Greg Lake first made his mark as a founding member of King Crimson, for which he was lead singer and bass player. During Lake’s tenure, King Crimson released their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King, which is regularly hailed as one of the pioneering works of progressive rock, and included “21st Century Schizoid Man” and the title track. When this original line-up broke up, Lake joined with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer to form the prog rock supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer (often abbreviated ELP), which became one of top bands in the genre. ELP’s albums included Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery, and their best known songs include “Lucky Man”, “From The Beginning”, and “Karn Evil 9″, all of which were written or co-written by Lake. ELP broke up in 1978, but reunited in the 1990′s and beyond, most recently for a one-off 40th anniversary concert in London in 2010.

Lake is currently on a solo tour called “Songs of a Lifetime”, in which he performs songs and tells stories about his life in music. The following interview took place on 4/24/12 as Lake was on his way to a gig in Alexandria, Virginia, and served as the basis for a preview article for his 5/17/12 concert in Ventura, California.

Photo: Lee Millward

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at your upcoming concert in Ventura?

Greg Lake: The best thing I can do is to tell you what it is. I’d just finished writing my autobiography, rather unsurprisingly it’s called “Lucky Man”, and when I was writing it these songs would pop up along the way that were sort of influential to me, or in a way, pivotal to my career. So in the end I had a collection of these songs and it occurred to me that what they represented really was the journey that I’ve shared together with the audiences that followed King Crimson and ELP. I thought it might be a nice idea to make a concert out of them, because it is a sort of nostalgic look back. I came up with the idea of “Songs of a Lifetime”. So that was basis, that was the basic idea.

With each of these songs comes a story, really, that I tell. How or why they’re important to me. And the other thing that occurred to me was that, of course, the audience have got stories about how those songs affected them, and what role they played in their lives. So the thought was to have an interactive type of show.

One thing that I didn’t want it to become is one of those boring, sit on a stool, strum a guitar “legend in his own lifetime” type things. I wanted it to be an entertaining and dynamic show. So that was the challenge really, to make it interactive as well as nostalgic and emotional. And I think from what I can see, we’ve played now six or seven shows, the audience reaction has been absolutely fantastic.

JM: I’m looking forward to reading your autobiography. I’m curious, have you learned any surprises about yourself as you reflected back on your life in music?

GL: [laughs] I have to say, I don’t think I’ve learned any surprises, but it does give you… it is an amazing thing, because when you sit down to write your autobiography, at first your mind just goes blank. There’s nothing in your mind. But, when you start to attach dates, certain events to certain times, then the memories come flooding back, because they’ve got a place to locate themselves. When you’ve got no framework where these memories fit, the memories just stay free-floating, and they’re almost nonaccessible. So that was an interesting process, to feel these memories locate into their relative timeframes.

Of course then you’re friends know you’re doing it, and they’re, “Do you remember the time we did this?” Or “Do you remember when you were doing that?” So certain things come back and get filled in.

It was certainly a cathartic experience. It just made me realize the value of all my friends, and of all the people that have helped me to sustain as long as I have.

JM: Going way back, in King Crimson you played the huge concert at Hyde Park [in the summer of 1969] before the band’s first album was even released. How did that come about?

GL: Well, King Crimson by that time had started to become quite famous. You know, the word had spread. We were the new hot thing. I think the promoters of the Stones concert wanted to have the latest and the greatest, and that was it. So we got signed I think at the last minute to do it.

JM: What are your memories of that concert?

GL: It was a very strange show. It was actually quite a beautiful day. It was a sunny day, right in the heart of London, in Hyde Park in London. You know, any Stones show is an event. I don’t know how many hundred thousand people there was there. It was the biggest audience I’d ever seen up until that time.

It was a concert in memory of Brian Jones. A little bit of a strange atmosphere really, because in a way I don’t think they parted company on the best of terms. The next minute Brian was dead, and everybody was sorry about it. But, anyway, for us it was just a chance to go and play the festival.

JM: Could you describe what was special about the chemistry of that first King Crimson band?

GL: It is very difficult to describe, because it was a very magical sort of band. It just felt as though it was effortless, you know? Things were happening almost under their own power. It just felt as though you were being carried along, really.

It was a very strange band because Robert and I went to the same guitar teacher when we were very young, and so we both had the same information, basically. So that was a strange thing, to be in a band with someone that knew exactly the same music as you did.

And the second strange thing was that Ian McDonald had never been in a rock band before. He came from the military. He was in a military brass band. So that was rather peculiar.

Then there was Mike Giles, who was an extraordinary drummer. He was sort of a very refined English gentleman. He was something like The Great Gatsby, 1920. He had a phenomenal ability to play drums that had independence between his left and right hand, and left and right foot. He could almost have four different time signatures running in parallel. Unbelievable.

It was a very incredible time, and the band was very innovative. We managed to come up with something different. And that was what we set out to do. We set out to be original.

JM: Well it certainly worked. You mentioned Robert Fripp, who is one of my favorite guitarists. Do you have any good Fripp stories that you’re willing to share?

GL: [laughs] Wow, I have hundreds of them.

Robert and I used to live together. We shared a flat in a place called Leinster Square in London. Robert had never been in a rock band before, and I’d been in lots, so he said to me, “What do you think about stage clothes?” So I thought, well, you know Robert isn’t a sort of rock and roller, really, he’s more like a college professor. I happened to know that Robert was fascinated by this violin player called Paganini. Paganini was actually a black magic guy. He was a very sinister character. He used to play his violin between two black candles and challenge people to play in competitions. He dressed all in black. So I thought we could dress Robert all in black, some sort of sinister thing.

We were living just around the corner from Portobello Road, which is a famous antique market in London, as well as being famous for the film Notting Hill. Anyway, so we went down to the antique market. We bought Robert all these black clothes, and a black top hat, and a cape. So that was that. He was going to make some stage outfit out of that.

That night I went into London to watch a band play. it was Spooky Tooth, actually, at The Marquee. So I got back late, and I got to the apartment, the front door, and I went in. Our apartment was on the first floor [in the US we'd call this the second floor], so I pushed the light to light up the stairs to go upstairs. But the light didn’t work, so I had to go up in the dark. I got halfway up the stairs, and I looked up and I noticed a candle being held under this face, like a horror story. And he had these horrible false teeth in, a top hat. It just looked like Jack The Ripper. And it was Robert who’d done himself up, powdered his face, put these false teeth in, taken out the lightbulb. He’d gone to all this trouble, and sat up waiting for me just to scare the shit out of me. Of course it gave him great pleasure.

Yeah, Robert and I lived together for some while, so we shared a lot in life together.

JM: I was surprised when I heard a sample of “21st Century Schizoid Man” in a song by Kanye West ["Power"]. What do you think of what he did with that?

GL: I don’t know. I think it kind of fits in a way. You know, he’s talking about the current day, and people having too much power. And in a way that’s what “Schizoid Man” was about. It does fit, it is appropriate in a way. It just goes to show you, really, how prophetic that song was when it was written. It kind of works, and I actually use it in the show.

JM: What were the origins of Emerson, Lake & Palmer?

GL: It was really a coincidence. King Crimson broke up. The night we played the Fillmore West in San Francisco at the end of our first tour, King Crimson broke up. Ian McDonald and Mike Giles decided that they no longer wanted to tour. They wanted to concentrate on making studio records. And that same night, when I went back to the hotel, I met Keith Emerson in the bar. We started talking, and he asked me about King Crimson. I told him what had happened, and he said, “Well, I’m coming to the end of my time with The Nice. How about maybe we could form a band together?” So that’s how it started.

JM: I understand there was a rumor of Jimi Hendrix also joining with the band. How close did that actually come to happening?

GL: The rumor happened because one of the people we talked to about playing drums was Mitch Mitchell. And Mitch suggested getting Jimi involved. When I talked to him, he said, “Look, I’ll speak to Jimi and maybe we’ll get together in a couple of weeks when he’s finished these shows with… I think it was The Band of Gypsys at the time he was playing with.

What happened was a few days later we got a call from a guy called Robert Stigwood, who was the manager of The Bee Gees and The Cream. He said, “Look, I’ve got the perfect drummer for you. It’s a guy called Carl Palmer. You really ought to check him out.” So we said OK, and set up an audition. Carl came along and we played together, and it was obvious instantly that the chemistry was right. He just fit, we fit together. The chemistry was complete. So that was it.

Of course, a few weeks later Jimi was found dead in his apartment. I don’t really it would have ever really worked. I mean, having two virtuosos [Hendrix and Emerson] in one band would probably have been a bridge too far.

JM: I’m always amazed by the arrangements of the ELP songs. Just to be specific, take the song “Tarkus”. How did the arrangement come together for that?

GL: It began with Keith playing a 5/4 lick that went round and round on the piano. At first I was not too keen on it because I don’t like gratuitous time signatures, you know just for the sake of it. I mean, if you’ve got something like Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, that is a piece of music written in 5/4, right? Most people who play in odd time signatures are actually playing in 4/4 and then adding a beat. Well, that’s not clever. What’s clever is writing in an odd time signature. So when I heard the 5/4 thing, I kind of had an in-built prejudice against odd time signatures. But in the end, Keith believed that it would be good, and eventually we got on with it.

Actually, Tarkus really isn’t a concept album at all. It is just a collection of different music thrown together, really, by an album cover. You know, there was no overarching concept to Tarkus.

JM: You produced the early material for ELP. How would you describe yourself as a producer?

GL: [long pause] I’m relentless. That’s who I am. You know, I have to have it right. I love music. To me, it’s painting a picture in sound. And, you know, I’m dedicated to that. It’s not that I’m a great producer, it’s just that I care a lot about the music. I care about it being right. I won’t easily allow things that are not right to exist on a record. Because it just spoils the good work that is there. So it is, really, a search for perfection, I suppose.

JM: The early ELP material was engineered by Eddie Offord. What did he bring to the music?

GL: He was a great engineer. Really good. Really good. A fun guy to be in the studio with. Good ears, Eddie, really good ears. He would always be attentive. He would always be listening. And so if you missed something, Eddie would have picked it up.

JM: I understand that there’s an upcoming reissue campaign for the ELP albums. Could you tell me just a little bit about that?

GL: I’m not really involved in it. I do know that it’s good quality. I don’t get involved in reissues much. I approve them, I approve them obviously. But, to be honest with you, once I’ve made a record it’s over. One thing that does get on my nerves a bit is when they keep reissuing the same record with different packaging. Why do that, you know?

So this one, I do believe, they’ve really gone out on a limb to produce a very, very good quality version of these records. Remixed, remastered, 5.1 [surround sound], added bonus tracks. They’ve gone back in the vaults. They’ve dug up outtakes. They’re really gone to town on it. So I do believe it’s good. I do believe the things are going to be good.

JM: I have to ask. ELP is often mentioned as the sort of band that punk rock was a reaction to. For the record, I happen to be a fan of both prog rock and punk rock, which I think is easier to be nowadays. How do you view the relationship between ELP and punk rock? What is your take on when that all happened?

GL: Well, ELP was music, punk rock was fashion. Punk rock was just one of those other musical genres that had no musical or cultural foundation. It was just a creation of the media. I could give you fifty names: Grunge, Garage, New Wave… They’re all the same. They’re inventions by the media trying to create a little more cash. There’s no musical foundation in punk rock.

You want to talk about punk rock, talk about The Who. They’re a punk band. That’s a real punk band. The Sex Pistols were a joke. Greasing your hair up, putting a safety pin through your lip doesn’t make you anything other than a clown. There was no music involved. There was no credence to the music. There was no heart to it. There was no soul to it. There was no meaning to it, other than some crass attempt at, sort of, what would you call it, revolution? I mean, really, it was childish. It hasn’t stood the test of time.

The fashion was interesting. You know, wearing safety pins through your nose, that sort of self-defacing trend. Deface your own beauty, wear ugly boots, wear trousers hanging down around your ass. All that sort of stuff. That brought about that sort of anti-fashion, I would call it.

I can’t think of anything good to say about it. If that wasn’t what ended progressive music… I mean, the way it worked in the music business was, originally music was coming out on vinyl records and CDs, and it was something you would buy and take home. You’d share with your friends. You’d sit around, you’d listen to an album, you’d look at the album sleeve, you’d chat about it and enjoy it.

Music then changed, when the Sony Walkman got invented it became a solitary experience. A lonely experience. And at the same time the music business became ever greedy, and it changed from being run and controlled by visionaries, entreprenuers like Amhet Ertegen, Jerry Moss of A&M, people like that, and it got taken over by accountants and lawyers. And the only thing accountants and lawyers know about is the bottom line. And the bottom line to them is what has been successful in the past. So the formula is, if the people like beans, give them more beans. And that was the end of originality, really, and the start of creating genres. I know, let’s create another genre? No, no good. Because it was phony. And that was the beginning of a phony era in music.

The final dagger in the back, of course, was the internet, which made the protection of intellectual copyright impossible.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

GL: Make music for yourself. When you’re making music for other people it becomes complicated. Making music that you like is simpler, and chances are someone else will like it as well.

Chris Hillman has been a professional musician for nearly fifty years, starting on bluegrass mandolin before he joined The Byrds, for which he played bass guitar and contributed vocals. You can hear him on hits including “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, “Eight Miles High”, and “So You Want To Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”, which he co-wrote.

Hillman left The Byrds after their landmark album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, joining up with Gram Parson (who also played on that album) to form The Flying Burrito Brothers, whose classic debut album The Gilded Palace of Sin featured many songs that he wrote or co-wrote with Parsons. Hillman was also a key member of the band Manassas with Stephen Stills, and had multiple country hits with the Desert Rose Band.

This phone interview took place on 4/11/12, and formed the basis of a preview article for his 4/25/12 show with Herb Pedersen at the Maverick Saloon as part of the Tales From the Tavern series. Incidentally, this interview was transcribed approximately eight miles high, on a flight between St. Louis and San Francisco.

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at your upcoming concert at the Maverick Saloon?

Chris Hillman: What I’ve been doing for the last few years is working with one other guy, Herb Pedersen. It’s all acoustic, so we mike our instruments, and it’s very vocal-oriented, so we both sing – sing duets – and play. I cover just about a bit of everything from my last forty-nine years, now, of music. Forty-nine years since I was first paid to play. My professional career started in 1963.

So I will do songs from before The Byrds, and then some Byrds songs, and then Flying Burrito Brothers. Basically just covering all of these little places I’ve been musically. And then I’ll pull out some newer songs and some songs from other writers. We try to mix it up. We do all kinds of stuff. We have a good time.

JM: You mentioned that this will be with Herb Pedersen, and by now you have a nice history with him. Could you describe what Herb brings to the music?

