INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS CUTLER
As a musician, you are mainly known as a drummer. Did you start by the drums?
Chris CUTLER : I started playing banjo, then
guitar, then trumpet. After that, I took up drums. I didn't particularly
want to play the drums, I just wanted to be in a band. At the school I
was in, everybody played the guitar and nobody played the drums, so I
decided I would. I have to say I had no particular feeling for the
instrument and it wasn't until I'd been playing for a couple of years
that I began think about its extended possibilities.
Did some rock/jazz drummers had an influence on you?
CC: No, at least not at first. There was nobody
who made me want to be a drummer. But once I started playing there were
certainly some I wanted to copy - Tony MEEHAN -THE SHADOWS first drummer
- Kenny BUTTREY, Keith MOON, Mitch MITCHELL, John FRENCH, Robert
WYATT... The last was probably Christian VANDER in the early 70's. I
liked a lot of others, but these were the ones I think I most obviously
drew from.
The first group you have played in, was it a rock or a jazz group?
CC: The first band I was in played guitar
instrumentals and then whatever was in the hit-parade. After that I
joined a soul band for awhile, took up R&B, and went from there. So,
it was rock - though I did a couple of concerts with a free jazz group
in the mid '60's.
When you joined HENRY COW, the group was already formed?
CC: Yes. Henry Cow was formed at Cambridge University in 1968 by Tim and Fred. I joined in 1970.
How have you encountered HENRY COW?
CC: Roundabout 1966, I was in a band that become
so strange we stopped even trying to get concerts. No promoters thought
anyone would want to listen to us. So we just rehearsed. There was a lot
of improvising - noise not jazz - and a lot of experiments. We were
like, well, it's hard to say - somewhere between SOFT MACHINE and (Syd
Barrett's) PINK FLOYD, but of course we'd never heard of them and they
hadn't become known then. Once these bands started to appear in London,
we realised that they were doing the same sort of thing we were, so we
started looking for work again. And found it. When that group finished I
did all sorts of different things but didn't stay in any single group -
though I started The Ottawa Music Company with Dave Stewart; but that
was a special project, not a permanent band. I kept looking for
something interesting and put advertisements in the music papers, and in
the end, that was how I found HENRY COW: they were looking for a
drummer and they saw my advertisement in the Melody Maker.
Did HENRY COW had a clear idea of what they wanted to do at that time or were they just " playing as they feel it "?
CC: Certainly HENRY COW had been influenced by
Frank ZAPPA, John COLTRANE, SOFT MACHINE and so on by the time I came
in, but it was a very open period. We talked a lot about music, and what
we thought we should do. We knew we wanted to do composed music,
complicated music; that we wanted to draw on techniques from
contemporary music and that we also wanted to improvise - and we
definitely wanted to be a rock group. Most importantly, I think, what we
really wanted to do was to bring all these disparate elements together
in an intelligent and intuitive way. An affective, not an academic way.
A rock group with no rock influences at all?
CC: Well, rock influences at the heart of course,
but not so much on the surface. It meant we found ourselves pretty much
alone. Today the public that has heard of us seems treat us as if we
were part of the Canterbury Scene, but that's not really true. At least
not obviously. And we certainly didn't have anything to do with YES,
GENESIS, KING CRIMSON or any of those so-called 'progressive' bands.
Although KING CRIMSON did some improvised works.
CC: Yes, later. They came to that in the period
with Jamie MUIR. I remember we all listened to " Lark's Tongues in Aspic
" and found it OK - though we thought their claims about its
originality were rather pathetic. As to the rest, I have to say I didn't
like KING CRIMSON at all. I just didn't get it; I couldn't understand
it. It all seemed very bombastic to me, very simple-minded. But that's
just me. I don't expect anyone to agree.
I think it's true to say that
Henry Cow was always out on some fringe and more or less alone. The
people I personally felt close to then were groups like FAUST and MAGMA
who were both doing something original - and very personal. MAGMA
managed to bring something of STRAVINSKY, Carl ORFF, James BROWN and
John COLTRANE together into a new form. Not to mix them up but to fuse
them, together, a remarkable achievement. They remain a group that
divides listeners utterly. And which provokes enormous moral argument.
