The Enid

Event information

THE ENID

"The only band on the planet to have successfully fused rock based music with the power, dynamics and scale of symphonic classical music. They are the absolute masters of their art and their achievements over more than twenty years of creative work set them apart from everything else which calls itself progressive"
The Guardian

"The Orb Meets Pink Floyd Meets The Berlin Philharmonic"
Time Out
"One of the greatest composers this country has ever had."
Tommy Vance

UK LIVE DATES

In 1988 after nearly ten years of continuous touring, Robert John Godfrey called an official halt to The Enid with two back to back sold-out shows at The Dominion Theatre, London and the band dissolved.

Except for a few one-off adventures during the nineties, the band lay dormant whilst Godfrey fought his demons.

In 2002, Robert John Godfrey met by chance a young guitarist, Jason Ducker. For the following years Jason and Robert have been working on The Enid’s music. Now he is ready to step into the unique role left vacant by Steve Stewart.

The original drummer, Dave Storey together with Jason Ducker and Max Read (member since 1995), join Robert John Godfrey, founding member and driving force within the band for a succession of live shows in support of their new album entitled Journey’s End.

Said Godfrey in a recent letter to his fans; “I haven’t been entirely idle over these years of inactivity. I have developed both as a composer and a person. I think you will all love these new interpretations of some of our most famous tracks.”

In Jason, I have found the guitarist I so missed after Steve Stewart left in 1988. Dave is in magnificent form and Max is, as ever, a stalwart in all things.”

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NEW RECORDINGS

“Arise & Shine”
Now completed is a special recording featuring the new line up performing all the music which was performed at The Bush Hall, London on May 29th.

This special CD is not intended for general release and will only be available at gigs, festivals and mail order through the band’s fan club, The Enidi.

“Journeys End”
The end of this year will see the completion of what may be Godfrey’s last major work, aptly called, Journey’s End.

In a recent radio interview Godfrey said, “I believe that if I am finally able to get this task done, I will have surpassed myself; and if that turns out to be true, then my struggles will be over and I will have nothing left to do.”

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THE ENID – BRIEF HISTORY
The Enid emerged in the latter half of the seventies as a radical answer to all those young people who couldn’t identify with punk but were nevertheless as tired and fed with the current music scene as nearly everyone else.

By 1983, Tommy Vance on Radio One had dubbed them "The biggest cult band in Europe". Not because they were, but because the main radio station in the UK assumed they must be!

Record companies feared them; Glastonbury banned them. The band was even investigated by MI5. By the mid eighties, just about everybody in the UK had heard of The Enid; and the amount of misinformation, which surrounded them, was staggering.

They've been called "fascists" (by people who had been told of, but obviously had never actually experienced at first hand, their sacrilegious on-stage renditions of "Land of Hope and Glory"), "leftists" (because of RJG's vociferous insistence that "all people are interdependent whether they know it or not and that individuality has no fundamental meaning"), and "anarchists" (some truth in that).

Many people assumed that they were some sort of insane punk band. That particular assumption could scarcely have been further from the mark. In fact they were probably the most enigmatic and intellectually challenging of any band to have emerged in the UK.

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