Chances Are: Bill Laswell’s Trip into the Vaults of Bob Marley and Miles Davis
[ed note: This article was originally published in 1999]
It's impossible to write an introduction for Bill Laswell. He's been involved in over three hundred records since the early '70s, so I'm not going to even try. I interviewed him this Fall to talk specifically about his two 1997 remix albums: Miles Davis' Panthalassa (a continuous mix of outtakes from In A Silent Way, On The Corner, and Get Up With It) and Bob Marley's Dreams of Freedom. Plans are in the works for similar projects, which include remixes of records Santana recorded with Alice Coltrane and John McLaughlin, Tony Williams' Lifetime Turn It Over, and remixes of 1930s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson ('there's a lot of noise on it. That's what we're battling with, at the moment, how to use the noise'). "The lawyers are just doing their version of remixing," says Laswell.
--
SAB - Both of these artists (Marley and Davis) have cult followings. What was the response like amongst the fans?
Bill - In the case of the Miles Davis, a lot of writers tried to separate the music from the sound or the production, but those records were initially made by edits and putting things together in studios, and I think a lot of people from the critical side didn't really realize how records were made. And in some cases weren't listening, they were just remembering. So a lot of the criticism, as well as the praise wasn't always too accurate. In the case of Marley, I think he had a much more religious following of diehard reggae fans, and if you tamper with their memory, it's a little heavier. So there was probably more criticism on Marley, but it didn't really affect the overall impact of the record or the sales. I think it also did well, and was received by people that were forward thinking. And I purposely didn't use his vocal, because I didn't want to chop up his songs, or his poetry, or his stories - for people that cherish them. I didn't want to insult anyone's idea, or their devotional feelings about him and his songs. So that's why it was done in a sort of old school dub way, where you base it on the sound, don't use a lead vocal, you mostly just use chorus and instruments.
SAB - With what you said about tampering with memory - I think it's really cool to hear that record, cause it's like hearing Bob Marley in a dream.
Bill - That was exactly the intention, to create a dream out of the thing. So from memory, you're trancing on these songs. It's funny, when I made the first mix - it was three pieces together - and I was in uptown New York, in a van, and I had this guy play the cassette really loud, and we were listening to one of the pieces which was a classic piece, a famous Marley piece that everyone knows. And these three Rastas were walking by the van, and they could hear this music, which is obviously Marley, but they'd never heard this take on it, so the feeling that I got from them was kind of reassuring. It was like they almost dreamed they were hearing that music. It exists, but it came into their heads somehow for a moment.
SAB - With the Marley material, were you working with the outtakes of the original masters, or just the original masters of the actual songs?
Bill - Yeah, it was the safety copy of the original master of the original song, and I think there was probably not more than one outtake in the whole group of tapes, because I asked specifically for certain pieces. I didn't go through the whole mountain of tape. I think I chose like 20 pieces, and then narrowed it down.
SAB - And were you in Jamaica to do it?
Bill - No, the tapes were sent to New York from London. I went to Jamaica a little before that, and that's where Chris (Blackwell) had the idea to do the project. But I've never used the studios in Jamaica. I've been there a few times, but by the time I was doing records everything had changed. I was interested in dub and reggae, but that music is no longer there. It's all just digital stuff now, and not very interesting. Except for Sly & Robbie, I don't really keep in touch with too many of those people.
SAB - What was the criteria for selecting the Marley songs - I know with the Miles Davis songs you were working from a specific period of three albums - with Marley, was there any …
Bill - The deciding factor was usually the bass line, and then the strength of the chorus. Could it hold up as a repetitive idea that you could hear over and over? And just the overall texture of the song. It really got down to imagining the feel of it, once you emptied it out to a strong bass line and a beat, and if the chorus would make sense as the main theme. And I didn't necessarily gravitate towards hit songs, just whatever felt good, and it turns out that a couple of them were, but that's because they fit into what I felt was needed.
SAB - So what's it like now, if you're sitting in a bar having a drink, and "One Love" comes on - how do you hear the song?
Bill - Well, it's interesting, because you've been inside the song, and you hear the hi-hat, you hear the bass, and you know how it all sounds unmixed and soloed. It's a very interesting experience. And the same with the Miles Davis. You find things on the tapes that you heard twenty years ago, like there's the sound of a glass falling and landing on the piano, and I used to hear that on the record, and I thought it was the guitar. And now twenty years later, you hear it, and you realize there's a noise, and it's actually a mistake. And you hear Miles talking at one point. Those were things that could have been taken out, if people were listening, but they weren't, and they've become part of your memory of the sound. That's why the whole concept of a purist, when it comes to sound, is completely irrelevant, because you're already dealing with mistakes, and things that have been different. It's all down to perspective, and the decisions that have been made at that moment in the studio.
