4 Questions for Drummer and Author Bill Bruford
Since retiring from public performance in 2009, the British drummer Bill Bruford has earned a doctorate in music from the University of Surrey and launched a new career as an author and lecturer. In the recordings he has left behind his snare is as recognizable, if not quite as celebrated, as John Lennon’s voice or Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. If he had retired after injecting clockwork precision and tension into the Yes masterpieces Fragile and Close to the Edge, his place in history would have been assured. But he quit that secure job to help King Crimson record its provocative growth-spurt albums Larks’ Tongues in Aspic and Discipline — and his career as a jazz bandleader spans more than three decades. Sweeping views of that career are available in a pair of box sets. The band known simply as Bruford and its late-1970s heyday are documented in Seems Like a Lifetime Ago (6 CDs, 2 DVDs, Winterfold). The even more capacious Earthworks Complete (20s CDs, 4 DVDs, Summerfold) covers 1987 to 2006, including distinct electric and acoustic phases. In addition to curating his legacy, Bruford has been publishing books that tell spiky truths from an insider’s perspective in addictively readable prose. Bill Bruford: The Autobiography is an overview of his career, including the bands in which he has played. His latest book, Uncharted: Creativity and the Expert Drummer, delves into the psychology of drumming. Oh, and he blogs.
In your autobiography, the dominant mood of your final years as a working drummer seems pretty glum. Have you rediscovered joy in your new career as an author and lecturer?
Glumness, joy, happiness, and misery have wafted in and out of my music-making uninvited and without permission, care, or reason. I acknowledge them in passing; we doff caps to one another. But since none of them seems to help or hinder my efforts more than another, I spend little time thinking about them. They are constant visitors, indifferent to the work in hand — lecturer, musician, writer, or occasional teacher. But then, as the writer Sebastian Barry puts it: “I am too jumpy for contentment…. I’m not a connoisseur of happiness.”
As a member of various single- and dual-drummer lineups of King Crimson, what do you think of the current three-drummer touring lineup?
It is an odd form of entertainment. There are seven musicians: four seated, three standing, two with fully enclosed headphones, and five with in-ear monitors. During the performance no foot taps, no hand claps, no smile smiles, and no one speaks. All remain in their allotted positions onstage. Occasionally a head turns, a body sways, or an instrument is exchanged. Visually, most excitement is generated by the high choreography of the drummers: three men visible only from the waist up. Drumsticks move across drum kits in phase or in synchronicity, with or against the pulse. The small gestures of the others’ fingers and wrists might be intriguing, were they visible on large screens at the sides of the stage. Even static cameras covering the width of the stage might show us the nod between performers, the half-smile, the raised eyebrow of acknowledgement that makes performance so worthwhile. No screens are in evidence.
The lighting remains democratically static. Three seated front-facing drummers cannot see their four colleagues on a raised platform behind them. Eye contact, were it possible, does not appear to be sought (or missed). Bodily movement is focused on fingers making small fleeting movements across fretboards. A flute replaces a baritone saxophone as their owner concentrates intently on what might be an iPad or perhaps even old-fashioned sheet music before him.
Is this perhaps a modern classical recital? The music appears to be heavily pre-prepared, despite short interludes of fragmented interplay. Audience participation is confined to reverent observation and polite applause as each piece concludes. A pre-performance invitation from a disembodied voice to a “party,” and an instruction that “we’re going to have a party,” are undermined by an almost complete disconnection from human movement, onstage or in the auditorium. The absence of a steady pulse would permit only the “tendril dancing” of pre-progressive psychedelic rock, were any attendee brave enough to try. Here, complex metrical machinations prevent feet from tapping and establish the ensemble as operating within the boundaries of High Progressive Rock — one of the few popular music forms, along with bebop, that is effectively undanceable. It is an odd form of entertainment.
For a younger fan using the streaming services to dip a toe into your recorded work, what albums would you recommend from the various bands you’ve led and served in?
Given that I’m not much in love with anything I’ve done, I’ll grudgingly admit that a couple of albums per decade, irrespective of my contribution, seem to have “legs” and some sort of coherency in their vision which enables them to stand apart from their contemporaries. Close to the Edge from Yes, and King Crimson’s Red in the ’70s, and Discipline and Absent Lovers in the ’80s, are perhaps some such. Also, One of a Kind by Bruford and Earthworks’ A Part, and Yet Apart were milestones upon a particular path for me. Listening back to old efforts is a bit like looking through the family photo album; you’re embarrassed not only by the terrible jeans you wore, but by the fact that you didn’t appear to know they were terrible!
Fans who are paying attention understand that your retirement from public performance is a settled issue — but do you ever sit down at the drum kit for exercise, research, or reaffirmation?
Walking from my desk to the kitchen I have to walk past a drum kit on one side and a piano on the other. They look at me rather balefully, I think: “Not even a C major 7th today, guvnor?” says the piano. “Go on; just a couple of ratamacues for old times’ sake,” hum the drums. Occasionally I accede, and they seem pleased, but my heart is not in it. My interests lie elsewhere now and our relationship has cooled. I had ardour aplenty for the first thirty years, somewhat less for the next ten, until the fire smouldered to embers and went out. It all seems perfectly natural to me.
