This is part four from a forthcoming book called Collected Essays: Volume Two.
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This essay will examine six
eccentric musicians, examine their characteristics and ascertain what makes
them unique. The Merriem-Webster dictionary defines eccentricity thusly:
‘Deviating from conventional or accepted usage or conduct, especially in odd or
whimsical ways’ (2021). The word is used in physics, since something deviates
from a circular path it is called ‘eccentric.’ In astronomy, astro-psychists
talk about ‘eccentric orbits.’ This essay will examine Captain Beefheart, Frank
Zappa, Mark E. Smith, Sun Ra, Harry Partch and Morton Feldman. They cover a
vast swath of musical genres, ranging from rock, blues, jazz, punk to
classical. In every single case, they were eccentric people who wrote eccentric
music. They were often pioneers in their respective genres, but they always
imbued their styles with their own eccentricities. They stand out from other
musicians in these genre because, in the case of rock and jazz, they do not
follow fashions and, in the case of classical, they do not follow schools or doctrines.
In most cases, they are not part of the musical community and work in the
fringes.
Many of the musicians
that this essay will look at strive to be authentic and authenticity is
something that has been discussed in philosophy since antiquity. One of the
most striking examples of this is On Liberty (1859) by John Stuart Mill.
The basic premise of the book is that individuals should be free to pursue
their own life projects and their values as long as they do not harm others.
However, some critics have contended that it is difficult to determine which
actions are harmful and which are not. Other critics have criticised Mill for
commending actions that only benefit the agent and no-one else (Gray 1983, p.
49). Mill centred the individual as the most important unit of society, which
accounts for this famous quote: ‘Over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.’ The first chapter of the book focuses on free speech,
but the second chapter is entitled ‘Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of
Well-being.’ Mill writes: ‘Individual spontaneity is hardly recognised by the
common mode of thinking as having any intrinsic worth. […] The majority […]
cannot comprehend why those ways should be good enough for everybody’ (1859, p.
65). Mill quotes Wilhelm von Humboldt: ‘Freedom and variety of situations and
vigour and manifold diversity which combines themselves in originality’ (p.
66). Individuals should work things out for themselves and interpret
experiences in their own way (p. 66). Customs and traditions have been taught
to them, but ‘the individual human being must use his faculties of perception,
judgement, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference’
(p. 67). Those who follow customs are not making a choice and they are not
using their mental and moral faculties (p. 67) The human being is not a
machine, he is ‘a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides,
according to the inward forces which make it a living thing.’ He also says: ‘A
person whose desires and impulses are his own […] is said to have a character
(p. 69). Indeed, Mill goes on to say that eccentricity is a virtue and that the
fact that there is not enough eccentricity is society is worrying:
‘It is in these circumstances, most
especially, that exceptional individuals, instead of being deterred, should be
encouraged in acting differently from the mass. […] In this age, the mere
example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee is itself a
service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make
eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that
tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when
and where strength of character has abounded and the amount of eccentricity in
society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour,
and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric,
marks the chief danger of the time’ (p. 76).
All the musicians that this essay
will cover evince these attributes. They develop their own vision, they work
things out for themselves and they do not follow customs. On the contrary, they
often deliberately flout musical rules. They do not follow the majority; they
work things out for themselves.
Other
philosophers who have addressed the issue of authenticity include Arthur
Schopenhauer, Soreen Kierkegaard and Colin Wilson. In Schopenhauer’s
philosophy, there is an irrational energy that runs through all subjects and
objects, which he calls ‘the will.’ All subjects and objects strive to attain
something, but they cannot attain it, which leads to suffering. Therefore, the
whole of nature is suffering. This ‘will’ is a single monolithic thing, but
individuals perceive the world through a subjective prism, which he calls
‘appearance.’ All individuals are different, which gives rise to plurality.
Schopenhauer calls this the ‘principium individuationis’: ‘The principium
individuationis and in the remaining forms of the principles of sufficient
reason. In the form of the limited knowledge, he sees not the inner nature of
things, which is one, but its phenomena as separated, detached, innumerable,
very different, and indeed opposed’ (Schopenhauer 1818, p. 352). The whole of
nature is a single monolithic thing, but the phenomena – the subjective
perceptions – are very different. Indeed, Schopenhauer stresses how individuals
are ‘different’ and ‘very opposed.’ Eccentric musicians fit this mould with
their individual characteristics.
Indeed,
Kierkegaard often valued the individual and, like Mill, warned against ‘the
tyranny of the majority.’ Kierkegaard wrote in the 19th century and
he is considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He writes: ‘Most
people become quite afraid when each is expected to be a separate individual.
Thus the matter turns and revolves upon itself. […] The central point about
being human is that the unit “1” is the highest; “1000” counts for less’ (Brown
2013). He also writes: ‘Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority
is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed
by those who really have an opinion while the strength of the majority is
illusory, formed by the gang who have no opinion.’ (Brown 2013) The individual
works things out for himself with his reason whilst the crowd and majority
follow the logic of ‘mob rule’ who bully and coerce others. It does not even
think. The eccentric musicians that this essay will cover follow their own path
and do not follow the majority. Finally, Colin Wilson also extolled the worth
of ‘the outsider’ in his book The Outsider (1956). He often felt estranged from society: ‘It
struck me that I was in the position of so many of my favourite characters in
fiction: Dostoyevksy’s Raskolnikov, Rilke’s Malte Lauride’s Brigge, the young
writer in Hamsun’s Hunger. Alone in my room, feeling totally cut off
from society’ (1956). Wilson lumps many disparate thinkers, writers and artists
together and the thing that they have in common is that they are all outsiders.
