Nothing Cooked Up

An Appointment With Mr Yeats

2010-11-13T01:24:00.000-08:00

' THIS IS SACRED GROUND WITH A POWER FLOWIN' THROUGH. ' / The Waterboys at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, March 20, 2010.

When I started listening to Bob Dylan at the age of thirteen I was fascinated by his voice and genius skills of juggling with words and meanings. Shortly after discovering Dylan's galaxy I listened for the first time to The Waterboys. I found their first three records. Back then Fisherman's Blues was about to be released. I was struck immediately. Whatever these songs were meant to be about, to me they were about hunger. As a kid exploring this music I kept it like a jewel. In March 2010 I found myself sitting in an Italian café near Grafton Street in Dublin. Mike Scott, the voice, the head and most of all the heart of the great Waterboys, was entering the room, accompanied by his wife Janette. It was three years before that I've met them in Hague. Half a year later my own band was opening for The Waterboys on their Book of Lightning tour. For the next two hours we sat at the window, talked, drank coffee, relished a hot Minestrone. Outside it was a fresh Irish Monday afternoon in spring. The Waterboys had just finished a week of five sold-out appearances at the Abbey Theatre premiering An Appointment With Mr Yeats.

Mike Scott interviewed by Michael Moravek. Dublin, March 22, 2010

***

M.M.: Is your song The Whole of The Moon related to Yeats?

M.S.: Specifically no. Yeats wasn’t in my mind when I wrote it. And it’s not about one single person. It’s about a kind of person. But I liked to put it in the show and dedicate it to Yeats as a way of honoring him. We did that every night and we show a little film of him to go with the song.

When you put the band together, how important was a personal connection of each musician to Yeats’ work?

Well actually, not important. There’s sufficient knowledge in Yeats’ work in my own presence in the band and also Steve Wickham who is a long-term reader of Yeats. So between the two of us, we brought enough Yeats-awareness into the show. Our guitar player Joe is a Yeats-reader as well. Perhaps Ruby, the oboe-player, I think she knew Yeats’ work. But most of the others would’ve known only a few poems and that didn’t matter. Though I gave them all copies of Yeats’ selected poems in rehearsals. It really was more important that they could just play the music right. The qualification was that they would perform the music in the spirit in which it was written and bring some of their own spirit to it. That was much more important than whether they had a big knowledge of Yeats. If I’d gone for people who had a big knowledge of Yeats I would probably got the music all wrong. And I would have people who maybe knew all Yeats’ poems but couldn’t play right.

So how long did it take you to put the band together for this project?

I’ve thought about it for a long time. I’ve been consciously preparing the project for the last 15 or 18 months. The first musician I identified was backing vocalist Katie Kim. I heard her play a concert in Dublin in December 2008 and I immediately recognized that I’d found the second voice I wanted for the show. And so I got in touch with her through MySpace. She did some recordings for me on my Yeats demos. And then shortly before the shows began I started rehearsing with her at my house - she lives in Waterford near the South coast - and she would come up a couple of days and rehearse with me and work on the parts. So she was the first one, apart from Steve of course. And then the next, I think, was Joe the guitar player. I knew that I didn’t want to play guitar in most of the show. I like just singing. I sing better when I don’t play. And I can get bored with my guitar playing. So I wanted someone to come in and do that job for me. Joe lives in Dublin and I was very impressed with his records. I respect him a lot. So he was the next. And then one by one I put them all together.

I never saw you sing that long in a set without playing guitar. I think it was one third of the set maybe?

It’s more than that. It’s about half; I think ten or eleven out of the 22.

It was interesting, because the way you acted onstage without an instrument was kind of reciting and singing in one thing.

Well, I love singing without playing an instrument. I just love delivering. I like using my hands as well, when my hands are free. I can really inhabit the song and lyric more than if I’m playing guitar.

You did 5 concerts at the Abbey Theatre which was established by Yeats himself and which has got a very intimate character. Are you planning to do further Yeats-concerts in different places and do you think it will work in a similar way as it did at the Abbey?

Well, it will never be like it was in the Abbey anywhere else, because the Abbey is a special place with its Yeats history and its Irish Theatre history. So that’s a unique event. It’ll never be replicated – unless we do more concerts in the Abbey at some stage. But we have every intention of taking the show out on the road and through other countries and to play in larger theatres. I’m confident that it will translate powerfully into different classic theatres especially in capital cities.

Will it be with the same band?

I hope so, yes. And they all want to do it. They all have other careers, so it’ll be bit of a balancing act, a juggling act, to bring them all together. But our next events will probably be in autumn, six or eight months away. So I think we’ve got enough time to ensure that we get everybody or as many as possible.

How did you experience the interconnection with the audience especially at the Abbey Theatre?

The mystery for me was the first night. During the show we got good respectful applause. But I couldn’t read the audience. I couldn’t quite understand what their response was. And when we finished the last song they all stood up and I knew that we’d won, that the show was a success.

And it happened every night?

It happened every night, but the surprise was the first night - delicious victory.

Have you been nervous about the first reaction?

No, not really. I knew the show was good. And if I believe it’s good, then - whether it is a success or not - I can stand proud in it and I won’t get nervous. I would get nervous if I didn’t believe in it, if I wasn’t confident. But I’m confident, so I don’t get nervous. But I didn’t know what the response would be and I didn’t realize that it would persuade the audience so quickly.

Will there be an album to the concerts?

