Graham Bond: the rocker who claimed to be the illegitimate son of Aleister Crowley
When we talk about influential artists from the 1960s, a lot of the regulars who come up include the likes of Eric Clapton, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. However, many prog-rockers and artists interested in the keyboard, such as Elton John, Rick Wakeman and Steve Winwood, would attest that one of their biggest influences was Graham Bond.
It took two days for police to identify the body of Graham Bond, and even then, they were only able to do so because they were able to check his fingerprints. The musician had thrown himself under a London Tube as a concoction of substance abuse, emotional trouble, and a fluctuating career proved too much. Before his grizzly passing, Bond was a prolific artist who isn’t spoken about enough.
“He taught me, hands-on, most of what I know about the Hammond organ,” said Deep Purple’s Jon Lord when talking about his prolific musicianship and showmanship. So, if he was such a big influence on so many, why does his name now fall under the radar so often? One of the most likely reasons is that the people he surrounded himself with ended up becoming much more famous. Equally, the ugly final years of his life will also play a part.
By October 1962, Bond was playing in Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, a hotbed for emerging talent in the blues scene. As a veteran of the saxophone and the organ, there was lots of room for Bond, as he was keen on blending styles of music and taking a unique sound to the British public. It was after a solo show in Manchester in 1963 that he decided to start his own band, which he is most famous for contributing towards, called the Graham Bond Organisation.
Members were allowed to experiment in the Graham Bond Organisation, as blues, jazz, classical music and R&B all culminated in making something many hadn’t heard before. “Graham was important to a lot of people,” said Jack Bruce, who played in the Graham Bond Organisation. “He was a one-off. Nobody could play alto sax and Hammond at the same time and get that incredible sound. The Organisation was a phenomenal band. It was quite primitive, but that was part of the beauty of it.”
If you recognise the name Jack Bruce, that’s because he was one of the founding members of Cream. Also, one of the founding members was Ginger Baker, who was playing in the Graham Bond Organisation at the same time as Bruce. This marked a pattern for Bond’s career, as a lot of people used his band as a stepping stone before starting some bigger and more successful ones. Bond knew he was an excellent musician and could never work out why he was never given a break. It led to a heroin addiction, over-indulgence of LSD and a general poor state of mind.
At his most confused, he became adamant that he was the son of Aleister Crowley, the occultist, magician, poet and novelist. This was because he found out Crowley had had a baby in 1937 that was left in an orphanage. Also born in 1937, Bond was convinced he was this baby.
“He felt very deeply and would sometimes muse about what his background actually was,” Bruce said. “He thought he was Jewish, for some reason. But he just didn’t know. It must be a terrible thing to not know who you are. I’m sure it played a large part in the way his life went later on.”
