The Tapes Archive

Marc Allan: How do you think you’re gonna have to change your music to

make it to commercial stage?

Bill Bruford:  Well, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not getting played on any commercial stations yet. Am I getting played on any commercial stations?

Marc Allan: No your not.

Bill Bruford: Not on any commercial station?

Marc Allan: Not that I know of.

Bill Bruford: No, well, the reason for that largely is ’cause there’s no singing on the record.

Marc Allan: And are you gonna add vocals eventually?

Bill Bruford: I dunno, that rather depends whether we can think about anything to sing about which is quite probable Dave and I both love it ’cause there’s no inbuilt prejudice against vocals either it’s just that this particular album didn’t have any vocals.

Marc Allan: Can you sing?

Bill Bruford: No, I can’t, I’m not a recorded singer so I don’t know how my recording voice is like.

Marc Allan: You’ve been in some big bands some of the most popular bands, especially “Yes” and on such a huge level where you were playing any major halls up across the country for the years and now here you are and I guess you’re staying at less of the hotels than perhaps you were .

Bill Bruford: Well yes that not the only problem.

Marc Allan: Well, I was gonna ask you how do you feel about that? You’ve obviously made a name for yourself.

Bill Bruford: The whole advantage of making a name for yourself is that we get to come to America with slightly more esoteric music and the whole thing is a viable proposition which is really good it doesn’t bother me at all. Listen, I’m one of these be stable kind of characters who doesn’t mind I like to be able to play in Madison Square Garden and not that I ever had actually a hazing to it and clubs. Although there’s another whole level of problems that occur past two or 3000 seats right now we can just play the music and know it it’d be fairly intimate.

Marc Allan: What kind of problems did you have that are erased now?

Bill Bruford: A group tend to fly on automatic pilot very easily at that level. It’s incredibly intimate and it’s amazingly easy to play in front of 17,000 black pallet faces. I know you don’t feel any pressure at all because the sound system is so enormous and the whole shemozzle was such an isolated and insulated kind of affair. It’s almost no reaction, no visible reaction from anybody to you’re playing like in a club you can see people reacting in those places none of that happens at all. It’s an extraordinary kind of ritual, it’s an amazing feeling of power but a little empty.

Marc Allan: How did you like that Genesis tour?

Bill Bruford: It was a strategic bit of work for me really it got me to America to keep the interest up in anything I might want to do in the future maybe this. I’ve had this plan for a long time and America I’d forgotten how to plan those big places and I’d forgotten all about America generally and America had forgotten all about me and on y’all want us to make a record feels good to me subsequently, it feels good to me and so you need some sort of strategic planning for things like that and Genesis was very suitable at the time. It got me playing it, got my face around it wasn’t the best music in the world but then it wasn’t gonna be paid for by me. It was a five month jail, which was fine I could’ve stayed there probably, but I had other plans. So I think we used each other in a way I think they got a good drummer and I got some return for it because I was able to come here.

Marc Allan: What attracted you to America. You seem to have here quite often.

Bill Bruford: If you don’t go to America it’s very hard to exist, to buy five synthesizers, to buy Yamaha pianos, to buy the other tools. Europe is a very strong place too and we could pass in America all together probably gonna work here. But in fact, we’ve more less decided to work in America in favor of Europe.

Marc Allan: Any particular reason for that?

Bill Bruford: No except that it’s the healthiest record market in the world. Therefore for any given output in a musical direction you’re likely to gain, it will speak to the most people, you’ll disseminate music quickest most efficiently probably followed by Canada and Japan.

Marc Allan: I wasn’t sure if you would really be a person who would like to talk to as many people as you can.

Bill Bruford: I like to talk, I assume not talk actually I am doing this as a promotion exercise there’s no doubt about it I need you and I would like you to write about what it is that we’re doing ’cause I’m interested in it and really want to get it across but it would be lovely one day if it didn’t have to say anything and people just kind of associated with the kind of music Dave and I would rather play and there was no constant need to keep talking about it. Do you see, we have to try and compete with Americans and Americans usually tour for longer than we do we come from England. We’re touring for six weeks, which to us seems like forever but an American band will tour for six months without thinking about it and so in order to compete at all to be in the same race at all, we must make use you know, every minute that we’re here.

