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It was a question of widening the scope of 'Blues' which seems,
in the end, to be something in which to drown one's sorrows, to
include the ("red") sense of 'taking one's stand' as in the lyrics
of 'Western Sun'.
IAIN: So Red and Blue are large scale
metaphors?
PAUL: As Chris put it:' Red is not only anger; it is also warmth,
comfort, sunset, roses.' Another aspect which Chris mentioned was
the notion of red blood/blue blood when we first brainstormed the
project: a reference which consequently found its way into the title
track.
I was aware of my own and many other white musicians growing up
in the 1960s borrowing idioms from Black American culture in order
to express what was coded in the 'blues' - an evasion of white
middle class roots, but also I was aware of the colonisation and
exploitation of black culture. Whatever one says about White Boys
singing the blues, I can't get away from the fact that the Rolling
Stones, Eric Clapton etc. became young millionaires while the
seminal blues singers mostly died in misery.
WHY does Elton John adopt a southern-American-states accent when
he sings, for example?
I also wanted to increase the scope of the stereotypical blues
political agenda: suffering and rebellion and acceptance all start
with the notion of
enslavement. I wanted to try to include psychological and
spiritual paramaters - if there is enslavement, it can also be to
internal forces - passion, for example - the lover's enslavement
epitomized in Shakespeare's sonnets, or enslavement to some form of
god.
I wanted to use a blatantly English cultural icon to epitomise my
own heritage, and Shakespeare seemed the most obvious reference
point: used with respect but with a deliberate sense of
presumptuousness. The sonnet has a fixed basic structure which is
then open wide to interpretation, like what happens with the basic
12 bars of the blues (click here to
listen to Red Blues).
IAIN: In the early 60s we mistakenly took "the
blues" to be an unmediated natural category - nowadays we can see
how much it had been constructed in the previous decade.
PAUL: I wanted to be able to acknowledge my own cultural heritage
when dealing with condensed lyrical contemplation. I guess Nick
Drake had the same notion: I'm interested that Nick has been likened
to Robert Johnson, despite superficially different cultural
contexts.
IAIN: So how did you start in practice?
Paul: The first song I specifically wrote for the Redblues
collection was 'Rich and Strange'
(click here to listen to Rich & Strange)- following on the Shakespeare
quote I used for the previous collection ('...suffer a seachange
into something rich and strange') into a fusion of non-standard
multilayered imagery over a blues base (a form of personalised
pizza!).
"Your love weaves a thread around me, a tapestry so rich and
strange...like a dolphin's song swimming in and out of range" is not
a line which Robert Johnson would come up with, I think.
Not that blues lyrics can't be metaphysical and witty: e.g.s 'Put
your arms around me like a circle round the sun' or 'I've been down
so long it looks like up to me'.
At the same time, in 'Rich and Strange' I wanted to use
superficial punning which is a form of deliberately bland defence
against deep emotional turmoil: a stoical, irritating way of
confronting 'serious' issues -like a cartoon. So there was a whole
play on words: "Your sun rose red and blew (blue) the clouds
away..." - still retaining emotion, but mocking at the same time.
This is also in the Shakespearean tradition: Hamlet's speech
"What a piece of work is man..." is simultaneously satirical and
noble, for example.
I wanted an unholy alliance between notions of 'high' and 'low'
culture: Shakespeare meets the Marx Brothers!
IAIN: Zeppo not Karl?
PAUL: Of course, there is the notion of red being associated with
socialism and blue with conservatism. Terms which used to be simple
to distinguish, but are now significantly blurred. When I put 'Redblues'
into a search engine, I was unsurprised to find Eastern European
jazz musicians who had identified with the title.
But then the internet also offered advice to carpet makers about
how to separate their dyes.
Then there is the idea that you can have different shades of
primary colours. My house in Cambridge was decorated with what I
thought were predominantly blue colours, but my son and a friend of
his, both of whom work in film and are orientated to colour, pointed
out that the blues were red-based.
