Derek Bailey (January 29, 1930 – December 25, 2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and leading figure in the free improvisation movement.
Career summary
Bailey was born in Sheffield, England. A third generation
musician, he began playing the guitar at the age of ten, going on to study with John
Duarte among others. As an adult he found work as a guitarist and session
musician in clubs, radio, dance hall bands, and so on, playing with many
performers including Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse
and Kathy Kirby, and on television programs such as 'Opportunity Knocks'. Bailey was also part of a Sheffield based
trio founded in 1963 with Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars
called 'Joseph Holbrooke' (named after the composer, whose work they never actually played). Although originally performing relatively
'conventional' jazz this group became increasingly free in direction [1].
Bailey moved to London in 1966, frequenting the Little Theatre Club run by
drummer John Stevens. Here he met many other
like-minded musicians, such as saxophonist Evan Parker,
trumpet player Kenny Wheeler and double bass player Dave Holland. These players often collaborated
under the umbrella name of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, recording the
seminal album Karyobin for Island Records in 1968. In this year Bailey also formed the Music Improvisation Company with Parker, percussionist Jamie Muir and Hugh Davies on homemade electronics, a project that continued until 1971. He was also a member of the Jazz
Composers Orchestra and Iskra 1903, a trio with double bass player Barry Guy and
trombone player Paul Rutherford that
was named after a newspaper published by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
In 1970, Bailey founded the record label Incus with Tony Oxley, Evan Parker and Michael
Walters. It proved influential as the first musician-owned independent label in the UK. Oxley and Walters left early on; Parker
and Bailey continued as co-directors until the mid-1980s, when friction between the men led to Parker's departure. Bailey
continued the label with his partner Karen Brookman until his death in 2005.
Along with a number of other musicians, Bailey was a co-founder of Musics
magazine in 1975. This was described as "an impromental experivisation arts magazine" [citation needed] and circulated through a network of
like-minded record shops, arguably becoming one of the most significant jazz publications of the second half of the 1970s, and
instrumental in the foundation of the London Musicians Collective.
1976 saw Bailey form Company, an ever changing collection
of like-minded improvisors, which at various times has included Anthony Braxton,
Tristan Honsinger, Misha Mengelberg,
Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, Steve Lacy, Johnny
Dyani, Leo Smith, Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Buckethead and many others. Company Week, an annual week
long free improvisational festival organised by Bailey, ran until 1994.
In 1980, he wrote the book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. This was adapted by UK's Channel Four into a four part TV series in the early nineties, edited and narrated by Bailey.
Bailey died in London on Christmas Day, 2005. He had been suffering from motor neurone
disease.
Bailey's music
For listeners unfamiliar with experimental musics, Bailey's distinctive style can
be initially quite difficult. Its most noticeable feature is what appears to be its extreme discontinuity, often from note to
note: there may be enormous intervals between consecutive notes, and rather than aspiring to the consistency of timbre typical of
most guitar-playing, Bailey interrupts it as much as possible: four consecutive notes, for instance, may be played on an open
string, a fretted string, via harmonics, and using a nonstandard technique such as scraping the string with the pick or plucking
below the bridge. Many of the key features of his music -- radical discontinuity, the self-contained brevity of each gesture, an
attraction to wide intervals -- owe much to Bailey's early fascination with Anton Webern,
an influence most audible on Bailey's earliest available recordings, Pieces for Guitar (1966-67, issued on
Tzadik).
Playing both acoustic and electric guitars (although more usually the former), Bailey was able to extend the possibilities of
the instrument in radical ways, obtaining a far wider array of sounds than are usually heard. He explored the full vocabulary of
the instrument, producing timbres and tones ranging from the most delicate tinklings to fierce noise attacks. (The sounds he
produced have been compared to those made by John Cage's prepared piano.) Typically he played a conventional instrument, in standard
tuning, but his use of amplification was often crucial. In the 1970s, for instance, his standard set-up involved two
independently controlled amplifiers to give a stereo effect onstage, and he often
would use the swell pedal to counteract the "normal" attack and decay of notes. He also made highly original use of
feedback, a technique demonstrated on the album String Theory (Paratactile,
2000).
Although Bailey occasionally made use of 'prepared' guitar in the 1970s (e.g.,
putting paper clips on the strings, wrapping his instruments in chains, adding further strings to the guitar, etc), often for
Dadaist/theatrical effect, by the end of this decade he had, in his own words, 'dumped' such
methods [2]. Bailey argued that his approach to music
making was actually far more orthodox than performers such as Keith Rowe of the improvising
collective AMM, who treats the guitar purely as a 'sound source' rather than as a musical
instrument. Instead Bailey preferred to "look for whatever 'effects' I might need through technique." [3].