CH: Herb is an incredible singer and guitarist, in that he plays just perfect rhythm guitar. He’s probably one of the best ones in the country. As an accompanist he’s terrific.

He’s such a well-rounded, versed singer. He was a very in-demand session vocalist in the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s, and still does sessions occasionally. He worked for Linda Ronstandt, and Kenny Rogers, and James Taylor, and people like that. I mean, he would do these sessions. And of course was in Emmylou Harris’ band for awhile, then he was in John Denver’s band for a long time.

So what he brings is a very stable musical foundation for me to work off of. He’s always there, and he’s very professional, dependable. And we both came from the same musical roots of traditional folk and country and bluegrass music. So that’s the best part. He knows the songs, he knows how to sing them with me, and we’ve known each other forty-nine years. It’s about since I started, when he started, too. It works out quite well.

JM: I know that this has been documented elsewhere, but how did you go from being a bluegrass musician who played mandolin to suddenly being the bass player for The Byrds?

CH: I really went from mandolin to bass by just a stroke of luck. I had heard the fledgling group sing together. It was just the three of them: Roger McGuinn, David Crosby – Santa Ynez resident by the way, and Gene Clark. I heard them sing with one guitar, and they were just beautiful. And when I got the call and they said, “Can you play bass?” I said, “Yeah.” I couldn’t play bass. I’d never touched a bass. But I knew that there was something special about the sound they were making. So I learned. I really, literally learned to play the bass.

But then when I went down to start the practice session with them, the first day, I realized they were learning, too, so it was OK. I didn’t walk into something where I had to play a lot of catch-up. I learned, I learned to play, and I think the fact that none of us really were coming from a rock ‘n’ roll background helped to create the unique sound of The Byrds.

JM: The arrangements of The Byrds’ songs are really outstanding. How did those typically come together?

CH: It was a joint effort between the five of us. We’d sort of play it and figure it out. But Roger McGuinn’s twelve string was a pivotal part of that sound, and he was a very experienced player, had been around, toured a lot around the United States as an accompanist to other groups. So I would say he had the most experience, but we drew the sound off of his twelve-string and then we all added our parts. And sometimes the arrangements, they would just come together. You know, everybody participates.

JM: Do you feel that your producers were important to the process?

CH: Very helpful. And we had a manager and producer, who’s passed away now, Jim Dickson. Very, very influential in our direction and our sound. He was really guiding us. Very, very important to the beginning of the band. A lot of things I learned from that man. He guided us into good material, and paying attention to recording songs that we’d be proud of thirty, forty years down the line. And he was right. Most of the ones, ninety percent of The Byrds material that we recorded stands up to me today. I think it’s very good, sophisticated music.

JM: On the fourth Byrds album, Younger Than Yesterday, you emerged as a significant songwriter. What was the catalyst for that?

CH: I think it was waiting to come out. It just was the right time. And I’d come home from playing for this session. I got hired to play the bass for Hugh Masakela, who was a South African trumpet player, who had had a hit song called “Grazing in the Grass” back then. It was an instrumental, it was a pretty big hit. But I worked a session a couple of days for him, and it was so stimulating, exciting, it was a whole different kind of music. Somehow it just broke the door down, and I started writing a song. It had nothing to do with what they were doing – the session was completely different. The first song I wrote was called “Time Between”, really sort of a country song.

JM: One of the songs on that album was “So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”. What is the story behind that song? It seems to have a bit of cynicism behind it.

CH: Well, it was sort of, it was a bit. We were looking at things, but we were still young guys when we wrote that. I think we’d been around a couple of years, and we were watching it all just come together.

It was really about the process of The Monkees, and nothing against them as individuals, but that Hollywood had this sort of contrived, silly, weekly sit-com about a rock band. It was just sort of, well… contrived is a good word. I drew the inspiration for that song off of that process. Here they are making a bad copy of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, one of the greatest of all time, with The Monkees. But it’s not against them. They were good guys, and they had a great job. They were getting paid a lot of money. But it was just the way they put that all together and everything.

But again, I should really say, it didn’t really, specifically point at them as much as just, all of a sudden the record business became a lot bigger, and it was a lot about image. Now look at it. You see these country acts now, that it’s all about image. And American Idol, all that stuff. It doesn’t resonate with me anymore, it’s not as musical as it used to be.

Also, the music of “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”, that particular song, was influenced by the Hugh Masakela sessions, because the way play we play that – and he’s on the track playing trumpet – the way we do that is very of much what I gathered from playing those sessions. Sort of a different feel to it.

JM: Around that time, The Byrds played at the Monterey Pop Festival. What was that experience like for you?

CH: That was the best pop festival ever. I mean, I’m sorry, Woodstock was not. I wasn’t there, but I saw enough of it, what was happening. It was a nightmare. I’m glad I didn’t play that festival.

Monterey was letter-perfect, the weather was great, the acts were diverse, interesting. Acts from Jimi Hendrix to Otis Redding to Ravi Shankar. It was a great weekend. Everything worked, there were no problems, there were no drug problems – there were drugs, I’m sure, but there weren’t problems. There weren’t any situations that arose, you know? To me – and you can look at every other festival they’ve ever had in that particular area and timeframe, from ’66, ’67 on to ’70 – that’s the best. I think that everybody that was there, whether as an observer or a participant, would agree with me.

JM: In The Byrds, was it hard to keep the momentum going when, say, Gene Clark and David Crosby departed, or were those viewed as opportunities to evolve with the music?

CH: Well, you don’t want to lose anybody, but when that happens you sort of gather up your warriors and look at the whole situation, and continue on. And we did a lot of good things. When Gene left we made some good records. When David left we made two good records, Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart at the Rodeo.

I’d have preferred to have the original band. I think that was the very best example of The Byrds ever, the original five guys. But, you know, I’m certainly not ashamed of anything we did when they left. We made some really good records. You sort of count your losses and go onwards. Yeah, and evolve. You re-evolve and reset it and go on with it.

JM: There certainly was a big change with Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and that was when Gram Parsons came in. When you doing that album, did you realize that it was going to be a groundbreaking album?

CH: Not at all. I was just having a good time. I don’t think I ever went into an album and thought after that this is going to be a great record, this is going to sell millions. I never thought that. We just did what we did, followed our instincts.

It was fun to do that record, because I was already coming out of a country music background. Gram was a good ally to have. He understood the music. It’s an interesting record. It’s not my favorite record, but it was a good example, it was a good start. I think Sweetheart of the Rodeo opened the floodgates for West Coast country rock music to start coming along. It set some amazing examples.

JM: Of course, that was the beginning of your fruitful association with Parsons, going into the Flying Burrito Brothers. Gram Parsons by now is a mythical figure. Could you describe the Gram Parsons that you knew?

CH: The guy that I knew was a really sweet guy. I had two good years with him. He was hard-working for that two-year period. He probably wrote some of his best material then. And he wanted to do it. He wanted to really put the time in and do it.

And I lost him. I had to break off the relationship, and I don’t think he ever got a hold of himself after that. But from The Byrds album to the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, he was really great. Good guy. He was like a brother to me. Then he got under the dark cloud of drugs and alcohol, and it was over. As it does for everybody. Never fails. There it is. That’s all I can tell you.

JM: Probably my favorite of yours is “Sin City”, off that first Flying Burrito Brothers album. What’s the story behind that song?

CH: Literally, that song was written in twenty-five minutes. And based on true things that were happening around us. I started it, he [Gram] was asleep. We were sharing a house in the Los Angeles area. It was coming real quick, I woke him up, and we finished it off. It was just based on some things that were going down. We had a manager that was robbing us, that we’d had bad dealings with. And just various things. It was just mirroring the culture of the time, really. The last verse is about Robert Kennedy. The second verse, I’m not quite sure what that’s about. Gram wrote that one. I don’t know if he was awake yet [laughs]. It works though.

JM: The Flying Burrito Brothers played at Altamont.

CH: That was the worst rock festival ever, OK? It goes from Monterey, which is idyllic, peace and love, to Altamont, within a two year period, to murder. It pretty well covers the spectrum. Right around when Altamont happened was the end of The Sixties. That was it. Not literally, but figuratively. The end of The Sixties. The experiment was over.

I can’t tell you how horribly ugly that day was. I played, and I got off the stage and I got out of there as quick as I could. I knew something bad was going to happen. When we played, the Burritos, we actually calmed the crowd down. We had them calm as can be. And then we got done, I left, so I don’t know, it got pretty bad after that. The Stones took forever to get onstage. It was not a good day. There’s a lot of books on that, if you ever want to revisit that.

JM: I http://music-illuminati.com/?p=4746 Seun Kuti has inherited much from his father, the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti: musical talent, charisma, a commanding stage presence, a burning desire for a better life for his Nigerian countrymen, and even his band Egypt 80. Along with the music of his brother Femi, which Seun heartily recommends, Seun (pronounced Shay-oon) is keeping Afrobeat - a rhythm-heavy, hypnotic mix of James Brown-style funk, jazz, Cuban and traditional West African music, featuring call-and-response vocals which are often about political topics - relevant in the 21st century. Seun's second album, From Africa With Fury: Rise, was released last year, and he is currently touring the U.S., including an appearance at Coachella. This interview, which was the basis of a preview article for his concert at UC Santa Barbara, was done by phone on 4/2/12. (photo credit: Kelechi Amadiobi) ]]>

Seun Kuti has inherited much from his father, the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti: musical talent, charisma, a commanding stage presence, a burning desire for a better life for his Nigerian countrymen, and even his band Egypt 80. Along with the music of his brother Femi, which Seun heartily recommends, Seun (pronounced Shay-oon) is keeping Afrobeat – a rhythm-heavy, hypnotic mix of James Brown-style funk, jazz, Cuban and traditional West African music, featuring call-and-response vocals which are often about political topics – relevant in the 21st century. Seun’s second album, From Africa With Fury: Rise, was released last year, and he is currently touring the U.S., including an appearance at Coachella.

This interview, which was the basis of a preview article for his concert at UC Santa Barbara, was done by phone on 4/2/12. (photo credit: Kelechi Amadiobi)

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at your upcoming show at the University of California, Santa Barbara?

Seun Kuti: My last show is my best show, you know? When we play Santa Barbara, it’ll be our best show, that night.

JM: Could you tell us a bit about the band Egypt 80 that will be joining you?

SK: We have been playing together for sixteen years. It’s going to be a great event as usual. My friends and I, we are like a well-oiled machine. The music is an extension of ourselves.

JM: What is your relationship with your father’s previous band, Africa 70 band, say with [drummer] Tony Allen and [guitarist] Ogene Kologbo?

SK: Oh, I see them around a lot. Uncle Tony and I are quite close. When I’m in Paris I go to his house, he cooks for me. He’s a great guy. Kologbo is always with him as well. Kologbo is one crazy motherfucker. Pardon my French [laughs].

JM: You’ll be playing in Santa Barbara right after playing the first weekend at Coachella. What do you find special about playing at big festivals like Coachella?

SK: It’s all the energy you get from 60,000 people. It’s amazing when you play those big audiences – 50,000, 100,000 [people]. It’s really incredible. It’s able to match the intimacy of the club, when you’re playing the club, like 1,000, 2,000 [people], and they’re close to you. That intimacy is hard to defeat. But once you play with 50,000 people, the raw energy compares to that to me.

JM: Your latest album was produced, at least in part, by Brian Eno. What was it like working with him?

SK: It was really good working with Brian Eno. He taught me a lot of things, opened my eyes to a lot of things in music as well.

JM: How did you get him to produce it?

SK: Brian had been a big supporter of my music for two years before the album. He’d been a great friend and mentor. So when I wanted to do the new album I asked him, “Hey Brian, I’d love for you to produce my new album”, and he said “Yeah, when do we start?”

JM: What did you think of the musical Fela!?

SK: That was a great play.

JM: Do you think it accurately captured the spirit of your father?

SK: Yeah, it was the best that they can do with a Broadway play. I think the play gave… it brought the message to a new audience, which is important as well. I’ve seen the play twenty times, on three different continents, so I love the show. I love the music, and the band, too.

JM: What are some of your memories of the Kalakuta Republic?

SK: You grew up learning every day. You’d see new people. It was the ultimate social experiment, where everybody was equal. So it was a great time for me, my childhood.

JM: I know that you’re on tour right now. What are your plans, musical or otherwise, for the near future?

SK: I’m working on my next album. It never stops.

JM: When do you expect your next album to be ready?

SK: I can’t put a date on it. End of the year, beginning of next year.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

SK: Your music has to be a part of the solution. Your music has to stand for the majority of the people. Music should be used for the people. If in your country everyone is living the good life, like you’re in Switzerland, you can sing about champagne, and fast cars, and wristwatches, and all that. But if you feel that your people need change, and your people need to develop in some area, then dedicate your music to the people, because that is what music is for, truly. Music is not selfish, you know? In one word, I’ll tell the musician, music is not selfish. That is what I would say to an aspiring musician.

Steve Diggle plays guitar, writes songs, and sometimes sings for The Buzzcocks, the hugely influential band from Manchester which produced the blueprint for pop punk. The Buzzcocks also jump-started the punk do-it-yourself ethos with their 1977 self-released Spiral Scratch EP, on which Diggle played bass guitar. The Buzzcocks’ notable songs include “Orgasm Addict”, “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)”, “I Don’t Mind”, “Promises”, and “Harmony In The Head”. Their compilation Singles Going Steady is regularly ranked as one of the best punk rock albums of all time.

The Buzzcocks broke up in 1981, but re-united in the late 80′s and have been going strong ever since. Between performances at this year’s Coachella festival, they will be playing a few smaller gigs in California, including one in San Luis Obispo for which this interview served as the material for a preview article. I reached Diggle, who also released a solo album called Air Conditioning last year, at his home in London. The interview took place on 3/23/12. (Ian Rook photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at the upcoming Buzzcocks shows in the U.S.?

Steve Diggle: Well, legendary songs from a legendary band. We’ll be doing a mixture of songs from the whole of our musical catalog. Selections from each thing. And a few new songs. I’m not sure whether we’re going to do two new songs or four new songs. Haven’t quite quite worked that out yet. Probably two new songs, as well, and a lot of the classics, and some from the later albums. So yeah, you know, it’s a whole mix there. That’s what you can expect.

JM: I’ll be seeing you in a smallish club, but as part of this trip you’ll also be playing at Coachella, which will be in front of thousands of people in the desert. How does it compare playing at a big festival versus a small club?

SD: They’ve both got their own thing really, you know? I mean, essentially you’re still playing to people, that’s what you’ve got to remember [laughs]. It’s just we might be playing to more people one day than another.

