Like his Uncle George, Derek saw pubs as his first port of call as a guitar player. Sheffield was not much use for music in the early fifties, so the job required a trip to Bradford.
In 1951, I went to Bradford to play with a trio, in a lounge – a pub, but a rather smart pub. There I met one of the first musicians who was influential for me – I mean I learned quite a lot from him. He was a blind pianist which was quite significant for the approach to the music in the group, of course. Stan Hume, ‘the Mayor of Bingley’, as we used to call him. He lived in Cottingley, and the pub job was in Keighley. I was living in Bradford (the magic in these names!). I used to share this job with another guitar player called Laurie Steel, a friend of mine I’d first met in Sheffield. First when I went there I lived in his house, then I moved into a house in the Lumb Lane area, which even in those days was a black area. I lived with what used to be described as a ‘mixed family’ – black father and white mother. One of the children, who was twenty-one, was a fan of this band I played in. He was a phantom vibes player. He didn’t play anything, he used to stand in front of the band and mime vibes parts to what we were playing. As a lot of the stuff we were playing was unison piano and guitar, it made more sense than it might sound, but it still looked rather surprising, especially to a room full of drunks. The other guitar player was a great guy. He drove a taxi as well. Additionally, we both used to sell polish door to door. But we did it via taxi. We would drive round in a taxi and then get out when we spotted a likely-looking area and try and flog polish. The patter went something like, ‘I’m from Evod, Staffs, and I’ve been asked to call on you to demonstrate our new product, “Dove”…’ This would produce a wide variety of responses. Another revealing exercise. Many of these jobs were significant for me in reinforcing what I already knew – that I did not want to know about the ‘real’ world. [10–x–1997]
How long did it take to reach the status of professional musician?
From my first three-or-four-night pub job in 1950 I considered myself a professional musician … but the first time it was economically justified was in early 1952. I got a genuine full-time job, working every night and two afternoons for a band that was resident in a dance hall, a fifteen-piece band. I played guitar in that. That went on through most of 1952, that was fine for me, I thought I was learning something, which I probably was. Anyway I didn’t learn enough, I got fired from that. This was an occupational hazard if you were a guitar player in a big band, and also if you played bits of bebop – which was my inclination. Strangely enough, even as late as 1952, it wasn’t generally recognised as being a part of popular music. I got sacked for playing ‘Ornithology’ in a quickstep melody. It was a contributory factor, anyway. [8–x–1997]
I asked Derek if he’d seen Sven Klangs Kvintett, Stellan Olsson’s 1976 film depicting the tensions between professional musicianship and bebop deviance in a 1950s dance band in Denmark. It’s often cited – alongside Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight – as one of the few films about jazz told from a musician’s perspective. Derek had seen it. Was it romanticised?
I thought it was a pretty good film. Authentic, in so far as any film could be – to put that experience into an hour and a half. [8–x–1997]
The sax player launches into a bebop solo and the dancers grind to a halt …
That wasn’t my experience. I don’t know how the dancers reacted. The bandleader, though, definitely didn’t like it! [laughs] [8–x–1997]
Musicians kept in touch with each other about possible employment, generally by letter.
In 1953, I went up to Glasgow, again at the invitation of Laurie Steel. I was doing some grisly job, delivering Walls ice cream I think. In Glasgow I shared a flat with Laurie on Royal Terrace, a wonderful flat overlooking a park that led up to the university. I really liked Glasgow. Incredibly strong atmosphere at that time.
That flat, in 1953, was where I first took part in what would have to be described as Free Improvisation. Three guitars, Laurie, me and another guy individually retuned our guitars and … played. The results? Can’t remember. We didn’t try it again. But that kind of exploratory episode, while uncommon, happened now and then, and my guess is that it has always happened. Nobody invented Free Improvisation.
I did some work in the Stage & Screen club, really a dump, with a trio. After a while they had a change of policy – what that meant was that one week they couldn’t pay us and we got thrown out. I stayed in Glasgow quite a bit, and though it sounds like a melodramatic exaggeration, I got close, I think, to starving to death. I was living on virtually nothing as regards eating. Laurie was working and he was very generous to me, but I missed most meals. Finally I surrendered and went back to Sheffield and turned up at my parents’ and they said, I told you so, we’ve had this in the family before. [10–x–1997]
As a variation in the programme of weekly interrogations, Derek Bailey recorded a tape of reminiscences at his home, without me being there. For this he adopted the alias of an out-and-about roving reporter on the trail of Charlie Appleyard, the senile and embittered musician who first made an appearance in the programme of Company Week 1990 (see Chapter 5), where he claimed to have ‘invented’ Free Improvisation. Derek’s partner Karen Brookman was on hand to ask questions, too.
