The earliest known photograph of the Rohan Theatre Band, taken in 1891. Edgar Wimble is 2nd on the left. Each of them is holding their trademark pipes, which featured widely in their early performances.

From its foundation in 1891 the Rohan Theatre has always had a house band, although the role of that band has changed and developed considerably over the years. Initially a traditional theatre band, accompanying songs, dances and melodramas, the collapse of the theatre building in 1892, and the company’s subsequent radicalisation of the notion of theatrical presentation soon necessitated an equivalent re-evaluation of the role of the Rohan Theatre Band. Edgar Wimble, the first Musical Director of the band (1891-1904), proposed that it should become a chronicler of events surrounding Rohan Theatre productions, and to this effect he penned a number of songs including the 1895 Music Hall hits “This Building is Collapsing” and “What Use is a Dwarf With No Legs?”
During the years 1892 – 1914 the Rohan Theatre Band performed regularly in Music Halls around London, acquiring quite a following through its unique combination of social satire, righteous indignation and empirical philosophy. By 1910 the popular expression “well call me Rohan and sing me a song!” (meaning “I’d never have believed it and yet it turns out to be true”) was common parlance amongst members of both the working and middle classes. However, this period of popular acclaim was soon to end with the outbreak of the First World War, and the subsequent shift in audience tastes towards the comforting and jingoistic. Finding themselves rapidly falling out of favour, in October 1914 the entire band volunteered and before long found themselves in the trenches at Ypres, where they continued to give performances of their “greatest hits” to the largely Canadian and Scottish troops whose condition of mortal danger made them more open to the often discomforting tenet of the songs. The bands most notable performance during the war was to take place on December 24th 1914, when they crept into No Man’s Land and, in a typically cryptic statement calculated to challenge popularly held conceptions, began singing Christmas carols in German, inspiring retorts in kind from both sides of the barbed wire which ultimately led to the now famous “Christmas Truce”. Though to historians this event is often referred to as a triumph of Humanity over the chaos of war, to Philip Duncan, the then Musical Director of the Rohan Theatre Band, it was to be the cause of much mental anguish which saw him spend the last twenty years of his life in Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, due to the guilt he felt at the extreme backlash of the authorities against fraternisation with the enemy which resulted in many hundreds of troops on both sides being summarily executed.

On their return from the war in 1919 the four surviving members of the band found that the public taste for challenge and indignation had all but disappeared, and with the arrival of cinema their particular brand of cathartic entertainment was no longer at all in demand. Now under the direction of Walter Wrenfield, and facing a lack of interest that would drive any ordinary band to give up altogether, they instead expanded their forces and went underground, often quite literally, performing exclusively on the periphery of Rohan Theatre Productions, and frequently without an audience. In time they were devising their own sardonic performances. In 1923 John Davey, lead banjo player, and a trained civil engineer, discovered on an old map a direct passage between the Westminster sewers and the crypt of Westminster Abbey, which resulted in their longest running musical production: “The Ghost of Sir Henry”: on the second Sunday of every month for the following 32 years members of the band (in various incarnations) would hide in a walled up room behind the tomb of Henry Purcell and perform a set of songs based largely on corrupted versions of Purcell’s own Drinking Songs. Before long rumours of the “haunting” had spread right across London and by the summer of 1924 regular ghost tours were being conducted at which ladies of note would be seen to faint with terror. It wasn’t until 1955, when restoration work on the sewer walled up the passage, that the performances stopped.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century the Rohan Theatre Band continued in its endeavour to “recast popular song in a serious mould”, and by 1960 it was unquestionably the most influential unknown band actively working in Britain. When in 1965 George Martin introduced The Beatles to a number of recordings he had made in secret of their project “The Necessity of Indolence” their influence upon the evolution of popular music was assured, and it is now widely accepted amongst those in the know that the song “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is a direct tribute to them and their works.

The increased commercialisation of popular music throughout the 80s and 90s pushed the band once more into the fringes, and yet it continued, without compromise, to influence the music and song writing of more serious artists, such as David Bowie, Björk, Tom Waits, and more recently Nick Cave and Pulp through acts of subtle implication and passive suggestion.

Probably the most remarkable achievements of the Rohan Theatre Band are its incredible longevity, and its ability to maintain a consistent identity despite the many changes of personnel over the years (there have, since 1891 been 107 band members and 18 Musical Directors). Regrettably, for aesthetical reasons they were entirely unwilling to participate in the world of corporate music production and hence they made no commercial recordings throughout the 20th century (although a number of their private recordings have turned up on the internet despite various threats of litigation on their part). It was not until 2001, when their current Musical Director, Rohan K. was appointed, that they decided to present their works directly to the public on the grounds that musical sensibilities were changing, and the world was again in need of their inspiration and guidance.

ROHAN K.

Born Toby Woollcott in 1963, Rohan K. studied accordion and banjo at London’s Guild Hall School of music and Drama, graduating with a low 3rd after a bizarre banjo related incident resulted in his immediate suspension and barring from the building during his final year, a situation which left him profoundly embittered and had a huge influence on the future course of his musical career. After a number of years living from hand to mouth as a busking one man band he was “discovered” by record tycoon Paul Mystère who released his first and only hit “If Only I Had an Unbrella” which reached number 3 in the charts in March 1987 and provided him with enough money to set up his own small business collecting and transferring old 78rpm recordings to digital formats. It was in this context that he first came upon a number of wax cylinders privately recorded by the Rohan Theatre Band in 1913, and from that moment on an obsession was born. In 1988 he had his name changed by deed poll to Rohan K., after the Rohan Theatre, and spent the next eight years travelling the world seeking out any further recordings and memorabilia that came upon the open, or indeed private, markets. In June 1996 he finally tracked down the Artistic Directors of the current Rohan Theatre and, after numerous failed applications involving leverage of both moral and immoral kinds, he was invited to join the Rohan Theatre Band in March 1998. Although initially suspicious both of his motives and his aesthetic it was not long before his courage and enthusiasm were embraced by the band, and in 2001 he was appointed Musical Director, fulfilling a long held ambition. Under his direction, and encouraged by the collapse of the Music Industry, the Rohan Theatre Band has finally embraced the medium of commercial recording and virtual distribution making their works publicly available for the first time. Their first three albums (Unsavoury Songs (2002), Rants and Accusations (2003) and Cemetery Songs (2005)) each sold out their limited editions within weeks, making it apparent that they needed a larger and more experienced label behind them, and as a result in June 2006 they were signed to the Independent label Hobgoblin Records.

Noted for their acerbic wit and inner darkness, Rohan K.’s songs remain very much in the long held traditions of the Rohan Theatre Band, and indeed some are quite literally based upon the many early recordings he has collected over the years. To the legions of new fans they have acquired since venturing into the public domain under his direction, it would be impossible to imagine a Rohan Theatre Band recording without his unique dulcet tones bemoaning the fate of our society and culture, and cursing those who refuse to think for themselves. Ultimately, of course, the personnel will change once again, and the band will continue in yet another guise, but for now it seems that the Rohan Theatre Band has entered a new renaissance, and there is little doubt that in the years to come historians of the Rohan Theatre will look back on the years under Rohan K.’s direction as a second golden age in the bands long history.