The Enid
Encyclopedia
The Enid is a British
rock
band founded in 1975 by Robert John Godfrey
, Stephen Stewart and Francis Lickerish
. Another early member was William Gilmour
, who subsequently founded his own band Craft
and now plays keyboards in Lickerish's band Secret Green
.
associated with periods of writer's block
. The band is still recording sporadically. There were no full-length album releases between 1997 and 2010, when Journey's End was released, although 2009's Arise and Shine featured newly remixed and partly re-recorded tracks from previous albums plus one preview of a Journey's End track.
The Enid began recording at about the same time as punk rock
burst upon the scene. Godfrey has said that he always regarded The Enid's ironic takes on classical music as being just as anarchic as anything by the Sex Pistols
, but this did not translate into either musical or commercial recognition, despite their work being played frequently by Tommy Vance
on BBC Radio One's Friday Rock Show. In 1981, the band played most of the music for Kim Wilde
's self-titled debut album
.
Robert John Godfrey has said that he does not regard The Enid as a progressive rock
band because most of it is "not actually progressive" and he would rather not be associated with the term. But that has not stopped prog rock fanzine
s and website
s from promoting the band. He has also been quite scathing in his criticism of "neo-progressive" bands accusing them of lacking charm, talent and originality. However, this has not prevented the band from taking advantage of publicity in prog rock websites and magazines.
In the 2001 the band formed a marketing agreement with Inner Sanctum which saw most of the band's back-catalogue being reissued on that label. However, in 2009 they announced that Inner Sanctum was illegally attempting to take control of the band's name and copyrights. As a result of the ensuing legal action the Journey's End album was released on the band's own Enidiworks/Operation Seraphim label.
The Enid's official website later carried further details of the dispute as it concerned some of the band's earlier recordings. The site states that in 2010 Inner Sanctum released illegal bootlegs of the original EMI versions of In the Region of the Summer Stars
and Aerie Faerie Nonsense
. As a result of this EMI took action against Gerald Palmer to stop the bootlegs and agreed to grant a Worldwide License to Operation Seraphim, (the bands own record label) for the three albums they own (In The Region – Aerie Faerie & The Fall Of Hyperion).
William Gilmour taught music for a while at Withywood Comprehensive School in Bristol.
s containing rare tracks chosen by listeners from a catalogue. This service was discontinued after a couple of years.
In March 2006 Godfrey announced on the band's website that he would shortly be making its entire back catalogue available for free download
on high-quality mp3
s.Godfrey wrote: "The purpose of this is to make sure that The Enid's music reaches as many people as possible and does not entirely disappear when I am dead. The Enid represents my life's work and I want it and what it contains to live on in those who warm to it. Having taken this decision it may well influence the way I think about The Enid and may drive me to do some more."
Some albums have been issued on CD two or three times, sometimes with different bonus tracks and cover artwork.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band founded in 1975 by Robert John Godfrey
Robert John Godfrey
Robert John Godfrey is a British composer, pianist and founder member of The Enid.Born on the Leeds Castle estate in Kent, England, Godfrey was educated at Finchden Manor in Tenterden, which was described by its founder George Lyward as a "therapeutic community for adolescents", other alumni of...
, Stephen Stewart and Francis Lickerish
Francis Lickerish
John Francis Lickerish, known professionally as Francis Lickerish , is a British composer, guitarist and lutenist, and founder member of British art-rock band The Enid....
. Another early member was William Gilmour
William Gilmour
William Gilmour is a British musician and artist who was an early member and keyboardist of rock band The Enid, before leaving to form his own band: Craft. He is now a music teacher at Culloden Academy in Inverness. He is also a contributing composer and performer for Francis Lickerish's band...
, who subsequently founded his own band Craft
Craft (band)
Craft was a British rock band formed by William Gilmour after leaving The Enid, together with Grant McKay Gilmour and Martin Russell of Afro Celt Sound System....
and now plays keyboards in Lickerish's band Secret Green
Secret Green
Secret Green is a British rock band, founded in 2007, by Francis Lickerish, Hilary Palmer and Jon Beedle. Recent additions to the band William Gilmour and Matt Hodge complete the line-up...
.