Investigative Reporter: And here we are at the ‘Have You Ever Considered Euthanasia? Hospice’, where we expect to find in the terminate ward of the one-foot-in-the-grave section a musician nowadays known as Charlie Appleyard, who you might remember, if you remember him at all, as Derek Bailey, the infamous serial killer who was accused of murdering – in a cold-blooded and horrific manner – the whole of the first generation, starting with Ego Park-It, of what used to be called the Free Improvisors, or some such ridiculous name. Ever since then he’s been incarcerated, muttering to himself over and over again, ‘These treacherous motherfuckers, treacherous motherfuckers …’ For years, nobody has been able to get another word out of him. But we are hoping to reveal the whole history here in a series – I think it’ll run to a series – entitled ‘Is That All?’ Meanwhile, let’s check out Charlie D. B. Appleyard … [10–x–1997]
Karen has been drawing a wallchart of Appleyard’s life: ‘I’ve got to here – you’re in Sheffield and your marital status is single …’.
Single, yes, free as a bird. I think my main sexual activity was masturbation. 1954, 1955 was a period that was pretty much doom and gloom all the way. I had very little playing work and during this time I stopped playing altogether. I’d never done that voluntarily before. For as long as I could remember I always seemed to be involved in playing music of some kind. But it was obvious things weren’t working out too well, so I thought, Let’s see what happens if I stop this nonsense. I learnt a lot from that hiatus.
Firstly, I realised that working or not, there was absolutely nothing else I wanted to do. Then – and this is difficult to describe – the thing I really missed was practising, and I realised the importance for me of simply working continuously on playing. Until that time, I’d practised regularly but usually for the realisation of specific ends, usually technical. But from that time my interest has grown in a wider view of practising. Starting around then, and continuing until now, I came to see it as something that served all kinds of purposes. Providing some sort of personal musical environment that you can constantly work on and develop. And if it’s possible to think in a tactile way, then sometimes it’s that. Is it a psychological need? You’ll never be alone if you practise? Whatever … since that time, however much I’m working, I know there’s more to playing than a string of gigs. There’s a guy in Japan plays shakuhachi – Japan is always full of Americans studying with him – who practises, he says, for the good of his health. I can dig that.
Curiously, during this period I had my second brush with what could be described as free playing. A pianist called Eddie Barton had a trio – with bass and drums – and they invited me to play with them on a couple of occasions. They used to play pieces written by Eddie and then improvise freely – as far as I could detect – over them. I’d always assumed that improvising without reference to mutually recognised harmony was a sure sign of incompetence. But they gave every indication of doing this deliberately. It made no difference to me. I couldn’t make head or tail of it. And I was probably too concerned to exercise my skills, as I thought, not to use them. It would be another ten years before I figured out that conventional skills are just as useful in free playing as they are in playing any music.
Incidentally, I don’t want to set off a gold rush, but I have an impression that the E. Barton Trio made a record about that time.
My personal life had become extremely complicated. I’d met Frank Long and a Mrs Priest, who later became the first Mrs Bailey.
Karen interrupts Charlie Appleyard: ‘When did you actually get married, Charlie?’
I think it was September ’55. I don’t know that it ever worked. I married this woman because at the time it seemed the easier thing to do than not marrying her. She got divorced from this guy – not entirely due to me – but before we got married it was sort-of obviously doomed I suppose, but anyway I went through with it, I didn’t know any better really. Stupidity was always my ace-in-the-hole, I could always play that.
Then I got a playing job and from that time on – 1955 or so – I worked continuously, playing virtually every night, even in some periods days too, until 1968 or so, when I stopped doing commercial work altogether. But in ’55 that job was with a trio in a restaurant; musically it was abysmal. I had to double on bass and piano. Of course, I couldn’t play either bass or piano in any meaningful sense, but I did my best not to let on about that. Anyway, the requirements were so primitive – playing piano, for instance, all I was required to do was play a few chords while the pianist played a few melodies on the vibes. We were in this quite posh restaurant, maybe Sheffield’s at-that-time most posh restaurant, located in a cinema, the Green Room it was called. Six nights a week and well paid. That went on quite a while until it was driving me nuts. At least it gave me a chance to do some work on the side. One of the things I’d taken up then – totally misguided – was studying arranging. As they used to say, ‘I’m an arranger/composer’ now. I started doing it for other bands. One of the bands I was doing it for offered me a job as bass player, guitar player and staff arranger. So I left this trio thing – this is ’56 – and joined this big band. The first piece I had to arrange for them was the national anthem! Arranging, in my experience, wasn’t a question of sitting up all night waiting for inspiration, the inspiration was delivered. Usually on a Friday evening, and in some detail. Like, ‘I’ve heard so-and-so play this like this, I’d like a version that’s similar.’ I got fired from that. I finished back at the Green Room in this trio.