You get the intimacy of the club, which obviously is a great rockin’ vibe. And then you get the great sense of occasion of a big event. You’re kind of still dealing with the same thing, but in a slightly different way. I mean, it’s great to see thousands of people kind of jumping up and down or getting involved on a bigger scale, that’s one thing. You’ve got the grandness of the event, you know?

Then in the other one, the more intimate place, then you can kind of smell the sweat. It’s almost like you’re inside of the song in a smaller place. It’s a bit more internal.

But they’ve both got their points. It’s a great thing to do. Life’s full of extremities anyway, you know [laughs]? In your life you go from one extreme to the other – happy, sad, crazy, mad – you know, you’ve got that difference.

At Coachella we’re also going to play two songs off of… We’re going to do Pete [Shelley]‘s “Homosapien”, and a song off my solo album I had out last year, an album called Air Conditioning. I’m going to do a song called “Hey Maria”. We’re doing that at Coachella. I think the promoter kind of asked if we’d do two of those songs, so we’re like, OK, we’ll do one each off of each of our respective solo careers, as well as doing the Buzzcocks stuff. So that’s a different set.

JM: The Buzzcocks first toured the US in 1979. Do you have any memories of that tour that you’d like to share?

SD: Kind of fragmented, yeah. I mean, great memories. Those were wild tours, those early ones. You kind of come to America and you learn to realize how big it is, how great it is. It was certainly rock ‘n’ roll on those early tours. Sex, drugs, craziness, and massive shows. The thing about America, if you kick ass they like you. And we like kicking ass. You could do that more than in London, in a sense. In Britain, it was still rockin’ and a bit refined, but in America it has to be bigger and greater. I remember we smashed our gear up a lot of times in the States. I think, in fact, we played Santa Monica Civic the first time, and I think some kid smashed a window so they said we’d never play again. However, I think we did play about two years later, the same venue as well.

Yeah, it was fantastic. I remember at the Santa Monica Civic gig a lot of kids coming to the bus. They’d been waiting two years to see us, because we’d had a lot of success, a lot of hits in Britain. It was a little while, over two years, before we came to the States, and I know people had been waiting. It was a great reception, you know?

And like I say, very wild tour. A lot of fucking coke, a lot of girls, and some fantastic gigs. The Ramones came to see us in New York. There were a lot of things going on. Full on rock ‘n’ roll, how you expect it to be in America. And everywhere else in the world, really.

JM: Can you tell me how you came to join The Buzzcocks?

SD: Malcolm McLaren introduced me to Pete and Howard [Devoto], at the time in ’76. I was waiting for somebody else. I was going to form a band, do three minute songs and smash up our gear like The Who. I was talking on the street, and he thought I’d come to meet Pete and Howard [laughs]. So they were expecting someone else. I’d spoke to somebody on the phone that had an ad in the paper, to meet somebody else. But instead, they met me and I met them. The respective people we were supposed to meet, we didn’t meet them. And it was like, OK, we’ll do a rehearsal the next day, and away it went. It was just magic from the word ‘go’.

JM: I read somewhere that you were actually going to the pub, not to the Sex Pistols gig. Is that true?

SD: Yeah, I mean I knew the Sex Pistols were playing, but it was more important to me to meet this guy and join the band. Where they were playing, around the corner was this lovely bar I used to go in. They had a special Boddingtons Bitter, which is well known in Manchester. So essentially I was going to do that. He [McLaren] kind of said that he was inside here. And I said, I don’t remember anything about this. I was kind of thinking of going in, but I thought it was more important to meet this guy, and see where it goes. Because I didn’t know who the guy was, I didn’t know whether he’d want to go in and see the Pistols, or I figured we’d at least have a drink first and see what happens. And, of course, I never met him, and I went in to the Sex Pistols, with about fifteen people.

There weren’t many people in there, that first show. We brought the Pistols back three weeks later, so we had three weeks to get The Buzzcocks together. So that’s the full story of how that happened. It’s kind of amazing how your life can just change. You turn one corner, you don’t know what’s going to happen, you know?

JM: The Sex Pistols gig is legendary because, it’s claimed at least, that it led to a number of bands being formed – The Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Fall, The Smiths, and so on.

SD: Yes, they all came to that second show, when we were playing. We opened up for the Pistols. Well everyone was amazed it was a local band from Manchester. Everybody basically had come to see the Sex Pistols, all the press came down from London to review the Pistols, and were blown away when we opened up. It’s like, who the fuck are these guys? They’re from Manchester! Look at these guys. And so, we got the reviews, and that kind of put the provinces on the map. It wasn’t just all about London. Of course, that kind of kickstarted that Manchester scene, and like you say, many people were in the audience who went on to form bands. People like Joy Division, and Mick Hucknall – you know, Simply Red, and The Fall, and Morrisey was there taking notes [laughs]. It was inspirational in a lot of ways, that gig.

To me, that was where the punk rock atom was split open, in Manchester, for the British side of things. There were The Ramones in New York and stuff, but over here that was like the Bethlehem I think… That’s where the real punk rock was born. Because the Pistols had only done a couple of clubs here, like Chelsea Art College and stuff. They were relatively unknown, even then. But that gig kind of crystalized things and put in on the map a bit.

JM: The Buzzcocks did tour with Joy Division. How would you describe the Ian Curtis that you knew?

SD: We were playing big theaters, and we’d had a couple of hits, so we took them on the road to open up for us. Because in those days, all the bands used to help each other. So we took them on the road. There were a few shows where he’d have those epileptic fits. So they’d go on and do their set, then we’d go on and do the full main set. We were quite often told to do an extra few songs in the encore while the ambulance went to the back of the theater to take him to the hospital. Because we’d have about two or three hundred kids come to the backstage door after the show and stuff, so we had to extend the set quite a few times so the ambulance could come and the kids wouldn’t leave the theater trying to get autographs from us and stuff [laughs]. There was that bit of it, yeah.

Apart from that, generally, he got to it OK. He did tell me that… At the end of the tour, we had a party in Edinburgh, he was a little bit troubled because he said he’d met a girl in Paris, and he was married, you know? But, I mean, in those days, when you’re twenty years old or twenty-one, you don’t think that’s a big deal, you know what I mean? We were all kind of enjoying fucking life in a way [laughs]. It’s like, you know, you fuck the chicks, I thought that’s one of the reasons you got in a band, you know, for us really. So I didn’t think it was a big deal. But when it got on, a few days later after that tour, he’d killed himself.

And then it happened with Kurt Cobain a few years later [laughs].

JM: And you toured with them also, right?

SD: Yeah, Joy Division opened up for us, then we opened up for Nirvana on their last tour. I said, “See you in London, Kurt”, and he went home and shot himself. That was kind of weird, you know? Different kind of guys like that – you’re with them one minute, then the next minute, like, what the fuck? The tour’s ended and then they’re fucking dead. Really strange.

JM: Did you see the Joy Division movie Control, and was that accurate?

SD: I’ve not seen it. Because I remember what it was like there at the time, so I’ve not actually gotten around to seeing it. I just remember being in Paris, and somebody was coming out having watched it, some French guys, and I was passing the cinema. It freaked him out. It was like, “Fuck, there’s Steve from The Buzzcocks. We’ve just been watching the Joy Division movie.” But I haven’t seen it. I was there, you know? [laughs] Will do one day.

As far as I was concerned, we were the masters. We taught them everything they new, you know? If you listen to their first album, it sounds like our Time’s Up bootleg, our first demos we did. The little similarities, you can see where they took their cue from, which they did their own thing with after, you know?

But yeah, I didn’t get around to seeing the movie, which surprises me. I must check it out.

JM: The Buzzcocks also, back then, toured with The Fall. Mark E. Smith has quite a reputation as a prickly character. Do you get on with him?

SD: Yeah, I mean he had to be grateful to us in those days because we took him on a lot of early tours and helped him out. We helped a lot of those bands out in those days. That was a kind of punk ethic. We did the White Riot tour with The Clash, and then when we started headlining the big venues we took people like The Fall. It was always OK with us. I think he was grateful we gave him a lot of breaks.

We did that with a few bands – Siouxsie and the Banshees, John Cooper Clarke. In fact, all the opening acts we took with us, all became very successful. All sort of made their mark, and were distinctive in their own way. We’re kind of thinking, we should open up for ourselves. We could be even bigger [laughs].

I know he’s got that reputation, but it’s a long time ago since that. We took him on many shows in the early days, and really helped them along, put them on the map. He’s never been prickly with me, you know? If he does, I’ll fucking get a guitar and slam it over his head [both laugh].

I know he’s told some stories about me to people, which is nice. He is a fan of The Buzzcocks, you know? And we go back a long way. He was always OK with us.

JM: I have a question about the first Buzzcocks’ EP, Spiral Scratch, which was influential musically, but maybe even moreso because it was a do-it-yourself release. Did you have any idea at that time what that was going to unleash?

SD: Well, you know, it was kind of a necessity, really. We thought it was the most uncommercial music possible, and that if we went to record company they wouldn’t be interested. They’d think, “What the fuck?” Because it kind of sounds raw, and weird, and unique. At the time, record companies were just putting out smooth kind of stuff, you know? So we felt if we make a thousand records, and maybe sell some around the gigs in Manchester… that was as far as we looked at.

But all of a sudden, people kind of picked up on that record. It was distributed by Rough Trade over here, then. A guy Geoff Travis phoned up and said, “I’ll put it in the shops”, and stuff. And it sold quite a lot, then. That was in the days when things were kind of word-of-mouth in punk. It was pre-computer. In fact, the word-of-mouth was faster than the computers, I think. Certainly, Spiral Scratch was known everywhere. Of course, it got to the States and everything else. I think it was a very powerful and inspirational EP, really. It opened up people’s eyes a lot, just by the sheer nature of it. And the fact that you could do it yourself. Certainly everybody over in Britain over here, or a lot of bands, started making their own records.

I know it was done in The Fifties in America. But I think… It was just our necessity. We just felt the only way we were going to hear ourselves on a record is if we make one. Which was kind of a stroke of genius, but it was also our necessity. Looking back, it’s like, “Fuck, how did we come to that?” It was like, that’s probably the only way it’s going to be.

Of course, after that you’ve got all the record companies wanting to sign you. But yeah, legendary EP. That inspired a lot of people to go out and do it themselves?

JM: In the early days, what were your goals for The Buzzcocks? Just to make music, or you wanted to get signed to a label?

SD: What happened was, as the song on that EP says, “Boredom”. We were bored. There was nothing happening. There were the progressive groups around, but they’d kind of run their course, really. There was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Yes, and all these kind of people, but I think they’d kind of come full circle. We wanted something exciting, and something lyrically that was relevant to us. And something that kind of described about your life, that you could relate to in your life. They were singing about mushrooms in the sky, and things like that. That kind of stuff, which was cool in the beginning, but all of the sudden the world has kind of changed, and it was like you need something more out of fucking songs than this. We need to feel alive, you know? So that the initial thing of what we were trying to do. Create some excitement, and some interest, and also some intellectuality about things. And that’s kind of what happened, really, yeah.

That was the initial goal. I mean, we didn’t think we’d be doing it all these years later. We didn’t plan anything out. We’ve never sat around a table, a boardroom, or anything, going, “If we do this, therefore we can do that.” It’s all been very organic. We were organic before people became organic. It was just like, OK this, go with the flow, let’s do this, let’s just do that. It’s whatever came up, which was a bit more natural, I think.

JM: Probably the best known song that you wrote was “Harmony In My Head”. Could you give your quick reflections on that song?

SD: I think we’d had a couple of hits. I mean, I wrote the second biggest hit, which was “Promises”, but Pete sang it. I wrote the chords and the music. “Promises”, did all the music and chords. I said, “You sing it. You sing the verse.” So I hummed the tune, and he wrote the verse. That was kind of like a nice harmony type of song, “Ever Fallen in Love” was and that.

We were on the Top of the Pops and the charts a lot. So now we’re in this position of power, now we need this song that’s like a fucking steamroller, you know? Something to really kick the fucking ass of Top of the Pops. That’s what the thinking was behind “Harmony In My Head”, in a way.

Also, it was that kind of feeling that there was alienation in the big cities. And it was also inspired by James Joyce, William Burroughs, and even Bowie a little bit on the cut-ups. James Joyce wrote Ulysses, this cinematic imagery, that everywhere we are we get these inputs from everything. More fragmented, we have a lot of these things. So I tried to write the lyrics like that, like as in you were walking down a street, and there are these fucking shopping malls there, giant shopping malls making you feel impersonal. Giant buildings, you know? In Manchester, the buildings were getting higher, and it seemed like we were getting smaller as human beings, you know, overpowered. So it was about all that kind of stuff.

Also, I thought it was going to be as hard as “Anarchy In The UK”, or any Clash song. It’s just as fucking tough as “Anarchy In The UK” or fucking any Clash song, as far as I’m concerned.

I read about John Lennon when he sang “Twist and Shout”, he smoked twenty cigarettes before he sang it, to get that rough vocal sound. So that’s what I did on that. The producer, Martin Rushent, at the time said, “Why don’t you sing the vocal?” I’m going, “No, I want it to be rough as fuck.” I want it with that real rough rock vocal sound. So that’s what I did with it.

And like I say, we had these many hits. “Promises” was a sweet song. That was my song, really. That was our second biggest hit. But then, I thought I’ve got to come back with something really heavy, and something really punky. That’s what I did, “Harmony In My Head”. And it was great being on Top of the Pops, selling that. Have some of fucking this, you know? You had to mime on that, and I didn’t even mime in sync, deliberately, to make it look more ridiculous. Take the piss out of the program [laughs].

JM: Why did The Buzzcocks break up in 1981, and what brought them together later in the 1980′s?

SD: I think we’d been about five years with each other. It was quite intense, and we were quite prolific. We put a lot of singles out. Singles seemed to come out every two months or something. We were on tour all the time everywhere. We came to the States a lot of times. Like I say, we had some crazy tours there, and in Britain, and in Europe. You know, in any band, you’re kind of married to four people, really, at the same time. You kind of get like that’s all you see, in a way. You know, you see the hotels, you see the towns, you meet people at the shows. But essentially it’s the same four people. It’s a lot to maintain.

Every group has their problems with that. They either split or they end up arguing forever. We were just a bit exhausted, as well. So we were going to take a bit of time off, and then finally we decided to call it a day for a bit. Because we didn’t want to go out if the band wasn’t firing on a cylinders. So it was kind of a lot to do with that, really.

