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From Worlds Afar is a lovely album of simple country-folky tunes by a woman from St Anne's-on-Sea in
Lancashire, her on acoustic guitar, with occasional second guitar guitar and tambourine, singing about UFOs and aliens.
But they aren't mean abducting, anal-probing or cattle-mutilating aliens,
they are benevolent wise beautiful aliens in one-piece silver suits,
offering us a chance of a better future if we only stop fighting wars etc.
The music is gentle and optimistic, like all those songs about children being
the hope for our future. Sort of funny, but bittersweet and touching in
hindsight.
I bought it in the late 1990s - it's a private pressing
(essentially a DIY project) from some time in the 1960s. I was getting
interested in UFO kitsch and recognised George Adamski's hubcap and
ping-pong ball UFO on the cover, so I snapped it up. He had been
discredited in 'serious' UFO circles in America by the late 1950s, but his
stories were so hopeful and utopian that some just couldn't let them go.
Mollie was introduced to UFOs through Desmond Leslie and
George Adamski’s book Flying Saucers Have Landed in the early 1950s.
"It spoke to me, it tweaked a nerve that I couldn’t resist"
she said. Adamski's tales of advanced and benificent
aliens merged with her established interests in spiritualism and
reincarnation, and the nascent new age movement. She met Adamski himself on
his last trip to the UK in 1963 - "The Brothers have work for
you" he told her.
A keen but untrained guitarist, she started to write the
songs that would be released as 'From Worlds Afar' in 1965: "Words and
music dropped into my mind. At first I thought it was my imagination, but I
did begin to write them down. They fit together…I somehow knew they
were going to be a song."
One night Mollie wrote three songs in 90 minutes. She
became convinced that the songs were the work of others, using her as an
instrument. Sir Anthony Brooke, ex Raja of of
Sarawak, taped some of her songs and was instrumental in arranging the
recording of the LP at Nield and Hardy's studio
in Stockport.
Released on Nield & Hardy's
small Asteroid label in 1966, it mainly sold through mail order and at UFO
conventions, but in the world of ufology, Mollie was a hit! In July 1966,
Gabriel Green invited her to perform at his Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs
of America Convention in Reno, Nevada. She spent the rest of 1966 in the
US, travelling with her songs and her guitar, much as she had in Britain,
meeting famous ufologists and contactees such as
Mel Noel, Howard Menger, Dan Fry and others. She
spoke of her belief in a prophecy of a major world upheaval that would
happen by the end of the year.
Returning home disillusioned in January 1967, she rapidly
lost interest in singing, UFOs and aliens, preferring to work behind the
scenes since then in various spiritualist organisations. UFO researcher
Andy Roberts tracked her down in 2005, and interviewed her for a piece in
the STAR Fellowship magazine Amscaya. Most of my
information, quotes and photos come from this source. See All
The Planets Are Inhabited! for more.
Thanks to Andy, Joe McGonagle, MS, and of course to Mollie,
wherever she is.
Simon Murphy
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