| The Nick Magnus Interview |  |
| The Nick Magnus Interview | |
Celebrating the release of a long-lost classic 70's Prog album, and the new release of a very 90's solo album, BOA journeys to 'Alpha Control', home and studio of Nick Magnus.
Perhaps best known as Steve Hackett's former Keyboard Wizard, in a two-part interview Nick guides us through the world of piano lessons, Mayday Galliards, Autumnal diversions, Hackett collaborations and Pan Pipe frolics that has led to the mysterious opus of 'Inhaling Green'.
IO: So Nick, what first inspired you to take up the keyboards, when did it all start?
NM: Well it started when I was six. I used to run into any room that had a piano shouting, "Ahhh look, piano!" and I just started bashing away at them.
IO: So it wasn't forced on you by your parents?
NM: Well being interested in music wasn't forced, but the formal piano lessons I didn't enjoy. At least certainly at the outset. The primary school I went to had a very draconian teacher called Pamela Richards who also gave private piano lessons. Of course as far as my Mum was concerned she was the logical choice of a piano teacher - at the school ready-made, and she only lived around the corner. So I had to go to her, and she was a spiteful old cow.
IO: In what way?
NM: She was into psychological sadism really. Most unfortunate way to start piano lessons. It worked out in my favour eventually because she used to punish me by giving me music theory papers to do. If I hadn't improved over the past week, rather than find out why or offer help, a concept that was beyond her, she took great delight in giving me these music papers. Grade 1/2/3/4 ASA papers.
Somehow or other, although no one had taught me how, I just innately discovered that I could do it. So the first five minutes of the lesson was me humiliating myself completely by not being able to play last week's set piece. She would then give me one of these papers as punishment and bugger off for half an hour to watch TV while I sat doing these things. Of course she would then come back expecting me to be in floods of tears and I'd just hand the thing to her going, "There you are," and she'd look at the thing and go, "Oh… it's correct, correct. Damn and blast," and then give me a harder one to do. The written theoretical side of music did come quite easily to me, but to this day I can't sight read. Well, one monophonic line I can stumble through but give me two polyphonic paths and I just become dyslexic. I can write it down without any problem and you think, "How can I write it down and not read it back?"
She was the first. There were a number of other teachers in my childhood, but in common none of them actually taught you anything. All they did was sit there and watch you play the piano and state the obvious, like, "Yes, that was OK," or "No, that was crap". No one would actually teach you anything.
IO: Sounds like a lot of teachers in the 60's and 70's.
NM: Yes, so you end up becoming 'self-taught' and I think that may be a very good thing. Going back to sight-reading, I have met the opposite - people that can read, but cannot create or play an existing tune from their memory.
IO: So do you think that you have to be born with a 'musical ability', and it is something that really cannot be learnt?
NM: I'm not sure. Some people I'm sure would say that, but I think if you have an interest in music and find a good teacher then I think that if you did not have it innately within you it is perfectly possible to get it.
I also studied church organ for a couple of years. Making the leap from piano to Cathedral organ was quite a substantial jump. The thing that drew me to the organ was a fascination that unlike a piano, where you press a note and the note disappears, if you do the same with an organ it keeps going for as long as you hold the key down, and it sounds huge. It was the sounds as much as the music that I found so appealing.
IO: When did you discover the joys of Rock 'n' Roll?
NM: Umm. Well, rather late. As far as playing it in a band situation I was 17 or 18. I had a really big interest in the 60's pop music of the time. There were lots of instrumental Pop groups - The Shadows, The Tornadoes all that kind of stuff, and I bought all those records.
IO: But they were mostly guitar-based?
NM: Well the Tornadoes were keyboard-based. That was the first electronic instrumental music that I was aware of that was 'pop' as well. But yes, it was really guitar-based then because the technology wasn't there. You really just had the choice of piano and organ. I had a deep interest in instrumental music from then on - I think that was the catalyst.
IO: Were you brought up listening to Classical Music?
NM: Yes, my mother had a big record collection, and I used to listen to those as well.
IO: Who's your favourite composer?
NM: Rachmaninov.
IO: The old Rach 2?
NM: Rach 2 is IT! That's a piece I can't listen to in company. I just end up in floods of tears. In fact 'Brief Encounter' is a film I can't watch in company either, I end up in floods of tears as of course it's Rach 2 playing all the way through it.