And then, we went off and did our own things, I had my band Flag of Convenience, and Pete did his solo stuff. That’d kind of come full circle. When I was playing in Germany with Flag of Convenience, they billed it as Buzzcocks. I abbreviated it to F.O.C., and they billed it as Buzzcocks F.O.C. Even though I wasn’t doing any Buzzcocks songs, I didn’t want to do any. So that kind of was the catalyst, the rumor that we were back.

Now, Ian Copeland, our American agent, I think he was in Berlin at the time. He’d seen the poster and thought we’d got back, so he phoned us up. I kind of said, no, we’re not back, they billed it like that over there. They billed it in Paris and in Germany for me like that, which I didn’t particularly like. But it was kind of going “Steve Diggle from The Buzzcocks and his band F.O.C.” That kickstarted it. So it was like, well OK, well if everybody’s up for it we’ll do a tour. And that’s what happened.

What we did, we came to the States and did a tour. We thought, we’ll do the tour of America, and we’ll see what happens. Then we went to Australia, then we were in Japan, then we came to Britain and did a tour.

Initially it was kind of like, let’s do a tour of America for old time’s sake, or whatever. Let’s just see what happens. We’ll do the tour, we won’t plan any further than that. And incredibly, as I say, we ended up going around the world. That’s what kind of got us back.

And the good thing about it, we’d kind of had a rest, we’d done the other things which I really enjoyed, and I learned a lot from doing other things outside of the group, working with different people. And then that’d kind of come full circle and it was time for The Buzzcocks to get back. When we got back, you realized what a great chemistry we had in the first place. Me and Pete have been the longest-standing members – well, right through the whole thirty-six years of it now. And we’ve never sat down and harmonized, or practiced for the guitar, we just kind of go, “Well, if you’re doing that, I’m doing this, so if I’m doing that, you do that.” He’ll come up with something, or I’ll come up with something. It’s a very magical thing. We don’t have to sit down there and try and work on it. It’s just something between us that works. Some magic, some alchemy that’s incredible. When we got back, it was like, “Yeah, that’s what was great about the fucking Buzzcocks.” Me and him, and those guitars. And the songs, and the way we complemented each other on the songs. Like I’ll put the riff on “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays”, he came in with the song and I put that riff on it. That’s the way it works. So there was good reason to get back.

When we weren’t together, a lot of people were going, “Will you guys ever to get back?” And we thought, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a bit long.” Now it’s quite a few years, you know? I’d kind of given up on that, and the next minute we were back. And we’ve been back longer than we were in the first place, now [laughs]. And to be honest, with the line-up we’ve got now, it’s better than ever.

JM: Kurt Cobain came up earlier. Do you have any good Kurt Cobain stories?

SD: There’s one classic one that I’ve told a couple of times.

They came to see us in Boston when “[Smells Like] Teen Spirit” was No. 1, and the album Nevermind was No. 1. We played in Boston and they came backstage to see us after the show and said, “Will you join us on the US tour?” which we couldn’t. But we said, when you come to Europe give us a call. So they did, and we did that last tour with them. We started off in Portugal, and it was France and all of that kind of stuff. And I think we did about eleven or twelve dates with them. So we got to know them well. They were great guys. Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, Chris Novoselic, and Kurt.

But on the first day, I flew into Portugal and I said to the tour manager, “I don’t want to buy any Nirvana hats or scarves or anything. Where’s the fucking coke?” [laughs] He said, “Oh, I’ll take you to the bus. I don’t know…” I said, “Just tell him it’s Steve. He knows.” So I got on the bus and he gave me a couple of grams. I put it out on the table, and he went upstairs on the bus. So I offered all of the other guys some, you know, I’d chopped all these lines, and they all refused. So each time a member of the band… “Dave Grohl, you want any?” “No.” So I did another one. “Pat Smear?” “No.” “Chris?” “No.” The roadie? “No.” So I did the lot, so when Kurt came downstairs on the bus, he goes, “What happened to the coke, Steve?” I said, “Fuck, Kurt, I’ve offered to everybody and I forgot about you. I’ve done the lot.” [laughs] So I kind of said, “Look, when you come along, then I’ll sort you out then.”

And of course, he never made it. I hope that wasn’t the reason he fucking blew his head off. God bless him. I mean, he was a great guy, we spend a lot of time together on that tour. Kind of walking around, walking around those stadiums we were doing, and talking and a lot of things. We got on really well. And all the band, you know. We loved those guys. They were big fans, Kurt was a massive fan. I think he loved “Harmony In My Head” because he loved the vocal sound. When you’re listening to his voice, I mean, there’s a little… you can hear how he likes “Harmony In My Head” with his voice. You see what I mean? That kind of shouting thing, he’s going “That’s a great vocal, Steve. That’s one of my favorite songs.” When I hear Nirvana, I think, “Fuck yeah, I can see why he likes it.” It’s got a bit of similarity on that song, that kind of half-shouting, half-singing rock ‘n’ roll things.

That’s one of the stories. There’s many other things. But it was an amazing tour, and by the time I got back to London it was all on the news that he’d shot himself. I was like, “What the fuck?” It was very strange, because having spend over a week and a half with him, or whatever it was, you kind of got used to him everyday, and then the next thing you’ve seen him on the national news around the world that he’s dead. He was still there, like he was still with me, you know what I mean? With all of us. It was like, “Fuck, I was with him yesterday almost.” That kind of thing. He’s just gone. And then you see him on the TV everywhere, it’s like, “Fuck, I was with the guy yesterday. Now he’s on the national news around the world.” They’ve even got footage of him and that. It’s like, this is crazy.

God bless him. We was a wonderful guy, and wrote some amazing songs, and I admired his sentiment and everything. I admired what he was singing about, and the band. The band was amazing live. With Dave on the drums and Chris on the bass, it was like, “Fuck!” That was a powerhouse of a band. Fantastic.

They did love the Buzzcocks. Like I say, they were big fans. They liked a lot of punk music as well. They were big fans, and that’s why they wanted us to play with them.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

SD: You’ve got to have some kind of self-belief. Because with music you’re dabbling in the darkness and the spirits, and you’ve got to have some solid self-belief to give you a guiding light through the darkness, the heaven and the fucking hell of it all. Because, as you know, many highs and as many lows… it’s like going through a fucking swamp. You’ve got to be real strong, that’s the first thing.

It’s one thing to learn to play. Anybody can learn to play a few chords, but you’ve got to have that strength not to lose yourself. And you’ve got to believe you can get through the forest, or from one end of the tunnel to the other, and still keep something of who you are. Because people lose themselves so much in music, where it can really fuck you up. As we know from casualties.

But having that self-belief, and the love of or some kind of commitment to it, that can see you through to the other side of the river. That’s the main thing. To the land of milk and honey, almost [laughs].

You know, it’s not all bad. But that’s the main advice. The playing is the easy bit in a way. It’s hard to learn to play and write songs, but you can get that down. But, it’s that other stuff that breaks people. You’ve have to have that fucking will of iron to keep going, because you’re in a ring with fucking Muhammad Ali getting fucking punched to pieces in the music business. You’ve got to fucking take the punches, you know, a fucking Joe Frazier is punching the fucking lights out of you, and you’ve got to come back with some fucking hit records or some kind of music that fucking gives it back a bit.

I know that’s weird advice, but I’ve come through to the other side myself. Through the drugs, I’m pretty clean now and all that stuff. I’ve been through the fucking mill like a lot of people of my age that are still around surviving. I’ve done all the fucking drugs on the tours, and all the things, and no sleep, and everything else. But you’ve still got to get up and write the songs, and that’s the excitement of it. That’s the reward, or whatever it is.

Because a lot of musicians don’t know what’s going to come to them. I’ve seen people crack up on tour buses because they can’t handle it, they kind of change, you know? It’s like one of those TV reality shows, when they do those two month tours of America on the bus. They start off thinking this is going to be great. We’re going to St. Louis, Los Angeles, we’re going to Seattle, we’re going to Kansas, all the rest of it. But after a few fucking weeks some of them just fucking crack up. I’ve seen tour managers and crew members go to pieces [laughs]. But I’m not one of those. I’m made of fucking steel, so I got through it [laughs].

JM: What are your plans, with The Buzzcocks or otherwise, for the near future? I know you have the tour of the States coming up.

SD: Tomorrow we’re going to Serbia – Belgrade, Serbia. We’re doing a gig out there in a big theater. The day after we come back we’re going to record two new songs, kind of like a single or whatever. And then we’re going to continue on, after we’ve recorded these two songs, we’re going to sort of continue on and make an album. We should have an album out by the end of the year, by the autumn or something like that. So that’s the main thing. It’s time for a new Buzzcocks album. We’ve been on the road for about two or three years now, constantly going around. Which has been fantastic, but it’s definitely time for a new Buzzcocks album. That’s kind of exciting.

I’ve just been in the studio working on my next solo album. Like I say, I had one out last year called Air Conditioning, and that was kind of a political album, really. On the day it came out the students started rioting here, and I thought that album Air Conditioning is right on target. Because it’s kind of about the times now, in a political way.

JM: Do you want to set the record straight on anything about your career, or some misconceptions that are floating around?

SD: There’s probably millions of misconceptions, but it’ll all work out itself in a way. I mean, people know who you are through the music, but they don’t know who you are as a person, maybe.

One thing that pisses me off, they think we just sing love songs. When I wrote “Autonomy”, which is on the first album, that was a political song. “She’s a Girl from a Chainstore” is a political song. I wrote a song called “Sick City Sometimes” about 9/11. When we were recording it the towers fell down, so I had to put the last verse, “Now those buildings take a fall / And he tries to kill us all / In the name of something zero in your mind”. That’s not a fucking love song to me, you know? So people should realize that Buzzcocks sing about the whole of the human condition, and not just fucking play “Ever Fallen In Love” all the time. That boils the shit out of me. It’s like we’re typecast sometimes. Great song, but there’s a lot more other sides just as good.

It’s like just playing The Who’s “My Generation” and forgetting about Who’s Next, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, you know what I mean? There’s 135 songs to choose from. I think people get lazy sometimes. But yeah, to set the record straight on that. They should check out, there’s a whole catalog and see what we’re singing about all around. And that’s including Pete’s songs as well. The closest I got to a love song is “Love Is Life”, and that was an anti-love song [laughs].

If you could mention my album Air Conditioning – you can download it on iTunes, or you can order it on amazon.com – that’d be cool. And that there will be a new Buzzcocks album out, hopefully by the fall.

JM: Am I correct that you are in London right now?

SD: That is correct, yeah. Like I say, I’ve just got in from the studio.

I did one interview once with my mate Jim Sullivan from the Boston Globe, and he said, “Where are you right now?” and I was standing outside the building where The Beatles sang on the roof, Savile Row in London. It’s not every day that you can go, “Well, you wouldn’t believe this, but I’m just outside the building where The Beatles sang on the roof” [laughs].

Luckily we’ve got California weather here, but we’re looking for a bit more out there as well. We love coming to L.A. One of the reasons is the sun in California. I do like a bit of sun these days.

Today’s Buzzcocks: (L to R) Steve Diggle, Danny Farrant, Chris Remmington, Pete Shelley. (Ian Rook photo)

Steve Reich is a pioneering composer, who along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is viewed as one of the most important figures in minimal music.

Reich’s early compositions “It’s Gonna Rain” (1965) and “Come Out” (1966) made use of tape loops which went out of phase with each other, an idea which he extended to live instrumentation with “Piano Phase” (1967) and “Violin Phase” (1967). He also explored the concept of “music as a gradual process” in pieces such as “Pendulum Music” (1968), in which microphones as pendula swing over a speaker, causing feedback.

His music took a new turn with “Drumming” (1971), inspired by a trip to Ghana. Steady pulse and rhythm became a dominant element of his compositions, including in the acclaimed “Music For 18 Musicians” (1976), widely viewed as one of his most important pieces.

Reich’s pieces began to incorporate themes from history and from his Jewish heritage with “Tehillim” (1981), which is the original Hebrew word for Psalms. Such themes continued with “Different Trains” (1988) which uses voices including those of Holocaust survivors, “The Cave” (1993) based on The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron which uses videos developed by his wife Beryl Korot, the opera “Three Tales” (1998-2002) about The Hindenberg, the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, and cloning, which also uses visuals by Korot, and “WTC 9/11″ (2010) which uses voices related to the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Reich’s compositions have been highly influential in the world of classical music, and he has been called “America’s greatest living composer.” In the rock music world, his influence has been cited for artists including Brian Eno, King Crimson, The Residents, and Tortoise. Reich is currently working on a piece based on the music of Radiohead.

This interview was conducted by phone on 3/28/12.

Jeff Moehlis: Let me wish you a belated Happy 75th Birthday. Has this been a particularly busy year for you, because of the birthday?

Steve Reich: Well, that was over last year. But yes, it was, and there’s still more coming up. It certainly was an enormous amount of travel last year.

JM: I’m excited that we’ll be hearing your new piece “WTC 9/11″ performed here at UC Santa Barbara. For people who are unfamiliar with that piece, could you give a quick overview?

SR: Let’s see. There’s my personal involvement, and then there’s the piece itself. What shall we begin with?

JM: How about your personal involvement?

SR: For twenty-five years we lived four blocks from Ground Zero. We went shopping there, it was part of the landscape that we lived in. On September 11th, 2001, my wife and I were in Vermont, but my son and my granddaughter and my daughter-in-law were in our apartment four blocks from Ground Zero. And about 8:30 in the morning our phone rang – it was our son saying, “I think they bombed the World Trade Center again”, because they’d bombed it in 1993. From our window you couldn’t see it, because there was a building close to us that blocked it out, but he could hear it and feel it. So we all turned on our televisions just in time to see the second plane hit. I told him “Don’t hang up”, and “get some hardware store masks” that we had in the bathroom and “put them on the baby and yourself and your wife”. We had double windows – “Make sure all the double windows are closed. And don’t leave.”

We had a neighbor who was a very together guy. I knew he had a vehicle. And to make a long story short, we kept the phone open, in touch until about 4:00 in the afternoon when my son and my granddaughter and my daughter-in-law all got together with our neighbor and into their vehicle. They couldn’t go on the West Side Highway or the East Side Highway, but this guy knew the city very well, and via the streets got out of the city up north to Westchester where his mother was. We drove down from Vermont, picked up our son, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law, and for months we had to stay up there because we lived below Chambers Street, and the US Army said that no one goes below Chambers Street for thirty days.

So that in a nutshell was my personal involvement.

Now shortly after that, people like yourself would ask me, “Are you going to write a piece about that?” Because they knew I’d done pieces like “Different Trains” and “The Cave”. At the time I was working on “Three Tales”, finishing up “Three Tales”, the video opera that uses an enormous amount of samples, and my wife was working with the video. And I said, “Frankly, I have no time for that right now, and I have no ideas about it, so the answer is ‘no’.”

