"A star is as far as the eye can see and as near as my eye is to me" Gregory Corso

Francis Kuipers: Keep Fighting The Blues

Anglo/Dutch guitarist, master of "flat-picking" and composer Francis “Superguitar” Kuipers lives mainly in Italy and The Netherlands. He has collaborated with worldfamous directors and composers including Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass for the films Anima Mundi, Evidence and Naqoyqatsi. From 2005 he has composed the original music scores for Mary, Napoli Napoli Napoli, Go Go Tales with the voice of Grace Jones and 4:44 The Last Day on Earth directed by Abel Ferrara.

For a number of years Francis Kuipers performed and recorded in duo with Beat Generation poet Gregory Corso.

From 1992-96 he directed the Music & Sound Department at Fabrica, the school of Multimedia Communications founded by Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscani near Treviso. Benetton international radio spots, created by him (with script by Fabrizio Andreella) won the European Grand Prix best radio publicity 1995- 96.

On his travels, Francis Kuipers collected and studied ethnic and experimental music. This activity developed into ongoing research into sound and music, and its numerous functions, and the sound environment, as well as the creation of a unique and extensive archive of sounds. A multi-lingual professional musician, musicologist and radio broadcaster, Francis Kuipers works  internationally, often collaborating with major artists. Important travels include: Australasia and Polynesia 61-65; East Africa and the Seychelles Islands 67-69; Nepal 69-70; India 74-75; The Philippines, 87-88 and frequent sojourns in the USA, South America and other parts of the world.

Francis Kuipers has conducted numerous radio series on music, principally for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and for the Italian RAI networks. Vedette, Red Records, Durium, Fonit-Cetra, Fabbri Editori, Folkstudio Records, Gypsy Records and Milan Records have published his recorded work.

Francis Kuipers has travelled the world for over thirty years, engaged in ethno-musical research, broadcasting, working as a composer and sound designer for film and, above all, performing. Although its roots are in blues and folk, Francis Kuipers' music is extraordinary, apart from his technique, in that it has evolved in a highly original manner, drawing inspiration from all of the music he has been immersed in.

Interview by Michael Limnios

When was your first desire to become involved in the Blues & who were your first idols?

I began learning guitar in the early 60’s during the Skiffle craze. Shortly after, I discovered Woody Guthrie, Country, and Bluegrass and, above all, Folk-Blues, as the Blues was then called by the music industry to attract a white audience.  I first heard  Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller on 78 records, then Lightning Hopkins, Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie McGee, Jessie Fuller, Sleepy John Estes, Son House, Blind Blake, amongst others, on reel-to-reel tapes of Library Of Congress recordings by John and Allen Lomax. Blues fans passed tapes hand-to-hand.  No European stores sold Blues and it was impossible to hear it over the radios in existence then. Forget the TV of course. Much like today, it hardly ever featured decent music of any kind.  Blues guitarists generally taught themselves, listening to recordings over and over again and through frequenting better musicians. 

While I was an art student, I began busking the streets of Paris, entertaining cinema-queues and the terraces of café’s. There were outstanding buskers in Paris in those days, like Davey Graham, Alex Campbell and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. At night we used to hang out on Le Place Contrascarpe. Later, for two years I performed acoustically in British Folk Clubs in duo with the masterful folksinger Harry Boardman from Salford. He held audiences enthralled with his singing, his stories and his banjo.

Which was the best moment of your career and which was the worst?

My compositions for director Abel Ferrara’s films are Blues and guitar orientated. Abel is also a musician and a lover of blues. It was a special moment when MARY, the film starring Juliet Binoche, won a number of big awards at the 2005 Venice Film Festival. There were also special moments when I jammed with Willie Mabon, with jazz accordion phenomena Antonello Salis and with the visionary Lester Bowie, trumpet player and leader of The Art Ensemble Of Chicago. When I’m on form it’s as if the music plays itself through me. The great Flamenco singer Cameron De la Isla said: “When I’m singing I don’t sing.“ And Cameron got it right.