Joni Mitchell moved on from "Blue" to "Indigo"...Indigo tends
towards purple, hence toward red... For those interested in
psychological colour theories, my house in Brighton is more red
based, tending towards yellow: maybe the next album will be about
bananas.
Blue and red are not mutually exclusive like black and white.
IAIN: I know there's a technique for arranging
music that involves colouring in. These metaphors must go through to
instrumental colours - and the ones or on the CD eg synth and guitar
tones are not always the one you might expect given the nature of
the songs.
PAUL: To start with "Rich & Strange" again, the musical textures
on this song are EXACTLY what one would expect from an acoustic
blues - I think you mentioned that it was the sort of area
'Pentangle' was in. And yet there is the hint already there, in the
solo instrumental, that a virtual world surrounds the acoustic one:
what EXACTLY is the instrument being played?
The tone is familiar, a reassuring, folk sound of a harmonica or
even kazoo, but in fact it's electronic.
IAIN: Yes I wondered exactly how that had been
done, especially as the phrasing is so authentic.
PAUL: The other conventional blues tracks: 'Western Sun'
(click here to listen to Western
Sun)and the
title track have similarly predictable instrumentation, with a
leaning towards the French/Orleans Cajun (from 'Arcadian',
incidentally) sound - a reference to the non-African, non-English
ingredients. 'Loop the Loop' also has a deliberate square-dance,
slightly scary moonshine madness, like 'Duelling Banjos'.
IAIN: Loop the Loop was always in that area
even the first recorded version a long time ago. I think it comes up
pretty well this time. It was a big step when you first wrote it -
away from a confessional style.
PAUL: I can see why you think that, although 'Loop the Loop'
(click here to listen to Loop the
Loop)was
based on a real experience when someone I knew took me up in a two seater airplane to lift me out of a depression, and even 'Aquarian
Home' was inspired by a builder's comment on my house in Brighton
that there was so much damp that the walls were made of water -
something I found very appealing!
Other songs in the collection are redblues but move away from 12
bar formats: hymns/spirituals: 'Palm Sunday', 'Govinda', which refer
respectively to Christian and Indian images, and gave rise to
different soundscapes accordingly. Then there are more personal
soul-searching songs.
IAIN: I have to say the ones out of the old
confessional school of writing - say like Songs to a Seagull never
fail with me. This is a guilty admission!
PAUL: 'Easy Time' with its emotional wash, and 'Far Outsider'
(click here to listen to Far
Outsider),
although the latter is still based around a twelve bar/country feel.
And then, well, quirky songs: 'Aquarian Home'and 'Recipe' where the
soundscape is at its most experimental.
IAIN: Very experimental I'd say - but
experimenting in ways that play with the more conventional meanings.
Chris did an amazing job particularly on the Aquarian one. And
Recipe is both hilarious and intermittently funky. The emotional
ones are more "straight ahead".
PAUL: Working with Chris gave me the chance to paint with sound,
which used to be the preserve of the few before technology became so
accessible..."Aquarian Home"
(click here to listen to New Age Aquarian Home) was designed around sound textures
being more important than the skeletal chord structure: particularly
the building of the 'walls made of water".
'Recipe' went through many colours before arriving where it did,
including one version in which only voices were used - something
like what Brian Wilson experiments at the time of 'Smile'.
'Rebel Heaven', for me, is the least easy to pigeon-hole, and
probably represents my most personal style, and also the most
intricate collaboration with Chris to evolve the sound-colours.
CHRIS: "Paul writes a song to say something rather than to make a
particular sort of sound. This makes for good songs but it doesn't
make my life easy.
If he said "this is a boogie-woogie shuffle in 6/8" I could dial
in the appropriate sounds and off we'd go. But he says "this is a
song which deals with the whole global-commerce thing in a slightly
sarcastic way" so I have to approach instrumentation and production
in a different way too.