OK, now cut to late 2009, early 2010, [violinist] David Harrington called me from the Kronos Quartet, and said, “Steve, I’d like you to write a third piece for us, and we’d like you to use speech again.” And I said, “For you, David, anything.” And I meant it. I love Kronos, and they’re one of the few people whose suggestions for a piece I will take seriously. But to be honest, I had no idea what the content of that piece would be. The only idea that I did have was a formal idea, and that was that whoever was talking, whatever they were talking about, their final syllable would be extended out via software as a held tone, which could then be doubled by viola, or violin, or the cello, or what have you. So, “He came from Bostonnnnn…”, that “n” could be held out indefinitely, doubled by the strings, and then the next speaker is joined to the previous speaker by doing the same thing. You begin building up chords of meaning, if you like, and connecting one speaker to another harmonically. So this idea existed quite independently of any content for quite some time, and I was really concerned, you know – what am I going to use for material?

And then, I guess it was about a month or two later, the lightbulb went on in my head, and it was like a brilliantly illuminated lightbulb, which said, “What else? I mean, I have unfinished business. And that’s 9/11″. Once that thought popped into my head, I knew exactly what I had to do, and I went about doing it. Which is to record those people who were directly involved in 9/11, and that starts with the air traffic controllers who noticed that American Flight 11 was going south when it should’ve been going west to L.A., when it started out in Boston. And then the New York City Fire Department, who records everything that goes on as field comm, field communications – and of course the New York Fire Department was the principal people involved, and the heroes of that time were largely made up of firemen, many of whom did not survive on 9/11.

That material comprises the First Movement of the piece, doubled by the strings – the speech melody of the speakers becomes the melody of the strings. There are also the sounds of the background. They are very noisy recordings, because the air traffic controllers are, again, being recorded over their own system. It’s very low grade recordings, and that noise is part of the texture of what’s going on. That noise and confusion is emblematic of the reality of 9/11, for the people who were in it. That’s the First Movement, very short, only three and a half minutes.

The Second Movement is made by recordings that I made myself of my friends and neighbors who lived in close proximity to the World Trade Center, remembering, now nine years later in 2010, what they did that day. So, for instance, David Lang, my friend the composer, who was in Soho, said “I was taking my kids to school”, and goes on to elaborate what happened from there. Many others are also reminiscing about what happened to them that day. And that is the Second Movement, which is a bit longer.

The last movement is quite a bit different. After 9/11, there weren’t too many bodies, as you may know. The fires were very intense, and what bodies that there were, and largely the parts of bodies, were taken to the Medical Examiner’s office on the eastside of Manhattan, in the East 30′s. There’s a law in Judaism which says that when someone dies, you don’t leave the body alone from the time of death until the time of burial. Now, when this happened in 9/11, a number of synagogue members from the Upper West Side started coming down to the Medical Examiner’s office – this is called “sitting shmira”, you’re accompanying the… sitting there, usually reading psalms, chanting psalms, singing parts of the Torah that are appropriate to that situation, 24/7, around the clock.

Now as you may know, on the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, you can’t take a subway or a bus, or use money, or carry your wallet, or any of the kinds of things that are necessary to move around Manhattan. So they started looking, very quickly, for Jews who were in the area, who were close to the East 30′s, and they found women from Stern College, which is part of Yeshiva University, who were very anxious to volunteer for this, and in fact did. These women would walk over on the Sabbath and sit there next to refrigerated trucks and say psalms, chant psalms, sing parts of the Torah. And I was able to locate two of them. As a matter of fact, one of them used to be president of Boosey & Hawkes, my music publisher. When she left the company she became a lay chaplain for Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and she volunteered to do this during 9/11. And you hear their voices in the Third Movement.

You also hear the voice of Maya Beiser, the cellist who I’m sure you probably know of, who is an Israeli whose mother recently died, and she went back to Israel for the funeral and the burial. She sat shmira and played cello for her mother before her burial. And I told Maya what was going on, and I said – I knew she had a beautiful voice – “Would you sing the end of Psalm 21?”, and she said, “I would be happy to do that.” You will hear her voice, sort of mixed back into the mix, very quietly, singing that psalm. Then you’ll hear the voice of one of the best cantors in New York City, from an orthodox synagogue, chanting parts of the Torah. It’s called The Wayfarer’s Prayer, it comes from Exodus. Those again are mixed very quietly in the background, behind the strings.

At the very, very end, though, David Lang says, “The World To Come. I don’t really know what that means.” “WTC” has at least two, perhaps three meanings, which again David made me aware of. One of them is “the World Trade Center”, the second one is “The World To Come”, which in Hebrew is “Olam Haba”. And, of course, we really don’t know too much about that. The singing at the end is very meditative and sort of suggests that atmosphere, but I felt that that was not an appropriate ending given what has happened since 9/11, which has been more of the same. So the piece ends, and goes back to the beginning.

I forgot to mention, at the very beginning of the piece, when I was beginning WTC 9/11, I was going into the shower in the morning, and my phone was off the hook and I didn’t know it. This was a landline. It began to beep that very insistent warning beep, like “your phone’s off the hook, please hang it up”. I thought to myself, “Eureka, that’s it! That’s how I want to begin this piece.” It turns out that beeping is in ‘F’, and so the piece begins with David Harrington doubling [laughs] a beeping telephone, and then John Sherba coming in with the ‘E’ below that. And that’s what happens at the end, that beeping comes back on, that warning returns and then David Lang is quoted as saying, “and there’s the world right here.” And that’s the end of the piece.

JM: Wow, sounds great.

SR: I think it is. It’s very short, very compact. I mention in the program notes that I thought, when I began the piece, that it would be a large piece, twenty-five minutes long. But when I finished the First Movement, it was three and a half minutes long, I thought to myself, “My goose is cooked. What is this?” So I called up David Harrington, and I said, “David, I don’t think that this is going to be a twenty-five minute piece. It just wants to be terse. It wants to be compact. It wants to be to the point, and then that’s it.” And that’s exactly what happened. Sometimes the piece tells you, the piece tells me, “This is what I have to be. Don’t mess with me.”

JM: Could you compare this to your piece “Different Trains”, which is also on the program, and seems to share some compositional similarities?

SR: Well, they certainly share the similarity of using pre-recorded voices, and using the speech melodies in the voices. That, of course, is the obvious similarity. They’re both about darker subject matter, although the first movement of “Different Trains” is very upbeat. It’s America before the war. It’s American train whistles, which are basically perfect fourths or fifths.

In the Second Movement, when the Holocaust survivors’ voices are there, of course it shifts to a much darker tone. There are air raid sirens in the background.

“Different Trains” is a longer piece. There’s more string development. “WTC 9/11″ is weighted heavily on the voices, and the strings are essential but they don’t elaborate independently and go on at any length. I think that does happen in “Different Trains”.

They’re very different pieces, but, of course, yes, there is that similarity.

JM: The program also includes selections from “The Cave”. Were you involved at all in deciding which parts would be performed?

SR: Yeah, they’re taking basically the end of the First Movement, and that definitely was something that was put together as a possibility to be done as an excerpt by a string quartet and tape. The remarkable thing is that the last three or four sections at the end of Act One of “The Cave” is inside the cave. It’s not really a cave, it’s a mosque that’s been put on top of a church [laughs] that was put on top of Herodian walls, that was put on top of a cave [laughs]. It’s a very large room and so you have kind of a resonant frequency in the room, a hum in the room from all the voices and because of the architecture of the room, as in any large room. It’s A-minor, actually, that the room is tuned to. When I recorded inside the Cave of Machpelah, the Me’arat ha-Machpela, there is this sort of droning sound of ‘A’. And that was reinforced by a sustained ‘A’ on the cello, and then you hear the murmuring of these voices, and then the other strings join in very, very quietly.

The remarkable thing is that that happens, and the piece ends very, very quietly, and when you get to the Third Movement of “WTC 9/11″ you feel like you’re back in the same world. I’m describing a very quiet section of the voices singing psalms and The Wayfarer’s Prayer against very quiet string accompaniment. There’s this link.

I want to say, this program is a unique program that Kronos put together, of all the pieces that I’ve written for them and this excerpt from “The Cave”. Of course, there’s also “Triple Quartet” which is, I think, one of my better pieces and probably stems from Bartok – the end of Bartok’s Fourth Quartet is a primary inspiration. They’re all… you know, the string quartet is a weighty medium [laughs], whether you like it or not. You can’t write for string quartet and not think of the late Beethoven quartets. When I went to school I spent an enormous amount of time listening to and analyzing the Bartok quartets, particularly the Third, Fourth, and Fifth. So those pieces are amongst the darker pieces that I’ve written. To hear them all on a program… when I first heard it, which was at Duke University when we did the world premiere of “WTC 9/11″, I was really struck. I mean, I felt like I learned something about myself I didn’t know.

At Santa Barbara, I’m very glad that Kronos is doing this. I hope that they get a chance to do it a lot, and I hope that they can make a recording of this. Because it gives a very, very different impression than, let’s say, the stand up and cheer ending of “Drumming” or a lot of the pieces that are percussion heavy. It may be a bit of a surprise, or a revelation or disappointment perhaps [laughs], depending on who you are.

JM: Almost all of these pieces that you’ve discussed involve pioneering interactions between music and technology. And of course, that goes back to your earlier years when you used tape machines, you had the phase shifting pulse gate, and so on. Could you comment on your approach to and your relationship with technology when it comes to your compositions?

SR: Well, “Triple Quartet”, you should know, is often played live with twelve players. It’s very good that way. As a matter of fact, it’s probably better that way. Of course, when Kronos plays it, they play it marvelously. It is often played with twelve players. And so tape functions in “Triple Quartet” basically is a matter of convenience so that a string quartet can in fact play it, and there are many string quartets and so therefore it is worthwhile having the tape.

“Different Trains” was a real line in the sand for me, in terms of my own work. I first came to public attention for “It’s Gonna Rain” and “Come Out”. “Come Out” was the first piece that was actually commercially recorded, way back in 1967. The piece was composed in 1966. And of course, it’s just the recording of a black kid’s voice that was arrested for murder – he didn’t do it, by the way. That came to public attention, I was thirty. It wrapped up in the technique of phase shifting that was used exclusively in both “It’s Gonna Rain” and “Come Out”. But I felt at that time, I felt like I was sort of trapped, because I felt people couldn’t do that [laughs]. Windshield wipers on a bus could do it, and warning bells at a railroad crossing could do it, tape recorders can do it, but people can’t do it. Well, finally, it took six months of torturing myself, I finally said, “I’m the second tape recorder”. I sat down with a tape loop of the pattern that later became “Piano Phase”, and so here I go. I start out in unison, I’m going to move slowly one sixteenth note ahead of the tape, and I found to my amazement, wow, I can do it! What’s more, doing it is really interesting. It feels good, because I’m just listening. I don’t have to read to do it. And I’m not improvising. I know what I have to do. That led to “Piano Phase”, and other pieces, and up to “Drumming”, and after that I stopped that technique.

Then, all this time… “Come Out” in 1966 all the way up to 1988 “Different Trains”… prior to “Different Trains” I heard lots of things, like Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”. It starts off with a tape loop. I thought, gee, a lot of people have used what I have done to create different things, what can I learn from what I did? Why not, instead of making it just like music, you know, pre-recorded speech as sounds, why not actually make it music, join it so every time a man speaks the cello doubles him, and every time a woman speaks the oboe doubles her.

I had been commissioned by Betty Freeman, who’s no longer with us, to write a piece for Kronos. Kronos was really coming up in the world in 1988, and I had just become aware of the sampler, and I was very excited to use it in a piece of music, and this seemed like a golden opportunity. So “Different Trains” was the first piece to join speech and music together in this way, and also the sounds of the trains themselves. It was like a mark in the sand for me, both going back and going forward, and it also suggested…

During the time that I was doing “Different Trains”, around the late-80′s, I would get occasional telephone calls from Europe asking me, would you write an opera? And I would say, “Well gee, I’m very flattered, thank you so much, but ‘no’. I’m not interested.” I mean, a lot of my contemporaries were writing operas, obviously, and they felt why not me? The answer was that the operatic voice did not attract me, the form does not attract me. So if you feel that way, you don’t want to take three or four years to work on a project [laughs] you don’t believe in. That’s kind of committing suicide in public.

So, I hang up the phone and I think, gee, isn’t there something that I could do along those lines? Suddenly the lightbulb went on. In this piece, in “Different Trains”, I’m hearing the people speak. What if you were working with a video artist, and there was videotape involved? I mentioned this to Beryl Korot, my wife, and she was doing other things at the time. I said, how about we just make some tests? And we did. We did some tests doubling the speaking voice with a synthesizer that happened to be at hand, and we thought, wow, this is definitely interesting. So out of that came “The Cave”, and then later came “Three Tales”, two video operas of different sorts. So, one use of audio technology suggested the use of video technology.

For “WTC 9/11″, I told you, the first idea I has was the idea of sustaining… Have you ever gone to the movies and you see a freeze frame, the action just stops? What I wanted to do was to make the synced soundtrack of that. So you’d say “zerooooo…” It would just prolong itself. Well, on tape that’s utterly impossible. You stop the tape and the sound stops. You slow it down, [voice drops] you sound like Darth Vader. By the time I did “Three Tales”, and “Dolly” the last movement – it was the last act – it was possible to do that. There is that stop action sound in “Dolly”, but there is so much going on, you don’t really hear it clearly. In “WTC 9/11″ it’s front and center. It’s the texture, the connective tissue between one section and the next.

So yes, technology plays a role, but also the harmonic world of “Different Trains”, and the harmonic world of “WTC 9/11″, and the harmonic world of “Triple Quartet” are all quite different from the harmonic world of, let’s say, “Music For 18 Musicians”. And I think again, that’s because Bartok for me is very present when I think about a string quartet. The subject matter was such that a different kind, a darker if you will, more chromatic harmonic world arose on truly musical grounds because of the instruments, and the tradition that those instruments have, and the nature of the subject matter of the piece.

JM: You might be interested to know that at the exact same time as the Kronos Quartet performance here at UC Santa Barbara, there is another concert in Santa Barbara by Radiohead.

SR: [laughs]

JM: Can I ask for a preview of what we can look forward to for your work-in-progress “Radiohead Rewrite”?

SR: No, it’s called “Radio Rewrite”. There are remixes, which are by people who work in audio, and they take recorded music and they do what they want to do with it. I’m a composer, I work in notated music. By the way, I think it’s a good distinction. Instead of pop and classical, think notated and non-notated. I work in notated music.