As for my worst moments….. I once broke three G’s and two high E’s during a packed-house solo gig at Rome’s Folkstudio. Although this occurred decades ago, the horror of the ordeal can still make me shudder. It was often impossible to find decent strings and it wasn’t unusual to get a bad batch. Stage fright and nerves can play strange games, so I occasionally wonder if, in actual fact, the strings weren’t to blame at all that night. Maybe I’d lost control over my picking hand instead. If I did, it never happened before or again. I keep running across persons reminding me of the debacle. I have done countless performances but, regrettably, the string-breaking gig seems to be amongst those remembered best. As the saying goes: you are only as good as your bad night.

What does the BLUES mean to you & what does MUSIC offered you?

Blues is my passion; all my music is visceral and permeated with Blues. I find most music, from any time or place, interesting, as long as it has quality.  My tastes are very eclectic, ranging from early ethnic and Classical to electronic and experimental music of all kinds.

Any of Blues standards have any real personal feelings for you & what are some of your favorite?

A good rendition of ‘Stormy Monday’ always sends a jolt up my spine, so does ‘John The Revelator’, by Son House, and ‘Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning’ by Fred Mc Dowell or the Rev Blind Gary Davis. ‘Oh Baby, It Ain’t No Lie’ by Elizabeth Cotton, always moves me. I am also a big fan of Slim Harpo and Hubert Sumlin.

Which is the most interesting period in your life and why?

When I am in the heat of a creative collaboration with Gregory Corso, Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, Oliviero Toscani at Fabrica and Abel Ferrara or others with dazzling minds, my life becomes even more interesting. I like to be busy creating music. Love and music combined has the power to raise me to sublime heights. If possible, men and women should always be in love.

What mistake of MUSIC business you want to correct? Give one wish for the BLUES

One of the mistakes of the music business is that it has allowed unimaginative entities to infiltrate it at the expense of musical expression and freedom. Despite the mediocre state of the music industry, there is still creativity and good music still emerges.  Real music emerges where there is a need for it, even during the greatest tragedy. Music gives people identity and it allows them to survive. It is impossible to restrain it.

I wish there were more Blues venues. I used to love going to New York Blues bars, but most of them have died out. In my experience, there are hardly any clubs left anywhere in the world where a musician can drop in and jam. I am convinced that it is beneficial to sing and dance any time, any place!  Even though David danced in the presence of God according to the Bible, it has even become illegal to dance to the jukebox in most countries of the Western world!

In the colonial past, whenever they conquered a foreign civilization and forced it to accept their culture, Westerners as a rule imposed a Taliban-style ban on dance and music. ‘Take away dance and music and you have their souls!’ was their credo.  All unfamiliar music was judged to be the work of the devil. What the colonists did to the music of indigenous peoples they considered to be heathen and inferior is exactly what is happening to us here in Europe at present. It is as if some malevolent entity is trying to steal the souls of the Western world through prohibiting music. Outside of homes and licensed premises under close surveillance, playing and dancing to ‘live’ music is now generally discouraged. Not for nothing was the Blues considered to be the devil’s music.

Which of historical personalities would you like to meet?

I am fearful of making a choice. What’s’ more, many great artists and musicians, who might have interested me tremendously, have been excluded from official history.

 

Do you think that your art comes from the heart, the brain or the soul?

Only Blues can save me when I feel my soul is lost. Blues provides release and balance. Most likely, music provides us with the only evidence that we have a soul at all.  It is probably one of the main motives for forms of Classical music being subsided.

Forced to dress up and listen, immobile, to music they don’t understand but feel is important, seemingly for hours on end, enables the most insensible persons to perceive they have an inner side and, for this reason, a soul. Even thieving brutes with permanent scowls can be spiritually uplifted after a dreadful concert.  An amount of watered-down Classical and New Age music is deliberately designed to relax the muscles of the listener. It is also employed to calm cows and to increase milk production. Subsidy rarely comes without a price. Control is exercised over what is played.

