"Music is an abstract: an organisation of sound that has meaning for the organiser and possibly others. I became comfortable with artistic endeavour and the struggle for creative expression at an early age. That struggle has given my life purpose ever since."

Bill Bruford: Jazz, Rock ... and Beyond!

Internationally known as a rock musician, drummer Bill Bruford also has impeccable jazz credentials, having recorded, performed with or written music for Al Di Meola, the Buddy Rich Orchestra, David Torn, Allan Holdsworth, Tim Garland, Django Bates, Iain Ballamy and Chris Botti among others. Early success propelled Bill, by nature a restless innovator uncomfortable with the well-worn path, into a 40-year career as a bandleader and writer. His groups such as Bruford and Earthworks led the way with advanced harmony in rock in the 70s and 80s; samples, electronics, and odd metres in electric jazz in the 90s; and stylistic innovation in his 21st-century acoustic jazz. Bill’s taste for the unpredictable in live performance has led him to collaborations with dozens of the world’s top rock and jazz musicians in an endless search for the innovative, the unusual, and the unlikely. “Bill Bruford -The Autobiography” published by Foruli Publications, in 2013.                                                      (Bill Bruford / Photo © by Winsum publicity)      

He was voted into Modern Drummer magazine’s Hall of Fame (1990), named by Rolling Stone magazine as #16 Greatest Drummer of All Time (2016) and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of ‘Yes’ (2017). The new 3CD box set, 'The Best Of Bill Bruford - The Winterfold & Summerfold Years' will be released October 18th. A 35-track reissue of two long out of print albums that together cull the best of the drummer-composer-bandleader’s recordings for the two labels. The package has been entirely re-designed By Dave McKean and overseen personally by Bill Bruford. Straddling both jazz and rock, Bill’s work as a musician is well documented on CD and DVD at Summerfold and Winterfold Records. Bill Bruford with The Pete Roth Trio creates jazz for a new generation of music enthusiasts that look beyond the ordinary jazz conventions. The Trio consists of Pete Roth on guitar, Mike Pratt on bass and featuring the legendary Bill Bruford on drums.

Interview by Michael Limnios

Special Thanks: Bill Bruford & Leonardo Pavkovic (MoonJune Music)

How has the music influenced your views of the world and what moment changed your music life the most? 

In 1962, when I was 13 years old, I played a little drum solo when I sat in with the hotel band in a Swiss ski resort. I saw the pleased reaction from my family and friends and thought - this is great! I can do this! So perhaps that moment got me started and changed my life the most.

Music is an abstract: an organisation of sound that has meaning for the organiser and possibly others. I became comfortable with artistic endeavour and the struggle for creative expression at an early age. That struggle has given my life purpose ever since.

How do you describe your sound and music philosophy? What's the balance in music between technique (skills) and soul/emotions?

My sound on the instrument is clear, I hope, and clearly articulated: like listening to someone who is speaking clearly. But it can be too much so; these days I’m playing a looser jazz style, with more ambiguity, in the Pete Roth Trio.

Three of my key influences were Max Roach, for his economy of style; Joe Morello, for his effortlessness; and Art Blakey for his elegance and power. The acquisition of these 3 E’s – Economy, Effortlessness, and Elegance – have guided me in the balance between technique and soul to this day.

"Naturally I’d like the listener to be thrilled, transported and in a world he or she never knew existed, but that is not always achievable. Further, it’s also about me and the other performers, not only the listener. I want the music to affect me. I want to be surprised, engaged, and challenged by my colleagues on stage in a way that I haven’t been before. That, equally, is not always possible. We aim for the stars, but sometimes settle for less. I feel the audience must leave knowing they have been in the presence of a high level of skill, and a collective, collaborative, creative endeavour of a few honest musicians giving of their best." (Bill Bruford At John Wetton Tribute, 2023 / Photo © by Kevin Nixon)

Why do you think that Bill Bruford music legacy continues to generate such a devoted following, since 1960?

The only clever thing I ever did was get born in 1949. That put me, as a young player in the 1960s, in a wide-open space. In the post-Beatles sunshine, record companies were awash with money they couldn’t spend fast enough. British art schools were churning out glamorous young things with ideas about fashion and its relationship to music. Stereo multi-track recording was promising endless manipulation of music sound sources. Furthermore, the enormous market of a place known to us as America was ready, waiting and primed with FM radio, with which the music of the glamorous young things might be beamed around the nation.

Everyone wanted live music. Recording the stuff was still expensive. Music tended to be made by specialist people called musicians, and the idea that anyone could be a musician had yet to be conceived.

So yes, things were good for the individual performer in many ways. The relatively local but expanding market ensured there was more money next year than this, and this year wasn’t bad anyway. Music wasn’t free, despite the insistence of a group of young left-wing Italians that it should be, as they helpfully let down the tyres of King Crimson’s equipment truck outside the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome, 1973.

The people who came to music back then have stayed with it – and the kind of bands I was fortunate to be in – Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Bruford, Earthworks – their whole lives. I was lucky to be in the right place in the right time, and to be aware of that. I became the ‘Godfather of Progressive Rock Drumming’, as some magazine called me. My legacy has continued to gain traction as the recordings of my efforts have spread and grown.

