It was a wonderful day for a trip to Amsterdam, for a conversation with Stephen Emmer about his latest album, Mt. Mundane. The run-up to that album had been quite challenging: the vicissitudes Stephen had recounted during an earlier conversation had continued, creating obstacles that many would have found insurmountable. Stephen approached that mountain with deliberation and, in doing so, became a champion for others in similar situations. It is therefore quite remarkable that, after Maison Melody, another surprisingly beautiful album appeared after scaling that very mountain. So there was plenty to discuss in Amsterdam.
WiM: It’s great to be able to talk to you about your beautiful new release, Mt. Mundane. What struck me this morning when I sent you a message via Messenger was that you captioned it ‘Glorious’. Can we take that as an indication of how you are doing?
That was me being caught in the moment, for sure. At the same time, I’m grateful for those moments. My mood still fluctuates between good and bad things. I’ve talked about my tinnitus before, of course, but as you also wrote in your review, I’m also deaf in one ear. And that has a big impact on my life. I go through life asymmetrically. Take, for example, when I’m on my bike and a car honks, I can’t locate where the sound is coming from.
That takes a lot of getting used to, because you deal with it every day. I also started feeling dizzy, to complete the trio of ailments. So I’ve had a few very difficult years. Between the previous album and making this one, I suffered from dizziness and had attacks where, after a few hours, the room would spin, I would feel nauseous and simply couldn’t walk anymore. That meant I had to walk with a stick or stagger or be accompanied by someone. That condition is called Ménière’s disease. Not only does my left ear no longer function the way it should, but neither does my left balance organ. It’s irreversible.
Movements require energy. Even so when I just opened the door for you. If I have to travel or do something else, it takes a lot out of me. Socially, my life has changed as a result. I don’t go to concerts, I don’t go to busy birthday parties, I don’t just go to a restaurant. If we do, I always want to know where the cutlery tray is or what kind of music they’re playing. The rattling of a cutlery tray is a very disturbing sound to me. And music? If I’m somewhere where the music is loud, I can’t stand it either. I was once at a restaurant where there was a speaker under every table. Most people don’t mind that, but for me it’s more than annoying. It just really drives me away.
It’s usually the volume that gets to me. And yes, I would call it the terror of the four-four time. That’s annoying too. And what’s the added value? You go to a restaurant to enjoy a delicious meal: the stimulus of excessive music doesn’t exactly contribute to that. Or is the music just a stopgap? Are we no longer able to engage in conversation? I’ve also encountered this with the Artists Against Tinnitus foundation. During a meeting with the state secretary of the previous cabinet, the deputy director of Horeca Nederland was also present. He indicated that he did not want to turn down the volume in his establishment because he believed it would generate less revenue.
He couldn’t prove it, but he presented it as an absolute statement. You wouldn’t expect that. And the question is how the state secretary listened to that. When you think about it, as a foundation, we’re not saying that we as musicians are victims of loud noise. No, we are also the producers of loud noise. So, as musicians, we also have to take responsibility for not damaging the hearing of our listeners.
During that same conversation with the state secretary, there was also a drummer who didn’t want to play any quieter because that would to him mean losing impact. When asked to define that impact, he said he wanted people to just feel the music. When I responded that this could also be achieved at a lower volume, the argument went: “I think it’s very dangerous if the state starts telling us to play more quietly, because it’s our music. Nobody should ever interfere with that.” So there are many different points of view and perspectives in this discussion. In any case, you can’t just say it’s about good guys and bad guys.
WiM: What I find fascinating is that a musician actually say: “I choose to keep playing loud.” I found that very surprising.
Yes. When you consider that there are alternatives. There are well-known bands in the US that are experimenting with low-level concerts. You have to be open to that.
WiM: It doesn’t have to be loud or in-your-face to sound beautiful or good.
Exactly, there are a lot of myths that have arisen in music culture. So people, including creators, say: you have to feel the music. Or other people say that otherwise people won’t come anymore. Aren’t you just insecure about your own content or your own form of presentation? A lot of parties are maintaining the status quo, but that whole norm… When Rammstein were allowed to play in Groningen, it meant that the local government had given in.
