1974 – 2021: 47 anni dopo Fred Frith Guitar Solos su #neuguitars #blog
AAJ: In common with a great many musicians it’s apparent that you haven’t just arrived at a musical reference point and stuck with it. As a multi-instrumentalist, that maxim might be said to be more pronounced but how did you arrive at your vocabulary on the guitar?
FF: I don’t think I’ve arrived anywhere yet. I’m still traveling. I use whatever vocabulary is most suited to the conversation I’m having, and I’m certainly not interested in having the same conversation over and over again. Which means that the resources at my disposal are always (hopefully) continuing to develop and evolve, as the need arises. When you learn a language you can only become fluent by discovering who you are in that language. Music is the same for me. I have to learn who I am in whatever context I’m working
Intervista All About Jazz Fred Frith: Mapping the Further Reaches by Published: May 3, 2010
Eccoci di fronte a uno dei numi tutelari della chitarra contemporanea e a uno dei dischi più importanti per quanto riguarda la chitarra improvvisata. Il Professor Fred Frith, chitarrista, compositore, songwriter e grande improvvisatore, dotato di una tecnica chitarristica unica, può, dopo 47 anni, ben dirsi soddisfatto di questo suo lavoro che ha contribuito non poco a ridefinire i possibili usi e abusi della chitarra. Quella che sto ascoltando, e che vedete nelle foto, è una delle ristampe (Fred Records 2002) su cd del vinile originariamente realizzato dalla Caroline Records nell’ottobre del 1974. E’ passato diverso tempo e penso sia bene fare un po’ di storia e di chiarezza sull’argomento.
Guitar Solos è l’album di debutto solista di Frith. È stato registrato mentre Frith era ancora un membro del gruppo rock sperimentale inglese Henry Cow e comprende otto tracce di musica non accompagnata e improvvisata suonata su chitarre preparate da Frith, senza sovra-incisioni. All’epoca l’album aveva ottenuto dei buoni riscontri dalla critica musicale:
– In una recensione su NME nel novembre 1974, Charles Shaar Murray lo descrisse come “un album totalmente rivoluzionario” e “un punto di riferimento innegabile nella storia della chitarra rock” [Murray, Charles Shaar (30 November 1974). “Review: Guitar Solos”. New Musical Express. ISSN 0028-6362. ]
– Sean Westergaard di AllMusic definì Guitar Solos come un album di riferimento per il suo approccio innovativo e sperimentale alla chitarra, scrivendo “Don’t expect any kind of Yngwie Malmsteen-style wankage; Frith instead uses a volume pedal, tapping, and other extended techniques to produce everything from chiming, bell-like notes to unearthly howls. It almost never sounds like standard guitar-with-plectrum playing, but the pieces have a logic (and beauty, in some cases) all their own. This is free improvised, challenging, avant-garde music, but that doesn’t mean it’s unapproachable. Guitar Solos’ lasting legacy is that it radically redefined the way some people think about the guitar.” Guitar Solos – Fred Frith | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic
– Nell’edizione di gennaio 1983 della rivista DownBeat , Bill Milkowski scrisse che, su Guitar Solo Frith, svelò una raccolta inquietante di musica improvvisata su chitarra preparata che deve aver sbalordito gli ascoltatori del giorno.
Milkowski, Bill (1983). “The Frith Factor: Exploration in Sound”. DownBeat. Vol. 50 no. 1. Chicago: Maher Publications. pp. 22–25, 61. ISSN 0012-5768.
Guitar Solos è tuttora considerato un punto di riferimento per via del suo approccio assolutamente innovativo e sperimentale. Diede come seguito altri due dischi: Guitar Solos 2 (1976) e Guitar Solos 3 (1979) e attirò anche l’attenzione di Brian Eno, “He’d heard my record Guitar Solos and was excited by the timbral possibilities that I’d been discovering, so that was the focus more or less “, che chiese a Frith di registrare e a suonare la sua chitarra su due degli album di Eno, Before and After Science (1977) e Music for Films (1978). La configurazione della chitarra da tavolo utilizzata da Frith in Guitar Solos diventò, inoltre, uno standard per molte delle sue successive esibizioni dal vivo, comprese quelle registrate nel suo doppio album live del 1982 Live in Japan. In seguito ha esteso la sua tecnica per includere “oggetti trovati”, che ha usato sulle sue chitarre per estrarre nuovi suoni.