Marc Allan: And this reason ’cause ?

Bill Bruford: Yes, we’re coming in at the small level at the low level where you start with with clubs. We’re not at the bottom rung I hasten to add I mean, the clubs are sold out and that’s great. So we’re not actually at the starting gate and I like to do club it is the American club system is excellent good sound systems by and large and sometimes you can do it for the radio at the same time and so forth and it’s a good system and there’s no other way for us to do it really.

Marc Allan: And your next level of this how are you gonna go about it?

Bill Bruford: And the next sort of rung up.

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Bill Bruford: Well in America you have to be seen to keep climbing ranks don’t you? Or else they think you’re losing a successful entire country and I have a feeling we’ll be able to come back shortly and hopefully play in some colleges and a small fierceness that would be good for another year or two something like that and then we’ll worry about what happens from then on.

Marc Allan: What would you want to tell people about your music?

Bill Bruford: It’s not deathly serious. Well, not about recruitment Guggenheim museum It’s not, it’s a feeling with instrumental music. Is it, this must be either jazz or classical or something like a work of art of some nature and therefore very difficult music and I don’t see that at all. We have some quite interesting bits of music but they’re not frightening or inaccessible particularly and I think when we play in such a way as to invite people to listen to it and invite them in rather than repel them and oppress them and defy them not to like us which is not achieved but I don’t like it a lot. I don’t like it at all so the recession also affected music and music is become more standardized record companies are achieving quicker turnaround on their investment. They need to, everybody has to survive in America and it really it’s, there’s an air of fear around actually, especially from record companies personnel.

Marc Allan: Now they’re starting to cut from the bottom.

Bill Bruford: That’s right.

Marc Allan: Groups too.

Bill Bruford: Groups too, there is definitely a climate of where’s the sword gonna fall next. It’s partly due to the good auspices of our management company that we’re allowed to sort of keep going I think ’cause, well, there’s potential there let me not be too modest.

Marc Allan: Can you talk about the groups that you played in and how you feel about the people you first been?

Bill Bruford: “Savoy Brown“, “Savoy Brown” was my first band and that was pretty awful and lasted for three days and that was no good. I came across my first guitar hero, Kim Simmonds and the hopeless kind of individuals guitar heroes hopeless. Then I looked around a bit and kind of cross “Yes” and that was a good band for one. Great, excellent but I mean, might still be though I don’t know very well now and I’d had enough of that off the five or six albums simply because I didn’t wanna spend all that time doing the sixth album close to agent the last one to take an agent and a lot of sweat and arguing and blood and trouble generally and I was wondering to plank in Crimson anyway which is how come I got to be Robert Fripp we’d supported each other in America and Robert said, I think you’re about ready to play in King Crimson now and his usual kind of superior way and so I said, well, good that sounds great and off we went and we did five American tours.

Marc Allan: So the last show they ever played was a matter of fact in Central Park.

Bill Bruford: Oh, you were there?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Bill Bruford: Yeah, that was an emotional night, that was.

Marc Allan: In fact when I talked to him about that he said trip said that that was the closest that that band had come to being great since the first band like he said that the last “King Crimson” and the first “King Crimson” were the best.

Bill Bruford: It was an extremely good evening and you might like to know one further anecdote about that story, which is that Robert tried his absolute damnedest to cancel our gig. He invented a buzz on the sound system which was almost inaudible in the kind of buzz that you hear out of any sound system and say it was impossible for us to play and he was cajoled and bullied and threatened into the 7,000 people there and he was just about dragged on stage to do that gig and now he will no doubt hail it as being one of the strongest gigs the band ever did. He is a man of contradiction on many levels and not the least of which is that so that’s another other anecdote about that gig but it was a great gig. We were really powerful I couldn’t believe it myself one of those great nights and you can’t believe that you’re as strong as you are I really enjoy that music.

Marc Allan: It’s funny though, ’cause I mean I thought it was great show except I think that possibly the band alienated some of the audience, I mean, you started with 21st Century Schizoid Man and a lot of the music was semi-experimental.

