l*y
发帖数: 21010 | 1 From the Vaults: An interview with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr
January 6, 2014 in INTERVIEWS
by MAX DAX about BERNARD SUMNER, JOHNNY MARR Tweet
Bernard-Sumner-Johnny-Marr-Electronic-Beats
When two songwriting icons collide: In the latest edition of our irregular F
rom the Vaults series, we present our editor-in-chief Max Dax’s 1996 interv
iew with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr. The in-depth conversation originate
s from around the period they released Raise the Pressure as Electronic and
is presented here in English for the first time. Photos: Bernard Sumner by A
ndrea Stappert, Johnny Marr (cc) University of Salford, 2007.
Max Dax: It’s remarkable that two musicians from Manchester with such unpar
alleled careers—with Joy Division and New Order and The Smiths respectively
—have started working together and that the songs which have come out of th
e collaboration sound so different to the music you’ve made before. It’s m
uch more club-oriented and has a techno feel to it.
Bernard Sumner: When we were in the studio with Electronic recording our new
album Raise the Pressure, Johnny brought in an album for me called… Wait a
minute…
Johnny Marr: New York Garage Trax?
BS: Exactly. That’s an album full of great club tracks. After all, we both
love the Ha?ienda in Manchester, where they play music like that. If I were
the owner of a record store for DJs in Manchester then I would have thousand
s of these types of records lying around in the store.
MD: What constitutes a song?
BS: If you think about what people like about the music that Johnny and I ma
ke, it’s the melodies and the harmonic structures in our songs. By comparis
on, it would have been too easy to just write a record full of dance tracks.
MD: Because these days machines make the process so easy?
BS: No, no, even simpler than that. In England you can buy copyright-free gr
ooves on CD right off the shelf. One CD is full of drum loops, the next CD h
as dozens of bass lines, then there are CDs with piano jingles. You can samp
le whole bars of music made up of these hackneyed collections and put togeth
er an authentic sounding dance track. If you’re experienced and your hard d
rive doesn’t continuously crash, then you can write a track per night. Howe
ver it’s not simple to write an original melody. In comparison to a melody,
a groove is super easy to program. But even today it’s difficult for me to
write a melody and a chord progression in a form that hasn’t been done bef
ore. Why is that? Because it’s difficult!
MD: It takes skill to write a melody. Would you describe it as craftsmanship
?
JM: Yes, what we’re talking about here is craftsmanship. And emotions. And
touch. A melody has to touch me and bring me to tears. That’s the benchmark
. That’s what we’re searching for.
BS: Quite simply, it’s hard work to write a melody. Above all it means cont
inuously throwing away ideas that you previously believed were exciting.
JM: It’s mostly craftsmanship, but there are also exceptions. Sometimes you
find yourself in the right place at the right time. Sometimes an idea simpl
y drops through the roof and hits you unexpectedly. Things like that don’t
happen to you when you’re in the supermarket shopping or when you’re in th
e car driving to the supermarket listening to music—maybe sometimes when yo
u’re driving, but rarely. I’ve been writing music for so many years and I
must say that ideas only come to me when I have a guitar lying around somewh
ere near me, or a piano. It sometimes happens to me that I’m in the studio
in the morning, overtired, working on a piece of music, and then I get all a
gitated and suddenly notice that I’m actually working on a completely diffe
rent piece. Our song “Forbidden City” came about when I was working on ano
ther song, “Free Fall”. Those who know them will know that they are two ve
ry different pieces of music. We were programming, it was quiet, there was n
o music playing for one or two minutes and in this break I heard the song in
my head with its whole chord progression, rhythm and refrain. I was worried
that I would lose the idea, so I grabbed a guitar, plugged it in and let th
e DAT run. My only hope was that this magic wouldn’t disappear, I tried to
not think about anything else other than this song that had come to me. If I
had been outside of the studio the song would have faded away like a dream.
BS: Someone I know who writes books once said to me that he could touch-type
with ten fingers at an incredible speed. He told me that this ability had e
nabled him, for the first time, to bash a thought or a sentence that he sudd
enly had in his head into the computer immediately without interruption—and
then after that to type in the following sentence. He sometimes writes like
he is in a trance, because the speed of his thoughts corresponds to the typ
ing speed of his fingers. The thought of having to first labour to write a s
entence before then thinking back to the other connected thoughts that he ha
d really does him in.
JM: Unfortunately these moments in which songs suddenly appear out of nothin
g like dreams don’t really happen that often. You simply have to be there r
eady for it when they do. It’s a different way of working than simply being
at the studio getting drugs and hanging around the pill table.
BS: But that doesn’t sound bad either.
MD: What comes first? The text, a line, a word? Or the idea to want to medit
ate about a certain topic?