This job had certain secondary attractions. American touring bands used to eat there. English bands didn’t because they couldn’t afford it; the Americans could, and it seemed to be a policy of the management to get them in there. So I did meet a lot of American musicians. I got to know, on two or three occasions, the Basie band, for instance. Of course there was the terrible embarrassment that we had to play in front of these guys. Not only did we play to these guys, we would on occasions play with them. I wonder how many other British guitarists have played with Lionel Hampton? He sat in with us one night and, astonishingly, he played ‘Star Dust’. I mean, ‘Star Dust’ had been his feature, even then, for twenty years, and he must have played it every night of the week for twenty years. He sat in and played ‘Star Dust’! That was kind of instructive.
In 1957 I left Sheffield. I never went back to Sheffield until the Joseph Holbrooke saga started, which was the end of ’63. I went to Leeds and I stayed there quite a while and worked in this dance hall, and that was a very good period for me. I met a woman there who I lived with. We had a very successful – the only successful arrangement with a female I’ve ever had other than my present one. [10–x–1997]
Karen must be blushing. ‘You are ridiculous …’
I’m sorry! [claps] This is the truth, we have to give the truth to this man, he’s a serious journalist and biographer. But I can’t talk about this. It was a great time; socially and musically. I was working six afternoons and six nights: a quartet, good, and always at least one musician I could learn something from, we were doing occasional broadcasts, the occasional gig afterwards. Even, on occasion, before. It was possible to do morning gigs then. Say, for the opening of a furniture store. Something of that sort. If they wanted music, they had to have musicians.
I played in the jazz club two or three nights a week run in Leeds by a fellow called Bob Barclay, a black guy famous for his red beans and rice. So a lot of musicians – again, strangely enough, mainly touring American musicians – used to come in for the food. And be inflicted by us! I used to play there when I finished in the dance hall, this would be Thursday, Friday. Friday and Saturday the thing would go on all night and lots of people would sit in. It could be grisly, but Thursday was often very nice. But at that time, I thought it was all fantastic, great. I couldn’t imagine anything better. [10–x–1997]
Karen: ‘What happened next?’
I went to France, so I guess this was ’58. I went to work with Stan Hume again. He had a five-piece there, a quartet with a singer. In France I lived in Orléans, then we went to Charente, I lived in Angoulême – shall I spell these? [laughs] – and I lived in La Rochelle, and then I lived in a great little place named Châtelaillon-Plage, which is on the coast, the Bay of Biscay, somewhere between La Rochelle and Bordeaux. This lasted maybe six months. We were working for the American forces who had bases nearby. There were French people there who claimed the Americans were worse than the Germans. They were still there, more than ten years after the war, and the whole economy of that part of France ran on the Americans being there. Working on the American bases is a special experience. You’d play to a six- or seven-hundred all-male audience that had just come in from a day crawling around with rifles in a muddy field somewhere. All they wanted to do was get totally pissed. Their musical taste … wow. Fifty per cent of it was ‘Night Train’. To compound the viciousness of this situation they all came from Oklahoma. There’s a special thing about Okies and music. For a start, they all play guitar, country. They all know how to play guitar, they think, and I’m sitting there doing my fucking Charlie Christian act, which they do not want to know about. Though he came from Oklahoma as it happens, not that they would know that – well some of them did. It’s easy to underrate these guys just because their behaviour was so moronic. That’s the soldiery, isn’t it? You put a huge bunch of young guys together, throw a lot of drink at them, train them how to be aggressive, and what’re they going to do? [10–x–1997]
Their main concentration was on our female vocalist, which is what she was there for, and she was great, she was fantastic at dealing with these fuckers. As a singer, she was quite good, and sort-of ambitious. But then again she knew that the only way she could survive in this environment was to have a relationship with an American in some position of authority. So all the time I knew her she had a boyfriend who was at least a sergeant or something. So it protected her a little bit, she made sure everyone knew about it. [15–x–1997]
Sounds like a Hollywood war film – the girl singer and the GIs …
