HW: moorcock interview (LONG!)

[J Strobridge]

A couple of months ago an interview that Dave Brock did for a
psychedelic mag called "Sniffin' Flowers" (c.1977) was posted here.
This is one by Mike Moorcock that appears in the same issue and might
also be of interest.    It's perhaps only fair to emphasise that the
date this was made was 1977 and his opinions will be related to that
period.   It could well be that he has moderated some of them by now -
20 odd years later down the road!

jill

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Interview with Michael Moorcock recorded by and published in
"Sniffin Flowers" magazine (2nd issue) published c. 1977

Sniffin' Flowers:  When did you take up music?

Michael Moorcock:  About 1954, I suppose, when everybody else in my
generation was.   I didn't much go for British commercial Rock and
Roll, more of my interest was in Blues and White American Folk
music.   Woody Guthrie was a great idol of mine.   I met Jack
Elliot, who was over here a long time, when he was a kind of
prophet for Guthrie so I learnt a lot of Guthrie's songs from
Elliot.

We went out as a Country and Western band since it was possible to
get gigs doing that, whereas it wouldn't be as a Guthrie type
singer, so we sang a lot of Guthrie songs under the guise of being
a sort of cowboy band, which was after all, what Guthrie did,
although not in South London.

I was around the same age or probably older than things that led to
the Yardbirds, the Stones and R and B thing, but I got out of it
before it started making money.   I got fed up with playing sleasy
gigs in dance halls, they wanted "See you later Alligator", but
that's what we used to do, straight Blues.

I was serious about it, but I tend to be fairly private about it.
I think that's what it boils down to and the whole music business
can so easily destroy you and make you cynical, dead or whatever.
I don't think I've got the temperament for being in the Rock'n Roll
world, so many people I know have been brought down by it, have had
nervous breakdowns or got themselves killed.

I still get rather depressed backstage at gigs.   It's not the
musicians, it's all the people around them, there are so many
fucking hangers on and they are always idiots, with one or two
exceptions.   Like films it attracts the no talent bullshiters and
I'd find myself getting really cynical if I'd stayed in the music
business.

I've done a fair bit with Hawkwind, but again gave up doing
straight gigs, and just stuck to doing free gigs and benefits.   I
wouldn't do any paid gigs, 'cos the atmospheres of free gigs are
always better or a benefit's better because you're actually doing
it for a purpose, and you don't get all the idiots.

SF:     How did you become associated with Hawkwind?

MM:     Well, a number of people in the band read my stuff, that was it
really.   I went to a few gigs and started writing some stuff for
them.   "Sonic Attack" and so on which I was doing mainly for
Robert.   Then Robert had a breakdown, took a rest or whatever the
euphemism is, he went in the looney bin, Dave said would I do it
and I didn't want him to feel that I was taking over his job so I
said to him and Hawkwind that I'd stand in for Robert until he felt
like coming back, which is more or less what I did.

SF:     What are your favourite Hawkwind albums?

MM:     Most of them from the middle period.   I suppose probably
"Space Ritual" is my favourite.   I don't listen to much heavy
metal Rock and Roll.   I enjoy it, but my own taste is towards more
melodic music, but I suppose "Space Ritual" is my favourite.

SF:     How did the concept of "New World's Fair" come about?

MM:     Well I've always written songs and one Spring I was up at our
place in Yorkshire with a number of people.   There were a couple
of songs I wrote and they said why not do one as a single and
Douglas (Smith) said "Yeah why don't you?"

So we did this single, which was in fact never released and we went
to have lunch with Andrew Lauder of U.A.   I thought it was just to
discuss the single and Andrew Lauder said "We like the single, when
do we get the album?"

I had a couple of mates who were trying to get started in music and
I thought I'd use it to give them a bit of experience which I think
now was quite a serious mistake, I mean I don't regret them doing
it, but it meant that everything was reduced and I didn't really do
what I would have done if left to myself.   I did lose concept that
would take in their numbers and mine but actually the only two
numbers I like upon the album are the first and last ones.

SF:     Are you going to be doing any more albums?

MM:     Well Pete Pavli and I are both musically very similar in our
development and what we are doing really is not Rock and Roll
anymore, it's much closer to 19th century Romantic music with a
little bit of Schoenburg bunged in in terms of influence.   It's
emphatically very melodic and complex and there aren't many Rock
and Roll companies that want to do that so we are hoping to do
"Gloriana" which is the ambitious thing we are doing, for the BBC
first as a sort of third programme thing.

SF:     About three years ago, I heard a rumour that you were going to
do a concept album about the eternal champion?

MM:     Well Dave wanted me to do a concept and lyrics for an album he
wanted to do on his own and I did half of it to give him a start
off, which was an entire story in songs, a little narration, less
than on "New World's Fair", but he hasn't done much with it.   A
fragment appeared on a thing he did called "Golden Void".   I don't
think that Dave and I have got very much in common musically you
know, I like him a lot but the things he is interested in musically
aren't the same, whereas with Pete we get on very well.   There's
nothing like our stuff in popular music at the moment and it
probably isn't very popular, whether a record company will ever do
it, I don't know really, I scarcely care.

I find the whole conventional process of making a record so
exhausting 'cos again, you're dealing 75% of the time with
production, more than the actual music and I think it's true that
you can do more on a bloody Akai in Yorkshire than you can ever
produce in a studio.   When you go into a studio obviously you
might have a slightly better sound, but it just isn't as good as
you can do at home.

