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In the 1980s, you had to cross the Bridge of Inhibition if you wanted to bring ideas that smelt too much of jazz to rock people, and those that smelt too much of rock to jazz people. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I spent most of career looking for a safe space in the grey area between the two. These days matters are much improved; a sturdy bridge called hip-hop carries plenty of traffic between both persuasions.
These three guys - Django Bates (horn and keys), Iain Ballamy (saxes), Tim Harries (bass) - were well worth forming a band with back in 1987, at the inception of Earthworks. I heard Django and Iain playing together in a grimy pub in my home town. Both men I liked immediately, but it was their combination that struck me as robust enough to make the crossing. They knew nothing about me, except that I was something to do with rock, and they didn’t seem to mind that at all. I’m pleased to hear the grimy pub has recently been refurbished and is hosting jazz evenings once again.
I was hugely lucky to find the quality of players I did over the 20-year life of the band. Coming from rock, I was a believer in settled groups with participants likely to be around for a while. Earthworks was not designed to be an every-day sort of jazz ensemble with rotating personnel - a band made up of anyone who could make it that night. That sort of rotation was born out of necessity back in the beginnings of post 2nd World War small-group jazz. Back then, the people the leader might have wanted couldn’t always make it, so he’d scrabble around with various recommendations until somebody acceptable was found. Generally, you joined a group, gave what you could, learned what you could, and moved on. That gave fast-developing be-bop and post-bop groups fresh impetus and young blood.
The people I hired were invariably younger and less experienced, but compositionally more adept than myself. They could write pieces like ‘Ikebana’, ‘Nerve’ and ‘All Heaven Broke Loose’. For my part, I could offer an international platform, payment when I said I’d pay, and clean sheets in a single room. So we had a balance of needs. By those criteria I was a good employer. You nurture that reputation carefully if you want the best guys.
We ‘originated’ from the UK. Everyone needed two passports - one to be travelling on and the other in the Embassy of the next country that required a dedicated work visa. The music was a bit odd-ball and not all impeccably transcribed, so sending a replacement (or ‘dep’) was problematic, even if s/he could get the right documents in time.
Then of course, in our infinite wisdom, the UK decided to leave Europe. That threw we musicians back to the Dark Ages - before we joined the European Union in 1972 (then known as the Economic Community (EEC)) - when you’d rattle round Europe with a pocket full of small change in a dozen currencies, getting stopped at every border. Plus there were new problems about instruments on planes.
Touring on the ‘wrong’ side of the bridge of inhibition (i.e. the place where the money isn’t), was never easy and it ain’t getting easier now. Tony Levin, my bass-playing friend and colleague from King Crimson, is on tour in Europe with his band ‘Stick Men’ around now. He reports that he’s enjoying the music a lot, but the nine-hour van rides? “Not so much”. You needed people with patience and stamina, who could fall out of a van after nine hours and still make sense with a musical instrument. In Earthworks, we had just the people. They had the first two requirements in spades and could do the third thing if I asked nicely enough.
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Негізгі бет Музыка Bill Bruford's Earthworks - The Bridge Of Inhibition (Stuttgart, 30th March 1991)
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