Notes about the transcription
(If you want to skip to the
interview jump forward a few paragraphs)
Generally
we don’t consider, when we are reading an interview that the writer has
subjectively manipulated the transcribed dialogue to aid readability. But, in
true conversation many thoughts that are stated are not 100 % clear at all: dialogue does not generally form clear sentences,
body language and tone of voice have a huge effect, and filler words or
discourse markers (ahs, ums oohs etc.) are very common.
The version
I have published here has been altered substantially from the original
transcription I made which was transcribed in 2001 as part of the
requirements for a musicology course at Victoria University Wellington, New
Zealand. If anyone ever wants that original, it is available. Truthfully I feel
that some interesting statements, perhaps from Bill's unconscious, were
revealed in the sideslips, backtracks and blind alleyways of that original
transcription.
I first met
my informant when I started drumming with the Windy City Strugglers in 1998. At
the time of the interview that band had almost finished the recording of the
third Windy City Strugglers album, Snow on The Desert Rd (see brief discography
below). Bill and I were therefore friends at the time. We were involved in a
professional and creative way, but I certainly did not know everything about
Bill's life. I think this was a good basis for the interview as Bill could
relax in a way that he might not have normal been able to with a complete
stranger.
Bill Lake
is an important figure in New Zealand music. He was born on the 30th August
1947 in Canberra Australia and moved to New Zealand in 1967. He has been a
songwriter and blues musician in various forms for many years. Like many New
Zealand musicians he is greatly respected by his peers but only known by a
relatively small audience world-wide.
If you want
to know where he is coming from as an artist I recommend his first solo album,
Home Truths on the Red Rocks label (RRR001) or either of the Windy City Strugglers
Albums available: the debut (EEL013) or On Top of the World (RRR002).
Bill is an
unusually honest person and I think as the interview unfolds we see how this
relates a little to his philosophical work. Since 1973, dissatisfied with the
constraints of his philosophy masters on Ludwig Wittgenstein, he continued privately studying the work of the philosopher. I think there is an
interesting link between his philosophical studies and Bill's desire to be
honest or to arrive at some kind of truth.
Bill is a very intelligent person. Sometimes as I looked at this friend of mine in
his little one bedroom shed cooking on a camp cooker surrounded by hundreds of
philosophical texts, the nervous fidget, the swept back receding hairline, I
felt like I was speaking with some kind of reclusive academic. Bill has spent most of his 53 years dissecting life and discussing it in
lyrical form or applying his observations to the work of his philosophical
idol. Fascinatingly, as I compile this interview for this blog in 2018, I am
almost the exact age that Bill was when I conducted the interview.
Bill Lake in London October 2005: Photo by Steve Cournane:
2001 Snow on the Desert Road Windy City
Strugglers Red Rocks RRR004
1998 On Top Of The World Windy City Strugglers Red Rocks RRR002
1996 Home Truths Solo album. Red Rocks RRR001
1994 Windy City Strugglers, Windy City Strugglers Eelman EEL013
1988? We're In the Same Boat Brother with Rick Bryant Eelman EEL012?
1987 A Bop in The Ocean. The Living Daylights Eelman EEL 011
1985 Krazy Legs. The Pelicans Eelman EEL004
1983 Eight Duck Treasure. The Pelicans Eelman EEL002
Interviewer
Tell me about your musical beginning.
Alright,
well I come from Australia. I grew up in a family who weren't musical, they
weren't practitioners but they did listen to quite a lot. On the one hand the
big classics like Beethoven and Mozart and a bit of Brahms and I do recall
those things. One of the first tunes I learnt was Ode to Joy strangely enough
but on the other hand they were kind of left wing people and they were
interested in sort of folk music of a sort. One of the things, for instance
Lonnie Donegan who is best known for novelty songs like Does Your Chewing Gum
loose its Flavour, but his background was much more kind of ethnic than that.
He sung a lot of Blues with a lot of Leadbelly's folksongs.
He leaned
heavily towards black music and so that was an early kind of experience of this
kind of thing and then like all kids of my age I heard Rock and Roll when it
first sort of hit, like Elvis Presley, a tiny bit of Little Richard, Buddy
Holly. They're the ones I can sort of remember, but by the time I'd become a
teenager, there was...it had gone into the well-known dead period in Rock and
Roll. All the original firebrand type guys had sort of died or quietened down.
What you were left was Bobby Darin and Bobby Vee and Bobby Vinton and hundreds
of Bobbys and it was pretty dull and then on the other hand there were
instrumental groups...
What year would that be?
