Interview with Nels Cline
by Adam Schatz
Nels Cline is a guitarist and composer from Los Angeles, and can be seen on the road with Wilco, his own Nels Cline Singers, or a variety of other great folks. His first solo / overdub album "Coward" is out now on Cryptogramophone records.
1. Why do you do what you do?
I don't know how to answer this exactly... I have loved sound and played music since I was 11 years old, and my immersion in sound-related activities seems to usually be thorough and almost immediate. Joy? Escape? Expression? It was easy to find this path. Just hard to survive doing it. Things are good now. Lucky!
2. What was the last bit of magic that you witnessed?
John Abercrombie Quartet tonight at The Jazz Bakery here in L.A. Just over an hour ago...
3. What are three of your current favorite jazz albums, and three of
your favorite “non-jazz” albums?
Hmmm... My current favorite "jazz" albums aren't too current. And what the hell is jazz at this point? Well, I am really into the Jimmy Giuffre album "Tangents In Jazz" the last several months and have put together a quintet of sorts to attempt some of Mr. Giuffre's music. I have never stopped listening to his early 60s trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow... I have recently enjoyed revisiting an older Jim Hall recording called "These Rooms", long a favorite. And perhaps my pouring over Ornette's "Art of the Improvisors" could be mentioned. Hey, that's three! As for "non-jazz", I always listen to Deerhoof, and their latest record, "Offend Maggie" is marvelous, playing constantly in my car (when I am home), anywhere there is a stereo. It might be lame to mention this because I appear on it, but the new Huntsville double CD (Glenn Kotche and I appear on the 'live' second disc) is great, and I am referring to the studio disc. I dig listening to Huntsville, as well as the ECM CD with Ingar Zach, Ivar Grydeland (from Huntsville) and others called "Dans Les Arbres". Beautiful improvised sound. Last, I guess I could mention that Debashish Bhattcharya, the Calcutta slide guitarist, is in constant rotation in my pad, pretty much always.
4. If you had the power to resurrect the dead, who would you bring
back to play one show with?
Yikes! Any answer presumes that I could actually add something to this hypothetical situation, which is 'iffy' at best... I could mention Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, many other inspirations/icons, but maybe instead I will say that it's a tie between Shelly Manne and Astor Piazzolla. Or maybe just one more set with Rod Poole...
5. What’s something you’ve never done before that you’ve always
wanted to do?
Kiss Charlotte Rampling's hand and thank her for existing. And hundreds of other things.
6. What is a common thought that runs through your brain while
improvising?
I apologize for not being able to really answer this. It's interesting to note that mundane thoughts sometimes creep into one's head while improvising. Thoughts about anything: dinner, the position of one's privates in need of readjustment! But really, the brain on improvisation is like a weird confluence of the abstract/unconscious/super-conscious and nuts-and-bolts struggle/configuration/assessment. If there is a common thought it's probably not actually a thought per se. Maybe more like an internal utterance resembling something like a thought. Or ???
7. What has been a difficult situation for you to perform in?
When everything is way too loud, few if anyone is really listening, and everyone but me seems to feel satisfied.
8. What has been an encouraging one?
Everything but the above! I feel blessed to be in contact with musical thinkers/creators of the highest order.
9. You’re a constant collaborator, and the variety of folks that
you’ve joined forces is pretty wide, ranging from Lydia Lunch and
Thurston Moore to Tim Berne to Wilco. What adjustments in your mental and physical approach to performing and recording change with each collaborator, and which truths do you find are consistent throughout your experiences?
I could possibly write a book about this question. Perhaps surprisingly, the physical part is, for me, the most changing. Playing so-called "rock 'n roll", especially 'live' is, for me, a kind of "ready to explode" state. My body/hands feel totally different. Harder, slower. As such, my mind is in a different state as well. I really noticed this when I was playing in one of Mike Watt's many Stooges repetoire bands he was doing (mostly here in L.A.) before The Stooges reassembled (Ron Asheton: R.I.P.). It was called The Real Oh My, a trio with Kevin Fitzgerald on drums. Playing those songs from the first 2 albums (his strictly adhered to repetoire except for "I Gotta Right"), my whole body was in a different state than when I play say, Vinny Golia's music, in which I am mostly loose, flexible, fleet, acting sonically on a moment's notice to a vast array of sonorities, pitches, ideas. I did not possess the "chops" present in my work with Vinny while playing the Stooges stuff, which I had heard since "the day". My inner ear was tuned to Ron, Hendrix, Jeff Beck. My whole hand position was probably different. I can't really explain this, but I think it stems from how one thinks about these musics. I cannot play "rock" super-relaxed, nor do the wild ideas of "free jazz" enter my mind very often while I play something like "I Wanna Be Your Dog". It's maybe some kind of combination of a reverence for the spirit/essence of these styles, a fixed idea about their identities, and how I relate them to my life, internally as well as externally. Other than this, I approach everything the same way: with openness and a willingness to learn and contribute. The artists you mentioned are people for whom I have enormous admiration. Though I have recorded with a handful of people or on projects that were light on vision/inspiration (and I still learned from them), most of these plus any repeated 'live' collaborations have been with artists of considerable power and vision artistically, to my mind, no matter what the differences in style/tradition/approach might appear to be.
10. When can we expect to see a “Nels Cline” edition of Guitar Hero?
Never. Anything that wins one points for tapping out of time isn't for me!
11. How involved are you in the production aspect of your records?
Well, if by "my" records you mean those that feature my compositions, I would have to say very involved. I just don't dig the credit thing so much. Since my first Trio, as well as records with The Singers, Destroy All Nels Cline, and even records like "Ash & Tabula" with Andrea Parkins and Tom Rainey, I have been closely involved with "production": material, sound, mixing, artwork... But still, this is always a collaboration between individuals. I rely on experts, engineers, on advice from close friends, on the contributions of valued visual artists, etc. There is only so much control I exert on a project because I look at each one as a sort of snapshot of that particular period. There is a lot of impulsiveness mixed in with the premeditation. And, perhaps mistakenly, I see this all as an ongoing process, a long arc, and I move on; looking forward to the next chance to try something else, do some more.
thanks for doing this!
You are most welcome.
