- Jumping forward to the present day, you obviously wrote some new bits
for the new performance. When did that whole process start? How much
did you want to tinker with the original piece, particularly with the
problems...
Let's take the two things separately. I wasn't wanting to tinker with
it at all. But, I knew, and I've always said, that you've got this
crazy situation where you've got the phonetics, the choir phonetics in
the funky section, you've got them one beat off what I intended, and it
was always an ambition to correct that - somehow. So the best solution
came, given to me on a plate, by the Chelsea Festival. So we did it, as
I explained on one of the nights, we did it the right way wrong, and
the wrong way right! [Laughs] And that works fine. It's quite a fruity,
juicy section, and it stands to be done twice, and then you've got the
offset of one beat, with the accompaniment still 4/4 in the group.
So that was that. So I would always want that to be done like that
now. And then, at one point, the millionaire chap said "Well, that
would make a great encore, wouldn't it, to do the funky section the
other way around?" And I said "I don't like that. I'd rather build it
into the main performance, because otherwise we might get into a bit of
a mess, and it's a bit low-key for an encore".
So I said "no" to that one. There were various permutations; I could
have said "no, we'll only do it the way that I wrote it", but then I
thought no, because it works fine the wrong way, the way it is on the
record. So, we'll do it both ways.
And then the cello was only ever the same melody twice, times two,
so that's four times you've heard the melody. Now, four times is
actually too many anyway, but that's how it went on the record. So,
that's more of a pop attitude - if you've got a good melody, repeat it,
don't throw it away!
But my perverse nature says, that's more than plenty, and if we're
going to get a superb cellist like Caroline to come along and do that,
she's got to have a bit more to do. So I wrote an extra chorus after
the two choruses, of the same melody, and the instruction in the music
and it's my feeling, is that this is the cellist saying "I've had quite
enough of this melody. I'm going off on a flight of fantasy now, and
here I go!" And off it went. And then the second time, "I'm going to do it even more!" But there are tiny elements of that original tune in those other [parts]...
- And I think that worked incredibly well, and the reaction of people who heard that, it really "stuck a chord" with them...
Ye gods! Stuck a chord! [Laughs]
- But it really worked well, doing that flight of fantasy...
Ah good! Yeah... Get flying girl! I said to her "It's about flying, about going off the ground". And off she went...
- And she did a great job.
Yeah. And some of it, because of the nature of the chord sequence
itself, some of it does sound a bit like tiny bits of the Elgar Cello
Concerto, but the connection there is also because Caroline Dale played
the sound of Jacqueline du Pré in the film [Hilary and Jackie]! And
Jacqueline du Pré WAS Elgar's cello concerto: IT became HER, and SHE
became IT!
There's all sorts of connections here, but only because of the
Chelsea Festival. When I lived in the basement in Elgin Crescent, where
I made my first album, I used to get the bus - because I didn't drive -
from the Royal College of Art, to the flat. And it was the 52 bus.
Frankie was at the Royal College of Art the first time (because she
went back a second time much later on), and you could get a very good
lunch for 4/6 down there, so I would go down there sometimes, and for
various reasons because of maybe being at the BBC or some other place,
I would have a black banjo case. The London double-decker buses then
had the long seat, and the open door.
And sometimes I'd see this girl, sitting across from me on the long
seat, with a cello and long fair hair, and it WAS Jacqueline du Pré.
So, there is the ultimate contrast of the self-taught new style (I
won't say pioneering) musician with a banjo, which represents "the
American coloured community" - the banjo represents to me their
attitude of shouting and laughing at life, at the same time - sitting
opposite the ultimate classical European tradition.
With Caroline Dale, who had been [Jacqueline du Pré] it was almost
like it was a repeat, and she was then sitting in the bus opposite. So
the idea of doing the banjo and cello thing came, and seemed...
- ...perfect?
Yes. In fact, it might NOT have been a banjo and cello, it might
have been a piano and cello, because I offered her accompaniment on
either the piano or the Eastern banjo for that piece. I said "the
accompaniment is optional, I can do it on either - it'd be different,
but the same". And she IMMEDIATELY went for the Eastern banjo. So I
said "fine", because that's me, leaving things to chance - throw the
dice, which one shall we have?
