Interview date: April 18, 2008
Daevid Allen is the legendary guitarist and vocalist of Gong, the band he also founded. After assorted adventures (mostly involving drugs) he left the band. Over the years he’s worked with plenty of musicians on all sorts of projects, and now he’s stopped in Gorica with Brainville 3, where he plays alongside Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, Peter Blegvad,…) and Hugh Hopper (Soft Machine). After the show he gave us a few minutes to talk.
Rockline: Are you happy with the show?
Daevid Allen: Honestly, I don’t even remember it all that well.
Rockline: What do you mean?
Daevid Allen: I remember certain decisions, and then I went off to some place I can’t remember. Really weird.
Rockline: Is music like a drug for you?
Daevid Allen: Drugs are just a fake.
Rockline: You think they’re unproductive?
Daevid Allen: No, they’re productive, they’re like medicine. But without drugs you’re totally clear-headed and you can take more away from the experience. Don’t get me wrong, I like drugs. I’ve got nothing against them. They’re our lady friends who help us get through life. You just have to be careful and disciplined. A healthy body matters too. I’m seventy years old and I look after my body. If I didn’t, I’d probably be a real pain. I’d be stuck in bed somewhere or in a wheelchair. You’ve got to take care of your body. The body is the vehicle that carries you through life, so it has to be in good shape.
Rockline: Do you look at life in a positive way?
Daevid Allen: No, because on this planet half the stuff is good and half is bad. When I’m in an optimistic mood, it’s across the board. Right now I’m in that state. When I’m optimistic, I change things through art, but when I’m a pessimist, I just mirror society and all its bad sides. With music you destroy all those bad things and bring people together. Music unites tribes.
Rockline: Do you think the audience is part of your tribe?
Daevid Allen: Of course. The audience is the tribe!
Rockline: Not just the musicians on stage?
Daevid Allen: No way! The musicians are just there by chance. Sure, as a musician you steer a certain current, you open a window and let the wind carry you off. When I play, I play spontaneously, without thinking. It’s not an intellectual exercise. Except when something goes wrong. When you have to fix something, you’ve got to use your brain too. Today it was sixty percent intellectual exercise and forty percent spontaneous playing.
Rockline: Does that mean you made a lot of mistakes?
Daevid Allen: No, I just did a lot of thinking. That makes it harder to play. When you’re really in the mood, you want to play things you’ve never played before, things you maybe aren’t even capable of playing.
Rockline: Was there a lot of improvisation during the show?
Daevid Allen: It was all improvisation, apart from a few little things.
Rockline: What about the lyrics?
Daevid Allen: Three texts were prepared in advance, and the rest was improvised.
Rockline: Is that an important aspect of the band’s music?
Daevid Allen: I think that aspect is important for the future of politics. That’s how countries will be run. Improvising is all about being immersed in the moment. In politics too, we’ll have to forget the past and give ourselves over to the moment.
Rockline: Was Gong also about improvised music?
Daevid Allen: Absolutely. We never played a single song the same way twice. When young bands come along and copy others, it’s like wrapping the music in plastic. It’s a photocopy. I encourage bands to play different versions of songs, like a punk version, hip hop or heavy metal.
Rockline: That’s more original.
Daevid Allen: Exactly. It’s not just about somebody trying to repeat somebody else.
Rockline: Can you tell me a bit about how the Brainville project came about?
Daevid Allen: I’ve been playing with Hugh (Hugh Hopper) longer than with anyone else in my life, since 1961. We’ve known each other for ages. Every time we meet up again, we see that we’re on the same wavelength.
Rockline: And Chris Cutler?
Daevid Allen: I’ve been playing with Chris for a long time too. We like hanging out.
Rockline: Did Chris join because of Pip Pyle’s death?
Daevid Allen: No, we’d played with Chris before. Actually, both of them were members of the band. One was available at one point, the other at another. Now, after Pip’s death, Chris is with us all the time and we play really well together.
Rockline: Is touring hard on you? Physically, I mean.
Daevid Allen: No. Every show is different, and at every show you’re hoping for some kind of miracle.
Rockline: Do you ever fight?
Daevid Allen: Not really. We’re pretty different characters, but we somehow click. Between shows everyone can go off in their own direction and it still works. Because we’re so different, it means we’re multidimensional. Three streams of consciousness develop, not just one.
Rockline: Would you describe your music as multidimensional?
Daevid Allen: Of course. That comes from the psychedelic mindset. Psychedelic music was about lifting you out of your body and taking you somewhere else.
Rockline: Do you think Gong was a psychedelic band, Canterbury, or something else?
Daevid Allen: They lumped us in with the psychedelic bands because we worked with Pink Floyd. They also thought we were a political band, because I was caught up in the student unrest in Paris in 1968. They even kicked me out of France over it. They also took us for a biker band, because I did the soundtrack for a motorcycle film called Continental Circus. So lots of bikers came to our shows. We played songs with weird time signatures, but they didn’t sweat it, they liked it. Then there were the hippies, who also counted us as one of their own. When there was a full moon, we always took LSD. For every show, no matter where we were. It felt like we were Native Americans. On the full moon we played long improvised sets. The whole thing feels like spiritual evolution to me. As soon as something gets too cemented in place, like churches for instance, it gets poisoned. It tries to oppress people. I think the future can be beautiful, but I still don’t trust people, not even myself.
Rockline: Not even yourself?
Daevid Allen: No, I’ve done wrong too many times. I think every once in a while you have to make a conscious mistake.
Rockline: Why?
Daevid Allen: Because that clears everything up and you don’t have to worry anymore. You can relax. When I play, I make a lot of mistakes. That’s exactly why I love playing – because I make a lot of mistakes.
Rockline: Can you tell me something about the imaginary world you created with Gong?
Daevid Allen: I was just listening to the voices in my head. Maybe they were from another planet. That’s part of the joke. The concept is presented like a children’s story.
Rockline: What about the names? Were those your idea?
Daevid Allen: Sometimes it would just dawn on someone and they’d say: “You’re Bloomdido.”
Rockline: Was that a result of the drugs?
Daevid Allen: Always. We ourselves were the main element, the drugs just guided us. We all have our own abilities that shape us.
Rockline: Thanks for the chat.
Daevid Allen: Thanks.
Interview by: Rok Podgrajšek
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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