I think that’s all a sign that we’re going to have to put up with this nuisance for a long time to come, because it perpetuates itself. Interested parties with divergent interests, sometimes even conflicting interests. That’s one way to look at it. Let’s take another example, wind turbines. Despite the low-frequency noise they produce, which has been proven to cause medical problems for some people, the VVD minister wants to have them installed closer to homes. If you pay attention, noise is often the scapegoat.
WiM: Noise pollution or preventing it? It’s also about acknowledging it, isn’t it?
I remember hearing low-frequency noise in a house about five years ago. Someone from the local council came with measuring equipment and couldn’t see or hear anything. I said no, I can’t see anything either, but I can hear it. The issue was never resolved.
So noise can evoke very different reactions. It can also be a kind of old-fashioned adventure story when you read that people have been driven out of their embassy by noise, in Cuba if I’m not mistaken. Yes, I find that interesting too. There are also some films that deal with the subject. It continues to fascinate me. When I went to a quiet area here in the Netherlands two years ago, clearly marked by appropriate signs, I was very surprised to see huge aeroplanes flying overhead.
WiM: Looking at the foundation, are there many musicians who have joined?
Yes, but it’s not unanimous. So there are also people who don’t dare or don’t want to admit that they are also bothered by it. That’s something we’ve come up against in our mission: it’s not that easy to become a united collective. I’ve asked people about this. And often I got the answer: ‘Yes, I want to cooperate, but not under my own name.’ I always want to know why. Why do people make that choice? So there’s still a taboo and people think that if they admit this, they might lose their job.
Because listeners might start to doubt your hearing and therefore your singing or playing. That’s very true for people in pop music. And it’s also true for classical music. I once had an ENT doctor as a neighbour who said that it happens to classical musicians too. And there too, people feel the risk of possibly losing their job, with all the consequences that entails. So it remains quite a taboo. That’s why, when I launched my publicity campaign, I decided to borrow from another minority group and say: ‘Yes, I’m coming out about this.’ I did that in the hope that this example would encourage others to follow suit. But that’s not entirely the case, because not everyone among our colleagues feels the same way.
WiM: And those who come forward are people who are definitely affected by it themselves?
Yes, that’s true. But I thought it shouldn’t just be the usual suspects, not just professionals, but also amateur musicians. Well, I get letters every week from people with stories. It’s a very vivid issue. And last year or the year before, we really got a lot of publicity. We could have guessed that would happen. What we are seeing is that doors open and then close again. Doors don’t just stay open for a subject like this. So we are now looking for ways to put the subject back on the agenda and keep it there.
WiM: It remains remarkable that it is in danger of falling off the agenda. When I look at the people around me who have tinnitus, I understand how profound it can be. For example, someone may still be able to listen to music at home, but they can no longer go to concerts. So it’s very strange that people turn a blind eye to that. I just don’t understand it very well. Yes, I get that. I’ll continue to evangelise a little. But apparently that has its limits, doesn’t it?
That’s how I approach every project, including albums. I’m fairly open-minded: I just give it a try. I had a rough plan in mind: first create support in the Netherlands, especially in the music industry. Then organise some events, followed by concerts. And then we could build a bridge to Germany, England and the United States. Just like you had Live Aid in the past, you could now have Tinnitus Aid, with international participants such as Bono and Chris Martin. It would put it on the international map. But I think we’re experiencing some satellite delay.
WiM: You’ve made a remarkable journey from Maison Melody to Mt. Mundane. You’ve now delved back into your childhood, a journey back in time to draw on your creativity from that period and then bring it back to the here and now, plucking the notes from the air.
That was actually a surprising journey for me. I didn’t have very high expectations. I thought, Maison Melody, that’s about it. Especially with my limitations. I was grateful for that and very happy that it worked out.
Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer and one of my sources of inspiration, once said: ‘It is actually your artistic duty as an artist to engage in introspection. Well, that introspection actually tells you how to proceed. Or not. No matter how much I dreaded the outcome, I did it, and it became clear to me that I didn’t want to stop adventuring, didn’t want to stop making music and composing. But I went looking for ways to deal with my hearing problem.
As you reason things out, you become a kind of amateur psychologist to yourself. That made me look at my asymmetrical hearing differently. Instead of seeing it as a problem, I asked myself: ‘What can I do with it? So I started to rethink things. Instead of thinking about what I found acoustically tiring, the obligation of a metre, I thought about what I would like. That led me to a different form of music, mild sounds, with woodwinds, for example, and free of a metre. Not pop music; the music didn’t have to repeat itself, as it did in older pop music, or in jazz or prog rock. Think, for example, of Excerpt From A Teenage Opera by Keith West.
All of this led me to a number of starting points in my own thinking about how I wanted my music to sound. Slowly, I arrived at my own interpretation of music, a non-aggressive message, a balance between philosophical and thoughtful and practical. Based on both preferences and feasibility. I then wondered to what extent music had already been made in that direction, and I decided to listen to streamed music. I did so as a listener, but not yet as a creator. Starting point: quiet chamber music. Debussy and Ravel often emerged from that. Mildness turned out not to be synonymous with woolly or light-hearted. And so I also started listening to neoclassical music, where Einaudi is certainly a model. But neoclassical music, I found and still find, is very much rooted in Anglo-American minimal music. So Reich, Glass and so on.
And that actually involves a lot of repetition. It’s very rhythmically oriented, whereas what I heard in French impressionism was harmonic richness. And that means you don’t do campfire chords anymore, but you hear really complex music that is at the same time accessible and gentle, very refined. That was actually a whole new ball game for me, to explore that in a playful way. Because I’m actually just a latecomer to that. And I wasn’t trained at a conservatory, I taught myself. So it worked for me.
WiM: How did you go about making that style your own on your way to Mt. Mundane?
I first immersed myself in it. And that started with listening a lot. I also wondered what I needed to buy, because I wanted to keep going. What did I need? So I bought the book Classical Music for Dummies. In it, I learned the basics about instrument groups, how an orchestra works, what orchestral groups express. How do you express certain experiences with an orchestra? Which instruments best convey danger, which best convey serenity? Well, that’s how I arrived at a direction with a mix of theoretical and practical insights. But then I still had to do it.
WiM: You weren’t there just yet.
No, no, that was just the prelude. Well, classical music in general: what do we people in the pop music branche know about it? Most of us, very little. That was true for me too. But I did hear the connection between French impressionism and modern film music, such as that of Alexandre Desplat, or European film music in a broader sense. And also from Netflix series. I heard that they owed their harmonies to French impressionism. That’s actually the cradle of visual music, and I found that incredibly eye-opening.
And then I started looking more into the realm of impressionistic French classical music. I also started looking for what and who was behind the luminaries. One of those people was Poulenc. He wrote much more than just the music for Babar the Elephant; he wrote some amazing pieces that are much more layered and deeper than his best-known work. The same goes for Ravel, of course, because although he became famous for Bolero, he himself considered it only his most successful non-musical piece, because ultimately that really is all about repetition. If you take the obscure pieces by both of them, you hear chords all the time, so harmonic decisions and choices, something I was also familiar with from my other favourite genre of music. Not surprising, because in pop I found Brian Wilson more interesting than Springsteen.
And in jazz, the chords of Bill Evans. That’s also impressionism, technically speaking, but applied to jazz. That’s how I started listening, letting it sink in, and that’s how I listened to Frank Martin. Martin is a Swiss composer who combined French impressionism with the last remnants of Schönberg’s surrealism. It’s remarkable how Martin combined atonality with the chords of French impressionism. He lived in the Netherlands and died here in Naarden. That’s how I ended up in classical music on a quest that I was already familiar with from pop music, but which was just as valid here. And that quest also led me to Debussy.