IO: So a real mixture of 60's Pop and Classics.
NM: Well also when I was in my early- to mid-teens I became fanatically interested in TV incidental / theme music.
IO: Like the John Barry / Jerry Goldsmith themes?
NM: Anything - I was quite indiscriminate. It could have been the cheapest bit of electronic tat or a huge well-crafted orchestral oeuvre. I liked it all and in fact myself and Mark (The guitarist in 'Autumn') used to trade TV tunes. We had piles of cassettes and built a system to 'DI' [Direct Inject] straight off the set. Of course in those days there was no such thing as a line-out or headphone socket, so we used to take the backs off the sets, wire up to the speaker and stick a huge resistor across the thing to cut the signal down. Before this we used to do it via microphone, and my mum would always know just when to start talking - as soon as the music started, it was, "Nicky, go and tidy your room…and….".
I think this is what initially triggered the cinematic / thematic work that I have ended up doing.
TV music now just seems very homogeneous, but back then you just got every style of music. So it was a huge variant influence. But as I said, I was completely indiscriminate and loved all of it to such an extent that I kind of lost interest in the Pop and Rock world for several years. Maybe this was also because my elder brother was into it at the time, and because he was my brother I by default loathed everything he played.
IO: That's interesting, because you usually find that it is the other way round and the sibling does usually get their musical taste from their elder. I remember my younger brother was considered very 'hip' by his classmates as he was into bands like ELP / Genesis at the age of 11 or 12, which he'd got from me.
NM: Actually, now you say that, I do remember that there were a handful of things that he had that I really did like - The Nice, ELP, and parts of Led Zeppelin. But my brother was mainly into 'Blues', and that's never been a great interest of mine… Terrible confession to make I know
NM: The interest in Rock music did not really return until a 'watershed' moment when I went to a party one night - '71 or '72 - and someone put on Bowie's 'The Man Who Sold the World'. I sat there totally ignoring the party and listened to the album all the way through. That's when my rock collection started.
Then, of course, I started getting into Prog…"Ooh, who's this band Genesis...? What's this album 'Foxtrot'...? (This is really good)…Hey, what's this scrappy grindy noise.... Ooh it's a Mellotron.... I love it".
IO: And we still do!
NM: And it snowballed from there. Of course the main interest was the keyboard-based stuff, so it was Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Greenslade - most bands beginning with 'G' in fact.
IO: And then on, or back, to a certain 'E' band?
NM: Not quite yet. Around about that point was school leaving time and at that point, although I had fantasies about being in a proper long-trousers rock band, it was, "Oh, that's just a dream - it's not going to happen." My other, in fact main, interest at the time was film animation, and what I wanted to be was a film animator. Film has always been a massive interest both visually and sonically; a thing that draws you in and takes you away from reality - that's the whole point of any entertainment really - and the further away the better. I used to make my own animated movies in the garden with plasticine. It was a forerunner to Morph, really. This was about 1973.
I looked at various colleges that were doing film courses, but most of them were far from home. Being a bit of a wimp I thought, "I don't want to move away too far from home," so I signed for the nearest one, which was Portsmouth Arts College. I went to have a look around and found a room with a stop animation camera. But the day I actually started there I went to the room and the camera had gone. So I went to the head of the department who told me they had sold it. I said, "But I'm doing a film animation course!" and he said, "Tough".
Instead of kicking up a stink, which anyone with any gumption would do, I just immediately said "Oh, I'll do the next best thing I suppose - I'll do graphics." So I enrolled for a four-year graphic design course. Now I only actually did two years of it because, as is always so well documented, art colleges are wonderful places to meet musicians.
IO: Absolutely, In fact Progressive Rock is called Art Rock in America.
The band that took up most of the time was an instrumental band called 'D'arcy', named after the Monty Python Jane Austen spoof. There's a quote from that sketch where Mildred reveals Darcy as "Something less than she first expected." "D'arcy - the band that was less than was first expected". That's where it came from, but funnily no one ever asked us at the time. It was basically a Greenslade rip-off. We didn't actually do any of their numbers, but I just basically wrote stuff that could have been them.