Faust invented a language that was between the best of Rock and the most
interesting of electronics and studio experiment. HENRY COW had never
toured with french groups like MAGMA?
CC: Yes, we did a number of concerts with MAGMA in
the 70's. The people who organised the first concerts for HENRY COW in
France were Giorgio GOMELSKY and Georges LETON, who were Magma's manager
and tour agents.
So, HENRY COW toured more in Europe rather than in the UK?
CC: Absolutely. We hardly ever played in England.
Firstly, there were no places to play and secondly, nobody was
interested. We played mostly in Italy, France, Scandinavia. Which
countries are open to new music and have the possibility to organise
concerts seems to go in cycles: In the beginning of the 70's, it was
Holland; in the middle of the 70's, France; in the late 70's - for us at
least, though not really for anyone else, Italy, and in the last
decade, Germany has been the easiest place to find a concert.
HENRY COW seemed to bring a new conception of the work in a band : compositions written by several musicians, not only by one...
CC: We worked in very different ways. Most things
were through-composed by somebody: Fred Tim, Lindsay or John. However,
once a composition had been given to the group it was effectively in the
public domain; once we started to rehearse it, everybody had a say and
could propose changes, criticise. It was a healthy process, I think. And
we improvised a lot - so things discovered in improvisation found their
way into compositions and things learned in the process of making
compositions work found their way into improvisation.
It's a kind of paradox : you were thinking intensely about what you were doing, but you improvised a lot, spontaneously.
CC: We took improvisation very seriously. We did a
whole tour in 1996 where we did nothing but improvise - which at that
time was a highly unusual thing for a " rock " group to do. But then we
were a pretty unusual group - organising our own concerts, running our
own management, being completely self-sufficient - with 3 men and 3
women in the band and a mixed gender crew (drivers, mixing engineers,
roadies).
It's very strange that a group could write complex compositions and also could do the weirdest improvisations.
CC: As I said, they fed and informed one another. We liked opposites.
Did all the other groups involved in the RIO structure do some improvising?
CC: Only SAMLA MAMMAS MANNA did that. But they did some of the best rock improvisations I've ever heard.
In which context did the "Rock in Opposition" structure grew up?
CC: The 70's was a period in which everything
seemed to be falling apart. Major record companies no longer controlled
the world of available music and independent productions were appearing
everywhere. Any kind of mainstream had vanished and split into separate
specialised factions. Punk set the fuse, and after the explosion the
'New-Wave' drifted down in fragments. Markets became more specialised -
and more closed. Meanwhile, HENRY COW had got to know many interesting
musicians in many other countries, mostly hardly known in their own
countries and totally unknown outside. We thought it would be a good
idea to bring some of them together - to show an interested public that
there were still innovative, experimental, things happening in electric
music. We had the power and the will to organise it, so we did.
What were the criteria for a group to integrate RIO?
CC: In the beginning, RIO was just those groups
that Henry Cow invited to the festival - because we thought they were
deserved a wider audience. There weren't any criteria then, because
there was no " RIO . RIO was constituted as an organisation after the
festival - to make things happen. Then there were discussions about how
to determine who might and who might not be invited - or apply - to
join. We decided Rock in Opposition, as such, lasted about a year as an
'official' organisation. There were 4 or 5 festivals, some tours,
another policy meeting in Switzerland and then it was finished. But
immediately reconstituted itself as a kind of public domain concept that
anybody could use. And of course all the participants carried on
co-operating with one another.
Did each band like the music of the other bands?
CC: Not necessarily, though I don't think anyone
disliked anyone else's music. STORMY SIX and UNIVERS ZERO had very
different perspectives, of course. But I think the diversity was good.
All the bands were serious - thinking about what they were doing,
working in a radical way. Co-operation was the important thing - and
creativity, not conformity.
Some of these groups have
reformed, like SAMLA MAMMAS MANNA, UNIVERS ZERO. Do you think these
groups have the same spirit as before?
CC: Well, the times have changed. It's been more
than twenty years. That's not a criticism. I loved the new Samlas
record. But because it's great in its own time, not in the rosy light of
the past. Heraclitus was right: you can't step into the same river
twice.
