Caravan - Recent Output

Caravan - Recent Output

By Pete Clemons

Rock band Caravan continue to celebrate their 50th year of existence. You may remember them for their 14 wonderful and varied studio albums and the rather splendid live recording with the New Symphonia Orchestra.

Caravan’s music was initially influenced by a loose form of jazzy rhythms but that disappeared as the band developed. Textured harmonies and, at times, extended and complicated work outs became a staple. Their songs can be catchy, sometimes display humour yet, at the same time, be deep and abstract.

The last twenty years has seen Caravan’s discography produce an abundance of live, demos, re-recordings and other, unused material. Some of the releases have been outstanding, some of them not so.

For anyone remotely interested in Caravan, they did have a large underground following, and who has yet to hear this stuff, I have listed below a selection of what I consider essential listens. Almost as important, in my opinion, as the bands original studio albums.

All Over You (1997) – Completely new and, it must be said, a brilliant set of re-workings of some of Caravan’s finest moments such as ‘Place of my Own’ and ‘For Richard’ in an almost acoustic format. The band at this point was Pye Hastings, Geoffrey Richardson, David Sinclair, Jimmy Hastings and Richard Coughlan.

All Over You…Too (2000) – A similar project to above but featured the reformed band of 1999 that included, Doug Boyle on lead guitar and Jim Leverton on bass. The energy and vibrancy, contained within these versions, is quite startling. Even a track like ‘Ride’ from the first album has been given a complete transformation.

Songs For Oblivion Fishermen (1998) – A live album containing archive BBC recordings that spanned the period 1970 to 1974 and was mastered from original archive tapes. As for the album’s title, Pye Hastings explained: ‘I have always been intrigued by misunderstandings and Chinese whispers and the title is an example of this. It stems from a conversation I heard in my local pub about these Bolivian street musicians - obviously I misheard’.

Ether Way (1998) – Another set of live recordings from archive BBC recordings that spanned the period 1975 to 1977 and featuring the band line ups from the ‘Cunning Stunts’, ‘Blind Dog’ and ‘Better by Far’ album period.

Green Bottles For Marjorie (2002), (‘Green Bottles for Marjorie’ was, as I understand, the early working title for what became ‘If I Could Do it All Over Again, I’d Do it All Over You’ tune) - This album contains Top Gear sessions from 1968 along with an In Concert recording from 1971 and a track recorded on the John Peel show in 1972.

Live at the Fairfield Hall 1974 (2002) – Originally released as a double LP in Germany and France under the title of ‘The Best of Caravan Live’, this concert remained unreleased in the UK until its CD release during 2002. This concert was performed by the line-up that released the Cunning Stunts album.

In addition, I would also recommend that you check out the various re-issues of official studio albums, for the bonus songs that they contain. Each of the 2001 CD releases contain at least three extra tracks of demo’s or working titles from the period of the main album they feature on.

Finally, Steven Wilson's 40th anniversary deluxe 2011 release of ‘In the Land of Grey and Pink’ album. In addition to the main event it also contains recording sessions, archival stuff from Sounds of the Seventies and a Paris Theatre concert hosted by John Peel.

The above CD’s I mentioned CD’s may be quite difficult to locate. However, with the number of digital outlets available nowadays, I am sure they would not take much time to track down on the ether.

I admit that it may seem strange have, in some cases, multiple versions of the same songs but the thing about Caravan, is that they never played to a script. Each version of every song Caravan perform, brings with it, its own uniqueness.


2019 sees Caravan appearing in selective gigs that continue the celebration of the bands 50 years of existence. Who knows how many more years exist. But one thing is for sure. Their legacy will live on forevermore.