This interview with Richard Sinclair was conducted by phone on September 10th 1994 by Ken Egbert and published in his magazine "Tone Clusters" (issues 55 and 56). Thanks to Ken for allowing Calyx to reproduce it online.
Well, I got up late the other night, a sort of sleepless night, and ... in England there's four sorts of television channels, and one of them's on all the time and into the early hours of the morning, of course I flipped it on and it went through all the current videos, you know, Peter Gabriel and Sting, and one or two other things that l'd not really sort of noticed too much. I'd heard the music but not really caught their videos to see what they've been doing to make themselves successful. Sting, and the Police in their day as well, really did spend a lot of money directing attention to individuals, didn't they, dancing around candles and things like that? I quite liked them, even if I have heard them over and over on the media system. It's not one of those things l'd actally buy, but on TV that's certainly one thing I can put up with. I liked Andy Summers' guitar parts with the Police as well. Other thing was, I haven't really ever sat down and listened closely to Peter Gabriel, even when he was with Genesis. I'm not a media-oriented sort of listener....
You don't pay attention to the things that
we're generally all but commanded to.
No, I really don't listen to all sorts of stuff like Yes and all
that. And listening to Peter Gabriel, even though it's not the type
of music I get off on, it is a feeling sort of vibe that we'd like to
aim at, but with an even more complex kind of music-magic, that
people might pick up on. Watching Peter Gabriel, I was thinking, now
that they've got the money they certainly do put on a good show,
don't they? Even if you don't really get off on the music itself. The
actual show's really theatrical, isn't it? Although his stuff's
always been that way.
If you had seen him with Genesis in the early
1970s when he was parting his hair with a razor, you'd know how right
you are.
I certainly didn't see him that early on, I was too busy with the
bands I was in, naturally. People often equate Caravan with Genesis'
early days and Yes' early days, and I suppose we were all about the
same age at the same time. Caravan didn't continue, as you know, in
the original lineup and it sort of fizzled for a little bit, and then
Pye [Hastings] managed to resurrect it back again; but it had become
something else by then, it had become a vehicle really for Pye's
tunes as well as for those other musicians that joined him. I think
the music, for me, took a bit of a dive even though Pye's music is
very beautiful, nice songs and all. It was the musicianship that went
through it; it seemed a bit standardized for my taste, all one way, a
bit like the West Coast of America rather than the English vibe.
Obviously the rest of the world heard it as more Caravan music, but
so it goes on. Funny old career, isn't it? I mean, here I started out
in 1968, and here we are closing in on 1995. Getting on, isn't it?
(chuckles)
Regarding what you were saying about videos
before: considering videos as they are used these days, do you
consider that one problem with them is that they tend to restrict
what a person can think about a song? I mean, once you see the video,
you have great difficulty banishing it from your mind's eye whenever
you hear the song afterwards.
I'll tell you what I think about that, I couldn't agree more.
Standardization's not got anything to do with what I feel music is.
Most of the music that I do, because of it's... well, for me it's not
complicated. But even for the musicians that play my music, they find
it so. Now why that is, I don't know; we've had a lot of discussions
recently with everybody that's played on R.S.V.P. Even the people who
are able to read and write and think and hear music very quickly and
hear exactly what you're doing - and l've been playing with some very
good musicians, as you know - still find many chords and notes and
melodies and things that have been made up and aren't taken from
other types of music and things a bit difficult. I can only play what
I play, though, really. My dad had a similar style. He'd make up
chords and things, bits and pieces, but mainly to standard tunes.
He'd have his own way of, if you could sing the melody, he could play
the chords behind it to support that melody. The bygone hits, the Nat
King Cole, Frank Sinatra, right away straight until now. He died just
recently and all that. He could invent chords and songs from them,
and to me that's what music is, people doing their own thing, finding
their own shapes and chords and melodies and how best they work. And
it can get quite busy. Of course it's not how you turn on lots and
lots of people, I've got to have just 3 or 4 chords and it chunders
and it goes ga-gon-ga-gon. Like Peter Gabriel and his (to a marching
beat) "Bi-ko, Bi-ko...". As I say, chundering along, funk-a,
funk-a.
It is unfortunate that he's gotten into that.
Well, some of that stuff can be very good, I mean there's nothing
like African music done properly with all those cross-rhythms, that
sort of thing, it's really super. African, yes, but if you're going
to refer to rhythm and blues as he has on "Steam" and "SIedgehammer",
you have to do something new with it, and he hasn't. "Shock the
Monkey" was pretty strange because he tried to do something
different, and it was a hit. So why's he grown timid over the last
few albums? "Steam" and "Sledgehammer, I mean, so what? We've heard
it and we've heard it. I think so, a little bit; it's nice to move
between labels of music, categories, and all that. People will say,
"oh, yeah, he's playing this, he's playing that, he's playing
jazz...". Well, what the fuck is jazz, anyway? It's an extension of
all musics, really. I mean, jazz will give you traditional jazz and
Miles Davis and John McLaughlin, and it goes on, but it's such a wide
field. Forms and forms. When you get individual characters that play
only themselves, that's what l'm interested in. Luckily in my career
l've been involved with people like that. And so you get this problem
with videos, which was what this conversation was initially about,
wasn't it? If I was to make videos they would have to be a
documentation of how the music was happening, who was playing what,
how he was playing it, rather than this sort of story from when we
used to do things with Caravan and all that sort of stuff, which
would be magical pictures and pictures of castles and all that. Now
for sure, if I was in southern Italy, where I often am, if I can get
there - we stay with some lovely friends of ours in Puleo - lovely
scenery - I'd fly the musicians down there and we'd film them playing
the music. Not miming it! Not jumping up and down behind a load of
candles! (chuckles). Some artists are really good actors, they're
able to dance, they're able to sing, play, and look good doing it.