Bill Bruford: Extremely experimental, yes, that’s right. Well, we were working on the idea that you need a good tune to start the music, to say hello to the audience and something strongly note and you need to play hit the end, just so they sort of recognize you as being the same group again and in between you can do whatever you like which still pertains that still is possible because audiences tend to go away and you remember, they remember the vibe of course and you remembering new music in the last five or 10 minutes and they would judge the success of the concert easily. They remember very strongly, the way you exited the story of the “King Crimson” concert in those days was that they’d almost be leaving their seat all the way through except that something to tell them and that was a good band. But anyway, yeah, Robert decided he wanted to go off and stop being in rock and roll bands for a while and that left me to play with other people. So I only knew about eight people at that stage I played in rapid succession with Gong and Roy Harper and I did some sessions and then Genesis, a National Health. I came here and did a record with . I was trying to find out what to do really what it was that I wanted to do, you know, by being with other people and asking them what it is and watching them, how they went about things watching where keyboard players fingers went. So you could maybe write a tune one day, that kind of thing. But it was always seemed to me that running a band would be great. But if I could get a sense of direction that be worked out all right and here we are hence feels good to me and then it’s slight sidetrack through UK which was a group kind of designed around that time and it was convenient to me to sort of use it as promotion thing. But then again, it’s scuffled feels good to me which was kind of saddled with the UK project and then the non-success really of UK for me an hour. I mean, it was a successful record first one to say I had enormous budget, enormous promotional budget. I mean, it was a high priority thing I mean, the president record company was putting on that. I mean, people, you know, I can feel it a cooler draft now for us. Right, they’re gonna want the money back that’s for sure with four named musicians, but that’s a good way to do it. That’s all right I’m not begrudging that I mean, I opted for that and I knew it would be so.

Marc Allan: Perhaps your experience with somebody other than, I mean different levels of road shows make you a little bit more I don’t know. It would probably make me if I were in your position more skeptical of everything.

Bill Bruford: Really mistaken I’m not in any way poisoned kind of I’m not cynical a veteran in any way. I’ve got my justice deserts and more so I’ve been very lucky I mean, the first band I was in was in the second Memphis hit band, very lucky but I think you’ve also got to use the money creatively if you can, you know, and just try and do something with it ’cause in a way, yes, it’s success is helping us today. There’s this some money around that kind of thing see, partly because I used to play with a group and that’s if that’s what gets us to play at the paradise tonight, that’s fine whatever gets you there, right as long as you play and you play well.

Marc Allan: You think people come expecting you to play .

Bill Bruford: No, no.

Marc Allan: I’ve asked this two times.

Bill Bruford: No, no.

Marc Allan: Ages ago.

Bill Bruford: Ages and ages ago yeah. We don’t have any calls for, we have a couple of calls for Allan Holdsworth because there is a confusion as to whether Allan Holdsworth is on this tour or not which he’s not because Allan likes to play around with lots of other people and doesn’t like touring that much anyway.

Marc Allan: How do you see yourself now that you’ve gone through all these bands?

Bill Bruford: Oh as a beginner, as my plan is having fallen into two stages so far. I had one stage from when I was 18 to 29 by 11 year period of learning about things and watching other groups playing and now it feels incredibly like my first tour of America. Incredibly exciting and right at the beginning of something fresh, which for me is like a second and we’re in the second part of my musical career. Something like that, you know, very loosely speaking but now there’ll be just another whole layer of problems Principally how to ride that and music that’s number one, problem. Not that the music’s bad, but I mean one always wanted to learn more about how to write music. I’m really lucky, I think I’m fantastically lucky to have had a band that’s got some money, which is great.

Marc Allan: This sort of tactless question but I think people would be interested to know are you wealthy?

Bill Bruford: I’m I wealthy? By American standards no.

Marc Allan: What do you think for the UK album?

Bill Bruford: It’s played too fast. I used to like the only thing she needs at least I love doing that on stage. It’s really speed it up doing possibly on funky temper. I don’t know I can kind of see the motivation behind it and I don’t think it’s entirely laudable. I think they consume rather too much of the scarce resources of rock and roll around too much equipment, too much time rehearsing, too much time on everything. But having said that any jobs in particular he’s an extremely good musician and a very friendly person. You know who one day I’m sure if not in the next year will be a big star, good luck to them. It’s not the path I would have taken which is why I’m not taking it I prefer to do it more at this level start with and work out sort of thing.

