SECRET POLICE
◊
◄ Music is the human mating dance ►
Gert : In the eighties, your way of playing drums has blowned a wind of change in pop music and even nowadays, thousands of drummers are fighting to reproduce it. You truly are a great reference. First of all, how does it feel and how comes you have never released a teaching method or a video?
Stewart Copeland : hum... I enjoy teaching even though I don’t ever do it. I only teach my sons. Also, I like to talk to musicians so I don’t only have my own experience but I suck up the experience of other people too. I always talk to other bands, everything about how the group works, who write the songs, where the creative dynamic is and everything like that. So when I’m 90 years old I’ll teach but I haven’t got time to now.
Gert : And how does it feel to be one of the greatest drummer of your time?
Stewart Copeland : Well that feeling is very fleeting and rare. It is something that people say and you only have to believe it when they say it and sometimes you fully believe it but these moments are rare. Most of the time you have in your head the same things that most people have which is : “when is lunch ?”. Things like that.
Gert : But when so many people say so, you should agree with that...
Stewart Copeland : Well, even so, you only believe it for a while and even if they tell you the same thing again next day, it wears off and it’s impossible to feel elited all the time. So it’s inevitable that you become “blasé”. On one hand it is very good to be reminded occasionally because you forget and like I say, most of the time thoughts running through my head are the same as the thoughts running through any taxi’s driver head, you know... The day to day moments of life. It’s been ten or fifteen years since people started telling me I was a great musician and everything and it does loose its charge after a while. It’s a terrible thing but you take it for gradate after a while. But there’s another aspect which I call ‘the Eric Clapton syndrom’. Everybody said that he was God on the guitar which meant that if he ever picks up a guitar in front of people, they are expecting it to be godhead. He doesn’t play as fast as Eddie Van Halen or Steve Vai, he’s just a very tasteful blues player... And so he was intimidated by his own reputation and so for many years he never played his guitar just because he was afraid of it. If he picks it up, it has to be God! And I don’t want that to happen to me, I have seen that happen to other people as well. So right now, I have practice, I’m gonna go and play with all these musicians and I’m not going to be God, I’m just going to be pretty average actually because I’m not in shape, but I don’t care.
Gert : How did you get from the writing of pop songs like the Klark Kent album ones for exemple to the creation of music for big orchestras ?
Stewart Copeland : Actually I started out as a kid thinking of music for big orchestras and writing pop music was a detour. It’s the only way I can get laid in high school !
Gert : I think your soundtracks have in my opinion a particular sound that one can instantaneously recognize, is it done deliberately ?
Stewart Copeland : No, not at all and it’s one of the mysteries of life that any musician picks up a guitar, he writes a song or writes a riff, or a piece of music and it is what it is : musician A is ignored and musician B for some reasons is unique! Now they both put the same amount of heart into it, they both scratch their imagination to do it, but... I don’t know why it is that people tell me my work is unique cause it’s just whatever came into my head. I do it with instinct and that’s I guess what can be detected whever I’m writing for orchestras or rock band or whatever... It’s the same instinct that drives it and maybe there is a personnality to that which is discernible.
Gert : You used to say that classical music was or is the main part of your musical background. Can you tell me more about that?
Stewart Copeland : It’s where I started from musically but most of my professional life I was playing rock music and my instrument is a rock instrument. The instruments that I play, guitar, bass, drums, whatever, are rock instruments... I can get a better performance out of a rock band... Karajan is going to do a lot better with an orchestra than me but it’s a strange thing that the music that goes through my head most of the time is symphonic music even though I enjoy playing rock music.
Gert : As a matter of fact, you love classical musical but as you said, rock & roll was better if you wanted to have a girlfriend
Stewart Copeland : (laughing) exactly.
Gert : Is that really the way how it all began ?
Stewart Copeland : You know it’s sounds like a joke but it’s actually true ! I was a very skinny late developer, and I wasn’t very good at sports. I was kind of small and pale and the only way I could get touching was by playing loud drums. Which is why most kids pick up instruments actually, that’s why most musicians are skinny kids who couldn’t play football... but still wanted to get laid.
Gert : The Beatles where saying about the same, they begun play music to impress girls !
Stewart Copeland : I think that music is the human mating dance. I think that’s why humans like music. Every animal species has its rituals, its mating rituals. You know birds has their feathers displayed and so on... Music is the langage of the mating dance for humans.
Gert : To my knowledge you have written three Operas. Can you tell me more about that very hard practice ?
Stewart Copeland : Yes, it is very hard and the good thing is that it’s all art (?) and it’s all the composer. When you write pop-music, you are thinking very much about radio format and so on. You only do it to have it ! When I’m doing film music, I’m persuing somebody’s else vision really. Opera is the composer medium. The composer is God in Opera and that’s why I enjoy it, because it’s complete control over a lot of very big elements such as the orchestra, the cast, the stage and everything.
Gert : And how did the critics react to your operas?
Stewart Copeland : Well, it varies. I would say... I don’t know what the proportion is... say half object to a rock-star taking a sideways step into classical music. It’s not supposed to be easy because all of the other people in that world studied hard, paid their dues, walked their way up step by step in classical music. So to have some rock star just go straight to the head of the queue ennoys them. On the other hand there are those people who respond to my music and I usually get extreme reviews, which is good.
Gert : Maybe it’s the same that happens to Paul Mc Cartney When he does his Liverpool Oratorio ?
Stewart Copeland : Absolutely ! There is a man who nobody can say that he doesn’t know how to write music. He has written some of the most important music of our time but still critics would attack him. There is another big thing to be fair to the critics, when they compare me as a rock musician, they are comparing me to the other rock musicians today of which there are hundreds of mediocres, some very good (mostly mediocres)... Now when I write an Opera they are not comparing me to all the other Opera writers today. They are comparing me to Pucchini, Mozart, Wagner... only the top of the top of the top, la crème de la crème de la crème! Because all of the other hundreds of composers who lived in the time of Mozart have been forgotten. Only the absolute supergod is remembered ! I’m competing with not the best of today but the best of five hundred years. And that’s a tough competition.
Gert : You once made a jam with Paul McCartney, when and where did it happen and how did it feel to play with a Beatle ?
Stewart Copeland : Well, it was great. Except the fact that I didn’t actutally play with a Beatle ! He hired a bass player, and I went along, it was George Martin and Paul and they were doing some songs, some boring pop ballad. And I tried to do something cool with it but they were like “no, no, could you just let it as it is”. I realised they didn’t ask me to play in this track for my way of playing, they wanted my name on, you know. But this was a great day. As soon as we realize the track wasn’t working, he just told Beatles stories for the end of the afternoon ! This was great, stories of him and John... That’s fun ! Then we did had a jam, which was pretty cool actually, but I don’t think he ever used it for anything. And I’ve learned something from him : he showed up the studio and I’ve had real problems parking. He said “what do you park for? I just came on the Tube !”, “you came on the Tube ? You’re a Beatle for fuck sake !”, he said “yeah, why not ?” And I was in this bubble of thinking “I can’t go on the Tube, people might see me”. “yes sure, so what will they see, so what ?”. And so from that moment... I really learned something for not giving a shit. It’s very liberating.
Gert : Coming back to classical music, would you enjoy writing a new opera for the Opera Bastille ?
Stewart Copeland : Oh yeah ! I love to write operas but it’s very difficult to find because it’s so expensive. You have to find opera companies to take a big gamble and if the Opera Bastille would have call me I would write an opera immediatly.
>>>>> NEXT PAGE