his subsequent live gigs;
for a year, the guitarist was Patrice Meyer, who was
then briefly replaced by François Ovide, before the
line-up settled again with the arrival of Frenchman Jef
Morin. The trio has a live album in the can.
Greaves
has also recorded an album of purely instrumental music,
as well as an album of jazz standards with pianist
Marcel Ballot and Patrice Meyer, On The Street
Where You Live, which was released by Voiceprint
simultaneously with The Caretaker.
In
2002, Greaves decided to return to acoustic music (while
keeping his rock trio going), and formed the JazzSongs
trio with old friend Sophia Domancich and more recent
collaborator, cellist Vincent Courtois. The result of a
prestigious deal with high profile French label Harmonia
Mundi, The Trouble With Happiness,
released in September 2003 to critical acclaim, contains
old favourites and a handful of new songs, including the
title track.
In
addition to his own albums and bands, Greaves
is involved in countless projects. In November 2003, he
participated in the Robert Wyatt tribute concert
"Dedicated To You" in Charleville-Mézières (N-E France),
alongside Karen Mantler, Dominique Pifarély, Sylvain
Kassap and others. That project is now known as
"Dondestan", and several other performances have taken
place. 2004 saw the release of Chansons, a
French language album with lyrics by Christophe Glockner
and lead vocals by Elise Caron, a former collaborator of
Albert Marcoeur, with guest appearances by the likes of
Robert Wyatt and Louis Sclavis. In 2008, he released his
own musical settings of poems by Paul Verlaine.
A John
Greaves discography:
Henry
Cow - Legend (1973, Virgin)
Henry Cow - Unrest (1974, Virgin)
Slapp Happy/Henry Cow - Desperate Straights
(1975, Virgin)
Henry Cow - In Praise of Learning (1975, Virgin)
Robert Wyatt - Ruth is Stranger than Richard
(1975, Virgin)
Henry Cow - Concerts (1976, Caroline/Compendium)
John Greaves, Peter Blegvad & Lisa Herman -
Kew.Rhône (1977, Virgin)
National Health - Of Queues and Cures (1979,
Charly)
David Thomas & The Pedestrians - Sound Of The
Sand (1981, Rough Trade)
National Health - D.S. Al Coda (1982, Europa
Records)
John Greaves - Accident (1982, Europa Records)
Peter Blegvad - The Naked Shakespeare (1983,
Virgin)
John Greaves - Parrot Fashions (1984, Europa
Records)
Peter Blegvad - Knights Like This (1985, Virgin)
Michael Zentner - Present Time (1984)
[rec.1979-80]
Michael Nyman Band - The Kiss And other Movements
(1985, EG)
Michael Mantler Band - Live (1987, WATT/ECM)
The Lodge - Smell Of A Friend (1987, Antilles)
Peter Blegvad - Downtime (1988, RéR)
John Greaves & David Cunningham - Greaves,
Cunningham (1991, Eva Records)
John Greaves - La Petite Bouteille de Linge
(1991, La Lichère)
Johan Asherton - The Night Forlorn (1992,
Fnac/Aurea Music)
Peter Blegvad & John Greaves - Dr.
Huelsenbecks Mentale Heilmethod (1992, Rough Trade)
John Greaves - Songs (1995, Resurgence)
Peter Blegvad & John Greaves - Unearthed
(1995, Sub Rosa)
Peter Blegvad - Just Woke Up (1995, RéR)
Soft Heap - A Veritable Centaur [rec. 1982/83]
(1995, Impetus)
Peter Gordon & David Cunningham - The Yellow
Box (1996, Piano)
Michael Mantler - The School of Understanding
(1997, ECM)
Peter Blegvad - HangmanÕs Hill (1998, RéR)
Pip Pyle - 7 Year Itch (1998, Voiceprint)
National Health - Play Time [live 1979] (2001,
Cuneiform Records)
John Greaves - The Caretaker (2001,
Blueprint)
John Greaves, with Marcel Ballot and Patrice Meyer
- On The Street Where You Live (2001, Blueprint)
John Greaves - The Trouble With Happiness (2003,
Harmonia Mundi)
John Greaves & Elise Caron - Chansons (2004,
Harmonia Mundi)
John Greaves - Greaves Verlaine (2008,
ZigZag/Territoires)
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