Yes! But I don’t know what form it will take. The whole future of the show and music is evolving as we go. The only thing I knew for sure was 5 shows at the Abbey Theatre. My team and I have to answer the question of what’s next. Do we tour the show with one-night-concerts like a regular Waterboys-tour? Do we play multiple shows just in capital cities? Do we do that in support of an album or do we do it before there’s an album? Do we record the album live? And we recorded a couple of shows at the Abbey. Or do we do the album in the studio? Do we do a DVD of a concert to go with the album as a big multimedia package? All these questions are in the air at the moment and they haven’t been answered yet. Part of the process of answering them is a financial one. It cost us a lot to stage the show, as the Abbey is a small theatre. We didn’t get paid as much as we would have if we’d played a two thousand seat theatre. So we had to subsidize these concerts. So there isn’t a lot of money left over to record an album and we need financial backing. And The Waterboys aren’t with a record company. The last album was with Universal, but that was just the one-off. So it may be that a record company will come in and want to do this and maybe not. So we have to figure out a way of recording the album even if we don’t have record company finance. But there will be an album. I just don’t know whether it’s a live or studio. And I’d like to do a bonus CD of all my demos, ‘cause I have all the songs recorded at home, and while it wouldn’t be appropriate to release them as “the” album, still I like them a lot, they have a character, they’re like blueprints.

I think that’s great. I’ve heard only your demo of The Four Ages of Man, but it’s wonderful!

Thank you.

How important in your opinion is Yeats for today’s Irish literature?

I don’t really know. I don’t know what’s important for Irish literature. I don’t think about Irish literature very much, to be quite honest. But I’ve got opinions on what’s important for Yeats and I personally feel that it’s important that Yeats gets liberated from the museum. Now the exhibition at the National Library is terrific; it’s important that that exhibition exists and that Yeats is honoured by the nation, because he’s the greatest Irish poet. But I also think it’s important that Yeats’ words are presented in a new way and that people are able to consider them without the crust of years on them. And I feel also that – because Yeats is taught at school in Ireland … See, I’m Scottish. I didn’t get Yeats in school, neither did you. So we approach Yeats freshly. But for the Irish, they all get Yeats stuff rammed down their neck as school kids. And so a lot of them don’t like Yeats or associate him with boring classes at school and maybe were given his most boring poems, or some of his good poems but they were made boring by the way they were taught. And I think it’s important to free Yeats from that. I think our show can do that and be an influence in that direction. But I don’t do it for that reason. I do it because I like it; anything else is a bonus.

Words For Music Perhaps is the title of one of Yeats’ works. Is music a catalyst that feeds spiritual experience?

I think music is like oil. It gets under peoples’ skins very easily in a way that words don’t. It gets to people’s emotions immediately and so music can carry words direct to people’s emotions in a way words on their own perhaps can’t do. You see, a lot of people don’t have patience for poetry, but music can bring the poetry to them swiftly with less effort than they would have to exercise it when they were reading a poem. As for music and spirituality, well – I don’t know. I’m weary of terms like that, because music has lots of applications. It can be used like background in the restaurant where we’re sitting to create an atmosphere, and it can be used as wallpaper, and it can be used to influence people badly, it can be used as torture, as we know. And it can also be used to inspire people in a very high way. They’re all different applications of music and they are all possible.

But for you personally, what does music mean in the way of transporting spiritual experiences?

It’s kind a thing I like to do and not talk about. I like to use music to have an effect on people, but I don’t really want to let them know that I’m aware that I’m working at that. You know what I mean? I’m always weary of artists that say ‘I’m trying to do this, I’m trying to do that’. Don’t telegraph your punches. And also it is very easy for artists to become portentous talking about spiritual applications of music. And most artists who do so don’t know what they are talking about. I think the ones who do understand spiritual applications in music don’t tend to talk about it. To say nothing and say it well. Just do it. – But it’s interesting you picked that title ‘words for music perhaps’. ‘Cause I think that Yeats often wrote his poetry with the intention of it being set to music. So many of them have musical titles - The Ballad of Moll Magee, The Ballad of The Foxhunter, The Song of Wandering Aengus, The Song of The Happy Shepherd, Words For Music Perhaps, Three Songs To The One Tune … again and again he uses these musical titles. He must have accepted that music would be set to these poems.

Down there at the exhibition is that room with recordings of people reading his poems …

… very badly!

I was surprised hearing Yeats read his own poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree, …

… very badly!

… he nearly sang it. He did it in a rhythm.

I really, really don’t like him reading his own poems! People send me links to, you know, YouTube, with recordings of him. They say “I thought you would like this”. But no, I don’t like it. I really don’t like the sound of Yeats reading his own poems. Sometimes the author isn’t the best person to present something audibly. The way he recites is the way he heard it in his head. And the way he heard it in his head was necessary to achieve the words. But I don’t think it translates into speech. It’s like a monument, it’s not alive, it’s too grave and weighty… almost frightening. I don’t like it. The best reciter of Yeats I’ve heard is an actor called Bosco Hogan. Janette (Mike Scott’s wife) and I went to see him doing a one-man-show called” I Am Of Ireland”. He plays the part of Yeats himself and recites Yeats’ poems and it was absolutely superb. His recitations had force and he understood the poems. The recitations I heard at the National Library were the one part of the exhibition I didn’t like. I thought the recitations were really bad, some of them sentimental, missed the point of the poems.

As I understand Yeats, the Irish country and culture were very important to him. Do you yourself think in such terms as “home” or “belonging to a place or country”?

Not in the same way as Yeats, no. I’m of another age when we all move around a lot more. We have freedom of movement, I mean financial and technological freedom of movement now in a way that was unimaginable to people in Yeats’ days. When I was a child my family moved every three years, so I was used to new starts all the time and my life has been like that. The longest I’ve ever lived in one place was seven years. I’ve lived in different countries, so I’ve never built up a single relationship with a place. When I go back to Scotland I feel Scottish and I like Scotland, but I don’t feel a deep resonance to Scottish culture. I probably feel more resonance with Irish culture. Why that is, I don’t know.

You lent your voice for another man’s words. Are these songs any different to your owns?

It is different writing music with another man’s words. I find the words the hardest thing to write in a song. Music comes semi-instantly but I will work over the words for a long time. But working with Yeats I don’t have to do that; I’m straight on to the music. Though there’s still some work with the lyrics. Sometimes I had to change a poem slightly to make it work with the music. Sometimes, as I said on stage, I’d merge two poems in one song. So there’s still some lyrical work, I’m still using my lyrical skills but I’m not having to write the lyric, to invent the whole being of a song from the start. I’ve got a leg up.

