THE LIVING END
Interview by Steve Lake
REACTIONS FROM CONTEMPORARIES
BL: I'd say they've mostly been negative.
SS: No, I've only talked to cats in the States and they were always excited about it. They can't wait for the record to come out. Everybody's saying "Boy, this is some scary shit."
PB: Living in Europe, I had a lot of funny situations after our first fourteen days of touring. All these good old jazz fans were saying to me "My God, Brotzmann what are you doing? And that nice guitar player Sonny Sharrock too! What are you doing with these idiots??" On the other hand, a lot of younger people seem really to like it, and of course I'm much more interested in younger people than in old fucked-up jazz critics. I always want to take something to the edge. And with this quartet I can feel it much more than with my, let's say, usual thing. More even than this avant garde art business with Bennick or whatever. This time people really have to decide if they want it or not. And that's great.
I'd like to see a lot of Last Exit records.
BL: I think we won't do it so much because we'll feel guilty just putting out everything that happens.
But this is one instance where it feels like there really is a lot to document.
BL: A lot of people have less encouraging things to say. Basically, no one wants to know.
Well, later they will. I promise.
BL: Too late, I'm afraid.
PB: It's always that way
SS: I'm sorry, I see something different happening.
BL: I see music happening, but I don't see a way to document it or take care of it. It's more like an experience you have to live with.
SS: I think that's going to be extremely successful and I think people who never thought they would be into what we're into are gonna see some shit they've been waiting for and didn't even know.
BL: Maybe I'm just a little jaded. Maybe I just expect the worst.
SS: I think my attitude reflects how happy I am. Every night I go on and play and I feel very good about our shit. Very fucking good, man. It's a weird thing. We like each other, that helps quite a bit, and we got a lot of respect for each other. These are crazy motherfuckers, man, but with that respect there it works.
PB: This Sonny Sharrock, you know, he's a fucking great guitar player. I don't even like guitar players. For me, there's Bailey and there's Sharrock, and that's it. Sonny is playing more like a fantastic horn player.
SS: I wanted to be a horn player, but I got asthma. Couldn't do that shit. Don't like guitar much myself, I guess I do hear it more like a horn. And Brotz here - he's the first horn player who makes sense to me since Pharoah and Byard (Lancaster).
SOME NOTES ON RHYTHM
BL: I learned from working with some really serious rhythm players, so any time I try to do something that's not written it's going to be a bit more rhythm-oriented than the improvisation of a person whose had another kind of experience. I just play more rhythm things and Sonny also does that. Even in Sonny's groups he plays rhythms that are straighter than what you would find in a "normal" jazz situation, if such a thing exists. It's just our backgrounds. There was no concept "hey let's make a free music band with rhythms" because that's certainly not an interesting proposition.
RSJ: The rhythms are not haphazard from the drums. It's very structured. You can play improvised music and find certain things, okay. But to play a rhythm, a set rhythm that you can get back to at any time, that's what's happening with the rhythms that are being done. They're not haphazard ideas. In other words, it's not spontaneous. Spontaneous rhythms are just that. They're spontaneous and they feel good then, but they very rarely capture. The creation of rhythm itself is a thing that I be dealing with.
SS: But, see, the killer of that is we don't know - although he may have an idea - what it's going to be until we hear it, and then our response is always going to be different. That's the beauty of the shit. If I feel myself going in the direction, I'll just go there. And if people come to that, they do. And if they don't that's cool too. We'll just build another kind of thing. Wherever these people go, it's gonna be musical. Sometimes I'll just listen. I'll stop playing.
BL: Well, the reason is you don't have no strings left.
SS: Ain't got no strings on the motherfucker! They're all gone!
RSJ: Some of the rhythms I have played in my compositions with the Decoding Society, right, but if I play them with Laswell they're gonna come out differently to the way they'd come out within the structure of my own group. Because here I'm at liberty to play it where it can be played. And also, I don't have to be limited to playing at a certain volume or trying to keep it in a certain construct because "Oh, it's overbalancing" or something. Drums are an equal component of what we're doing. So the rhythms can be there, and then what he comes up with as the equivalent of the bass line of that, he can take it somewhere else.
BL: It's not, like, parts.
RSJ: It's like a kaleidoscope. You turn it and you say, like "Wow!" and then it moves, "Oh shit!" and then "What the fuck??!"
To make the music work, does more of the responsibility fall upon the bass and drums?
BL: Any two members of the group could do the gig. We don't even have to be there.
RSJ: I think the record reflects that. It shows that it can be all four of us. It can be two, it can be one. We're still in the same place. The same ocean, the same galaxy.
PB: I haven't heard the record.
LOOKING GOOD ON STAGE
RSJ: Image? What's that word mean?
BL: Shannon's got a couple of good hats. Skipper's hat and a cowboy hat.
Brotzmann's taken to wearing a tie, and a nice little scarf.
BL: It's for the ladies.
SS: It's always for the ladies.
PB: A tie? No!
BL: Yeah, you had a tie in Paris. You were looking rather slick actually. In Zurich you wore a scarf.