IO: Of course David Greenslade now is mostly known as a composer of TV themes and incidental music.
NM: Yes, from the 1979 'Pentateuch' time onwards and ever since.
IO: Bit of collectors' item that album. Anyway we digress.
NM: Well D'arcy gigged around a fair bit and were mostly greeted by fairly bemused audiences, who weren't quite sure what to make of us. Eventually I fell out with the bass player, why I can't remember. So I thought "Oops, I'd better see if there is anything in Melody Maker".
IO: Were you still in college at this time?
NM: I'd left at that point. I left September 1975 and via an advert in Melody Maker joined The Enid on May 20th 1976, a date engraved on my mind. I seem to remember that the advert for a keyboardist mentioned "Symphonic Band - acclaimed first album."
IO: Of course, that would be 'In the Region of the Summer Stars' - See BOA article (The Enid - In The Region Of The Summer Stars - Another BOA 25 year special).
NM: A 'plug' for BOA… (laughter). Anyway, this advert intrigued me, and I got a phone call from RJG asking me to come up and I was asked to join on the day. So I did.
IO: How long were you with them?
NM: About 6 months. Reading Festival was the biggest gig I played with them.
IO: Ah yes. The first time I saw the band was the next day at the Marquee. Little 16-year-old me had to ask Mummy's permission…
NM: Ah, cute…Bless (laughter)
IO: Well I have to thank you and the band at that time for getting me into music - it was that first gig that really 'did it' for me and 'Region' is probably still my favourite album to this very day.
Anyway, six months with the band but no actual released recordings?
NM: Well obviously I'd missed 'Region', and we started to write and record the initial pieces for 'Aerie Faerie Nonsense' just as I left. But nothing was recorded properly, although we had recorded stuff in the band's studio. Although you can't really call it a studio. It was bales of hay and hardboard in a kind of hut in the garden. Because there were no neighbours for some distance we could go in there and blast away at top volume. The band had borrowed a 'four-track to do demos.
IO: Quite good technology in those days.
NM: Yes, in those days a 'Docorder' four tracks was 'the Donkey's knob', so we were really chuffed to get this, and there were even thoughts at the outset that this would actually do…. I can remember doing at least 'Mayday Galliard' on that machine. But those were the only actual recordings I did with the band.
IO: The Enid must have been a very good school for you?
NM: Yes it was. I think I learnt more in six months with The Enid than I had learnt in my entire life up to that point. Robert, when he was in the mind and in the right mood, was a very good teacher. He used to sit me down at the piano and just for an example say, "Go on, play me a bit of one of your tunes," because when I joined The Enid I played them some of the D'arcy stuff and Robert said, "You know, in one of those tracks you have enough material for about three albums." He may have been right, because in that schoolboy type of writing I just used to get all the ideas that were in the same key and stick them in the one track. You need to be taught how not to write as well as how to write. That was one of the principal things that Robert taught me. He'd sit me down, get me to play something, and say, "Right, stop there. Now that little figure, you can make an entire section out of that. Stick the melody down to the bass, use the rhythm on the left hand, figure on the right…. " Real symphonic writing, and it was stuff I had never considered. I was going, "Oh my God, wow, this is incredible." It took a number of years for it to sink in I suppose. In fact I think the title track to 'Inhaling Green' is at last that teaching sinking in 20-odd years later.
Anyway, I decided to leave the band along with drummer Robbie Dobson. That was when I joined Autumn.
Autumn home page: http://www.autumn76.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm
Autumn CD available on line from Compact Disc Services: http://www.cd-services.com/index.htm
Autumn already existed, with guitarist Mark Easton being the band's figurehead. He was the one constant member. The band had been going for a couple of years prior to this, but Mark had been constantly cycling around Portsmouth trying to find musicians that were actually able to play this stuff. When I came back home Mark said, "Nick, I wish you'd join Autumn, come on, join." They had a friend's basement that they used to rehearse in all the time, so I went and sat in on a number of their rehearsal sessions, and eventually found myself thinking, "God, I wouldn't mind playing this stuff - it's really good." So I thought, "Sod it - why not?"
So I got in contact with Robbie, as I thought he would be the perfect drummer for this. I contacted him and said, "Look Robbie, we are looking for a totally stonking and completely bizarre drummer and you're just the person." And he said Yes straight away.
