INTERVIEW
Intervista a Bill Bruford
1 You mention discipline as an important part in a musician’s life. How did you obtain such “skill”? Any outside help?
I have a degree of self-discipline and self-determination, every inch of which was needed during my career. Outside help of course came from parents, teachers, school. Listening to good musicians you immediately know the hours of work necessary to play an instrument to a high standard.
2 Now that the record industry is in a downfall there’ll be - in your opinion - a resurgence of interest in content and quality?
I see no necessary connection between a declining record industry and a resurgence of interest in quality. The record industry may be in decline, but there is a greater consumption of music than ever. It’s now consumed in a fractured, incomplete way that older listeners find confusing and do not like. Kids play about 10 seconds of a record and ask you what you think – they are interested in texture, the fabric of sound, and the beat – they have less interest in the longer arc of the narrative. They have no patience for it. I don’t mind any of this, but it make it harder for the musician trained as an instrumentalist to produce a form of music satisfying to both himself and the modern teenager. My generation is still buying CDs with booklets in the old way, but I’m afraid we are a diminishing minority!
3 Do serious musicians of the younger generation have the sense of the discipline needed to make “a great record”?
If they are serious muiscians they will appreciate that discipline is required. Beyond that, imagination is needed for a great record. The possibility to imagine the future for your instrument, your ensemble, maybe even your genre of music. ‘Are you Experienced’, ‘A love Supreme’, ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, ‘Kind of Blue’ – the artists who made these were all playing the future. Making a great record now seems un-imaginable to me – I’ve heard too much – but the great news is that some young people will always be able to imagine possible futures. Somewhere right now someone is making the record the rest of us can only dream about.
4) From reading your book it’s clear that the prog rock music that helped shape your career is no longer your main passion, and you have felt this way for many years.
Why, especially now, do you think that prog rock is back on TV, reissues from the era sell well and Future Publishing in the UK have now launched a magazine called Progressive Rock?
Well, as you say I haven’t kept up, so I’m no authority on the current stae of progressive rock. For sure, in the UK, some of the people who liked that muisc in the 70s are now in positions of media power – they own radio stations, edit magazines and can dictate radio play-lists and commission TV programmes etc, so that in part determines the agenda. They haven’t found anything that appeals more to their tastes, so they support the old music. The musician’s job – what we are paid for – is to find the new music.
5) What went wrong with prog for you and what made you tire of it?
I don’t think prog went wrong for me – I just tired of seeing the same 4 people every day. I was young, and for 4 ½ years I’d only heard myself play in the one context of Yes. I was more interested in my drumming and musical skills than prog, and the way to progress is to hear yourself in other contexts. I dare say if I’d been in a band for 4 ½ years with Coltrane, Miles and Hendrix at that age, I’d still have left it. Young people do that sort of thing. I had tired of Yes, and felt I could do no more there. Being at the back of the band, all drummers see is a row of asses in front of them. I wanted to see a few different asses!
6) Can you describe in few, quick words you relations with big names of rock music?
Yes - My other first girlfriend. As such I shall always remember her.
King Crimson – The one I lusted after while I was in Yes. The place I did my growing up.
Gong - I didn’t get it. Tea-pots? I was doing a session job. I needed work.
National Health – Written instrumental rock music for two keyboards. I liked it.
U.K - A difficult balance, which, so long as we stayed on the high-wire, was bound to be at least interesting. After one album, we fell off the high-wire.
7) What was the main reason behind Earthworks and why did you stop?
Earthworks, born 1986, was based around the idea that the electronic drumset, recently able to play all manner of chordal , sampled , pitched or un-pitched rhythmic material, had come of age, and was a serious instrument that could be used seriously in jazz. The idea was that I would play much of the chordal material, and that I would find some young open minded players from the growing UK jazz scene, which was very hot at the time, and have them play single lines on top. I knew a brilliant local tenor player that I'd used on some demos, Ian Ballamy, and he introduced me to the astonishing Django Bates. I liked both individually, but better still they were very close as people, a musical double act, a real partnership. They were essentially the backbone of the first edition, and then we went on to a second, acoustic edition of the band.
