A Short Bio:
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Although
he came to prominence as a major exponent of the British
progressive rock scene of the 1970s, Bill Bruford
has always defined himself as a jazz musician. This
probably accounts in part for with his involvement in
the Canterbury scene in the mid-seventies - his stints
with National Health and, briefly, Sinclair & The
South, not to mention his long-term collaboration with
Dave Stewart in the group Bruford.
Bruford
grew up listening to jazz masters like Max Roach and Joe
Morello, and at age 10 started playing with brushes on
the back of record sleeves. Progressively he assembled a
real drumkit, had a handful of lessons from Lou Pocock
of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and when he reached
18, moved to London to look for gigs. He landed in blues
group Savoy Brown in early 1968, but was fired after
only three gigs as his style proved incompatible with
the music. Luckily, his next move would prove to be a
very fruitful one : he joined Yes, staying four years
and recording five acclaimed studio albums : Yes
(1969), Time And A Word (1970), The Yes
Album (1970), Fragile (1971) and Close
To The Edge (1972). As a member of Yes, alongside
such contemporaries as Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and
Chris Squire, he made a major contribution to defining
the shape of the progressive rock genre.
In
July 1972, Bruford joined the new incarnation of
King Crimson formed by Robert Fripp, alongside John
Wetton, David Cross and percussionist Jamie Muir. "I'd
been with Yes for four years and, as a young player, it
seemed like a very long time. King Crimson looked like a
much more interesting band to be in". This was an
opportunity for him to experiment with improvisation and
playing with another drummer. But Fripp put an abrupt
end to the band in September 1974, after three landmark
studio albums - Larks' Tongues In Aspic (1973),
Starless And Bible Black (1974) and Red
(1974).
A
period of uncertainty followed Crimso's breakup. In
November 1974, Bruford joined Gong for the final
leg of their European tour, after Laurie Allan was
busted at the Franco-German border for carrying drugs.
This could only be a temporary thing, but he did like
the music. "I thought You was a terrific album -
a good blend of psychedelia with a serious groove".
In
1975-76, Bruford continued collaborating with
various bands on a short-term basis while making plans
to form his own band. This included demo tapes with
guitarist Ray Gomez and bassist Jeff Berlin (a graduate
of the Berklee School of Music) in New York, guest
appearances of solo albums by former Yes colleagues
Steve Howe and Chris Squire, and rehearsals with Brand
X, depping for Phil Collins while the latter was away
touring with Genesis. Bruford appeared with Brand X as
guest live percussionist at some of the band's early
gigs.
Later
that year, he guested on American band Pavlov Dog's
second album At The Sound Of The Bell and the
sole opus by an obscure combo named Absolute Elsewhere,
the conceptual work In Search Of Ancient Gods.
And he almost decided to start a career of session
musician, but stopped after three weeks drumming to
idiot advertisement jingles. Also in late 1975, Bruford
was involved in early sessions for Phil Manzanera's Diamond
Head album, although he was not featured on the
finished record.
Meanwhile,
Dave Stewart and Alan Gowen were forming National Health
and auditioning various candidates for the drum stool.
They all proved unsatisfactory, until they got in
contact with Bruford. "Someone had given
Bill my phone number", Stewart remembers. "We
arranged to have a play together, and it went very
well. Bill could read music, so our complex
arrangement held no terrors for him. We liked his
confident style and he seemed to appreciate that we
could all more or less get a tune out of our
instruments". Bruford keeps fond memories
of National Health's music. "It's written music -
chamber rock... A classic British idea - not what
Elvis Presley had in mind when he invented rock!".
He stayed in National Health long enough to tour Britain
twice (the only European gig during this period had John
Mitchell deputising for him) and record demos and BBC
sessions now available on the Missing Pieces CD,
released by East Side Digital/Voiceprint in late 1996.
Following
their collaboration in Brand X, Bruford was
asked by Phil Collins to be Genesis' live drummer for
their first tour with Collins on vocals, promoting A
Trick Of The Tail. This lasted from approximately
March to July 1976, and is briefly documented on the
live albums Seconds Out (1977) and Three
Sides Live (1981). But again this could only be a
temporary arrangement, as it was restricted to live
performances and consequently involved no creative
input. Bruford was subsequently replaced by
ex-Zappa/Weather Report drummer Chester Thompson.
Bruford
was involved in various other projects around that time.
