Facelift Magazine - The Canterbury Scene and Beyond

Elton Dean is undoubtedly one of the most talented and respected musicians

to have emerged from this genre we call the Canterbury scene. Nowadays a

major player on the European jazz scene, he has been a professional

musician since his late teens with an energy that shows no signs of

abating.

"I had piano tuition from the age of about four which I hated, then a bit

of violin, I suppose it helped me later but I got the impression that the

teachers were trying to encourage my parents to stop wasting their money. I

did musical theory up to grade 5 or thereabouts, so I can read music

although I've never been a fluent sight reader. I didn't touch piano again

for years until I started working in jazz groups around the age of 18, the

big difference then was learning by experience, not just theory from a

book. I remember seeing a clarinet in a shop window, luckily my

grandparents had just given me some money so I could just about afford it

plus a couple of reeds. Life suddenly became clearer, I was on my way,

although it was not until a couple of years later that I got my first

saxophone. In those days the trad boom was in full swing, so that's what I

was listening to mainly. Acker Bilk was a good player, I liked the Alex

Welsh Band, every Monday evening I would go to the 100 Club to see these

guys in action."

Having absorbed the influences of London's jazz clubs it was time to play

for real.

"It all happened fairly quickly, I joined a South London trad band doing a

few pub gigs, you could work quite a lot in pubs in those days. Initially I

was playing clarinet, then I bought a sax the result of which was I had to

leave school so I could work to keep up the payments. I got involved with

an R 'n B band called Lester Square and the GTs, we went over to Germany

and ended up getting completely ripped off. Two of the band came back

straight away, but I stayed out there with the drummer John Dummer and

picked up with an Irish showband at the Star Club. I stayed about a year,

then back in the UK I did a few more showband gigs and then joined a soul

outfit called the Soul Pushers."

The vibrant club scene in mid sixties London was a land of opportunity for

up and coming musicians.

"It was a good time, the club scene was booming, people like Keith Moon and

various Beatles would be hanging out, it was all happening. At that time

there were a lot of good bands down at the Q Club, Harry Beckett's group

included a young John McLaughlin, Mark Charig was playing with The

Sidewinders, John Marshall was with the Blue Flames. It was a good scene to

get into, we backed various singers, Ronnie Jones was one I remember. I had

my horn stolen after a gig at the Q Club, so there was a bit of a gap until

I sorted that out, eventually I picked up a tenor."

A chance meeting lead to higher profile work. Bluesology were a renowned R

'n B outfit probably best known for their association with singer Long John

Baldry. Their piano player was a struggling songwriter called Reg Dwight

who later embarked on a solo career. Searching around for a more appealing

alternative to his given name he combined the first names of his former

saxophone player and vocalist and became Elton John. Whatever became of

him?

"I ran into Pete Gavin who'd been the drummer with the Soul Pushers but was

now working with Bluesology, he said they were looking for a brass section

and within a few days I was in. They wanted a trumpet player so I

recommended Mark Charig, and he was soon recruited. Reg Dwight was the

keyboard player, and also a frustrated singer, his problem was that we

already had three regular singers, Alan Walker, Stu Brown and Marsha Hunt,

not that she was a terribly good singer but she looked great. Bluesology

eventually became a bit of a struggle, I remember backing some awful one

hit wonders called the Paper Dolls on one tour. Sometimes we would get to

open the show as a quartet, occasionally with Long John Baldry. He was a

good singer, actually he was best heard solo, just him and a 12 string

guitar singing the blues, a fantastic voice. Then he got into recording

ballads with strings, and of course immediately had hit records. He lives

in Canada nowadays."

A more serious jazz attitude was coming to the fore, ED began to move away

from the R 'n B scene and into full scale improvisation.

"We had got to know some of the main faces like Mike Osborne and Harry

Miller. Mike was an integral part of the scene until a nervous disorder

stopped him playing. By 1968 Mark and I had begun to play more improvised

stuff so we decided to enrol at the Barry Jazz Summer School down in Wales,

and that was where we met Keith Tippett and Nick Evans. After that Keith

came to London got the band together and started working straight away, I

was on tenor and soprano, there were so many venues in those days. It all

happened very quickly, suddenly we were part of the scene and we'd made a

record."