But in those films they would be playing tunes like ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’, ballads. These bastards didn’t want that. They wanted, at the most, six or seven tunes – all country – each repeated about twelve times a night. They also liked slightly risqué tunes. Stanley had a stock of these slightly dirty tunes which he sang, and the GIs loved them. It was always interesting working for Stanley, partly for his musicianship, but also the way he looked at things, if you’ll excuse the expression, being the blind pianist I’d worked for in Bradford in ’51, very good musician. Also, not surprisingly, a total cynic. He was funny. Stanley was a con man, and to see him working a con was a thing of beauty. His victims were the GIs. All Americans, according to Stanley, were incurably sentimental, a direct result of this being that they all suffered from ‘momism’: after a few beers they inevitably start talking about Mom. He seemed to prefer them in that condition. He operated a variety of cons; for instance, he would persuade some guys to play dice with him. He always won. He couldn’t see anything of course, but they made sure he won. He had an additional income raking money off these guys. We all totally approved. These guys were getting paid more money for a day rolling around in the mud than we got for a month playing ‘Night Train’. Anyway, through him, we never paid for alcohol; an absolute necessity in that situation. [15–x–1997]
We lived off the bases at Châtelaillon on the Bay of Biscay, and three of us shared a room in a hotel, a great place right on the front. A small holiday hotel in a small holiday resort. At lunchtime we used to eat at the hotel. It was summer and full of holidaymakers. Everybody ate the same, a pension-type place. The long tables were full of families, and the three of us were at a little table. We had more or less no money. Badly paid, we didn’t always get paid on time. We were paid monthly, and we worked for a Paris agent. [laughs] I guess he was a one-hundred-percent crook. What money we had evaporated on our night off. Lunch was at twelve and everybody moved in there, it was festive. All the tables, with families and kids, were groaning with wine. Even the kids were drinking wine. Our table, the Anglos, were sitting there with – a bottle of water. Eventually, the people who ran the hotel couldn’t stand it, they gave us a bottle of wine, just to start us off. And, of course, it did.
The first course every day – local thing – was twelve oysters on a soup plate. I hated oysters in those days, I could hardly look at the bloody things! Hung-over, every day starting with twelve oysters. Stanley loved oysters. But there were certain things Stanley couldn’t do – it was amazing what he couldn’t do and it was amazing what he could do – and somehow it became my job to prise free first his twelve oysters and then my twelve oysters and give them to him, loose in the shell. [15–x–1997]
The restaurant didn’t open them for you?
No. I had to go through all that, and he just sat there like a big toad – glug, glug. That’s a very strong memory. He was known as ‘the Mayor of Bingley’ due to a rap he had and was liable to produce anywhere. For instance, this bedroom we had – three of us, the tenor player, me and Stanley – had a balcony, and he used to go out and make speeches on the balcony. He’d start, ‘I’d better introduce myself, I’m Stan Hume, the Mayor of Bingley. Now while you might not have heard of Bingley, I’d like you to know I’ve never heard of fucking Châtelaillon!’ That kind of thing. Nobody walking about underneath knew what he was on about, of course. He was a funny man, and he was a real good piano player, maybe the first really good musician I ever worked with. Perhaps. Probably was. [15–x–1997]
How did you learn the country songs? Sheet music?
No, no written music, the band leader was blind! One of the skills you develop is learning tunes quickly, and they’re not the most complicated tunes in the world. He would play it and he would expect me to be able to play it also – by the latest, third time round. If we’d played three choruses, he’d expect me to be playing the melody. Whereas he’d expect me automatically to play the right chords. In this kind of work, which at that time I’d been doing consistently for some years, if you can’t get by without sheet music in most situations, you don’t work. A fairly low level of work, but it does demand certain skills. Reading music is secondary. [15–x–1997]
How did you come to leave France?
I left France and went to this band in Glasgow – travelling from the Bay of Biscay to Glasgow by train and boat on a bank holiday weekend – the reason was that it was a twelve-piece band and there was no pianist in it, which was attractive to me. I’d never done it before, I had to take that role on the guitar. It was interesting for a while. [15–x–1997]
Because you had more responsibility?
You’d got more to play, yes. This was a pretty good job, but already by the late fifties those big-band jobs were moving on the skids. It had been gradually getting worse for years, but not to the point where it affected what I did. In fact, I was finding it easier to get work.
Now after that, things get complicated as regards movements. I moved from there – probably because I wanted to get back to a small group – to Edinburgh. Edinburgh was great, living in Edinburgh is something I’ve always retained as a possible reserve option. The group wasn’t bad, and I had a lot of extra musical activity – I don’t know if it was good, it was, I suppose, playing jazz and that. It was an amazing town for parties, I found, and I was there over a Christmas/New Year period, about three months, which was really fantastic. Opposite the dance hall was this beautiful little pub called the Fair Exchange. Terrific library there as well. So cold, in February, so cold, quite a special experience. [15–x–1997]
Where did you stay? Were there digs for musicians like the boarding houses that actors stay in?