BS: Most of the time it begins with a line that comes out of nowhere and str
aight away means something to me. Later, I make sense out of it and then fin
d the rest of the words which turn that fragment into a song. When I write I
try to go along with the flow of things. It only rarely happens that I sit
down at the table with the clear intention of writing a song. Actually it wa
s only that way with my confession, the song “Second Nature”. That was a c
ase where I had the urge to summarize a lot of things that I’d been thinkin
g about. In this song I imagine what it is like to die. When I stand face to
face with God and I’m asked: “What have you learned in your life?” and “
Second Nature” is my answer to that question. For me a song must always me
a story, it must express something that I have actually been dealing with. B
ut very often these are improvisations.
MD: In your song “One Day” there is line where you sing “It’s hard to fa
ce rejection / What used to be affection.” This has a wonderful effect—is
it also the result of an improvisation?
BS: That’s a song that I would probably need longer to determine the real m
eaning of. Of course it is about love. That’s obvious. And about rejection.
But what else?
MD: You don’t know?
BS: No. But look at this way: other songs don’t need any words, these being
the dance tracks. When lyrics pop up in these, you can just relax and forge
t about them.
MD: But surely good lyrics don’t ruin a dance track?
BS: I’m coming ever closer to the realization that the whole point of dance
music is to forget—it’s escapism. Forgetting about seriousness. A moment
of freedom. Dancing to forget. You can work hard and concentrate all week be
cause you want to reach or achieve something—at least in the best cases—an
d then at the end of the week you go to a club and want to forget about the
pressure that these days have burdened you with. In this moment I use music
to forget about the pressure, to suppress what is inside of me. The words in
a dance track are generally only superficial. If I write a dance track then
I don’t want to distract people from the rhythm and the flow of the melody
. So in this way I approach different types of songs in different ways.
MD: Surprisingly, on the cover of the Electronic album Raise The Pressure th
ere appear to be diary-like texts. With New Order you don’t communicate in
this way.
BS: I wrote the notes that you can read on the sleeve of Raise The Pressure
when I couldn’t fall asleep one night. Late at night I sat in front of my c
omputer and wrote down what was going through my head. What I saw in the soc
ial realities of today, of the time in which I live. I wrote about how I see
children, who are of an age where they don’t know what’s happening to the
m because they are not yet capable of abstract thought, being divided into t
wo groups: one half of the children will lead a successful life, and will al
ways experience affection, love, attention. The other half are sorted out an
d denied this.
MD: Are you talking about yourself? Were you sorted out in this way?
BS: In a way. On the other hand though, these children don’t just disappear
into thin air. They continue to grow and become adults—and this is as mean
ingless as it is useless for society. What do these people do? They hang aro
und and create problems for society. Society expects that these sorted out p
eople will simply disappear into thankless jobs with McDonald’s or UPS. Of
course a lot of them don’t do this and instead become criminals. Or they be
come psychologically ill because they very well know that they were denied t
he chance for a good life at a point when they couldn’t yet responsibly thi
nk for themselves. They simple weren’t allowed in. Our education system in
Britain is responsible for a range of problems that our society has today, b
ecause it doesn’t treat all children with the same level of respect. It rid
icules some of them. Our society is responsible for creating its underclass.
MD: Today you are the father of two children.
BS: I didn’t have these thoughts because I have children myself so much, b
ut rather because some of my best friends are criminals. I asked myself why
my friends have gone down this path, because these are, without exception, f
riendly and in their own way genuine, honest people. I would like to note th
at this particular worldview, and how it can be formulated as songs in my ba
nd with Johnny Marr, can not be transferred over to other projects. Songs ar
e not innocent. We don’t do anything like this with New Order. That wasn’t
ever possible. With New Order it was always about being passive. With New O
rder the lyrics follow a code. We have never made an active statement with N
ew Order. We thought it better not to make observations or represent any vie
wpoints. For me it was very important with Electronic to step out from the p
rotection that such a concept offers. It’s very easy to hide oneself behind
the secretive or the vague. It can be so shocking to actually observe the w
orld.
JM: We both still live relatively close to the places where we grew up. That
means the crew which connects us to the places that remind us of our past i
s still around. But today we have more money. We are successful. I don’t li
ve where I used to. I live close by, in a better area.
BS: I also live in a well-off area of Manchester. But I come from a very poo
r family. I can see the transformation. Today, the gap between rich and poor
is bigger in England than in Kenya. That’s how things are in England. I’m
talking about a division of society and I have experienced this division th
rough my own life because I come from one end and have now moved around at t
he other end.
JM: The strange thing is that we don’t really fit in to either of the two c
lasses.
MD: You said that with New Order it was about being passive. How do you mean
that?