In January 1976, he joined a one-time all-star ensemble
called Sinclair & The South, which featured
Canterbury cousins David and Richard Sinclair alongside
John Murphy and former East Of Eden leader/violinist
Dave Arbus. Interestingly, that outfit played mostly
instrumental jam-based material written by Dave Sinclair
and John Murphy.
A
more permanent opportunity came in the shape of an
all-star trio with former Yes and King Crimson
colleagues Rick Wakeman and John Wetton. Promising
rehearsals took place in September-October 1976, but the
trio came to an abrupt end after Wakeman's management
refused to let him take part in it. This however planted
the seeds for both Bruford's subsequent solo
debut, Feels Good To Me, and the UK band
project. As a matter of fact, among the compositions
rehearsed by Wakeman/Wetton/Bruford were
"Beelzebub", "Back To The Beginning" and "Thirty Years".
Demos made with Wetton around the same time have
resurfaced on the John Wetton/Richard Palmer-James
album, Monkey Business (1998), consisting of
unreleased recordings, demos and alternative versions
from 1972-1997. Of the 24 tracks, Bruford plays
on "Confessions" and "The Good Ship Enterprise" from
1976.
Shortly
after a second stint with National Health
(August-November 1976), Bruford started making
plans for a solo album. It was to be his first
opportunity to show his skills as a composer, and he
spent several months working out the material.
Rehearsals involved ex-Brand X and National Health
colleagues John Goodsall and Neil Murray, but eventually
the line-up settled with Dave Stewart, ex-Soft
Machine/Gong/Lifetime guitarist Allan Holdsworth and
Jeff Berlin. Singer and composer Annette Peacock was
also featured promintently on the album, as was
flugelhorn virtuoso Kenny Wheeler.
Plans
for a new band with John Wetton finally materialised in
the summer of 1977. The duo was joined by Eddie Jobson,
Wetton's former bandmate in Roxy Music, fresh from a
stint in Frank Zappa's band, and subsequently
Holdsworth. The resulting 'supergroup', UK, recorded a
self-titled album and did European and US tours before
splitting within one year of its formation. Wetton and
Jobson, in favour of a more pop/rock orientation,
carried on with drummer Terry Bozzio, while Bruford
and Holdsworth, wishing to continue playing more
fusion-orientated music, went their separate ways.
In
November-December 1978, Bruford set out to form
a new band. Having just left National Health, Dave
Stewart was happy to resume his collaboration with him
and work began on new material. Eventually, both Allan
Holdsworth and Jeff Berlin joined them, reforming the
line-up of Feels Good To Me. The resulting
effort, One Of A Kind, included two compositions
from the UK repertoire - "Forever Until Sunday",
featuring an uncredited Eddie Jobson on violin, and "The
Sahara Of Snow", which Jobson actually co-wrote - as
well as "Hell's Bells", a Stewart composition which also
recycled an Alan Gowen motif from an early incarnation
of National Health's "The Bryden 2-Step".
Holdsworth's
involvement in Bruford, the group, only lasted
long enough for a British tour in the Spring of 1979,
then he went off to start a solo career and was replaced
by a former student of his, and amazing soundalike, John
Clark, nicknamed 'The Unknown'. With this line-up, the Bruford
group did two US summer tours (1979/80), recorded a live
album in New York (The Bruford Tapes - live to
2-track with no mixing), and a third studio effort, Gradually
Going Tornado, which marked a move to a more 'pop'
sensibility with Berlin's vocals featured on several
tracks.
The
quartet ground to a halt due to economic difficulties.
Then in 1981 Br uford was contacted by Robert
Fripp to participate in a new band venture also
involving Americans Adrian Belew (ex-Zappa, Bowie and
Talking Heads) and Tony Levin (ex-Paul Simon and Peter
Gabriel sideman). This quartet was known as Discipline,
until Fripp decided to call it King Crimson. Between
1981-84, they toured intensively and recorded three
remarkable albums, Discipline (1981), Beat
(1982) and Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984). Once
again, it was Fripp who decided to split the band up
when he reckoned it had run its course.
Meanwhile,
Bruford had forged an unlikely alliance with
Swiss pianist Patrick Moraz, a fellow alumnus of Yes
he'd met in 1975 while working on Chris Squire's solo
album. Together, they recorded two albums of mostly
acoustic music - the aptly titled Music For Piano
And Drums (1984), and the more electronic and
inconsistent Flags (1985) -, not to mention a
few tours. Around this time he also recorded and toured
with David Torn, whose album Cloud About Mercury
(1987) also featured Tony Levin (who was replaced by
Mick Karn for the tour).