Do you think they are right to reform?
CC: It's not for me to say. I think it's fine when
people get together again to play - for their old public or a new
public. I wouldn't want to do that myself, however. 'Henry Cow', for
instance, would be too much of a burden, just the name has too much of
the past in it. Of course, I still work with the people I worked with in
that group and I would work on a project that all of those people were
in - if it were a new project, and if it wasn't called Henry Cow,
Do you have the impression that what you do now have always something in common with rock music?
CC: Sure. That's where I came from - and I
certainly don't feel as if I have left it behind. Even in the
improvisation side of my work. There are many kinds of improvising
language and I definitely refer to rock - in a way that, for instance,
improvisers who come from the world of jazz do not. A lot of improvisers
are still unhappy if you play a straight, simple, beat.
The fact that you often play with
the same people like Fred FRITH means that you have always fresh ideas
for improvising and experimentations.
CC: Yes. You know - people go away and do
different things. Then they come back together changed and regenerated.
It's productive.
So, improvised music can take new ways...
CC: Improvised music is a complicated and a
dangerous form. It can be wonderful and it can be a disaster. In fact,
if it can't be a disaster, it can't be a triumph either; that's my
approach. One has to decide if one is going to play the safe way or the
dangerous way. There are definitely two schools and I prefer to play
with other dangerous players. It's more interesting and the rewards are
greater.
Always in small units?
CC: Improvising in a duo is easier in a purely
practical sense. Costs are lower and the same money is divided by two
instead of, say, four. Sorry to be mercenary, but when it's the way you
earn a living - it matters. If there were more money for this music
there would be more interesting larger projects (it's why I did p53 -
there was a budget for it). But money isn't the whole story - of course!
Duos are especially stimulating and clear as a form. A duo is like a
conversation. And, like a conversation, the greater the number of
participants, the harder it is to retain coherence. With more than seven
people around a table, sub groups appear and overall coherence
disappears.
Is there an instrument you wouldn't like to play with? I mean, is there an instrument that doesn't fit with your drums?
CC: That's an interesting question. I don't
know... Maybe. It's hard to make a rule because I might be able to play
with one trombone player and not another. Nowadays, most people have
electrified, their instruments. That makes them different instruments.
It makes them all electric instruments, and that affects the question of
what is compatible with what. Loud and quiet source sounds cease to
matter when instruments are amplified, so almost anything is in theory
compatible with almost anything else.
Do you use samplers with your drums?
CC: No, I don't like samples. They're too predictable. But I do use electronics to modulate acoustically originated sounds.
Let's talk about "Le signe de Trois", that you have made at the Festival Sons d'Hiver in January 2000. Is it a new creation?
CC: It's a premiere. It was written as a radio
piece. Someone else had the idea to make it as theatre. What can I tell
you about it? It's a detective story, a theological caprice and an
argument with Jean BAUDRILLARD - all mixed together. At one level, it's a
detective story: there is a murder, investigations, some clues and the
obligatory denouement at the end. At another level, it is a light
theological joke, which relates obliquely to Alfred JARRY's "The Passion
considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race". Thirdly, there are comments on
BAUDRILLARD's 'Simulations'.
Is it a kind of essay expressed in a theatrical form?
CC: No. Maybe a Theatre of Ideas. But it's nothing
very serious in the end. It's an entertainment. A puzzle - I wrote it
in a rather complicated way, where different texts cut into one another.
It reads as a linear text and not as a compilation of cut-ups, but the
linearity is a product of different lines interleaved. It makes sense,
but it's very open to interpretation.
The "deal" that I make with the public, my promise
to them, is that nothing is meaningless, nothing is just there
"because". It's certainly more modern than postmodern in that there is a
centre of semantic gravity around which the whole text moves. There is
music and there are three actors who speak. Two actors have one
character each: a narrator, that's Marie GOYETTE, who also plays piano,
and the detective, Eric HOUZELOT All the other parts are played by
Christian GERMAIN. The director is PHILIPPE THOMINE. I wrote the texts
and Stevan TICKMAYER and I developed the music together.
Let's talk about the
actors/musicians in "Le signe de Trois". It's not the first time you
play with Marie GOYETTE or Stevan TICKMAYER?