Trying to do the harmonic stuff from pads was a self-inflicted punishment that drove me crazy. Wisely, no other drummers seemed keen to leap into that particular quicksand. Any musician worth his salt always wants to push these new instruments past their design capabilities, and the manufacturer always wants a high level endorser to get behind the instrument, in this case Simmons electronic drums, often before the equipment is really ready for the market. A recipe for disaster. I spent months with hexadecimal midi-code, trying to get reluctant instruments from several manufacturesrs to co-operate, and it was a heavy ride. But the results could be spectacular--"Industry" and "No Warning" from King Crimson, "Stromboli Kicks " from Earthworks' "Dig?", "Bridge of Inhibition" from "Earthworks", "All Heaven Broke Loose" from the CD of the same name. But in the fourteen or fifteen years I was actively on board, I suppose I gave rise to no more than a couple of dozen compositions which were absolutely a function of electronic percussion, and whose charm arose uniquely from that instrument. At about one a year, that’s not a great output, given the time it took. But I don't regret a minute of it, and it was driven by both the necessity and the desire to find interesting things to do on a drum kit.
Earthworks has stopped because I have retired from live performance. I’ve written a lot about this in my Autobiography, but basically 41 years of me is enough for anyone, and it is especially enough for me! Time to let others have a go. I have a new record coming out in September tho’ with the British composer Colin Riley.
8) Your interest in jazz goes a long way back. Does it retain the same sense of integrity as it did in the 40/50s? Or has the industry and egos stolen the show?
Jazz has not always had integrity, but it has always had plenty of egos, so not much change there. Before World War 2 jazz was popular music and popular music was jazz, and both met on the dance-floor. No one much talked about integrity. Plenty of people think separating jazz and dance was a big mistake, and consigned jazz to the ghetto, wherer it has been sulking ever since. I see it perhaps as the research and development area of popular music. What a jazz drummer does on Monday, a rock guy will do slower on Tuesday. Anyone interested in the cutting edge of drumming wil be listening to jazz , and that’s probably true of most instruments in popular culture with the possible exception of electric guitar. Jazz is alive and well, but it needs a new name.
9) You totally redefined the role of the modern drummer. After having done that so well do you think it’s time for new drummers to take it further?
Plenty of new drummers are doing wonderful things on drums. Gavin Harrison, Gary Husband, and Asaf Sirkis from the UK; Salvador Niebla from Spain, Rene Creemers, Wim de Vries from Holland, Marco Minneman from Germany; Americans Dan Weiss, Ari Hoenig, Keith Carlock, Mark Guiliana. All these people have their own touch, style, approach. The standard of drumming is so high and the developments so fast I can’t keep up. Lots of guys – Zach Danziger, JoJo Meyer - are seemlessly integrating electronics and acoustics so they can go instantly from what sounds like looped electronics to acoustic burn. Sometimes at the same time. Throw in metrical modulation, improvising with pulses, ethnic and world music influences and it’s a very exciting scene – almost too rich a feast.
10) You have been close to some great musicians, both well known and obscure. Who in particular did not get the recognition they deserved?
The recognition any one ‘deserves’ is a matter of opinion, not of fact. We get what we get. Some guys are good at self-promotion and marketing – like me. I’m doing this interview, aren’t I? Some guys can’t be bothered with all the screaming and shouting you have to do to get attention, but that doesn’t mean their music is any less valuable. Some have a great talent that seems to go not very far, some have a great talent that connects effortlessly. Some have no talent and go nowhere, some have no talent and go everywhere. Personally I place myself in the ‘modest-talent-long-way’ category. Musicians in general – and especially drummers - are respectful of other talented players, and if you contribute you will get respect among your peers. The greater difficulty is getting the public to hear what you do. That’s very difficult now that everyone can -and does- make a CD in his or her bedroom.
11) What is the most useless role in the musicians’ world you’d like to erase? And why?
I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the travel, but no one has invented a way of bringing the audience to us, so we’ll keep queueing for the airport bus.
12) What is the best advice you can give to younger generation of musicians ?
The music does not exist to serve you. You exist to serve the music.
13) How would you describe that 18 year old kid playing drums like he’s driven by the devil in Yes?
I was arrogant, more skilled than the average UK drummer – which isn’t saying much – and had no conception of self-doubt. Now I’m less arrogant, and have a very advanced relationship with self-doubt.
14) If you had a choice would you “ do it again the same way” or do not do it at all?
Absolutely - do it the same way again! There is no other way I know how to do it!
Ernesto De Pascale