But some of the music we play, sure, you can move about and do things
like that. But l'm not able to really dance about to single notes and
go ba-bunga-bunga, I'm a bit trapped because l'm not really
physically balanced to do it, you know. Or mentally, either! It
doesn't appeal. I do get off on the actual playing of the instrument,
to me that's a dance in itself, trying to express out through your
fingers, your mouth singing, that's the dance that matters. How do
you get that onto video? Most of the ones l've seen have more to do
with collages of effect and exposures. Peter Gabriel makes a good job
of it, but I keep thinking, so what? The music sounds the same, the
film looks the same. Where's the endeavor to take people's
imaginations into where the musicians are? Really doing it and
hearing each other play and reacting to what each other play, rather
than being all set out like Camel used to be. I got very bored with
Camel's music as I was playing it, because it's so set up. There were
thousands and thousands of people who don't play instruments who
obviously got tuned into Camel and that type of music, and they want
to hear it again. And that's what I find quite difficult because I
want to draw them forward with the music, to find the same amount of
joy we get of actually playing it. When you get that competent you
want to draw people along with you. I find the easiest method is to
actually teach them my tunes directly. As the fans come round to my
home, which they do, I say, "Well, it's easy. Bring your guitars and
we'll play these shapes!" They're great, and they really do get off
on it. To some they're unusual melodic shapes but to me they aren't,
really. Funny. And suddenly they're even more into the music because
they can feel it and hear it and also play it! They can actually take
part, it's really good. I am not too precious about any of my music,
I don't think any of it's particularly wonderful, I get the
wonderment out of it when l'm actually doing it.
Sounds like you'd like to figure out how to
smash that "fourth wall" barrier that separates the Musician from the
Listener...
Well, yeah, a lot of my listeners are musicians anyway. I got known
for playing the bass in sort of weird and wonderful ways as opposed
to the normal. I don't consider myself to be any great shakes on the
instrument, but a lot of people have said, well, we really like your
bass playing," and some of them are starting to say the same about my
guitar playing. Funny, ah... what was your question again? My brain
stopped... Listener as opposed to musician, er... Oh, yes, thank you,
for sure. Some of my gigs I do are very much like that. When I played
in America like the gig I did at The Fez [back room of the Time Cafe
in downtown Manhattan] or the Wetlands [a club in TriBeCa, also
downtown Manhattan], though they were really fun, it was more
traditional. A stage. An audience. And most of the rest of the night
was taken up with other loud forms of music, whether it be on the
sound system or some such. The whole thing is geared toward punching
out entertainment on the P.A. That's what the form has been for so
many years, loud P.A., big audience, pump it to them. And yeah, that
works, but it's not the only way to do music. You can arrive in
people's homes, do it very simply, and be paid to be there all day
and play the music. And I quite like that approach as well, you know,
people actually pay you whatever they can afford. You sit in their
home and they get to know you, and they hear you and they get to
participate at close range. And sometimes you have a party that lasts
all day! Where people play music with this person who they know and
whose music they've enjoyed, and it's really good fun. And there's
lots of other things that don't work when people expect you to be
like something else, a more dominating rock musician type who
controls things, who gets the whang bar going on the old guitar, a
million and one sorts of effects pedals... they call those
"shredders," don't they?
An effects pedalboard called a "shredder"?
Sounds familiar, but if they don't call it that, they ought to.
All these amazing electronic things....
Oh, yeah, the last time I heard that term was
in 1973 when Robert Fripp was in King Crimson. I saw them at the
Academy of Music and he had this huge pedalboard for his guitar
input, and one of the pedals he had I believe he referred to as a
"shredder." Most of the time after I saw them my ears were ringing
afterwards. Deaf, but ecstatic!
I saw him recently myself, two years ago, I was doing some concerts
in Italy. It was Perugia, we'd taken Caravan out there to play as
well earlier, and Caravan of Dreams as well, later. One of the
concerts was called "Rock In Umbria", and the other was called "Jazz
In Umbria". Obviously my bands were part of the "Rock In Umbria"
show. And also on the bill was Robert Fripp and David Sylvian and one
other fellow. And it was well uninteresting, and I was surprised,
because they'd gone for the pop-rock stuff. I mean, you either like
the angular stuff or you don't; some of it's great, I especially
liked Robert when he was with Adrian Belew, you know, [imitating
Belew], "it's only talk!"
"Balderdash"!!...
Yes, quite interesting. Something new. But this stuff... there was a
2000-seat theatre, full if I recall properly, sitting pretty numb in
those uncomfortable seats, and the tickets were expensive too, in
English money about 20 quid a hi... and Fripp and Sylvian played this
sort of lightweight stuff that made me so I'm not going to sit here
and listen to this because l've heard them do better than this! And I
haven't paid this money so I don't feel I have to stay here, l'm out
of here, l'll have a drink outside. Found it pretty boring, actually.
And he's a great guitarist, Robert. I guess it's just one of the
things he's tried. David Sylvian certainly can sing and the bass
player certainly can play, but it was all so turgid and down and
incapable of lifting off at all; in fact the only thing that did lift
off were these scatterlights wheeling above them.
Not very helpful if your light show upstages
you.
Well, if you like that sort of thing... but afterwards I was asked by
Italian TV, "do you think this is the most progressive happening sort
of thing?", and I said, "well, actually, no". I said, "I saw Soft
Machine in 1968, they were far more progressive than this stuff!"
(laughter) They were! Even with Kevin Ayers playing bass, Robert
Wyatt playing drums and Mike Ratledge on keyboards, they were
phenomenal. It was a shift of gears! The musicians didn't think so,
but musicians never do, and it certainly was a change of direction
for many people. Soft Machine drifted off into a jazz band, true, but
it was still nice music, a lot of my mates played in that band. Roy
Babbington, John Marshall, exceptionally good drummer and all that.
But Soft Machine had something going between audience and the
musicians, I've got a feeling there, and it was definitely them doing
their thing. And that's exactly what Caravan tried to do, doing their
thing, however special it was to themselves, drawing the audience
towards them there. I've always tried to do that. Help the audience
take part, rather than be "better than thou", you know, the musicians
ruling. Not for me. In fact, that's the way it was in the Hatfield
days, when the musicians really went for it, and if the audience
didn't really discover what we were doing, well, it was their fault.