CC: No, I've played with Marie since... 8 years. I
first worked with her when she was in one of Jon ROSE's 'shopping'
projects. Then I invited her to be part of 'p53', a group I organised
for the Frankfurt Jazz Festival some years ago. Stevan, I've known for
20 years. We've worked together with choreographer Josef NADJ, in
various improvising contexts and made several records, the latest being
the SCIENCE GROUP's 'a mere coincidence'. Eric, I've never worked with,
and I didn't know him.. Christian, I'd met but never worked with.
Did you write the texts especially for this play?
CC: I wrote the text in English. It was translated
and made into a radio piece Italy (with music by Tiziano Popoli) and
then in Germany (by composer Lutz GLANDIEN) where it was later re-mixed
in Dolby 5.1 surround sound to demonstrate that technology. Stevan also
had the English original and I think because Christian GERMAIN was
interested in it, they proposed we use them as the basis of a music
theatre piece.
Is it true that one of the texts is a sort of a refutation of Jean BAUDRILLARD?
CC: Well it's a bit more complicated than that.
One of the three subtitles is "Forget BAUDRILLARD", which is a kind of
tribute to BAUDRILLARD referring to "Forget FOUCAULT". It's not a
serious title, but I drew on some of Baudrillard's ideas, in a loose
way. Ideas, I have to say I'm not very satisfied with. I respect
Baudrillard for putting certain questions clearly - well - actually
putting certain questions very unclearly - "on the table", as we say in
English. Certainly such extreme expositions as his do generate argument
and discussion around important topics. I had them in mind when I was
working on this text and a mild critique became a part of the story -
but you can't take it all too seriously.
But it has been done very seriously !
CC: Everything should be done seriously.
Especially comedy. Laurel & Hardy were very serious about their
work. This doesn't mean it's not fun or that you can't understand it
without reading forty pages of exposition in "Les Cahiers du Cinema". A
film has a life of it's own. All artworks do. So throwing too much
theory at an art work can't do it any harm. At worst it might obscure
its best qualities temporarily, for certain viewers at least. At best it
might illuminate it - give it other lives.....unless we speak of very
modern art works which are made of theory and can therefore be destroyed
by it....
Does it mean that the artistic creation suffers from too much theory?
CC: No, but I do think that, to some extent, a lot
of contemporary art has been replaced by theory or has become theory,
and not for the better. Marcel DUCHAMP's urinal ('Fountain' 1917) was -
in a sense - a theoretical argument: you could certainly argue the case.
Whatever else - it was a theoretical act, and an important one -
raising essential and difficult questions. Nearly a hundred years later,
some artists seem to think it might still be meaningful to raise the
same questions, again and again, as if they hadn't been raised, more
intelligently and more accurately - and more wittily - eighty years
earlier. In fact they seem to have mistaken the question for an answer.
Do you think the situation is the same in music?
CC: Not really. It's also a question of money. A
lot of modern art sells, but there isn't very much modern music with the
same "cachet". Maybe some of the minimalists, like Philip GLASS are
seriously bankable in that way, but there are very few of them. At first
sight it's strange. After all, paintings exist in space, and they
endure - you can go to see them anytime you want, they wait for you, but
music exists in time and there is only one chance in one place to see
it performed. After that it's gone forever. You'd think that would make
music more precious, but it doesn't - you will see many people at an
exhibition of new art but very few at a new music concert. But then,
gallery art is big business and music is not. There's no equivalent in
music to the massive art market. There is no object to buy and sell.
Nothing to own, keep and re-sell later.
Especially improvised music, which happens at one place and one time...
CC: Exactly. Improvised music is produced against
the solidification of music in objects. Any written piece can be said to
have, in principal, a more or less ideal realisation - which given time
and money can be frozen into a CD. This can make difficulties for the
future of the work since there is always the danger that listeners will
compare the work they hear performed with the CD version. It is
automatic to think "Is it better or worse?" The CD somehow kills the
work as a lived experience. And how will it find another life?
Improvised music is a way to avoid this problem.
