Glenn Branca

14 January 1999, 65 Mercer St, Soho, New York, 7pm

Reich, I knew, was listening to my music. When I released my very first record of my
instrumental music, which was released in 1980, which is, what, 19 years ago now,
you know a friend of mine knew someone who knew Steve Reich who said “Steve
heard your record”. I was totally shocked – I mean I was just a babe in the woods at
this point, and Reich lived at the top of Mt Olympus – he wasn’t even part of my
world. And to think that he’d even heard the record was, like, amazing. And it was
amazing that he was even in touch with, you know, the little guys on the downtown
scene at that point. And basically his comment was “Lesson no. 1 was fill, but the
other piece, Dissonance, I really liked” – that was his comment, or at least what was
filtered back to me. It’s funny, Lesson no. 1 is the only piece that I ever wrote that has
overt minimalist references. I didn’t start out to do that, but it clearly does sound like
a classic minimalist piece (but for guitars of course), and in fact it’s a good piece too
by the way!

The very first six-guitar piece was 1979. I was doing rock bands, starting in 77 with a
band called Static. It all happened - I wrote a lot of music in a very short period of
time between 1979 and 1980. I was young, I had so much energy. It was my time.
When I say I was young – I was about 30 or 31 at that that time. I had struggled. I had
paid some big dues, and I wanted to be a serious artist in some form. I was in theatre

I worked really long days for a really long time. We’re talking 21, 22 hour days. Of
course I was doing speed as well.

4:06

Branca 2 tape

Same harmonies, same rhythms, whatever, is horrifying to me. I mean, when I go to

see a concert of academic, twelve-tone music, I mean, it’s worse than going to church,
and my ass starts hurting after about fifteen minutes, I’m bored out of my mind, and I
mean, some of these composers have talent. I mean this horrifying, Schoenbergian
style has been sophisticated to tremendous degrees, but, you know, 99% of the people
that write it are just rehashing the same crap, and it doesn’t mean anything. See the
thing is, I use a lot of process in my music. I use a lot of mathematical ideas in my
music. In fact, from what I’ve seen about twelve-tone and serialism, the kinds of ideas
I use are most likely more sophisticated than any damn tone row, or variations on tone
rows. I mean, it’s sad and pathetic. I mean, the tone row is just an easy way for young
people to learn how to write music. I mean, that’s all it is.

R: It’s very teachable and very doable.

G: Right. I’m not going to go on. I’ll stop myself. But you can listen.

R: Is there a typical mathematical process in your music?

G: It varies in the extreme. I mean for me – every piece is like a little world unto
itself, or at least that’s the idea. And I’m always unhappy with the previous piece, so
that the next piece has to be a different world, because I’m not going to use the same
approach as I used in the last one because it didn’t work. But I’m being really extreme
about that. What I usually do is I take, I simply, I push the idea, because I’m really
working on one single program.

R: All the pieces are part of it.

G: In a way yes. I mean, there are different types of pieces, but in the end, whatever I
do is all heading towards the same conclusion. And I’ll tell you the truth – some
people say, “well, once you succeed at doing the one thing that you want to do, well
then, you’ll have nothing to do.” That’s not going to be my problem. I want to
succeed. I’m going to succeed! I’m telling you. And I can’t believe how far I’ve
come. I mean from being someone, well, who didn’t have a lot of knowledge about
music, who is not and never was a very good musician, or at least in a technical sense
(I think I have a lot of balls and stuff, but I don’t have too many chops), and someone
who in fact never even intended to pursue a career as a musician or a composer, to
have become so… to have become one of the best composers in the world, I think is
pretty good, alright? No [laughing]. No, but I mean, but I have become, in a sense…
well, I think of myself as a kind of expert in the particular field that I’ve been
pursuing, and the only (that I’m aware) reason that I might be an expert, or maybe the
only expert, is because I’m the only person who would bother to pursue this direction.
It’s insane, what I’m doing – well, could easily be considered insane, although I’m far
from insane.

