Robin Morley explains why he thinks musicians should stop showing off and get on with making some tunes...
Has there ever been a more infuriating recording artist than Frank Zappa? I doubt it. Just consider the man's attributes: incredible songwriting ability; a totally original way of thinking; and no sense of quality control whatsoever! There are dozens and dozens of Zappa albums out there in the marketplace. Many of them are great, of course, but the majority are patchy, self‑indulgent, or even totally pointless. Musical gems surrounded by hour after hour of needlessly flashy playing and daft time signatures. It's a bloated legacy.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that there's no place in music for excess. I suppose I just have some curious belief that any work of art should be able to justify its existence to the world. And the fact that there are only 37 live Zappa CDs available is not, in itself, the most compelling rationale for producing a 38th.
I've been thinking a great deal about this whole phenomenon lately, ever since I read Paul D. Lehrman's feature in August's SOS: 'A Technological Tribute To Frank Zappa'. Fascinating as they were, it wasn't really the mechanics of Mr Lehrman's super‑complex performance piece which interested me, so much as the motivation behind it. Here's Lehrman's summing‑up at the end of his article: "A well‑respected electronic musician, after hearing the piece, paid me what was possibly the highest compliment I could want. He asked me, 'How did you do that?'"
'How did you do that?' The kind of reaction you'd expect if you'd just produced a playing card from behind your ear — this is the highest compliment possible? Isn't there more to music than this? And yet this mentality is something we've all been a victim of from time to time. Why? Because all musicians and producers are, in the final analysis, terrible show‑offs. If we can approach something in a way that's just that little bit more involved, just that little bit more difficult, then we will.
We idolise technique‑heavy musicians like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. And we seethe when artists like Oasis and the Fugees touch nerves in the record‑buying masses with the simplest, most straightforward of material. "Stuff like that is so easy to do," we moan over our 15th pint. "I could put that track together in half an hour."
But could we really? Or would we be too busy slipping in that fancy chord we learned last week? Weaving in a few bars of 7/8 before the chorus? Or drenching the vocals needlessly in that cool effect from our newly‑acquired piece of outboard?
The more music I come across, the more it occurs to me that the finest attribute any performer or producer can possess is restraint. The ability to keep things simple, even though the option is there to complicate them. The ability to leave that drum pattern alone, rather than spending hours tinkering with it until it's 10 times worse than before. The ability to edit one's own output: shortening and refining the best songs, then consigning the rest to the bin.
Some people are born with such abilities. The rest of us need to develop these skills over time. But how? Well, from my experience, it's easier than you might think. All you need to do is put a few obstacles in the way of your normal working routine. For instance, how about turning off some of your equipment? Work with a limited palette, but squeeze every last drop of performance out of it. If you're working in your home studio, with no expensive hourly rates to keep you in check, try setting yourself deadlines: 15 minutes on that bassline, say, then leave it alone.
Try out your material on someone who isn't into your style of music. Listen to their criticisms. Maybe they're wrong. More likely, though, they'll hear aspects of your songs which you've overlooked. Try following their instincts, not yours — you might well come up with something unexpected.
Am I sounding a little preachy about this? If I am, it's with good reason. After all, I did undergo my own Damascus‑style conversion to this way of working a few years ago. Let me explain...
Invited to record a Peel Session at the BBC's Maida Vale studios, my band arrived to be greeted by our producer for the day: a gentleman responsible for hordes of classic, groundbreaking sessions, and a right miserable sod. We would, he informed us, only have a fraction of our allocated time to put down our tracks, so we'd better get on with it. And with that, he swivelled round to face the console.
Infused by a mixture of indignation and desperation, the five of us piled into the live room and proceeded to deliver our best performances ever. In fact, the broadcast session sounded better than any of our expensively‑produced album or single material. (Nor, of course, were we the first band to discover this phenomenon.)
Was the producer telling the truth about those nightmare time constraints? Or merely using a tried‑and‑tested tactic for getting sluggish musicians to hurry up? Who knows? Who cares? It did the job. So thank you, Mr BBC, for teaching me a valuable lesson — one which many studio and muso types out there would do well to learn (the Artist Formally Known As Worthwhile, for one).
Shout it from the rooftops. Less really is more. Restraint is everything.
Mind you, if I ever meet that producer guy down a dark alley...