
COME BACK IN THREE HALVES,
Bruce Gilbert (Wire) interview for Thee
Data Base
One of the most dangerous things about the
current music scene is the resurgence of
the dodgy-middled-aged-male fraternity.
You know the kind, the ex-punks - or even
worse, the ex-prog-rockers - who think they
have something new to say.
Alas, the likes of Killing Joke, Tangerine
Dream and Steve Hillage have very little
to say - but give them their credit, they
know a good bandwagon when they see one.
It would be easy, and more than a little
insulting, to disregard the whole generation
out of hand. There are some who have marched
swiftly to the forefront of new electronica
such as Andy Weatherall and Alex Paterson
and there are some who have been making
absurdist and avant-garde music quietly
in the background.
One such luminary is Bruce Gilbert. His
music career started fresh out of college
in 1976 when he joined as guitarist / writer
for Wire. They seemed to be a little too
clever for the heady maelstrom of punk,
but that only made their survival more inevitable.
They managed to succeed outside of the usual
rigours of the standard album-tour format
and their imagination even carried them
through a five year hiatus from 1980-1985.
During that time, Wire never performed or
recorded as a group, instead the members
drifted from one solo / duo project to another.
Bruce Gilbert notched up an impressive back-catalogue
of work, mainly with Wire vocalist Graham
Lewis, in Dome, Duet Emmo and P'o.
It was P'o that brought Thee Data Base in
touch with Bruce Gilbert in November last
year. The track "Blind Tim" from
the only P'o album, "Whilst Climbing
Thieves Vie For Attention", was used
a continous loop in an eight hour installation
/ performance from Glasgow "Live Art"
collective, Cylinder. Their idea of Cylinder's
"Blind Tim" performance inspired
Gilbert to visit Glasgow, framed as it was
in the context of the National Review Of
Live Art.
Though he would never call himself a performance
artist, Gilbert & Lewis' 'Dome' collaboration
sparked off a series of live art performances
at venues such as Manchester's Hacienda,
the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and the
Rotterdam Arts Festival.
"We never called it 'performance' as
such" explained Bruce Gilbert, in an
impromptu interview in the midst of Cylinder's
set. "There was a need to make the
music three dimensional. We wanted a physical
equivalent of our approaches in the studio,
which had a strong absurdity angle.
"Our work had to be done in 3D. When
you create something out of context, if
you have no history of intellectual context,
it becomes anecdotal at best or just absurd
- cliche ridden quite often. The object
was to put our approach to things in the
context of normal music. When we were invited
to "arts" events we were very
uncomfortable. We didn't want a career as
performance artists. I dabbled as a performer."
Why then did 'Dome' perform at such events
if Gilbert did not see himself as a performance
artist?
"Being a rock group, we had to perform
at both levels or no levels. Wire as a group
were always committed towards using multi-media.
When you use record company money to make
absurd things, when the record company had
no idea what the money was to be used for,
then you had to have a strategy. It was
a good background, coming from a musical
entity, but people just expected us to play
Wire songs. They expected us to play punk
rock songs and they didn't get it. We were
progressing very quickly. We used to confront
audiences with something they would never
dream of seeing at any other time, but eventually
people did see the link. We saw the link,
so it needed to be done. We had the opportunity,
so we had to use it."
Wire returned to recording in 1985 with
'Snakedrill' released through Mute records.
As the most prolific and certainly most
respected 'independent' label in the UK,
Mute saw Wire sit side-by-side with the
likes of Neubauten, Nick Cave and Diamanda
Galas. The credibility of Mute's recent
attatchments with the likes of Ritchie Hawtin
and Moby have enevitability done Gilbert's
profile no harm.
He was invited to DJ at the now-legendary
Brittronica Festival in Moscow with the
Aphex Twin and Alex Paterson amongst others.
"When I sent over my requirements,
I said that I wanted to be DJing in a shed.
I got there and there was no shed. It wasn't
as if there were any large pieces of wood
lying around that I could make one out of
- you learn to do these things in those
situations. I said to the organisers "Where's
the shed?" They just looked at me and
laughed and said, "We just thought
you were joking."