You make them your own?

Well, I treat the lyric as if it’s my own. But still it’s not my own. And I’ll never change the intention of Yeats. I might change the form, I might choose to leave out a line, or even a verse, but I’ll never change his intention or his meaning. That’s the rule I work with when I work with other people’s lyrics. I have to preserve that integrity, otherwise it cheapens the original work, doesn’t honour it sufficiently. I’ve seen some people take Yeats’ poems and they use just three or four lines and then write a whole lot new stuff themselves and I think how can you do that? How can you think that your own sixteen lines are worthy of being with Yeats’ four lines? You can’t do that. So when I work with Yeats I won’t write my own lines. I only change subtly. But it is a very different experience from writing my own lyrics. I don’t have to take the usual responsibility for what I’m saying. And it frees me in some ways. Doing a theatrical show is something that I might find quite difficult to do with my own lyrics because I might not take myself as seriously as I take Yeats.

When you’re writing your own songs, what’s first?

Usually words.

Any plans for an album with Mike Scott songs?

Yes, I’ve got most of an album written. But I’m going to stick with Mr. Yeats for a while and get this project playing on the world’s stages before getting involved in anything else.

In an interview with Decemberists singer Colin Meloy that was published in the magazine The Believer in 2007 you said “the high summer of music’s power is over”. Are there any current bands that find your interest?

There are few that find my interest, but they don’t really keep it. I’ve an odd taste in music now. I listen to a lot of old stuff. The great period of popular music, at least for rock and soul music would be from 1965 to 1971. That’s for me the golden time when more great records were made than in any other time. It’s not just that I was young then, it’s that the music of that time is better than the music of today. Much better. We’ve forgotten a lot of tricks that used to allow us to make great music. It’s harder now. We know too much. We’re too smart now. But I do listen to new bands and new music and now and then I hear something I think is really great. Most recent would be Laura Marling’s new album I Speak Because I Can. But not often anything that engages me in a way that I would listen to the same artist for three or four particular albums and keep finding the magic.

Has that got something to do with age as well?

No, I don’t think so. It has got something to do with times. I liked OK Computer. That was a great, great record. But nothing they’ve done since has held me. I liked Deserter’s Songs from Mercury Rev but none of their successive albums held me. I liked Odelay by Beck and I liked Mutations, the next one, but nothing since then… it’s the same story. It’s like the Andy Warhol “Everybody is famous for 15 minutes” thing. Everybody makes something great for 15 minutes and then it’s someone else’s turn.

The line-up of The Waterboys seems to be ever changing. What is The Waterboys? What has been the basis over the time?

Me and my songs make The Waterboys. It has always been a vehicle for my songs. In the first couple of albums I played most of the instruments myself, sometimes all of the instruments myself. And I had a vision of the music which I achieved on record on the early albums though I wasn’t able to achieve it in concert. I never thought The Waterboys’ live sound was right until Steve (Wickham) joined. Steve and Anthony (Thistlethwaite) became the wings of the sound. But the centre of the music has always been me and the songs. And over the time Steve has become inextricably connected.

As Steve Wickham is the most-constant member. What is the connection?

We understand each other and from the moment we met that understanding was there. It was a harmony musically. I’ve only found that once in my life, that degree of connection that I have with Steve. We hit the high spots together. I’ve had great musical connections with several musicians, but he is the deepest one.

Is it important for you to have somebody with you who knows you for a time and is familiar with your music?

No, it doesn’t matter that much. I’ll be alright. I’m very experienced now; I’m experienced in working with different bands, with new people. I can turn five strangers into a band in a day. That’s ok. And I can make them play the way I need them to play while still expressing themselves. It’s just tricks I picked up over the years. So, the band doesn’t have to have people who know me well. But if you have someone like Steve who not only knows me, but I know him, that kind of connection adds a deeper dimension.

I watched the show on Saturday and I thought it must be great to have fellow musicians who can share this happiness about the success.

I can tell you, the eight other musicians all cared about the show and were all thrilled with its success. Maybe not in the same profound ways as me and Steve, having worked on The Waterboys for twenty years each, but each of them had an emotional investment in the show. I’m not quite sure how that happens, but it’s a wonderful thing. And at the same time, yes, it’s great to have the old colleague there. Also the presence of Steve and the two that we add up to affects all the other musicians. They see our relationship and our connection and they plug into that. They’re included in it somehow. And if Steve wasn’t there that wouldn’t happen.

Art in terms of The Abbey Theatre in Yeats’ time fulfilled a political role being provocative. You created a song and video to the words of Let The Earth Bear Witness. The film refers to the uprising in Iran. When or how did the incident and the two Yeats’ poems in the song relating to the video interconnect?

It was a coincidence. I was constantly looking for more poems to set to music so I could extend the show and I was working through the poetry book looking for verses that I’ve missed that would spark a melody. And just at that time the Iranian election protests were happening. Janette pulled me into it just when I was working on the verses about Let The Earth Bear Witness and They Shall Be Remembered Forever. The two – the scenes in Iran and the words in Yeats’ verses became intertwined in my imagination and I found that when I worked on the music I was singing about the Iranian people. And in fact it was the same struggle for self-determination for the Iranian people as it had been for the Irish that Yeats had originally been writing about. And I was so deeply affected by what was happening in Iran that I wrote emotive music which was appropriate for the lyric. Then it was a short step from there to think “Let’s put some film to it and get it up on YouTube”.

You played the film during your show at The Abbey. What was your reaction when after playing the song the audience applauded? Did you find it appropriate? You think they understood?

I’ve noticed on the last two nights that there was a silence at the end, a weight, a gravity in the room before the applause began. I took it as an indication that the audience was affected and that there was a natural desire to leave a silence before applauding. Applause is a means of saying not just “Yes, I like” but “Yes, I agree” or “Yes, I’m moved, yes, I feel it too”.