Tell me a few things about the story of “Poesia e Musica - Gregory Corso and Francis Kuipers”, how that came about?

I discovered the poem ‘Oh Roma’, the first track on the LP, scrawled in chalk, in Gregory’s unmistakable and florid hand-writing, across a fashion poster near a wine-bar we liked to frequent. It looked as though it had been written recently and in a rush. Knowing Gregory, and presuming it was unlikely that he had a record of the poem, I copied it in my notebook and later suggested to him that we make a song out of it.  To introduce ‘The Moose’, which I sing in Italian on the LP, Gregory had me say: “Lord Byron said:  Never Explain The Explanation. This song ‘The Moose’, however, needs explanation!”(He was referring to the great English Romantic poet Byron who died in Greece.)

Gregory insisted that we only did quality shows. “First find out what it is, then where it is, then at the end you talk about the money!” He instructed me before I set up a gig for us. Unless it was Allen Ginsberg or some other Beat Generation big shot, Gregory avoided artistic collaboration. People were always trying to involve him in their self-aggrandizing schemes. We were even offered money by rich part-time poets to be on the same bill as us! Gregory had an answer prepared for that: “OK, but on one condition, that we go on first!” That usually ended the affair, as no one dared follow him as the audience would be following him out of the hall.

“Lady Poetry came to me!” Gregory would say. “Allen and the others grew up with books around them, their parents had books in their libraries. They searched out poetry, but Lady Poetry came to me, in prison, to save me!”  Abandoned by his mother and thrown out on the street at the age of 16, Gregory had spent part of his younger years  in jail. “People do terrible things!” He would say, glancing nervously over his shoulder. It has been pointed out to me that Gregory must have trusted me a great deal to make our historical recording. Legendary Argentinean percussionist Louis Agudo, whom I have also played with, put me in touch with Sergio Veschi of Red Records in Milan who produced the LP.

                                                                                                                            Photo: Dario Bellini

What are some of the most memorable tales with Gregory Corso?

Unlike musicians, used to touring and waiting around before gigs, saving their energy for the show, Gregory did not like hem. Once he was in front of an appreciative audience, he had a great time but, on the whole, he only accepted gigs when he was desperate for money. The main motive for Gregory’s reluctance to perform was that it took a lot out of him and he was now in his late 60’s. His official public appearances were not just mega events but also poetry marathons.  They often went on for hours and hours.  His performance started the instant his train arrived at the station or when he descended from a car, and finally ended when he left town. Appearing on the scene, Gregory was immediately besieged, usually by groups of women “Ciao bella donna!” He would exclaim as they dragged him off to a series of bars where he would entertain everyone present with his startling energy and superb wit, between reading poems and even writing them on the spot. When he finally made it to the theatre and the gig he might be quite exhausted, although he soon recovered. At our jam-packed performance in Pisa, with every city notable and their wives dressed-up in the front row, he joined me on stage half an hour late, staggering in with a bevy of prostitutes from the nearby seaport of Livorno. Having extra seats placed on the stage for the ladies, Gregory included them in the show, having them translate poems he had just written. Once they got used to it, most of the audience enjoyed the show but, judging by the way a number of Pisa residents got up and left with their nose in the air, the broad and vulgar Livorno accents of the ladies evidently upset them.

Habitually not having a fixed abode, Gregory spent a lot of time reading and writing anywhere he could, in parks, in bars, clubs and café’s. One day - he told me - a young man passed by, shyly handing him a handwritten piece of paper containing a poem called The Times They Are A Changing. “It was Bob Dylan before he got famous!” Gregory explained.

 

What is the “think” you miss most from Gregory? Which memory from Corso makes you smile?

Many memories of Gregory make me smile. Just thinking of his smile makes me smile. “I don’t tell lies because I don’t remember them.” He said once. A few months ago, years after his death, I found a message for me that he must have placed amongst my papers to warm my heart. One of our unrealized projects was an opera on Giordano Bruno, the philosopher who was burned for heresy. We planned to have chorus lines of dancing cardinals etc.

