Annunciato. Atteso. Eccolo! Graham Bennett, Soft Machine: Out-Bloody-Rageous (SAF Publishing, 2005).
Soft Machine were one of the great British pioneering bands, they played a pivotal role in shaping psychedelic rock, progressive rock and jazz-rock fusion. Out-Bloody-Rageous is the definitive biography of this ground-breaking band. Based on extensive interviews with members and associates of Soft Machine, it is illustrated with over eighty photographs, posters and clippings and includes a full Soft Machine family tree, concert file, discography and sessionography. Out-Bloody-Rageous is essential reading for any serious fan of rock or jazz, as it traces the lives of Soft Machine’s members, pieces together the band’s serendipitous formation and colourful career, and unravels the truth, the mystique and the legend behind this most elusive of bands. It recounts the incidents and internal tensions that led to an astonishing twenty-four different line-ups and places Soft Machine’s development in the musical and social context of the time.