Living in the Heart of the Beast
| "Living in the Heart of the Beast" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Henry Cow with Slapp Happy from the album In Praise of Learning | |
| Released | May 1975 |
| Recorded | February–March 1975, England |
| Genre | Avant-rock |
| Length | 16:18 15:30 (remix) |
| Label | Virgin |
| Writer(s) | Tim Hodgkinson |
| Composer(s) | Tim Hodgkinson |
| Producer(s) | Henry Cow, Slapp Happy and Phil Becque |
"Living in the Heart of the Beast" is the title of an extended song written and composed by Tim Hodgkinson in 1975 for the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. It was recorded in 1975 by Henry Cow with Slapp Happy, who had recently merged with Henry Cow after the two groups had recorded a collaborative album, Desperate Straights the previous year.
"Living in the Heart of the Beast" was the first of two "epic" compositions Hodgkinson wrote for Henry Cow, the second being "Erk Gah" (1976), later known as "Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine".
Tim Hodgkinson began writing "Living in the Heart of the Beast" in mid 1974 and presented it a few months later to Henry Cow as an unfinished and untitled instrumental. The group cut the piece up into fragments, interspaced them with improvisational sections, and performed it live. One such performance, Halsteren was recorded in Halsteren in the Netherlands on 26 September 1974, and appears in Volume 2: 1974–5 of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009). This instrumental suite was also performed in Groningen in the Netherlands two days later, and part of it was released as "Groningen" on Concerts (1976). In early 1975, after a successful collaborative album, Desperate Straights with Slapp Happy, the two groups decided to merge, and Henry Cow, for the first time, acquired a vocalist, Dagmar Krause from Slapp Happy. Plans were made for "Living in the Heart of the Beast" to be recorded for Henry Cow's next album, this time with vocals and lyrics added.
Hodgkinson commissioned Slapp Happy's songwriter Peter Blegvad to write lyrics for the piece for Krause to sing. However, after several attempts, Blegvad (who was soon to be asked to leave the band) admitted that he was "out of [his] depth", and Hodgkinson wrote the lyrics himself. Blegvad presented a slightly different interpretation of this situation in a 1996 interview with Hearsay magazine, stating "The piece that got me kicked out [of Henry Cow] was "Living in the Heart of the Beast". I was assigned the task for the collective to come up with suitable verbals, and I wrote two verses about a woman throwing raisins at a pile of bones. [...] Tim Hodgkinson said, 'I'm sorry, this is not at all what we want’, and he wrote reams of this political tirade. I admired his passion and application but it left me cold. I am to my bones a flippant individual. I don't know why I was created thus or what I'm trying to deny, but it clashed with the extreme seriousness."
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