R: No one else is doing it as much as you.

G: No, no one else is even beginning to do it. And in fact, it’s not so difficult, but it
does require a lot of thought, experiment, and work. And for someone to catch up to
me now, even if I showed them everything, and I by the way, I don’t have any secrets
whatsoever. Anyone who wants to know anything is welcome. Because the project is
so gigantic, I would love someone else to attempt to pursue it. But no one else even
understands what I’m trying to pursue, because, admittedly, I haven’t been successful
enough. When I say successful, I don’t mean in the world, I mean in the work. When I
think people start to hear, when they really start to hear what I’m trying to do, then I
think there’ll be people who want to do it, for sure. Because the idea is to make music
which just blows you away, which doesn’t require any work whatsoever – it just
swirls around your head, and sings the whole time, but you could go as deeply into it
as you want. It would be like a vibrating string that has an endless number of
harmonics, all vibrating at the same time, and you can choose just to listen to the
fundamental or to the first two harmonics or to 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – as many as you want, it’s
up to you. If you want to pretend that all those harmonics aren’t really there, and it’s
just a fundamental tone that you’re hearing, fine.

So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to create a metaphor, an analogy for the
vibration of a string – that particular magic that occurs, which as far as I’m concerned
has never been described by any physics that I’ve read. And I’ve looked. It hasn’t
been described in the way that I would like to see it described.
R: Experientially you mean?

G: Well, no. I mean even mathematically. The mathematical descriptions of it to me

are not adequate to describe what I consider to be a system that interpenetrates on
itself. I mean the closest you come to describing what goes on in a string is like the
new (well not so new now, but what in Eighties was called the new) science of chaos,
and fractal geometry. That was the beginning of a geometry or a mathematics that
curves back on itself and comes out the other side, and is constantly recreating itself
through itself. That’s the beginning of understanding what is happening in the very
simple vibration of a string. The very, very… so in fact, I guess, you know, I could
say yeah, probably right that there hasn’t been an actual description.

R; Ideally, would this be music that sounds like the Mandelbrot Set

G: That would be great – all those glittering, glistening, weird object, yeah. Well, it
would be like if you were able to take a filmic tour of the Mandelbrot Set, in time,
then you’d start to rock baby. Vistas upon vistas opening up – and that is the direction.
I think of it as like going deep into a forest. So deep into the forest, the canopy is so
dense, that it’s just totally dark. Then you reach a part where light is starting to break
through, where you’re reaching certain open areas, and it starts to become like truly
mysterious, but at the same time, you’re … it’s not just trudging through the same
dark forest – you’re constantly discovering.

I have a tremendous imagination, so I was able to hear this music by listening to

things that we mentioned before, like various kinds of drones, jackhammers and fans
and all kinds of things. And now my job as a composer, who supposedly is supposed
to have such a great imagination, that’s my gift supposedly, like a good hitter’s gift is
to get their bat on the ball, that’s my gift, and so it’s my job to get this down on paper
so everybody can hear what I heard. And it really is as simple as that, period, end of
story. And if I could live to be 200 years old, believe me, I’d get it done.

R: So getting down on paper – the pieces are all scored? I know Symphonies 8 and 10
are all fully notated for example.

G: Oh they’re all written out.

R: But Symphonies 8 and 10 are…

G: Oh in staff notation, yes. Symphony no. 8 was the first guitar piece that I wrote in
staff notation. I started writing in staff notation when I did the Peter Greenaway film,
like in 1986.

R: But with guitar, it was Symphony no. 8. There’s a score for that.

G: There’s a score for all of them, but that one has a staff notation

R: They’re not published though

G: No. No one’s called me. Anyone wants to give me an advance, they can have it all,
just like that. They don’t want ‘em. I don’t know. Sometimes people call me about the
scores and I send them for performance.

R: So there have been performances independent of your involvement?