PB: Well it was the middle of winter, damn it.
BL: Do you have the tie with you?
PB: No, not tonight.
Tour manager: Last Exit does carry a certain image. It was really clear in Frankfurt where in contrast to the surroundings and the other bands was really strong.
SS: Yeah, we did follow them quiet dudes. I'll talk about the motherfuckers, I don't give a shit.
BL: Yeah, go ahead, I will too. I'll fight!
PB: Scofield and Frisell, my God.
SS: Yeah, them dead motherfuckers.
PB: Oh shit!
SS: No, they're excellent players, man, but that ain't enough. You got to play something. We followed them and we sounded and looked different for sure. There is a style, but it's just each individual character and how we feel about this band. It's very natural. Peter's got a tuxedo tonight: that's how he feels.
PB: I left it in Wuppertal!
Ensemble choir: I left my tuxedo in Wuppertal!
IS LAST EXIT A BLUES BAND?
BL: Have I studied blues? I haven't studied anything. I listen to blues. More and more.
PB: The music has to do with blues, sure. I feel very comfortable with that shit.
They have the blues in Wuppertal and Berlin?
PB: Of course, I'm not an American and I'm not a black guy. But I think I've had my own experience of the blues. I have no problems with that area. I would be ready to work with a good rhythm and blues group, too, any time.
Is the group inclusive enough for everybody? Shannon, for example, is using a wider range of colours in his arrangements for the Decoding Society.
RSJ: Yeah, but in this band I play in this band, you know? I wouldn't come to this band and say: "Here's an arrangement of a piece."
BL: You could try it.
RSJ: They would send me out in crutches!
BL: We'll, you know how bad I've been wanting to get my acoustic pieces done...
SS: Acoustic Bill! I love it!
Shannon, on the tape from Paris you're singing Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me To Do" at one point.
RSJ: That's not on the record, though.
SS: We don't talk about nothin' that's been edited, brother!
Are you regularly singing songs, as such?
RSJ: See, there's nobody telling anybody what to do in this band and...
SS: You wanna sing, you sing, man.
RSJ: I'm gonna play the flute on day; I might get hit over the head.
BL: There's a good chance. We hate metal flute.
RSJ: They hate my flute.
SS: No...I never heard it, man.
RSJ: You don't want to hear it, that's why.
BURNING QUESTIONS
Peter, what did it sound like when you played with Tangerine Dream?
PB: Oh, I just played my usual shit. I don't know how to do anything else.
SS: That's it, folks. It's the bottom line.
PB: And sometimes you play with good musicians and sometimes you play with some that are...less good. It was a long time ago. Twenty years.
Sonny, we know about your early history from the records but what were you doing in the years immediately before you started coming out with Material in 1980?
SS: Those were The Lost Years. The Lost Years were spent in my hometown working on shit that is just now coming to fruit-ation. This band's had a lot to do with that. I was working on a melody and after the last tour I started to see everything that I'd been looking for. Suddenly. And we went in and did the solo record immediately when we got back to New York. There's a technical way to explain it but I'd rather not deal with that but it's like "Ooooh....lemme get some more of that shit goin'." It has to do with overtones, but that's bullshit. I don't want to talk in those terms. I spent the last few years working on that. I don't have a bridge to go to like Sonny Rollins, but that's cool. There's no bridge in Ossining.
BL: Is there a call-box?
Or a lamp-post?
BL: Zzzzzzzzzztttttttttt!!!!
SS: Like any musician I was just working on things and now they're finally coming together. I really have to credit this band with that.
Were you aware of the fact that you influenced guitarists outside of jazz?
SS: Lots of cats have told me that but I never saw no cheques about that shit, y'know?
BL: I hear that too, but I’ve never heard anybody who sounded like Sonny.
Some years ago, shortly after you first played with Brotzmann, Bill, you told me that the results "sounded like Motorhead". Still feel that way?
BL: The way Peter plays, where there's a lot of energy and a lot of sound, that's not so different from what Motorhead do. Merely in terms of energy. We’re playing a whole other music, but the energy could be related. That would be really difficult to explain to a Motorhead fan or somebody who likes free jazz and hates rock and roll. But I hear it. And that's my problem.
PB: I have no problems with the comparison.
Heavy metal is supposedly aggressive music. Would you describe Last Exit as aggressive?
BL: People who like Neil Diamond might find it abrasive. I don't.
PB: Aggression? Not any more. There was aggression in my music in the early years. But violence...maybe, if we could translate it with the German word Leidenschaft. How do you translate that?
Passion.
PB: That's it. Love and hate. You need that for your life, fucking hell.
SS: Passion is the word. In the sixties writers would talk about how we were violent. That wasn't it. But there still is passion to play.
RSJ: I gotta go tune my drums. Catch you later.
Ronald Shannon Jackson gets as far as the door when Laswell calls across the room to him.
"Hey, Shannon. What do you want to start with tonight?"
Takes a second for the penny to drop. Then the drummer cracks up. So do the rest of Last Exit.