This morning I read What Then. What do you think was Yeats' view on his life when he wrote this poem at the end of his life and just a few years before he died?

I think it may indeed be about Yeats himself – at least in part, but that its writing doesn’t necessarily signify a personal sense of hopelessness, which I don’t believe Yeats had. I think the question “What Then” is Yeats’ way of pointing at the mysteries of life and death, and his own imminent death – he died a few years later; of even recommending that the reader consider these mysteries, without at the same time intending to say or mean that all human life is “meaningless” or “hopeless”. How can anyone who has read Yeats think that could have been his worldview, unless for a fleeting moment? And if even for a fleeting moment, such a moment wouldn’t have sustained through the writing, editing and publishing process of a poem. No, I don’t believe Yeats means all is hopeless. He’s recommending the reader’s consideration of the mysteries.

© M. Moravek

Michael Moravek has written two reviews on An Appointment With Mr Yeats for German paper/magazine Schwarzwälder Bote and FOLKER.

Is There A Ghost

2010-10-31T04:16:00.000-07:00

Auf der Halbinsel bei Belfort. Die Bühne steht am seichten Sandufer, eingekeilt zwischen Bäumen und dem stillen Wasser des Sees. Die Helligkeit der dunstigen Luft birgt eine Ahnung, dass die Sonne dort oben stehen muss. Auf der Bühne sechs bärtige Männer unbestimmten Alters bei der Arbeit. Sie nennen sich Band of Horses. Es ist Sommer und auf dem mit Wiesen und Bäumen, kleinen Tälern und leichten Anhöhen durchzogenen Gelände des Eurockéennes de Belfort werden später um die fünfundsiebzigtausend Menschen gezählt. Vor der Scene La Plage sind es dagegen nur wenige hundert. Die meisten sind in diesem Moment zum Chapiteau im Herzen des Geländes gepilgert, um Pete Doherty zu sehen. Vielleicht um einmal mitzubekommen, welche künstliche Spannung sich herstellen lässt, wenn ein rein medial mythologisierter Charakter eben das tut, was von ihm erwartet wird. Er wäre gerne ein Rimbaud. Und sie verpassen ein einmaliges Schauspiel auf der Seeseite. Vom Himmel fällt der Regen wie Pulver herab. Im dämmrigen Licht und mit Hilfe der weißen Spots und dem großen schwarzen Vorhang hinter den Musikern sieht es aus als regnete es allein auf der Bühne. Die Band spielt Is There A Ghost und die Zuhörer schauen abwechselnd zur Bühne und einander an, als wollten sie etwas sagen, wofür sie aber auf die Schnelle nicht die richtigen Worte finden können. Wie unwirklich dieser Moment ist. Die Musik schwebt. Wie ein manisch gewordener Wal taucht sie auf und ab. Mit der Kraft und behäbigen Geschmeidigkeit wie sie nur große Tiere haben. Beim Abtauchen peitschen die Gitarren mit der Wucht einer mächtigen Schwanzflosse gegen das imaginär dräuende Wasser einer Sturzflut. Es sind zerbrechliche Songs, die Ben Bridwell singt, lose zusammengehalten von seiner Stimme und dem fragilen Überbau der Instrumentierung. Aber sie brechen nicht auseinander. Es ist, als halte sie in diesem Augenblick der Nieselregen zusammen. Als ergebe das Licht, die klamme Feuchtigkeit, die Musik und man selbst, mit dem Sand unter seinen Füssen, eine zwingende Einheit. Wie ein Kitt, der alles zusammenhält. Es ist, als gehöre all das zum alltäglichen Bühnenbild dieser Band. - Das nächste Mal in einem Club oder einer Halle würde es mit Sicherheit dasselbe sein.

© M. Moravek

December Is The Coolest Month

2010-01-19T09:05:00.000-08:00

When I was 17 or 18 I loved to sneak into our living-room at home while everybody else was sleeping to listen to The Waterboys or A Pagan Place. Just like the seafaring men had discovered new continents, I had just come across these two records. As the needle touched the vinyl with a softly cracking noise I put on the ear-phones and lay down on the brown coloured eighties couch. At that time we lived on the second floor of a stonemason’s house and the tombstones were spread all around the house. Every now and then the room was illuminated by the headlights of passing cars. A lonely lantern’s dim light spread itself into the corner with the TV-set, and only the seasons seemed to change its density. Lying on my couch I flew through winter, spring, summer and fall; with the wind and rain pushing against the window or ice crystals covering the glass.

But wintertime was the most precious time. The world was a space where everything was slightly dampened and the snow-covered streets and fields were overlayed with a pale, blue-white colour. Those nights I kept my eyes open while the music glided though my world like a ship through a cold, rough sea. Snowflakes were spinning upwards against the lantern’s light – almost dancing, slightly revolving – only to finally disappear onto the ground.

Snow, silence, winter. These are some of the coordinates on a large map, which Mike Scott, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of the Waterboys, uses as a guide on his travels through strange countries and oceans. Sometimes these ships, like the red-sailed the Marlene, can bring its crew even up to the gates of Paris.

‚December is the cruellest month, but this time - for once - my cheeks are warm...’

The first time I saw The Waterboys was one evening while sitting together with two friends for an editorial meeting. At that time we were publishing our own magazine in a small run. Along the way the TV had a Rockpalast feature on. Or at least I think that is what it was. Talk Talk had just played, left the stage and on came – dressed in black leather gear – the Waterboys. They started to play. I could not recall having heard the name before but I liked the symbolism in it and learned later, that it was taken from a Lou Reed song. The first song they played was All The Things She Gave Me. It started like a storm and I was electrified. We put down the pencils and fully concentrated on the show. The presence of the music and the singer was compelling. They continued, played A Girl Called Johnny and finally The Red Army Blues and Savage Earth Heart. Only once before I had such an experience: when I heard Bob Dylan for the first time a couple of years before. Something caught me. Something that I did not know of, that seemed to be part of me so much. That helped my thoughts to find their path. The very next day I went to the record store and got myself A Pagan Place. And the following day I bought their debut The Waterboys.

