In the sixties and early seventies, foreign artists rarely made the grade in France, yet how much less were French acts seen abroad! Even Johnny Hallyday, who can lay claim to be one of the most consistently successful artists anywhere - albeit with derivative styles - is hardly known outside France. A sign that this was to change occurred on the 25th of August 1973 when Magma came to England for the Reading Festival. Herb Alpert of A&M had decided to release Magma's third album (third in a projected series of nine… a super-ambitious series of nine) despite its inaccessibility. Let me break a customary rule and quote from a 1973 press release on the subject of Magma.
"Magma play recognisable music, but have rejected all known languages like English (the pop Esperanto) or even French. Their language is Kobaïan, which comes from Kobaïa the imaginary planet where the new concept will one day be able to flourish and where the new man, Uniwerïa Zekt, will find, we hope, greater energy and meaningfulness..."With the expansion of leisure and leisure industries it is important that popular music should evolve a greater sense of social action as much as for the vast audience that it covers as for its own aesthetics. In the age of Prof. McCluhan's Global Village we cannot just go on amusing or entertaining ourselves without due care to our spiritual, as well as physical survival."
Gomelsky, I suspect, wrote these words. But the true power behind the group is Christian Vander, the group's leader, composer and drummer. His commitment to the group is absolute. "Magma is my entire life," he is reported to have said. "If it fails I shall die. For me, personally, on this earth there is after Magma, nothing." Vander's music, which demands an absolute commitment from its members, is strongly influenced by Coltrane, though this is not evident on the surface. One of its features is the use of odd time signatures, as opposed to even, which when mastered allows a strange but potent liberation - most of John McLaughlin's pieces are in odd time signatures. On first hearing them, I could not say that I got to grips with Magma's great design. But it seemed to have strength of purpose, a grasp of the social role music can play in people's lives, not yet attempted or even formulated before.
Meanwhile, Giorgio Gomelsky claimed to have heard 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh' in concert some four hundred times before the end of 1973, and was still finding new shades in it. There is a lot more to tell in the Gomelsky history, but here would not be the place to tell it. What is more important is that he was instrumental with his facility for travelling through every country as a stranger and therefore as much at home in England as in France or Germany, in a major development in breaking down the xenophobic myopia which even now still afflicts Europe.
It was not without a certain pride that he said: "Robin Scott, BBC's Head of Light Entertainment, once told me: 'What a shame we could not appoint you as the official ambassador in Europe for the new British music." It may no longer be for the British music but an ambassador of sorts he must certainly be.