Part 2 of the Cucamonga Interview with ph, (Belgian radio) December 1998
(augmented with some extras out of a newspaper article, based on the same interview though; enjoy!)


*****more on the voice*****


When I had just started with the band, I lost my voice every third concert. A visit to a singing master was a disappointing experience. Being the go-getter that I am, I started to look for a solution myself. Along the way I discovered techniques to save my voice. Obviously it was an advantage that I wrote the songs myself, and as such could decide upon the vocal settings myself ...


*****more on Liberal Studies in Science*****


Personally I find mathematics a very magical and creative area, especially when one is talking about complex and imaginary numbers. So it's not at all strange that I like using metaphors belonging to the scientific area.


*****on musicals / blues*****


I listened a lot to Chicago blues. In my opinion, there is still this blues influence in my songs. Furthermore I listened to the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who and the Animals quite a lot. Another thing I really loved in my youth were musicals. And I still really love musicals. Fantastic stuff! Great stuff! I really loved, I still do actually, the work of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Rodgers & Hart. Great! Great great stuff which, to be honest, does have a part to play in the way that I write. Just the way that blues does. Though these things will not be immediately apparent. I think that there is a lot of John Lee Hookeresque stuff in my riff writing, although obviously I accept that I am white, middle class and British and that therefore it is in no way appropriate to try and write a John Lee Hooker riff... But to write it from my perspective is reasonable I think.


*****on Hendrix, again*****


We [VdGG] even played a support act before a Jimi Hendrix gig.


*****on VdGG , Genesis, Bob Dylan & the heart of the matter***** Genesis wanted to be successful, certainly more than us [VdGG]. Maybe even: they wanted to be successful and we didn't want to be successful. That is not to say that we wanted to become failures, but we wanted the WORK to be successful. This also was a VdGG attitude. And this is still my attitude as to why I'm not personally bothered by not being famous. Though I still believe that the work deserves to have a lot more success and to be much more widely known. But as a grown-up, and especially knowing some famous people ... you know, actually, problems remain problems, however famous you are...


No two VdGG gigs were the same, we never had the same set list. Genesis however always played the same show over and over again: same songs, same order, same solos. Oh, not that I want to criticize them: I presume they thought this a fair attitude towards their audience, something like "this is our show". But we improvised a lot more ... with all its consequences ... From every five concerts, two were just good, one was just bad, a fourth one awful, and the fifth one just fantastic. We went on tour for this brilliant gig. You know, going to a VdGG gig was a gamble ... but our audience seemed prepared to run this risk. Compare it to Bob Dylan fans: even after a very bad evening they will say that they will go again next time he's around, because maybe it'll become the concert of their life ... Though I hope that these days my consecutive gigs are more on a level with one another. I really think this is possible without having to sell your soul for cheap professionalism. But still: why do I play concerts ? For that brilliant evening!


*****VdGG as instrument*****


[The answer to the question what the difference was between writing a PH solo song and a VdGG song, especially of course during the period that VdGG was going, seems a difficult one, so after some reflection...] .. Let me put it this way: If you have been writing for a string quartet and suddenly you get an orchestra to write for, you write to try to extend your possibilities of writing. Obviously VdGG, rather than PH solo, was "the instrument" that was going to play what I wrote. So yes, while VdGG was going, that's what I wrote for. Although I have to add that this frontier between writing purely for myself and for the band faded away over the years. I remember that after our reformation, in the time of Godbluff, we decided very democratically - with a ballot and all that - on which songs we were going to play or not. I can tell you that some songs ended on the set list that we had never played together before. I presume this meant we had become grown-ups... But again, in this self-education thing, there was this question that I can write things that are more complicated because we were able to play things that were more complicated. These three things: my nascent musicianship, my songwriting and the instrument that was VdGG pulled each other along.


*****improvisation***** Usually songs come out of improvisation, rather than, say, "I'm going to write a song in E minor". Having said that my number one thing is being a songwriter, one of the things that I can do really well is "organize it". This is perhaps a reminiscence of the scientist in me, but I can stick together these different coloured building blocks in a way which makes sense, at least to me! This, for me, is being a musician: organize this journey of how on earth will we go from here to there...


*****recording at home/tape manipulation*****


The fact that I could record everything myself in a room and produce my own music was something that attracted me, and I wanted to learn it. And I think I knew enough about recording to do it. And round about that time it also became clear to me that it was possible to improvise with the tape running, and use the tape medium as an improvisatory tool. There are a number of songs written like that: where the song has not been written at all. And by a combination of overdubbing, addition, subtraction, editing, reversing, manipulating, etc. I can effectively do the songwriting and improvisatory process in real time, while the thing is going on.


The Jargon King is basically tape manipulation. It's exactly one of those improvised pieces: various tapes, some of which I think are outtakes from somewhere else. I had them on loops and then ran the loops, ended up with three or four different loops running simultaneously, after which I edited the multitrack down. And obviously, while I was working on this for a period of time ... "oh, this is a chorus!" in exactly the same way that a tune comes along while one is improvising. So exactly the same thing happens while working on the tape as it would if I was playing piano, guitar or what have you.


*****sofa sound/terra incognita & working hours...*****


It's a good thing that I have to go out of the door and have this 15 minute drive [from Freshford to Bath] to the studio. If the studio is just downstairs [as it was before], you open the door, you're in, and there's not really enough time for reflection. When I was recording at home, I'd be up at 9.00, be in the studio at 9.30 and work until 3.00 in the morning ... and then be up again at 9.00, in the studio at 9.30 and do this continuously ... which could be, er, er, interesting, but not necessarily that great. These days, I'm still in the studio at about9.30, and I work until about seven or eight, maybe nine if I'm really in the middle of a song, an album, but then it's peaking, it's six days a week. But I try to have at least one day off. Life is life, one ought to live it.


*****lyrics / ambition /recognition***** [The question as to what is PH's real ambition seems a tough one ... after a long reflection comes the following answer, which is quite an interesting example of how PH can be challenged by a question, of how an answer develops through talking about the known aspects & thinking on how to relate it to new aspects simultaneously ...]


I don't think that there exists an underlying ambition that keeps all my songs together ... All the more so because they have been written in between my 15th and 50th birthday. I don't write songs if I think that the subject is simply to do with me. I did write songs like that because I was 18 or 19 and there was absolutely no doubt that I was the most important person who'd ever existed in the universe and my every thought was central to the continuation of that universe... As it is at 18 or 19... But gradually since then I can only write about things that I think are important, if not within the experience of the majority, then within the experience of a substantial minority. The only thing I have to say, whatever the style may be, is "sometimes it looks or feels like this". And if I do a good job at that, then something is there for a member of my audience. Not the same as my own experience obviously, but the normal artistic process that sometimes an artist does something which the person who receives it recognises... Yes, strive for recognition seems an appropriate description of my ambition!


You could say that I am completely mad because I'm still doing this work, and that I am an eccentric genius because I succeeded in carrying on ........