“One of the great voices of ‘60s London counter-culture. Anything that gets the word out and celebrates that has got to be good news!” Colin Harper, music biographer of ‘Dazzling Stranger’ (Bert Jansch) and ‘Bathed In Lightning’ (John McLaughlin)
From the Sydney clubs to London’s Notting Hill Gate to the sprawling plains of the US, it’s been a long journey for singer-songwriter Phil ‘Shiva’ Jones.
And now it’s being told in the pages of Philip K. Marks’ June 2026-published biography, ‘Cosmic Surfer’.
In 1969, East met West when five musicians gathered in the cellar of Notting Hill with a tambura, a Hammond organ, an electric guitar, and a shared sense that rock music was ready for something it hadn’t done before.
They called themselves Quintessence.
At the heart of the sound stood Phil Jones — a young Australian singer who had grown up on Delta blues, found his way to a London ashram, taken the name Shiva, and was now ready to channel everything he had absorbed into a music that no one else was making.
What came out of that basement changed the texture of British rock.
Quintessence signed to Island Records, the most adventurous label of its era and released a slew of acclaimed albums. .
They headlined Glastonbury in its earliest, most luminous years.
They played the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Royal Albert Hall on Christmas Eve, and 100,000 people at the Holland Pop Festival.
Jim Morrison claimed them his favourite band.
With over 40 photographs, press clippings, and album artworks from Shiva Jones’s private archive — including the original Island Records sleeves, rare live shots from Glastonbury and the Marquee Club, and the Sydney newspaper coverage of his first band — this is the long-awaited biography of one of the most quietly influential figures in late-twentieth-century music.
‘Cosmic Surfer’ The Book is available now from Amazon via this link
Shiva’s 2024 take on the song, “Cosmic Surfer” …
Find out more about Shiva’s story at SingsongMusic.com
The story begins HERE
L to R: Shiva Jones and Jimmy Page, Sydney, 1968