G: The only thing that was performed independently was one movement - it was
Spiritual Anarchy, in fact. It was performed by a group of students at a university in
Fargo, North Dakota – Moorhead State University. And they did a great job of it, and
actually one of the musicians was so good, I brought him to New York, and he was in
my group for about three years.

R: In Symphony no. 8, you have a long section in the first movement where you have
repeated notes. I guess it reminded me slightly of Steve Reich. What was that all
about?

G: I’ve used stuff like that a number of times before. The opening of the last
movement of Symphony no. 5, for instance, is a single… basically a perversion of
that. To tell you the truth, it was not intended to be that. It was one of those situations
that most composers can relate to: you have it on the computer, it’s cranking through
the sampler, I’d written out the rhythm, and “Oh my God, it sounds really cool if I
don’t bother to write any chords”. And I just left it. Well, that’s part of the damn
process. I just went with it. you know, this is cool.

R: Then when you listen to it, you hear the harmonics.

G: yeah, that’s right. But it wasn’t so much about harmonics. I like the idea of seeing
what would happen if you really jazz up the rhythm a little bit, and not change any
aspect of the chord or orchestration. I’ve used that even back to my record The
Ascension there’s a couple of bits of that type of thing. So I like that sort of monolithic
thing.

R: When everyone’s playing together. It’s sort of a relief from the wall of sound.

G: It’s a big… that piece needs a relief. It’s tough. That whole record is hard to listen
to. That’s probably the closest to you know, like, too much. Like strychnine or
something – it’s too much. I mean, even one movement is difficult to get through,
much less all four of them. It’s just too much. I mean, when I listen to it, I have to
immerse myself so much just into one movement, it’s like [pants], “oh, Jesus Christ!
When’s this thing ever going to be over!” It seems, in many cases anyway, it does
keep coming back, but to then listen to another one on top of that? You gotta be…
well, I don’t know – if I was younger and I was stoned, you know, I think I could get
through the whole thing pretty easy. I mean I am sort of writing it for people who can
handle it – people who listen to like speed metal. I would hope, at some point, these
kids could fucking discover my music, because maybe they all wouldn’t like it, but I
know there’s a couple of guys out there who would flip to hear this shit. I mean, they
sit around listening to heavy bands – and then this – this is like from Mars, this is like
heavy metal from the year 2020 or something.

R: Maybe it will sound like that then!

G: There’ll be a couple for sure.

R: I freaked out some high school kids with your Symphony 6 – kids who were into
The Prodigy

G: Right – it has to be people who are already into that head, right. So there’s a
connection there. But I don’t know who I’m writing for really. But it’s there if people
want it. They’re only gonna get it one place. That part I like – I really like that part.

R: I want to keep asking you about the album with Symphonies 8 and 10. It’s got
more clarity about it than the earlier records.

G: It’s a very well-recorded record. I mean, most of my records have had real serious
problems. I have a dark cloud over my head when it comes to recording. The moment
I walk into a recording studio, everything breaks down immediately. Everything. And
I just have…

R: So 8 and 10 were done in a studio?

G: That’s a studio recording, and it was produced by Steve McAllister, who was
brilliant. It’s his sound that you hear.

R: It’s very clean.

G: Well, he basically gave it that sound that guitar bands are supposed to have at that
time in the 90s when it was recorded, and that’s basically what we went with. I
wanted to do that at least once. So it has, well, a studio sound – a proper sound and all
that, and it has a real nice range from top to bottom. Every other record has had
tremendous problems, and it’s always the same story: there’s no more money, it can’t
be fixed, “we can’t go in an re-record that movement, it doesn’t matter that the two
ambient room mics weren’t working for the entire course of the recording – we didn’t
find out until we got to the mix. It was too late – we’ll go with those mics” etc etc,
endless.

R: It’s not likely they’ll be re-recorded.

G: Oh, it’s out of the question.

R: What about to restage the earlier symphonies?