It's a way to deal with recording technology by making every piece of
music different, every piece unique, so that there is nothing to compare
it to. Improvised music doesn't have to struggle with acoustics,
execution, comparison with an ideal - there is no ideal. In an
improvised situation, most of the factors that affect performance can be
simply accepted - they are given, they are an aspect of the material
you use to make sound. If you're improvising, the acoustic in the
performing space is just part of the material you can use; but a written
piece may need less reverberation than the room has, or more; a score
may call for frequencies and amplitudes that create bad reverberations
or distortions in a particular space, while an improvisation simply
doesn't have such problems. Once you know that certain notes and levels
will produce reverberations and distortions, you can avoid them, or
control them, or use them as wanted rather than unwanted material.
Don't you think there is a paradox
in the fact that there are CDs relative to improvised music events,
short-lived meetings, like this CD that contains excerpts of concerts
you have made with Thomas DI MUZIO?
CC: Yes, it's a kind of paradox, but you will
notice that although I have released 5 or 6 improvised CDs, they are all
taken from concerts. None was made in a studio. There is a reason for
that: I have trouble understanding the act of improvising in a studio. I
don't know why I'm doing it or who I might doing it for. There's nobody
there - just microphones. But I can understand improvising in public.
You have one hour, you start now, you can't stop, you can't change
anything, you're doing it for these people here, now: that makes sense
to me.
In a studio then, I'm happy to improvise, but only
if afterwards it is to be used as base material for further
compositional work (the CD with Rene Lussier and Jean Derome was made
like that), I think of a studio as a composing instrument and not a
means of documentation, except at a very basic level. It's for composing
- composing with performances. So, if I release improvisations, they
are always taken from concerts, and they are chosen as recordings, not
as documents. I mean that when you lose the information that comes from
four of your senses - all of which are integral to the experience of a
concert - you are left with only one: the sound. If you are going to
release a concert recording on a CD, the main consideration has to be,
not 'is a good record of the gig' but 'does it work as a piece of music
coming out of loudspeakers'? Many improvisations that worked well in
their concert setting sound bad on tape - where so much has been lost.
And, on the contrary, improvisations that didn't work well in a concert
may sound fantastic on a tape.
That said, many people want to have on CD a document of a concert.
CC: Yes and I have no objection to that. It's
perfectly legitimate to use a medium in any way you want. I only
explained why I personally do what I do. The urge to document is a
different aesthetic activity from producing a work in itself. And to be
honest, you can't document a concert in a meaningful way - when you have
nothing but sound, 4/5 of the concert is lost. A concert is not a sonic
event, it's total event.
It's the same with a picture of a painting in a
book: it's not much like the painting; the size is different, the
colours are different, it's 2 dimensional, you're not in a gallery, etc.
You have recently made a CD with
Stevan TICKMAYER. It's called "A mere coincidence" by THE SCIENCE GROUP.
It seems to be totally composed music. The booklet says that the lyrics
were written over a long period. Is it a project you have thought of
many years ago?
CC: I started writing texts about science subjects
long ago, just putting ideas together slowly in order eventually to
build up a body of texts substantial enough to use as the basis for a
record. When there were enough, I offered them to Stevan Tickmayer. I
work on various things all the time: slowly accumulating several
projects at once.
You didn't write texts in thinking of a particular album to make?
CC: Sometimes, I did. For ART BEARS, I wrote all
the texts directly for the records. I have just written a body of texts
for Fred FRITH about Kosovo. Sometimes I write texts to order when
asked. But, if I don't have a special project or a deadline, I just let
it take as long as it takes. Give me a dead line, and I'll finish it,
otherwise...
For "A mere coincidence", did you write the lyrics in knowing that Stevan would make the music?
CC: No, at the beginning, I had no idea who I would work with eventually.
How Stevan came to join the project?
CC: Well... you know, I've known him for 20 years.
He's a trained composer, has a very a contemporary way of thinking,
he's an accomplished improviser and has a good feeling for sampling and
electronics. I wanted to see how a song record would work with him.
Bob DRAKE is also credited as a major member of the band?
CC: Yes. When we started to record, Bob, in his
position as engineer, immediately took a major part in the production.