That was
late- ‘50s, ‘59, and ’60. On the other hand instrumental groups like the
Shadows and the Ventures. I think in Australia there was more American music
around. Out here I'm not sure if that was the case. Well anyway I heard quite a
bit and took an interest in that sort of thing but I always had this kind of
left wing, this folk music thing in the back of my mind and then somewhere
around '64 my older brother (six years older) was at University and he was
mixing with people who were listening to the very first Dylan album for
instance and in fact he brought it home one night in the bedroom where I also
slept.
How old were you then?
I was about
fourteen and Joan Baez and a bit of that and he also had a contemporary, a good
friend who was more into Blues and black music. He actually had Leadbelly
albums and Lightning Hopkins albums and I remember a very seminal visit to
Sydney one time when we stayed at his place and he just played all this stuff
over and over again. Well he played it but he was used to it and I wasn't used
to it and then I used to listen to these Lightning Hopkins albums and then go
walking around the streets for hours, like with them, singing them to myself
cause I loved it so much.
Would they be Folkways Recordings?
They were
probably Prestige Blues. Prestige had this little subset of their, you know, sub
label called Bluesville where they did a lot of Lightning Hopkins records. The
Leadbelly was on Folkways yeah. And so I think that was the point where it
really hit me, you know, that I loved this stuff and it was hard to get, it
wasn't an easy thing.
What was it about it that you loved? Can you
sort of say anything about what that would be?
I don't
know. I just used to sing not particularly the words but the melody, the sort
of melodic thing of it, and it's sad music I suppose and I just loved it. It
got right inside my head and it got right to my musical centre, I suppose,
right away. A lot of Blues fans seem to be like this you know. They sort of
fool around with different kinds of music and sometimes they like something but
they don't know why until they hear Blues and then they realise that it was the
Blues in it that they liked: those notes and that way of phrasing things and
the...it's the notes and the way of handling instruments you know; that very
fluid sort of playing and very rhythmic as well. I've always been a pretty
rhythmic player or interested in that.
Sure.
So that was
a seminal thing and from then on it was really just a matter of me finding out
how to get these records which was reasonably hard but there were more, there
were a few shops in Australia that sold it and I was beginning to mail order
records and it just sort of broadened out from there. I remember, I suppose
another seminal one was, you see those recordings were like, well the old
Folkways ones were from say the ‘40s and then the Lightening Hopkins ones were
‘50s, mid ‘50s recordings and then in America they got into this thing of re-issuing
very old Blues from what's called Country Blues from the ‘20s and the early
‘30s and there was a record that really started that whole thing, This one on
Folkways called The Country Blues. You know it's a re-issue of about sixteen
Country Blues by all sorts of the great guys from that period and I ordered
that and got it and I remember listening to that, sort of five or six times in
a row (laughs) you know.
Really?
It was a
revelation, it was very hard to understand cause it's really...
Would that be Son House?
He is one
of them. He's not on that, oh I think he is actually; yeah I think he is on
that record, but you know Robert Johnson is actually the latest of them. Blind
Lemon Jefferson, people like that, Leroy Carr. I mean in fact now-days I would
say it was a sort of fairly partial selection, it wasn't you know, there were
certain people that I would class as among the greatest of those people that
weren't on this record you know like Charley Patton for instance, the
Mississippi Delta player. Anyway that was a big start and that was when I
realised ooh there's all this stuff.
When you heard that i.e. you heard this
different Country Blues. What ways did it speak to you that were different?
Hard to
say, well like I said it was harder to understand because Lightning Hopkins
pretty well always plays in a swing feel it's something you can recognise cause
a lot of Rock and Roll's like that. Jazz is like that in the same feel you know
do di do di do
It’s got the triplet rhythm?
(Bill is
obviously oblivious to my query.) That sort of thing and a slower version of
the same - so you know that was familiar enough in that respect. Leadbelly was
a bit different cause he plays a lot; its all based around 2/4, really for him
and that was maybe a bit harder to understand, but he was a incredibly driving
player. I listen to him now and he's just such a rocker!
But anyway, in these
old guys you’ve got to remember that they came from an era, they learnt to play
in an era before recordings for one thing and also before drums were really
significant and they developed their own rhythms, you know, they do, they play,
each of them. You can almost say that each of them has their own approach to a
rhythm and even though you can say well that's a sort of a swing rhythm you
know its very far cry from this rather standardised rhythm that, that you were
used to by the time...
Jazz?
(Bill is
oblivious again.) Lightning Hopkins come along.
(Realising my mistake) Yeah
Oh...Ok alright.