FF: There was a record called “Guitar Solos,” which I made in 1974. At that point, Henry Cow had recently signed to Virgin Records, and as is typical of a major record company, they had decided that they wanted to have the guitarist make a solo record. They thought that rock guitar players should make solo records, because it’s “cool.” But they had no idea what they were getting into in my case. I gave this to myself as a kind of challenge. I gave myself two weeks in which I would try to completely redefine for myself what I thought a guitar could do, and then I would go into a studio and record it. One of the things that came out of that period is that I started to experiment with laying guitars on the floor. What I started to discover, when I no longer had the guitar in the “playing” position, is that there were things you could do which no longer were concerned with gesture. Gesture, to me, seemed to be very important. Your playing gesture, the way in which you produce sound is tied to a whole bunch of assumptions about technique, and once you lose those assumptions, interesting things start to happen. One of the things I did for that record, was I laid two guitars flat on the ground, with their necks coming from opposite directions. So I had these two necks, which were basically like keyboards, and I started preparing them. I’d seen David Toop, who opened for Henry Cow at a concert in 1971, using alligator clips on his guitar. That led me into a whole thing about, if the alligator clip could produce a sound out of an electric guitar which sounds like a gong, then there must be all kinds of things you can do to a guitar, which are going to do comparably interesting things. So I started to try out everything. I used sticks, bits of glass, metal, springs, chains, and all the things which have become a part of my vocabulary ever since. Dropping things on the guitars came later. I don’t think anymore, when I’m playing a guitar with a paintbrush, or pouring rice on it, that there’s anything unusual about it. It’s just like using a pick for me. For somebody who’s not used to this, seeing someone play a guitar with a paintbrush is kind of funny. And I have no desire for them not to find it funny. I mean, I don’t want to impose any restrictions on how people react to what they perceive. But something I observed when I started performing solo concerts is the palpable relief that people feel when they understand that this is not going to be difficult. That they don’t have to be genius to understand it. Because there is a lot of preconception about “new music” being cerebral, but once you come into a room and find that it’s ok to laugh, that can be a very big relief, and I like that. The only problem is that once people start laughing, it’s very difficult to get them to stop. You have to learn to project a certain kind of intensity, which creates a tension between the thing which they are finding funny, and make it also perhaps feel a little bit dangerous.
Interview Freedom In Fragments: Steve Elkins Interviews Fred Oakland, California March 2002
L’album è stato registrato ai Kaleidophon Studios di David Vorhaus a Londra l’11-13 e il 15 luglio 1974, con una Gibson 1936 K-11 modificata con l’aggiunta di un pick up extra direttamente appoggiato sulle corde del manico nelle vicinanze della paletta, cosa che gli perse di amplificare entrambi i lati delle corde, dividendo in due con un capotasto mobile il manico ottenendo così di fatto due chitarre amplificate sulle quali poter suonare contemporaneamente. L’aggiunta di mollette metalliche sulle corde permise di “personalizzare” ulteriormente i suoni che dalla chitarra vennero poi incanalati in un mixer e da lì distribuiti attraverso un sistema surround a più canali. L’album è stato registrato in quattro giorni senza alcuna sovra-incisione. Tutti i pezzi sono stati improvvisati, alcuni completamente, altri su un’idea approssimativamente preconcetta, e suonano così come sono stati suonati, tranne “No Birds”, che è stato registrato in due parti, e “Not Forgotten”, da cui sono state rimosse due note. Gli unici suoni non prodotti ‘naturalmente’ dalla chitarra sono quelli di un fuzzbox utilizzato in “Out of Their Heads (On Locoweed)”, “Heat c/w Moment” e “No Birds”, un echo delay utilizzato in “No Birds” e il rumore ambientale del respiro e dei piedi di Frith in “Heat c/w Moment”. Frith ha preso il titolo di “No Birds” dall’ultima riga di una poesia, “One Nest Rolls After Another” del Capitano Beefheart, stampata sul retro della copertina dell’LP del suo album del 1971, Mirror Man. Frith ha anche usato la frase “No Birds” nella canzone di Frith/Cutler, “Beautiful as the Moon – Terrible as an Army with Banners”.
KB We have to mention, that in 1974 you also released your first solo album called Guitar Solos, which was really experimental. What was the concept behind it?
FF I gave a copy of that record to Beefheart, and years later John French told me that Don had handed it on to him and said: “check this out – he’s ripping me off!” Which was certainly true of the title of No Birds! Anyway, the concept was to try and reinvent the guitar the same way that John Cage had reinvented the piano or Barre Phillips had reinvented the bass – to transform and expand its expressive potential. That’s it really. And of course I was coming from a primarily rock and folk background, so, while it may be experimental, it still stays pretty close to its roots. I wasn’t part of the London improvised music scene at that time, my only connection to it came through Lol Coxhill, who I’d started playing and hanging out with in the early 70s.
It’s Psychedelic BabyMagazine: Fred Frith interview about HenryCow & beyond Friday, January 6, 2012 Interview made by Klemen Breznikar / 2012
A distanza quasi cinquant’anni queste musiche e le idee di cui si fanno portatrici non hanno ancora esaurito la loro carica innovativa e rappresentano un bagaglio di esperienze e di possibilità indispensabili per qualunque chitarrista. Frith ha poi continuato la sua carriera in modo più che onorevole con collaborazioni che vanno dall’Ensemble Modern a John Zorn, dimostrando di saper attraversare con disinvoltura e britannico sense of humor qualunque genere musicale. Lunga vita al Professore!
NeuGuitars 