Dominic Sandbrook writes: ‘Wilson’s argument was basically a mishmash of
Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus and dozens of other writers and philosophers thrown
together with frenzied enthusiasm’ (2005, p. 165-166). Still, once more, it
reifies the sense of alienation that many of these eccentric musicians express
in their music.
The
first eccentric musician that this essay will examine will be Don Van Vliet,
otherwise known as Captain Beefheart. His music has a devoted cult following
and it is renowned for being abstruse and bizarre. Like many of the other
artists that this essay will examine, Beefheart cultivated an eccentric and
charismatic persona. Indeed, he mythologised and self-aggrandised himself. He
even claimed to remember his own birth: ‘I was born with my eyes open. I didn’t
WANT to be born. I can remember that deep down in my head that I fought against
my mother bringing me into this world’ (Barnes 2000, p. 1). He also exaggerated
his own achievements, as he claimed that he was offered an art scholarship in his
teens, which is most likely not true (p. 2). He repeatedly claimed that he
never attended school, which accounts for his famous quote that ‘if you want to
be a different fish, you have to jump out of the school.’ However, there is
plenty of evidence that this is not true, as photos have emerged of him wearing
a graduation gown and Frank Zappa spoke about attending school with him in
interviews (p. 7). Beefheart claimed in an interview with David Letterman that
he ‘outsmarted the truant officer.’ He was cryptic and bizarre in interviews
and seldom spoke in a normal manner. Indeed, this is how Mike Barnes describes
his interviews: ‘Baffling and elliptical wordplays and verbal conundrums’ (p.
3). Although he could be charismatic, he bullied his musicians and could be an
unyielding tyrant. For his album Trout Mask Replica (1969), he kept his
band locked up in a house for a year and rarely fed them. Beefheart gave them
loose scraps of music by banging the piano, which he could not play, or by
whistling to them. They did most of the work when it came to arranging this
disparate material, but they were not given any arrangement credits for this.
John French played drums for Beefheart in many of his bands and was often
responsible for arranging Beefheart’s lapidary material. He wrote a lengthy
memoir chronicling his traumatising experiences:
‘There were days when I was
completely puzzled by Don’s behaviour. He seemed to want to get this album done
in a hurry, but then he would start questioning one of the band members about
something. […] Marker mentioned that the idea seemed to be, in his view, that
Don wanted to keep everything slightly off-kilter – just enough to keep
everyone tense and uncomfortable’ (French 2010, p. 417).
He would often give the band
lengthy lectures, which made French convinced that he was dealing with a
‘terrible’ person (p. 418). The band worked fourteen or sixteen hours a day and
were never paid for it (p. 418). Their daily meal was a measly little bowl of
soya beans (p. 418). French rarely had time to bathe and his clothes were rags
(p. 418). Beefheart was always the centre of attention, he would interrogate
the musicians and this would last for days (p. 418). French would spend most of
his time teaching the parts to the other musicians (p. 418), although he was
not given any credit for his drumming let alone for arranging the material.
Beefheart psychologically tormented his musicians and could even be violent. He
never paid them for their arduous work, nor did he even credit them for their
considerable musical input. He had a charismatic personality and he was prone
to wild self-aggrandisement. Indeed, a common trait of many of these eccentric
musicians is that, although they have charismatic personalities, they are
ruthless in dealing with others.
In
terms of influences, Beefheart was primarily influenced by blues. Even his name
clearly pays tribute to blues and jazz greats such as Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Willie
Johnson, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Jelly Roll Morton. His voice is obviously
indebted to Howlin’ Wolf. Indeed, Beefheart and Frank Zappa would listen to
rhythm and blues records when they were teenagers (Barnes, p. 18). He was also
influenced by free jazz and he was friends with Ornette Coleman, who gave him a
‘shenai’ instrument (Barnes, p. 47). He played wind instruments – soprano sax
and bass clarinet – in an untrained manner.
The music itself is
clearly influenced by blues music. He always uses slide guitar, but the lines
are played in an angular manner. The drumming is irregular and polyrhythmic and
it interacts with all the instruments. The bass plays chords and is another voice
in its own right; it does not simply support the music. The music is
polymetric, as all the instruments play in different time signatures. Trout
Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970) are his most
intricate albums, but the production is not very good and the individual parts
are not always clear. Later albums, especially Doc at the Radar Station (1980),
have better production values and the parts can be heard more clearly.
Meanwhile, the lyrics are funny, absurdist and surreal, but they do not always
make sense. They often allude to 1950s culture, such as confectionary like
‘cherry phosphate’ and chocolate bars like ‘abba zabba.’ His lyrics often have
a lot of contractions, which clearly pays tribute to the language used by the
blues greats. His lyrics often reference nature, as he speaks about ‘the bears
takin’ me in’ and ‘gonna join the mermaids.’ In one song, he sings: ‘Clean up
the air and treat the animals fair.’ The songs could easily be heard
instrumentally, but the lyrics can be heard on their own terms, too.
But what makes
Beefheart’s music eccentric and unique? There is no doubt that Beefheart strove
to be a ‘different fish’ and he sings in his song ‘Frownland’ that ‘I want my
own land.’ John Stuart Mill would clearly approve of Beefheart’s
eccentricities. Kevin Courrier: ‘Van Vliet’s version of freedom is a mastery of
a man who cannot make anyone else’s’ (p. 127, 2007) The music is clearly imbued
with his personality, as the lyrics are strange and allusive. The music is hard
to get around with initially, as it sounds jarring at first. Even hardcore fans
struggle with it initially. The guitars sound harsh, the time signatures are
odd and it all sounds like a chaotic jumble. It does not sound like other music
– this is perhaps its greatest quality – and the more you hear it the more you
like it. Indeed, it is never monotonous. Kevin Courrier writes: ‘The music
seldom repeats itself’ (p. 102). Beefheart railed against the 4/4 rhythm,
although he sometimes employed it in his music, and ‘the catatonia state.’ This
is probably why Beefheart will outlast many of his contemporaries and this is
probably the greatest quality of the best art – it transcends time. We still
listen to J. S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert – however different
they are from Beefheart – because we keep hearing new things in them. No matter
how much we associate him with 1960s counterculture, he is not an anachronistic
relic from that era.
