Eclection

Rosen and Hultgreen met when Hultgreen - who had grown up in Canada - was playing songs in a Bayswater restaurant. They decided to form a group, and recruited Lucas, who had previously recorded in Australia, and in Britain as an accompanist to A. L. Lloyd, after seeing him perform at the 1967 Cambridge Folk Festival. Lucas in turn recommended Kerrilee Male, who had previously worked as a singer with Dave Guard, formerly of The Kingston Trio, on his Australian TV show ''Dave's Place''. The four rehearsed together and acquired the name Eclection - a back-formation to describe their "eclectic" style and origins - at the suggestion of Joni Mitchell, who was playing folk clubs in England at the time and who was a friend of Rosen's girlfriend. The group then added drummer Gerry Conway, a member of Alexis Korner's backing group. Despite their backgrounds, the band regarded themselves as being a "progressive rock" group rather than playing "folk rock", a term which had not yet come into widespread use. The songs were recorded as rehearsed, with vocal harmonies and ornate orchestral arrangements overdubbed later. and We Five. Reviewer Richie Unterberger stated: "The combination of male-female harmonies, optimistic lyrics with shades of romantic psychedelia, folk-rock melodies, acoustic-electric six- and twelve-string guitar combinations, and stratospheric orchestration couldn't help but bring to mind similar Californian folk-pop-rock of the mid-to-late 1960s.""The musical direction of the group was probably closer to American folk-rock than anything else. I must confess, having spent my formative musical years haunting the folk clubs in Montreal, Canada and watching all the current folk and folk/rock programs on TV, I was strongly influenced by this music. The most influential artists for me at the time were people like Dylan, the Byrds, Fred Neil, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, and Gordon Lightfoot. Pre-Eclection, I was a purist fighting the acoustic battle versus the electric "demons" creeping into the scene. I remember being shocked when Dylan went electric. It is therefore ironic that I should end up a few years later playing an electric 12-string in Eclection." ==Later career and split==

After the album was released, the band began to perform at festivals and in clubs around Britain. Their second single, a version of American band Kaleidoscope's song "Please (Mark II)", was released in October 1968. However, that month Kerrilee Male decided to leave the band, and returned to Australia. Conway said: "We just decided, eventually, that we weren't really going anywhere. Not where we wanted to go, anyway." Jac Holzman stated:"I loved that group. They were a fascinating group, a wonderful band, and I thought the records were wonderful. I think our mistake was not bringing them to the States, because they really needed to get out of England. There was too much other stuff competing in England, and in the States, we might have had an easier time. I don't know why we didn't bring 'em. I think, had we got 'em the right venues and gotten them some help with their show, it would have worked." ==Aftermath==

After Eclection split up, Lucas and Conway formed Fotheringay with Lucas' girlfriend (and later wife) Sandy Denny, formerly of Fairport Convention. Lucas and Denny later both rejoined Fairport Convention for a period; Sandy Denny died in 1978, and Trevor Lucas in 1989. Gerry Conway continued a prolific career as a drummer, with Cat Stevens, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull and others. Georg Hultgreen was later known as Georg Kajanus, and had commercial success in the mid-1970s with the band Sailor, later forming DATA and Noir with Tim Dry (Tik from Tik and Tok), and writing musicals and soundtracks. Mike Rosen managed the progressive rock band Cressida, and was later a member of Mogul Thrash, before returning to live in Canada. Little is known publicly about Kerrilee Male after her return to Australia. Dorris Henderson headed a new band, Dorris Henderson's Eclection, in the 1970s, with her son Eric Johns. She died in 2005. The album Eclection was re-issued on CD by Collector's Choice Music in November 2001. The title of psychedelic folk artist Prydwyn's 2009 album with Quickthorn, 'Solitude Owes Me a Smile', is a paraphrase of a line from Eclection's opening track 'In Her Mind'. ==References==