SAB - Yeah, that's how I think about it. Like once it's in the studio, it's all - well, fake's not the word for it, but …
Bill - It's put together in another way. It's not just based on the performance of an artist put together as a whole. There's a whole lot more that goes into it. And people get used to a certain thing, and they start believing in it, and they think that's the absolute way it has to be, when it can be a million different ways. The record Kind of Blue, which was done in the '60s - when they mixed it, or transferred it to make the record, the b-side was running at a slower speed, and for 20-30 years no one noticed that, and then all of a sudden someone found out. They found the original tape, and now they've put it at the speed it's supposed to be, which changes the pitch, which changes everything. But that's how it's supposed to be. The way it existed for thirty years was a mistake. And there's purists that are saying, they don't want it like that, they want it the way it was, which is already a mistake, so it's really funny to know how limited people are just in terms of how they judge records, because you can't, unless you know exactly what goes into making them.
SAB - When working with a sampler, it can be quite painful to hear it go through the bad edits, or effects that aren't very good, on the way to getting the desired result. Was it quite intimidating for you to go through these sounds, and try to morph these pieces?
Bill - It's a little intimidating to deal with Marley, just cause of the size of the audience that's following the artist - not really because of the music. It's pretty simple music, so that wasn't so intimating. And the Miles - I actually got to know Miles, and I was going to work with him, but I didn't pursue it, because of what he was doing at that time. He had already finished with the things that I was interested in. So I sort of had a feel for what he liked, and what he was trying to do, and I knew and worked with a lot of the people that played on those records. That was more natural. That felt like I was working with the people that I would work with anyway.
SAB - Did you sometimes forget that Miles Davis isn't even here anymore?
Bill - When I was working on it, I was kind of remembering talking to him, and the things he had done, and I had absorbed a lot of it from that period, so it felt like he was in on it the whole time.
SAB - In terms of processes, is there anything inherently different between your role in this and Teo Macero's in the originals?
Bill - Not particularly, because in some cases, there's an outtake and there might be a theme or a solo that's taken from another outtake and transplanted together. Teo Macero did a great deal of editing, and, in my opinion, I didn't always think the editing served the music. It appeared to have been done very quickly. I used to hear those records-when you don't know anything about how records are made, you wonder, 'How does the band do that? How do they change key so quickly? Why is it like that?' It's all him, doing editing, and I believe Teo Macero was more responsible for the results of the records than Miles was. I don't think Teo Macero necessarily worked for Miles. Miles didn't pay him. Columbia paid him. He was a salaryman, and a record guy, who worked for a company, and his job was to get a record made, get it out, and move on so they can make another one. And I think that was pretty much his mentality. I think he was good in the sixties, and then when the seventies arrived, his ideas from the sixties and all of his manual edits and quick decisions, I don't think it related to the music. A lot of people argued that, but those are people who are still living in the sixties.
SAB - So when you make these new tracks, are you actually playing on either of these albums?
Bill - No, not really. I'm playing samples, or shifting things around, or putting things in place. It is producing music, but I didn't want any human presence to enter into that picture. It should have just been the sound being processed through the technology of today, or what you intend to do with the technology of today. I also used really primitive technology doing it. I tried to keep it as close to the way it was done. There's manual analogue editing, the same way they did it. They were doing it with quarter inch, and we were doing it with half inch on the Studer analog machine. Things were bouncing around from different formats, from analogue 24, which was originally an 8-track. In A Silent Way was originally an 8-track recording. Every musician had a track. The drums were on one track. Everybody had his own track. Then we bounced that to 24, and then back to analogue half inch to be mastered to DAT.
SAB - From what you saw of the Miles Davis archives, was everything in good condition?
Bill - Yeah, it was professionally done at the time in a big studio with professional people, and there's nothing sloppy about it. Everything's well recorded, but you had to record stuff well. That's Columbia in the late sixties, early seventies - they have their own studios, their own engineers, staff people, like Teo Macero. So it's all done very professional.
SAB -I've been put under the impression that there was an absolutely staggering amount of stuff in the archive.