The debut album starts with December, being the morning star in Mike Scott´s universe. The perfect music for lonely nights and snow covered streets in front of your door. Music, which can help to lead you to a safe shore across a turbulent sea. It is almost a physical process to witness the colours, sounds and stories intertwine while listening; creating a shivery and oscillating atmosphere.

These days I do not spend my nights in my parents` living room to listen to music. These days I retreat to the backroom of an ancient house, whose windows are facing the market square of a medieval town. Friends of mine have rented that secluded room together with me. A place to retire and listen to music, read literature, recite poems or make photographs. Everything is left just like it was fifty years ago. And between plain and inornate wallpaper sticking on old newspaper, an old green sofa, a more than a hundred year old tiled stove, the old Philips reel to reel tape recorder, given to me by an old friend, and a record player I have started again to listen to music by nights. And even if my musical spectrum has increased enormously, I still enjoy listening to the Waterboys. Without my ear-phones on. Music just played for itself and true really seems to be rare these days.

It is quiet outside and – almost like the planks on a ship at sea – the old floorboards of the room vibrate slightly from the bass sounds. Everything seems to come back to me. Like then I can almost hear the colours when Gala breaks out of the loudspeakers. A composition of flickering lights, the trying to bond a cracked soul, carried by a voice of anonymous times. And transcendentally this music seems to take possession of a room. Even before Mike Scott´s voice sets in. The piano, starting first tentatively with single small jingles, breaks away and then, together with the drums and the bass, they lament themselves into an ecstatic uproar. Finally collapsing and giving way to the piano driving further to a minimalist drum beat. Like the steady noise of a rudder dunking into a virgin sea. Taking it into a never-ending universe escorted with airy, floating chords, covered with a peculiar colouring, driving it easily into the next level of a strange world. Mike Scott sings the way a narrator would tell his stories.

When I close my eyes I can see that girl in the window cross staring out on the sea. And all of a sudden I find myself sitting in a ship’s stern behind some fishermen. Half the night they have been outside on the rocking waves. And while they round the ship, they cast the net once more. I crouch down further backward, still trying to hear their chant, and when they pull our frightend souls aboard, I can see Gala’s soul amongst them. The frightened off child that we once knew and were ourselves. At the end of the song the bass drum reverberates for quite a while, sounding like a fading heartbeat that slowly sinks into the depth of a dark sea.

Why did this music touch me so much and never really let me go? It might be true in its roughness, its mysterious nature, in its promise. It might have opened up a door and given me the invitation to pass through its hallway, discover other rooms and open up more secret gates. But most of all, as its vastness will never fade to inspire my imagination. Songs like I will Not Follow, It Should Have Been You or Savage Earth Heart exist in their own universe.

Mike Scott has recorded most of the songs on this album by himself. An offbeat guitar and a piano accompanied by the sound of the legendary drum-computer TR-606 create this particular sound. Later he kept on recording further brilliant songs with numerous other musicians, amongst others with the grand violinist Steve Wickham.

Will a musician know which impact his music can have on the listener? Most probably not. Once the act is completed, it liberates itself from the artist and leads a fully independent life. Kandinsky stated that the art was eternally free. But can the artist be fully decoded? Is that not irrelevant? Are not legions of Dylan-scientists just hunting their own primal sensation? And does not every new interpretation simply lead them away from their own, real and non-transferable inner picture? Then again the artist will never appreciate why his work is loved.

Mike Scott turned fifty these days and his voice has kept the unbowed intenseness of a lucid flame. Scott rightly belongs among those singers, whose forceful impact can grasp hope and tragedy of an entire life. The scholar of Blake and Yeats has become a poet himself. As if using a scalpel, he sets his words unerringly through the blood vessels right in the nerve centre.

This morning the postlady has delivered a parcel and I would swear she winked at me. The parcel contained the latest issue of the Believer, a magazine from San Francisco. As it grew dark outside, I removed the enclosed CD and took the shortcut through the two narrow alleys to the old house on the market square. I took the straight stair, the floorboards creaked under my steps and in the dark I fumbled for the key above the door. Mike Scott has recorded the more then ten minutes long A Wild Holy Band especially for this issue. I turn it on and the music starts. Like a ship leaving the harbour, bidding farewell to those left ashore. A ship carried out on the high seas by the arising winds, on an eternal quest for truth.
And as Scott´s voice comes in, I wish the winter had found its way into the streets outside and covered them with a white powder right in the middle of August.

I walked out stunned and liberated and soon began my travels.

The captain of a ship called the Waterboys.

© M. Moravek/J. Moravek

December Is The Coolest Month

2009-11-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Als ich 17 oder 18 war liebte ich es, mich nachts - wenn alle schliefen - in das Wohnzimmer meiner Eltern zu schleichen und The Waterboys oder A Pagan Place aufzulegen, die ich kurz zuvor entdeckt hatte, gleich einem Seefahrer, der einen neuen Kontinent entdeckt. Während der Tonarm mit federndem Knistergeräusch das schwarze Vinyl berührte, setzte ich die Kopfhörer auf und legte mich auf die braune 80er Jahre Couch. Wir lebten damals im 2. Stock des Hauses eines Steinmetzes und um das ganze Haus herum standen Grabsteine. Hin und wieder wurde das Zimmer durch die Scheinwerferkegel vorbeifahrender Autos erhellt. Das fahle Licht einer einsamen Laterne schien immer in die eine Ecke des Zimmers in welcher der Fernseher stand und nur die Jahreszeiten änderten die Dichte des Lichtes. So flog ich auf dem Sofa liegend durch Winter, Frühling, Sommer und Herbst, mit Regen und Wind, die gegen die Scheibe drückten und mit Eiskristallen auf dem Glas. Doch im Winter war es etwas Besonderes. Die Welt war ein Raum. Alles war leicht gedämpft und der Schnee tauchte die Straßen und Räume in ein mattes weißblaues Licht. Wenn es nachts schneite, hielt ich die Augen offen während die Musik meine Welt wie ein Schiff in kalter See durchsegelte. Dann konnte ich im Licht, das die Laterne warf, die Schneeflocken sehen, wie sie manchmal mit einem leichten Aufbäumen wieder aufwärts wirbelten und tanzten und endgültig ungesehen zu Boden fielen.