The album You Are Here, I Am There, released in 1970 was entirely composed

by Keith Tippett. It develops themes and excerpts from a much longer

composition that had been commissioned by the Arts Council. On the original

vinyl side 1 has two extended pieces, whereas side 2 rings the changes with

six shorter sketches, all no doubt expanded in the live context.

"Strictly speaking it was actually our second record, we'd already been

involved with someone who had a studio where we cut a record that never saw

the light of day, I think I might have an acetate of it somewhere. We did a

lot of gigs, Keith had an Arts Council Grant to compose and that helped us

get off the ground. The press was good and we soon had festival bookings,

that's where we came across Soft Machine and a project that Mike Ratledge

had scored for a brass section. He hired us en masse, plus Lyn Dobson. Lyn

was on the fringe of the jazz scene, I'd seen him in a band with John

Marshall and John McLaughlin, but I think he came to us from the Blue

Flames or was it Manfred Mann?"

A moment of decision loomed, to carry on in a more pure jazz direction with

Keith Tippett, or enter the world of rock music. The latter seemed more

attractive at the time.

"Initially as a horn section we were shared, I remember doing two

successive weeks at Ronnie's one with Soft Machine and one with Keith's

sextet. Ratledge was writing some pretty complex stuff by this time, it was

my first experience of unusual time signatures, sevenths, ninths,

elevenths, it was all quite challenging."

This Softs line up was brilliant, but ultimately doomed. It all proved too

unwieldy and difficult to manage in terms of both personnel and budget. The

only recordings released so far are sessions for John Peel's Top Gear on

Radio 1 in November 1969, although elements of the line up contributed to

parts of Third and Fourth.

"The first tour we did was a long one about 6 weeks, and everyone seemed to

get ill at some point. The biggest difficulty was balancing the sound, we

used to have bugs in the horns rather than use standard miking techniques.

The technology was at a very formative stage and that was the most

unsatisfactory part really. The band were very loud onstage, some would use

earplugs!! I'm sure it affected my hearing at the top end. Nick really

couldn't get along with the amplified trombone, he was never really happy

touring. Mark got a bit disorientated and eventually he and Nick left to

join the Brotherhood of Breath. There were also financial problems, I don't

really think the band could afford to run the complete horn section, in the

end everyone was quite happy to reduce it to a quintet, it was much more

manageable. Having said that there was some nice writing and some good

gigs. Lyn lasted a few months longer, he had one or two wayward

experiences, went over the edge a bit and that was that. So we were down to

a quartet, but I think we all soon realised the chemistry was right."

Side one of Third was Hugh Hopper's Facelift which was the quintet before

Lyn Dobson left. He contributes soprano and flute to live recordings

stitched together from gigs at Croydon and Birmingham in January 1970.

Sides two and four are the basic quartet augmented occasionally by Jimmy

Hastings and Nick Evans, with side three Robert Wyatt's almost totally solo

Moon in June. The closest they got to the big band sound in the studio was

Ratledge's Teeth on Fourth with Alan Skidmore in for Lyn Dobson, plus extra

bass from Roy Babbington.

"We did The Proms which was a bit of a novelty, we played poorly though. It

came about through Mike's contact with Tim Souster, who was putting on an

evening of music. Mike was playing with Souster at the beginning of the

programme and we appeared later, the first pop group to appear. The sound

was terrible in the Albert Hall, we were too loud for it really. Overall

though we played some good stuff during this period, Robert swallowed his

unhappiness a lot and enjoyed it but there came a time when he just

couldn't take it anymore. The music was moving away from his songs, I

remember when we first started with the horns there was a trio set of all

Robert's stuff before the rest of us came on. There were things going on

within that trio, barely spoken but felt, Robert's pieces were dropped one

by one until he would just try and incorporate his voice into the

improvisation, which probably wasn't enough for him. I was too busy

concentrating on the music to fully comprehend the personality issues going

on around me. It was never discussed, there were no blazing rows. I got on

well with Robert most of the time, we were good mates for a while, although

we did have a bit of a disagreement during a tour of the States shortly

before he quit. It's funny but some of the best improvisation we did was

during the period leading up to Robert's departure. If he wanted to carry

on with the songs he never really said so, we didn't rehearse much or

discuss direction, we would go on tour and things would happen, pieces

would be written by Mike and Hugh and we would play them. I wasn't really

writing much then, just a few themes or sketches to kick off an

improvisation, there's some good examples on the Virtually album. In the

end I think there was a sense of relief when Robert left, John Marshall was

the obvious replacement but he was busy with Jack Bruce so I suggested Phil

Howard. I was already working with him on a pretty regular basis,

conveniently he was living next door to me at the time. Mike showed

interest initially so after an impressive audition Phil was in."