Of course, Frank Zappa
was Captain Beefheart’s counterpart, mentor, friend and nemesis. Zappa was an
extraordinarily creative, original and talented musician and he was one of the
most musically literate musicians in rock. He wrote experimental rock, comedy
rock, jazz and orchestral classical music. He released sixty-three albums and
died aged fifty-two. He forged his distinctive style after assimilating many
different styles as a listener. He had a peripatetic childhood and moved around
a lot as a teenager. He moved to the Mojave desert, where he met Captain
Beefheart. He discovered a copy of an Edgard Varese album aged fourteen, which
blew him away and he decided that he wanted to be a composer. Zappa found a
magazine advertising a record shop that would sell anything. Indeed, it would
even sell an album by Edgard Varese, which sounded terrible, and Zappa thought
‘that’s for me’ (Zappa 1989, p. 31). For his 15th birthday, his
mother gave him money and used it to make a long-distance phone call. He called
Edgard Varese, but he was not in (p. 33). He soon heard albums by Igor
Stravinsky and Anton von Webern and he loved them. He also loved rhythm and
blues albums and he acquired a prodigious collection of these albums. Indeed,
it did not make any difference if the music he liked was of popular or
classical provenance:
‘I didn’t know anything
about twelve-tone music then, but I liked the way it sounded. Since I didn’t
have any kind of formal training, it didn’t make any difference to me if I was
listening to Lightnin’ Slim or a vocal group called The Jewels […] or Webern,
or Varese, or Stravinsky. To me, it was all good music’ (p. 34)
Although jazz featured a lot in his
music, he was not a huge fan, although there were a handful of jazz artists
that he admired. He taught himself how to write chamber and orchestral music by
looking at scores. This is an incredible achievement, as most composers learn
their craft by attending a conservatory.
In terms of
personality, Zappa could be contradictory. Although he was part of the
counterculture, and espoused much of its anti-authoritarianism, he worked
assiduously hard on his music – usually at night – and he was very disciplined.
Indeed, by the time of his death he had made sixty-three albums. He was
promiscuous, despite being married with four children. He said the following to
Pauline Butcher: ‘After music, my great interest in life is lust. […] If I
didn’t spend my life composing and playing music, I’d be into lust at every
opportunity. […] Why can’t people fuck anywhere? In trains? In the lift? In the
street?’ (p. 133). Initially he had a bohemian lifestyle, as several people
would walk into his house in the Log Cabin. Pauline Butcher: ‘Apart from pop
stars, there grew up around Frank’s tolerant and non-judgemental presence a
group of weirdos and hangers-on, all poor in purse, all searching for a
different life, the drop-outs of society’ (2011, p. 71) Due to his hirsute
appearance, and his wayward music, many people assumed that he did drugs, but
he never used them. (If you listen to his intricate pieces, it is hard to
imagine how anyone under the influence of drugs could write it.) He was
very opinionated on political issues and spoke from an anti-authoritarian
standpoint. He advocated low taxes, small government and restricting the power
of trade unions. He appeared at congress testifying against a pressure group
called the PRMC, who wanted to put labels on albums with sexually licentious
material. Additionally, a lot of the anti-communist counterculture in the
Soviet Union considered him to be a hero and they listened to his albums, which
the Soviets banned. He made the following statement about communism: ‘A system
that doesn’t allow ownership, that doesn’t allow you to say “Mine!” when you
grow up has – to put it mildly – a fatal design flaw’ (1989, p. 330). The Soviet
dissident, playwright and politician Vlaclav Havel admired his music and
invited him to Checoslovakia once he became its president.
Zappa released
sixty-three albums in his lifetime, which featured primarily avant-garde rock,
comedy rock, jazz, orchestral music and computer music. He came to prominence
with the band The Mothers of Invention and their first three albums featured a
lot of social satire. They featured invectives against the hippie
counterculture, their more ‘square’ parents and corrupt politicians. Around
1967, the group expanded into a nine-member ensemble featuring saxophones and
keyboards. It became an astonishing Dadaist outfit which played Zappa’s own
compositions, but they would also veer towards wild free jazz improvisations inspired
by Albert Ayler, they would quote Edgard Varese and they would also perform
comedic doo-wop songs. The album Uncle Meat (1969) features much of his
best music. Unfortunately, Zappa folded this group when it was at the peak of
its powers. The group felt betrayed, as they were not earning much whilst he
had bought an expensive house in Hollywood with a pool and he had Buick parked
outside (Miles 2004, p. 186). Nine musicians were on a salary and it was
becoming increasingly expensive to tour with them. Also, they were soloing more
often and large chunks did not feature his compositions (Miles, p. 185), which
upset the megalomaniacal Zappa. Following this, he made a jazz fusion album
called Hot Rats (1969) with state-of-the-art studio equipment. Miles
Davis at the time had started fusing jazz and rock with albums like Bitches
Brew (1969) and In a Silent Way (1968). Bands like The Mahavishnu
Orchestra and Weather Report would explore the same territory. Unexpectedly, he
formed another incarnation of The Mothers with the two lead singers of The
Turtles. He indulged himself with songs about sexual depravity and groupies.