Which was really very much a Hatfield approach, they really worked 24
hours a day on the music. Learned it upside down, inside out, played
it forwards and backwards, we even did it on the way to gigs! I
remember traveling in a Ford Capri with Pip [Pyle] and Phil [Miller],
and Dave Stewart and Phil and I would be in the back of this Capri
traveling at 90 miles an hour with Pip driving or something like that
- we'd be learning the set backwards!!! For sure, putting the music
together 'round the other way. Because we wouldn't try to play the
same set every night!
Yes, l know! I've got live gigs of Hatfield
strewn about from 1973 to 1975 and no one live tape's set list in any
way resembles the set list in any other.
Whereas Camel, which came after Hatfield and The North, it was a bit
of a downer for me 'cause they played the same old music every night
and expected to get all the notes in place. Usually went "dong, dong,
dong..." Started off very simple, and I found it boring after a
while. The thing I didn't find boring about Camel was the big
audiences that you could play to! In the end, I actually did get the
sack, you know, they got rid of me. They could actually see me
coming. Because I wanted to change the band in a way that would move
its music on. And even the music I wrote with Camel was very
gimmicky, they were used on the albums as gimmick sort of things. l
wasn't into that sort of pop-rock.
Yeah, like that song "Down On The Farm" that
you wrote for Camel's 1978 release "Breathless", and the increase in
jamming on other tunes on that album like "Echoes" and "The
Sleeper"... I mean, Camel were never big on improvisation.
True enough. Now, when I joined up with Pye just before I joined
Camel, we did a few sessions and things in the studio that never got
used; well, my music didn't, and in fact we did a version ol "Emily",
and a version of "Down On The Farm", which was slightly better than
the one Camel did because ours didn't have that Camel "rock star"
beginning. Andy Latimer was convinced that would work. And then the
song turned into this sort of like,
"how-many-words-can-you-sing-without-taking-a-breath?"
(laughter)
Had some oxygen on hand for you during gigs,
did they? (laughter)
(imitating Andy Latimer) "Can you sing it this way?"... No, I
couldn't, actually! Now I can, but l've moved on from that chord
form!
All right then, tell us some things about
Canterbury.
Canterbury's the most amazing place, several people have asked me to
write about it and all that stuff since l've been here for ages, 46
ages to be exact. But you know, everybody loves it and hates it, who
lives here, because they all go, "well, nothing happens here". But in
fact it's one of those places where you're surrounded by artsy-fartsy
people all doing little bits and pieces and things like that, and you
can live right next door to someone and not get on with them because
they're doing their own thing, and then one day, "your mower's too
loud!". It's really a bizarre place, it's really the biggest village
we've got in this part of England. Everybody half-knows each other
and has been involved in something with cross-references. Which is
why I think, the music situation is quite unique, that has happened
here. I mean, everybody was at college here, and other people who
came to school from elsewhere played music here for a little bit and
then these bands formed like Caravan and Soft Machine, and the family
tree went on from there. And the press took it on and made it widely
known. It's gone funny now because it did die out for sure, when
Caravan stopped playing music in the early '80s, and Soft Machine
were no longer a unit as they were with Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt
and Hugh [Hopper]. But now they've got quite a bit jazzy, like what
Pip and Hugh are up to.
What did you think of Soft Machine afler Mike
Ratledge left in 1977 and Karl Jenkins turned the band into a fusion
lounge act?
Don't know their late stuff all that well, l mean I quite liked
"Bundles", although it's not quite my kind of thing. I also rather
liked Dave MacRae's music when he played with Matching Mole, Wyatt's
band afler Soft Machine, I thought he was a fantastic keyboard
player. I mean, him and Robert, I thought they were a great team.
Really like Robert's playing as well; busy, busy boy. It's a shame he
doesn't come out and play more often, but I think he finds good
reason. His body's really only half there, after all. We miss him not
doing all that stuff. I've noticed he's done some things with
Ultramarine, do you know them?
Vaguely; who are they?
They're an English band, they've got this sort of monotony-type dance
stuff going with techno, but a sort of oddity to them. They're very
into the Canterbury scene, Kevin Ayers, Lol Coxhill, and that type,
though I don't suppose that Kevin and Robert consider themselves to
have anything to do with Canterbury, really! Robert was asked in an
interview a while back, "what about this Canterbury scene, then?" and
he said, ~It's probably the Italians' fault!". Well, that was 2000
years ago when the Romans invaded, so they've got a lot to answer
for, don't they? I mean, thanks to them, you New Yorkers have all
those nice orderly squared - off blocks, all your streets left and
right, no squiggles anywhere.
Nice to have dead civilizations to borrow
things from, isn't it?
Well, when you don't you have to rely on your imagination, and I find
there's quite a lot of it in America. Obviously it's less visible on
the media system, but there isn't any there anywhere in the world.
They have to do what they can make money from. That's what slows
everything up. We've gone through a phase in England here where once
Thatcher got in and did that stuff to us where it was all about "well
we must have quality" changing to "well, no, we must have profit".
And what made profit was really "quantity", and things that didn't
last. So you could turn the same item over and over. Like the
Japanese, they still do it. It's called "design for obsolescence".
Make something like a fridge that lasts for 3 years, and then
something in it gets noisy or the thing starts to defrost odd. Or a
camera no longer clicks properly. I mean, there used to be a time
when people built things to bloody well last. And I think the same
thing's happened with music and things like that "oh, we can sell
this, it's got 2 chords, it goes bash-bong-bing-bong!". I'm sure my
father said the same thing to me: "God, why do you play your music so
bloody loud? I'm going deaf, for God's sake turn it down!"...
Just what my kids say to me!
Well, he also used to say, "Why don't you play a few more chords and
make it a bit more friendly?". In fact, once he heard the bands I was
in he then said it the other way around, "why don't you take a few
chords out, make it a bit more like a nursery rhyme and get
successful?" (laughter). "For God's sake, you've got too many chords
in there, boy, you're never going to make money! Take a few out, sing
it to them, they like nursery rhymes!"
Your dad was no fool.
No, he wasn't, was he? He charmed quite a few people off their seats
at dinner dances. With Hatfield and the North, there was no attempt
at charm; that's why we played that music LOUD, so it couldn't be
talked over. Strident, loud, bang-it-down-their-necks!