 

What advice has given Corso to you? What kind of a guy was Gregory?

Gregory had the power to light up a room; he could be full of luminous grace, like a winged messenger bringing news of extravagant fun-loving Gods. On occasion, he could also be terrible like a William Blake angel. You can’t mess around with poetry or playing the Blues, you need to get to the truth or they don’t work.

 

Are there any BLUES memories from Gregory Corso, which you’d like to share with us?

You got a good deal paying a ticket to one of our shows. Gregory could emanate charisma like Marlon Brando and he was masterful at handling an audience. He could put you through a gamut of emotions for your money. They could range from wonder, marvel and glee, to horror and even disgust and rage. Gregory touched on big subjects: death, love, every essential human argument, and he delighted in surprise. His appearance was no muscle-relaxing, mainstream event for sure! We never rehearsed. Every show was spontaneous and different; for me it was sometimes like walking on a razor. Gregory stripped peoples’ minds naked and touched their souls. When this became unbearable for them and the atmosphere became explosive he had the ability to suddenly make the entire theatre collapse into relieved laughter. Sometimes, matters could go horribly wrong as well. I can recall times when the audience was hostile and we had a few narrow escapes. Once, we left in a hurry through the lavatory window of a venue in a provincial town. For hours I had to drive my ancient VW through a thrashing rainstorm with police following us with menacing flashing lights. It was pitch dark. I had my face glued to the windscreen, struggling to see the road through the rain and the wipers. Gregory was in the back seat singing Italian opera and waving a bottle of whisky.

What experiences in your life make you a GOOD musician?

I am continually striving to become a good musician.

From whom have you have learned the most secrets about Blues music?

I had the good fortune to make friends with Jim Loomes a gifted guitarist who had been a student of Alexis Korner in London.  We travelled together to Spain and, later, to New Zealand playing in duo. Jim grew into a superb Classical guitarist.

 

How/where do you get inspiration for your songs & who were your mentors in songwriting?

I am usually busy composing film music that does not require lyrics so my output of original songs is limited and I have no mentors. Most of my songs have never been published. Possibly they are considered unmarketable because they don’t much resemble other songs. Once I have understood the director’s intentions and have read the movie script, inspiration for a score comes to me immediately. Scripts and editing invariably undergo continual transformation until the last minute; consequently my score changes and evolves also.

 

What's been their experience of touring in Greece; do you have a message for the Greek fans?

I visited Philip Glass backstage at a big show in an Athens arena once but I have personally never performed in Greece. I am of course pleased to learn that I have Greek fans.

 

Why chose “Superguitar” for nickname?

I have a typical Dutch surname that is difficult to pronounce for most non-Dutch people. Nobody in his or her right mind has an unpronounceable name in show business. On one of my first trips to Italy, a one-man music studio in Milan published an EP of mine entitled Superguitar. Afterwards, for better or worse, the nickname stuck. As I cannot always live up to the huge expectations it can generate, I often don’t bother using the name.

In which songs can someone hear the best of your guitar work?

Z Files and Good Moons, on my CD Anthology, have some nice acoustic guitar. The film GO GO TALES, directed by Abel Ferrara, starring Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento, with great vocals by Grace Jones, is full of good pumping music, as well as MARY, also directed by Abel. The film Abel did in 2011, THE LAST DAY ON EARTH, has a Blues score and I sing Blindfold Blues, with lyrics by Abel, over the credits. Of late, I am playing more and more hard and elementary Blues, going back to the roots.

 

Where did you pick up your guitar style & what were the first songs you learned? Where did you pick up your slide style?

In the beginning, I was definitely influenced by Jack Elliot’s flat-picking. I also listened to Bluesmen like Muddy Waters and sitar-players Vilayat Khan and Ravi Shankar as well Country musicians and exponents of Free Jazz. Having worked with him on ANIMA MUNDI and NAQOYQATSI, directed by Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass’ music has also transformed my life.