Whilst the early Mothers were comedic and Dadaist, this group took the sexual
content to the umpteenth degree. This would be a consistent feature of his
music for the rest of his career. However, this period came to an end when a
fan pushed him off a ten-foot stage. The band thought that he had died, but he
fortunately survived, his voice dropped a few octaves and his left foot became
larger than his right one. He was told that he might never play music ever
again (p. 233). Whilst convalescing, he created two astonishing jazz fusion
albums called Waka/Jawaka (1972) and The Grand Wazoo (1972). The
albums featured a large big band jazz orchestra reminiscent of Sun Ra and Duke
Ellington and showcased Zappa’s compositional and arrangement skills. For the
rest of the 70s, his bands performed intricate instrumentals as well as comedy
songs with lewd content. His bands featured incredibly accomplished musicians,
such as George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Bruce Fowler, Terry Bozzio, Steve Vai,
etc. Zappa was also a gifted guitarist and many of his concerts featured his
extensive solos. Indeed, Miles Davis’ groups often featured musicians who went
on to have the most iconic careers in jazz and the same is true for Zappa’s
group. Miles: ‘Frank saw himself as running a school for musicians, providing a
supportive environment to bring out the best in each player and stretching them
by writing material specifically tailored to their abilities’ (p. 30). He also
had some of his greatest commercial successes in this period, with albums such
as Overnite Sensation (1973), Apostrophe (1974), Zoot Allures
(1976), Sheik Yerbouti (1979) and Joe’s Garage (1979). After
performing endless live versions of silly songs like ‘Dinah Mo Hum,’ and a hit
single like ‘Valley Girl,’ Zappa saved up enough money to have his orchestral
pieces performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. They performed his
fiendishly complex pieces inspired by his love for composers like Igor
Stravinsky, Edgard Varese, Elliott Carter, Webern, etc. He was not pleased with
the performances, however. He stated the following about the experience: ‘They
made so many mistakes and played so badly on that piece that it required forty
edits (within seven minutes of music) to try to cover them’ (1989, p. 156).
Soon after, none other than Pierre Boulez conducted some of his orchestral
pieces, but Zappa was still not pleased with the results. He was finally
satisfied when the Ensemble Modern performed some of his pieces before his
death in 1993. Increasingly frustrated by ‘the human element’ – in both rock
groups and classical ensembles – Zappa purchased a ‘Synclavier,’ a synthesiser
which was state-of-the-art at the time. It now sounds very dated and, indeed,
one would be more likely to encounter it in a museum. Zappa explained what he
liked about it: ‘With the Synclavier, any group of imaginary instruments can be
invited to play the most difficult passages and the little guys inside the
machine play them with one-millisecond accuracy every time’ (p. 173). He used
it to create an excellent album entitled Jazz from Hell (1986). However,
the Synclavier helped create what is most likely his masterpiece – Civilisation
Phase III (1994). Pieces like ‘Amerika’ and ‘N-lite’ are incredibly
detailed and took about ten years to create.
What makes Zappa’s
music unique? His hero Igor Stravinsky wrote in many different styles –
neo-classical, serialist, Russian – but it was always imbued with his own
distinctive style. Likewise, Zappa wrote in many different styles, but it always
sounds inimitably like Zappa. His style on the guitar, his jazz pieces, his
orchestral pieces, his rock songs, his satire, etc. all sound Zappaesque. He
was single-minded and worked relentlessly to achieve what he did. He was
completely self-taught and even learned how to write avant-garde classical
pieces on his own. He maintained this independence of thought throughout his
career by voicing his dislike for mainstream education, state censorship and
authoritarian communist regimes. He did everything on his terms, as he fell out
with Warner Brothers and established his own record label. He had unusual
predilections and indulged himself by writing unusual lyrics about gas masks,
hoovers, poodles, etc. Although he was part of the counterculture, he disliked its
high-mindedness and he was not shy to lampoon it. Much of what he did was in
line with Mill’s ideas about the cultivation of individuality and not
succumbing to the ‘tyranny of the majority.’
The next artist that this essay will look at will be Mark
E. Smith, front man and lead singer of The Fall. This essay will start by
looking at the origins of the group. Mark E. Smith was the only permanent
member of the group, which lasted from 1976 until 2018. The Fall formed in 1976
after he attended a Sex Pistols concert and Mark E. Smith decided that he could
do better. Indeed, Stewart Lee writes: ‘The Sex Pistols may have inspired Smith
to form a group, but there any comparison between the two ended’ (2006, p. 40).
The Fall were more influenced by the kind of music that John Peel played, who
was himself a champion of their music: ‘Smith and his cohorts were nourished by
the 70s counterculture drip-fed of Krautrock, Iggy Pop, Captain Beefheart and
weird prog and it could be argued that The Fall became Peel favourites because
they reflected a decade of digesting the DJ’s more extreme music choices’ (Lee,
p. 40). Punk music emerged in a period of political and economic crisis. The UK
was undergoing stagflation – that is, both high inflation and unemployment. The
UK had just taken a hefty loan from the IMF. The UK took a 3.9 billion loan,
which was the largest loan the IMF had handed out at the time. They did this so
as to stabilise the value of the pound, which was accompanied by spending cuts.
Extremely high inflation and industrial unrest had priced Britain out of world
markets and this had also led to high unemployment (Tejuan 2017). Mark E. Smith
lyrics around this time reference unemployment, such as ‘Tempo House’: ‘Make
your claim.’ They also reference industrial unrest in ‘Stop Mithering’: ‘They
always strike for more pay.’ Indeed, punk music was a reaction against this
sense of social malaise. Mark E. Smith says:
‘To me, punk was a safety net for a
lot of people, a refuge of sorts from the reality that was 70s Britain. On one
side, it was something that kids could fall into and out of when it all got complicated
and harsh; and for the older generation, instead of concentrating their minds
on the undeniable mess of the state, it provided them with an almost manageable
problem’ (Smith p. 103, 2007).