G: No, but if some crazy King Ludwig came along and said “I want you to do … you
know, here’s half a million dollars, and I want you to restage all of your symphonies”,
you know, sure I would do it, but on my own, I’m not going to go back and do
Symphony no. 3 when I can write Symphony no. 13. No way!

R: 12’s been done?

G: Yeah, that was a guitar piece. It was done fairly recently in London actually.

R: 11 was orchestra.
G: That was orchestra. There’s no recording of it. That will be coming out any time
soon. I’m going to have to…somebody will have to put up some money to actually
make an orchestral recording, because the live recording is not releasable. The piece is
undeniably the best piece of music I’ve ever written. I would consider it to be my first
masterpiece. I really got it with this piece – it’s there. And I did it with an orchestra.
But the fucking recording is just an abomination.

R: The performance or the production?

G: The performance was very good. And in rehearsal, it sounded so ungodly great, I
was just in awe of the piece – I couldn’t believe it: there it was. But, as always, I make
the same mistake. They tell me, “oh we’re going to make a recording at a certain
point”. Fabulous. So I don’t bother to set up a recording of the rehearsals. So we get
to the concert hall, and it’s not a concert hall. It’s a big brick box with concrete floors,
and steel and glass ceiling that they’ve turned into a concert hall. It’s a concert hall,
it’s used all the time, and in fact, for practically anything else that I’ve ever written,
this room would be great. It is like the livest room on the face of the earth – it’s a live
reverb chamber. For this piece… the piece turned into mud! The whole piece just
disappeared off the face of the earth. And the recording just sounds like mud. If I had
made a recording of the rehearsals… well, whatever. That’s the Symphony no. 11
story, but at some point it’ll be recorded and it’s pretty fucking great.

R: I had heard there were going to be guitars with the orchestra – how did the balance
work?

G; There were supposed to be. But it’s just straight orchestra and chorus again. Same
exact setup as for Symphony no. 9, and in fact it starts off sounding almost exactly
like Symphony no. 9 for about ten seconds, and then it goes from there.

R: No amplification?

G: No.

R: None of your orchestral ones use amplification then.

G: I will not allow them to be amplified. I think they did put some mics on the voice
against my wishes. I want the natural sound. But the one where they always get me,
and it’s always the damn singers, is “well, they’ll be straining their voices. Oh…”. I
mean, that’s when I have to get in. They tried about fifteen other reasons why they
amplify the voices, until finally…so I had to say “of course, we can’t have them
straining their voices”. That’s their instrument, right? And I think that’s fair. I guess
next time, we’ll just have to have a triple-sized chorus. Then we won’t have to worry
about straining their voices. You know, because I do use these small choruses that are
meant to be integrated into the orchestra like an instrument group. They’re not meant
to be like the Brucknerian chorus back there, or the Beethoven chorus or something –
it’s just meant to be like another instrument. When they’re not getting solo parts,
when they’re singing my kind of weird music, they don’t like to project.

R: Have orchestras been hostile?

G: Never. Never, ever, ever. It sounds like that’s what I’m saying. The singer’s have
never been hostile, but the parts are really very difficult. I have them singing pretty
continuously without a rest, and they’re singing close harmonies, integrated into the
orchestra without any solo parts – I mean, it is hard. So it amazes me that they do it,
and they do it well.

R: How about the players?

G: No, they do not complain! There’s always some old curmudgeon who hates it and
who makes it very clear that he hates it, and wants me to know that he hates it, but
that’s it. The orchestras are much younger now, than in the days when they were
trying to play Reich and Glass, and walking out and complaining. Because they had a
lot of trouble, you know, with orchestra players. But I get young people, who in fact,
you know, like a little change from the classic repertoire occasionally, especially in
New York, where the programs are even straighter. It’s a lot more just Bach, Mozart…
it’s a lot more really straight music. Most of the players are jazz musicians on the side,
rock musicians on the side. And I have good orchestras playing my music.

R: Do they know your music?