I think more and more people are going to do that.   You lose a
lot, particularly when people don't know what you're doing, 'cos
more people are only good at producing soul.   Go into any studio
and the taste of technicians is abominable.   I mean they might be
nice blokes or good technicians, but they don't know what you want.
  They try to make everything come out like the Supremes or
whatever and they can't understand what you're doing, even if they
like it.   They always make everything bass heavy even if your
intentions are in the higher ranges, like in a lot of our stuff
there's not much bass line, but when they come to record it they
make everything bass heavy and distorted as a result.   There's no
way round it.

I think Eno's a good producer, I admire him tremendously.   If we
were going to do a record in commercial terms, then I'd want Eno to
do it, but then nobody likes Eno because he's so nasty.   I
actually like him for that reason, that is he's very demanding and
people like to have a happy time.   When I'm working I like to be
working and nothing else, whereas most people like to have a few
joints and get relaxed, which means that everything takes ten times
as long and costs ten times as much.

SF:     Would you like to offer an opinion on punk rock?

MM:     Well it seems to me that this is pure prejudice, 'cos I don't
like the styles, I don't like the cynicism, I don't like what it
does, all that cathartic stuff was probably alright in the 1960's.
 I've only actually seen it live in America by accident 'cos I
didn't know what I was getting into.

I think it is a pure creation of the music press, you know, middle
class lads who think black leather is great.    My view is that
when the origins of punk, if you like say 1950's Rock and Roll,
came about, the people doing it weren't self conscious at all, I
mean the styles of say Little Richard or Elvis weren't
self-consciously adopted.   They really thought that when they went
on stage that they were very elegant.   Teddy Boys reckoned that
they were very sharp, they weren't wearing the stuff for any
satirical reasons.   As a result, the thing did have its own sort
of power and was healthy, but this stuff just shows a total paucity
of invention.   It's just an extension of the position that
commercial Rock and Roll got into, for all it's supposed to be a
new wave.   As for anti-establishment, I don't think that it is, it
seems ideal for what Top of the Pops is after.

It could be just the generation.   I've sort of always been an old
hippy before there were hippies.   The thing is that 1965 to 1970
were to me all that I'd wanted to be before that, sometimes I get
reviews in places like "NME" and "Time Out" as this dated old sod,
doesn't realise that things have moved on.   Which again is a
complete confusion, between fashion and art, which the Rock
business is particularly prone to.   They think that everything is
down to fashion and nobody seems to be capable, the journalists in
particular, because they are constantly following fashion, of
realising that people do have a certain thing, that they've always
had.   You know, you have a period when it happens to be in vogue,
you carry on and it's not in vogue any more and you get this very
strange "Ha, Ha, Ha, you're not in vogue any more" and you never
wanted to be in vogue in the first place.

With punk, the two words to me which would crop up most are
self-conscious cynicism.   The whole hippy thing was idealistic and
I still sort of believe in the same sort of ideals.   I don't see
why you shouldn't just because they've stopped being fashionable as
it were.   I think that there's nothing wrong with Love and Peace.
 It might not be as easy as that to achieve.   In all my books I
still try, however complex they are, particularly in the sword and
scorcery to have a very simple message at the end, saying it can be
done.   It is worth hanging on to your ideals, so I find punk
rather horrible.

I find it pretty sad really, I mean I was pretty old when the whole
underground thing started and I was privately cynical about a lot
of ideals 'cos they were a bit wild.   I'd been through so much
that I'd be the one saying "Yeah, alright try it, but I don't think
it's as easy as that".

I always had a very strong sympathy with it and when you wrote to
me, I immediately felt a strong sympathy.   I was particularly
associated with "Friends" 'cos "Friends" was the best of the
underground papers because it was so untogether in terms of
production.   I just responded to the whole style of it and
similarly with Hawkwind and the big festivals, particularly
Windsor.   Although I thought a lot of the things people were
saying at the time were silly, I was still sympathetic whereas the
pseudo-sophistication of punk I find completely demoralising.   It
just makes me miserable because there's nothing but vogue behind it
and a kind of cathartic would be evil.   I always found the Rolling
Stones very daft.

The Damned with the bloke going on in a tutu.   They always go on
wearing a tutu ever since they started doing that sort of thing or
they'll always wear slicked back hair or they'll always wear black
leather.   There's no imagination in the music.   It seems to me
that they're completely derivative.

Another thing is that it's the old people are always wary of
attacking anything new in case they are made to look like fools,
which is the way it goes these days.   It's the same for artists, I
mean nobody likes to say a piece of conceptual art is a load of
rubbish, and it's the same with music, most of the popele who've
taken up with punk,  have taken up with it largely because they
didn't have any taste in the first place and it's a great relief to
them to find something that they can like or because they are
afraid of being out of the trend.   I think you really have to
decide what you like and what you don't like and stick with it.

SF:     Have you any final message?

MM:     Holy Mother!   No, I haven't.   Any message that I've ever got,
came out in books and then only came out towards the end, when I've
written the book, but I don't start off with any particular
message, so I haven't got any final message.


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J.D.Strobridge at ed.ac.uk                         eset08 at holyrood.ed.ac.uk
                                                ELIJSA at srv0.arts.ed.ac.uk
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