Punk music was a good release to vent their
frustrations against a decaying society of industrial unrest, rising
unemployment and rising prices. The older generation could scapegoat the punks,
even though they were losing control over the political and economic situation.
Punk was also a reaction against the excesses of prog rock, which had become
increasingly convoluted. Mark E. Smith named the band after a novel by Albert
Camus, although they were initially named ‘The Outsiders’ after another novel
by the French author (Smith 2007, p. 41).
In terms of their actual
music, Smith read widely and he was influenced by Norman Mailer, H. P.
Lovecraft, Colin Wilson, Edgar Allan Poe and other authors. He often cites many
of these authors in his lyrics. He states that this was the intention for his
group: ‘Combining primitive music with intelligent lyrics’ (p. 26). Indeed, the
music is often about creating an hypnotic mood and expressing a sense of
rebarbative emotion rather than creating something sophisticated. Smith says
the following about rock music: ‘Rock and roll isn’t even music really. It’s
mistreating of instruments to get feelings over’ (Baneri 2011). Additionally,
Smith came from a working-class background and he is symptomatic of a kind of
working-class autodidacticism, exemplified by disparate people like Melvyn
Bragg, Colin Wilson and Alex Ferguson. Smith: ‘Looking back, I never liked
college anyway, I educated myself better’ (2007, p. 21). Indeed, many of his
lyrics reference working-class culture, such as ‘Prole Art Threat’ and ‘Fit and
Working Again.’ Punk provided an outlet for people such as Smith, since prior
to punk he would not have felt confident enough to make music. His lyrics have
a surrealist slant and are quite angry and misanthropic. Like Beefheart, they
are cryptic and do not always make sense. The music is self-consciously
repetitive. The music does have some similarities with Beefheart and Can, since
the guitars have little distortion and flit off onto separate directions.
However, those artists are often more intricate whilst The Fall play three or
four chords throughout the same song. They made their best albums throughout
the 1980s, such as Hex Enduction Hour (1982), Slates (1981), Perverted
by Language (1983), This Nation’s Saving Grace (1985) and Bend
Sinister (1986). Brix E. Smith infused more of a pop sensibility when she
joined the group in 1983 and they experimented with electronic music in the
1990s. They produced roughly an album a year from 1977 until 2017.
What makes The Fall
unique? They certainly have a distinctive sound – repetitive guitars, a unique
bass groove and Mark E. Smith’s distinctive delivery. Mark E. Smith’s lyrics
mix mundane observations with surrealist overtones. He was literate, but he was
also highly idiosyncratic and he could be rambling and incoherent. The music is
visceral and rough-hewn, but it does have a pop sensibility. Mark E. Smith had
a notorious attitude, since he was contemptuous of most aspects of society. In
many ways, he was the UK’s very own Captain Beefheart, since he led his own
band in a tyrannical manner, he could be an irascible bully and many band
members came and went. He was untrained musically, but he still managed to
imprint his vision onto his music. He could be very obtuse and abrasive, but
his music does have a pop sensibility, too.
This essay will look at
Sun Ra, a notoriously eccentric and borderline psychotic musician. This essay
will start by looking at his personality. There used to be scanty evidence of
this, as Sun Ra tried to construct his stage persona and hid all information
about his real self. Notably, Sun Ra claimed that he came from Saturn and this
was not a joke. However, he was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1940, a racially
segregated city with the highest KKK membership in the country (Szwed 1997, p. 3). However, Birmingham was still
tolerant of individuality and eccentricity (p. 3). Still, he claimed that he
was not from Earth and he ‘destroyed his past’ by destroying file certificates
(p. 2). His older sister Mary stated the following: ‘He was born at my mother’s
aunt’s house over there by the train station… I know cause I got on my knees
and peeped through the keyhole. He’s not from no Mars’ (p. 7). He was a very
able musician, but developed a reputation for ‘weirdness’ when he lectured
other musicians on morality, astronomy, physics, space travel and that science
and music would become one (p. 58). He also took an interest in Egypt and the
Egyptian sun God, Ra (p. 64). He formed his group the Arkestra in the early
1950s.
Like the other musicians
that this essay has looked at, Sun Ra could be a ruthless tyrant. He shunned
drugs and would not employ musicians who took them and drugs and drink were
forbidden in the house that they lived in (p. 116). Some of his musicians snuck
out to do this, but those who broke his rules would be punished (p. 117). It
felt like house arrest, but they were always rehearsing, which has parallels
with the rehearsals for Trout Mask Replica. He forbade musicians from
speaking to the press without his permission (p. 118). Band members were
dominated and even bullied, but they stayed because they thought that they were
doing something unique (p. 118). This is once more similar to Beefheart, as
several of his musicians wanted to leave but chose to stay due to the vitality
of the music. The band did not make much money and he did not tolerate
discussions about money (p. 118). Some band members complained about not
receiving credits for composition. They would rehearse all day by getting up at
4 AM, rehearse til 12, then back again at 4 (p. 119), which once more mirrors
the gruelling rehearsals that led to Trout Mask. The music was hard to
play, which is why they rehearsed so much (p. 121). One musician estimated that
they rehearsed 180 hours for every concert that they played in public (p. 119).
Additionally, he even had a musician guard the door all night (Wilmer 1997, p.
44). Once more, like Beefheart, he fed his musicians a sparse diet (p. 44). He
wanted the band to follow his example and break with family and friends. He
disliked it when band members acquired girlfriends and sexual relationships
could only be pursued under his permission (Wilmer, p. 43), since he felt that
it was too distracting from the music. When John Gilmore’s girlfriend died, he
talked him out of attending her funeral. When one of his saxophonists died, he
prevented his group from attending his funeral (Szwed, p. 196). They had to ask
for permission to go on a date and visit family members (Van Wilmer, p. 44). He
would punish members if they did not follow his rules by cutting their solos
from albums and by leaving them out from publicity photos (Szwed, p. 196).