G: Yeah, they… well, or the word gets around. You know, most of these people live in
this myopic little classical music world, and really a lot of them don’t know who the
fuck I am. but the word gets around. There’s always seven or eight guys who are like
“oh fuck, Glenn Branca’s coming with one of his pieces!” So there’s always a couple
of guys who are really excited and they tell everybody else in the orchestra. But no,
I’ve never, ever had a problem, right from the beginning.

R: Which orchestras did you work with?

G; For the 11th it was the Dutch Radio Orchestra, it’s in Amsterdam, and I think they
work out of Haarlem [look it up]

They were fabulous, fabulous. I mean I just…it’s a joy working with these players,
and they can just read it cold. But I’m good to them. I give good part, baby. I mean
it’s clear, it’s straightforward, and there’s rarely problems. I’ve had pieces played
cold, the first time, perfect.

R: You print it all out from the computer?

G: Yeah. And I’m anal about that kind of stuff.

R: Which software do you use?

G: Encore Finale. But I tell you, this piece, though, I’m not using the computer
anymore, because the piece is too complicated. Symphony no. 11. I’m not going to
use the computer for 12 either. Both 11 and 12 are completely written without the
computer. 11, I had a score copyist take my notes off charts – very complicated I had
to… there’s a light box there. I was using layers of tracing paper – craft tracing paper
– to build up a dimensional connection between the different orchestral parts. and it
was impossible to do on the computer or in staff notation. And I was lucky, man. The
Dutch got me this great copyist. My stuff is always unbelievably difficult to copy,
because they’re copying off charts that have very involved instructions, and there is
no improvisation. I mean, it has to be exactly right, every measure. And this guy was
just a gem, so it’s his… he should be credited with those parts.

R: Is your music better received in Europe than in the States?

G: No. It’s exactly the same. Exactly the same. It’s been like that for fifteen years.
Maybe at the very beginning, there might have been a slight difference, but no.

R: So you do quite well here with response?

G: I don’t do that good there is what I’m saying! Some people think I’m famous,
other people think “who’s he?”. I don’t know – it’s really schizophrenic.

R: Do you hang around with other composers?

G: Yeah, a little bit. Actually, yeah, yeah. But not much. Annie Gosfield was over here
yesterday – she’s teaching a class at Cal Arts and she wanted to have some
information about scores. She’s just great, she writes good stuff. I see Michael Gordon
and those guys – I’ve known them for years, and his wife Julia. She takes her baby on
a walk right in my neighbourhood – their block is right down the street, so when I see
them on the street, we hang out and talk. I think three times I’ve run into them, and
we hang out. I don’t go out much. But yeah, when I go out and I run into Steve Reich,
we’ll get a cab back together, that kind of thing. you know what I mean, it’s like that.
Whoever I happen to run into. Z’ev is a good friend of mine – I don’t know if you
know his work. I don’t know if you’d call him a composer, but I think of him as one –
a musician, whatever. He’s a good friend, and he hangs out, although we’re at war at
the moment. Well, I did a gig (I don’t know if you knew this) at the Knitting Factory a
couple of months ago. I put together this band with Z’ev and Rudolph Grey,
Maryanne Amacher and Margaret de Wys, who’s a good…who’s now become a
serious composer up at Bard College, and she was the keyboard player in my old band
Theoretical Girls – unbelievable. Then there was Maryanne – she’s a friend of
Margaret’s and I ran into her up at Bard. She does LaMonte Young-type electronic
music stuff, and it was intense. Anyway, what happened is…I was just very naïve
about the idea that we can bring all those unbelievably big egos together and actually
make something work, because in rehearsal, it sounded ungodly fabulous. It was so
loud, it was so big. It was unbelievable. And it was totally improvised! The idea was
we just get up there and fucking jam. That’s all it was. But I had this very special
group of people. Rudolph Grey of course was on guitar as well, and I was playing the
harmonics guitar. And it did sound ungodly good, until we got to the sound check, and
everybody’s egos just jumped out of their bodies and everybody just refused to do
what they do. All of a sudden, we did these stupid concerts where everybody was just
refusing to play for various reasons relating to arguments that we had had that
afternoon. I mean, it was ridiculous. And so it was too bad, because I wanted to tour
that group in Europe. It was incredible. The original model was Musica Electronica
Viva, which interestingly, one of our people had played in (Amacher).