Generally speaking I’d aim for a flat. When I first went to Edinburgh, I inherited the flat of the guitar player who had just left, which was a usual thing. You turn up, somebody meets you at the station, you go to the dance hall and do a rehearsal. Then they’d say, ‘You’d better go to George’s place.’ I was taking over from George Firth, the doyen of dancehall guitar players. He’d been around for years. Apart from his reputation as a guitar player, he might have been even better known as a drinker.
I went into this flat. The curtains hadn’t been opened for weeks, apparently. In the wardrobe there were lines of empty beer bottles going round and round in tiers, right to the top. Amazing construction. Next to the bed was a cupboard, opening it all these crisp packets fell out. I guess that was his diet. Interesting player. They used to call him ‘the Billy May of the guitar’. That won’t mean anything to you. Billy May was an American arranger, arranged some Sinatra albums. [15–x–1997]
Actually, with the Easy Listening revival, Billy May’s time has come again. He wrote the score for Johnny Cool, a 1963 throwback to film noir directed by teen-beach supremo William Asher, with the title theme – ‘The Ballad of Johnny Cool’ – sung by Sammy Davis Jr. However, the re-release of the soundtrack on Rykodisc (to the jubilation of loungecore fans everywhere) post-dated this conversation, so we’re treated to Derek’s description of May’s style.
May’s speciality was glissing saxophones, slurping and sliding all over the place. And George Firth (who was not doing it to copy Billy May) pretty much always glissed when going from one note to another. Quasi-Hawaiian, very commercial sort of sound. But he was very accomplished in certain ways. I remember asking him once if, as it appeared, he only played on the top two strings? He said, ‘Yes, why bother with the others, there’s nothing down there.’ I said, ‘Do you never play them?’ He said, ‘If I played them they would sound terrible, haven’t changed them in years.’ But George could work anywhere because of his busking abilities. He could play anything. This was in trio or quartet jobs where the guitar played the melody much of the time. He also, importantly, had a very good sound. On the top two strings, of course. [15–x–1997]
What does this have to do with finding a place to stay?
After a couple of weeks of George’s place I had to get out. The place was suicidal. I went into digs – again, three of us in one bedroom. It was a workingman’s digs, fantastic place, run by a Welsh guy who’d fallen off a scaffolding, his head was a strange shape, and his Scottish wife. The rest of the inmates used to work on building sites, one or two lorry drivers, and we all used to eat in the evening around one huge table. We were treated like fucking mascots, figures of fun – you guys are musicians?? [laughs] They were real nice guys. It was a great place. Stayed in lots of digs at different times. Not all of them were great. [10–x–1997]
Return of the Investigative Reporter: We now leave, as Charlie ‘D. B.’ Appleyard appears to have moved back to his ‘treacherous motherfuckers’ mantra. This, apparently, is a sign that he wants to be fed. I think we’d better leave him now. So, bye. D’you think there’s any chance he might get fed? [10–x–1997]
Karen: ‘There’s a chance. Thank you Charlie.’
The tape finishes.
Bailey is keen to inform a younger generation about the conditions for a working musician in the 1950s.
One of the things missing in describing this stuff is context. It was a strange world. I liked it very much, maybe loved it. The idea of dance halls around today seems to come from television programmes made in the sixties, when dance halls as a social function had become completely defunct. The images of a bunch of ostriches leaping around in acres of space with a band in the background trying to keep up has nothing to do with the kind of places dance halls were [Bailey is referring to the tacky British TV series Come Dancing]. During the period I worked in them – from the beginning to the end of the fifties – they were slowly dying, I guess, but they still fulfilled a very special social role.
