This is the official MySpace page for the UK rock band Egg (1969-1972). Egg consisted of Dave Stewart (keyboards), Mont Campbell (bass/vocals) and Clive Brooks (drums). Known for their uncompromising complexity and pinpoint accuracy of performance, the group was one of the most musically adventurous to emerge from the UK underground scene of the late '60s. The organ trio toured the UK extensively and recorded three highly acclaimed albums (Egg, The Polite Force and The Civil Surface).
Egg's members first played together in Uriel, a Hendrix / Cream / blues / psychedelic group formed by school friends Steve Hillage (guitar), Mont Campbell and Dave Stewart. The line-up was completed when Clive Brooks answered their 'drummer wanted' ad in Melody Maker. Uriel began gigging in 1968 and in the summer of that year decamped to the Isle of Wight to play a club residency. Events from this trip were later immortalised in Egg's anthemic 'A Visit To Newport Hospital'.
At the end of the IOW stay Steve Hillage left the group to pursue his academic studies, later rising to fame as a '70s guitar hero. Uriel continued as an organ trio and fell in with a management company who forced a name change of 'The Egg' on the band. After signing with Decca in mid-1969 the band evolved into a hard-working live unit who won many fans on their travels round the UK. Under the musical leadership of Mont Campbell, short songs began to give way to long complex instrumentals influenced as much by Stravinsky as by the odd time signatures of Soft Machine. Psychedelia continued to loom large in Egg's consciousness, and when the group were let loose in a recording studio for the first time they revelled in the new sonic possibilities it offered, creating the deranged soundscape 'Boilk' on their first eponymous LP.
While in talks with Decca Records in 1969, Egg were approached by a small London label and asked to record a psychedelic album. The trio invited Steve Hillage to re-join them and recorded and mixed the LP in a single nine-hour session. Much of the music was improvised, and although parts have a heavily psychedelic flavour there was little or no processing and minimal overdubbing - the musicians simply went into the studio and played, which gives the project an attractive live feel. Titled Arzachel, the album is now considered a classic by psych fans and original vinyl copies sell for astronomical sums.
Egg and Decca parted company after the release of their second album The Polite Force, considered by many to be one of the finest prog albums ever recorded. Combining musical ingenuity, instrumental dexterity and super-tight performances, The Polite Force (produced by Neil Slaven) featured the much-loved 'A Visit To Newport Hospital' (whose opening fuzz organ riff is often mistaken for heavy metal guitar), the thoroughly mad 'Contrasong' and the intricacies of 'Long Piece no. 3', an extended instrumental piece in four movements. Accompanying these compositions is the nine-minute 'Boilk II', a multi-layered sound collage with psychedelic overtones. Though The Polite Force's heavily written music would be a severe challenge for any rock musician, organist Dave Stewart says 'Boilk II' was technically the hardest track to record and mix.
Often finding themselves at odds with music business apathy and the dull-mindedness of the UK rock scene, Egg battled on for another couple of years before disbanding in 1972. Happily, a 1974 studio reunion enabled the trio to record several of Mont Campbell's excellent compositions which otherwise would have been lost to posterity. Entitled The Civil Surface, this album was to be Egg's last for 33 years. During that time, word spread about the trio's musical excellence and in the 1980s bootleg CDs of radio sessions and live concerts began to circulate. Unfortunately these are of poor sound quality and offer inaccurate or non-existent documentation.
Dave Stewart subsequently became a leading light of the 'Canterbury scene' bands Hatfield and the North & National Health and played keyboards with Yes drummer Bill Bruford before storming the pop charts in 1981 with his partner Barbara Gaskin. Clive Brooks joined The Groundhogs and Mont Campbell left the music scene for a while, to re-emerge in the '90s with a new musical direction and an amazing solo album Music From A Round Tower. The three continue to be musically active and occasionally collaborate on projects.
The story of Egg continues - after a 33-year silence, the trio have released a fourth album. While researching the history of Uriel prior to re-releasing Arzachel in a special collectors edition on the musicians' own Egg Archive label, Dave Stewart was contacted by a UK music fan who had preserved over an hour of vintage Egg recordings. That discovery made the idea of an Egg archive CD feasible. Released in December 2007, Egg's The Metronomical Society is a collection of live and studio recordings made by the pioneering trio between 1969 and 1972. It features archive material unheard for nearly 40 years, including a sizeable segment of Egg's last Roundhouse concert which demonstrates the group's live power. Also included are superior versions of tracks from the band's radio sessions, previously available only on dodgy bootlegs. Dave Stewart says: " "I'm delighted that the Egg tapes have come to light. The live recordings reflect exactly how the band sounded to me on stage, with a bite, attack and visceral power that our '70s studio albums failed to capture."
L i n k s
Band website
Egg Archive online shop
Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin
Mont Campbell
Steve Hillage & System 7
System 7 online shop
Egg would like to thank all their listeners for their enduring support!