"The music ecology, in which I grew up, has long since changed beyond recognition. Nothing we can do to bring it back. The small near-jazz backwater in the UK, in which I choose to operate, hangs by a thread of financial viability, with venues and musicians struggling to exist." (Bill Bruford with The Pete Roth Trio, 2023. Bill Bruford with The Pete Roth Trio creates jazz for a new generation of music enthusiasts that look beyond the ordinary jazz conventions. The Trio consists of Pete Roth on guitar, Mike Pratt on bass and featuring the legendary Bill Bruford on drums. / Photo © by Sonia Roth)

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of the past?

Music generation in the past was less automated, less computerised, more interactive with fellow humans. Lennon and McCartney had to get together in one room to write Sgt. Pepper’s, and the Beatles all had to gather in a studio, with George Martin, to record it. That required real-time social interaction. Call me old-fashioned, but I came into music for such interaction, not to work alone in my office, playing with software and sending files around the world to people I’ve never met.

That’s why I’m currently a featured performer and on tour in the UK with The Pete Roth Trio. Pete is an exciting young guitarist beginning to develop a career as a performer. We’re playing his music locally, when and where he wants. He does the logistics and heavy-lifting that comes with any band starting out. He’s taking on an older, more experienced player who’s along for the ride. I have marginal interest in developing my own career (already developed!) but I do want to further my music skills, which have lain fallow for fourteen years. Pete and I have a balance of needs. I’m low-maintenance, and free as a bird.

I’ve been asked many times to explain why I want to play a more reflective, interactive music in small intimate rooms to 150 people rather than a less reflective, less interactive music in stadiums to thousands of people. Music, for me, now, is not so much about being able to play something, it’s more about being able to think up fresh things to play, in conjunction with others, in a small place, in real time. How best to do that? Performing in the Trio is a good way.

What are your hopes and fears for the future?

The music ecology, in which I grew up, has long since changed beyond recognition. Nothing we can do to bring it back. The small near-jazz backwater in the UK, in which I choose to operate, hangs by a thread of financial viability, with venues and musicians struggling to exist. I find it tough to jump up in front of a crowd of rosy-cheeked young musicians in 2024 and tell them they’re unlikely to make a living playing what they want, as I was fortunate to do. Were I to do so, I’d be happily ignored; written off as a sour old git who hasn’t got any answers. And they’d be right, I haven’t. But I’m good with questions, though.

"Music, for me, now, is not so much about being able to play something, it’s more about being able to think up fresh things to play, in conjunction with others, in a small place, in real time. How best to do that? Performing in the Trio is a good way." (Bill Bruford / Photo © by Ed Percival)

Lonnie Donegan (Skiffle), Chris Barber (Jazz), Alexis Korner (Blues), Yardbirds (Psychedelic), Yes (Progressive): what made the UK in the 1960s the center of music research and development?

Two things: first; the success of the Beatles, and second; the expansion of the British Art School system. The first meant that Capitol Records and other labels were awash with money and were able to fund more experimental groups which moved quickly from Psychedelic Rock to Progressive Rock and on. More funding usually means better research outcomes.

As mentioned, British art schools were producing young artists with fresh ideas about fashion and its relationship to music. These people were as likely to become musicians as fashion designers. Ray Davies, Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Christine McVie, Ian Dury, Cat Stevens, Bryan Ferry, and David Bowie all went to art school before making it in music.

How do you want the music to affect people?

Naturally I’d like the listener to be thrilled, transported and in a world he or she never knew existed, but that is not always achievable. Further, it’s also about me and the other performers, not only the listener. I want the music to affect me. I want to be surprised, engaged, and challenged by my colleagues on stage in a way that I haven’t been before. That, equally, is not always possible.

We aim for the stars, but sometimes settle for less. I feel the audience must leave knowing they have been in the presence of a high level of skill, and a collective, collaborative, creative endeavour of a few honest musicians giving of their best.

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in music?

• The music doesn’t exist to serve you; you exist to serve the music.
• If the music isn’t working well, leave something out.
• If you want to change your part to build tension, don’t do more, do less.
• The maximum tension you can add is by stopping completely.
• Greatest creative satisfaction lies in those performance contexts that can best accommodate and welcome expressive input and afford a sense of control of outcomes.
• A capacity for creative action is the rule rather than the exception.
• Creativity is both constrained by and achievable within all music genres and styles.
• Greater technical control in music invention affords a greater number of possible options from which to select.
• If you want to have your own voice, avoid what others are doing.

"Three of my key influences were Max Roach, for his economy of style; Joe Morello, for his effortlessness; and Art Blakey for his elegance and power. The acquisition of these 3 E’s – Economy, Effortlessness, and Elegance – have guided me in the balance between technique and soul to this day."

(Bill Bruford / Photo © by Graham Hutton)

Life is more than just music. Is there any other field that has influence on your life and music?

After I retired from international performance in 2009, I went to university for five years, and acquired a doctorate in musicology. I wrote a second book (Uncharted: Creativity and the Expert Drummer, 2018. Michigan University Press). I then became an academic author until 2022. So, I suppose you could say the study of music generally – how we use it, what we think it is, how we value it or not - has played an important part.

The other powerful ‘field’ that has influenced me is paternity. I have three children and five grand-children and watching their development over 47 years has been inspirational.

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