Phil Howard was a flamboyant Australian whose style of drumming was of the

Tony Williams school.

"On stage Phil and I would take the music into new areas of freedom,

perhaps a bit beyond what Mike and Hugh could handle. Phil wouldn't exactly

play the time signatures as such, they might just be implied, a pulse

beneath ever increasing layers of rhythm, an astonishing drummer. In the

end Mike and Hugh decided he was too hot to handle and had to go, to my

horror I was given the job of telling him. There had been no indication

that they wanted him out, the decision seemed to be made very suddenly. I

was not consulted, it would appear that I was still looked upon as a junior

member of the band. John Marshall was now available and the obvious

replacement, in all honesty he was the ideal drummer for the band being

able to keep the required rhythmic accuracy, more so than Robert ever

could. I really left when Phil was fired, I was well pissed off, I did one

more tour with John Marshall on drums."

Thus ended the classic Soft Machine, they were never really quite such a

potent force again. Undoubtedly the later line ups produced much excellent

music but never with the same maverick feel, it all became a rather

clinical.

"Apart from the musical differences there were financial reasons for

leaving, quite simply there was no money, the band were virtually bankrupt

due to mismanagement of the accounts, I just couldn't see any future in it.

Our manager Sean Murphy wanted to release various tapes he had accumulated

over the years but none of the royalties were ever going to come our way.

We finally got the Union to pay for a decent lawyer to help us out, it

never actually got to court, the case built up and we managed to block all

his moves. Alfie did a lot of hustling on Robert's behalf, and I had a

contact at EMI who searched out old contracts. All we could do was plug the

holes, I think we now get what's due to us, I still get royalties on all

the Softs albums, just a trickle but it's there. Robert suffered more

because he sold more records when his solo career took off."

Whilst still part of the Soft Machine ED had laid the foundations for his

future solo career.

"My first album was really under the Soft Machine contract, CBS put it out

but made little attempt to promote it. It was quite enjoyable to do, we

just went into the studio and did it. There was only a couple of real

compositions, most of it was improvised. Around the time of the split with

Softs I had formed Just Us, the additional live stuff on the Just Us album

was recorded around this period. I was beginning to play quite a bit of

piano onstage as a reaction to the poor sax sound I frequently had to

endure. On the Softs Live in France album there's a gig in Paris on which I

play mostly piano because the horn sound was so appalling, I eventually got

a Fender Rhodes out of it which was great. Just Us became my main focus, we

didn't get much work, the odd gig at Ronnie's, a couple of festivals,

occasional gigs in mainland Europe, Italy was always good. The line up was

very fluid depending on who was available."

Apart from solo projects there was a lot of activity in other areas, ED was

much in demand.

"I had a lot of work in the late seventies, Brotherhood of Breath, Barry

Guy, Ninesense. The latter was a mixture of Keith's sextet and the

Brotherhood of Breath, personnel and style wise. The sort of gigs Ninesense

played in this country, usually small clubs and colleges, just don't exist

any more, but for a while in the mid seventies there was quite a good

scene. Ogun Records was putting out a lot of stuff and there would be

contemporary music tours to all the major cities. There was also the first

of various EDQ, usually with Keith, Louis Moholo and Harry Miller, as

before we always went down well in Italy. We were as busy as any other

English quartet, although mainly in Europe. I did a tour with the Carla

Bley Band, mainly festivals, that was great, a weird mix of people, Hugh,

Gary Windo, Roswell Rudd etc."

The Carla Bley experience is documented on the European Tour 77 album.

Aside from these jazz oriented projects there were other more experimental

situations on the fringes of various genre. Much of the recorded output of

Soft Heap / Head has only recently become available. Could this have been

how Soft Machine might have evolved if Wyatt and Dean had not jumped ship?