Anyway, so
you know that takes a while to understand but I think it's always made me aware
of rhythms that are not the standard, you know that are created just by the way
you play the guitar particularly or whatever instrument it is, you know, things
that don't fit the sort of normal categories of rhythm, I suppose. I guess that
was subliminal, I wasn't conscious of all that then, I just sort of listened to
it and kind of struggled to...but I liked it, I mean it still had that Blues and
it was extremely intense. It was sort of...
When you first heard that country record. It
felt kind of... You knew it was Blues but it was kind of a bit weird almost?
Yeah it
wasn't like familiar. I mean Lightning Hopkins, I guess felt familiar because there
were elements that I knew already but with this stuff, a lot of it wasn't
really very familiar at all and they were virtuoso instrumentalists and really
strong singers, very powerful. I mean a lot of them are street singers and
there was no amplification so they had to sing loud and clear and they played
at parties and so on and they were just great singers and there was all this
stuff laid out. Then I just went through this, well I began to play, the minute
I got hold of a guitar I managed, I was trying to play like that you know and
of course it was beyond my ability at that time. It took me a very long time to
be able to play in the...
How did you learn? Did you teach yourself?
I just
taught... I just listened to the records and tried to do what they were doing
and you naturally gravitate to the easiest things, like I remember there's this
song by Leadbelly called Good Morning Blues which has that classic, its
actually the sort of boogie pattern for a piano it's actually don di
don di don. I latched onto that and I could sort of understand that, I
learnt...
Did you learn from any books or just, just
straight off by ear?
No, I think
I learnt, yeah its all pretty much by ear. I mean I think I learned some basic
chords out of a book but the chords didn't seem to be the part of it really.
Was there anybody you could go and sort of play
with or were you by yourself?
By myself,
yeah for quite a while. My father tried, paid for me to go to a lesson (laughs)
with a jazz guitarist and he listened to me play and said, “What kind of music
do you like?” And I said “Oh blues, you know Lightning Hopkins and things like
that,” and he kind of went on with the lesson but he said to my father “Oh well
I can't really...”
Not interested?
“I can't
really tell this guy any thing, you know” (laughs). Well because that guy
played jazz and it was, I didn't want to play jazz I didn't want to play all
those chords, those funny chords.
Interviewer laughs (a running joke between us
about jazz).
So he had
nothing, he knew that he wasn't gonna be able to teach me anything.
Interviewer laughs again.
So anyway
that was it and I just went on learning things and I didn't get very far. I was
also learning rock things like Apache. Every kid in those days learnt the
Shadows, Apache and Wipeout, this Surf Instrumental.
Sure.
Yeah,
because they were easy and they were good and I learned a few of those like I
learned Ode to Joy just as a little piece. I wasn't intending to play in
public. It was all just kind of for my own pleasure really and the next
landmark would be that I joined...I started a jug band, a little three piece
band that played jug band music, jug band music being a sort of sub-species of
Blues, but particularly it’s played by a group, it’s a band, it’s band music
and its dance music mostly and it was done in the ‘20s and ‘30s and so it’s got
a lot of Blues but it's also sort of fun. There's a lot of fun music in it and
the fact that its not a solitary person playing, playing amazing guitar or
something, it's a whole bunch of guys and you know none of them have to be
particularly wonderful to be able produce a sound so we did that: that was the
Garden City Strugglers.
Melbourne?
In Canberra
that was the Garden City Strugglers, the first band I was ever in that went
along and we weren't very good but you know I learnt. I was actually not playing
much guitar then. I played mandolin, harmonica, sang a bit and there was a guy
who played, who was very good on sort of chord guitar and kazoo and things like
that and sang, so I was sort of the ornamental bloke and the other guy played
jug and that was all. And then I came over here, to New Zealand in 1967 and I
hooked up with Rick Bryant at the beginning of that.
Mammal?
Oh no,
earlier, it was a sort of an electric R and B band, kind of playing Stones
music and Pretty Things and Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley - just a whole lot of
stuff, not very well, but with a lot of verve. I especially, was really
terrible then playing electric guitar. It didn't help that I didn't have a good
guitar, but even so I was dreadful and the other guys were better (drinks wine).
Anyway, so that went along, and then roughly the same, oh the next year I
started another band. We called it the Windy City Strugglers and it followed
that tradition but we were much... By then I was very serious about Country
Blues and I... Though there were jug bands in NZ they tended to emphasise the
sort of good time, have a bit of fun and a bit of novelty kind of aspect to the
thing and I thought this music deserves better really you know. It’s actually,
these are, some of them, the jug bands and a lot of the Country Blues can be
played as a sort of group thing and you want to get, try and get that intensity
into it and the good playing as well you know. You wanna be able to play well,
so we...