“Radio Rewrite” – it arose because I met Jonny Greenwood. Actually I met him on the phone way back when I did “2×5″, the rock piece. But I met him in person in Krakow, Poland last September when he was doing his version of “Electric Counterpoint”, a piece I wrote for Pat Metheny. He made it on tape. I knew about him. I knew that he had been a violist at Oxford, and then he joined the group, and he’s still composing. He did the music for There Will Be Blood, which you would never think was written by a rock musician. I had a very, very, very good time meeting him and talking with him while I was there, and it encouraged me to listen to more Radiohead. I was working on some other project which was not going well, and I just was really up to there with it, just wanted to trash it. Two songs struck me – one “Everything In Its Right Place” from Kid A, and the other one is “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” from In Rainbows. I thought, I’d like to take those two songs, and then do I know not what with them, i.e., I’m not going to make recognizable variations on them, but I will use the harmonies that make up the two of them, and I will use fragments of the melody here and there.

It was an exciting prospect, and it gave me the energy to get going, which is the crucial thing when you’re beginning a piece. I have finished two out of five movements, and I’m working on the third. It’s due for premiere by the London Sinfonietta. It’s not scored for rock musicians at all – there are only a handful of rock players who can read, and they were the people who played in “2×5″, and there are others now, and there will be more. But it’s written for the London Sinfonietta. I mean, it’s written for flute, clarinet, string quartet, two percussion, two pianos. It will be premiered by them in March of 2013, and Alarm Will Sound is the co-commissioner in this country, and they will do it out at Stanford also in 2013, I believe in March also.

JM: Do you hear any Steve Reich influence in Radiohead’s music?

SR: Uh, you’ve got to ask them about that. I know that Jonny Greenwood is very interested in Penderecki, but I mean he did play “Electric Counterpoint”. I’ll leave that for others to judge.

JM: One artist who has acknowledged your influence is Brian Eno. Have you followed his work at all?

SR: Yes, well as a matter of fact he and I had some meetings to discuss a project which we hope to do. I’d like to see him produce “Drumming”, but there’s financial considerations which have made it impossible for the time being. He’s a remarkable… very, very interesting… [laughs]

When I was a kid, when I was fourteen, you know, when I was in high school, I used to go to Birdland to hear jazz, to hear Miles Davis and Kenny Clarke and Bud Powell. Then when I was in Julliard, I went to hear John Coltrane. When I was studying with [Luciano] Berio out on the West Coast at Mills College, I went to hear John Coltrane. And that had an enormous influence on me.

I remember, now cut to 1974, my ensemble was performing at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, and after the concert a guy comes up, long hair, lipstick, says, “How do you do? I’m Brian Eno.” And I think to myself, “poetic justice”. I’m here listening to Miles Davis, and he’s listening to me. That was a very good beginning.

We really haven’t had that much to do with each other. I do admire his work, not only his own stuff. He has a touch as a producer that makes remarkable recordings. The beginning of “Where the Streets Have No Name”, from the U2 Joshua Tree album, is absolutely amazing. I can’t but believe that that’s entirely Eno’s thinking.

So yes, he’s a remarkable musical presence, and appears in many roles as producer, composer, and just general influence on a lot of people.

JM: You mentioned some of your influences coming from jazz. Have you ever had any influence from the world of rock music?

SR: Not really. I mean, I would say maybe when I was first getting into this whole neck of the woods musically… As I mentioned, John Coltrane, particularly Africa/Brass, is half on hour on ‘E’, the low ‘E’ of a double bass. That was unheard of. But that was something that was in the air, and since it was in the air it also appeared in Motown. I remember Junior Walker, he was a saxophone player on Motown. He did a tune called “Shotgun”, I think it was back in 1964, which basically has a repeating bass line. This goes throughout the whole tune. It’s not A-B-A. It’s just A, all the way.

Of course then it was also Balinese gamelan, which was something that I was studying and listening to on recordings, and actually performing as a student out on the West Coast. And African drumming which I did in Ghana, and here in the States. All of these musics…

I was also interested in Perotin, and Leonin, and the school of Notre Dame from the Twelfth Century in Paris. It’s called organum, basically taking the notes of a Gregorian chant and elongating them to enormous lengths, and then putting decorative voices over these held, not drones, but long, long tones.

So it’s basically all these different sources – organum, Junior Walker, even “Ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm” ["Maggie's Farm"] by Bob Dylan, where it’s basically all the tonic, with a quick turn around back to the tonic. Harmonic stasis. Harmonic staying put. It’s there. It’s there in Coltrane, it’s there in Bali, it’s there in African music, it’s there in “you ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more”, it’s there in all these different sources. And that’s why this kind of music arose in America in the middle-60′s. Because it was in the air. People like myself, [Terry] Riley, and La Monte Young, Philip Glass, and much later John Adams, and quite independently on another part of the globe Arvo Part. If you have your antenna up you get the signal, and something happens.

JM: You had mentioned using sampling technology in your own work. How do you feel about your own music being sampled?

SR: I’m actually glad to see it happen. I remember being interviewed in the early 1990′s in London by one of these pop keyboard magazines, and they said, “What do you think of The Orb?” And I said, “What’s The Orb?” They said, “You don’t know?” And I said, “No I don’t.” They said, “Well, you should know.” And they gave me a CD, and I took it home, and there’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” and they’ve got about thirty seconds of “Electric Counterpoint” from Pat Metheny in the piece. I knew that I’d had an influence maybe on Eno, and also perhaps on David Bowie and “Weeping Wall” – he was at the premiere for “Music For 18 Musicians” in Berlin. But I was totally unprepared for the whole sampling phenomenon, when my music wouldn’t an influence, it would be a presence [laughs]. But it didn’t occur to me to sue them. I guess it all worked out.

More people are doing that. In 1996, my ensemble was in Tokyo performing “Music For 18 Musicians” and “Drumming” and the young man who ran Nonesuch in Tokyo, Hiro Nakashima, at the time, said “you”, meaning me, “ought to have a remix album”. At that point I kind of knew what he meant, so he in Japan and a woman in the U.K., Amy Coffey, and David Bither in New York all approached different DJs saying, “Would you like to remix a piece by Steve Reich, and here are the pieces that are being proposed.”

I began getting CDs and DATs and what not, and between those people and myself we worked out the contents of what became Reich Remixed. And people would ask, like you just said, “What do you think?” I said, basically, I feel great. Because here are people that honestly I’ve never met in my life. I didn’t know them at all. They didn’t know me. They probably weren’t born in 1965 when I did “It’s Gonna Rain”. And they find that piece and others a real interest. It’s genuine – you’re writing a piece for online, right? – you want people to read it, and if they see you, to say, “Hey, interesting piece. You did good. Congratulations.” If they’re on the street, and they don’t even mention it to you, you’re gonna feel it’s wrong. I’m the same way. I write music, and I want the people to listen to it. And if musicians listen to it, and musicians who I don’t even know, who are in another part of the musical universe, so to speak, well, I feel great. It’s out there, people are listening to it because they are genuinely attracted to it. I think any composer basically wants that for their music. So that is very satisfying.

[JM tells SR that in the 90's he did a recording in which he played an excerpt from "Six Marimbas" in the one channel, a delayed copy of the same excerpt in another channel, and played improvised guitar over it.]

SR: As a matter of fact, some group just came – I forget the name of the group – but they’re going to use “New York Counterpoint” as an ostinato. So it’s still happening.

JM: I know that the story isn’t over, but how do you see your legacy?

SR: [laughs] Well, I’ll leave that to others. I’m working on “Radio Rewrite”, then I have other pieces lined up to do after that. So I’m basically focused on what it is that I have to do and what’s coming up next. The rest is for other people to decide.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring composer or musician?

SR: To the aspiring composer, the advice that I would give you is be around a community of players. Don’t be sitting around a classroom talking about music, analyzing music. Go where there are lots of players and where you can write a piece and get it played, and write another piece and get it played, and learn what works and what doesn’t work.

And also, if you can, get involved in performance. I had an ensemble for forty years – we’re now on hold because I really can’t take the responsibilities of being a bandleader – so when I travel around now I coach, and I sometimes sit in for certain pieces that can be done easily, like “Clapping Music” or something like that. But, you know, my ensemble was a very active presence, and lots and lots and lots of recordings were made, and we still occasionally play together, I mean with individuals. I just played with Russell Hartenberger at Ohio State about a month ago.

So get involved, I would say to them. Get involved in the performance of your own music. If you play an instrument, play an instrument. If you conduct, conduct. If you program a drum machine, program a drum machine. But get involved on a practical level.

Another thing, if you write a piece, make sure that it gets played. And hopefully it gets played more than once, because if you write something that’s not worth playing more than once, then you better write another piece fast.

JM: You’ve already mentioned a few of your plans of what is coming in the future. Anything else that you want to mention?

SR: There’s a piece for two percussion and two pianos, following “Radio Rewrite”, that’s aimed at the percussionist Colin Currie, who is, I guess, the greatest percussionist of our day. He travels around the world playing concertos, but he’s also a fantastic organizer of groups. The Colin Currie group plays “Drumming”. These are top players in the U.K. I heard them do it, and it just knocked my socks off. It’s great to hear players that you don’t know, who end up doing a performance that I wish we could’ve been able to do. It’s better than anything my ensemble ever did. It’s very gratifying to see another generation of younger players come along, who get the music, and play it. Not just play the notes, but really play the music. So I am feeling very fortunate, and I’m very thankful for that.

JM: Is it correct that I’m reaching you at your home in New York?

SR: Yes, we live about fifty miles north of New York City. We left the city in 2006. I was in New York for thirty years with earplugs in my ears, and I finally was able to relieve myself of that burden. I’m looking at grass and plants and birds and trees, and not garbage trucks and cement.

Penelope Houston fronted the San Francisco punk band Avengers, whose “Pink Album”, consisting of recordings made in 1977-8 but not released until 1983, is often hailed as one of the best punk rock albums of all time. Avengers opened for the Sex Pistols at their final show. Houston re-emerged years later as a folk singer-songwriter, still retaining much of her punk attitude. Houston just released a new solo album called On Market Street, and a new Avengers compilation is coming out soon.

This interview was conducted by email, with answers received on 4/1/12. (Photo: Ethan Hill)

Jeff Moehlis: I’ve been enjoying listening to your new album On Market Street, which had a long gestation. How did it come together?

Penelope Houston: I put it off and put it off and finally cleared a space in my crazy/busy schedule in the summer break from school (going to SF State for a BS in Painting/Printmaking) and booked the time at Fantasy with my favorite musicians.

JM: I particularly like the title track. Could you give your reflections on that song?

PH: The idea was taken from a poem I wrote a few years ago called “X-mas Lists” about Central Market Street and the meeting of consumer-dazed shoppers and a homeless penitent on a rainy December day. I work at the Main Library in the Civic Center and see a lot of heartbreakingly needy people.

JM: “On Market Street” has a mellotron backing. Where does one find a mellotron these days?

PH: At the amazing Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. My co-producer Jeffrey Wood added the Mellotron track.

JM: What is the songwriting process typically like for you, or is there a typical?

PH: Usually I come up with lyrics, then melody, then chord progressions.

JM: How has this process evolved for you?

PH: With the Avengers songs were written the “hard” way: band members came to rehearsal with a chord progression and some riffs and I would muck about trying to make up a melody with lyrics springing from my head… eventually. (once wrote the final lyrics on the bus on the way to the studio!)

JM: Do you have any thoughts on having a bigger following in Germany than in the U.S.?

PH: Better-educated populace? haha

JM: Some of the tracks on your first solo album were produced by Snakefinger. What was he like, and what did he bring to the music?

PH: Philip Lithman was a funny and sweet man. He had a huge knowledge of different kinds of music including sea shanties — and an appreciation for more complex lyrics. This went well with my career-long inclination for simple folk-ish melodies and complex darker lyrics.

JM: The new Avengers compilation is coming out soon, which sounds great and gives a more complete picture of the band than has ever been available. Could you give a quick overview of what people can look forward to?

PH: The LP is the original 14 tracks on the Pink Album, the CD set has those 14 on one disc and then an additional 17 bonus tracks on disc two including a cool earlier version of “White Nigger,” and the White Noise EP versions of “The American in Me” and “Uh-Oh.” There are a total of 27 different songs, some live but most from studio or rehearsal recordings.

JM: How would you describe The Avengers’ place in the history of punk, in San Francisco, in California, or in general?

PH: We were in the first wave of SF/Cali bands in 1977 and it’s said we’ve influenced many that followed from punk rockers to Riot Grrls like Kathleen Hanna to Pearl Jam. The interest in the band seems to grow even 30+ years after our break-up.

JM: The Avengers famously opened for the Sex Pistols’ final performance, and by many accounts put on a better show. Any reflections on that evening?

PH: We had only been together for 6 months at that point and perhaps had more to prove than the Pistols. When listening to the audio or watching the video of our set, I can hear the tremble in my voice give way to righteous confidence over the 35 minutes we played.

JM: A famous question from that night: Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

PH: Many people claim that evening as a turning point in their lives, so I guess it’s relative.

JM: I’m happy to see that The Avengers are doing a short West Coast tour in May, including playing in Los Angeles on May 26th. What can we look forward to at these shows?

PH: Greg Ingraham and I (along with Joel Reader and Luis Illades: the rhythm section we’ve toured with for over 7 years) will play most of the Pink album and other favorites like “Teenage Rebel” and “Crazy Homicide”.

JM: You have worked with some notable punk musicians over the years: Steve Jones produced an Avengers EP, you worked with Howard Devoto, you wrote songs with Billy Joe Armstrong. What have these experiences been like?

PH: Most of those interactions were enjoyable but pretty brief and didn’t really impact my career too much. (I do like the song I wrote with Billy though… maybe should resurrect that for the live set)

JM: You must be quite busy with the new solo album, the Avengers compilation, and supporting tours. Anything else on the horizon?

PH: Yikes… I have to finish school and graduate at the end of this year!

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

PH: Keep your publishing and your masters as much as possible!

JM: Where are you responding from?

PH: Oakland CA

Jeff Moehlis: First of all, my huge condolences for your wife’s recent passing. It’s inspiring, and sadly not so common, to hear about someone in the music business being married for 30 years.

Bob Bert: Thank you, yes Linda and I were married in 1984, the same year as Kim [Gordon] and Thurston [Moore], and Lee [Renaldo] and his first wife Amanda. The last few years have been really hard dealing with Linda’s declining health, but now I am ready to rock.

JM: I’ve really been enjoying the new Chrome Cranks album. What brought the band back together after such a long break?