On acoustic guitar I played heavy gauge strings for many years and I used a rigid tortoiseshell pick.  Tortoises becoming protected species I now use a nylon Herco Gold pick and play medium gauge D’Addario Phosphor Bronze strings. On my Fender I use any strings, usually lightweight. Most of my acoustic guitars are Martins, I play them unplugged or through an amp. My favorite guitar is a 1960 Martin 00018 that I purchased second-hand in 1962 in a pawnshop in Auckland, NZ. Remembering it dangling from the ceiling among the other instruments still causes my heart to pound. I have one of the best sounding acoustic guitars in the world too, an EKO jumbo that was custom-built for me some 25 years ago when EKO sponsored me.

I enjoy listening to most slide players but no one really influenced my playing except for Fred Mc Dowell early on. When I use the slide, I just let myself go, always improvising. I wear a short slide on the middle part of my middle finger so I can still fret comfortably. Years ago, I requested a plumber in Spain to saw up an aluminum chair-leg that was the right diameter. A few years ago, I presented the slide I was using to Louisiana Red who was most appreciative telling me that Muddy employed a similar one.

 

Do you know why the words of the BEATS are connected to the Blues & jazz?

During Bebop, with Charley Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and other musical giants, the Beats were definitely influenced by the spontaneity and the revolutionary, dynamite energy of the music. After that innovative stage, I have never much enjoyed poetry with Jazz, as most musicians seem to repeat a dated and predictable procedure. The music distracts me from the words. Poetry and music is something that worked for a while at the right time. Maybe it can work again with different music.

 

Is there a parts of Corso’s poems that you like most?

Generally, Gregory’s only luggage consisted of a plastic shopping bag. He wrote continually, some poems were published, others he forgot in bars or they were mislaid. I heard that, for a while, there was a lady in New York that gave him a $100 every time he brought her a poem. Who knows what happened to these? There are so many poems by Gregory that move me but here’s the shortest one I know.

A STAR

A star is as far as the eye can see

And as near as my eye is to me.

 

Is the “BEATS” a way of life & what does the BEAT generation mean to you?

Ginsberg promoted The Beat Generation so his friends would have a movement that allowed them to survive. Allen organized get-togethers now and then but a number of Beats barely knew each other. I belong to the generation that came between the Beats and the Hippies. I am tough. I recover from disappointment rapidly and I make an effort to steer well clear of compromise, and any form of ‘ism’.

 

What made you want to work with Jack Kerouac, what would you ask Allen Ginsberg & Jack?

I met Jack briefly in Paris in the 60’s. He was considerably older than me, a celebrity. I was a young and humble busker. It never entered my mind to work with him. I met Allen, Herbert Huncke, Roger Richards, Robert Frank and a number of other Beats years later in New York during the making of ANIMA MUNDI.

 

Some music styles can be fads but the Blues is always with us. Why do think that is?

In my opinion, the Blues didn’t only drag Afro-Americans out of their misery but many other cultural groups too. This not only proves that the Blues spread from the Mississippi Delta to grow into a vital world music, but that a musical formula can work for everyone. Every person who is free, or who wants to be, identifies with the Blues.

Apart from the Blues, I am particularly interested in Stone-age music, music from the remote past, the last time we had a single global culture but managed to live in harmony with the planet. We all have organic global Stone-age music deep within us so I have an idea that it holds a key to the Blues of the future.

 

Who are your favorite Blues artists, both old and new? What was the last record you bought?

Son House, Fred Mc Dowell, Memphis Slim, Eddie Lang, Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins, Hubert Sumlin, Slim Harpo, Jimmi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Billy Gibbons. The list can go on and on…..The last record I bought was an early recording by Link Wray that I found cut-price at a railway station store.

 

How has the music business changed over the years since you first started in music?

I am little qualified to answer this question, as I have virtually nothing to do with the music industry at all.  Except for my bigger film scores and a few early LP’s, all my music is largely self-produced and therefore inadequately distributed. Happily, thanks to generous audiences and having the good fortunes to have been recognized by  number of geniuses, I usually manage to stay busy making music.

