Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden: A Girl’s Life in The Incredible String Band
Rose Simpson
266pp / 154mm x 240mm
Heavily illustrated in black & white
16 colour pages
Paperback / Hardback
£15.99 / £25.00
Anyone with an interest in this idealistic era and its legacy will enjoy Simpson’s wealth of vignettes and insights.
- Rob Young, The Wire
What an extraordinary and intoxicating tale this is, that impossibly fabulous late ‘60s world of wild creative adventure viewed from the inside by one of the very few women playing in a band at the time. A whole era seen from a new perspective: fascinating.
- Mark Ellen
An illuminating and engrossing read. It is both a celebration of the ISB’s achievements and a gentle warning regarding how the very best of intentions can go astray.
- Richard Foreman, International Times.
A quietly revelatory account of her days as a member of the Incredible String Band: at once pragmatic, grounded and assured, while alive to the psychedelic wonder and magic of the times, and to the beauty of the music she created along with Licorice, Mike and Robin… A beautifully-written, thought-provoking account of a woman’s attempt to create a space for herself in a male-dominated musical world.
- Alasdair Roberts
A memoir by a member of the Incredible String Band that charts a journey from hippie utopia to post-Woodstock implosion, with many never-seen-before images from the author's personal archive
Between 1967 and 1971 Rose Simpson lived with the Incredible String Band (Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Licorice McKechnie), morphing from English student to West Coast hippie and, finally, bassist in leathers. The band’s image adorned psychedelic posters and its music was the theme for an alternative lifestyle.
Rose and partner Mike Heron believed in, and lived, a naive vision of utopia in Scotland, but they were also a band on tour, enjoying the thrills of that life. They were at the centre of Swinging London and at New York's Chelsea Hotel with Andy Warhol’s superstars. They shared stages with rock idols and played at Woodstock in 1969. Rose and fellow ISB member Licorice were hippie pin-ups, while Heron and Robin Williamson the seers and prophets of a new world.
Through a haze of incense and marijuana, they played out their Arcadian dreams on stages brilliant with the colours of clothes, light-shows, rugs, cushions, and exotic instruments. But like most utopias, the ISB’s imploded, leading from psychedelic dream-world to the harsh alternate realities of Scientology and celebrity.
Never seeing herself as a professional musician, Rose retained an outsider’s detachment even while living the life of a hippie chick. Her dreamy, yet firmly-grounded memoir gives voice to those flower-wreathed girls whose photographs have become symbols of the psychedelic sixties.
About the author
Rose Simpson is an English former musician. Between 1968 and 1971, she was a member of the Incredible String Band, with whom she sang and played bass guitar, violin, and percussion. She later became Lady Mayoress of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth.