BS: New Order was escapism, clearly, above all it was a game of hide and see
k. As the songwriter of New Order I never said a word about the lyrics that
I wrote. With New Order everything is unclear and indistinctly laid out. It
is intentionally unclear and misleading. You must understand that I was neve
r a songwriter and never wanted to be a singer. I only became a singer becau
se Ian Curtis, our singer, killed himself. We nonetheless needed to and want
ed to continue, and the idea of replacing him with someone from outside seem
ed to us all disconcerting and even artificial. Through his suicide he inter
fered with my future, he changed my life. I had to suddenly do something tha
t I had never considered. I had to change the way I looked at life. Up to th
at point I was always the one who stood in the corner and could observe the
others. Even on stage. I was the guitar player, the observer. In this role I
could also sit back in peace and register what all those around me were doi
ng. I found that very interesting. As the singer you can’t do that. As the
singer you have to face the people directly, you are the object being viewed
and you receive the attention. That is the mental state of the singer and f
rontman. I had to change my worldview, my manner and as a consequence myself
in order to make it as a singer and to be successful. My lyrics with New Or
der were therefore arranged as a way of protecting myself, so that no one, r
eally no one, should know what was going through my head. I had to sing beca
use it was my job. I was the only one that could steer the ship off of the r
eef that it had landed on with Ian’s suicide, and I therefore gave myself t
he right the hide myself.
MD: What are the New Order lyrics about if you talk about them from the dist
ance of today?
BS: At a metaphysical level they were always about communication. Between pe
ople. Also and perhaps exactly when this communication didn’t occur or when
it broke down. Furthermore, I would have felt open to attack if the communi
cation had worked, if people had understood what was going on with me.
MD: But isn’t everyone who raises his or her voice on stage vulnerable?
BS: When I write a melody, a chord progression, that is something abstract.
Even if this melody warms you, and hopefully it does warm you, it remains a
sequence of guitar notes. The melody remains a feeling. A song lyric on the
other hand is a literary concept; in my case it was the considered idea of a
vulnerable human being. To say it positively: he who has nothing to say can
not hide or conceal this nothingness either.
JM: That’s very interesting for me to hear, Bernard, because, generally, ot
her singers can hardly wait for the next time they stand in front of an audi
ence and can let loose and have fun. I know what I’m talking about. Or they
just can’t stop their thoughts flowing when they write lyrics, because the
y are caught up in a sexual ego trip or they just need to get their oh-so-im
portant emotions down on paper. Those who work in such a way are, in my eyes
, nonetheless entertainers. I don’t have anything against entertainers: ent
ertainers have an enormously important role to play in society. People want
entertainers because they want to be entertained. Every one of us needs ente
rtainers. Bernard on the other hand works in a completely different way when
he approaches his lyrics. Maybe it is actually due to fact that he only bec
ame a singer due to a tragic twist of fate. His story has always fascinated
me right from the beginning. We both grew up and lived our childhood in a ve
ry hard English working class environment. Artistic expression was the last
thing that we were encouraged to do by our parents. If as a youth you had ex
pressed an interest in an artistic career, it was not supported. Today I can
understand why it couldn’t have been any different: when you come from the
working class you have to be able to provide for yourself financially and a
n artistic profession certainly didn’t provide the security you need to gua
rantee that. If you can’t answer the core question of how you are going to
survive, then that means you have to pit yourself against your parents and i
n the worst case, leave them. And what then? Back then, where could you try
out the artistic talent that you might have? I come from the north of Manche
ster, a very hard part of the city and when I was still a child we moved to
an area in the south of Manchester that wasn’t quite so hard. When I told p
eople that I came from the north, they were worried about me stealing their
watches and wallets whereas for me it was like moving to Beverly Hills.
BS: What Johnny means is that where we grew up it was difficult to make the
decision to be a musician or an artist because these weren’t the qualificat
ions that would have allowed you to have a simple life. You had to be aggres
sive and defend your ground. Around us those were the qualifications that co
unted.
JM: In Manchester there are also areas of the city in which your hippy paren
ts would start you with piano lessons at age four. They would then say to yo
u, because they themselves would have loved to have been artists, “You will
be an artist on our behalf. Go to art school.” In the north there wasn’t
anything like that. I nevertheless knew that I wanted to be a musician. That
wasn’t up for debate. And I think that this circumstance, that we had to s
truggle for the life we wanted, found good expression through our music, for
me with The Smiths and for Bernard with Joy Division and New Order. You can
hear it in the determination and the vulnerability of the music. The sadnes
s that we had picked up along the way, and the doubt. That is perhaps the el
ement that appeals to me the most about the music that I make. Even today, a
lthough I now lead a very privileged life. There are things one never forget
s. I’m not referring to depression, but rather to melancholy and sadness. D
epression just leaves me empty. Sadness on the other hand is a strong emotio
nal feeling. Sometimes it is even necessary, because life is that way. Where
I grew up the houses are from the Victorian era, they are black and run-dow
n and they seem gothic. When I think back to my walks to school, when it rai
ned there was something in the atmosphere there that was beautiful.