BB: When the band ended in the late 90′s, Peter [Aaron] moved upstate and I didn’t speak to him for 12 years or so. Jerry Teel and I along with Jack Martin, Kid Congo Powers, and Barry London formed the Knoxville Girls who recorded 2 albums for In The Red Records and did some touring here and in Europe. In early 2009, I got a email from the Chrome Cranks biggest fan Skeleton Boy about The Chrome Cranks double CD on Atavistic called Diabolical Boogie (singles, demos & Rarities: 1992 B.C.- 1998 A.D.) which I knew nothing about. I decided to track down Peter Aaron, make amends about differences we had in the past and get some copies of Diabolical Boogie.

Instead of being pissed off that something I play on was released without my knowledge, I was happy that all those recordings were documented including 4 or 5 new songs that were recorded right before we fell apart. We all started communicating through the internet and decided to get back together and play a few shows. In 2009 we got together and it felt better and was more fun than the first time around. We played NYC, Brooklyn, and a big festival in Lyon, France. In 2010, we regrouped again, played NYC and Brooklyn again, whipped together this batch of tunes and recorded the Ain’t No Lies In Blood album.

JM: How would you compare the new album to the previous Chrome Cranks albums?

BB: No comparison, this one blows away all the others in spades. This is the Chrome Cranks album I always wanted to make and hear.

JM: In addition to the smoking originals, the new album has some great covers. How were these chosen?

BB: They were all chosen by Peter Aaron. “Lover of The Bayou” was the only one I was familiar with and always dug.

JM: Are there any plans to tour in support of the new album?

BB: We all live in different states and have different lives. We hope to play some shows sometime this year. As far as touring for long periods of time like we did in the 90′s, probably not. We are trying to be wiser this time around.

JM: If it’s OK, I have some questions about previous bands you were in, starting with Sonic Youth. How did you get that gig?

BB: I bought Sonic Youth’s self titled first EP right when it came out and loved it. I went to see them play a few times with their first drummer Richard Edson. A few months later I saw a flyer in a downtown record store saying Sonic Youth needs a drummer so I took it off the wall and called them.

JM: You were the drummer for the album Bad Moon Rising, which is often regarded as one of Sonic Youth’s best. What was the band trying to achieve with this album, and were you successful?

BB: Sonic Youth didn’t make music at that point trying to achieve anything but doing what we did. When the songs were completed we linked them together to form one long composition and performed them live the same way. It took the band a long time to get someone to put it out. I think that the fact that you are asking me about it 27 years later and say it is regarded as one of their best that we were successful.

JM: You were part of (at least) two big Sonic Youth tours – the Savage Blunder tour in the US, and a tour of Europe. What was it like touring in those days?

BB: The Savage Blunder Tour was the very first tour of both Swans and Sonic Youth in 1983. 10 people on the floor of a van with a U-Haul, heading into the South. I was the only one at the time who didn’t smoke cigarettes so it was like traveling in a cloud. Both bands just had their first EPs out at the time and no one knew who these freaks from NYC were in their nice little towns and we blew whoever was there heads off. I have lots of photos from this tour which I will include in my book that I will start working on soon.

I toured Europe with SY 3 times. The first one- We played this Speed Trials fest at a gallery in NYC on a bill with The Fall and the very young hardcore band Beastie Boys. The next day Lee & Thurston left to tour Europe with Glenn Branca while setting up the first Euro SY tour. I flew over there on my Birthday June 11 in 83, traveled 24 hours to get right on a stage in Lausanne, Switzerland. When we finished the set, a riot broke out with small fires, it was nuts and things got crazier. We did that first tour carrying 13 beat up guitars and traveled with Euro passes. Sonic Youth definitely paved the way for indie US bands touring Europe.

JM: Are you still in touch with any members of Sonic Youth?

BB: Yes, all of them, in fact I play Congas on a few tracks of Lee’s solo LP which is released today. I’ll probably see him tonight.

JM: How did being in Pussy Galore compare with being in Sonic Youth?

BB: Apples and oranges. When I hooked up with the Pussy kids, I was 10 years older than them and coming from totally different influences, but it all worked out and I’m very proud of my work with both bands.

JM: Neil Hagerty told me that Pussy Galore’s recording of the Exile on Main Street album was a response to Sonic Youth talking about covering The White Album, which never happened. Was that idea floating around while
you were in Sonic Youth?

BB: Yes, they were talking about it and I remember one SY rehearsal where we got through “Back In The USSR” but that was it. When I first joined Pussy Galore, Jon mentioned the idea to me and I thought it was brilliant. This was my first recording experience with Pussy Galore, Neil had just arrived in NYC and we whipped it out in a few days recording on to a beat up 8 track cassette player. We ran off 500 cassettes and when Jon was bringing them up to Caroline to distribute, we got signed.

JM: How do you view the legacy of Pussy Galore?

BB: As the coolest most rocking band on the planet.

JM: The Pussy Galore reunion show in December seemed to take everyone by surprise. Any chance of this being more than a one-off?

BB: You never know. Right Now!, Sugarshit Sharp and Dial M for Motherfucker are currently being re-issued on vinyl and internet.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

BB: Keep your day job and be original. Don’t be a dick.

JM: What are your plans, musical or otherwise, for the near future?

BB: Writing and putting together my photos for a book, rocking with the Chrome Cranks and working with my idol and good friend Lydia Lunch later in the year. Living life to it’s fullest.

JM: Where are you responding from?

BB: My home in Hoboken, New Jersey, home of Frank Sinatra and Steve Shelley.

The Chrome Cranks (L to R) Jerry Teel, Bob Bert, Peter Aaron, William G. Weber

Kim Manning is an electrifying, red-hot performer who has been singing vocals with George Clinton and Parliament / Funkadelic / The P-Funk All Stars for ten years. She has also worked with artists including The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, and Sly Stone, and was “Peaches” on the first season of the reality TV show Flavor of Love. Manning just released a new album called Good People. She answered the following questions by email, with answers received on 3/12/12.

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at the upcoming George Clinton / Parliament / Funkadelic concert in Ventura?

Kim Manning: If you’ve never seen George then you should come, period. He’s a legend, you can only get this funk from one place and it’s here. It’s almost church; you’ll change when the groove hits you. Now, if you are already a funkateer you will be delighted in all the old Funkadelic material G has put into the set recently.

JM: I understand that you will also be the opening act for the show. What can we look forward to for that?

KM: Yep, it’s gonna be a Funky good time. I’ll be doing it as my CD Release party for my new album Good People. I’m going to have my boys Groovesession back me up and the dance troupe Diatomaceous Love will be dancing and doing aerial. It’ll be a mini rock opera, an excerpt from the full musical that I wrote called “The Recycled” that same cast will be performing in the summer.

JM: How did you get the gig touring with George Clinton?

KM: Nearly a decade ago, I met a girl who knew him, I went to the show in San Francisco at the Warfield and then down to LA for the House of Blues. George brought me on stage to dance and “baptized” me in a grand bow center stage. Later that day, Shock G, from the Digital Underground, had this jam session, I was to naïve to be intimidated so I just went and sang my ill heart out. My mom called a few days later and said “Kim, some guy named George Clinton called, I don’t know, but he seems really serious, he wants you to go to the studio”, and the rest is history.

JM: Could you describe the George Clinton that you know?

KM: G, as we call him, is amazing. I’ve never seen him mad, he’s always good with his word, in 10 years I have never had a single problem with him. He is good people! I feel like as long as you are always acting in the higher self then everything is gravy with him. Being in a 36 person band is weird but I always knew G had my back and wanted me there – so there I have stayed.

JM: What is your favorite Funkadelic / Parliament album?

KM: My favorite P-Funk album is Standing on the Verge of Getting It On.

My Favorite P-Funk song is “Clones of Dr. Funkenstein”.

JM: I saw you perform with George Clinton in 2008, and things seemed a bit chaotic onstage, but somehow it all worked. What is it like performing with such a big band?

KM: George loves Chaos, he says that when things are moving smoothly he will do something to purposely mess it up, keep it interesting. It keeps you in the flow, you can’t go into cruise control, you never really know what song he’s doing next, he might start a new song on top of another song, you better hope its one of the 300+ songs of his that you know and better be ready to find the harmonies in whatever key he’s singing it in, then you got to look around and see what other singers are on stage and make sure that you cover all the parts for those that are missing. It’s a vibe, a groove; it’s real music, real time!

JM: At the show that I saw, Garry Shider was still alive. What did he bring to the band, and how has it been adjusting to his absence?

KM: Wow, Uncle Garry, we miss him so much. Garry was the vocal director, George’s best friend; he was like the heart of the band. He’s a father to me, he and G fathered in the funk for me. How do you replace that, you can’t. We all sing his parts, but you can’t replace him, ever. It helps to have Garrett, his son, out playing with us. It’s funny because ever since Garry passed I hear him in my head, saying his famous “Garry’isms”, still bossing me around, so in spirit he lives on through us – the next generation of funk. Did you know that aboriginal nation in Australia sent a letter for Garry’s funeral; they said the world had lost a bright star!

JM: One might imagine that the tour bus is pretty wild and crazy. Any good stories that you’re willing to share from your time in the band?

KM: Boy oh Boy, I’m thinking about writing a book of my life and times in P-Funk, but seriously, it’s very arduous, most people don’t realize the party is on the stage, the rest of the time we are traveling and surviving. We are a family, a family that plays music and survives on the mothership.

JM: I read that you recently sang with Sly Stone. How did that come about, and what was that experience like?

KM: Well, Sly had started coming out on tour with us a couple years back. I’ll never forget the first time he started to sing “if you want me to stay” I remember he sounded exactly like the record – blew me away, I was standing there living in this famous record, singing along even – cause it was my job even – crazy. During that time I had just finished recording “I am Good People” which has a very Sly feel and George was listening to it and Sly was in the room, I was sweating bullets, what was he going to think, and then he started singing along, made up his own riff to it, whew – approval!

JM: Could you reflect on your experience on the TV show Flavor of Love?

KM: I loved being on reality TV, I went in and was just myself, it might not have been the best move for ratings, but people all over the world saw me do Kundalini Yoga, eat vegetarian, and being nice to everyone, so I feel I did my job. I made great friends in that cast too.

JM: What are your plans, musical or otherwise, for the near future?

KM: Well, I just raised $5000 with Kickstarter to release my album, Good People. Ventura will be my CD Release. It’s Funk, Soul and Rock and Roll and features tons of members of P-Funk, and I had my hero, Victor de Lorenzo of the Violent Femmes help with the production. When I’m not on tour with P-Funk, I will be on the Kim Manning & Groovesession tour supporting Good People while at the same time prepping the Dinner theater Rock Opera show via Skype in LA, and preparing to release my third album, called “Space Queen”, it’s a Pop-funk record. Whew, and my dad thinks I’m lazy.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

KM: Okay, if you really feel the calling, and you have a gift, then you don’t really have a choice do you, you have to share your gift. If it’s your destiny, you will be miserable doing anything else so surrender to it and practice, a lot, now, before you’re on tour 350 days a year. But you really have to assess if it’s your ego that wants it, like could you be poor and happy and working for 10 years away from your loved ones, playing bar after coffee shop to 50 people at a time, if so then it’s for you. Otherwise, if you want to be a musician, and you don’t pass those tests, you better have lots and lots of money to make yourself a star like Taylor Swift or Paris Hilton did. “Paris is a Porn Star” is one of my songs from “Space Queen”! She understands the power of doing what it takes to be a star, and she’s hot!

Robben Ford has been playing guitar professionally for over four decades, and was ranked one of the Greatest 100 Guitarists of the 20th Century by Musician magazine. He has released multiple solo albums, helped launch the jazz fusion band Yellowjackets, and has worked with artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Jimmy Witherspoon to Kiss to George Harrison to Miles Davis.

This phone interview took place on 2/15/12, and was the basis of a preview article for the Robben Ford and the Yellowjackets concert at the Lobero Theatre on 2/17/12.

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at your upcoming concert with the Yellowjackets at the Lobero Theatre?

Robben Ford: I was with the Yellowjackets many years ago, so there’s a lot of history there. But we play together rarely anymore. In various situations I might go in and record for them, or one of them for me. Jimmy and I play together sometimes. My point being, when we do get together, it’s always a lot of fun, for lack of a better word. It’s like seeing friends you haven’t seen in a long time, getting together with people that you really like. So there’s a lot of joy in it really.

JM: Can you tell me about the current Yellowjackets line-up?

RF:: The band is actually going through some changes right now. Jimmy Haslip, the bassist, and Russell Ferrante, the keyboard player, are the remaining members from the original band.

JM: Bob Mintzer will be on sax, also?

RF: Bob will not be there. He had a prior commitment that he couldn’t change.

JM: And then Will Kennedy on drums.

RF: Yeah.

JM: As you said, you have a lot of history with these guys, going back to your solo album The Inside Story and then the first two Yellowjackets albums. Could you give a quick reflection on that early work as part of your development as a musician?

RF: It was one of those groups – originally it was Ricky Lawson on drums, Jimmy, Russ, and me – when we started playing together, when we finally got that group of four, it took a minute, you know, for all of us to come together. Basically, conceptually, it started with Russell and me. Once that group of four came together, all of us had the same feeling that this was something that was definitely meant to be. I mean, we didn’t talk about it.

It doesn’t happen that often in anyone’s musical life that they really find a group of people that just completely seem to be on the same wavelength. They want to make the same music in the same way. It’s just very rare that that happens. You’re lucky if it happens three or four times in your lifetime. One of the reasons why the group Yellowjackets has stayed together for so long is because they just like playing together, you know? [laughs] And once you lose that, you’re like, wow, will that ever happen again? You don’t know. That’s another reason why it’s such a great pleasure to get together and play with these guys. Because that never seems to go away, that musical connection just never seems to go away.

JM: Do you plan to perform any of those early songs from those first few albums?

RF: Not from my record. I’m not sure – we might be doing something from the first Yellowjackets record. But, you know, we don’t really think that way. We’re not nostalgic in that way. It’s just what happens when we play together is what we like. It could be anything [laughs].

JM: You played on one song, “Magnolia”, on their latest album. How did that come about?

RF: We always kind of think of each other. Something comes up and you think, “Oh man, Russell would be perfect for this.” I do that. He’s on several of my records. I brought him in because he’s the guy I wanted. I think, as well as that being one of the reasons they called me, we had been talking about doing something together, touring. And so this is an opportunity to reconnect. They brought me in for the song, and at the same time we were already talking about doing some shows together at some point this year. It hasn’t quite happened yet, except for our concert here at the Lobero, but we all have that intention.