 

What advice would you give to aspiring musicians thinking of pursuing a career in the craft?

There is craft and skill involved in playing Blues but I see it, above all, as a form of art. Don’t take up music unless you have talent, passion, vocation, imagination, blowtorch determination, capacity to skip meals and infinite optimism. You might also need to go for lengthy periods without a fixed abode, just like Gregory, the Baul musicians from Bengal and the poets and architects of ancient Greece. Above all, you can’t bullshit playing the Blues. 

Music is not only entertainment; it has many different functions. In free and enlightened societies everyone is a musician some of the time.

‘We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves’ Jim Morrison

 

Tell me a few things about your meet with Champion Jack Dupree, what gift would you had given to him?

My biggest gig with Champion Jack was in Rome in a huge, packed-out Teatro Tenda. Jack was living in Germany then. He grew up in the same New Orleans orphanage as Louis Armstrong. He had had a hard life, most of it on the road, and he was a sweet and generous man with an indomitable spirit and unflinching enthusiasm. In his youth Jack used to be a pugilist, he fought over fifty bouts, even winning the Golden Gloves. A slogan on the sleeve of one of his hand-painted shirts read: Keep Fighting The Blues.

 

What’s the best jam you ever played in? What are some of the most memorable gigs you've had?

Performing an important radio series ‘live’ in duo with Antonello Salis for Italian RAI Radio III was incredible. A number of concerts we did were pretty exciting too. Jamming with Lester Bowie and other members of the Art Ensemble in a small club was a huge adrenalin rush. I enjoyed jams with John Sutherland on harmonica in New Zealand and with Enrico ‘Mad Dog’ Micheletti and bass-player Goran Mimica. Gigs with Gregory were all memorable.

 

Would you mind telling me your most vivid memory from Philip Glass & Francesco De Gregori?

I saw Philip recently so the most vivid memory I have of him is watching his joy when he showed me a short film of himself and his young children playing music on his cell phone. I admire Philip, for his enthusiasm, for his brilliant mind and his astounding memory and discipline for a start. He became enchanted with music as a young boy because his father ran a record store and – a little known fact - his uncle played drums with the Marx Bros on Vaudeville. Working on Godfrey’s film projects Philip and I often spend much time listening to very interesting and little-known music, delving into its secrets. My archive of sounds and music is very extensive as well as unique.

Francesco and I have been friends since the sixties, and Rome’s Folkstudio, where he was discovered and went on to become a big star. I go and visit him at his place in the country when he is not touring. We play some music, drink good wine and talk about books; he makes great olive oil. Even as a young kid he was a brilliant songwriter and a classy musician. He invited me to play 32 dates as a special guest on his summer tour of Italy and Switerland in 1989.

 

You have traveling all around the world. What are your conclusions?

That is a big question! For as start, it used to take me 6 weeks by ship to get to Australia, now a couple of days. I try not to dwell overly on my past, on my fantastic adventures and all the wonderful friends I have made. I am concerned with now and the future. It is said that Beauty generally fades in time.  I have lived in and visited many places that would have had unfading beauty if it had not been for the onslaught of tourism and commerce.

Sound and music accompanies us wherever we go, where we like it or not, just like the score of a film follows the plot and the action of actors, but hardly anyone ever talks about it. It is as though the subject is taboo. Sound and music is a constant element in our lives, it affects our behaviour and life style, but it is paid the least conscious attention. The starting place of everything is sound. We hear sound while we are still in the womb and it is the last thing we are conscious of when we die. Increasingly, I am concerned with noise pollution and I believe sound is a last environmental frontier. It is in the interest of everyone with functioning ears to use them to listen hard. What sounds do you want to get rid off, which do you want to keep?

Happiness is…

Instead of answering this, I pose you a question. The entire world loves the potato crisp that, in actual fact, is merely some disgusting type of potato soaked in cheap oil. What would the potato crisp be without its crunch?

Francis Kuipers - musician, musicologist, composer for film website