Schnee, Stille, Winter. Koordinaten einer großen Landkarte, mit deren Hilfe Mike Scott, Sänger, Komponist und Multiinstrumentalist der Waterboys, Länder und Ozeane durchreist. Manchmal auf Schiffen mit roten Segeln, die The Marlene heißen und ihre Besatzung bis vor die Tore von Paris bringen.

‚December is the cruellest month, but this time for once my cheeks are warm...’

Das erste Mal sah ich die Waterboys, als ich mich eines Abends mit zwei Freunden zu einer Redaktionssitzung traf. Wir brachten damals eine eigene kleine Zeitschrift in Miniauflage heraus. Währenddessen lief im Fernseher eine Rockpalast-Sendung. Zumindest glaube ich mich zu erinnern, dass es eine war. Gerade noch spielte die Gruppe Talk Talk. Danach betraten in schwarze Lederklamotten gekleidet The Waterboys die Bühne und begannen zu spielen. Der Name sagte mir nichts, aber die Symbolik darin gefiel mir. Das erste Lied war All The Things She Gave Me. Es begann wie ein Sturm. Ich war elektrisiert. Wir legten die Stifte weg und konzentrierten uns ganz auf die Sendung. Die Präsenz der Musik und des Sängers war überwältigend. Sie spielten A Girl Called Johnny und schließlich Red Army Blues und Savage Earth Heart. Es war ein ähnliches Gefühl, wie das, als ich einige Jahre zuvor das erste Mal Bob Dylan hörte. Etwas erreichte mich. Etwas, das ich sonst nicht in meiner Umgebung kannte und das gleichzeitig so sehr zu mir zu gehören schien, meinen Gedanken half, ihre Bahn zu finden. Das hatte zur Folge, dass ich gleich am nächsten Tag in einen Plattenladen ging um mir A Pagan Place zu kaufen. Am übernächsten kaufte ich The Waterboys.

Das Debut-Album, das mit December beginnt, ist der Morgenstern im Scott’schen Universum. Die perfekte Musik für Nächte in Einsamkeit und mit verschneiten Straßen vor der Tür. Musik, mit deren Hilfe man an das Ufer einer unruhigen See gelangen kann. Es ist fast schon ein physikalischer Vorgang wie Farben, Töne und Geschichten beim Hören ineinander greifen und ein fiebrig-flirrendes Schwingen erzeugen.

Heute lege ich mich nicht mehr in das Wohnzimmer meiner Eltern um Musik zu hören. Heute gehe ich in das Hinterzimmer eines uralten Hauses, das mitten in der mittelalterlichen Altstadt mit Fenstern über dem Marktplatz liegt. Freunde haben das einsame Zimmer gemeinsam mit mir gemietet. Ein Ort um sich zurückzuziehen, Musik zu hören, Bücher zu lesen, Dichter zu rezitieren oder Fotos zu machen. Alles ist so belassen, wie es noch vor 50 Jahren war. Und ich habe zwischen schlichten schmucklosen Tapeten, die noch auf Zeitungen geklebt sind, einem alten grünen Sofa, einem über hundert Jahre alten Kachelofen, dem alten Philips-Tonbandgerät, das mir ein Freund geschenkt hat und einem Plattenspieler wieder angefangen nachts Musik zu hören. Und obwohl sich mein Musikspektrum enorm vergrößert hat, höre ich immer noch die Waterboys - diesmal ohne Kopfhörer. Musik, die um ihretwillen gespielt wird, die wahrhaftig ist, ist rar in diesen Tagen.

Draußen ist es still und die alten Dielen vibrieren leicht unter den Bässen, gleich den Planken eines Schiffes auf See. Alle Assoziationen sind da. Und wie damals höre ich in Farben, wenn Gala aus den Lautsprechern brandet – eine Komposition aus flackernden Lichtern, das versuchte Kitten einer zersprungenen Seele, vorgetragen von einer Stimme aus einer namenlosen Zeit. Diese Musik ist imstande in metaphysischer Weise von einem Raum Besitz zu ergreifen. Und das geschieht noch bevor Scotts Stimme ansetzt. Das Klavier – erst zaghaft und mit einzelnen kleinen Klimpertönen intoniert – bricht aus und klagt sich mit Schlagzeug und Basstönen, die von irgendwo her kommen, rhythmisch in ekstatische Erregung. Bis schließlich alles erlösend in sich zusammenbricht und das Klavier alleine mit dem minimalistischen Schlagzeug nach vorne treibt - wie das gleichmäßige Aufschlagen der Ruder auf stiller See. Hinein in einen unendlichen Raum. Leichte Akkorde schweben und tragen das eigenartige Kolorit in die nächste Ebene einer nächsten Sphäre und Mike Scott singt wie ein Erzähler spricht. Ich schließe die Augen und sehe das Mädchen im Fensterkreuz stehen und auf die See hinaus starren. Mit einem Mal finde ich mich wieder im Heck eines der Boote, hinter Seeleuten sitzend. Die halbe Nacht waren sie draußen auf den schaukelnden Wellen und werfen jetzt die Leinen aus, während sie beidrehen. Ich kauere unentdeckt im Boot ganz hinten und lausche ihren Gesängen, als sie unsere verlorenen Seelen aus dem kalten Wasser an Bord und in Sicherheit ziehen. So auch Galas verängstigte Seele, das verschreckte Kind, das wir kannten und das wir einmal waren. Manchmal denke ich dabei an Die wahnsinnige Kate, ein Gemälde des Malers Henry Fuseli, das eine kindgleiche Frau zeigt, mit traurig verstörten Augen und auf einem Fels sitzend, während der Wind durch ihr Haar fährt. Am Ende des Songs hallt noch lange die Basstrommel nach, deren Rhythmus wie Herzklopfen klingt, das nach und nach in der dunklen Tiefe der See versinkt.