IAIN: Sometimes Brian Eno comes at production
from the very abstract point of view. Like you he thinks about music
on lots of different levels at the same time.
CHRIS: Songwriters who use the acoustic guitar as their main
compositional instrument often give clues in the way they have
constructed the guitar part to demo the song. This is one of the
great things about the acoustic guitar - it can, in the hands of a
good player, sound like a harpsichord, an accordion, a rock band, a
jazz quartet, anything. So I listen to what Paul is doing with the
guitar when I first hear a new song. Almost subconsciously he'll be
telling me what the backing should sound like.
IAIN: I think it always helps to watch their
fingers.
CHRIS: Of course, this can only get you so far, so we have long
conversations about what the song is doing and I'm always looking
for keywords in the conversation; "edgy", "sharp", "silly", "pushy",
"drunk", "apologetic" are the sort of words that lead to the first
"sound palette" being constructed.
IAIN: That's almost like Neuro Linguistic
Programming
CHRIS: Only rarely do we talk about actual instruments but if
Paul has some definite sound in his head that's one fewer thing for
me to worry about.
When I find what I think is the "way in" to the song I'll send
Paul a real rough with a proposed set of instruments and the process
becomes fairly predictable from that point.
IAIN: That's the bit I hate.
CHRIS: Emails and refined versions fly back and forth -
rejecting, suggesting, rejoicing, and finally approving (time for a
large beer for me!)
Paul keeps his eye on the big picture all the time. The overall
balance of the project forms in his mind from quite an early stage
and this can lead us to completely overhaul a previous arrangement
of a song if it doesn't work in the context of the other tracks. His
songs are strong enough to withstand a variety of arrangements
imposed upon them.
IAIN: No question about that. And yet there are
powerful governing metaphors too.
CHRIS: Red and Blue instrumentation in Red Blues? No, there is no
deliberate attempt to create "red" or "blue" sounds. Red and blue
are adjectives and it's what they are describing that needed
instrumentation.
We talked so much about these songs before recording them
(including their redness and blueness) that we became instinctively
aware of what was right for each track. Interestingly though, I can
assign shades of red and blue to most instruments used in the
project much more easily than shades of green or yellow.
That's probably because yellow and green (in our society at
least) stand for external things like grass and sun whereas red and
blue are often used for internal things like anger and sadness.
I'd like to do a lime-green album next.
IAIN: I sometimes think that the structuralists
are 100% right and that all meaning depends on the order in which
units are arranged. I said to Paul earlier that there seems to be a
caesura betweeen the first 7 and last 5 tracks.
PAUL: Yes, indeed. This was prompted by Chris who said that from
a musicalpoint of view, there was an interesting joint between the
end of 'Rebel Heaven and the beginning of 'Aquarian Home' - I
immediately realised that from a thematic point of view, this was
essential to the vision of the whole collection. The shift of the
rebel from solidarity to solitude (to quote Simon Schama ) suddenly
made sense of the collection.
IAIN: Which particular disenchanted
revolutionaries was Simon Schama referring to?
PAUL: Mary Wollstonescraft and co. - why the Brits were not swept
up in the revolutionary wave of the 18th century. There's a sense,
particularly if you happen to have been a teenager in the 1960s,
that 1968 had some unique momentum, which is a trite assessment of
what revolution means in the bigger historical context.
IAIN: So how much of the particular class of
1968 version of counter culture is incorporated here?
PAUL: The Redbllues collection does represent my own transition
from idealism via nihilism to egotism to spirituality to personal
frailty: I make no apologies. The incitement to take one's stand
against imperialism in the first track is a cry throughout the ages:
the 'Americans' could be the 'Romans' or the 'Mongols' depending on
historical context. Empires who get to the point that they think
that they can make the sun rise in the West (actually, Arthur C
Clarke even posited this in his sequel to 2001). I wrote the first
version of that song just before the upheavals in Eastern Europe at
the end of the 1980s; when I came to record it for Redblues, the
only thing that had changed was a slight geographical reference.