Bill - There is. I didn't go to the real storage place. I don't know exactly where that is - it's somewhere upstate called Black Mountain. That's where there's literally warehouses of tape. But where I went was the Sony studio, where they have a tape vault, and there was a lot of tape there. Of his stuff, there's a lot of tape existing - obviously, Bitches Brew box, they brought out quite a lot more outtakes, and there's a lot more where that came from. And I probably have about six reels of outtakes from On The Corner alone.
SAB - How long is each reel?
Bill - Each reel's about sixteen minutes. And a lot of it doesn't come together musically, but a lot of it didn't come together anyway. That's why the edits existed. Starting around 1969, it wasn't just rehearsed - the band goes to the studio, and records the music - it was go to the studio, and experiment. Then, cut the tape up, and release the record. The same way people work now. But the year before that, it was, 'let's rehearse the quintet and do something really weird with it. We'll add a guitar or something.' It was really a straight format - rehearse, record, if the first takes great, they probably didn't work on a record for more than three days. Two days, probably.
SAB - I think both of these artists, and it comes through in full force on these two CDs, made timeless music. With what you've done - were you consciously trying to maintain that? It also sounds like it could be seventies or nineties
Bill - It was timeless music, and I think it's just another version, or take on it, to continue the flow. I wasn't trying to be conscious though-that was part of the idea.
SAB - Maybe that's why it worked. I don't know if you heard it. But there's a double LP of Can remixes.
Bill - I haven't really heard the whole thing. I've just heard pieces of it.
SAB - Yeah, cause I heard that - and you don't have to give your own opinion, cause you haven't heard it - but lots of the tracks sound like they were just 1996 underground dance related remixes. Whatever flavor was going on at the time.
Bill - That's unfortunately how it is with most of those situations. Very few people can go back and tap into that energy. It's energy. And regardless, you can't just click on a button, and expect something to happen. It's an art form. Something has got to go into it. Something has to be behind it. And in a lot of cases, it isn't and that's why you get those results. There's a whole remix record of the Miles stuff coming out, with contemporary, so-called remix people from that culture - King Britt and DJ Krush - I haven't heard Krush's mix, but the other mixes were consistently lacking in one vital element, which should have been there, which was the music. It's just a few loops, and somebody programming different effects on the loops, and it's pretty bad. And if it was a remix of something that just came out, and an artist that just happened, but it's not, it's Miles Davis, who is an icon.
SAB - Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Most of these tracks sound like they could be the b-side for an artist you've never heard of.
Bill - Exactly, and there's no element in there that would ever make me think that an artist the calibre of Miles Davis had anything to do with that, which is a little bit of a disappointment, and artistically it's a failure. I'm always fighting against that kind of thing. But I can't fight too hard, because I want to keep working on remixes, and keep working with the companies, but the real reality is that a lot of people don't know what they're doing.
SAB - With you being allowed access into the Bob Marley and Miles Davis archives - my first reaction anytime I hear about these sort of projects is, 'What gives someone the right, and not me, to go into the vaults and get the original masters?'
Bill -It's unfortunately business. I was lucky with the Miles thing, because Peter Shukat, Miles' manager and his lawyer, and he's my lawyer, too. He controls the Miles Davis estate. So for me to go to Columbia, and just say, 'I want access to the tapes,' probably wouldn't have translated. The fact that Steve Berkowitz, now head of the Legacy reissues series, and that Peter Shukat was, too, really made it happen for me, and the fact that I had a relationship with Miles. All those went into making that happen. Otherwise, it would have never happened. Bob Marley - same thing. The idea was created by Chris Blackwell, who was not only the original producer but the owner of Island, and really the creator in some ways of popular reggae. So in those two cases, that's how it happened. Otherwise, I would never have been able to do either.
SAB - Can you ever see it happening, perhaps on a more advanced technology format, where they'll release Miles Davis records with track separations, so you can get the drums by themselves, you can get the horns by themselves?
Bill - I think that'll happen to all music one day, and we're probably not that far off.
SAB - So what happens to the sanctity of the finished original version?
Bill - To me, there is no absolute version. There's just mixes - one happened on a Tuesday, one happened the next week. One happened ten years ago. They're just versions that someone has balanced, and it can be an endless interpretation of that. It can go on indefinitely, and all you're going to get is different opinions from different people, in the same way you get different versions from different balances. Nothing gets finished. We live totally in a time of incompleteness. Nothing can be absolute - in sound, I mean. It's absolute in the heads of record buyers, because they're stuck in thinking, 'That's the original,' or 'That's the way it was played,' not understanding that half the shit might have been edited to death already.
