WHILE THE post-mortems are hold and the critics scoff about the first pop group to play at the Proms. Soft Machine continue their rehearsals and regard the incident as just another gig.

Bass guitarist Hugh Hopper only bothered to read a couple of national paper reviews - one scathing, the other complimentary.

"I think we're all pleased we did it now." he says. "At the time lots of little things went wrong onstage, although probably only we noticed - the equipment broke down, things like that. On 'Omnibus' it looked quite good but I wasn't very pleased with the sound - but then it's never good on TV or radio."

The whole Proms appearance came about through Tim Souster, a friend of Mike Ratledge. who heard the Soft Machine back in January and asked them to do a piece on the Proms the same night as him.

"I wasn't very keen," recalls Hugh, "because the Albert Hall is a very strange place for sound.

"We didn't do anything different for that concert," says Hugh, airily. "We just did our usual thing. We fuse things in a sense that we like different bits of music which is all put together. anyway, so there's probably a bit of the classics in there."

Hugh was talking during a break in rehearsals held in the back room of an Islington pub. Soft Machine were rehearsing new numbers for stage performance and the next album, which they start shortly. When I arrived they were in the middle of an Elton Dean composition - his first for the group since joining last November.

"We started off with me getting a four-piece brass section in - and then it ended up with just Elton. For anyone who writes it's very nice to have a brass instrument there, it's much fuller. We got the brass because we wanted to expand our writing; it was becoming a bore writing for three people.

"When Lyn Dobson left we thought it would leave a bit of a gap, because when Lyn was in the group Elton stayed in the background, but now it's great and he's worked in really well."

Soft Machine have an usual history. They've been in existence since 1966 and were the first group (with Pink Floyd) to start the London UFO scene in 1966.

Since then they've always had a nucleus of devoted fans but have never hit the limelight as Pink Floyd went on to do. The reason for this is probably that they're reticent people and their music has less universal appeal than other bands.


In this respect their Albert Hall Proms appearance has done them good, and got their name to a larger audience.

I think our fans are not quite blues fans but the hip section of the community - people who actually like listening to the music as well as the effects. What really surprised me were friends of my parents who set up and witched the Omnibus programme at eleven o'clock at night and really enjoyed it" says Hugh.

"I don't think by appearing at the Prom's we could have damaged our reputation, because we were at a level before where any publicity would have helped. If we'd been very well known and played badly it might have hurt us, but as we weren't very well known, it could only really improve rather than hurt us."

It's difficult to pin a "typical" and identifiable sound on the Soft Machine - it's varied over the years depending who was in the group and whose particular number they're doing. It started off as a fairly conventional line-up which varied as people came and went, although pianist Mike Ratledge and drummer Robert Wyatt have been permanent fixtures since their formation in Canterbury. So has Hugh, except for a period in 1967 when he left to ride about on his motor bike, later rejoining them as road manager and finally taking up bass with then again in 1968.

It's all slowly changed. When it first started the group revolved mostly round Kevin Ayers (bass) and Dave Allen (an Australian guitarist/poet) who was later exiled. When they left and Mike became the most influential, and now I think it's Mike and myself. it's good because not many group are organ based - they usually have a lead guitar".




Mike and Hugh tend to do most of the writing - they write separately as a rule but some tracks are collaborations, and Robert writes the occasional thing.

"I think it's good for everyone to write. However good one writer if only one person does the writing all the compositions have the same sort of sound.

Record sales are pretty important to the group, too, as they're not the sort of band that' on the road every night - they do perhaps one gig a week, usually in a big hall, so they've never been earning a terrific amount of money. Now Hugh has just brought out a book of some of his scores for the group, as they were constantly being asked for notes and chords of various numbers at gigs. They also have an American tour lined up for the autumn which they're anticipating with mixed feelings.

"Now," says Hugh, "there'll be people there who actually know us, I really don't know what's going to happen."