JM: So it may happen, but no announcement yet.

RF: Yeah, but it probably will.

JM: You’ve worked with a number of amazing musicians over the years. First, I’m curious, what was it like working with Joni Mitchell?

RF: As far as I’m concerned, she’s the greatest musical artist of the 20th century. When I was invited to join the L.A. Express and tour with her, I knew very little about her. Even the group L.A. Express, I didn’t know who those people were. So it was kind of out of the blue that that came to me. I was playing blues guitar with Jimmy Witherspoon at that time. So, in a way, I almost didn’t fit. But they were all very kind to me [laughs], and kind of nurtured me along. And I found myself in the best musical situation that I could’ve been in, really, to open my mind to more music than I had really paid much attention to. I was very into blues and jazz, more into jazz. Joni Mitchell – I thought of it as folk music. But certainly, way beyond folk music. As I say, she became, in my opinion, the greatest musical artist of the 20th century. So it was an incredible opportunity to be able to do that. You know, I was 22 years old, and suddenly I was playing with top-notch musicians with this incredible, beautiful artist. It was just awesome, really.

JM: Could you comment on her guitar style? I know she uses all these different tunings. I find it to be unique – it’s not just strumming the standard chords.

RF: For sure. She’s a great musician, and that’s not necessarily the case with singer-songwriters, that they’re necessarily great musicians. She has a huge mind, so she approaches the guitar as an artist, not as a guitarist. Her technique is minimalist. She plays for the most part with one finger [laughs]. You know, she just lays one finger on the fretboard and there’s a chord. And she moves it around the guitar. She does use her other fingers as well, but they’re very basic finger positions for guitar. But the tunings create this really different atmosphere, and again that’s the musician in her. That she hears music in this way, and can actually produce music in this way – it’s completely unique. She’s a completely unique artist. There’s no one like her.

JM: Around that time, you toured with George Harrison.

RF: Kind of in the middle. Yeah, first Joni, then George, then back with Joni again.

JM: Could you describe the George Harrison that you knew? What was he like at that time?

RF: Hard to talk about publicly.

JM: OK, whatever you’re comfortable with.

RF: I say that only because there was a tremendous amount of drugs around. And drugs don’t do anyone any good [laughs]. But, as a person, he was very kind to me. He, too. I always use the word “kind” because these people were older and more sophisticated than me. I was just really a bumpkin from a little Northern California town, kind of thrust into the world. So the whole thing was a bit overwhelming for me. In any case, George was great. I stayed at his house for days on end, twice, because I was in England with Joni, and sat in the ballroom of his estate in Henley-on-Thames, and listened to Ravi Shankar and the Indian Orchestra rehearse everyday. I’d sit on a huge pillow drinking tea, listening to them rehearse the band for the tour. So that was pretty rare. He gave me a guitar at the end of the tour as kind of a parting gift. He had it made for me.

I ran into him at the Grammys, years later. I was up for a Grammy for something, and he was there with The Traveling Wilburys. They were all at the Warner Brothers party, and I was on Warner Brothers at the time. So he was over there kind of in a receiving line. People were just coming up and saying hello, and I walked up, said hello to him, and he said, “Oh Robben, how are you?” And he said, “I think of you.” It was sweet, you know? That was the last time I saw him. Again, he was good to me, and obviously a good person.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the film [Martin Scorsese's Living In The Material World]? There’s footage of part of the tour that we were on.

He was a very special human. He really was. There was even more to George than anyone knew, as far as how expansive his mind was.

JM: Another of the giants that you played with was Miles Davis. How did you get that gig, and what did you learn from playing with Miles?

RF: Miles was making the record Tutu, and it was being produced by Tommy Lipuma. This was Miles’ first record with Warner Brothers after he left Columbia after all those years. Tommy Lipuma signed and produced his first record. They were making the record, and Mike Stern left Miles’ band, so Miles asked Tommy if he knew any guitar players. And Tommy has signed and produced the Yellowjackets – that’s where I met Tommy, when he signed the Yellowjackets to Warner Brothers.

So he recommended me and played him some recordings, and Miles decided he liked what he heard, and he called me and asked me to join the band. Interestingly, Jimmy Haslip was sort of in the loop there, because Tommy called Jimmy Haslip asking for my phone number. Jimmy said, “You gotta let me call Robben.” He wanted to be the one to tell me that Miles Davis was looking for me. So he did, and gave me Tommy Lipuma’s number. I called Tommy, and Tommy said, “You wanna do it?” I said, “Yeah, man!” He said, “OK, I think Miles is at the studio. I’m gonna call him, and I’ll have him call you.” And I said, “Cool!”

For three days, every time the phone rang I’m thinking it’s gonna be Miles Davis, and it was not. But finally, indeed it was. He did call three days later, and just said, “You wanna play with me?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “OK, here’s Jim.” And he gave me to his tour manager, and ten days later I was on a flight to Washington D.C. to play my first show with Miles, which was a co-bill with B.B. King. So that was the beginning of it. I was actually living in New York at the time. But I had an apartment in L.A., with my wife. We kind of had two small apartments in New York and L.A., going back and forth. The second show was in New York City, about four blocks from where I lived. I walked over to the theater. That was also with B.B. King.

So I was with Miles for about six months, five and a half months, something like that. I left because I was already signed to Warner Brothers, and I had my own record to do. And the situation with Miles also was not so cool. He was great, but everything around him was sort of chaotic, and kind of strange. It wasn’t really comfortable. With a record to do, I split. After I played my last show with him, and went back to say goodbye, he said to me, “If you ever want to come back, just come back.” Completely open door policy. That was just an amazing thing to hear from probably the most influential musician in my life, really. I still probably listen to more Miles Davis than I do any other particular artist.

So anyway, what that gave me was a sense of confidence. No matter what the situation, I felt like I always had something to offer. I could go into any other musical situation, and I would have something to offer. And if it fit, it they liked it, great. If they didn’t, that’s OK, too. But it didn’t affect me. I felt good about myself as a musician, because he approved of me as a musician. That was a turning point for me, really, just in terms of my sense of confidence and ability to move throughout the rest of my musical career freely, without really worrying about it.

JM: Did Miles give you any kind of instruction, to play this or play that?

RF: He would give you some sort of instruction, and you didn’t even know what he was talking about. He would say things, and I’d be like, I think I know what you mean. And he didn’t care if you got it or not. Very strange, unusual person. But there were a few things that I took with me. Whether or not that is what he wanted when he said it to me, because again I was never sure, they were things that really enriched me. You know, devices, musical devices, little rhythmic things or harmonic things that I picked up while I was with him, that have stuck with me.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

RF: If it was a guitar player, I would tell them to learn chords, and chord voicings. And learn how to play songs. A lot of musicians, and particularly jazz musicians, they want to learn how to solo. How to play a lot of notes. What will always make that an easier road is if you understand harmony, if you understand chords, and how to use chords. If you know chords, you can play songs. If you can play songs, you’re making music. You’re not asking yourself to come up with something out of thin air. That’s a big problem for musicians, too. It’s like they just don’t know what to do. They don’t where to begin, they don’t know where to go. Again, if you know how to play chords on your instrument, and you learn some songs so that you can use these chords, you’re making music right there. And that can be done in a matter of, if not weeks, months. You can be making music. So that would be my advice.

JM: Would you like to set the record straight on anything?

RF: No.

JM: What are your plans, musical or otherwise, for the near future?

RF: I am recording for a Dutch label called Mascot Records. This is a new thing. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I really didn’t think I would ever sign with a record company again, because the record industry is in great distress. Because of the internet, things have changed so much. So I really have found record companies to be more frustrating than good. But these guys seem wonderful. So I’m recording for them now.

Also, Renegade Creation, which is a band that Jimmy Haslip and I have together, is just finishing a record that will be out in the summer. We’re going to be touring in Europe in the summer with that band.

I’m going to Japan in about ten days for, coincidentally, a Miles Davis tribute band. That’s just for a week – I’ll be there from about February 26 until March 2nd or 3rd, I think, and then come home.

After the Renegade Creation tour in the summer, I’ve got about a week’s worth of dates in August with the Ford Blues Band. That’s my older brother and myself. It’s his band, and I’m a featured artist with the group.

There’s also a guitar camp that I’m doing for a week in August. I think it’s National Guitar Workshop.

And I will be touring with my own band, starting in the fall, with my new release. Those are the main things.

JM: Sounds busy.

RF: Yeah. Fortunately I’ve had the last couple of months off. I really tried hard not to work, and it’s a really good time, December and January, to not work, to kind of back off for a while. So I had a couple of months to prepare myself for the future. I’ll be recording April and May, doing these recordings for Mascot. So right now I’m basically writing and conceptualizing the record. March, April, May will really be about writing and recording for Mascot.

JM: I read that you have an album with Michael McDonald either in the works, or it’s done by now. What is the status of that?

RF:: Mike and I have been writing and recording for about two years now [laughs]. I’ll be real happy when some of that comes out, whenever he’s ready.

JM: He’s playing at the Lobero in a few weeks, another benefit.

RF: Yeah, he’s very generous with his time. That’s a great thing, but he’s always so busy, it’s hard for him to really focus and really get any one thing done. But yeah, we have a lot of music recorded, and basically, when he’s ready it will come out, I assume.

JM: Where are you calling from?

RF: I’m at home in Ojai.

Larkin Grimm is a well-traveled, eclectic singer-songwriter in the “freak folk” genre. The Swans’ Michael Gira has described her as “the sound of the eternal mother and the wrath of all women”, and also said “her voice is like the passionate cry of a beast heard echoing across the mountains just after a tremendous thunder storm, when the air is alive with electricity.” Grimm’s fourth album Soul Retrieval, which was recorded with the help of famed T. Rex and David Bowie record producer Tony Visconti, will be released in February 2012.

This interview was done for a preview article for her 1/27/12 concert in Isla Vista, and was conducted by email, with answers received on 1/24/12.

Jeff Moehlis: What can we look forward to at your upcoming concert at Biko Garage?

Larkin Grimm: I will be playing solo electric 12-string Stratocaster and singing my songs.

JM: How would you compare the experiences of performing live and recording in the studio?

LG: To me, live performance is all about energy, and recording is more of a fine art. They are very different, and I love them both. I think my live performances are usually better than my recordings, which is frustrating. I’ve been trying to bridge that divide for a while. For this new album, we recorded the band all together at the same time, trying to achieve that live feel. The song “The Road is Paved with Leaves” comes closest to replicating a live sound.

JM: Your soon-to-be-released album Soul Retrieval was recorded with help from Tony Visconti. How did this come about, and what did he bring to your music?

LG: I recorded a song called “She Was Born to Be My Unicorn,” and Tony Visconti is the guy who produced the original track, so somebody who knew him heard my cover and forwarded it to him, and he was just so surprised that anyone still listens to Tyrannosaurs Rex. He was like, “Who is this person?” He lived in the West Village and I lived in the East Village, so we met through a friend, through a photographer who knew us both, and it was basically her idea that we work together musically. I don’t think I would have ever had the nerve to ask him. We ended up producing the record, and he played some shows in my band.

It was so awesome to have this production genius standing behind my work and legitimizing my vision in a way. It helped my confidence. I absolutely totally admire Mr. Visconti. He is amazing.

JM: Do you feel any special kinship with any other Tony Visconti-affiliated artists, say the Tyrannosaurus Rex-era Marc Bolan?

LG: I recorded a cover of “She Was Born To Be My Unicorn”. I love those albums! They contain such sincere experimentation.

JM: Can you explain where the phrase “Soul Retrieval” comes from?

LG: A shamanic healing ceremony. I had this experience studying with a guy, his name is John Perkins. He’s the author of this book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which ended up being a New York Times best-seller. But he was a Wall Street guy, who went down to Ecuador and got really, really sick. A shaman there saved his life. As a result, the shaman said, “Now I own you. [Laughs] Now that I’ve saved your life, you’re my apprentice. I’m going to train you to be a shaman.”

So I met this guy, who’s now a white shaman, who was going around doing these shamanic ceremonies with CEOs of companies, trying to prepare the world for 2012. And 2012 is supposed to be this time when the heart and the mind, or logic and institution come into balance. Some people call it the masculine energies and feminine energies. And part of the thing to get people to achieve this balance is you do these ceremonies called “soul retrievals.” It’s a ceremony where you search for pieces of your soul that have been lost, and you try and make yourself stronger and better and more uniquely you.

JM: How would you characterize your time playing with the Dirty Projectors?

LG: Oppressive.

JM: Your 2008 album Parplar was co-produced by Michael Gira and released on his label. What was it like working with him?

LG: Totally magical and wonderful. I love that guy. We parted ways for good reasons but it was an experience that changed my life for the better. Mr. Gira is a very inspiring man. He is also a truly good, kindhearted person. Not everybody realizes that about him because his music is so intense. I think I could work in the studio with that guy forever and be happy. But our lives outside the studio really clash.

JM: How do you think your upbringing in the hippie spiritual cult/commune called The Holy Order of MANS has affected your outlook on the world?

LG: Enlightened by the age of 5, a spiritual outsider, nothing left to do but long endarkening experiments with human life force.

JM: Do you have any formal musical training?

LG: Not in the classical sense, but my whole family plays Appalachian folk music. Blood harmonies.

JM: Could you give a quick rundown on the different instruments that you play, and their relative merits?

LG: Lap dulcimer – mesmerizing drones and wonderfully limited modal scales. Only four strings to deal with. Simplicity is beautiful.

Banjo – ethereal, starry, otherworldly and dark. The fifth string provides the rhythm. It is really a drum with strings.

Classical guitar – 6 nylon and silver strings, so buttery smooth, rich and warm.

Electric 12-string – psychedelic and impossible to tune, always surprising me with its chiming charms.

Harp – it is nearly impossible to play an ugly sound on a well-tuned harp. And playing it is s primal and simple.

JM: I read that you are a descendant of the creators of the Grimm Fairy Tales. Do you have a favorite Grimm Fairy Tale, and why that one?

LG: I am a super great grand-niece, I think. The Grimms have a very strong intellectual tradition. There are not very many of us around. My favorite story is probably Thumbelina or The White Snake.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

LG: Don’t do it. It is a hard life. We do it because we aren’t suited for anything else. If you can hold onto another job, stick with that! But if you get fired from every job you have ever had and you are a high-strung orchid living on the edge of sanity, GO FOR IT! and try to be kind to the show promoters. They tend to be generous, sensitive, kind people and they deserve respect for what they do.

JM: Where are you responding from?

LG: An ice covered house in Olympia, Washington with no heat or electricity, in the middle of an ice storm.