And then, when I think back to how an artist can develop, my thoughts turn to Mark Hollis of Talk Talk with his only solo album. Because there you can also hear that transformation and actually a kind of musical restart. Unfortunately, he was a tormented figure who is no longer with us. But I heard so much more in that record. I found that album extremely inspiring, very different from what he had done so much before.
WiM: So your journey to Mt. Mundane was quite an adventure.
Yes, it’s an adventure in an almost boyish way. I encourage everyone to do a little mental test on themselves. Think back to the music that really grabbed you, what was your first single and which records did you discover later? And that you were really upset for an evening because of the excitement of finding that, a song that immediately got under your skin. You lose the image, or rather the sound of it, because you hear even more things when you’re thirty, forty, fifty. Back to the here and now, for the genre I was discovering, I was once again that eighteen-year-old exploring this whole new territory. I realised that a lot of it has been artificially kept out of pop music. Certain classical pieces, which, incidentally, are never performed here in the Concertgebouw, but obscure classical music, where you find many unexpected similarities with what are probably your favourite pop bands.
WiM: But would they know that and do it consciously? Because that’s an interesting question, of course. To what extent did it end up there consciously? Or is it much more than that? Is it something shared through time without them perhaps knowing about its existence?
Yes, I think it’s about taking something that appeals to you. Take Blackbird by the Beatles. Paul McCartney said about that: “We thought it was a great classical piece, but we couldn’t play it very well, so we made something up ourselves and that became that song.”
But I think it’s mainly a matter of taste. Taste is an intangible concept for everyone. But I think taste can also be the ultimate genre crossover tool. So if you like certain elements of Sketches Of Spain by Miles Davis, chances are you’ll also like Villa Lobos. Not the DJ, but the classical composer from Brazil, Hilton Villa Lobos. Because you hear roughly the same horns, but a hundred years earlier. And so, for all your heroes, you can actually find a link to an earlier inspiration.
What you do see is that in current music, say since the rise of Ed Sheeran, the craziness in expression has disappeared somewhat. A lot of songs are made in the same mould, which is a shame. Where have all those crazy chords from Miles gone? And from Mahavishnu Orchestra, Sparks? That craziness was what made the music. But I’ve also experienced that myself in my assignments.
If I suggest something that I used to be able to do, it’s not always accepted by clients these days. They want it within a fixed format. And that doesn’t suit me. I’ve decided that I no longer fit in there. Not in commissioned music, not in mainstream pop. I’m now known as a bit stubborn. And there are creators who can and want to do that. They mainly say, ‘You ask and we deliver.’ Well, I don’t do that, so you automatically come across as stubborn. I think that’s wonderful. Because that’s how I was when I was twenty. I’ve come full circle. I did conform for a while, but that was also because there was more room for it.
WiM: You proved yourself right with Maison Melody, to begin with.
Yes, after the previous album (Home Ground), a record executive at BMG asked me, “What’s next?” And I replied, “It will be a piece with a piano and string quartet.” He called it “commercial suicide.” I said he could see it that way, ‘I’ll call it artistic development.’ And that’s how I still feel about it. Except, of course, I’m in a privileged position. I don’t need any favours from record companies. I do it all myself because I can finance it myself from commissioned music. Well, I earn my money from commissioned music and hardly anything from free music. So what I do is one pays for the other and I don’t have to beg or ask permission from anyone.
That has actually been one of my intentions. In fact, I think the whole world should do that. Musically, at least. Thousands of songs are uploaded every day, so I would say let one of the filters or conditions be that there can be no repetition. Hopefully, that will result in much more interesting new music.
WiM: With the knowledge you gained, you went back to your younger years. So you already had the idiom in mind. Back to your old recordings, how did you proceed? After all, you could only have had a vague idea of what you wanted to do.
Well, to be honest, at that point I just had to do it. At the same time, I know that I only have limited energy. So I was dreading it. I realised that I had come up with it all and had to go through with it, start from scratch. So I needed some input. Not from others, but from myself. I knew that I used to make all kinds of musical sketches, melodies that I kept for someday or never.