- So how did rehearsals go? What was the process of getting all
these different individuals all worked out? Obviously, you mentioned
that the brass was "interesting" because of the different personnel at
various times. Initially, did you do the different performers
separately?
Yes. The Italians knew the piece anyway; they were beavering away on
their own down there in Florence. Occasionally, I'd get emails like:
"What's this bit? What's that? Can we get around this?" And I would
say, "I'm putting in an extra chorus" or whatever. They were warned of
that.
The brass. [Laughs] Nothing went smoothly with the brass. First of
all, the first rehearsal - having engaged them through the Royal
College of Music, they were top end students, and they were coordinated
by the External Events Coordinator girl. And the first rehearsal,
which... it might have been March... February/March, sometime, Mark,
the conductor, couldn't make it, and she had took ages to get ten
players together because of "diaries, commitments". So when it came to
the date, Mark couldn't make it so I said, "Right, I'll go and say
hello to them, and get a feel for what's going on". I had just sort of
started... I was about a minute into writing Brascourse - it's only
got one "S" as it's ALMOST a complete course for brass. And that's the
truth of it, guv! [Laughs]
So I took along about eight bars to test, because I hadn't written
much more than that. I scribbled out some bits, and I had some of the
original Atom Heart Mother score, just to get the feel of it. It turned
out that they were expecting a full three-hour rehearsal, and I was
expecting just an hour and a half to get the feel of them, and to say
"Right, well that's great", and I can go back and get on with writing
and finish the thing. Right from the start, there was
misinterpretation, of communication between me and the Coordinator. So
that was somewhat wasted because I'd run out of things to do after
about an hour.
Because I was not going to be conductor - I mean I couldn't: I could
have learned, by the time I'd gone through all the other things, but I
think I had quite enough to do, and that might have just broken me! I'd
have cracked up! [Laughs]
Anyway, I reported back to Mark, I said "They're fine, they can play
anything. Just like the old joke: they'll play the fly shit on the
paper"! [Laughs]
"Fantastic", I said, "they're really a good group. The use of mutes:
fine, they've got all their mutes, they know what they're doing, etc.,
etc.".
But then it took bloody ages to organise the next rehearsal and that
was not possible in the big hall that we had the first one in. [The
next one] was in a sweaty little room, and it was a hot day. It was
getting up to the beginning of May, and then I'm noticing that... I
mean it was a wonderful rehearsal, because Mark was there and we were
getting them all sorted, but we could soon see that there were a lot of
problems with Brascourse because I didn't hold back to do with ranges
and timings and stuff: it was proving quite difficult. AND there were
several players different. Actually the first rehearsal was even worse,
because TWO players weren't there at ALL - we'd only got eight brass
out of the ten!
So we're off to a bad start. But as time went on, it got tighter and tighter.
Caroline, I couldn't get hold of her at all for ages. She was all
over the place, and when she phoned up, she was always in a bad
reception area. [Laughs] So that was all kind of hit and miss, but when
I went around there, eventually, it was a doddle, she just sat there
and said "How do you want it?" She was, to use the old phrase, "a
consummate professional". She's sticking the score up with a bit of
sticky tape, nothing's clean and tidy, but what comes out the cello -
superb.
And the choir, because it was Mark's choir, and they rehearsed every
Tuesday in a church in Pimlico, that was a doddle. I remember doing the
Blackbird piece - I was very nearly not going to do that at all because
things were getting so tight with all the other scoring problems. I was
nearly going to give up, and Frankie said "No, you've got to do it" and
Mark said "Listen, you've still got time to do that". Anyway, the choir
piece was finished about 12 days before the gig. Because of modern
technology, I was able to email that through to him on the Tuesday
morning, he was able to print it out and get it to his own rehearsal
with them, and when I got there in the evening, they were DOING it!
[Laughs] And I was astonished: "Christ almighty, oh this is wonderful!"
And they got it. We just needed to fine tune it...
- But it was a fantastic performance, wasn't it? Spine tingling.
Good, good, yeah... Well, it's partly that strange combination of
allowing an improviser that doesn't know it is - the blackbird - to do
it's thing, and it's a random thing, not placed, just the way it comes
out. That worked fine. But that was tight, doing that. But it showed
that I can do it when push comes to shove. I thought "I don't know if I
can stand the pressure any more, fuck it - I'm going home, or I'm just
going to stay under the duvet". [Laughs]
That was a great joy, right from the start, to walk into that church
and they'd been at it for about quarter of an hour already, and I
thought "What's that they're doing?" and then I realised it's what I'd
written!