Following
King Crimson's breakup, Bruford decided to
assemble a new, more jazz-orientated group. He recruited
three gifted young British musicians - Iain Ballamy
(sax), Django Bates (keyboards & horn) and Mick
Hutton (bass) - and formed EarthWorks, an
innovative quartet that aimed at producing a uniquely
British blend of jazz. Bruford used mainly
electronic and chordal drums in this context. Over the
next seven years it toured frequently and recorded three
studio albums for EG Records, the Dave Stewart-produced
EarthWorks (1987), after which Hutton was
replaced by Tim Harries, Dig? (1989) and All
Heaven Broke Loose (1991). EarthWorks
broke up after a last tour in 1992, documented by the
live set Stamping Ground (1994).
In
1988, Bruford was contacted by Yes singer Jon
Anderson to take part in a project reuniting the Close
To The Edge line-up, with the notable exception of
Chris Squire. This resulted in the album Anderson-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe
album in 1989, followed by a world tour. While working
on the follow-up in 1990, ABWH were absorbed into a
resurrected Yes for the infamous Union album
project and subsequent tour (which was far better than
the album) in 1991-92.
In
1993 rumours of a King Crimson reformation began to
circulate, but Bruford was the last to know
about it - Robert Fripp apparently didn't plan to
involve him alongside former members Adrian Belew and
Tony Levin. The drummer was going to be Jerry Marotta,
of Peter Gabriel fame. Bruford contacted his
former bandmate and expressed his desire to be involved.
Eventually, the new King Crimson was a sextet, with Warr
guitarist Trey Gunn and drummer Pat Mastoletto joining
the 1981-84 veterans. The EP Vrooom was released
in 1994, followed by the full-length effort Thrak
(1995). Most of 1995-96 was spent on the road, resulting
the live sets B'Boom (1996) and ThrakAttak
(1997). During this period Bruford also guested
on projects by Steve Hackett - Genesis Revisited
(1996) - and Eddie Jobson - the still unreleased
UK-reunion finally turned solo project, Legacy.
At
the instigation of producer and longtime fan Russ
Summers, in February 1997 Bruford teamed up with
prestigious jazz musicians Ralph Towner (guitars and
piano) and Eddie Gomez (bass) for the acoustic jazz
album If Summer Had Its Ghosts, consisting
largely of Bruford originals. As this particular
combination proved impossible to tour with, he then set
out to form a new incarnation of EarthWorks. For
this he was joined by Patrick Clahar (saxophones), Steve
Hamilton (keyboards) and Geoff Gascoyne (bass). Bruford
is now focussing his energy almost entirely on this
band, which is constantly touring and has so far
released a number of studio and live albums.
A lot
of Bruford's 1990s activities were more or less
Crimson-related - ProjeKCt One, a quartet featuring
Robert Fripp, Tony Levin and Trey Gunn, played four gigs
at London's Jazz Café in December 1997 (recordings of
these have since been released); and B.L.U.E.,
short for Bruford-Levin Upper Extremities, was a
collaboration with Tony Levin, actually almost a
reformation of the line-up featured on David Torn's Cloud
About Mercury, as Torn was prominently featured,
as was trumpeter Chris Botti. The quartet did a couple
of brief tours in support of the release (a live CD, BLUE
Nights, was released in 2000). Bruford
was also involved with Pete Lockett's Network of Sparks.
As
for King Crimson, Bruford ceased his
collaboration with the group in the late 1990s, with the
aim of concentrating almost exclusively on EarthWorks
activities (including its big band incarnation
EarthWorks Underground), while guesting occasionally on
other people's records, notably Jean-Philippe Goude (Rock
De Chambre) and Sean Malone's Gordian Knot. He
also released several collaborative CDs and DVDs with
Dutch keyboardist Michiel Borstlap.
In a
shocking statement, in January 2009 Bruford
announced his indefinite retirement from live
performance (it is as yet unclear whether studio
activity is still a possibility). His is publishing an
autobiography in March 2009.
Bill
Bruford's desert island discs :
- Keith
Jarrett My Song (1978)
- Miles
Davis Bitches Brew (1970)
- John
Lennon Walls And Bridges (1974)
- King
Crimson In The Court Of The Crimson King
(1969)
- Yes
Close To The Edge (1972)
- Albinoni
Adagio For Strings
There
is a chronology of Bill Bruford's career
(centered on his 'Canterbury' related work) on this
website.
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