[mod.music.gaffa] the harold budd interview #2

Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (03/23/87)

Really-From: rutgers!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor (Mr. Sharkey....white courtesy phone, please)

HAROLD BUDD INTERVIEW PART 2. COPYRIGHT 1987 GREGORY TAYLOR
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It seems to me that the whole Postmodern notion that culture
presents  us  with options in the absence of editorializing-
that that we're expected to choose among-is at  work  there.
On  one  hand,  that  is  wonderful.  On the other hand, one
longs sometimes for easy guidance.

    -even something to rebel against.

But that is a kind of focus itself....

    Yes. When I was coming of age, there was so much to  dislike
    that once you found some kind of art scene that just flew in
    the face of all received convention, you could just fall  in
    love  with  it.  It was all a kind of secret information-and
    it may not be quite so simple as all that now.  It was espe-
    cially secret information for me,  growing up in Los Angeles
    and California-which still in some ways remains a very small
    and parochial town-particularly in regard to New Music.

It's difficult to imagine that being true now.

    I can assure you that there's not been a whole  helluva  lot
    of change.  Well, I'm going to back up on that a little bit.
    There's a whole lot of people here doing some very interest-
    ing  work-but  this is still a dreadful place to be a modern
    artist, I must say-unless you're a painter.

It is possible that-with all its faults-the  system  whereby
one  lives  and works in New York or noplace or commutes has
not been fully supplanted by the kind of  fragmentation  and
regionalism  that  you've  implied in your discussion of the
radical shift in access to information.

    I see how you could mean that and be right, but  regionalism
    is from now on impossible.  Forever.  There is just too much
    information available to maintain the kind of isolation that
    regionalism  needs.  There is absolutely no hiding from any-
    thing that's happening.  Regionalism at one time was a  kind
    of muscular way of citing your own independence from a scene
    that was happening somewhere else.  I don't really  see  how
    that can occur anymore, since even self-imposed isolation is
    almost impossible.

That brings us rather neatly around to the notion of  educa-
tion.    Back  when  "The  Pavilion  of  Dreams"  was  first
released, you were a teacher at Cal Arts.   Could  you  talk
about teaching a little bit?

    I was there from 70 until 76.  Look, it's  very  simple.   I
    really  didn't teach.  It was more that my students hung out
    with me.

In the sense of the Medieval notion of education as  a  kind
of apprenticeship, that's not such an unusual idea....

    Yes, I see what you're saying.  The difference in this  case
    is  that  I didn't lay down any laws about what the truth of
    the matter was.  My students came to me-since everybody  had
    a  choice,  those people came to me because I was associated
    with a certain kind of music and a certain kind of  attitude
    to  working,  as  opposed to other members of the faculty or
    other faculty at other schools.

It's that issue of access again.

    Yes, exactly.

I guess there is a kind of collaboration in the  process  of
one's education as well.
    
    Oh yes.  That's true with the act of listening as a  way  to
    learn  as  well.  The thing is that I never felt the urge to
    lay any kind of heavy aesthetic  trip  on  my  students.   I
    don't  know  how to put it, exactly-there wasn't any kind of
    convincing about the matter.  It was "I'm delighted  to  see
    you.   I think that you're really going to make some wonder-
    ful music here,"  and-I didn't exactly say this  explicitly-
    "If  you  really want to get associated with what I'm doing,
    I'm sorry.  You're not going to learn very much about Webern
    or Schoenberg." I always figured that I had the attitude-and
    it was an attitude that I always tried to convince  my  stu-
    dents  to  adopt  if  they would, please-that what they were
    really doing was bringing what  they  were  trying  to  work
    through-trying  to  look  at  things, trying to feel things,
    seeing how they go-all kinds of very complex issues-and tak-
    ing  these  things  to  someone who was by default older and
    just more experienced.   I  always  thought  that  that  was
    really  what  the  proper  role  of  a teacher should be.  I
    didn't think that a teacher should give lessons or tell what
    should  be  done,  or anything of that nature-just simply be
    present to bounce ideas off of, while  being  a  little  bit
    older.

It sounds as if you might have been trying  to  recapitulate
the experience of your own education.