"It soon became obvious to me that
all the resident DJs were just little Moscow
rich kids with baseball caps playing Madonna
records. The club was basically full of
members of the Russian Mafia and their girlfriends.
The "kids" that we wanted to play
to couldn't afford the tickets. We were
not playing to "real people".
"I tried to duck out of my DJ spot,
but the rest of them said to me, "You're
only playing fucking records...". I
started off with what I normally play -
"drones" by people like Phil Niblock.
I thought it would set the scene, a scene
on top of which you can do anything. The
audience were becoming restless, they wanted
to dance to the Top Ten western dancey-dancey
tracks. "I decided to put on "Frankie
Teardrop", I thought "well, it's
got a kind of beat", but it's basically
just acapella screaming and it goes beautifully
with the drones. All of sudden I was surrounded
by people on stage with shiny shirts saying
"Why are you not playing music for
the people?". They started to look
through my record bag and I was saying "Madonna
isn't in there..." After that, I put
this other tape on and a man in an even
shinier shirt came up and said "People
want to dance!", so by this point I
had had enough and I just said, "Oh,
fuck off." Then he started saying,
"No, you fuck off!" and it went
on from there "Fuck Off!", "No
You Fuck Off!", "No You Fuck Off!"...
"While this was going on, I turned
to Richard James and I said "I've done
my bit! It's your turn!". He put on
this dancey thing and these uniformed goons
arrive. They were basically Russian SAS
moonlighting as security guards. The Aphex
Twin had played about thirty seconds of
this beautifully groovy music when he was
physically removed from the stage.
"We both went upstairs and Alex Paterson
was just like, "What the fuck's going
on? I'm going down to do my set..."
He come back thirty seconds later shouting
"Bastards! Wouldn't even let me audition..."
"Ultramarine were due on next, but
they said they weren't playing if the DJs
weren't allowed to play. The coach was called
and the roadies from Ultramarine were the
last people out. We were all on the coach
and it was just revving up to go, when they
came running out of the building towards
the bus - they just went in there and pulled
out all the plugs for the resident DJs...
"The frustration was in that we never
got to play in front of real people. We
never met the "underground" of
Russia. If you'd had that line up in this
country, people would be queuing in the
streets - it would have been a great idea.
What's a bunch of show-off Russian DJs compared
to the likes of Alex Paterson?"
Not to be disheartened from such an event,
Gilbert has taken up a monthly DJ residency,
appearing as 'The Beekeper' at the Disboey
Club in London.
"It's a club with an eclectic mix of
acts with everything from standard free
jazz to situationist ranters like Stewart
Home. As a DJ at Disobey there are certain
rules I have to follow. Records are allowed
to be old and temporarily unavailable, but
they must have been commercially available
at some point. Having no record player at
home also makes life interesting."
The last recorded output from Wire was under
the name Wir, following the departure of
drummer of Robert Gotobed. The album, 'The
First Letter', surfaced in 1991, and since
then all has been unnervingly quiet in the
Wire camp.
"When you don't sell a large quantity
of records, you are in a very vulnerable
position. We were put in the position of
having to sell our arses to the Americans.
We were on tour in the US and I was being
given a few $ a day in payment and I thought
to myself, "I don't need to be put
through this kind of pressure." Mute
wanted to sell us to America - it was just
like being on the record business hamster
wheel. We never had a contract with Mute
though. If Daniel Miller dies, we're all
up shit creek.
"'Wire' is asleep. Colin [Newman] is
a record company now, doing trance LPs.
He loves the complications of the business
- he's the only real muso out of all of
us. Graham has left the Mute family. He's
living in Sweden and it would cost £400
for one airfare. The bottom line is that
to finance people you have to promise tours
and get into deeper shit with record companies.
We're perfectly capable of getting into
a room and making a noise, but at the moment
that's not on the table."
Following Gilbert's Glasgow visit, he returned
to London to instigate a one-off 'Dome'
performance at Disobey with Graham Lewis.
Quite what that says for his future plans,
remains to be seen. He says he's taking
things easy, making plans and waiting for
invitations. So and slow it grows.
back
to text | back to top
|