Longtime rock impresario and Gong manager Giorgio Gomelsky found himself in New York in the late 70s, partially involved with RCA/Utopia records, but also arriving at the beginning of the "no wave" movement. He started the Zu Club; and a young Bill Laswell, along with drummer Fred Maher and keyboardist Michael Beinhorn, formed the house band. At the invitation of Gomelsky, Allen traveled to New York City in 1978 to be part of the Zu Manifestival in October, and enlisted Laswell and friends as his backing group.

Gilli Smyth, aka Shakti Yoni, first met Daevid Allen in 1964 by which time she had already earned her degrees from King's College London, taught in Paris and had her first child. When Allen was barred from England in 1967 for visa irregularities, the pair returned to Paris and founded Gong. Following their stint with Planet Gong in the mid-70s, Smyth's first album, Mother, was assembled (mostly) with various Gong recordings, some dating back to the early 70s.

Legend has it that, in the late 60s, Daevid Allen found Didier Malherbe playing a flute and living in a cave in Deya, Majorca (though they'd met before in Paris in 1967). No matter: Malherbe spent the next decade playing wind instruments with Gong, eventually parting ways after an album into Gong's so-called Pierre Moerlen era. Back in Paris in the late 70s, Malherbe—or rather "Bloomdido Bad de Grass," as he was known in Gong—formed a band of his own, and recorded an album named after his moniker, Bloom, for Tapioca Records.