I made them back in the days of the Minipops with a small organ, and I wondered if I could still use them. Could there be something useful among them? I couldn’t listen to the tapes I had anymore, and I heard that Jett Rebel and De Wolff still had such a device. Eventually, I was able to get hold of one of those devices and listened back to what I had made all those years ago. It was primitive and not recorded with the most exclusive and advanced equipment; I always had the simpler models of instruments. So not the Fender Precision, but the Fender Mustang, not the Yamaha DX-7 but the DX-9, not the Korg MS 20, but the Korg MS10. The same was true for the string instrument I had, which was not the Solina but the Elka.
I remember playing chords on it. Simple chords. Well, these were simple chords and I heard my one-finger melodies with a separate track. I isolated those melodies and listened to them, and I heard something in them that I found very moving. It was super naive, and it was also clear that I didn’t know that when I recorded it. We weren’t trained musicians, of course, so we did it all by feel. And I could hear that in those melodies. Later, as a kind of leap of thought, I found that interesting in the early days of hip hop. Those DJs would mix samples from different records and you could hear a confusion of tonalities. It really clashed with the harmonies, because they had no understanding of that. They were only focused on the beat.
But in that confusion of tonality, I did occasionally hear exciting melodies. Also pieces that I couldn’t come up with now, because there was too little that made sense. But I still understand what I meant by it at the time. So I asked myself if that could be my starting point. And so I started playing those melodies. Playing myself was actually a lot of fun as a dialogue. Stepping into a creative process with your younger self. I listened to myself and realised that the music at the time had been created by a kind of innocent deer. And based on that old music, I started improvising on the grand piano. Those melodies from back then with chords that I now thought would fit.
From there, I linked that to instruments within the new idiom I had already discovered. And then one thing led to another. I had a theme I wanted to build on, so I chose to go deeper. Just like I learned in Brian Wilson’s classical pop music: working with melodies and counter-melodies. To name just one thing. With my knowledge of harmonisation and instrumentation, I added depth by introducing contrasting layers of textures. And suddenly I heard something emerge that made me happy. I knew how I wanted to do it. Now all I had to do was do it.
WiM: Today I listened to Mt. Mundane several times. If you just take the opening track and follow what happens there, like the way you’ve incorporated the choir.
Yes, in that opening track, the melody and counter-melody also come together. That was interesting to experience. Starting from simplicity, from that melody from the past, and with my knowledge and experience, I was able to make it even more beautiful. That was already a very nice combination.
However, I noticed that this could go further than I thought I could, and so I surpassed myself. Really unexpected. I also remember that when I was working on it, I was just at home. And then at the end of the day, my girlfriend came in and I let her listen to it, something I was really excited about. Later, she said that I looked wild-eyed and seemed to be in a kind of trance. What exactly was that? For me, these were intangible experiences in which I travelled from my own process to higher spheres.
Well, that was one of my most cherished moments. Because that’s where one plus one became three, there was magic in that.
WiM: Did it all click for you then and there, or not yet?
Yes, I was doing it all in a kind of flow. I didn’t even really know what I was doing. You sometimes hear that the best things come naturally. Then you’re actually a distribution point or a conduit. I am sensitive to spirituality, but I think I’ve also worked on it myself.
I want to make that clear. It’s a combination of my musical past and present. And it also gave me perspective on my musical future. When you consider that you can do this as a kind of occupational therapy. And I thought that was wonderful to experience, because I realised that you can really steer yourself towards that moment. As an artist, you can steer yourself towards that moment. I was complemented, but in the end I did it myself, even though that was and is perhaps difficult to put into words.
You sometimes see those moments in sports too. Transcending what you think your own capabilities are and then delivering a top performance. Yes, well, that’s a kind of Shangri-La moment, of course. And that Shangri-La moment is, of course, what I wish for everyone. If everyone knew that, this would be a better world.
WiM: I agree with you.
People who don’t know that run the risk of being afraid or angry or searching. Occupational therapy is already very good and important, and how you do it, what works for you, whether it’s knitting, building a nice cabinet, helping other people or making music, it doesn’t matter. Feeling cheated in whatever activity you do: that’s the true religion.