So this started a two-year project. Steve Hoff remained the bass player because no one could fill the role he did. He is such a wonderful and intuitive bass player, with no real formal musical knowledge at all. But he just knew exactly what notes to play.
So we started to gig around a lot, and we were very well received. But the prospect of actually being able to record anything seemed fairly remote. Even quarter-decent recordings were a very expensive option then (1977-8). We didn't have any money and most of us were living on the dole. But we had a little luck.
Mark worked in a local music shop called 'Telecoms' in Portsmouth. They had just finished building an eight-track studio above the shop and were keen to get some guinea pigs in to try it out. Mike who ran the shop said to Mark, "I don't suppose your lot would like to do it?"… YES!
So we went and recorded what subsequently twenty-three years later became the 'Oceanworld' CD.
IO: How long did you have to actually record?
NM: I think the whole thing was done in a day.
IO: Were all the tracks tested out on the road beforehand?
NM: Yes, thoroughly. You also have to consider that there are practically no overdubs in the recordings, so we had to be very well rehearsed. The only overdubs that I made were because the Vox string machine I was using at the time I had modified so that you could do a church organ and French horn sounds. I tweaked a few pots inside and discovered that you could get all these different noises from it, so I rigged up switches on a side panel.
So there were a couple of passages where I was playing strings where I decided that some French horn or something would be nice. It was like, "Well we've still got twenty minutes, let's just do this little overdub." Other than that the whole thing is really completely live. It was a one-take, seat-of-our-pants job.
IO: So why wasn't it released at the time in any form?
NM: No one was interested. As explained in Mark's inner sleeve notes, which take the form of a little essay about the rise and fall of Prog and our place in it. Our place was right at the time of the steepest gradient of the fall. Punk had exploded and anything proggy was absolute garlic-and-crosses. So there was absolutely no interest in the recording. Robbie and I did a tour of record companies with a cassette of this stuff and were suicidal when we came home. We were virtually laughed out of the office each time. Some people just refused to even listen to it. It was a very, very bad time, and it's only now, twenty-three years later, that it's becoming a good time again for this type of music
IO: So where were the master tapes for all this time?
NM: Well, we all had cassette tapes of the album. But the master tape, which we previously thought had been lost, was found a couple of years back when Mark was moving. He clearing out his old house and he found the original quarter inch master tape in a plastic bag in his airing cupboard. He immediately rang me up to tell me and that's when I approached a mutual friend of ours at CEDAR to do the sound restoration. (Hello Gordon). (http://www.cedar-audio.com/)
IO: So who's actually put it out and distributed it?
NM: We have - the band. But Mark actually did all the hard work.
IO: How's it been received?
NM: Really, really well. Surprisingly well, in fact. We are getting reviews saying, "This is an undiscovered gem - where have they been -why can't we have more - why did we have to wait twenty-three years…?"
IO: So will there be any more?
NM: Mark and I have discussed it. There are numerous hurdles to overcome, none of which are insurmountable, but hurdles nonetheless. Some bigger than others. The biggest one being that all four of us are doing completely different things now. Robbie lives in Wales, runs a vegan farm-cum-rehearsal studio complex, Arcania (http://www.arcania.co.uk/), Steve runs a studio in Southsea and is just about to move, Mark's a graphic designer, and I do what I do. We all get little free time. I mean doing what I do, when I do have some free time, I either want to do nothing, or put it into some of my own projects. Mark's very busy with his graphics work. So it's a question of when the four of us could ever get together at the same time. And of course the writing is a lengthy process in itself. The way the Autumn stuff was originally written was through uncountable hours of rehearsal. Mark, Robbie and myself shared a house together, so all our waking hours were spent with the gear on and playing. Whatever we would come up with now would be quite different from what it was then. Obviously we would try to push it towards the original Autumn sound, but there's twenty-three years of experience gathered since then. I certainly wouldn't do things the same way now. We are all hopefully better musicians than we were then, and different musicians than we were then. Obviously also the technology has radically changed.
IO: So everyone is still playing?