Weshalb hat mich damals diese Musik so berührt und bis heute nicht mehr losgelassen? Sie ist echt in ihrer Ungeschliffenheit, in ihrem geheimnisvollen Wesen, in ihrer Verheißung, dass sich hier eine Tür aufgetan hat, eine Einladung, den Korridor entlang zu gehen und weitere Räume zu entdecken und weitere Türen zu öffnen. Und weil sie Phantasien freisetzt durch ihre ungeheuren Räume. Songs wie I Will Not Follow, It Should Have Been You oder Savage Earth Heart bilden ihre eigenen Sternensysteme. Die meisten Stücke auf diesem Album hat Mike Scott alleine aufgenommen. Unkonventionelles Gitarrenspiel, Klavier und der Sound des legendären Drum-Computers TR-606 machen den Klang dieser Musik so eigen. Später hat er mit zahlreichen Musikern weitere großartige Songs aufgenommen, unter anderem mit dem einzigartigen Geiger Steve Wickham.

Kann ein Musiker wissen, wie seine Musik auf den Hörer wirkt? Nein, das ist unmöglich. Ist das Werk erst einmal vollendet, hat es sich von seinem Schöpfer befreit und führt ein gänzlich unabhängiges Leben. Laut Kandinsky ist die Kunst ewig frei. Ein Künstler kann nicht in Vollkommenheit verstanden werden. Aber ist das nicht belanglos? Jagen die Legionen von Dylanologen nicht ihrem ursprünglichem Gefühl hinterher, einem Bild, das sie erstmalig gesehen haben, als sie die Bedeutung seiner Songs nicht universal, sondern für sich alleine verstanden haben? Und entfernen sie sich nicht mit jedem weiteren Deutungsversuch immer mehr von diesem echten, nur für sie alleine geltenden und niemals übertragbaren Bild? So verhält es sich auch umgekehrt. Ein Künstler kann nicht wirklich wissen, weshalb sein Werk geliebt wird.

Heute ist Mike Scott fünfzig Jahre alt und seine Stimme hat noch immer die ungebrochene Intensität einer Flamme, deren Herr er ist. Scott gehört als Sänger in die Reihe derer, die mit einer suggestiven Wirkung in einer einzigen Zeile Hoffnung und Tragik eines ganzen Lebens zu fassen vermögen. Der Schüler von Blake und Yeats ist selbst ein Dichter geworden. Einer, der wie ein Chirurg seine Worte gleich einem Skalpell zielsicher zwischen den Verflechtungen der Blutgefäße in den Nervenzentren ansetzt.

Heute Morgen hat mir die Briefträgerin ein Päckchen übergeben und dabei schien es mir, als habe sie mir zugezwinkert. Es enthielt die neueste Ausgabe von The Believer, einer Zeitschrift aus San Francisco. Als es dunkel wurde, habe ich die beigelegte CD herausgenommen und bin die Abkürzung durch die zwei engen Gassen gegangen, hin zu dem Haus. Ich erklomm die geraden Treppen, meine Finger tasteten im Dunkeln nach dem Schlüssel über der Tür und die Dielen knarrten unter meinen Schritten. Das über zehn Minuten lange A Wild Holy Band hat Mike Scott eigens für diese Ausgabe aufgenommen. Ich schalte an. Die Musik beginnt. Es ist als würde ein Schiff aus dem Hafen auslaufen. Als würden die an Land Gebliebenen lautlos Abschied nehmen in der Hoffnung, es möge im Wind segeln, den Stürmen trotzen, vor Feinden nicht zurückschrecken. Den Anker gelichtet, die Segel gespannt, vom aufkommenden Wind auf die hohe See geblasen auf der ewigen Suche nach den wahren Dingen.

Ich wünschte draußen vor der Tür hätte der Winter mitten im August Einzug gehalten und still die Straßen in Weiß gepudert, als Scotts Stimme ertönt.
I walked out stunned and liberated and soon began my travels.

Der Kapitän eines Schiffes, das sich The Waterboys nennt.

© M. Moravek

Lost In This World

2008-09-06T01:17:00.000-07:00

Willy Vlautin, Sänger und Songschreiber der Band Richmond Fontaine aus Portland, hat ein Buch geschrieben. Es ist sein erstes. Motel Life handelt von Schuld, Flucht, der Jagd nach Hoffnung und der Abwesenheit derselben - und vor allem - von Schnee. Es ist die Geschichte zweier Brüder, die sich nach dem frühen Tod der Mutter mit Gelegenheitsjobs durchschlagen bis ein tragisches Ereignis die Schicksale der beiden untrennbar miteinander verknüpft. Der Vater, ein Spieler, ist schon lange verschwunden. Unentwegt schneit es in Reno, die Strassen sind vereist und frostige Luft schleicht aus den papiernen Eingeweiden des Buches.

Jerry Lee, der ältere, hat in betrunkenem Zustand mit seinem Dodge Fury einen kleinen Jungen überfahren, der ihm zu nachtschlafener Zeit auf einer Kreuzung die Vorfahrt genommen hat. Auf einem kleinen Fahrrad. Draussen tobt ein Schneesturm. Zur selben Zeit liegt Frank in seinem Motelbett, auch er sturzbetrunken. Mit einem lauten Krach zerbirst die Fensterscheibe seines Zimmers. Eine Ente durchschlägt das Glas und bleibt tot auf dem Boden liegen. Schon in den ersten Sätzen des Buches wird klar, dass die Ente mit ihrem gebrochenen Hals eine Metapher ist.