WiM: Well said! You had laid the foundation, a first song that could perhaps serve as a basis for the rest?
Yes, that was the blueprint, and indeed it felt as if the rest could come about in the same way. Of course, I benefited from my forty years of experience in writing music on commission. You learn how musical flow works for you.
At the time, I sometimes said that I always lived with my attention on the power button and the moonlight. On the one hand, you have to do your job as a musical copywriter, but on the other hand, you need the moonlight for inspiration. That one song made me realise what the path could be, just like a long time ago with a piece I wrote for the KRO’s house style. I had the leader, the closer and an underscore, and that became a package. So that’s how I started looking at the melodies. And I didn’t hesitate to intervene in the theme at times. I gave myself that freedom. Morricone did the same in many of his own pieces. Not copying them bloodlessly, no, but refining his music. And that’s how I looked at it too. Not repeating, trying to improve myself. That’s what I wanted to do now. And yes, I had already figured out how I wanted my music to develop. .
I thought carefully about the sound of the music, about what I wanted to achieve with it. And I thought about what attracted me. I had always been most drawn to the adagio sections of symphonies, even if it was just for my own ears. These are the parts that are the most peaceful, the most down tempo, without becoming loud. In fact, these are not only the pieces of music that appealed to me the most, they are also the pieces that I could still play within my capabilities. Add to that the fact that, for me, adagios capture the most expressive side of a composer, bringing you closest to the creator. It was clear to me: the album had to consist of adagios.
WiM: Your In Search Of Meaning on the album is very beautiful.
Yes, something happened there where I realised that I only needed to accompany that old melody. But when I came up with the melody, I wasn’t aware that it modulates to a different pitch. I learned to place that theme in a different setting, in a different context, through my commissioned work. For example, when you create a house style for a broadcaster, you have one recognisable melody. And if you do it right, you can translate that into a classical form for Radio Four. I was able to put the knowledge I gained from that to good use. If you hear the melody in its original form, it sounds very monotonous. Now I really wanted to bring out those different sides, like a search, not an eightfold repetition. I wanted to express that musically, and I think I succeeded.
WiM: That turned out really well.
Thank you. Because yes, I’m also very curious to find what people think of it. If you look at the response I’ve had to the album, it’s very mixed. A colleague thought it was just a simple melody. And that made me think of Burt Bacharach. He was taught by Darius Milhaud, a classical composer. And Bacharach was called Master Melody by Milhaud. I was annoyed that my colleague saw it that way, but then there was the reaction of Willem Jeths, the first composer laureate of the Netherlands, who thought it was great that I worked with melodies. “It’s great that you’re bringing melody back into contemporary classical music, because it’s missing, and it’s very good that you can do that, and that you do.” I find all of that very encouraging.
WiM: What do you want to convey to people with this album?
The book “Man’s Search for Meaning” was written by Viktor Frankl in Auschwitz. There he discovered how you are called upon when you are cornered. How that calls upon your tolerance, your resilience. He noticed that despite all the conditions there and the intimidation and threats and fear of death, he was able to stand up. He didn’t know that about himself. And those questions can apply to anyone. If a fire breaks out in your house, do you freeze or do you immediately take action? He noticed that the Germans could go to great lengths in their terror without breaking him. And he wrote a book about it.
Well, I found that a very interesting theme, because with In Search For Meaning, that’s actually what I wanted to show and hear with this music: what I felt I could do with my limitations. I felt that I too, albeit in a different way, had been thrown back on myself and started to look at what I could still do. I haven’t travelled for five years now, except to London for the recordings. But then, what do you do with all those limitations? Do you just carry on living? Yes, of course! Are you a semi-hermit? Yes, I suppose so. Do you have to accept that? Yes. But who am I then? Well, at that point I was also searching for meaning in my personal life. And I thought: ‘Is that possible?’ Maybe I can express or exorcise that with music.