Additionally, many of his musicians complained that they worked too long
without breaks and that they worked too cheap (p. 197). There were not many
gigs and there were high transportation costs involved in shipping musicians
and equipment (Van Wilmer, p. 44). He had to hold back on spending, which meant
that his musicians resented not being paid much (p. 44). Many of his musicians
did rebel, even his most faithful acolytes (Van Wilmer p. 43).
This essay will now
look at Sun Ra’s actual music. He was extraordinarily prolific, as different
albums came out all the time, often with no title and the same title would be
given to two different pieces (Szwed, p. 125). His titles often referenced
antiquity, Egypt and Africa (p. 125). In the early 1950s, he produced a highly
individualised interpretation of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington and in the
late 50s he became more interested in percussion (Priestley 2004, p. 768). He
started using electric keyboards as early as the late 1950s (p. 769) and, once
again, he was ahead of the times when he employed two bassists before Ornette
Coleman (p. 769). He became more interested in free jazz and collective
improvisation in the mid-60s. John Gilmore and Marshall Allan explored noisy
and extreme timbres that tenor saxophones could produce, which influenced
latter-day Coltrane (p. 190). He started veering towards free jazz and,
although his pieces were often organised and composed, the band could veer
towards pure noise and free improvisation. He veered towards free jazz with the
album The Magic City, a collective improvisation akin to Ascension (1966)
by John Coltrane and Free Jazz (1961) by Ornette Coleman. Indeed,
Ornette Coleman might have instigated free jazz, but he still did not go the
full-hog. He was more interested in melody than harmony, as he did not
improvise on chordal patterns, but his melodies became more irregular than
anything heard on bebob. His music was still very rhythmic and his solos were
still very bluesy. He was revolutionary, but the free jazz practitioners who
came after him would take all of this further (p. 233) as later free jazz
musicians disregarded rhythm altogether (p. 233). Although Sun Ra tried to
distance himself from the movement, his music still very much fell within that
category and he could produce the most extreme examples of it.
What makes Sun Ra’s
music unique? He took swing and big band jazz and infused it with Egyptian
melodies and harmonies. He later veered towards free jazz and group
improvisations and he took the template laid out by Ornette Coleman and made it
even more abrasive. This led to artists pursuing this path, such as Albert
Ayler, Peter Brotzmann and Evan Parker. He experimented with electronic
keyboards before they became a core part of jazz. He infused his music with a
mystic philosophy as well as kitsch visuals and costumes. Like the other
artists that this essay has considered, he was tyrannical and cantankerous, but
his music was playful and many of his musicians found his vision compelling.
His music was joyful, often bizarre, often beautiful and exciting.
This essay will now
examine Harry Partch, who was called ‘a crackpot inventor’ by Norman Lebrecht
(1992, p. 253). His music was indeed incredibly radical and innovative, but
Partch’s personality was – once more – notoriously eccentric. His parents were
Christian missionaries in China (Gilmore 1998, p. 14), which led to a strong
distaste for Christianity. He was socially isolated as a child, which led to
him thinking of himself as an ‘outsider.’ He said: ‘Once upon a time there was
a little boy and he went outside’ (p. 20). He took an interest in Chinese
culture (p. 28) and this interest in Oriental culture permeated his music
throughout his entire career. However, his father became an atheist whilst his
mother retained her Christianity (p. 28). Just as he developed a distaste for
Christianity, he discovered that he was homosexual when he was a teenager (p.
30), which compounded his alienation from society. He went to university, but
dropped out after six months after he became dissatisfied with formal music.
Later on, he became a hobo during the Great Depression, a lifestyle he greatly
enjoyed. At the time, he went to Europe to promote his ideas and his career was
on an upward trajectory, but he came back to a ‘jobless America’ (p. 133). He
went on ‘hobo travels’ and took a notebook so as to document his experiences
(p. 13). There were short periods when he had jobs, but this was not a
continuous thing (p. 113). He had to endure hunger, loss of sleep, filth and a
constant sense of danger (p. 113). Vagrancy seemed to be a constant feature of
the Great Depression, something that the New Deal wanted to stamp out (p. 115).
He also had homosexual sex with hobos, which meant that he contracted syphilis
(p. 125). The hobo lifestyle was attractive to him, even though ‘there were
hardships and dangers’ (p. 126) and he maintained this lifestyle even when he
moved to Phoenix and found a job (p. 125). He valued the stoicism that hobos
evinced in the face of these hardships (p. 126) as well as their eccentric
personalities.
Partch’s music was an incredibly radical
statement. All of his music was written for instruments that he designed and
built and he considered himself a carpenter as much as a composer (p. 7). It
was tuned to a microtonal/just intonation scale, not the equal temperament of
the piano (p. 2). It could never be satisfactorily played on western
instruments (p. 2). His instruments demanded ‘new geometric forms of their own’
and required large physical spaces. It required ‘choreographic’ movements from
the player to move across the entire instrument and the performance was highly
corporeal (p. 3). The instruments required large storage spaces and a lot of
rehearsal time (p. 3). He accepted that he needed to release recordings, but
his music was primarily a ‘seen and heard’ performance. It was choreographic
and multi-faceted and it was bound up with drama, text and dance. However,
Partch did not create new instruments because he wanted to create new timbres,
he did it because he wanted to realise the intervals in the microtonal scale,
as most experimental composers created new instruments so as to create new and
unusual sounds. He was also interested in recreating the patterns of speech,
something that the Ancient Greeks did in their music (p. 7). The watershed
moment for Partch, and the moment in which he formulated his musical vision,
was when he discovered the book On the Sensations of Tone (1863) by
Hermann Helmholtz, a study of music theory and a scientific study of sound.