SAB - Well, there's one way to have an absolute, and that's to destroy the masters, you know.
Bill - Well, I think it would be really helpful to destroy the majority of the music's that's existed - that way people would be forced into new ways of thinking, new ways of constructing sound, their approaches would change. It's the same way with a computer. You can back up only so much, and then you're full, and you have to get rid of that. In some cases, you don't back it up, because it's over. I think we could really benefit from that, especially in terms of generic pop music, and the classic, and every song that sounds like every other song. It would be great to just completely annihilate that whole sensibility.
SAB - That would be excellent, to just go into a used record store, and get rid of 99% of the stuff.
Bill - Just burn the shit, because that's what it is. That's what the futurists were saying in 1912 - destroy the museums, or the art - noise is the new music, and let's get on with it. But no one has the courage to do that, because everyone's worried about their security.
by Don Anderson
|
|
|
From the Pulp Vaults:
(Previously unavailable online)
Bird People In China
The perfect time to take a nap is where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, within the fleeting magic hour surrounding sunset...
The Institutionalization of Violence
It's the perfect setting. Somehow, as a city, L.A. is so now...
Broken Boulevards Still Dream of Havana
"We were going to outstrip Monte Carlo... the idea was to turn Havana into the world's biggest gambling paradise...
Listen Without Prejudice With Open Ears Volume 1
It's a sunny afternoon, and I'm on way from the Düsseldorf Hauptbahnof to St. Martins Studio...
How Deep Is The Ocean?
The Sinking of the Titanic, and the Burden of Recording
An interview with Christopher Doyle
Christopher Doyle, an Australian expatriate and one-time sailor, has done the cinematography for all but the first of Wong Kar-Wai’s movies...
What used to be paper, is now just skin
An open book with blank white paper makes the same shadow in the middle as two thighs pressed together.
Playing Once Upon A Time With Mercury Rev
Deserters songs, that’s what someone called the results of the basement sessions between the Band and Bob Dylan.
Sound without vision: Do soundtrack albums need movies?
In the last few years, one sentiment I've noticed often come from the mouths of musicians...
Chances Are: Bill Laswell’s Trip into the Vaults of Bob Marley and Miles Davis
It's impossible to write an introduction for Bill Laswell. He's been involved in over three hundred records since the early '70s, so I'm not going to even try.
Designers in the Attic
From the beginning I was convinced that an article about Attik wouldn't be entirely out of place in a magazine like SAB.
|
The Often Beautiful Music of Richard Ashcroft
Former lead singer of the Verve, Richard Ashcroft, thinks out loud about his debut solo album, Alone With Everybody.
A Million Tiny Decisions Made By Alex Garland That Affect You and Me
"It surprises how much you can keep in your head while you're writing a book..."
Tezka Macoto's Hakuchi: Parallel Universes of the Mind
"I am powerless in the face of this pitiful reality," goes the voiceover of the main character Izawa, halfway through Hakuchi: the Innocent.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
The swaying of Maggie Cheung's hips becomes something like a musical refrain in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love.
After Life Directed By Kore-Eda Hirokazu -- To Die And Then Have Time
an edited version of a conversation from October 1998 with Japanese film director, Kore-eda Hirokazu, in which he talks about his 1998 film, After Life
Little Steven on Bruce Springsteen, Sun City, The Sopranos, and his friends in Bali
Jason Anderson's interview with Little Steven, a.k.a Steven Van Zandt
Palahniuk Has Entered The Produce Section … he's eating grapes
Jason Anderson talks to Chuck Palahniuk - the author of the Fight Club. His new novel, Choke, is being released in the Spring of 2001.
Scenes : One Particular Scene From The Limey directed by Stephen Soderbergh +++ some jumbled narrative techniques
Miike Takashi -- The City of Lost Souls
a Yakuza eats a blue Popsicle in the harbour, while bodies are packed into oil barrels.
The Angel : In The Realms of the Groove
It's more than likely that you haven't heard of her, but you have heard her. I could almost guarantee it.
Techno Animal Foam At The Mouth
An excerpt from an interview with Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick - musical collaborators in the groups Techno Animal, Sidewinder, Ice, and various other side projects - all of which makes it a full-time job to keep track of them.
Older articles can be found in The Archives
|
|