Der verkaterte Frank macht sich auf, seinem Bruder zu helfen und am frühen Morgen finden sie den Körper des kleinen Jungen im Schnee. Dieser ist tot. Sie packen ihn auf den Rücksitz und legen den Leichnam in der Nähe des Krankenhauses ab. Es ist die pure Verzweiflung. Immer wieder bekommt Jerry Lee Weinkrämpfe. Die Schuld lastet tonnenschwer und lässt sein sowieso schon verpfuschtes Leben sinnlos erscheinen. Was hatte der Junge da draussen in den ersten Morgenstunden mit seinem Fahrrad zu tun? In einem Schneesturm! Die Brüder spinnen Theorien um sich zu entlasten. Frank, der jüngere, versucht seinen Bruder zu beschwichtigen. Es war ein unglücklicher Unfall. Ein Zufall, der nicht vorauszusehen war.

Von da an beginnt die Flucht vor den Behörden. Sie wollen in die Berge von Montana - zwei Gestrandete, nach denen in Wirklichkeit nie jemals jemand gesucht hat. Auf der Jagd nach dem Sinn, der einem das Weiterleben ermöglichen soll. Im Gepäck massig Alkohol - und die Songs von Willie Nelson, die Reminszenz an ein früheres Leben, als Musik noch das Transportmittel der Lebensträume gewesen ist, als die Mutter noch lebte. Vielleicht Erinnerungen an den Vater, der auch nur hoffte, am Spieltisch oder am Einarmigen Banditen sein Glück zu machen, um endlich das Spielen sein lassen - die Leere füllen zu können. Die unerfüllte Hoffnung aller Spielsüchtigen. In diesem Buch gleicht die Hoffnung einem Luftstrom, der sich dorthin bewegt, wo sich ein neues Fenster öffnet.

Zum Referenzsystem von Willy Vlautin gehören Authoren wie Thom Jones, Charles Bukowski und Raymond Carver, aber auch Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers und mit Sicherheit auch Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Dessen Highway Patrolman erzählt die Geschichte zweier ungleicher Brüder. "Yea we're laughin' and drinkin' nothin' feels better than blood on blood". Es sind diese Geschichten von kleinen Leuten, einfachem Leben, der Strasse, vom Unterwegssein, die einen Kosmos bilden, aus dem es keinen Ausweg zu geben scheint.

Man hat den Eindruck, die Charaktere in Vlautins Buch sind allesamt Menschen, die ihm über den Weg gelaufen sind, die er kennt, oder die er selber ist. Auch er ist wie Franky und Jerry Lee gemeinsam mit einem Bruder bei der Mutter in Reno aufgewachsen.

"...maybe it's my skin, it's tooooooo thin" singt Willy Vlautin in Lost In This World, dem letzten Track auf Thirteen Cities (2007). Und kurz darauf "I'm fucked up again, I barely know, where I am". Das gesamte Album scheint mit dem Buch verschmolzen. Der Song $87 and a Guilty Conscience That Gets Worse The Longer I Go erzählt von einem tödlichen Unfall mit anschliessender Unfallflucht.

Auf die Frage nach dem Namen der Band erzählt Vlautin folgende Geschichte: "Dave Harding, unser Bass-Spieler, war unten in Baja, Mexiko und er traf diesen Kerl aus Wyoming, ... einen Kerl, der eine große Menge Kokain gefunden und sie draussen in der Wüste versteckt hatte. Er und Dave wurden Freunde, sein Name war Richmond Fontaine. Dann ging Dave in einer Nacht hinaus zu der Stelle, aber der Mann war verschwunden. Der ganze Stoff war noch dort, aber Richmond Fontaine war wie vom Erdboden verschluckt. Niemand hat ihn je wieder gesehen."

Diese Geschichte könnte direkt aus dem Film No Country For Old Men stammen, den die Coen-Brüder im letzten Jahr veröffentlicht haben. Sie könnte aber ebenso in Motel Life vorkommen. Es ist, als ob einer einfach erzählt, was er selbst erfahren und erlebt hat. Nüchtern und ungeschminkt klingen diese Geschichten auf einmal wie moderne Märchen. Fast schon wie neutestamentarische Gleichnisse. Die Songs, die Vlautin schreibt, sind hierbei nichts anderes, sondern fügen sich ein. Auch sie sind echte Geschichten, oder vielleicht auch Lieder über die ein und selbe Geschichte.

In einem deutschen Magazin wurde die Musik von Richmond Fontaine als 'Americana' bezeichnet. Abgesehen davon, dass das eine einfältige und geradezu dämliche Definition ist und unter diesen Umständen selbst die Musik der grandiosen Hamburger Gruppe Tomte unter diesen Genrebegriff fallen müsste, gibt es 'Americana' wahrscheinlich gar nicht wirklich und entspringt wohl eher der Sucht der Musikindustrie nach immer neuen Musikbezeichnungen und -beschreibungen um ihrem Absatzmarkt neues Leben einzuhauchen. Was Richmond Fontaine tun ist schlichter Folkrock mit Anleihen aus der Countrymusik.

Und dabei ist ihnen mit Thirteen Cities ein fabelhaftes Album gelungen, dass noch in 30 Jahren nichts von seiner Frische einbüssen wird. An den Aufnahmen, die in Tucson/Arizona aufgenommen und von J.D. Foster produziert worden sind, beteiligen sich unter anderem Joey Burns von Calexico und Howe Gelb. Manchmal hört man die zögerlichen Töne eines Klaviers, von einer Mundharmonika begleitet. Hier und da eine Steel Guitar, die einem sanft ins Fleisch schneidet und doch den Gitarren den Vortritt lässt. Willy Vlautins Stimme. Der singt "... I'm just lost in this world, ... lost in this world ..."
Die Melancholie und der Hunger sind authentisch. Diese Musik atmet. Und weil sie atmet, lebt sie. Und weil sie lebt wird sie mit uns gemeinsam alt werden.

© M. Moravek