It's hairy, the whole thing. The elements were all rehearsed,
separately, and then on the Thursday before the gig, there was a full
day of EVERYBODY, but not everyone at the same time! Like, it was
discovered that Caroline had not got (or she'd buried it under her
washing or something) the schedule. So she didn't actually know that
she had to be there from mid-afternoon to the evening. So, she could
only come in the afternoon. So there was a tiny bit of overlap with
David; David came about 2 or 3pm. So there was a bit of an overlap
there. The group were there all the time, all set up.
The brass didn't come until 6pm, their call was from 6-9pm. And the
choir, of course being an amateur choir they could not turn up until
7pm. But Mark worked out how to get this and that rehearsed, and then
he'd still got some time to do the brass piece on its own.
It was only then [on the Thursday] that I knew that we'd have a
show! [Laughs] Because there were so many disparate elements, and it
was the first time they'd come together properly.
This all goes back to last July, that's now a year ago, when I said
to the Festival, that this project needed a full time coordinator. "Oh
no", they said, "I'm not sure we can afford that, with everything else
we're shoving out. We'll manage between us". This included my friend,
Michael Dempsey, who was the original bass player for The Cure - that's
his claim to fame, he now does music for TV commercials, manages
things, etc..
I said that [we needed the full time coordinator] very clearly, and
it very nearly broke us, in terms of the amount of effort. Because
Michael was in America, around two months before the gig, writing new
stuff for an album that was coming out there, and of course that was
when a lot of the shit started flying about here.
- So you could have done with him here.
Absolutely. That's the problem with having people standing in part
time. But anyway, you wanted to know the background, you've certainly
got it now! [Laughs]
- So did David do his own rehearsing beforehand?
Yes. He had put the original recording into his Pro Tools system,
and when I went there and told him I was putting in an extra chorus,
he'd just copy and paste it. He was accurate, too, with music editing.
I said "You know what you're doing, boy, looks good to me!" and he
stuck them in. So he was rehearsing with his system.
But then that's what you'd expect. You'd expect him to turn up
[ready]. I mean, I had to do the same. I had to go through all the
chords and the piano bits, and get my bits right, as well. Less, but
effective, I think, in the couple of places where you had to stick a
bit of piano in. So that's what you do. But it's a bit like in
companies. No-one actually takes full responsibility because they know
someone else is in charge, and it is only when you do things yourself,
that you know what it is to be READY and responsible for your actions.
Because in a big company of any sort, you can always blame someone
else, or hide behind a pillar or a desk, or whatever.
So you're out there, and you've got to perform. I mean, the brass
players, they rose to the occasion. In fact, when I get my energy fully
back and think about some new ideas, I'd work with the tuba player. He
wants to come down and "mess about", and he was fantastic; he was very
good technically, but he was also very good doing different effects,
such as growling down the tuba, effects that expand the palate of the
instrument.
- Which must be very interesting for someone who has
potentially been "properly" trained, to be told "forget all the rules,
and try this this way..."
Yes. Mind you, since the beginning of the 20th century, composers have
really started to push the boundaries, even composers who are now dead
have done some incredible writing, or provocative writing, or it's
explorative, for different instruments. Particularly, I'd mention
Luciano Berio, the Italian composer; his pieces for solo instruments,
and one of them's solo trombone, where the trombone player at times -
apart from the fantastic virtuoso parts, he has to hum and play and
hums other notes through the instrument while blowing it, to get two
notes. And when you get two notes, you get a third note, because you
get an interference with harmonics. Things like that.
So it does happen. Of course, one of the whole points of jazz music,
or the Afro-American expression through jazz music, was to make
effects, to change things, to use the instrument to make horse
whinnies, cat-calls, growling and stuff, which is the very opposite of
what would be desired in the European classical tradition.
The interview concludes with Ron talking about David's
involvement, the footage that was shot over the course of a year
running up to the concerts, and what the future holds... click here to
go to part three!
The pictures shown here are all copyright of,
and provided courtesy of, Joe Geesin, and cannot be used elsewhere
without his permission.
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