What is it? I'm interested in that. What is it
that they were sort of lacking for you?
What those
bands that were...?
Yeah
I was in
one for as while. I just felt that they were a bit... Basically they modelled
themselves primarily on American white jug bands who were already...They'd,
who'd already imbibed the same stuff that I was listening to: this old Country
Blues and jug band music and made something of it and you know now I can look
at them and say they were wonderful and they were very creative to do that but
at the time I felt it was a bit second-hand and that I wanted to kind of take
it back to that old stuff and really try to play like those old guys and
not...I was pretty purist about it.
So they were actually trying to take a slightly
opposite approach? They were thinking, I don't want to go back and do that too
much like them. They wanted to try and make it their own?
Yeah, they
weren’t as sort of purist as I was. They were all terrific fans of blues and
some of them, those that are still going like Geoff Muldaur. He still plays
pretty well only Blues you know, that's what his music is, that's the kind of
people that came up at that time: people who became totally besotted with this
music and have remained sort of with it ever since. You know, in a way you all
broaden out and everything but I'd still basically say my style is Blues based
and I always go back to that kind of stuff. Anyway, so that's what we were
trying to do and we did, we learnt. I think we only had about two songs when we
first played and they were what we thought of as pretty close renditions of
really old blues, one was a piano and mandolin duet, Sloppy Drunk.
Oh yes I know that one.
Yes we
still do it and I found this guy Geoff Rashbrooke who could actually play piano in a
really primitive style that easily passed for country blues piano and he
listened to the same stuff. He loved it too and I was very lucky there you know
and we played that. That was our first gig; we just played these two songs; the
other one was Newport News and you know people liked it and we liked it,
but we sort of realised fairly quick we needed some other people who could do
some of the things better, like who could sing better for a start and we got
Rick to sing and that was great. Rick comes from a
slightly different background. He hadn't... he liked country blues but because
it wasn't as available here, and because also, I don't know; he was more of an
R and B guy...
Geoff Rashbrooke playing in London October 2005: Photo by Steve Cournane
Urban Blues?
Yeah, more
urban, but he really loved it and he's learned all this stuff and sung really
well and all that and then we had... we had quite a number of other people
floating through the band but the core of it I guess was me and Geoff and Rick
and you know the others were additional and we just gradually developed this
repertoire and it was very authentic renditions of these old things. We weren't
really interested in kind of remaking you know, I mean whenever people do this
they end up doing something different without trying, because they're different
people and they listen to different music and inevitably some of that comes
into it and of course we were very limited compared to some of these guys we
were trying to emulate but that was the game we were in and I, in particular,
was a real purist for...I don't know... it just gradually...
Why do you think that was? I mean was it a sign
of respect for you or...?
I'm a Virgo
(laughs).
No honestly though, it's not just wanting to
imitate is it? It is something else perhaps, I am just not quite sure what?
Respect.
Yeah I still think those people who played that music are among the greatest
musicians I’ve ever heard, it's the most moving music still for me and it’s the
thing that I can always rely on to move me in the music. They were great
players. Also, I guess there was a certain romance involved. These guys led
these incredibly tough lives and lived in a really terrible environment sharecropping
in the South and all that stuff. I think that kind of appealed to me. It wasn't
like I thought I could be like that myself but I thought, you know the music
seemed to come straight out of that, that environment, that sort of suffering
and you know it seemed to make everything else look a bit pale I thought.
Yes indeed.
I mean I've
heard things since that I always like: the Rolling Stones cause they had a sort
of grittiness and a lot of energy and stuff and even though they couldn't do
quite a lot of the stuff the old guys did they had a good go at it and
eventually they created their own style which has been a big influence on me.
They invented this completely new way of doing Rock and Roll using a lot of
Blues techniques and things and it's really rhythmic and it’s got such drive
and a feel that you can’t ignore.
I mean the other side of this is that I've
been in rock bands since the electric R and B band I'd got into with Rick. Then
I was in Mammal and we played progressive sort of art-rock really because of
various people who were in the band. It was a mixture of art rock that we wrote
ourselves. Well Tony Backhouse mainly wrote it and on the other hand we did
quite rootsy covers like we did a number of Stones’ songs, a number of songs by
The Band and some soul covers like Heard it through the Grapevine and
Temptations and that sort of thing, that sort of stuff that you played with...
Quite Souly?
Yeah, yeah
(pours drink).