History
The Enid's membership has since undergone several changes, always with Godfrey at the helm. Godfrey has diabetes, and has also described bouts of depressionClinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
associated with periods of writer's block
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
. The band is still recording sporadically. There were no full-length album releases between 1997 and 2010, when Journey's End was released, although 2009's Arise and Shine featured newly remixed and partly re-recorded tracks from previous albums plus one preview of a Journey's End track.
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
burst upon the scene. Godfrey has said that he always regarded The Enid's ironic takes on classical music as being just as anarchic as anything by the Sex Pistols
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...
, but this did not translate into either musical or commercial recognition, despite their work being played frequently by Tommy Vance
Tommy Vance
Tommy Vance was a British pop radio broadcaster, born in Eynsham, Oxfordshire. He was one of the few music broadcasters in the United Kingdom to champion hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s, providing the only national radio forum for both bands and fans...
on BBC Radio One's Friday Rock Show. In 1981, the band played most of the music for Kim Wilde
Kim Wilde
Kim Wilde is an English pop singer, author and television presenter who burst onto the music scene in 1981 with the number 2 UK Singles Chart new wave classic "Kids in America". In 1987 she had a major hit in the United States when her version of The Supremes' classic "You Keep Me Hangin' On"...
's self-titled debut album
Kim Wilde (album)
Kim Wilde is the first studio album by Kim Wilde, released in June 1981.Most of the music on this album was played by the symphonic rock band The Enid and the songs were all written by Marty Wilde and Ricky Wilde. Production duties were fulfilled by Ricky Wilde...
.
Robert John Godfrey has said that he does not regard The Enid as a progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
band because most of it is "not actually progressive" and he would rather not be associated with the term. But that has not stopped prog rock fanzine
Fanzine
A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...
s and website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
s from promoting the band. He has also been quite scathing in his criticism of "neo-progressive" bands accusing them of lacking charm, talent and originality. However, this has not prevented the band from taking advantage of publicity in prog rock websites and magazines.
In the 2001 the band formed a marketing agreement with Inner Sanctum which saw most of the band's back-catalogue being reissued on that label. However, in 2009 they announced that Inner Sanctum was illegally attempting to take control of the band's name and copyrights. As a result of the ensuing legal action the Journey's End album was released on the band's own Enidiworks/Operation Seraphim label.
The Enid's official website later carried further details of the dispute as it concerned some of the band's earlier recordings. The site states that in 2010 Inner Sanctum released illegal bootlegs of the original EMI versions of In the Region of the Summer Stars
In the Region of the Summer Stars
In The Region Of The Summer Stars is The Enid's debut album. It is based on the Tarot sequence and on the writings of Charles Williams. It was released in 1976 by EMI...
and Aerie Faerie Nonsense
Aerie Faerie Nonsense
Aerie Faerie Nonsense is The Enid's second album. It was released in 1977 by EMI and later re-released by The Enid in 1983 following its deletion from the EMI catalogue.-Release:...
. As a result of this EMI took action against Gerald Palmer to stop the bootlegs and agreed to grant a Worldwide License to Operation Seraphim, (the bands own record label) for the three albums they own (In The Region – Aerie Faerie & The Fall Of Hyperion).
William Gilmour taught music for a while at Withywood Comprehensive School in Bristol.
Marketing innovations
In addition to traditional vinyl and CD releases, in the late 1990s the band also pioneered the production of "Bespoke CDs" - mail-order custom compilation CD-RCD-R
A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....
s containing rare tracks chosen by listeners from a catalogue. This service was discontinued after a couple of years.
In March 2006 Godfrey announced on the band's website that he would shortly be making its entire back catalogue available for free download
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
on high-quality mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
s.Godfrey wrote: "The purpose of this is to make sure that The Enid's music reaches as many people as possible and does not entirely disappear when I am dead. The Enid represents my life's work and I want it and what it contains to live on in those who warm to it. Having taken this decision it may well influence the way I think about The Enid and may drive me to do some more."
Studio albums
- In the Region of the Summer StarsIn the Region of the Summer StarsIn The Region Of The Summer Stars is The Enid's debut album. It is based on the Tarot sequence and on the writings of Charles Williams. It was released in 1976 by EMI...
(1976) (BUK BULP 2014) - Aerie Faerie NonsenseAerie Faerie NonsenseAerie Faerie Nonsense is The Enid's second album. It was released in 1977 by EMI and later re-released by The Enid in 1983 following its deletion from the EMI catalogue.-Release:...