Eschewing labels such as "jazz" (even "free jazz"), Bailey
describes his music as 'non-idiomatic', a label which has been much-debated. In the 2nd edition of his book,
Improvisation..., Bailey indicated that he felt that free improvisation was no longer "non-idiomatic" in his sense of the
word, as it had become a recognizable genre and musical style itself. In his efforts to avoid predictability he always sought out
collaborators from many different fields: players as diverse as Pat Metheny,
John Zorn, Lee Konitz, David Sylvian, Cyro Baptista, Cecil
Taylor, Keiji Haino, tap dancer Will Gaines, 'Drum 'n' Bass' DJ
Ninj, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and the Japanese
'noise rock' group Ruins. In fact despite often
performing and recording in a solo context, he was far more interested in the dynamics and challenges of working with other
musicians, especially those who did not necessarily share his own approach; "There has to be some degree, not just of
unfamiliarity, but incompatibility [with a partner]. Otherwise, what are you improvising for? What are you improvising with or
around? You've got to find somewhere where you can work. If there are no difficulties, it seems to me that there's pretty much no
point in playing. I find that the things that excite me are trying to make something work. And when it does work, it's the most
fantastic thing. Maybe the most obvious analogy would be the grit that produces the pearl in an oyster, or some shit like
that." [4]
Bailey was also known for his dry sense of humour. In 1977 Musics magazine sent the question "What happens to
time-awareness during improvisation?" to about thirty musicians associated with the free improvisation scene. The answers
received varied from lengthy and highly theoretical essays to more direct comments. Typically pithy was Bailey's reply; "The
ticks turn into tocks and the tocks turn into ticks" [5].
Mirakle, a 1999 recording released in 2000, shows Bailey moving into the free funk
genre performing with Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Calvin
Weston. Carpal Tunnel, the last record to be released during his lifetime, documented his personal struggles to
come to terms with the development of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in his right hand,
which had rendered him unable to grip a plectrum (and in fact marked the onset of his motor
neurone disease). Characteristically, he refused invasive surgery to treat his condition, instead being more "interested in
finding ways to work around" this limitation. He chose to "relearn" guitar playing techniques by utilising his right thumb
and index fingers to pluck the strings.
Partial discography
- Karyobin (with the SME, Island records, 1968)
- The Topography of the Lungs (with Han Bennink and Evan Parker,
Incus, 1970 (nb, this was the first release on the Incus record label))
- The Music Improvisation Company, 1968 - 1971 (with the Music Improvisation Company, Incus, 1971)
- The London Concert (with Evan Parker, Incus, 1971)
- Solo Guitar Volume 1 (Incus, recorded 1971, reissued 1992)
- Solo Guitar Volume 2 (Incus, 1972)
- Duo (with Anthony Braxton, Emanem, 1974, reissued on CD with extra material, 1996)
- Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet/The
Sinking of the Titanic (with Gavin Bryars and others, Obscure Records, 1975)
- Company 6 & 7 (other players on this re-issue originally recorded at the 1977 Company Week include Lol Coxhill,
Han Bennink, Leo Smith, Tristan Honsinger, Steve Beresford, Anthony Braxton and others,
Incus 1992)
- Dart Drug (with Jamie Muir, Incus, 1981)
- Aida (Incus, 1982, reissued on Dexter's Cigar, 1996)
- Cyro (with Cyro Baptista, Incus, 1982)
- Yankees (with John Zorn and George Lewis, recorded 1983; issued variously on
Celluloid and Charly)
- Figuring (with Barre Phillips, Incus, 1987)
- Takes Fakes and Dead She Dances (Incus, 1987}
- Lace (solo guitar, Emanem, recorded 1989)
- Village Life (with Thebe Lipere and Louis
Moholo, Incus 1992)
- Playing (with John Stevens, Incus 1992)
- Rappin & Tappin (with Will Gaines, Incus, 1994)
- Guitar, Drums and Bass (with DJ Ninj, Avant records, 1996)
- The Sign Of Four (with Pat Metheny, Gregg
Bendian, Paul Wertico, Knitting Factory,
1997)
- The Gospel Record (with Amy Denio, Dennis Palmer,
recorded 1999; released on Shaking Ray Records,
2005)
- Ballads, (Tzadik, 2002)
- Pieces for Guitar, (Tzadik, 2002)
- Barcelona (with Agusti Fernandez), Hopscotch Records, 2001, available from emusic
- Wireforks (with Henry Kaiser) Shanachie/Jazz, 1993 available from
emusic
- Legend of the Blood Yeti with Thirteen Ghosts and Thurston
Moore
- Limescale (with Tony Bevan, Incus, 2002)
- Improvisation Ampersand/Runt 1975, available from emusic
- Soshin (with Fred Frith and Antoine Berthiaume) Ambiances Magnetiques, 2003, available from actuellecd.com
- Carpal Tunnel, Tzadik, 2005
- The Moat Recordings (as part of the Joseph Holbrooke (band) Trio),
Tzadik, 2006
- To Play (The Blemish Sessions), Samadhi, 2006
- Standards, Tzadik, 2007
References
- ^ BBC 3 Tribute & John Zorn's Tribute live at The Barbican, June 2006
http://www.users.on.net/~dubrosa/bbc/02%20Derek%20Bailey%20Tribute.mp3
- ^ Correspondence with bailey from 1997, quoted at http://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mbailpg3.html
- ^ Correspondence with bailey from 1997, quoted at http://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mbailpg3.html
- ^ Jazziz, March 2002, quoted at http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/frontpage/001106.html
- ^ Musics, no. 10, November 1976, quoted at http://efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mbaileym.html
- Derek Bailey - Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice (1992)
- Ben Watson - Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation. ISBN 1-84467-003-1
External links
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