Partch said: ‘Whether there was any logical reason for twelve tones in an
octave. […] I was always dissatisfied with the explanation of musical phenomena
given in school by musical teacher. […] Helmholtz was the key I had been
searching’ (p. 48). Helmholtz was a scientist and he was interested in
re-establishing the connection between music theory and the natural sciences,
something that harked back all the way back to antiquity and Pythagoras (p.
49). In western music, each octave runs from A to G, the seven pitches are
equally spaced and there are sharps or flats affixed to the letter names so as
to indicate pitches that fall within the gaps of the letters. However, there
are no more tones within those gaps (p. 49). Keyboards were tuned to a small number
of fixed tones, but Partch thought that this method – equal temperament –
should be jettisoned and replaced by ‘just intonation,’ a tuning system which
had been used by the Greeks and the Renaissance (p. 50). Partch wanted to write
music for smaller and smaller tones, otherwise known as ‘microtones.’ He would
abandon western notions of pitch and embrace ‘the language of ratios’ (p. 50).
He moved to San Francisco and immersed himself in Chinese culture who had
instruments which were ‘non-tempered’ (p. 53). He tried to compose pieces for
conventional instruments in just intonation, but he quickly run into
difficulties. At the time, modern music, such as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold
Schoenberg, was still bound up with the concert tradition, which Partch wanted
to distance himself from (p. 55). Partch started to build his own instruments,
he engaged with Chinese culture by transcribing poems by Li Po and he also
transcribed speech patterns into music (p. 76). His most ambitious and
large-scale pieces were The Bewitched (1955) and Delusion of the Fury
(1966) and he acquired a larger following in the anything-goes atmosphere
of the 1960s.
What make Harry
Partch’s music unique? One could make the case that Partch, in a competitive
field, was one of the most unique composers in modern classical music. He
thought that the whole language of western classical music – twelve tones per
octave – was a fraudulent mistake. He was bored by the rigidity of the concert
hall, something which even the most experimental composers of the 20th
century clung on to. He disrupted its staidness by adding choreography, pagan
themes, he looked outwards by exploring Eastern cultures and back in time into
antiquity. He used ‘just intonation’ and devised his own microtonal scales. He even
built his own instruments so as to play his music and his instruments were
themselves beautiful to look at. He did everything on his own terms and this
could be exceedingly cumbersome, as it required large storage space for his
instruments, which could not be easily reproduced and musicians had to be
trained on them. He even lived as a hobo and he enjoyed being self-sufficient,
not having to rely on an employer and finding food for himself. He produced a strikingly
original body of work and always stuck to his values and principles.
The final eccentric
musician that this essay will look at will be Morton Feldman. Morton Feldman
was of Jewish provenance and grew up in New York, where the most important
artists of the day dwelt (Lebrecht, p. 117). He was the son of a manufacturer
of children’s coats (Ross 2006). He worked in the family business until he was
forty-four-years-old (Ross 2006) and he also worked part-time at his uncle’s
dry cleaner’s (Ross 2007, p. 527). He wrote music in his spare time, but he
later became professor of music at State University of New York, Buffalo
(2006), where he loved to challenge his students’ assumptions. He did not like
the idea of music being part of academia, so some people thought it was
hypocritical when he took up this post (2007, p. 523) He worked in relative
obscurity for most of his life, but to everyone’s surprise he became one of the
most renowned composers of the 20th century once he died. Unlike
Partch, he was more embedded into the artistic community. He was friends with
painters, including Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko (p. 117). He also became
friends with John Cage, a Californian who was gay whilst Feldman was straight,
Russian, Jewish and from New York. They met one night after hearing a piece by
Anton von Webern at Carniege Hall. Sergei Rachmaninov was on the bill next, but
they walked out early. Feldman asked ‘why was that beautiful?’ and they forged
a close friendship. However, their music was different, as Cage was a reckless
experimentalist whilst Feldman was more restrained. Feldman said the following
about Cage: ‘I owe him everything and I owe him nothing’ (Ross 2006). In
bohemian circles, he was a commanding presence, as he was six feet tall and
weighed three hundred pounds, so he was very noticeable (Ross 2006). He was
friends with Edgard Varese and his teacher was Steven Wolpe, a Marxist who
thought that Feldman’s music was too esoteric. In an amusing anecdote, Wolpe
asked Feldman to look out of the window and think about the first man who
walked across the street. Just as he said this, none other than Jackson Pollock
walked past (Ross 2006). Feldman often made his presence felt at the New York
school of poets, dancers and painters and often lavished his attention on the
women of the room (Ross 2006). He amused and confronted other composers. John
Adams recalls staying at a motel in California, went down for breakfast and
found various musicians of the 20th century there, including Steve
Reich, Iannis Xenakis and Milton Babbitt. Feldman talked through the entire
meal and Adams called him ‘a lovable solipsist’ (Ross 2006). Although he was a
verbose man, Feldman wrote notoriously quiet music and once told a group of
musicians: ‘It’s too fuckin’ loud and it’s too fuckin’ fast’ (Ross 2006).