Essentially, the dance hall was a youth thing, this is the only fucking place they had to go to. The average age would go from fifteen, sixteen up to twenty-five. But these places might be open all day, and in the afternoons it changed, you’d get older people. Everything could happen in the dance halls. Primarily, everybody was there for sex. Looking for it or, in some places, getting it. A lot of criminal activity was centred on the dance hall. The afternoon was the time for the widest variety of people to use them. Many of them had balconies, alcoves – they were sometimes quite architecturally exotic places, vaguely oriental – some professional football teams seemed to spend most afternoons of the week there. Perhaps they considered it part of their training. Maybe they were just drinking tea. There was nowhere else to go, for fuck’s sake, there weren’t any drinking clubs. Of course they didn’t sell alcohol, but all kinds of things were moving around the balconies. The dance floor would be almost empty. Musically, the afternoons were the best times. You could pretty much play what you like. Nights were completely different. These were often big, cavernous, sweaty, dark places and most nights they would be packed. Weekends were the time for fights. Fountainbridge Palais in Edinburgh, when I worked there, seemed to specialise in Friday fights. These were gangs fighting each other. You could see a fight moving round the hall. A favourite vantage point was the bandstand, and when they got to the stage you were supposed to carry on playing. You’d get a fight going between two bunches of lads – the toilets were deadly places sometimes to be in, if something was going off – and they’d work down the side, because there was a bit of room, and they’d get a kind of foothold on the stand if they could while they’d fight. Kids they were, kids. I don’t know if anyone got seriously hurt. Nowadays, kids are into serial killing and so on, but I don’t think back then that they’d thought about that. In some places a cage would come down and surround the band. [8–x–1997]
Like a fire curtain?
Yeah, actually a metal thing … this seemed to be a speciality of Glasgow dance halls, of which there seemed to be dozens. I think they were more concerned to protect the equipment than the musicians. There were all sorts of mechanical devices around. Particularly in the afternoons, the music had to be continuous even while the bands changed over, and they facilitated this by having revolving bandstands. In Belfast one time, I witnessed an amazing sight when a vibraphone, trapped between the revolving stand and an immovable wall, gradually got squeezed into an accordionlike contraption. And the band played on.
Socially it was, I think, an unusual life. There was no real separation between players and the people you played for. The musicians came from the same background, of course, sometimes still lived with them. And yet it was a completely separate life, almost a kind of secret society. A completely integrated alternative. There were no illusions about ‘the people’. Unlike in art, there was absolutely no interest in what ‘the punters’ thought about what we were doing. All nonmusicians were alluded to as peasants. Nothing personal, just an acceptance that what the general public demands of music is that it’s not demanding. They save their mental and sensual exertions for other things. And there was a kind of scatological approach to life. The obscenity count wasn’t anywhere near as high as in the navy, but, for instance, more or less every song title would have accepted lewd associations, which could make requests intriguing. Some years ago, Emanem put out a record on which I’m talking about Margaret Thatcher [‘The Last Post’, In whose Tradition?, Emanem 3404, 1988] and at the same time playing ‘You Go to My Head’. In the extremely unlikely event of any of my former colleagues hearing this, they would immediately get the point of it, because they would have heard it used for the same purpose before. Don’t imagine anybody else did. None of this seemed obviously cynical. Maybe it was a kind of defence against the unrelieved gruesome sentimentality of the stuff we were playing.
After Edinburgh, it was more of the same but more so. I was changing jobs every few weeks. Partly because I could do so, but also because I was finding it harder to find work that served what I was looking for. The only constant thing I can find about the music I play, from the beginning up to now, is that I can feel okay about it if I feel I’m learning something. If I think – however misleading the impression might be – that I’m moving a little bit somewhere. A new job would provide that for a while, but the periods when I could feel that were getting shorter. And although, strangely, I was finding it easier to get work, it was clear that the skids were under the whole enterprise. Dance halls were still open, but increasingly the requirement was that you play nothing but the top fifty. [8–x–1997]
Was this then a golden era of live music before records took over?
It had been, but I guess it was its last throw. We were moving into the era where live music’s main justification was how successfully it could replicate recorded music. Whereas previously there had been a lot of freedom, if not in what you played at least in how you played it, now popular music seemed to be incomprehensible unless somebody had previously sold 50 million copies of it. At the present time, of course, it’s all much more efficient. They’ve dumped the musicians altogether and they simply play the records. Perfect: they are there on time, don’t throw up over the dancers, don’t set fire to the TV in the bandroom and, best of all, sound the way they are supposed to sound.
But help was at hand! As dance halls closed, the club scene opened up. In some respects, better playing situations. All small groups, for a start. At the beginning of the sixties, cabaret clubs – as they liked to call themselves – opened up all over the country. The definition of ‘cabaret’ could be pretty loose. For instance, about this time – ’60 or ’61 – I took a job in the Potteries which involved playing in three different clubs each night. Primarily, accompanying the cabaret, which would be three or four acts, including wrestling. Incidentally, being confronted by some enraged monster ranting on about the way you’ve played ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ is the best argument against improvisation I’ve come across. In the early days of provincial clubs they were extraordinary places, some mixture of nightclubs and workingmen’s clubs and often housed in cavernous places: converted back-street cinemas, very often. One of these Potteries clubs – Burslem, I think – was situated next to a slag heap. At night, the thing glowed red, as they do, or did. The bandleader – never been out of London in his life before – was petrified the first time he saw it. He thought it had just landed. And it was in one of those clubs that a well-known singer of the time, beautiful woman, called me into her dressing room to discuss a guitar intro or something. While we were doing that, she took a piss in the sink. I’d never seen a woman do that before. So, you see, there was an educational side to the work. [8–x–1997]
London was where touring bands were organised and where the agents operated. How come Derek only moved to London in 1961, after ten years of professional life?