As a vocalist you're not a shouter, really, but
then nobody in what's referred to as the Canterbury School ever was.
Well, l can only tell you about myself. Where Hatfield was concemed,
the quiet bits often captured the audience, and of course I got to
sing a bit at those points. And whatever the musicians I play with
are, at times they're too bloody loud. You can't pissing well sing
over that, you can really only scream. Apart from two l've played
with just recently, it's the first time in my life l've done
something with musicians who can play something that supports you
singing. One is Dave Rees-Williams, he's a keyboard player, trained
as a chorister somewhere, and he's a great player, all ears and he
can do anything. The other one is Tony Coe, the clarinet player. And
they find drummers too bloody loud as well, you know. From a
drummer's point of view you've got to whap it, you don't want to
sound puny, do you, so you're going to give it a ding. You try to
sing against that! You're going to have to come up with something to
shriek like, say, "Biko!" or something like that.
Now what songs on R.S.V.P. does Tony Coe play
on?
Only on two tunes, and only just one the whole way through. And we
did play it together. Also on that track that Tony's on is the first
time in my musical career l've played with Pip Pyle and Hugh Hopper
in the studio at the same time. Or anywhere, for that matter. It's
great fun, because Hugh is a great bass player with Pip. Pip is
equally amazing, all these ideas coming out, and I was able to play
guitar, an unusual situation since I don't usually play guitar. Or
haven't done until now. And it was really good fun to do. It wasn't
quite "there" in the studio, it was designed to have another
instrument go on perhaps later, and I was actually considering having
someone like Tony Coe do something on this unfinished track. I asked
him, "this is the track, Tony, can you listen to it and play over it?
It hasn't really got a melody, it's just a series of chords. I've got
melodies in my head, but rather than give you a melody to play, just
play what you do well, which is just extensions of what you can hear
and play"... And it went on for a bit, and he said, "what do you want
me to do?"
That's the sign of a good session musician.
"what do you want?"
Well, l said to him, "I want you to do what you want on this". And he
said, "well, give us a clue!". and all I did was I pressed the record
button and said, "I avant-garde a clue, mate!". Ever hear that joke?
"I avant-garde a clue...".
(blindsided) Ouch! Ouch!
Took a few times for that to sink in, didn't it? (laughter) I think
Tony found it amusing, and then he switched out and did it. He's a
very peaceful person as he's playing. He really goes into the melody
deep, he's a great listener, Tony. And he does a lovely piece on my
bit of music, right. Which takes it away from what l'd have thought
of for a melody, and he just plays beautifully. Now I think a lot of
people will miss it unless they actually listen to it in a studied
way where you just calm down and listen to it, for real, hear what he
does. It's not just a load of old notes. It's amazing where he places
what he places. A phenomenal player. The idea of the tune's name
"Barefoot" came from Heather, she may have got it from that American
movie, l think, "Barefoot in the Park"...
Oh, that horror...
(laughs) Or for me, it reminded me of when I used to stand on stage
in hot countries with no shoes on. People will say, "oh, you've got
your shoes on!". Sometimes I flick 'em off onstage because they're
bloody uncomfortable. A very dangerous thing to do, however, if
you're playing a pop festival in the rain. Tony also is on the
beginning of "Videos," a tune I did with Hugh in the mid-'80s when we
went down to do a duo album which hasn't yet been brought out. It
nearly was, on the Voiceprint label, but I got a bit fed up with
Voiceprint not delivering money back for things. Well, there'll be a
lot more things out on Voiceprint, but l'm not all that interested in
them, they're doing very well, it's just another bunch... They picked
up on the Canterbury scene, came down and picked my brains, and they
got in touch with everybody and took all their tapes and brought them
out as the Canterbury Scene! For me, I like to draw the musicians
onto the stage, live, onstage; that's what the Canterbury scene is to
me. Draw them in, let them play the way they want to play, but that's
an amalgamation of musicians, wherever they come from, and that's
what the Canterbury scene is for me. Why they call it Canterbury I
don't know; they come from all around the world, sometimes, but
that's what it is. And they epitomize all this stuff from the past.
Well, so bloody what? It's happening now too; the Canterbury scene is
going on. It's so funny, l mean, that's where this conversation
started off, because when I came back to do the music about four
years ago, people would occasionally talk to Phil Miller about his
music and to Hugh about his, and it was a joke! Something that was
from the past, I mean, "Oh, Soft Machine, yes, dead and gone, isn't
it? Caravan, that's dead and gone...". What they didn't realize is
that there's an audience out there that's always loved and liked what
they did. And Canterbury could be anything you like, it could have
been Birmingham, but it wasn't, it was Canterbury where they all
were. And now suddenly, on everyone's CDs they're claiming to be part
of the Canterbury scene! Which is exactly what I wanted to happen.
But it does self-defeat the purpose, if you want to call yourself
Canterbury and all that, because in one way the musicians are almost
like working against each other. They're all heading for the same
gigs! But anyway, they're in there now, they're all putting
cathedrals on their CD covers, which I find amusing. Even Pye
recently put out that album we talked about before, you know, called
"Cool Water", and he called it a Caravan album, which no way it was
Caravan at the time. It's a terrible collection of recorded tunes;
they're very nice chords, I suppose, but the actual recording of it
and the up-ness of the music isn't there, and I'm really surprised at
Pye to do it. In fact I was quite upset that he did it because he
didn't ask any of us "do you want this to come out?". He just brought
it out for the money and I was really very upset with that.
What were the circumstances of these sessions,
and why didn't they work out?
Well, Dave Sinclair wasn't in the band; it was Richard Coughlan, Jan
Schelhaas, myself and Pye, and it was mainly directions from Pye.