An interesting thought. Their final album A Veritable Centaur is not for

the faint hearted, Mark Hewins is magnificent.

"Soft Heap was Alan Gowen's project (circa 1978) with Pip, Hugh and myself

completing the original line up, the music was much more composed. Then Pip

couldn't make one of the tours and Dave Sheen came in, so it temporarily

became Soft Head, that line up produced Rogue Element which came out

recently. After Hugh left John Greaves came in from National Health, and

when Alan died we carried on with Mark Hewins. He was excellent, we knew

straight away that it was going to work. A Veritable Centaur was totally

improvised, the chemistry was weird and wonderful. The bit I particularly

liked was the BBC session track, a 25 minute piece that I reckon it was the

best thing the band did. It hasn't actually been out that long, the tapes

were hanging around for years, yet a lot of it still sounds pretty

contemporary, unclassifiable really."

Mark Hewins is a versatile and innovative guitar player from what you might

call the second generation of Canterbury musicians, inspired by the

original spirit.

"Mark has always had a high output of official and unofficial releases,

tape only stuff. I did a duo with him at the Jazz Café that was recorded,

Musart put it out on tape only, there has been some talk recently of a CD

release. We'll probably record again, we always work well together even if

we haven't played for a while."

In the early eighties Phil Miller's composing talents were maturing, his

adventurous material though is perhaps sometimes suited to a larger group

of musicians than economics will allow. The current sextet probably comes

closest to being able to fully recreate the sounds conceived in Phil

Miller's head.

"The original In Cahoots was me, Pip, Phil Miller and Richard Sinclair.

Richard is a brilliant natural musician, he doesn't read music or anything

like that. His bass playing was fine although he did eventually have a few

problems as Phil's material got more demanding, but at the end of the day

rather like Robert Wyatt, he could only take not being a singer for so

long. He's a fantastic carpenter, I remember once during a lunch break in

rehearsals he knocked up two great big boxes for Pip's drums."

Current bass player is Fred Baker, a superb technician who is equally at

home on guitar. He has even been known to play solo gigs on bass.

"I'd met Fred before when he was working with Harry Beckett, he's such a

good jazz bass guitarist, he has a superb walking style that really swings.

When I first met him he was better known as a guitarist rather than a bass

player. His father was a jazz musician, one of the earliest electric guitar

players in this country."

During 1997 ED put together a larger ensemble to play both composed and

improvised material, in many ways carrying on where Ninesense had left off

in the seventies but with some new angles. Newsense prominently featured

three trombonists who became affectionately known as Snap, Crackle and Pop.

Paul Rutherford, an uncompromising explorer, constantly pushing his

instrument beyond its recognised boundaries, Annie Whitehead, versatile,

schooled in jazz but happy to cross over into funk, reggae, ska etc. and

Roswell Rudd, the trombonist's trombonist, seen it all, done it all.

"Someone had already suggested reviving Ninesense, the idea of the three

trombones came from Roswell about a year before, so I combined the two. I

took the quartet I'd been working with and augmented it with the trombones

plus a couple of others. Roswell I've known since the days of the Carla

Bley Band in the late seventies. We've always kept in touch, he's a

fantastic player, every trombonist's hero, able to play in any style.

Rutherford heard he was in town and came over as did Annie, Ros fell in

love with her. The mix of old Ninesense stuff and newer material worked

well, we made an excellent album recorded live at the Purcell Rooms in

London."

The conversation turned to other recent releases, particularly two

recordings that span 20 years and show that the ED has been a major force

in improvised music for a long time. Into the Nierika is a very recent

recording by ED's new trio featuring Newsense bass player Roberto

Bellatalla and regular drummer Mark Sanders. The Dean / Mattos / Pyle /

Zagni set Three's Company, Two's a Crowd has been a long time coming,

having been recorded sometime in the late seventies, but well worth the

wait.