Marc Allan: What are you listening to now?

Bill Bruford: It Is hard, you see, I mean, I could tell you the three records I was asked to play at WPIX last night in New York I can tell you that I’ll see concerts I went to three records Stand by Sly and the Family Stone. I was made to love her by Stevie Wonder and I want you back by Jackson Five last three concerts with key tickets arc which is 22 piece loosely described, variously described jazz orchestra in London. So Michael Tippett’s the English composers Opera called the Ice Break which had some fantastic modern music in it. Some really beautiful writing I just was astounded by and concept before that I can’t brightly remember. So I mean, you know, in factual terms those are what I’m listening to. I listened to the American radio to see if there’s any of your life there still which there’s a bit in places, but it’s so formatted by those little senses, those little Hitlers out there radio has an fantastic palette and I hate usually to come to a country and make pronouncements on it. But as a matter of interest from a musician’s point of view there’s probably too much music. The industry has created itself in years of glorious success and now it needs to eat it’s what is it? So it’s a, there’s a Greek classical.

Marc Allan: It’s Hydra in a way..

Bill Bruford: Is it a hydra or something like that. It’s beginning to sort of its own tail you know, it’s in sort of death roads for cuter kind of awful death roads you know and agree by brief it exists somewhere in this and we are interested in survival, not only of our own personal musical wishes but in surviving somehow in this rock machinery it’ll turn of course, you know in 1985 and probably be different and you can bet your sweet bippy, I’ll be around.

Marc Allan: I take it you don’t like Donna Summer or any, I don’t know it was always called R&B.

Bill Bruford: Exactly, it was always called R&B and had that dignity, you know.

Marc Allan: Maybe that’s what its missing.

Bill Bruford: You see the monster also seems to lower your dignity it lowers the dignity of people incredibly the monster devours humans as well, you know and it will remove your dignity if you’re not extremely careful and it usually comes through repetition. That’s the first sign of a constant need to formalize be the same as other people, play the same thing and repeat it.

Marc Allan: So EG records said to you Bill we wanna sell a million albums in the States and we want you to sacrifice a little bit and maybe make the top 40 tune.

Bill Bruford: No, I hasten to add each a much more subtle than that. They’re, less subtle which is why you have the go-between the musicians and poet or I mean, I was up in go in New York and if you spend more than five hours there I think you said this you just go crazy because you’re talking a different language really and there is a big gap and their businesses to sell it, which is fine and really it’s not my business it really is not, in many ways I shouldn’t even go there actually. I’m interested in learning all possible facets and pretending I’m not shocked but I am amazed that many times at the size of the monster, you know, the whatever we we’ll call it, the, you know, the hydra whatever it is a monster and I am, I pretend not to be shocked, but then I am amazed. There’s no use just shouting at the enemy shouting at the hydro calling it an enemy. I mean, that’ll get you nowhere fast because it would just recoil and it’s not interested in that kind of behavior and they’re not the enemy anyway, they exist. It’s a capitalist up and they exist but it helps if you have go between. So you can sort of translate between the two and some neg are in some way you go between us. I mean, I’m sure the conversations that go on about this band briefly between the head of EG records and the head of Polydor Records are probably which never get relayed to me would probably horrify me with the actual truth that was said and it’s about its potential and stuff but I’m cushion from that to a degree ’cause I’m fairly resilient, but I’m not so resilient that I couldn’t be heartbroken sometimes.

Marc Allan: Could there be a record company that existed on goodwill and maybe putting out slots, but they don’t think so?

Bill Bruford: Well, that’s why the independence of come up in England that they’re trying for that Virgin Records started out like that in England but backfired miserably Virgin Records as unfortunately the goodwill got lost or got backfired the ultimate truth is that you have to sell them everything and there are probably there are high up extremely intelligent people Jerry Jaffe, Dr. Jerry Jaffe is a doctor of micro chemistry and he’s an amazingly amazingly intelligent person and no fool but he’s not the President of the company and the America said that the President of the company he has a lot of, you know he basically says what’s happened.

Marc Allan: Okay, thank you.

Bill Bruford: Great.