Canterbury legends
Soft Machine went through a dizzying number of lineup changes from their inception in 1966 to their late-'70s fade-out, but the "Soft" story hardly ended there. Over the years, various alumni of the group would carry the torch forward with outfits such as
Soft Heap, Soft Head, Soft Ware, and
Soft Works, before the emergence of
Soft Machine Legacy in the mid-2000s. In the fall of 2015,
Soft Machine Legacy -- at the time including three members who had appeared together on
Soft Machine's 1976 album
Softs -- dropped "Legacy" from the band name and decided to begin touring and recording as "
Soft Machine." The group embarked on an international tour in 2018 to mark the 50th anniversary of the first
Soft Machine album, and released Hidden Details in September of that year.
The saga of all these various "Soft" bands started in 1978, when saxophonist
Elton Dean and bassist
Hugh Hopper got together with Canterbury scene buddies keyboardist
Alan Gowen and drummer
Pip Pyle to perform and record under a moniker that quite justifiably referenced
Soft Machine, the group that had brought
Dean and
Hopper the highest level of attention in their musical careers. The new group was named
Soft Heap, and the music the quartet produced was a unique and noteworthy style of electric jazz fitting within neither the psychedelic pop nor the jazz-rock template of the ever-changing
Soft Machine.
Soft Heap recorded an eponymous studio album that year, released on the Charly label in 1979 (and getting the remastering treatment on a 2009 Esoteric CD reissue). And, in a sense, the group actually premiered on disc with 1978's live album Rogue Element, although the quartet used the moniker Soft Head on that release, since drummer
Dave Sheen stood in for the unavailable
Pyle on the recording (made during a French tour).
Hugh,
Elton,
Alan, and
Pip were the "
HEAP";
Hugh,
Elton,
Alan, and
Dave were the "HEAD."
Flash forward over two decades, all the way to 1999, and
Dean and
Hopper were back in another Soft Something group, Soft Ware, this time featuring a third
Soft Machine alumnus, drummer
John Marshall, along with free/avant jazz pianist
Keith Tippett, who had his own performing and recording history with the saxophonist and bassist. This aggregation didn't issue an album, but it did signal that the story of
Soft Machine alumni referencing their '60s-'70s internationally famous group wasn't over, and in the new millennium yet another outfit emerged to tap into the reservoir of fan interest: namely
Soft Works, a quartet that released the 2003 album Abracadabra, featuring a somewhat spacy contemporary jazz flavor with Canterbury-esque and fusion leanings. This time, however, the group consisted entirely of previous
Soft Machine members; in addition to
Dean,
Hopper, and
Marshall,
Soft Works included guitarist
Allan Holdsworth. Although the four had all been in
Soft Machine, no version of
the Softs had included them at the same time, with
Hopper appearing on albums
Volume Two through
Six;
Dean on
Third through
Fifth;
Holdsworth on
Bundles; and
Marshall on all the
Softs albums from
Fifth onward until the
Karl Jenkins-led version of the group finally called it a day (around the same time that
Dean and
Hopper were playing in
Soft Heap, as a matter of fact).
Holdsworth had left
Soft Machine after one album, 1975's
Bundles, and in somewhat characteristic fashion, he was gone from
Soft Works after one album too. That left
Dean,
Hopper, and
Marshall looking around for someone to replace him, and in an instance of history repeating itself, guitarist
John Etheridge stepped up and plugged in, just as he had after
Holdsworth departed
Soft Machine following
Bundles, when
Etheridge signed on for 1976's
Softs. So after
Soft Heap, Soft Head, Soft Ware, and
Soft Works, this new quartet took off in October 2004 under the name
Soft Machine Legacy. The quartet members apparently decided not to merely hint at the group that had given them their highest profiles in the music world --
Dean,
Hopper,
Marshall, and
Etheridge came right out and said it in their band name: they were building on the legacy of
Soft Machine. Moreover, although
Soft Machine Legacy focused on new repertoire, they also began to revisit at least one old
Soft Machine warhorse in their set list, "Kings and Queens," penned by
Hopper and appearing on what some consider to be the peak recording of the
Soft Machine "classic quartet" (
Hopper,
Dean,
Mike Ratledge,
Robert Wyatt), 1971's
Fourth.
The MoonJune label began issuing
Soft Machine Legacy albums with 2005's Live in Zaandam, recorded in May of that year in the Netherlands. It was followed by an eponymous studio album the following year, and then a pair of live releases from a December 2005 concert at the New Morning venue in Paris: the DVD New Morning: The Paris Concert, and the CD audio set
Live at the New Morning; the New Morning concert included a version of "Seven for Lee," one of
Dean's finest compositions featured on Soft Head's 1978 Rogue Element album. Sadly, however,
Dean was in poor health and, although he planned to tour with
Soft Machine Legacy in February 2006, he died that month at age 60.
Soft Machine Legacy vowed to continue following
Dean's passing, and added saxophonist/flutist
Theo Travis to the lineup for the group's next album, the 2007 studio album
Steam. Although the group no longer exclusively featured musicians who had been in
Soft Machine,
Travis was an ideal choice for
Soft Machine Legacy; he not only possessed serious jazz credibility, but had also performed and/or recorded with many artists linked to the same Canterbury scene that spawned
Soft Machine, including
Phil Miller's
In Cahoots and latter-day versions of
Gong and
Hatfield and the North. But again, the old guard continued to pass away. The year after
Steam was released,
Hugh Hopper was diagnosed with leukemia, and he died in June 2009 at age 64. The two key members of
Soft Machine who -- among many other projects over the years -- had maintained that group's spirit of adventurousness through
Soft Heap/Head, Soft Ware,
Soft Works, and
Soft Machine Legacy, had both now passed on.
But the remaining three members of
Soft Machine Legacy, drummer
Marshall, guitarist
Etheridge, and saxophonist/flutist
Travis, again vowed to continue, and bassist
Roy Babbington soon joined the lineup.
Babbington had appeared as a guest on
Soft Machine's
Fourth (although he did not play bass on "Kings and Queens"), and had joined the band as a bona fide full member following the departure of
Hopper during the group's
Karl Jenkins years, appearing on 1973's Seven, 1975's
Bundles with
Allan Holdsworth, and 1976's
Softs, the album that introduced
John Etheridge to the lineup.
Soft Machine Legacy now had three
Soft Machine members who had appeared together on
Softs:
Etheridge,
Marshall, and
Babbington.
In October 2009, several months after
Hopper's death, the latest version of the
Soft Machine Legacy quartet set off on a European tour and recorded the album Live Adventures at dates in Germany and Austria; the album included a version of one of
Hopper's best-known pieces, "Facelift," as well as two Jenkins numbers, "The Nodder" and "Song of Aeolus." Live Adventures was released in 2010. Three years later, in early 2013, this lineup of the band returned with its first studio date,
Burden of Proof, also released by MoonJune. The album featured all new compositions and improvisations aside from one track, a new rendition of "Kings and Queens."
Looking back half a century to the 1968 arrival of
Soft Machine's eponymous debut album (by the trio of
Mike Ratledge,
Robert Wyatt, and
Kevin Ayers), in 2018 the quartet of
Marshall,
Etheridge,
Babbington, and
Travis embarked on a 50th anniversary international tour and released the album Hidden Details. The group had dropped "Legacy" from its name in the fall of 2015, after which the quartet toured and recorded under the moniker of the band that started it all:
Soft Machine. ~ Dave Lynch