R: Had you known MEV? Alvin Curran, Frederick Rzewski…?

G: I didn’t know them, no. I met Rzewski but I don’t know them, no.

R: So what was this gig you did in London recently in the Barbican?

G: That was Symphony no. 12, which obviously is a short piece, like 30 minutes, 35
minutes maybe, and the idea was it was meant to be a shot piece because I wanted to
do a gig, a kind of Glenn Branca Revue – in fact, that’s the way it should have been
billed really, but they were so afraid of the audience not knowing who the other
people were. So a number of musicians in my group, who are also composers, and are
quite good – Phil Kline, John Bepler, Virgil Moorefield, Wharton Tiers…So it was me
plus all these guys from my group, and they all did pieces… and the idea was that
they were to write pieces for my musicians, so we would be touring with the same 12
people, and everybody would write for those… and not only that, most of those
people are actually in – Most of the people in my group are also in their groups, so
there was all this incestuous stuff. It was a great idea, but then everybody got really
serious about it, they started bringing their own bands – it became a gigantic
undertaking. But it was quite good and very successful. I think Phil’s piece was the
best; Wharton’s was very good too. You’re familiar with Wharton?

R: No. I know Phil though.

G: Well, he was the drummer – Wharton was the drummer from Theoretical Girls and
is mainly known as an engineer. He produces most of…he produces all of Sonic
Youth’s stuff. But he also writes his own music, which he has done for twenty years,
and it’s quite good. And he has his own band now that he’s been touring with. He
tours with everybody he records – if he records Helmet, he goes on tour with Helmet.
If he records Dinosaur Jr., he goes on tour with Dinosaur Jr. – with his band – he takes
his band out as the opening act. He’s starting to get somewhat well-known. He does
instrumental rock stuff, but it’s commercial. It’s instrumental stuff that could actually
get on the charts kind of deal. It’s classic rock minimalism, but with a more accessible
edge on it.

R: You haven’t collaborated with Sonic Youth or other bands you’ve been around?

G: No. But finally after all these years it looks like there’s a collaboration that’s going
to happen.

R: With Bowie right? He’s admired you from a distance.

G: Yeah, he was like one of my fans, you know? That’s what it turned out to be. I
have favoured musicians and bands and composers too, so I was one of his favoured
things, so he listened to my music, but that didn’t mean we had to work together. The
idea was never his idea or my idea. It was completely done from the outside, and in
fact I was very embarrassed about the whole thing. And then it kept happening – see,
once the seed was planted, people would keep offering these subsidised collaborations
between me and Bowie, and neither of us had anything to do with any of these things.
It was bizarre.

R: But it is going to happen now?

G: Well, now it’s going to happen because it’s coming through the inside this time. It’s
happening through a video artist who actually works with Bowie on his videos, and
who’s also someone I’ve worked with as well – a guy named Tony Oursler. So in this
case, it’s like, you know, it’s about the three of us. The thing is, there’s a commission
from the World’s Fair in Hanover, Germany, and they wanted to do an installation, so
it wouldn’t require Bowie having to perform live or something. so I would sort of
write the music, and he would sing these parts that would be used as part of this
installation – videos projected on sculptures, and all that kind of thing.

R: Have you met about it?

G: I have not…as yet, I have not met David Bowie, after all these years. I’ve talked to
everybody in the world around him, I’ve met…I’ve spoken to [sounds like Rhys de
Brels] many times. I haven’t really wanted to meet… I mean, I love Bowie’s music.
Well since Hunky Dory, I’ve been a gigantic Bowie fan. I’m mainly a fan of the 70s
stuff. [don’t print that] He had ten great albums – you can’t complain about that.

R: Is the piece for 2000 guitars happening?

