BravEar
1987
Egyptians Interview
by Seymour Glass
Roger Jackson: We work best at long distances. When we get back to England, we'll go to different rail stations in London and head off with our suitcases and that's the last we'll see of each other until we get together again. Usually we come to The United States on the same plane.
How often do you rehearse, or are you so accomplished that you don't need to?
Roger: It's not really a question of accomplishment, it's attitude -- and most of us have an attitude most of the time. We do get together, we meet, and we eat in this little Italian cafe, L'Orange.
Andy Metcalfe: We eat there quite a lot and occasionally we go over to the rehearsal studio...
Roger: ...which is where we keep our equipment...
Andy: ...and play a few tunes and go and eat some more.
Robyn Hitchcock: Some days we don't bother to rehearse. We just get together and eat. Or drink coffee.
Roger: Or alcohol.
Robyn: We have liquid days...
Roger: ...and we have solid days.
Andy: We exist as a social club.
I see. Suppose a songwriter in the band brought in a new song. You would
have some pot roast and then go try it out?
Roger: No. No, it's an Italian restaurant.
Andy: The only thing worth eating in this restaurant is escalloped spaghetti, which is a piece of veal with spaghetti Bolognese on the same plate. Or kidneys, liver, bacon, chips, and peas.
Robyn: Sometimes without the peas.
You guys dine in lieu of...?
Roger: "Dining" is putting it a bit strongly.
Andy: We'd hear that there's a new song, you know, around, and we'd say,
"Sounds great. We must have lunch."
Roger: We would hear through the grapevine that a new song had come about. I'd bump into someone in the street. He'd say, "Oh, did you know Robyn's
written a new song?"
Morris Windsor: Then he'd start to get hungry.
Roger: I'd go down to the cafe one day and no one would be there, and the
next day I'd go down and Morris will have come along. Eventually all four
of us will be there. We have have plenty to eat. We'll go back across the
street to Alaska (the studio) and talk about it.
Robyn: About the old days.
Roger: About the group we're not allowed to talk about.
Right, the Small Faces.
Roger: No, we're allowed to talk about them. We reminisce about some of the characters some of us knew when we were in this other band that we never
like to mention. In fact, we like to mention it so little that we talk about
it a lot.
It's too bad you haven't come up with a surrogate activity for talking
about the band you never like to mention. Like eating-instead-of-rehearsing
you could, for example, exercise-instead-of-talking-about-the-band-that-you-never-like-to-mention.
Andy: Exercise we do separately. We don't like to watch each other exercise. It's something that caused a lot of friction one time in Manchester. Morris said, "Hey guys, I'm going to work out." He comes from Manchester, you see? So we watched, and it wasn't athletic. We avoid that now.
Since you mix music and food, I was wondering how long it takes for a
new song to...
Roger: Congeal?
Precisely. Enough so that you're all comfortable playing it.
Roger: It depends on the song and on the climatic conditions.
You've been playing together for a number of years, so...
Morris: Yes, a number of years.
Andy: A number less than two.
Morris: One. Maybe one and a half.
Roger: It has been in fact eighteen months.
A number of months playing together.
Roger: That number being eighteen.
A number equidistant from both seventeen and nineteen.
Robyn: A truly massive number of days together, and an absolutely enormous number of hours.
Andy: Sometimes it takes quite a few meals to get a song going. You could
eat quite a lot on one particular song.
Morris: Some songs are diet songs.
Andy: There are other songs that we rarely play because they cause massive flatulence.
Are there ever disgreements about how songs come out?
Andy: You mean like indigestion?
Roger: We've always agreed with each other.
Robyn: It's impossible for us to take opposite views on anything.
Roger: I think you're right, Robyn.
Andy: I agree with you completely.
Morris: You put it so well. In fact, I couldn't possibly disagree with you less.
Robyn: Conversely, I know there are things I wouldn't want to submit to
them anyway, but they hear about it through the grapevine. If it's not the
right kind of thing, it's not the quality that they would expect.
Would they ridicule you?
Robyn: Oh yeah, inwardly if not outwardly. But I can tell by any little
gesture. It saves time, not rehearsing songs that don't work.
Roger: The songs exist independently of us, really.
Andy: It's a bit like finding the parts written on tablets at the top of a mountain, except that we don't have to go to a mountain and there are no
tablets.
Roger: We play a song and it's either right or it's wrong. We've been
playing together sufficiently long enough for it to be right.
Robyn: If it's wrong you know why, or you abandon it.
Roger: If we can't play it, it's because we shouldn't be playing it.
How do you know that you can't play it (if it's new, you need time)?
Roger: Quite often, we learn a song and never play it.
If someone put sheet music in front of you, could you play it?
Robyn: What, you mean dots?
Yeah, with the stripes.
Morris: Not without at least a cup of tea.
Andy: I'd need apple pie.
Roger: Warm.
Andy: And lots of cream.
So a new song would be hummed and strummed and you'd pick it up from there?
Roger: I see what you mean.
Andy: I don't think it's in the dots. The songs exist to some extent in the recordings. They're more like bursts of energy that appear every now and then. Sometimes you can capture some of that energy in the recording. And when you play live you can see that energy flare up as the song goes by. When we
concur (that very agreement that was spoken about earlier) -- when we do agree,
people like to call it a song.
Roger: If you were to have a conversation with somebody, you wouldn't think about what you were going to say in advance.
Andy: You wouldn't prepare a script.
Roger: You would just sit down and have the conversation -- and it would work or it wouldn't, as a conversation. You would either sit there in total
silence, or you would run out of things to say, or you would talk for hours.
Our playing is very much like a conversation.
Andy: Very conversational.
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