"It was a duo with Pip and a trio with Marcio and Ivan Zagni, the tapes

were lost for a while but eventually resurfaced. Then quite recently I

heard from Enzo Hamilton who had financed the original sessions, so I

returned the tapes and he transferred them to DAT and put them out. The

funny thing was not long after and completely out of the blue Ivan Zagni

phoned me up, he just happened to be in town. He used to play with Jody

Grind, an obscure progrock band from Norwich who also included Boz Burrell

and Tim Hinkley at various times. He later became a choirmaster in Norwich

playing guitar in his spare time, we heard some of his weird and wonderful

playing and invited him to town where he began working with Marcio, then he

met this girl and went off to New Zealand. The recordings have worn well,

the trio was recorded one Saturday morning, and the duo in Pip's garage on

a 4 Track he wanted to try out. The two recordings were originally entirely

separate projects, there's still another reel of me and Pip. The reels for

both sessions were old and looked in poor condition but they've turned out

fine. Actually when I first heard the playback on CD I thought some of it

must have been transferred at double speed because the string bass sound

was so high in places. I checked it against one of my original cassette

copies and that was how it was, Marcio must have been playing cello

although he has no recollection of it."

Soundwise Into the Nierika is sparse, there are no hiding places. The

musicians revel in the freedom and produce moments of high energy and mixed

with great lyricism. The flow of the music is seamless, these are players

on the same wavelength.

"The new trio album was recorded in Mark Hewins' front room, that's where

he has his studio set up and it's a lovely sound. It was all improvised, an

enjoyable afternoon's work, one drum case between the cymbals and my

microphone and Roberto behind the sofa. He is your archetypal free jazz

bass player, straight down the line, no electronics. The trio set up is

very naked, it's something I've got into recently, we might even go out and

do a few gigs. I've occasionally played in duos with Keith Tippett, you're

very exposed, especially if Keith is in one of his funny moods, then it's

very hard to play."

ED's output these days is high, several CD releases a year. There is

clearly a core audience out there for improvised music, but how big?

"Distribution is very important, we would hope to sell 1000, maybe 2000 if

the distribution is good over say a three year period. Obviously Soft

Machine tends to sell more than that and my sales do benefit from the so

called Canterbury connection, also companies like Voiceprint will take

anything of mine and put it out. It is how I make my living."

For a number of years Sunday evenings at the Vortex club in Stoke Newington

was the stage for Jazz Rumours, a focus for improvised music in London. ED

was a prime mover in this enterprise.

"We've been running Jazz Rumours for nearly eight years, starting out in a

local pub then moving to the Vortex on Sunday nights. All the music is

improvised, usually played by a regular squad of musicians. Last year we

began inviting guest players, mainly Europeans plus the occasional American

passing through, but it hasn't really worked out as I'd hoped. I was trying

to run it along the lines of Mike Osborne's Peanut Club in the sixties and

seventies, but I guess it all existed in a different time when people were

more jazz community minded. You could go down there any evening and catch

Keith Tippett or some other jam session, there was a wide range of music

and musicians, you never quite knew what to expect, now everything has to

have labels on it."

ED's views on how jazz should be presented are uncompromising.

"Jazz doesn't work that well in the studio environment, it's not a true

picture if you start separating the instruments and changing individual

sounds. The heart of jazz culture is the sound of musicians playing

together and reacting to each other. The best way to experience jazz is in

a live situation, to me it just doesn't work as studio music."

The art of improvisation is a concept difficult to explain to somebody who

hasn't experienced it. Are any structures and patterns planned? Do you

think before you play?

"If you think about it and plan it you're missing the point, ideally it's

just pure reaction and exchange of energy. It only happens with people who

have that knowledge, when it's flowing it's very powerful, but the

chemistry has to be right. Immersion in the flow is something that comes

through experience, even if the musicality is there somebody new to it will

at some stage pause and wonder where to go next. Doubt and indecision will

lose the flow. There is a nucleus of players around London that I can call

upon, probably around a couple of dozen. I get them all together for Jazz

Rumours from time to time, mixing and matching, I know that any combination

will work. You have to be strong yet sensitive to what others are playing,

the art is to have a distinctive voice within the larger entity."

As far as Elton Dean is concerned the music comes first, commercial

considerations have never been allowed to stand in the way of his desire to

improve and explore. This philosophy has certainly not made him a fortune

but has produced an impressive body of work and made him a major player on

the European improvised music scene. Many thanks to Elton for a friendly

and informative interview.

An updated version of this interview and article on Stephen's own website can be seen here.

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