Tag: Robert Fripp

Burning Bridges

‘our influences on our sleeve’

Richard Barbieri, Mick Karn and David Sylvian were all classmates at Catford Boys school in South London. Karn and Sylvian were friends, their surnames then Michaelides and Batt, the latter’s home being ‘close to the school,’ as Mick recalled, ‘so we would go there together for lunch, with his brother Steven Batt bringing a friend and joining us.

‘Music was our common interest, namely David Bowie. Steve was a big Alice Cooper fan and they were both very keen on T. Rex and their earlier incarnation Tyrannosaurus Rex… Every inch of their rooms were filled with posters, I’d never seen anything like it.’ A photograph of a teenage Sylvian shows him strumming a 12-string guitar with every inch of wall space taken up by pictures of his musical idols. Clearly visible is a shot of David Bowie performing ‘Cracked Actor’ on the Diamond Dogs tour of 1974, with dark glasses, cape and skull in hand, below there is one of Terry O’Neill’s images of the singer with an imposing dog – a publicity photograph for the album after which Bowie’s tour was named.

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Alphabet Angel

‘unconditional love’

At the peak of Japan’s popularity in 1982, David Sylvian was posed a question during an interview with The Face: ‘Do you like children?’ The 24-year old’s response was: ‘I hate children. Children in airplanes is my biggest hate, I just cannot stand having children in such close contact and not being able to get away from them.’ Whilst some might sympathise regarding experiences when flying, Sylvian’s outspokenness reminds me how young he and his fellow band-members were at the height of their success, and how they had existed within a relatively insular world to that point.

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Showing the Wound (A Will to Health) – Steel Cathedrals

‘the first step in a new approach’

‘This short film was shot in two days of November 1984 in and around the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan. A large part of the music was completed during that same month and recorded over a period of three days. I later updated the material in London, in an attempt to elaborate on the theme started earlier in Japan, and to further improve the quality of the soundtrack.’
David Sylvian, August 1985

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Answered Prayers

‘more than a fascination’

Eight Days a Week was an arts review programme broadcast on BBC2 on which host Robin Denselow discussed the latest music, movies and books with a small invited panel. The show had a relatively short run in 1983 and 1984, but that timing allowed for the release of David Sylvian’s debut solo LP, Brilliant Trees, to be a subject of discussion. Among the guests that evening was former Be-Bop Deluxe front-man and guitarist, Bill Nelson.

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Protopunk – Brightness Falls

‘live in lightness’

Trey Gunn knew that he wanted to pursue a life in music and, despite the prevailing spirit of contemporary culture, was keen to develop an understanding of the fundamentals. ‘I went to the University of Oregon and I studied composition. I had played classical music as a kid, like from 6 or 7, and played Bach or Bartok or whatever you did back then on piano, and transitioned to bass and acoustic guitar. I was in punk rock/new wave bands in the late ’70s and it was counter to the culture to study music. It was, “I’m going to go my own way,” and, “I’m NOT going to learn!” – I’m talking about the punk culture – and sometimes that was cool, sometimes that would produce unusual things…but I still felt like if I was going to be a professional, whatever that meant… basically on track to get really good at something, then I should learn about the materials, even though it was counter to everyone I knew… I thought, if I was a writer, I would want to learn how a sentence is structured; it just makes sense, even if you are going to be deviant… I wanted to learn more stuff and get exposed to more things.’

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