page_title: Gong (band)
section_title: Mythology
hierarchical_section_title: Gong (band) / Music and lyrics / Mythology
caption_attribution_description: Gong playing Hyde Park free concert, 1974
context_page_description: Gong are an English-French progressive rock band that incorporates elements of jazz and space rock into their musical style. The group was formed in Paris in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen and English vocalist Gilli Smyth. Band members have included Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Steve Hillage, Mike Howlett, Pierre Moerlen, Bill Laswell and Theo Travis. Others who have played on stage with Gong include Don Cherry, Chris Cutler, Bill Bruford, Brian Davison, Dave Stewart and Tatsuya Yoshida.
  Gong's 1970 debut album, Magick Brother featured a psychedelic pop sound. By the following year, the second album, Camembert Electrique, featured the more psychedelic rock/space rock sound with which they would be most associated. Between 1973 and 1974, Gong released their best known work, the allegorical Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, describing the adventures of Zero the Hero, the Good Witch Yoni and the Pot Head Pixies from the Planet Gong.
  In 1975, Allen and Smyth left the band, which continued without them, releasing a series of jazz rock albums under the leadership of drummer Pierre Moerlen. This incarnation soon became known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong.
context_section_description: The Gong mythology is a humorous collection of recurring characters and allegorical themes which permeate the albums of Gong and Daevid Allen, and to a lesser extent the early works of Steve Hillage. The characters were often based on, or used as pseudonyms for, band members, while the story itself was based on a vision which Allen had during the full moon of Easter 1966, in Deià, Majorca, in which he claimed he could see his future laid out before him.  This mythology was hinted at through Gong's earlier albums but was not the central theme until the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy of 1973/74. It contains many similarities to concepts from Buddhist philosophy, e.g. optimism, the search for self, the denial of absolute reality and the search for the path to enlightenment. There are frequent references to the production and consumption of "tea", perhaps suggesting mushroom tea, although the word has also long been used to describe cannabis, especially in the 1940s and 1950s.
caption: Gong playing Hyde Park, 29 June 1974
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