NM: Yes, as far as I know they are. Whatever you do now is going to be influenced by the way you are now- with reference to the way you were then. There's also the cost of the thing. Especially the drums. A good drum sound doesn't just happen; it needs a lot of work. But nevertheless Mark and I have discussed this a lot, and always end our discussion with, "Wouldn't it be good?"
IO: If?
NM: Yes, "If…."
Autumn have given BOA special permission to host one of the tracks off Oceanworld. For a full MP3 download of 'Some Like It Crunchy', please go to our Guest MP3 page, or press here.
Oceanworld can be ordered direct from the band -
Home page: http://www.autumn76.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm
Nick Magnus Homepage: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/nick.magnus/
NM: Yes, 11 years working with Steve with the touring element being '78 to '84.
IO: What did you learn most in those years?
NM: Well just about anything you can think of really. I think communicating with other musicians, that was certainly improved upon. Obviously a lot of that went on in Autumn, we couldn't have turned out what we did in Autumn unless we were very close to each other. But that really came out of knowing each other so well. I mean Mark's my oldest friend; we've known each other since we were four. So few words needed to be said.
IO: That obviously must take a while to develop in a new band.
NM: Yes it can. I did a lot of session work in the 80's so I was constantly going off to strange studios to play with people I'd never met before. And I did find it quite stressful from that point of view in that some people made themselves amenable and likeable, and then you felt you could give of yourself comfortably and confidently; other people were just intimidating - "You're just a hired facility, you don't even have a 'Fairlight'. But we'll put up with you and begrudge paying you the fee." Curiously enough these comments usually came from people who were not particularly well known. The well-known people, well for the most part they had 'grown up'. They had been there themselves, knew what it was like, so they treated you accordingly - that's when you feel confident in yourself and make every effort to do your best.
But establishing a working rapport with someone can be a difficult thing. There has really only been a handful of musicians that I would say that I had a perfect rapport with, and Steve was one of them.
He immediately made me feel welcome and appreciated and was always willing to listen to my ideas and thoughts as I was to his.
IO: When did you really start to stamp your mark on the Hackett albums?
NM: Well the albums we did as a band ('Spectral Mornings'/ 'Defector') were really band albums rather than any one individual. Everybody had their own special area - Dik Cadbury for example was so good at all the vocal arrangements; John Shearer, a complete maniac anyway, just added so much energy to it all. And I added what ever I added.
 |
 |
 |
IO: But listening to those two albums, and the earlier Autumn album, you can hear the Magnus sound.
The particular use of the clavinet combined with Steve's guitar in 'Tigermoth' for example, and the bombastic keyboards in 'Clocks' and 'Slogans' is to me 'The Hackett sound' - or 'The Magnus/Hackett sound'. "Beware the mighty Magmatron!"
NM: (laughs) It was originally recorded as "Beware the mighty Smegmatron!" but we got a bit tired of the joke….
But I think you spotted there the thing with the clavinet was the thing that started the fascination that Steve and I both had with trying to make the keyboard and guitar occasionally indistinguishable. With the Clavinet it was really that when you put it through a chorus pedal it's in the same sound filing cabinet as a 12-string guitar. So when you had the 12-string and an arpeggiating Clavinet you sometimes couldn't really tell what was doing each part. That constantly fascinated Steve and me when we used to play it back in the studio.
Anyway, back to your original question. It's difficult to be really specific what I took away from those years. All the different people that you work with, you take little bits with you. I added a whole new harmonic subsection to my library. There are chords, shapes, progressions and colours that Steve always uses which I hadn't come across before. And now I like using the same sorts of things.
IO: Yes, I can hear it on the end section of 'Inhaling Green'.
NM: Yes that is very 'Hacketty'. Actually the one section that was on my mind when I did that was The loud bit in 'Tigermoth' which is the bit we used to call "bring another victim". Bring another victim -boom-boom - bring another victim…. It's that kind of bombastic, relentless, doomy kind of feel.
So it's only when I start to analyse my own work that I do find what I have picked up from other people over the years. And sometimes it's a bit chicken and egg: have I learnt the Hackett sound or was the Hackett sound a mixture of my input and Steve's?
IO: So you spent seven years on the road with Steve. Why did it all come to an end?