So my tendency was also coming from that commissioned music, which I found increasingly oppressive. I need more, and that includes more people with conditions looking at life differently. My life is also very different from when everything was happy-go-lucky. What is the meaning of my life? What is the meaning of life? I want to make more meaningful music. That’s what I chose at the time. That feeling has to be expressed in that piece. So it’s a lot more serious.
WiM: You also won an award for the album. How did that feel?
Well, it’s wonderful, of course. And in that regard, I had another huge surprise, which I’d like to share with you. Yesterday, I won another award: the Erik Satie International Music Competition prize. An award linked to one of my heroes. I’m proud and grateful, of course, but you’d almost think the award was linked to my conditions. Apart from that, all I have is a swimming certificate! -Laughs-. You would almost recommend that people with a condition get involved, because it brings a kind of understanding and recognition.
What’s nice is that it also confirms what we stand for with the foundation. I can now demonstrate that. It also makes it clear that the fear people have that things won’t be okay after tinnitus doesn’t have to become reality. I am now proving that it is possible; despite these conditions, you don’t become a lesser artist at all. On the contrary, even with my impaired hearing, I still won awards. Then even others make it clear to you that you are relevant and that you still have something to offer. So I would say that everyone should take advantage of that.
WiM: I think that’s wonderful for you. Congratulations!
Yes, I’m delighted, of course. I think it’s quite an experience. But that also applies to me when I read a review like yours, which really touched me on an emotional level. When you think about what a wonderful trip it was. When I was standing in Abbey Road Studio 2 and it was the choir’s turn, I walked from the control room to the choir and stood among them in the recording studio. The choir sang what I had come up with in a difficult situation, and then thirty people gave it back to me as the creator. That made quite an impression. Some people might find that a bit breathless, perhaps a little melodramatic, but that’s how I felt. What they sang, the fact that we were standing there like that, is because of who I am and what I have created. Making this music and the way it was performed by the choir. For the first time in forty years of making music, I felt my personal and artistic identities merge at that moment.
I found it a very special experience. Perhaps comparable to becoming a father, such an intense peak experience. In the evening, in my hotel room, I experienced another moment like that, very intense again: how beautiful was that? Well, if I were to be hit by a tram tomorrow, I would have achieved my mission. That is a whole new form of peace. In retrospect, I was so restless. That creative process was also a period of wandering and searching.
I once spoke to someone who was familiar with NLP and, in our search for solutions, we also talked about human paths and where they lead. Thinking about what you want. And if you assume that we are all here on this earth to leave it a little better than we found it, where do you want to go? What is your path? The NLP master asked me how I was going to do that. Shouldn’t it be music, what else can I do? That’s what I’m really good at. And then, during that conversation, we realised that music isn’t my passion after all. It has become my job, though. When I think about it now, the passion I feel as a person and my work have become my mission. If I can contribute something to the world, that’s it.
WiM: I can see it in what you do. Also in the way you talk about how you got to this point in your life. Yes, all in all as well in how open you are about it and how you manage to weave that into your music, that completes the picture.
Yes, you’re right. We’re now apparently in the phase of approaching completion. And that gives me peace. But also acceptance of the resistance I had to my limitations. It all turned out well in the end.
WiM: So we’ve discussed two pillars. How you got into music and we’ve looked at the compositions. But Abbey Road as a recording location is also something to consider.
Well, let me start with the Netherlands. When I wanted to record with an orchestra in the 1980s, I think it was a tune for the NOS, I asked the Concertgebouw Orchestra. And the answer I got was: “Well, we don’t do that kind of work, tunes.” So I went to the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra: ‘We don’t have time, if you really want it, come back in two and a half years. Given that my client wanted it finished within four weeks, I actually wanted to visit a number of other orchestras. Wherever I spoke to orchestras, the message was, yes, but we’ll have to rehearse and have meetings first.
