Ben Watson - Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation

BEN WATSON is a writer on music and culture. He is the author of numerous books, including Adorno for Revolutionaries, Honesty Is Explosive!, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play and Art, Class and Cleavage: A Quantulumcunque Concerning Materialist Esthetix.

This paperback edition first published by Verso 2013
First published by Verso 2004
Ben Watson 2004, 2013

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Has Cataloged the Hardcover Edition as Follows
Watson, Ben, 1956
Derek Bailey and the story of free improvisation / Ben Watson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
Discography: p.
eISBN: 978-1-78168-240-1
1. Bailey, Derek, 1932 2. GuitaristsEnglandBiography. I. Title.
ML419.B13W38 2004
787.87_092dc22

2004003582

v3.1

THANKS : I should like to thank Harry Gilonis for his highly informed read-through and fact-check; Matthew The Quickener Hughes, Patrick Dallas Boner Atkinson and Tim Fletcher for keeping the critical discussion informed and flying; Peter Riley, Peter Stubley and Andrew Shone for essential data; Tony Oxley, Gavin Bryars and Steve Lacy for granting me interviews; Marco and Christiano of Lendormin; Andr Cholmondeley of Project/Object; Gavin Everall from Verso for saving me from a quadruple nightmare; Esther as always.

SPECIAL THANKS : Derek Bailey and Karen Brookman for the cups of tea and making this book possible.

THIS COMPACT DISC FOR YOUR CEREBRUM IS DEDICATED TO STU N MARIE AND WHATEVER ( WHOEVER ) THEY PRODUCE ( HELLO DUNYA )

When this book was first published, Derek Bailey was still alive. It was a joy to present him with a pile of copies for his record label to sell (payment for the interviews), and he was most complimentary. The writing process was an intimate collaboration, with me transcribing his spoken word from countless interviews held at his house in Clapton, Hackney, and he being allowed to edit out anything he disliked (mainly unfinished sentences and swear words). Hed correct errors of fact, but never sought to interfere with my opinions or judgments. Hed relocated to Barcelona by the time the book was published, drawn there by a combination of the warm, dry climate (good to old bones) and performance opportunities he posted me a cassette to play at the launch, which was at Rays Jazz in Foyles bookshop overlooking Charing Cross Road. And then motor neurone disease took over. What was originally thought to be a hand injury, sustained when taking baggage off a moving belt at an airport, turned out to be fatal. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome meant he could no longer hold a plectrum, but he taught himself to play using thumb and fingers, a process he documented in a release on John Zorns Tzadik label, Carpal Tunnel. He died on Christmas Day 2005.

How I miss Derek and his wry, Sheffield-jazzers take on the metropolitan avant-garde! Distracted by an intense few years of babyminding, I didnt register his death fully until the summer of 2012 when, children at nursery and school, I stumbled upon Robin Ramsays excellent little book Conspiracy Theories in the Oxfam Shop on Goodge Street. I liked it so much I got in touch with the author. Turns out that in the late 60s, Ramsay used to improvise on trumpet with drummer Jamie Muir, a collaborator Derek recalled with particular affection. Ramsays brave exposure of Peter Wright and the MI5 smear campaign against Harold Wilsons Labour Government took on a new lustre: Free Improvisation, with its complete disdain for the spectacle of the music industry, its honesty and directness, its hatred of management, its proletarian pride, is the natural ally of Ramsays anti-bourgeois, whistle-blowing politics. I found myself walking to the phone. I had to tell Derek about Robin Ramsay, his political understanding of conspiracy theory and his past as an improvisor Death. Its a hard one.

Still, its exciting to be asked for a preface to this paperback edition. Commenting on the current state of Free Improvisation is a temptation, but that would entail a tirade which would distract from the matter in hand, which is to get the measure of Dereks legacy. Punters flooding out of the Vortex, a London jazz venue, are confronted with a street sign reading Bailey Place. I imagine it being the occasion for comments and jokes about Improv and its vexed relationship to jazz, with few people knowing that the street was actually named in his honour in December 2007. (Apparently the London Fire Brigade doesnt like complicated street names, so Derek was deleted.) In the years since 2004, Derek has become a legend, his name dropped in every issue of The Wire. But rather than any grand pronouncements about his legacy, I thought itd be more appropriate to talk to someone who played with Derek at the very end, someone with a very particular take on music and life. So I conducted a brief phone interview with Stu Calton, a Manchester call-centre worker whos known as T. H. F. Drenching when hes improvising on Dictaphone (or releasing his stream of computer-music CDs).

I wanted to know how Calton, a Derek devotee and back then a young and almost totally unknown musician got to play with the Grand Old Man of Improv. The idea, he told me, came from Marie-Angelique Bueler, improvisor on bricks (as Sonic Pleasure) and mother of Caltons two children. The pair were indignant that Incus had stooped to releasing avantesque ironies by Jim ORourke, so in 2000 they declared themselves Improvers rather than simply Improvisors. Marie suggested Stu mail Derek a brick-and-Dictaphone improvisation theyd recorded in a Liverpool Airport disabled toilet at four in the morning (you need to be in charge of a baby or be a junkie to know just what a wonderful place a disabled toilet can be). They wanted to show Derek that his original duets with Han Bennink were still inducing sparks. Their plan worked.

Derek was particularly impressed by the packaging, encrusted with collage and doodles and slogans by Calton, and he made comments about it to me at the time. (I was very pleased, since I knew Stu from his days in Pence Eleven, but I kept quiet, because Derek hated it when I recommended musicians to him; he sabotaged a gig in Rome with Lendormins Cristiano Luciani because I waxed too enthusiastic about his drumming; Derek found his musicians himself, thank you very much.) Derek replied with a postcard I didnt know people were still doing this! and included his home phone number. The power and originality of their duo playing an unwitting reinvention of the power and unpredictability of Tony Oxleys drums and their address in Levenshulme, Manchester doubtless confirmed an old piece of Derek wisdom: improv is better in the provinces. Calton dialled the number on the postcard: Call back in six months, Im busy now Six months later, Calton called and needed to remind Derek what instrument he played. Ah! Youre the one who plays Dictaphone with a woman! So they came down to Dereks home in Clapton for a play, and there in the midst of all the tea cosies and other old-Sheffield-guy stuff was this person with a large amount of fluffy ginger hair looking very awkward called Alex Ward. The four of them played together (Derek made a recording of this initial try-out; it can be heard on the Incus CD-R release