G: That’s happening. As of about five days ago, well at least I’m getting
commissioned – I’m getting $50,000 to write it. If they don’t want to put up the
money to do it, that’s their problem. It’s 2000 guitars – I’ve figured it out. I’ve been
working on this for a year and a half now. At first, when they first told me (it wasn’t
my idea), I said “oh yeah, right. You’ve got to be kidding. Pluh-ease!” It was not my
idea. My agent called me (my agent lives in Paris) and she sort of got this together. to
tell you the truth, I don’t know whose idea this was – I’ll have to find out. It’s
someone who thought “2000 guitars for the year 2000” right? I mean, if you’re going
to have a lot of guitars, why have more than a thousand? What is the two thousand?
It’s the year 2000. But it’ll be…I’ll tell you this: I can’t wait to fucking hear it. Oh it’s
going to happen. You want to play? You want to come? You’re invited. Bring your
guitar. Bring a little practice amp. You’ll see. It’s going to go out on the net, at least
six months before the show – an announcement will go out on the net, and you can
respond if you wish. I mean, of course, most of the guitars are going to come from
Paris, but I know plenty of people who are going to come from all over to play. Just to
be able to play in that fucking thing is going to be a trip. Because no one’s getting
paid. You can’t pay 2000 people. Just to find 2000 places to plug in is going to be
expensive enough. It’s a million dollar budget.

R: You can’t use batteries?

G: We’ll have to have a generator or something like that. But oh, they could use
batteries. I hadn’t thought about that. Ok, maybe I’ll propose that! Maybe I’ll propose
that.

R: You definitely can get battery-powered amps.

G: They say they’ve got a very good electrical system over in Paris I’m told, and there
should be no problem with plugging in all these guitars. They’ve got the money and
the budget to do it. This is a gigantic budget.
R: I didn’t want to bring this up, but the composer of An Angel Moves too fast to see
lives in Paris.

G: Oh, you think I’m not aware of this? Rhys will probably be there with a pistol in
hand.

R: Maybe he’ll play in it.

G: Well, he’s welcome to play. He’s played in my music before. How do you think he
learned how to write it for Chrissakes? I’m sorry to say. I mean, talk about a war – it
isn’t a war – this can be printed, after what Rhys says in public? No in fact, the last
time we met, I said I will never, ever mention your name to a journalist ever again,
you fucking bastard! That’s going to be your punishment! But now I’m doing it. I
don’t care. Because of this. I mean, I love Rhys, I love his music. It’s not my fault
he’s an asshole and a bastard and a ripoff.

But you can extend my welcome to Rhys to come and play. I’ll even put a spotlight on
him. I don’t have a problem with it. I mean, anyone who’s heard our music knows the
difference. I mean it’s not even slightly…well, there’s a slight resemblance in some
cases.

R: Well, you started off with some common ground?

G: No, no, no. The common ground came later! No, no, no, no, no! How could there
be a common ground, when for two years, Rhys had one piece called Guitar Trio
which was one chord, and I had ten pieces, one after the other after the other, all of
them different. Dissonance, a spectacular commodity, Lesson no. 1, The Ascension,
Instrumental for 6 guitars, and the list goes on and on and on. And Rhys is still [sings
“da da da da da da da da”]. I mean there was no connection. The first piece that Rhys
wrote after I had written this tremendous number of pieces was the out-of-tune guitar,
which was the most overt imitation of Dissonance you could possibly have. And as I
said, he played in… he would not have known how to do these tunings, and wouldn’t
have known how I structure pieces if he hadn’t played in a performance of
Instrumental for 6 guitars. Because Rhys was too damn dumb to figure it out for
himself just by coming to the concerts, I’m afraid to say. But again, I love Rhys. What
can I say? He’s been, he really has been an asshole. Did he tell you what he did the
last time I saw him in Paris? Did he tell you that?