Indeed, Feldman’s music
was notoriously quiet and minimalistic. His music was more about creating an
emotional experience for the listener than in creating a quasi-mathematical
system. Indeed, The Rough Guide to Classical Guide to Music says the
following: ‘The American avant-garde is different from the European avant-garde
– it is more about the sensual quality of the sounds than the organisation of
the sounds (2001, p. 192). Indeed, Morton Feldman fits the American mould, as
he was more interested in timbre than structure. He liked being American, as
this meant that he could extricate himself from the European tradition and it
provided him with unfettered freedom (Universal Edition). He emphasised
repetition and, indeed, The Rough Guide writes the following: ‘[It is] a
conscious attempt at formalising a disorientation of memory’ (p. 192). Another
aspect that Feldman was interested in was time and his pieces could go on for
hours and hours. He said the following:
‘My whole generation was hung up on
the twenty to twenty-five minute piece. It was our clock. We all got to know it
and how to an it. As soon as you leave the twenty to twenty-five minute piece
behind in a one-movement work, different problems arise. Up to one hour you
think about form, but after an hour and a half it’s scale. Form is easy; just
the division of things into parts. But scale is another matter’ (Service,
2012).
Indeed, Feldman’s pieces last for a
very long time, but they are not especially ambitious. On the contrary, not
much happens at all and the dynamics are very soft. They do not stretch the
bounds of what instruments are capable of, but they take place over a
protracted length of time and induce a sense of mystical disorientation.
Indeed, the most extreme example of this is String Quartet No. 2 (1983),
which is almost six hours long. However, unlike, say, Philip Glass, the music
is seldom predictable and you hardly ever know what is going to happen next. Initially,
Feldman used alternative styles of composing. He used a ‘grid notation,’ a grid
of boxes which represented high, middle and low ranges and the musician could
choose which ranges to play (Ross 2006). Later on, some works appeared which
specified the pitches, but they allowed the performer to decide when and how
long they should be played. In other words, it was indeterministic (Ross 2006).
This became a more common practice in the avant-garde, but Feldman returned to
traditional notation and produced his most iconic pieces with Rothko Chapel
(1971), Piano and String Quartet (1985) and The Viola in My Life
(1970).
What
makes Morton Feldman unique? Modern classical music in the late 1960 and early
1970s was very dogmatic. Most composers followed strict formulas and rules,
such as ‘total serialism.’ Indeed, most music departments had been taken over
by this and the idea of doing something different was scoffed at, but Feldman
rejected this. Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote grand, almost megalomaniacal pieces.
In the case of Gruppen (1957), he wrote a piece for three orchestras.
Feldman wrote quiet pieces, with softer dynamics and for increasingly smaller
ensembles. Additionally, he did not write music which followed some kind of
system. Instead, he was more interested in the sensual quality of these sounds.
Like Harry Partch, he is an eccentric figure within the classical canon.
John Stuart Mill wrote that the cultivation of individuality is important. Individuals who follow their own path and think for themselves use their own judgemental capacities. On the other hand, those who follow customs do not do this. Mill even wrote that the lack of eccentricity was the ‘chief danger of the times.’ Similarly, Schopenhauer wrote that, unlike monolithic nature, every individual is different. Kierkegaard wrote in favour of the individual and the minority, as opposed to the majority and ‘mob rule.’ Colin Wilson also wrote a book which praised ‘the outsider’ in philosophy and the arts. All the musicians that this essay looked at follow these examples, as they cultivate their own vision and do not follow fashions. They create their own distinctive style and do not follow ‘mob rule.’ Captain Beefheart created a unique body of work which used angular guitars, polyrhythmic drumming and surreal lyrics. He was influenced by blues and jazz, but he clearly departed from those genres as well. His music sounds abrasive at first, but repeated hearings are very rewarding. The music is seldom repetitive and keeps yielding rewards. Beefheart himself was a strange person who rarely spoke much sense in interviews and he self-mythologised and aggrandised himself. He was a tyrant who bullied his musicians and rarely credited them for song writing and arrangement contributions. Frank Zappa was Beefheart’s childhood friend and he also forged his own unique path. Unlike Beefheart, Zappa was musically literate and he was a highly accomplished composer of classical, jazz and rock pieces. He created a body of work that synthesised multiple styles of music. He wrote many pieces with sexually gratuitous material and he was often satirical of many aspects of American society. He was anti-authoritarian, he was stridently anti-communist and he was popular among dissident groups in the Soviet Union. He was part of the counterculture and lived a bohemian lifestyle, but he was very disciplined and produced sixty-three albums in his lifetime. He wrote complex music, he rehearsed incessantly and, contrary to popular myth, shunned drugs. Mark E. Smith formed The Fall after attending a Sex Pistols concert. Mark E. Smith was not trained musically and never learned anything about music theory in the forty years that he was involved in music. However, punk provided an outlet for his ideas. Punk emerged in a climate of political and economic crisis and many of Smith’s lyrics evince a cynical critique of society. Like Beefheart, his lyrics are cryptic, bizarre, surreal and imaginative. Sun Ra was another strange person, as he claimed that he came from Saturn, not planet Earth. He started his own swing band, but he was always highly individualistic and started to disrupt it with unusual harmonies and time signatures. He started to veer towards free jazz and collective improvisation and he produced some of the most extreme examples of the genre. Like many of the other musicians that this essay looked at, he was a tyrant who ruled the group with an iron fist. Harry Partch grew tired with the concert tradition and the western tuning system, something that even the most radical composers of the 20th century persisted with. He grew interested in the ‘microtones’ and built his own instruments so as to play them. His music was a visual spectacle as much as musical. His instruments were beautiful to look at and required choreographic movements. He called these performances ‘a pagan ritual’ and were a clear affront to the staidness of the concert hall. Partch was highly eccentric and actively enjoyed living as a hobo. Finally, Morton Feldman wrote music that did not follow a system. He did not follow a school or a doctrine, instead he created his own unique voice. His music was minimalistic, quiet and slow, but it does not sound like the minimalism of Philip Glass, Steve Reich or John Adams, as it is seldom predictable. He frequented bohemian circles and he was renowned for being eccentric. These are the characteristics of these eccentric musicians and their actions and creations would have been extolled by John Stuart Mill.
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