Arista, the company that Pye had been working with, said they'd put
up some money to make some demo tapes to see if the band was worth
recording to try to draw it back to make an album. Now obviously they
would have used the name Caravan for that and all the rest, but I
certainly wasn't part of Caravan then and I wasn't a session musician
in any way, and after the sessions, I realized I quite enjoyed to do
my own music but I didn't really care to do Pye's because I'd moved
away from that sort of music. I'd had more endeavor from Hatfield and
the North, the instrumentation had become more complicated, the
chords had become more elaborate, the melodies had been more
resounding, more jazzy and classical-influenced, than Caravan had
been. Pye was by then very much more into the pop tunes to get to the
people, to make money. Well, I've never been very good at that. And I
felt the actual result of our recordings were a bit of a
disappointment, and so did Arista.
Their reaction may have had a lot to do with
the general industry feeling in 1976 that progressive rcck was not
the thing any more and that what was then called "punk rock" was. I
mean, remember all the crap National Health went through trying to
get a record contract...
Well, perhaps that was a factor, but there's also the music we did on
those sessions, which I thought was a bit weedy. I wouldn't have done
anything with the tapes. l thought we could do a lot better than
that! Because the actual band hadn't gelled, it wasn't really a band,
anyway. We had fun doing it, I always have fun playing with Pye and
Jan and Richard and all that, but it hadn't moved in any real musical
direction. It was ordinaire, right. We had the same problems later
when we reformed with Dave Sinclair in 1982 and made "Back To Front".
Because there wasn't enough endeavor, enough time taken to get on
with each other to find out each other's musical differences and
possibilities. They were still living in the past hoping the thing
would work, and of course it didn't, anyway. Now when I was calling
my band Richard Sinclair's Caravan of Dreams, l think it affected
everybody who had been in Caravan later for sure. I had left off in
1972. And it created a few problems for them, they were all
disappointed because some promoters in Europe tried to drop the 'Of
Dreams' against our wishes. Well, even so, what of it? I can call a
band of mine what I want to, it's a different band. Anyway, it meant
that there was a possibility that people were coming to see Caravan
instead of my band. Well, not many did. I only had one complaint from
an audience, saying, "well, we expected seven musicians, whatever,
because of your CD, and where's Pye?". Only once did I get that in a
series of concerts, but anyway... it developed a rather bad taste for
everybody and I fell out, l think, with Geoff Richardson, who at one
of Pye's parties said "well, what have you done for Caravan
recently?". I said, "why should you mind if I call it Richard
Sinclair's Caravan? You haven't done anything recently yourself, you
haven't come to Italy, and you were invited to come and play, and you
didn't!". Get on with it! A name to me doesn't mean anything, it
could be Richard Sinclair's Camel of Dreams! It really doesn't
matter, as long as the music's happening and people love and like it.
And it really opened the floodgate for Pye.
How so?
He thought, well, look at Richard, he's printed a few T-shirts and
all that shit, which I did because I did reorganize Caravan to play a
few television shows and a few concerts in Italy, and did the old
music again. They all wanted to do it and worked hard, they were all
a bit disappointed in it, but we did it, it worked quite well, the
people who have the tapes and the CD were all entertained; I thought
it was better than what we'd done before, but the rest of the band
didn't. And that was because it didn't have that same solidarity we'd
had before of all going in the same direction. I'd pull in a
different direction from what Caravan turned into. And I think now
the situation is, well, Pye's brought these tapes out from 1977 as a
CD without telling us, and I felt pretty hurt by that because l've
been going on for weeks to Pye, saying, "look, you must come round
and play some music, I'm playing music, this is my new music, be on
my album, come out, la-da-da, and lots of people are coming to my
home to play, let's do it, let's get on with it", but I find it's
very restrictive how he's only got one way to do it; it's very much
in the media system, which isn't my thing. I think for me, Caravan is
well gone, now. I couldn't be bothered to play music that doesn't
actually develop its style further into the future, with good chords
and good melodies that you have to get 'round. You have to sit there
and work hard on them and enjoy them. I can't play down to an
audience, l can't be bothered with it, I'm not like Peter Gabriel who
can provide music for people to throw up along and get off on. People
do say to me, "well, you should, Richard, because you could make lots
of money!". Well, it's not what l'm there for doing! Yes, I want the
money, for sure, and I am a bit silly if I don't do it, l suppose,
but in the end, no! I enjoy this other stuff that's, you know,
desperately trying to climb into the camps of the great musicians'
that we have on this planet, that l'm nowhere near. And maybe before
I die, I might be able to achieve a bit of music that I actually
like. Something that's entertaining rather than simplifying! One
always seems to have to simplify! I think Robert Wyatt wrote a tune
about that; he's good at categorizing all this stuff, you know. A lot
of people do say to my surprise that I sound like Robert; well, I
don't listen to him enough to be able to copy or emulate him, I'm
sure! I am greatlty stimulated by Robert's thing but I like Tony Coe
as well, lots of different players, Jaco Pastorius is another. There
are more younger players available as well, and quite a few of these
are out of my range. But that's what I'm heading for, to move my
musical ability and listening ability along. I'm hoping to drag some
of the people along who used to listen to my music with us. But if
not, not.
"Whimsical", they called me, matey, and that's even from one of the great writers in the "New York Times"...
I'd say that's the kiss of death in
America...
"Whimsy, you little bimsy doomsy dimsy dumsy", for sure, that's
what's come out on CD, you can't always get your music out on CD as
you want it. Now I'm attempting it, and I think I'm going to lose
quite a lot of people in the process, and gain some I hope because
the art of putting stuff onto CD and collaging it at different times
obviously isn't one of my crafts, I've realized that because I've
only ever sold... I think the last CD, Caravan Of Dreams sold about
15,000 and this one, R.S.V.P., has only done 3,000 so
far, I know that because we've manufactured it ourselves and there's
only 3,000 manufactured... I've only done these two CDs that I've
worked hard on; now I'm working even harder and hoping my next CD
will be a good musical statement for me because I've considered the
playing on the other ones, they're nice CD's for sure. I think
they're as good as In The Land Of Grey And
Pink and all that stuff, a lot better for
me, because on Land Of Grey And
Pink, I wasn't able to direct. Now I'm
getting near to the point where I want to direct a really good strong
album which hopefully picks up on the time now, 1994, '95; it's
something I'd love and like to do. It's got to move in some way. And
you know, there's a lot of players I've been wanting to play with
that are exceptionally good, maybe they'll be on the album and maybe
they won't, maybe I'll just do a solo album, at the moment there's
nothing caught. It's just the music. It might not be a progression,
hopefully it will, it will certainly be an extension of how I play my
instrument, which will mean hopefully I'm getting better at playing
it. I'm not doing the same things because I know they make money,
I've actually moved on from that sort of thinking. I can't stand 99%
of what I hear on the TV and radio unless it's a very considered
jingle where the music is obviously played by musicians, or a
composer or arranger or a competent studio man. 99% of the media
music I hear, it bores me shitless, to be honest with you. Sorry
about the language but it does.