Chris wrote a great song called 'The News' which he wrote around
the time of the first attack on Iraq in 1991, which has the
plaintive chorus 'I've heard it before', and is a brilliant
indictment of the way that history repeats i tself.
IAIN: For the current generation these events
seem to be a motivation to study history more deeply. My son was
very absorbed in the discovery that history extended into his
lifetime - he was six when the Berlin Wall came down - now he's
studying non European history as part of his first degree. The way
history goes on seems to be a focus for intellectual energy for
those who are picking up the pieces.
PAUL: Other songs among the first 6 are more bouyant. I started
out the project before 2001, and it was going to be a skiffley,
rather boisterous Brighton sound. I'd just bought a vintage Hofner
archtop guitar, and it wanted to play songs like 'Midnight Special'
and 'Home in that Rock' - songs I played in a jug band as a
teenager. Moby was reworking spirituals at the time; so was local
Brighton hero Fatboy Slim in his own way, and I think the same idea
struck Cassandra Wilson.
IAIN. Yes you accused me of being an old softie
with my enthusiasm for her sophisticated acoustic approach to being
down home! I guess Brighton is one version of the "deep south".
PAUL: Then came 2001. For a while, I shelved the whole thing,
then I decided that I would continue the original resilience and
reference to tradition, while being quite clear that I could not
ignore references to 2001, but hopefully set them in a wider
context.
IAIN: Some people think that those shiny
monoliths launched Minimalism on wider culture. An absolute from
outer space that triggered a new age.
PAUL: The first version of 'Rebel Heaven'
(click here to listen to Rebel
heaven) was written after I
read Musil's 'A Man Without Qualities', which, again, was not about
the 1960s, but was about the way in which war depends on identifying
who are 'my brothers', regardless of the fact that this group
continuously changes - like Orwell'svision of the enemy in nineteen
eighty four, or Pete Townshend's comment about 'Meet the new boss,
same as the old boss'.
IAIN: Musil is often linked to Wittgenstein -
utterly radical Viennese thinking after the First World War.
PAUL: 'Aquarian Home' and 'Recipe'
(click here to listen to Recipe) represent the absurdity of the
consumer shell which is enjoying such success at the moment' 'Loop
the Loop' could be said to represent the similar fashion of extreme
sports in this context; but by the time the collection reaches 'Govinda',
there is a shift to a much wider perspective. In the context of
Redblues, I think it's significant that this song started as an
intensely personal song about Nick Drake's death being on the same
day as my son's birth, but it seemed time to let the song grow up.
IAIN: I liked that version very much indeed
especially the Lennonish bits...
PAUL: At the start of CE 2001, the greatest event in the third
world was the Kum Mela - 30 million people gathering for a peaceful
spiritual event: 1968 did not invent hindu cultures and beliefs; I
spent a long time trying to be fair to the references to Arjuna and
Govinda (click here to listen to
Govinda), but I bow to those with greater insight. The fact that in
the first world the violent events of the latter half of 2001 are
remembered more vividly is tragically significant. The split between
rich and poor is nothing new but misery is not an ephemeral fashion
statement.
IAIN: The Kum Mela was brought to us in the UK
by the verve and imagination of a few people on Channel 4. Thanks to
their commitment, some of those powerful images have stayed with me.
Lennon was certainly someone who could combine powerful global
images with personal confession going right back to "There's A
Place". Shakespeare too - but you never know which bits were his
confession
PAUL: 'Easy Time' (click here
to listen to Easy Time)is back to the confessional mode: I wrote it on
hearing that I was going to be a father in 1970: this recording was
made over 30 years later, as a grandfather. There is a line in the
song: "give me seasons to feel it through..." many seasons have
passed and many feelings, and many people. To finish with the
Shakespeare reference again, it had for me the intensity of
Shakespeare's sonnet 30 "When to the sessions of sweet silent
thought I summon up remembrance of things past..." |