(1977) (EMI International INS 3012) - Touch Me (1978) (Pye NSPH 18593)
- Six Pieces (1979) (Pye NH 116)
- Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) (ENID 3)
- Live at Hammersmith (Vol 1) (Recorded 1979) (1984) (ENID 1)
- Live at Hammersmith (Vol 2) (Recorded 1979) (1984) (ENID 2)
- Aerie Faerie Nonsense (Recorded 1983) (ENID 6) - Band's own rerelease
- In the Region of the Summer Stars 1984 (1984) (ENID 7) - Band's own reissue of debut album
- The Spell (1985) (ENID 8) (originally released as a double-45 rpm album) (UK IndieUK Indie ChartThe UK Independent Chart or Indie Chart is a chart of the best-selling independent record releases in the UK.- History :In the wake of punk, small record labels began to spring up, as an outlet for artists that were unwilling to sign contracts with major record companies, or were not considered...
#24) - Salome (1986) (ENID 10)
- Lovers And Fools (double retrospective compilation) (1986)
- The Seed and the Sower (originally released as by Godfrey and Stewart) (1988)
- Final Noise (live album) (1988)
- Tripping the Light Fantastic (1994)
- Sundialer (1995)
- Anarchy on 45 (singles compilation) (1996)
- Members one of Another (compilation, fanclub's choice) (1996)
- Healing Hearts (compilation by Matthew Manning) (1996)
- White Goddess (1997)
- Tears of the Sun (1999)
- Arise and Shine (2009) (remixed and re-recorded tracks, plus preview of "Malacandra" from Journey's End)
- The Art Of Melody - Journey's End (2010)
- Arise and Shine Volume 2 - Risen (2011) (re-recordings of early tracks)
Some albums have been issued on CD two or three times, sometimes with different bonus tracks and cover artwork.
Special & fanclub releases
- The Stand (1984)
- The Stand (1985)
- Fand (Special Extended Re-recording) (1985)
- Liverpool (1986)
- The Music of William Arkle (1986)
- The Enid at Hammersmith 17 October 1986 (Official Bootleg)
- The Enid at Hammersmith 30 October 1987 (Official Bootleg)
- Joined By The Heart (1987)
- Reverberations (Robert John Godfrey Solo recording) (1987)
- Inner Pieces (Compilation) (1987)
- Inner Visions (Compilation (1988)
- The Story of The Enid (Told in words and music by Robert John Godfrey) (1991)
Singles
- "The Lovers"/"In The Region Of Summer Stars" (1976) (Buk BUK 3002)
- "Jubilee"/"Omega" (1977) (EMI International INT 534) release cancelled
- "Golden Earrings"/"Omega" (1977) EMI (BUK) INT 540
- "Dambusters March"/"Land Of Hope & Glory"/"The Skyeboat Song" (1979) (Pye 7P 106)(PS, Blue vinyl with RAFRoyal Air ForceThe Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
roundel design) - "Fool" (with Malcolm Le Maistre)/"Tito" (1980) Pye 7P 187 (PS)
- "Golden Earrings"/"665 The Great Bean" (1980) EMI 5109 (PS)
- "When You Wish Upon A Star"/"Jessica" (1981) (Bronze BRO 127)(PS)
- "Heigh Ho"/"Twinkle Little Star" (1980)(Bronze BRO 134)
- "Then There Were None"/"Letter From America" (1982) RAK 349 (PS)
- "Then There Were None"/"Letter From America"/"Raindown" (1984) (PS, 12")
- "Itchycoo Park"/"Sheets Of Blue" (1986) (7": Sedition EDIT 3314)(PS) - (12" - Sedition EDITL 3314, blue vinyl)
- "Salome"/"Salomee" (1990) (7" - Enid ENID 7999)(PS) (12"- Enid ENID 6999)(PS)
External links
- The official Enid website
- The official Enid Myspace
- The Enid at Facebook
- Robert John Godfrey youtube channel
- The Lodge Recording Studio website
- The Enid: A Brief History - part 1
- The Enid: A Brief History - part 2
- Talking Elephant The Enid Page
- Secret Green - Francis Lickerish's band
- BBC feature about The Enidi and Robert John Godfrey