R: He didn’t talk about you

G: Ok. Well this is what happened. I’m having a champagne reception after my
concert at the Theatre de la Ville. Champagne reception – this is very nice. This kind
of thing rarely happens. Who’s there? Rhys. There’s 150 people all drinking
champagne, Rhys is there. I’m sitting in a chair. Rhys comes up to me and put his fist,
without saying a word, he puts his fist into my face, and says “I’m the one who
invented the unison tuning” when he knows he’s telling me something that we both
know is a lie, to my face! To my face! With a fist in my face! So tell me what kind of
logic that’s about? What’s that about? And of course he knew he was going to get my
goat, obviously that was the idea.
We were friends. We were really good friends. You see, that’s what makes it worse.
It’s like we’re sitting over beers so many times picking my brain and then he drops the
bomb. “I’m stealing your fire, baby, whether you like it or not.

R: He didn’t actually say that?

B: In so many words, he might as well. When he was high on Quaaludes, he very

possibly did say that. He used to be like, well we all took drugs in those days. We
used to get so fucked up on Quaaludes, man, you couldn’t walk. He’d be falling down
on stage. You know the famous quote by John Rockwell was in the [New York]
Times. Oh my God – it was “Mr Chatham had some trouble maintaining a vertical
position” – on stage, you know. And it was true, because I was in that concert, so I
know. He was so fucking high, man – he comes on stage, and the curtain is closed
(this was when I was playing in the Guitar Trio) and we’re standing there, and he’s
like walking around like this, and he starts taking his shoes off really slowly. And
we’re sit…all the musicians are just waiting there to start, looking at him, and the
curtain’s closed, so it’s not like there’s a performance on. And then he starts taking his
socks off really slowly. and we say “Rhys, what the fuck are you doing?” He doesn’t
know. And then, someone’s sitting in front of the curtain (and this is really hilarious,
because he was music director of the Kitchen at the time) – someone says “when are
you gonna start?” And Rhys says “just a minute – I have to look at my book” – you
know, his fucking date book, you know? He was not making a joke. He was not – he
was so high on Quaaludes, because he actually…Rockwell was right; he could not
stand up during that concert. Oh, and here was the killer: he would go into the
audience with his guitar (and this was what Rockwell was referring to), because he
was playing the piece, and he was leaning up against the table because he couldn’t
stand up, in the middle of the audience. What he didn’t know was that he had gone so
far into the audience that he had unplugged his guitar. So the concert that Rockwell
reviewed was pretty much just me and the other guitar. But I was good – I loved
Rhys’ piece, and I played the hell out of it.

R: What I meant about the common ground was that you were both using multiple
guitars, and that was a new thing.

G: Three guitars – you see, I have an argument with that. Three guitars was not
multiple guitars. Would you say that Buffalo Springfield or The Grateful Dead or
Moby Grape was using multiple guitars because they had three guitars? No. Six
guitars was multiple guitars. Rhys…I’m going to say one more thing. Rhys would
have never done another guitar piece after Guitar Trio if it hadn’t been for what I was
doing. He wouldn’t. He was writing songs and shit, that’s what he wanted to do. He
had already incorporated songs into his Guitar Trio act. He wasn’t writing more
instrumental guitar pieces, he was writing rock songs. He wanted to be famous. He
wanted to be the Sex Pistols or something.

R: Well now he’s gone pretty much into pop music…

G: I didn’t know that.

R: …with his jungle or drum n bass tracks.

G: Oh really? Oh that’s cool. I’d be interested to hear what Rhys’ version of that
would be.

R: Well he plays trumpet over drum n bass.

G: Oh that’s cool. I’ve never heard a piece of Rhys’ that I haven’t liked. I mean, I
think he’s a fine composer. And when I was saying… what I said about him before, I
stick to. I think he’s a fine composer, and in fact we were good friends, and I liked
him and I still do, and I love his music, but he’s a fucking asshole. And I don’t
understand what that’s about. He’s an asshole – sorry, end of story. That’s all I want to
say. So that’s a good way to end it, right?