I just loved the fucking provinces, I loved provincial life. One of the things I liked about it was you could work without travelling. I’ve spent a lot of my life travelling and I’ve always detested it: an appalling waste of time and anti-musical in some way. But I do like being in different places. That life – as a dancehall, nightclub musician in that period – provided that. I could live in different places but always working in residencies. I would never tour, for instance, except for short spells – there were lots of touring bands, I hated touring. After you’d achieved a certain competence and you’d achieved a certain reputation for that competence, you could move around, changing towns, let’s say on average, three times a year. Maybe longer in some towns because I liked the music and the place. Between the early fifties and 1963, when I went up to Chesterfield and met Gavin [Bryars] and Tony [Oxley], I must have lived in every major town in Britain and much of it was, for me, fine. I enjoyed many aspects of it.
Those towns! It’s beyond my abilities to explain how different those places could be from each other. Many of them had very distinctive features and atmosphere. It’s disappeared so completely, I feel as though I’m talking about Atlantis. Now, if you were dropped down in the middle of Glasgow or Leeds or Birmingham, or for that matter Cologne or Rotterdam, you probably wouldn’t know where the hell you were. Maybe the best part was the amount, in time, you could work. Sometimes, it was possible to play for just about every waking hour of the day. Although I also found that through the sixties.
But, as you say, as a musician you can’t avoid London. I first settled, if that’s the word, in London sometime in 1961. I enjoyed it in that period, ’61 to ’63. Later, when I returned in ’66, it was, of course, drowning in bullshit. But the early sixties in London were just fine. I still worked mainly in clubs. Did a certain amount of jazz club playing in that time too. By this time, I’d realised that I didn’t really understand what jazz was. What, since childhood almost, I’d taken to be some sort of exploratory process – a continuing development – turned out to be, in practice, more of a ritualistic thing.
There’s another side to this, of course. My disenchantment with jazz stemmed from the realisation that I couldn’t do what the people I admired had done. I’d started in the wrong place at the wrong time, possibly in the wrong race, a conclusion I’d reached much earlier. I wasn’t going to be Charlie Christian. After that, it was about playing every fucking thing I could lay my hands to and looking to get rid of some of my musical ignorance. [8–x–1997]
You stopped doing commercial gigs when you found you could make a living by playing art music?
Let me try and explain this. I’ve never thought I could do anything – what I do now or playing commercial music – unless I did it full-time. This is a personal thing: however other people manage it, I couldn’t play music part-time. It might be to do with what the alternatives might be but, mainly, whatever attention I can muster I need for this stuff, exclusively. [8–x–1997]
Derek’s pride in his instrument is evident as he explains the advantages of its low volume when unamplified.
The guitar is a very good instrument for practising on. You can play guitar in a room and somebody in the next room can’t tell that you’re actually playing an instrument, particularly if you play a solid guitar unamplified. I used to play my electric/acoustic Gibson, the same guitar I use now – though that caused problems, because it could be heard. Sitting in the middle of a 16-piece band, the only other people that can hear it are the other musicians, the audience can’t hear it, and usually they can’t hear it on stage either. Imagine practising the trumpet – the limitations! You’ve got to do it out of doors I should think. You couldn’t do it in a hotel, for instance. You can practise the guitar pretty much anywhere. [12–viii–2000]
Derek’s habit of practising on the job got reactions from those around him. Playing in the orchestra pit for musicals and shows was particularly desirable – you weren’t on tour and you weren’t playing sets for dancers, both of which were exhausting.
A lot of these string players were ex-symphony, ex-orchestral musicians, the ones who’d play in the pit. I used to sit next to this violin player, an interesting character, a grey-haired small guy. He used to say, What is that stuff you were playing – Schoenberg? He at least knew what that was, the kind of exercises I was doing, what they were related to. [12–viii–2000]
In 1965, Derek Bailey played for the Morecambe and Wise Show at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool, a four-month season – two shows a night, six nights a week.