    No, not really.  I had  already  left  all  of  that  entire
    scene.   I  had  completely  cut  myself  off from that.  My
    teacher was very different than I was.   He  was  also  very
    good  and I learned a tremendous amount from him.  I learned
    harmony and traditional counterpoint just about as  well  as
    could  be  learned.   At  a  certain  point that just became
    irrelevant  for  me.   That  doesn't  mean  that    he   was
    irrelevant  in any way.  When I decided to become a composer
    myself, none of my reasons for doing that had anything to do
    with  what I had learned.  It is like having had a very nice
    Math teacher when you're a kid and then becoming  a  chemist
    instead.   You  take  a  lot  of  that basic information for
    granted.  The other thing about  being  a  teacher  is  that
    you're  just  constantly  bombarded by ideas from people who
    are really smart-your students.  All of my students are  now
    the  age that I was then.  I look at what they're doing, and
    some of them are really making their  own  mark-doing  music
    that  is  often radically different than my work: Peter Gar-
    land, Eugene Bowen, Michael Byron, Chas Smith, Michael Fink,
    Michael  Bennett.  But the whole idea was that we had a com-
    mon attitude, and I'm sure that's the only reason that  they
    tolerated  me  for all that time: The notion that everything
    that has happened in the past doesn't make a bit of  differ-
    ence.  I said, "I'm not going to punish you for not learning
    the past; let's start at square  one  and  see  where  we're
    going  to go and-all things going well-please come up with a
    kind of music that's going to change your  life.   Do  some-
    thing.  Stun me."

What have you done since that time, then?

    I've done just about everything but teach.  Luckily,  I  was
    in  a  kind of college (Cal Arts) where when you were hired,
    you were expected to be a teacher  and  an  artist-to  work.
    But  once  that was over, I thought that the art part was of
    paramount importance to me.  I was really  without  a  plan,
    except   to  follow  the  stalk-the  one  that  smells  most
    delicious-and you go in that direction.  That was ten  years
    ago.

You have been really fortunate to be able to pursue that.

    Certainly, Not everyone has the chance to do that.  I assure
    you  that  I  didn't have a plan or a goal for this.  What I
    really wanted to do  was  to  do  something  that  I  really
    believed  in  that  I  wouldn't have to be embarrassed about
    later on.

We've talked about collaborating with  other  musicians  and
the exchange of ideas with one's students.  How does it feel
to collaborate with  a  producer?  You  seem  to  feel  very
strongly  about  the  notion  of getting a piece of recorded
work perfect.  You've produced a fair  amount  of  your  own
work  in  addition  to  working  with  Brian  Eno.   "Lovely
Thunder"  strikes  me  as  an  unusual  recording,  and  I'm
inclined  to  see  some of that sense of difference as being
tied to Michael Hoenig's role as producer.  Some of the work
that  Michael Hoenig did in Koyaanisqatsi strikes me as hav-
ing the same kind of dense, theatrical space in  it  that  I
associate  with  your  collaborations  with Brian Eno.  What
sort of relationship do you have  with  Michael  Hoenig  and
with his own work as a musician?

    First of all, Michael is a friend of mine, and we get  along
    really  well  as  persons.  He has a fabulaous studio in the
    little Tokyo section of Los Angeles where we worked on  much
    of "Lovely Thunder".  In addition, he is an absolutely bril-
    liant engineer, and he wound up doing a large amount of  the
    work  that  I  am simply not capable of doing on my own.  He
    discovered a lot if ideas-maybe it  would  be  more  to  the
    point  to say that he made it possible  from his technologi-
    cal vantage point for me to discover a lot of things that  I
    couldn't have predicted would come up.

By definition, then, that's quite a successful collaboration
from your point of view.

    Very much so.  I must say, I've been  extraordinarily  lucky
    all  along  the  line.  Everyone I've worked with has turned
    out to be a great friend and they've always  been in  places
    where something good has come out of working with them.

One of the things that I think I hear  in  "Lovely  Thunder"
that  strikes  me  as  unusual  in  terms of your other work
derives from hearing what I've come to associate  with  your
way of working done with a very different-.

    I know what you're about to say, and I completely agree with
    you....  

I think that I hear the music that you've worked on for some 
time mapped onto a very different set of electronic timbres.

    Yeah, that's it all right.

    I  think  that  "Lovely  Thunder"  is  a  good   deal   more
    confrontational-is that the right word?

Well, it is an album that someone who knows your work  could
potentially dislike, either for being so spare, for sounding
so different, or for being so dissonant.  For you, that's as
confrontational as you get.

    Outside of "Lovely Thunder" and  working  with  the  Cocteau
    Twins,  it has been two years since my last recording, Aban-
    doned Cities.  There is also "The Pearl"-which I  knew  then
    and  know  now,  is the end of that entire world.  Eno and I
    are never going to do another piano album together.  We have
    already  done  it.   I  like  the ethos of "Lovely Thunder",
    where it isn't charming or necessarily seductive.