Quite all right. What's puzzling is that I
think most people agree with you about that sludge. So why does it
exist, do you think?
I sit there and I think, for Christ's sake, this is being pumped out
every day on the radio, and the only reason why it's there is because
it makes money. And the companies like Coca-Cola and Budweiser
realize that and they're financing these things. And all the record
companies, why are they there? Well, they've made loads of money out
of all the musicians they've ripped off for God knows how long. And
now they're pumping it out, right, they're picking up on the kids,
they're certainly only aiming at money at the moment and not music at
all. And I find it pretty boring; I'm sure I sound like a boring old
fart, getting old, but I know my parents and their parents went
through the same thing... but I'm looking for the ones that want to
play and stimulate you, and sometimes I wonder what the hell, why did
I land on this planet? (chuckles) What am I doing here? Of course, I
can turn it off, you know. Radio off, TV off unless there's something
specific I want to listen to.
Or, as you say in "Heather," listen to the
birds.
Or listen to other music that I like. I certainly play with birds!
(chuckles) Or the passing trains.
I'd wanted to point out that in what you've
mentioned you seem to be looking for what classically has been
considered part of the jazz idiom, you know, like "The Sound Of
Surprise". Like on R.S.V.P. when you told Tony Coe to play what he wanted to play on
the existing incomplete track of "Barefoot", you reminded me of the
time Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane were in Thelonious Monk's band
in the late 1950s and he gave them sheet music they couldn't read.
And when they went to Monk he told them, "The music is on the horn.
Between the two of you, you should be able to find it"...
Oh, I suppose so, that's a nice story; I don't know that sort of
music really. I'm just starting to hear music like that now. The only
time I've been exposed to any of those musicians in that way was
maybe when I got to hear Eric Dolphy early in my career. And he
certainly used to listen to birds and animals and God knows what
else, you know. And one of the albums that's my favorite is Out To Lunch; it
was my great favorite in early days. I've moved on a bit, but I found
it on CD just recently in America and listened to it again and played
it to my girlfriend Heather here, and I was quite delighted to find
it again. It was first played to me when I was about 15, I think, by
Hugh Hopper, on the back of a tape he'd sent me of one of his tunes.
And of course Robert Wyatt and Hugh Hopper and all of that lot,
they've listened to a lot of jazz. Robert's always been a great
listener to earlier creative jazz musicians, I've maybe missed out
because I didn't, but I've been happy trying to struggle through with
my own bits. Just being involved with the people who've come to play,
on R.S.V.P. most
recently as you know.
Now I want to talk about the new CD some
more...
Yes,the whole thing about that is, you see, I have a series of ideas,
right, I've written a lot of different tunes and bits, but they never
get completed until other people play them or I'm asked to do a
performance of it. And then it doesn't ever really get completed, I
always like to change my music; even while I'm doing it I like to
change it. I had a lot of difficulty with Hatfield and The North at
the end because all the notes had to be right in place; you write a
piece of music, it goes that wav. Well, I'm not a free player,
totally free, I do like to have musical structures but I do like to
have the empathy within the band that the thing can change. And
change very radically as you work your way round, change squareness
to roundness or whatever. Some things are opaque and some things you
can see through, in music, all that sort of thing. It's listening
ability, just knowing the other musicians and your actual imagination
takes over and then you do it! So the whole thing about R.S.V.P. was,
OK, I'm going to get a series of tunes here, probably ten, which was
what happened, they were being written right now, and then I'll be
taking them to the studio, I've had these ideas hanging about my
head, ideas in different ways, 'cause they usually come in the way I
play chords, I took them to the studio with them more or less
completed for my own imagination but not for the other musicians',
and I got them to play them in the studio. Dave Cohen started it off,
he came over from Kansas City, he's a drummer. He's easily my
favorite drummer of all time. He's sensitive. he's imaginative, he's
powerful, he's quiet; he's not a stage performer, he only plays with
weddings and clubs and things in Kansas City, but he's easily my
favourite drummer. And my dream band would be certainly to get him
over to England to play with Tony Coe and Dave Rees-Williams, for me
if I had the money I'd draw those three musicians together straight
away because I know they're the best musicians I've played with
easily by far. And so there we have it, a situation where I'm in the
studio, allowed to play for two weeks and we did it in little stops
and starts and jumps. So as the musicians were available here in
Canterbury like Didier Malherbe or Pip Pyle or Dave Cohen or Andy
Ward, all the people I enjoy to play with, I took them to the studio
and we just put down backing tracks, or parts of tracks, or I got
them to extend tracks, and then I built the album that way. And these
tunes "appeared", the words were written as I was doing it, mainly.
And a lot of the tunes didn't get "completed", they're not complete
tunes, that's why I got Tony and Didier and Jimmy Hastings to play
things, melodies I half-suggested to them, letting them play a bit of
their own melody. And so they're not complete musical forms from my
point of view. I like them, they were put down on CD, great, they
sound great, I'm sure people will love them like that, but it's not a
complete form, it's just one way the music could be played. Next week
the whole tempo could change, it could go up, go down, there could be
chords added, they could be linked, two of the tunes could be
amalgamated into one tune, and so it goes on. And that's how I feel
about my music. That's why I found it very hard to go back and do
music like Camel, after I'd been with Hatfield and the North.
Why in heaven's name did you take that job,
anyway?