BS: Our band Electronic has a much less sad undertone than The Smiths or New
Order ever had. We have also changed as people since those days. The worst
time of my life was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. Back then
my life was a never-ending procession of emotional storms. Thunder storms.
Today I say to myself, if you survived this period, then you will survive an
ything for the rest of your life. What do you want from life? I want to be h
appier. And today I am a very happy person. ~
This interview was originally published in German in Max Dax’s Drei?ig Gesp
r?che / Thirty Conversations, published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2008.
MANCHESTER
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te - See more at: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/from
-the-vaults-an-interview-with-bernard-sumner-and-johnny-marr/#sthash.ZmhuzFt
B.dpuf | l*y
发帖数: 21010 | 2 However it’s not simple to write an original melody. In comparison to a mel
ody, a groove is super easy to program. But even today it’s difficult for m
e to write a melody and a chord progression in a form that hasn’t been done
before. Why is that? Because it’s difficult! - See more at: http://www.ele
ctronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/from-the-vaults-an-interview-with-be
rnard-sumner-and-johnny-marr/#sthash.ZmhuzFtB.dpuf
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【在 l*y 的大作中提到】
: From the Vaults: An interview with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr
: January 6, 2014 in INTERVIEWS
: by MAX DAX about BERNARD SUMNER, JOHNNY MARR Tweet
: Bernard-Sumner-Johnny-Marr-Electronic-Beats
: When two songwriting icons collide: In the latest edition of our irregular F
: rom the Vaults series, we present our editor-in-chief Max Dax’s 1996 interv
: iew with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr. The in-depth conversation originate
: s from around the period they released Raise the Pressure as Electronic and
: is presented here in English for the first time. Photos: Bernard Sumner by A
: ndrea Stappert, Johnny Marr (cc) University of Salford, 2007.
| l*y
发帖数: 21010 | 3 Quite simply, it’s hard work to write a melody. Above all it means continuo
usly throwing away ideas that you previously believed were exciting - See mo
re at: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/from-the-vaults
-an-interview-with-bernard-sumner-and-johnny-marr/#sthash.ZmhuzFtB.dpuf
mel
m
done
be
【在 l*y 的大作中提到】
: However it’s not simple to write an original melody. In comparison to a mel
: ody, a groove is super easy to program. But even today it’s difficult for m
: e to write a melody and a chord progression in a form that hasn’t been done
: before. Why is that? Because it’s difficult! - See more at: http://www.ele
: ctronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/from-the-vaults-an-interview-with-be
: rnard-sumner-and-johnny-marr/#sthash.ZmhuzFtB.dpuf
:
: F
: interv
: originate
| l*y
发帖数: 21010 | 4 S: Quite simply, it’s hard work to write a melody. Above all it means conti
nuously throwing away ideas that you previously believed were exciting.
JM: It’s mostly craftsmanship, but there are also exceptions. Sometimes you
find yourself in the right place at the right time. Sometimes an idea simpl
y drops through the roof and hits you unexpectedly. Things like that don’t
happen to you when you’re in the supermarket shopping or when you’re in th
e car driving to the supermarket listening to music—maybe sometimes when yo
u’re driving, but rarely. I’ve been writing music for so many years and I
must say that ideas only come to me when I have a guitar lying around somewh
ere near me, or a piano. It sometimes happens to me that I’m in the studio
in the morning, overtired, working on a piece of music, and then I get all a
gitated and suddenly notice that I’m actually working on a completely diffe
rent piece. Our song “Forbidden City” came about when I was working on ano
ther song, “Free Fall”. Those who know them will know that they are two ve
ry different pieces of music. We were programming, it was quiet, there was n
o music playing for one or two minutes and in this break I heard the song in
my head with its whole chord progression, rhythm and refrain. I was worried
that I would lose the idea, so I grabbed a guitar, plugged it in and let th
e DAT run. My only hope was that this magic wouldn’t disappear, I tried to
not think about anything else other than this song that had come to me. If I
had been outside of the studio the song would have faded away like a dream.
- See more at: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/from-th
e-vaults-an-interview-with-bernard-sumner-and-johnny-marr/#sthash.ZmhuzFtB.d
puf
continuo
mo
【在 l*y 的大作中提到】
: Quite simply, it’s hard work to write a melody. Above all it means continuo
: usly throwing away ideas that you previously believed were exciting - See mo
: re at: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/from-the-vaults
: -an-interview-with-bernard-sumner-and-johnny-marr/#sthash.ZmhuzFtB.dpuf
:
: mel
: m
: done
: be
|
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