Morecambe and Wise were a very orthodox, traditional comic act. The season was booked up as soon as they announced it. This was before they became famous on TV. Ken Dodd was another one, he used to play in the opera house on the other side of the road, and that’s a 3,500-seater. As soon as they knew he was playing there, for four, five or six months, whatever it was, every night would be booked up – twice a night. Morecambe and Wise had a particular method of working. A sketch would start off quite pared down, quite functional, and they’d develop it over a few nights.
They’d often start with a couple of sketches that were silent – I thought they were great actually – but they never left them silent. They weren’t wisecracking comics, but the gags would develop out of the situation. I wouldn’t say they were improvising, but the thing developed. If it turned out not to be great, they’d dump it, and put another sketch in. Generally speaking, they would feel their way for a little while. There was only one test as to whether it was good or not, and that was the audience. If the audience liked it or laughed more when they did a certain thing, it was in. There was no higher authority, it was strictly about audience reaction, but they knew their audience very well. [12–viii–2000]
You were backing the singers they had on as guests?
There was a whole show. I was booked as an accompanist for an ex-rock’n’roller called Mark Wynter – as far as I know he’s totally unknown now, but he’d had a certain fame in the sixties – he came on and did ten, fifteen minutes. The whole show was a musical show in a sense, it started with music, finished with music, music between the acts. There was music in every sketch. There might be some conjuror act, and there’d be music all the way through – [sings the ‘Can-Can’] ‘da-da-datta-datta-da-da’ – ridiculous music. You thrashed away for ten minutes. [12–viii–2000]
I asked Derek to tell me about the incident when his practising got a reaction from Eric Morecambe.
The sketch went like this. Ernie says to Eric, ‘I’ve got these two birds, beautiful …’ – I don’t think they’d get away with some of this stuff now – ‘I’ve got these two great birds, we’ll be all right tonight.’ In the theatre, they could be quite … [Raunchy? Blue? How’s-your-father? DB doesn’t say] Eric’s saying, ‘Great! Where are they?’ and Ernie says, ‘I’m meeting them, I’ll bring them in to meet you.’ So Eric’s saying, ‘What are they like?’, and Ernie’s saying, ‘We’ll be all right, they’re beautiful.’ This nonsense goes on a bit. Ernie goes off to get ‘the birds’, and he comes back on with these two quite good-looking young women, dressed rather scantily, both of whom are enormously fat, I mean enormously fat – and they didn’t do anything else in the show, they were there for this sketch. Eric is appalled. The sketch then is Eric complaining to Ernie that he’s fucked him up with these women, he’s brought him these two ridiculous-looking women, but he can’t say that because they’re there, and he’s saying, ‘Yeah, nice, lovely …’ [DB makes exaggerated grimaces and waves his hands, utters squeaks of throttled horror] It’s gestural, see. Ernie’s behaving as though they’re perfectly all right, saying, ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong with them?’
I used to sit right under the stage, because I had a couple of spots where I played with somebody. I was down there practising, and during this, Eric leans over, and said, ‘What’s wrong? Well, there’s a guitar playing in the middle of mine!’ Nobody in the theatre knew what he was talking about, except the band. When the band laughs and the theatre doesn’t laugh, that’s bad news actually, they’re only interested in the audience. He wasn’t being nasty, he was just letting me know. They did ad lib to a certain extent, or Eric did, and Ernie would respond with some appropriate thing. It never happened again. I still carried on practising, I think I stopped for the rest of that sketch, but that particular one was a very quiet thing, with a lot of gestures. I really used to like the silent ones, but sometimes I would get off into what I was doing. You’d always know when time was up, there’d be a cue, anyway you’d got a conductor [taps table like a conductor tapping his music stand with his baton]. That’s that story. [12–viii–2000]
The career pattern for a successful commercial musician – Bailey was earning enough by the mid-sixties to buy a house in Rusholme, Manchester – was to end up working in the studios. This meant an increasingly straitened musical existence, with less opportunity to improvise, and less opportunity to learn, two things Bailey thinks of as synonymous.
Once I was working in the studios – because that’s where the career I’d been following, if successful, eventually leads – I realised I didn’t want it. Whatever I’d been pursuing all these years, it definitely wasn’t that. Fortunately that coincided with meeting these characters … [8–x–1997]
These ‘characters’ – two musicians with musical horizons that extended beyond conventional success – were named Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars. The three formed the Joseph Holbrooke Trio, playing music that transformed Bailey’s musical direction, and laid the basis for Free Improvisation as a genre. Though it took another ten years – with opportunities to work in Germany and Holland with other free improvisors in the early 1970s – before Bailey could afford to drop commercial work completely, it was Joseph Holbrooke that opened the way.