He effectively produced the record and mixed it - as well of course as
playing on it. It was a full time work and the result is as much his as
it is Stevan's or mine. The others just came and did their parts
(brilliantly!) in some days, Bob, Stevan and I were the permanent
producers. So, for better or worse it was our joint project.
These 3 guests reminds me the
"Domestic Stories" album you've made with Lutz GLANDIEN. There were also
the same kind of guests : a female singer, a guitarist and a horn
player. Is it just a "mere coincidence"?
CC: I asked Fred because I like to work with him.
I've worked with Fred on a lot of records since the ART BEARS and he is
always a good partner. As to the female singers, well I like to work
with female voices and I don't know that many male singers I could
imagine writing for. Christoph ANDERS was one - and I have thought of
doing something with Peter Blegvad, but meanwhile I like women's voices.
Horns, they have a special sonority, they are acoustic, vocal - I would
be happy using brass too, and I probably will one of these days.
Claudio is a classical player and Alfred HARTH is a jazz player, so they
are not quite the same. But the instrumentation is fairly static,
that's right. Maybe I'll change it for the next one...
When you write texts, you usually
use them for albums with composed music, except when you have played
with CASSIBER, where your texts were used for improvised pieces. It's
not so common...
CC: For Christoph (ANDERS) it was a very good way
to work. It was interesting to produce texts that had to be performed in
that way.
Do you write differently when you know that your texts will be used for improvised pieces rather than for composed pieces?
CC: Yes. Wherever possible I write with my ear. I
write for specific people's voices. I used to write for Dagmar's voice,
knowing how she would sing, how she would pronounce words. Same with
Christoph.
The structure of the songs and
pieces on "A mere coincidence" reminds me ART BEARS and NEWS FROM BABEL,
eventually HENRY COW, but in smaller format. They are very tight, short
but also very dense, complicated. Should we say that the music on this
album is close to the "progressive style"?
CC: Er... I'm not sure I like "progressive" very
much anymore but... I know what you mean. It shares certain elements
with what people think of as progressive music, but I don't hear it that
way. This record could not conceivably have been made in the 1970's.
So, you haven't completely abandoned the "song" format?
CC: No, no. THE SCIENCE GROUP is for me a direct
descendent of ART BEARS. And I still work regularly with Peter BLEGVAD
and John GREAVES - these are more traditional, straightforward songs -
and with David THOMAS. The (ec)NUDES was a band formed specifically to
play songs too. And of course I have performed with HAIL, THE KALAHARI
SURFERS, THE RESIDENTS, all song groups..
By the time of RIO, you have started running your own record company, Recommended Records. What was the idea behind it?
CC: Well, it was very much related to RIO. There
was a lot of music around that nobody had heard about - the main
distribution networks and big record companies weren't interested in it,
the music press wouldn't write about it. Somebody had to do something,
so I did. It's that simple, really.
You are the only one to choose the groups to produce?
CC: Oh yes. It's not at all democratic.
How many records do you put out per year?
CC: About 10/12 a year.
Does it still have the same spirit that at the beginning?
CC: Well... what was experimental in the 70's
would most likely be rather boringly old fashioned now. And though I
sometimes do release old material, it's mostly new things that I release
on the label. Things which are experimental today, not that look back
to yesterday.
Some years ago, you have published a book, "File under popular". What were the subjects of it? Was it just about music?
CC: Yes, it contains my ideas about music, as they
were eighteen years ago. There are some fairly general articles about
what 'popular music' is, there are my thoughts about recording
technology and about the impact of media on cultural forms. And there
are more specific articles about SUN RA and THE RESIDENTS, for instance,
which I use as case-studies for a more general theory about the course
music has taken in the C20.
Have you think about realising a new edition, by adding new articles?
CC: Another book, yes. I have a lot of unpublished
material now. Nearly enough for another book. But I want to write some
other articles before I do that. There are a couple of topics I'd like
to include.
Does the "ReR Quarterly" magazine still exists?
CC: Yes, it exists...but comes out only every two
or three years now. I have a lot of trouble collecting articles for it.
Also, I don't have as much time as I used to, and I'm afraid it doesn't
really pay for itself in sales, so... It's a problem. But I haven't
abandoned it.