THE PROG INTERVIEW JOHN GREAVES

Every month, we get inside some of the biggest names in prog. This issue, it’s John Greaves. The bassist joined Henry Cow in the autumn of 1969 and remained a constant in the band until his departure in ’76. He also played with National Health and Soft Heap, and teamed up with Slapp Happy’s Peter Blegvad for 1977’s conceptual Kew. Rhone.. He’s enjoyed a modest solo career, which includes his current album Life Size, and, in 2014, he reunited with his Henry Cow bandmates at London’s Barbican to celebrate bassoonist Lindsay Cooper’s life. Here, he looks back over a varied career that’s taken in performances with Mike Oldfield, Jakko Jakszyk and Robert Wyatt.

Words: Mike Barnes

Pre-Cambridge days. It could’ve all gone so differently…

COURTESY JOHN GREAVES

John Greaves grew up in Prestatyn in north Wales and his musical path might have taken a different direction had it not been for the death of a bass player in his father’s dance band, The Ray Irving Orchestra. At that point the 13-year-old Greaves had taken piano lessons and was able to read music, so his father bought him a bass guitar, telling him, “Bass is dead easy, you can learn this in a month.”

After this early musical education, Greaves declined his father’s offer of a permanent place in the band and instead went to Cambridge University in 1968, where he met the members of Henry Cow and promptly joined the group. He also had stints with the Ottawa Music Company, a rock composer’s orchestra whose members included Steve Hillage, Mont Campbell and Dave Stewart of Egg.

“We met Mike Oldfield on our first day, when he engineered the first track Henry Cow recorded, Nirvana For Mice, because Tom Newman had been celebrating the end of Tubular Bells and was brainless drunk under the console.”

Henry Cow signed to the nascent Virgin Records in 1973 and quickly established themselves as one of the most inventive, challenging and politically motivated groups of 70s progressive rock. They recorded Desperate Straights in 1974 with Slapp Happy, a trio of Dagmar Krause, Anthony Moore and Peter Blegvad. After recording In Praise Of Learning, Greaves left Henry Cow in 1976 and teamed up with Blegvad to record the acclaimed Kew. Rhone. in 1977. He enjoyed spells in National Health and, throughout the 80s, in Soft Heap.

Greaves’ later groups include The Lodge with Jakko Jakszyk and Anton Fier, and he still plays in the Peter Blegvad Trio. In recent years he’s played on Robert Wyatt’s 1974 album, Rock Bottom, with the North Sea Radio Orchestra and vocalist Annie Barbazza, both in concert and on the 2019 release Folly Bololey.

He moved to Paris in 1984 and established himself as a songwriter of rare invention on the albums Songs (1994), Chansons (2004) and most recently Life Size (2018). At the moment he has a number of releases in the pipeline.