I was doing woodwork; I was making tables for restaurants here in
Canterbury - I was doing my music myself always - but my other
endeavors are that I'm able to make furniture very well; I've always
been able to make things and do things, my father was a master
craughtsman. He used to restore furniture for the Archbishop of
Canterbury here, he was also a musician in the evening, and so the
two things were a part of our household. I was born to sort of make
do! I can make the instruments I play. It's just one of those things.
Some people do it, I enjoy woodworking, metals, making peoples' water
systems work, gas and electric, I'm able to do it well. Designing
these things to work in peoples' homes, that's special. And I've
worked with marble sometimes, whatever, tiles and things... So, what
was I doing, why did I join Camel? I was making tables and playing
music locally here in Canterbury, things like that, and suddenly I
got a call from the Camel management saying well, they were making an
album, and they'd just lost their bass player who'd actually been
moved on because he couldn't play some of the parts that Andy Latimer
wanted him to do; I think that's what it was about, that's a shame
but there you go. And I was asked to join as a session person to do
the recording sessions. And I went down there and I played music with
them and I quite enjoyed it; it wasn't my particular music but I
enjoyed it and I got on with it. I thought this was better; I'd
rather earn a small amount of money with Camel than doing it just to
play music, and there's a possibility to make a nice album. And I was
asked to do the singing, which is quite nice. When people ask me to
play, whoever it is, I always go along and try it out and certainly
if I get on with it, even if it's not quite the right thing, I'll try
and play and do a good performance, and that's exactly what I did.
And at the time it was acceptable to Camel and I joined Camel; I was
asked to join as a permanent musician but I'd be paid a wage and all
that, and I'd be able to take part in this band which I hoped
eventually I'd be allowed to write music for, but of course I wasn't.
That's how I joined Camel and I ended up playing in this band for two
years. And the nice thing was we traveled Europe and got to Japan and
went to America over a short period of time. And for me it was good
to see what might have happened if I'd stayed with Caravan, because
Caravan had then got to that stage where they could play to audiences
of l,000-plus. And for me that was the first time that I was playing
to an audience that was regularly over a thousand a night. And it's a
very pleasant experience. The only thing that didn't really work for
me was, it wasn't my music. I was having to play other people's
identities that rather limited what I can do.
Of course you wouldn't be happy in a band like
that; I'll bet that's the same reason why you left Caravan in 1972.
As a matter of fact, I had a tape of a 1976 Caravan gig... Now this
is not to say anything against Caravan, I wouldn't, but the thing
that struck me was that when they opened up with "Memory Lain, Hugh"
and "Headloss", as God knows they always did...
As they always did, and a similar thing with Camel!
Well, Jan Schelhaas played Dave Sinclair's
solos note-for-note, and I had to think, "all well and good, but
where's your personality?"
That's it! That's what happened in 1976 with us. That's what
happened, you've captured it in a nutshell; it was frightening, the
same bloody announcement every night with Camel, I couldn't believe
it [imitating Andy Latimer, very deep sepulchral voice]: "And now
we're going to play a piece from our opus The Snow Goose..." I mean you
hear that a hundred times, you're with it! I mean, play something
else, anything! I nearly got snowed good! (laughs)
Problem is there's nothing wrong to have heard
and enjoyed, but Dylan wasn't far off when he said "He who's not busy
being born is busy dying"! I will never throw away that Caravan
show...
No, absolutely not, it captures an important musical moment in
time....
But let's move on, man, let's take chances,
there's a future out there!
But then how do we get the radio stations and the media systems to
say, well, we'll risk it? But they don't. They all immediately think
they're going to start to lose money, and then they do because they
don't get behind projects. There's so many good musicians now out
making good music that are really on the breadline. They have to stop
playing their music because of the stuff that gets pumped down all
our throats. For sure, I'm not bitter about anything because I'm well
happy with my own music. It's just that other people expect you to be
this famous rich person that everybody knows, and I don't tend to
relate to that sort of thing. I don't know what it is. I'd rather be
a sort of ordinary person that makes music, try to make it as well as
you can, you try to entertain other people... You know, I find
nothing special about people like Prince or Michael Jackson or Boy
George.
Listen, those people are not musicians, OK?
They are not personalities. They're Thanksgiving parade balloons.
Oh, yes, Thanksgiving! I've been there, on my first solo visit to the
United States, it was great. In fact, that was when I arrived for my
first solo round 'round the States. It was a wonderful experience,
because I met these people again a month later on the other side of
your continent, they'd all rushed across to see their mums and dads
and friends and things. I said, What a nice thing, much better than
Christmas! Everybody gets together to thank the air for good food and
all that's been and it's a nice thing to do, Thanksgiving.
Delightful. A lot of people in England don't know about that.
You must have eaten a lot of turkey.
Well, in fact, once I'd arrived, I think I was heading for somewhere
and I had to pass through Cincinnati and they'd let a fan know I'd be
at an airport at a certain time. I was sitting there thinking, God,
I've arrived in this country, I haven't been playing music for years
and no one knows me at all, isn't that wonderful, what an exciting
experience. And suddenly someone very kind, a lovely fan, a guy
called Peter Kurtz, who's written things, he's always been a fan of
the Canterbury scene, he appeared with a piece of pumpkin pie his mum
or his aunt had made, in cellophane with a little fork, and he said,
"are you Richard Sinclair?". And I went, "Well, yeah. How did you
know I was here?", and he said, "well, I tracked you down, I'm a fan
of your music and I was told you may be a little bit hungry, as you
may not have got this airport stuff together..." and he gave me this
piece of pie. Wasn't that nice? And that's how I arrived in the
States. As I went through I stayed in people's homes, I played music
in their little local clubs and had great fun. Nothing supersonic and
starry about it at all, it was just pleasant to be there. I've done
it four times now, once with the band including Rick Biddulph and
Andy Ward. Had good fun, didn't make a lot of money, but that's not
what's important anyway. See, I've been learning to play the guitar,
with someone else playing bass. Now, I'm spending a lot of time
playing bass and guitar. And I'm changing my band format so it's like
if I play I have a keyboard player or a horn player and then
sometimes no drums, you know, or whatever's available. No special
thing like it is this set band. I mean, in the last few years we've
gone through Going Going, a band with Hugh Hopper and Andy Ward and
Mark Hewins, and Vince Clarke, he played percussion; they've all been
on the albums. And then we got into Richard Sinclair's Caravan Of
Dreams, that was the next thing up, we reformed Hatfield and the
North and Caravan for sure, but then the other one, this latest one's
R.S.V.P. and
it's already had like ten different members, in fact I think slightly
more than that now. I keep chopping it and changing it and making it
because it is, you know, it's change. It's progressive!