NM: The end of touring coincided with the demise of Charisma. Charisma was taken over by Virgin and when Virgin went through the catalogue, one of the artists they decided they no longer wanted was Steve. So Steve had to find a new label and ended up on an independent label called Lamborghini who unfortunately did not have the resources to promote an act like Steve. Unfortunately this was a bit of a trough for Steve, no support from the record company, and these were in the days before the technology existed to do it yourself. If you hadn't got a 'proper' label supporting you, you were dead in the water. So we were really forced off the road. But we carried on recording in all sorts of studios all over the place as we could get cheap down time. It was then the thing that is known (in Hackett circles) as the "Feedback Project" came into existence.
IO: Sorry, I don't know of this.
NM: Well, amongst the Hackett fraternity it's semi-mythical. It's basically all the stuff we recorded between '85 and '89, which I believe Camino are now considering putting out. If this is supposed to be a 'secret' or not I don't know. But everyone seems to know about it - it's that secret. All the stuff that we did amounts to about two albums. Steve in the meantime was trying to get a deal and eventually came to the conclusion that his money would be better spent on a studio of his own. A couple of years earlier he had moved house and it had a basement. The last use for it had been a self-contained flat. He thought about using it as a studio and after a while of 'umming' and 'ahing', thought, "Yes, I'm going to do it". So the last batch of things we recorded were done there.
IO: Was 'Genesis Revisited' recorded there?
NM: I believe it was. Apart from the one track 'Valley of the Kings' which, as I played the keyboards, I know was definitely recorded there, I can't actually confirm it. In fact that track was one of the 'Feedback' pieces.
IO: But you were still touring with other bands at this time (1985-87)? I remember seeing you in a band supporting Suzanne Vega at the Royal Albert Hall.
NM: Yes, in '87 and '88 I did 2 tours. I joined a band with bassist Chas Cronk (ex-Strawbs) with his friend, songwriter Roy Hill. The two of them used to go out and gig as a two-piece and I ended up sitting in a guest sometimes. But this was playing drums on octopads, not keyboards, so I never had to learn the pieces. I ended up getting quite involved with them and they ended up getting a name, 'Cry No More'. We got a record deal with EMI. This time I was playing keyboards as well and we ended up doing a support tour with Suzanne Vega. We had a single out called 'Tears on the Ballroom Floor'. The live act was 70% comedy, 30% serious. That's what Roy was, and is, so good at - he should have a TV show of his own. I ended up on stage playing both drums and keyboards, sometimes simultaneously, and being in the early midi days things invariably went wrong. These were the times Roy most looked forward to. He would just step in front of the mike and do a monologue, which was what most of the audience were waiting for anyway!
The second tour in '88 was supporting John Martin. They made two albums with EMI but unfortunately I was not on them. EMI said, "If you're going to make these albums, we want to pick the team on them, and we don't want him". I just wasn't a sellable name.
That was my last touring experience, unless you count Roland demonstrations!
IO: So you haven't been back on the road since '88, apart from the demos? Was that a decision taken at the time or was there one event that finally decided it?
NM: There were two… In 1990 Steve decided he wanted to get back on the road and do some live gigs. He came straight to me and asked me if I wanted to do it. It was right in the middle of one of my earliest "production" projects so it was really the wrong time to ask me. If he had asked me before I had started the project, then I probably would have said yes. So I turned him down, admittedly regrettably; I sort of miss it now. Also, there had been such a dramatic change in keyboard technology between '84 and '90, suddenly mini sequencers, which had not even been invented in '84, had become paramount, and the more the technology had developed, the more was expected of the keyboardist in a live situation. You get people presenting you with tracks that had taken six months to compose and expecting you to reproduce it at a touch of a button. Well, yes, but only if you've spent 3 months programming it all in. I also had little confidence in this technology live, and still don't to some degree. Even today in a studio, when it's all installed, it can still break down. They are all inter-connected now. Whereas before I had a 10-keyboard rig, but they were all independent machines, so if one broke down I could always fill in with another.
IO: Do you now think that technology is dictating to the musician rather than the other way round?
NM: I think it did, but I'm sure a lot of people will disagree and say that it has freed them up enormously. The combination of being busy on my project, and the nervousness about the technology, was added to my decision that the studio was what I liked best, so that's what I was going to do.
The two-million seller
And the new Magnus-opus 'Inhaling Green'
Coming soon on BOA