Meanwhile, time was ticking away, and then my English friend Michael Dempsey from The Cure said, ‘Do it here in the UK, we do things very differently there.’ The musicians there also form a very professional industry. If anything special is ever needed, it’s just arranged. It’s really very maturely organised there. It’s a mature industry, it’s not a hobby or anything. And that also applied to orchestras. If you ask the London Philharmonic to have something ready within a limited number of days, they let you know immediately what that means in financial terms. As the customer, you know where you stand, and so do the orchestra members. And there’s also a union representative present, because he can stop the sessions if they don’t comply with the Union Rules. They call him Dr Death, because he can kill the sessions.
Back then, I went to the National Westminster Bank with my girlfriend at the time to collect the money. So we were walking down the street with £35,000 in cash. To be able to pay in cash. So we went back to the studio and saw the money being handed out by the doctor. All the musicians got their share and then they could start.
I had to stick to the format and choreography associated with the blue KRO logo. It moved and the music had to fit in with that. So it had to be synchronised, because that’s how I had written it. It was an excellent collaboration with the orchestra and with the conductor David Bedford, who had also worked with Mike Oldfield and Kevin Ayers.
Everything went smoothly and the orchestra was very accommodating. I had my notes on how it should go on my computer and I could already hear how the orchestra played the composition the first time, in line with what I had prepared for that leader. It just fit! That made a deep impression on me, as did the collaboration with the technician, who anticipated everything I could possibly ask for. I was sold, and that’s why I went back.
Because I loved it there. Super professional and more, namely the people there. I’m not saying they don’t do that here, but the red tape here, the bureaucracy, really kills it. Because I really tried to work with the people here, but it never worked out. Well, not now, so I went back there.
WiM: What makes the difference for you between the two approaches?
Perhaps the big difference is that the music industry there doesn’t work with subsidies as much as it does here. In the UK, orchestras really have to earn their keep. I was also looking for a specific classical sound and not so much a jazzy sound with strings. That also made me want to go to the UK. There are great opportunities in the music industry, so it all worked out well. I have
It’s wonderful to work with extremely dedicated professionals. That actually translates outside of music as well. I work with a regular video editor and a regular cameraman. I have all of that now, those kinds of people, because I’ve worked with them before. You see a lot of those regular pairs in film, too, Leone and Morricone, Hitchcock with Hermann, Lynch and Badalamenti. It works well because you can work from a shared body of ideas. You just know very well what works together.
I loved working with Anthony Weeden, and Andrew Dudman was the engineer. And then there was the collaboration with pianist Ben Dawson. That worked really well too.
WiM: Last year, you misled everyone with a photo on your Facebook page: it showed two guitars. It seemed like it was going to be something surprising.
Yes, that’s right! I felt like I was done with the piano and wasn’t thinking about orchestras at all. So I actually wanted to go back to new wave and make a neo new wave album. Nice with guitars and singers who fit in well, like Stephen Fellows from The Comsat Angels. But thinking about it, I realised it would be more about repetition, rather than taking it to something modern. And although I even had a cover design in mind, I didn’t find enough in it to really go through with it. The painting that inspired it was called Morning Never Came. Well, maybe that’s what happened to new wave; it never really took off. The ambition to do things differently, to want to do things differently, didn’t really come to fruition.
WiM: You weren’t satisfied, so you made a choice. Very conscientious.
That’s right, yes. When I was working on Home Ground, I got feedback in the demo phase that it was almost forensic in its preparation. I wondered if that was a compliment or not. The feedback was meant without judgement. But I had indeed prepared very well in terms of the standard chords in soul music, what I hear as timbre, and I did that very carefully. However, the term forensic would never have occurred to me.
WiM: Looking ahead, do you have any plans for the near future?
Yes, definitely. I’m just making my orchestral debut in the classical world. The album is getting great feedback and has already won two awards. And I do have something in mind, but that has to remain a surprise for now. I’ve agreed that with one of the people who will be working on it. To be continued. And then there’s something else happening around my anniversary; what, how and where, that will be announced in due course. And, this is also a first, there will be a new release around Christmas 2025, again with international vocalists, including Beth Hirsch (Air).
WiM: That sounds very promising, Stephen! Thank you very much for this lovely conversation and for your time.
You’re welcome!
[Written In Music – Marcel Hartenberg]