Alessandro Achilli dedica a Pip Pyle la puntata di stasera di Prospettive Musicali, su Radio Popolare, a partire dalle ore 22.30 circa.
Steve Lake, celebra penna per Melody Maker negli anni Settanta (forse proprio a lui si deve il primo uso dell'espressione "Canterbury scene"), pubblica oggi su What's Rattlin'? un ritratto dell'epoca in cui viveva con Pyle:
"It's true that I lived at his place:in East Sheen above a bed shop on the busy Upper Richmond Road with double-decker buses and lorries rattling past. That would have been... 1974. Pip was still in his Green Period then. Had painted the whole flat in a bright leaf green – walls, ceilings, woodwork, telephone -, the only exceptions were the curtains which were in a violent pink-and-black check. The colour combination could almost induce hallucinations when you were sober. Pip wore only green clothes and at one point dyed his hair green (although that changed almost weekly), a particularly surreal vision. I took over the flat from Pip but we were in it together for a few months – with his family, and a steady stream of guests and near neighbours. The place was on the hipster's map as a jazz-and-Canterbury scene crashpad: the backdoor was always open and the sofa at the disposal of anyone who needed a place to put his or her head down – unless there was a party in progress, in which case welcome and do you mind drinking brandy/ouzo/vodka/chianti from a teacup?, we're out of glasses…Regular guests included all the Hatfields and Northettes, Steve Miller, Alan Gowen, Lol Coxhill, Laurie Allan, Gary Boyle, Dave Sinclair, Hugh Hopper, John Greaves. Harry Miller once or twice. Robert Wyatt infrequently. Bill Bruford lived a few doors away and would sometimes drop by to borrow LPs I'd reviewed for MM – I recall him and Pip talking about the Brotherhood of Breath's "Live At Willisau" and the driving drumming of Louis Moholo. Pip was usually at the centre of the most hardcore raving and heated arguing that accompanied the epic socializing, along with Elton Dean and Benj LeFevre, the ex Matching Mole roadie who helped Hatfield when not on tour as a Led Zeppelin sound technician – this trio were unchallenged as the three musketeers of merry carousing and wild pranks. You took your life in your hands if you tried to match them drink for drink. In the case of Pip you could argue either that the personal recklessness worked to the detriment of his musical development (is it wise to visit the pub more frequently than the rehearsal room?) or say that taking chances with his mind and body was a part of being a fearless artist. However: he wouldn't take a drink before going onstage in the early 70s. He was strict about that. Afterwards was another matter. We went out to hear music together – various events around John Stevens, the Bracknell Festival, pub gigs with the now-forgotten altoist Mike Osborne (with ex Soft Machine roadie Jeff Green on guitar), Ronnie Scott's Club… where we particularly enjoyed a George Coleman/Cedar Walton group with Billy Higgins on drums. Later Pip spoke with Higgins in the downstairs bar, told him how great he was.Back then, Pip wanted Hatfield to be more improvisational. He half-wanted to play more jazz, thought that was where he might end up, and had been stung when Elton once told him he was "too heavy-handed" for acoustic music, a criticism he took seriously and worked to correct. At the same time he liked the cranked-amps, adrenaline rush aspects of rock. I don't recall much rock of any kind on his record player, though. (And in the time I was there he never listened to his own recordings. Not once.) We went to the movies in Notting Hill and saw the Dutch festival film "Stamping Ground" in which Pip disliked everything except the Soft Machine playing "Esther's Nose Job." The rest –Santana, Pink Floyd, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane etc. - was all too contrived and `theatrical' for his tastes. That might seem strange coming from a guy who didn't mind wearing ladies clothes for a Gong photo shoot and enjoyed assassinating garden gnomes on stage with Hatfield. A few years later, when punk came in and practically swept away progressive rock, he laughed. "Pretty vacant??" he said, "I can identify with that." Hadn't he written songs about being "basically a cretin"? Needless to add, he was much brighter than he cared to admit and part of his musical contribution was to bring some of the intelligence of jazz drumming into rock – as Mitch Mitchell and Robert Wyatt had done earlier. By doing it longer Pip may have directly inspired more players. I'd first seen him play with Delivery at the Roundhouse in 1970; I think they were opening for Kevin Ayers. I'd never heard of the band before. Pip would have been just 20 then; I was 18. The group opened with a tremendous version of Carla Bley's "Vashkar": its bracing sense of freedom, underlined by Pip's speeding, sweeping drums, just lifted me away. I thought: who *is* this guy? I'm glad I got a chance to find out, and remember those early East Sheen days with Pip and Pam and co very fondly."