(chuckles)
Change is good. We hear that on commercials and
the like, so it's suspect, but it is. So what part of Canterbury are
you in?
Well, I'm just relaxing at home here, in front of the windows I've
just repaired; we've got a huge window, we've got a massive view of
Canterbury Cathedral. We've got the center rooms in the old Mayor's
home. It's a lovely building in Roper Road, and it looks out across
Canterbury so we see the Cathedral beautifully. I've been here eight
years in this house, Heather's had it nine, ten years, and I don't
think the windows have ever actually been serviced. This house must
be about 150 years old, and these are those really big sliding sash
windows. I had them out about three weeks ago and it was so nice to
be able to them open wide, you know. Getting a bit chilly here, now,
though... Summer's gone, Ken, what are we going to do?
Talk about the next time you plan on coming to
America, if you've thought that far, I suppose.
I was hoping to be in America next year, actually; I'd wanted to tour
around it for a whole year. One of the ideas was that we'd get people
to sponsor something in the way of making a CD. And it was just a
matter of adjusting the amount of money people might have to pay,
saying like a hundred dollars per share. You could actually advertise
it out and say, are people interested enough to take part, let the
whole thing work out through magazines and radio. I've mentioned it
and people say "oh, yeah, we've paid you $400, $500 for a concert
last time, OK, we can afford $100 to send back across to England".
We'd have to organize a bank in New York or Boston or one of those
places so that all the money could be sent to one spot and then it
could be sent in one job lot to England because that's the easiest
way to do it. Rather than everybody sending hundreds of dollars to
our address in notes and all that and them disappearing in the post,
get it done properly and professionally. And I was hoping it could be
done in New York, because Andy Meyers of Musician Magazine could help
get it organized and sent to England to make an album of a group of
Canterbury musicians playing here in Canterbury. See, supposing a
thousand people did it, that may be a bit amazing exaggeration but
supposing a thousand people did pay, oh, a hundred dollars each.
Right? Well, that's a lot of money. We could make a very good CD and
with the money we could fly people over to come and play concerts in
America. I'd come over and I'd organize a mobile home for myself and
my girlfriend Heather; we'd travel in that and we'd organize during
the year maybe three or four visits of musicians to meet us in, say,
Kansas City,or L.A., or New York, and I'd play the music with them
and either accommodate them or find accommodations for them. And
everybody who paid their hundred dollars would get a set of ten CDs
that they could sell and get their money back, if they liked. Or
perhaps they could sell their shares at a later date once the project
has been concluded. The whole thing is just a platform, really, to
get musicians to play music in America that people want to hear.
Well, maybe that works, maybe it doesn't; I'll just try to put pen to
paper and advertise it out to the fans: this is what we'd like to do,
would you be able to afford to do this? Send no money now, just give
us a yes or a no and we'll provide the details.
I think that's an excellent idea. You're
working towards a kind of collectivization here that the Communists
never had the nerve to try! If it were to work, it actually would
give the lie to something that Robert Wyatt said in an interview in
Musician Magazine in 1992: "It's a romantic illusion that you can
exist outside the system. Systems are a bit tougher than that.
Systems are the way society is constructed".
Well, that's the reason I want to go outside the system of promoting
and record companies and all that, and I'm sure Robert would agree
since the system's not been kind to him either. I mean, all the 1960s
and 1970s Soft Machine BBC sessions are now available, and where's
Robert's share of that money? Courtesy of Sean Murphy [former manager
of Soft Machine], incidentally. The music industry doesn't work the
way I'm proposing we do this share-selling idea, obviously, you know
that; you have to go into a shop now and buy a bootleg Caravan CD for
$25 or something, and you have to think of this alternative: for
three to four times that amount you could be involved with the actual
members of those bands. We were going to call it the "Share It" idea,
you know, the Hatfield song of the same name. We really have been
trying to carry on on small amounts of money. Obviously for the idea
we would have to give receipts for the amounts forwarded, along with
a direct letter from Canterbury along with the signatures of the
musicians who were going to be on the CD and the tour. Most of the
musicians who would be on the CD do have their own mail-out business
anyway, such as Hugh Hopper and Pip Pyle; Pye [Hastings] and Dave
Sinclair don't but they'd be happy to send back letters. I think
it'll work because the only people who would send the money as I
mentioned would be those who know the music anyway, so they'll know
what they'd be getting. I mean, Heather and I could come over for a
whole year if we're successful enough in our share-selling. I thought
it might be nice to start it off in June of next year, again
depending. Each concert could be organized by the shareholders,
whether they be in small halls of 200, 300, their own homes, back
gardens, barbecues, etc., and so it goes on! Robert was right,
everybody only works within this media-based system, "oh I've got
this concert coming up, it'll cost 2,000 quid," everybody only thinks
one way and it's nice to do other stuff. Now among the musicians I've
had on R.S.V.P.,
Tony Coe's really keen to come and play. Whether I could drag him
across the Atlantic I don't know, because he hates to fly. I might
have to stick him on a boat if we can get the money up, whatever.
Probably we'd play our way across on one of these QNR
things...
Wouldn't that be fun? Would you ever do that?
Well, not on the big boats across the Atlantic, but I've done it
across the English channel, it's quite funny; especially when you're
playing like a bluesy tune and it's slow and the boat's going with
the swell, you can time the music with the swell of the boat as it
rolls side to side. Or the saxophonist playing to the microphone
that's gaffer-taped to the ceiling above him; it's quite funny,
especially when the boat's pitching and the microphone's moving
about... (laughs)
Then I suppose you just have to time your
swaying...
That's it; go where the music goes...