The first album, simply titled Gryphon, combines medieval and renaissance dance tunes, traditional British folk songs, and original compositions by the group. The album features humor, some shockingly fast recorder licks from Harvey, and a taste of things to come in the adventurous, group-composed "Juniper Suite."

            Midnight Mushrumps (1974) found Gryphon enlarged to a quintet with the addition of bassist Philip Nestor. No longer sticking to acoustic instrumentation, the band dived head first into Progressive rock with the 19-minute title track, which picked up w "Juniper Suite" left off. Only one song, the traditional "The Ploughboy's Dream," was not an original composition.

            The all-instrumental Red Queen to Gryphon Three followed later that year. This album consists of four lengthy pieces, all originals, and is much more rock-oriented than its predecessors. Red Queen… is the only Gryphon album released in America.

            Gryphon toured the U.S. in late 1974 as a support act to Yes, and even appeared on the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio concert series. Members of Gryphon, including new bassist Malcolm Bennett, later appeared on Steve Howe's 1975 solo album, Beginnings.

            With Bennett replacing Nestor, Gryphon recorded Raindance in 1975. Although the album featured another extended classical-styled composition by Richard Harvey, "(Ein Klein) Heldenleben," it also marked a turn towards a more pop-oriented style, especially in Taylor's Cat Stevens-ish "Don't Say Go" and a hushed version of the Beatles' "Mother Nature's Son."

            Gryphon went through major changes before the release of their 1977 finale, Treason. Graeme Taylor, who left to join Ashley Hutching's Albion Band, was replaced by Bob Foster; bassist Jonathan Davie replaced Bennett; and Alex Baird was added on drums, freeing Oberle to concentrate on lead vocals. As if swelling the ranks to a sextet wasn't enough, the band brought in an outside lyricist, Tim Sebastion.
            Some of' the resulting album is genial but conservative pop, mote reminiscent of pre-disco Bee Gees than the Gryphon of old. Still, Harvey's "Spring Song" is a Progressive master-piece reminiscent of Yes and Genesis, while Gulland's "Flash in the Pantry"' is an amazing little whirlwind of quirky rhythms and humorous lyrics that sound like the ravings of a mad medieval herbalist.

            Gryphon members have had numerous outside projects. in 1975 (at the tender age of 21), Richard Harvey recorded a solo album, Divisions on a Ground, consisting of baroque recorder pieces, including a concerto by Vivaldi and a sonata by Handel. His playing can also be heard on albums by Kate Bush, Mike Heron, Richard and Linda Thompson (playing crumhorn alongside Brian Gulland), and many others. After Gryphon disbanded, Gulland joined the French folk group Malicorne. David Oberle went on to become an advertising manager for the Heavy Metal magazine Kerrang.

N the early seventies Gryphon were the nearest thing the folk-rock scene had to a cult band: teenage schoolgirls and young folkies packed their concerts and followed them round wherever they went. However, when recorded, their blend of early music, folk-rock and instrumental grooves appealed across the generations and the LPs soon became steady-sellers both in the UK and abroad.

            Led by the multi-instrumentalist Richard Harvey, the band drew initially on a nucleus of Renaissance pieces and re-arranged folk tunes, combining bravura and knockabout use of period instruments with acoustic guitar and percussion, to pleasing effect. They soon developed their own distinctive sound and original repertoire, expanding the extraordinarily diverse range of their instruments to include banks of electronic keyboards, electric bass, electric guitars and rock drum-kit. They went on to record two more albums for Transatlantic, Red Queen To Gryphon Three and Raindance touring the UK and Europe with, among others, the progressive rock band Yes.

            Richard Harvey is now, of course, better known for his feature film and TV drama scores and the other original members of Gryphon have gone their separate ways: Brian Gulland back into early music and film scores, Graeme Taylor into various incarnations of the Albion Band and beyond, and Dave Oberle into the production of hard rock bands.

F my somewhat fogged long-term memory serves me anything like correctly, I was still at music college and living with my parents the day I got a phone call from Lawrence Aston of Transatlantic Record. Funnily enough it had been the August and dusty ambience of the Royal College of Music where I first met Brian Gulland that had persuaded me as to the benefits of ‘longer than classical’ hair and strange-shaped trousers However, "did he jump or was he pushed?" might have been the sotto voce question around the time of my hasty departure from that fine establishment.

            In fact, Transatlantic Records had provided me with most of my listening pleasure up until then, with Pentangle and John Renbourn being the most influential among their varied but always interesting roster of artists. So when Transatlantic became keen to sign the band the label seemed to be exactly right for us. The first album Gryphon was released in 1973 and immediately hit the headlines: we even had the distinction of appearing on all four BBC Radio networks in one week. The second album saw the band beginning to develop our synthesis of early music and rock, particularly in the ‘Midnight Mushrumps’ suite inspired by the music I had been commissioned to write by Peter Hall fur his 1973 National Theatre Company production of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’.

            For my part, I appear to have survived what to me was the dark age of the eighties: by losing myself quite successfully first in TV commercials and later in film and TV drama music. I don’t imagine that Gryphon will fly again but who knows perhaps the CD re-issue of the first two albums might help to spark pre-millennium renaissance in musical eclecticism a return to the spirit of experiment that gave birth to the original Gryphon.