Bill Bruford interview

Few successful musicians willingly renounce the lure of the stage but back in 2008 Bill Bruford sat in the New Inn in Ham, Richmond, and told me why he planned to quit professional drumming. Over an illustrious career he had set the standard for creative rock drumming with Yes and King Crimson before returning to his first love, jazz, with multiple editions of his band Earthworks. But 40 years was enough. Quitting the stage, Bruford instead published an autobiography and plunged into academia, earning a PhD in music from Surrey University. Recently though, Bruford, found himself “urgently and violently keen to start all over again” on the drumkit. Now at 75 he’s back performing with the Pete Roth Trio.

UK Jazz News: When you announced your retirement, you said one reason was that you’d watched older musicians play on when their skills were clearly waning. I’ve seen you a couple of times this year and your chops are in good shape. You must be pleased.

Bill Bruford: My technical ability has always been sufficient, but only just. At this level, what you think up to play in the moment is of more interest, to listener and performer alike, than whether you have the ability to execute it flawlessly. After a 13-year lay-off such as mine, any drummer’s Achilles’ heel is going to be fluency; the smooth transition from one dynamic, or timbre, or tempo, or meter, or idea, to another. Nothing lumpy, please. The trouble with having Golden Chops is that audience and performer tend to enter into an unwritten conspiracy whereby said chops will be presented for admiration; regularly, most of the time. The music tends to get forgotten. We’re not talking Buddy Rich here. I’m not selling dexterity, I’m selling ideas.

UKJN: What was the connection with Pete Roth?

BB: Pete was a student of mine at the Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM) in Guildford in 2002-4. I was looking for a drum tech/road manager for an Earthworks UK tour. Pete seemed to have all the necessary attributes – reliability, punctuality – and a serious thirst for guitar information: Howe, Fripp, Holdsworth, Torn, Towner. So we drove round the country with my drums, in my comfortable Mercedes Benz, with the music blasting. He came out of Joe Pass, John Scofield and later, Julian Lage. 20 years later, and as part of my rehab back into the industry after a long lay-off, I cast around for a local player who had some time to fool around in a rehearsal band with me. Pete’s name leapt to mind. With a couple of albums under his belt, I was astonished how much he had matured into a serious player. Pete recommended Mike [Pratt] on acoustic and electric bass. We started with the acoustic, but pretty soon the music started to catch light, so we moved to the electric.

UKJN: Did the trio click immediately?

BB: No, but the group came into being only slowly; because we weren’t trying to form one. We were a rehearsal band playing standards for the fun of it, with a drummer in rehabilitation from years of musical inactivity. He needed to find some drums and then find his feet again. Over time, a group emerged with sufficient material to amuse the audience at our first gig at the Ventnor Arts Centre, Isle of Wight, a little less than two years ago. The band has been my main focus on a daily basis ever since.

UKJN: How would you describe the music?

BB: Interactive, immediate, intimate, close up, accessible. We invite you to look inside the workings of a band thinking on its feet. You see how the ankle bone is connected to the leg bone which is connected to the thigh bone. It’s a melange of particular influences and ideas that could only be concocted by we three. It’s the product of our particular imaginations bumping into each other and just about holding fast. If the outmoded terms “jazz” and “rock” weren’t so stratospherically unhelpful, I’d say our original music has a foot in both camps. Like many of my recent colleagues, Mike and Pete know little about rock, and even less about progressive rock.

UKJN: Has any promoter wistfully asked if he/she can use the name “the Bill Bruford Trio”?

BB: Our booking agent would have explained carefully that no such group existed. Part of taking a long time away was precisely to get rid of the baggage which comes with supposed “leadership”, where my name is, or was, over the front door of the club or at the top of the album.

UKJN: Is the rest of the band intimidated playing with someone who has logged more than 2,800 gigs?

BB: You’d have to ask them, but I strongly doubt it. Most of us are too busy trying to make it work to be intimidated (or impressed) by their colleagues. My friend, bassist Tony Levin, was once asked by an interviewer: what was the difference between playing with Steve Gadd and Bill Bruford? “One of then shows up on time,” responded Tony.

UKJN: What would Adrian Belew have needed to offer to persuade you to join the Beat tour of the US last year [playing King Crimson music of the 1980s] ?

BB: I was not open to persuasion. I seem to lose interest in any music group in which I’ve participated after I’ve left it. Once the emotional connection is severed, the organism appears to me like an empty shell. Its heart has been removed. I may well stay connected and interested in the development of individual friends – Iain Ballamy, Tim Garland, Steve Howe, Tony Levin – but the group name under which we laboured dies to me.

Aside from the excellent and unavoidable Owner of a Lonely Heart, I never heard Yes after Close to the Edge, either on record or in concert. Nor did I hear any post-Thrak King Crimson output, until 2023’s movie [In the Court of the Crimson King] and a gig with more drummers than you could shake a stick at. If I did, I didn’t want to, and have forgotten all about it.

In a similar vein, I have little concern as to whether you or I “like” something musical. I may admire it or be revolted or bored by it, but the extent to which I like it seems irrelevant, or, better, it says more about me than the music. Many younger people tell me they’re not going to listen because they don’t like something in or around the music, although how that is possible before hearing, remains unclear.

I’m sure I’ll go and see BEAT, if they are still standing when they come to town. I shall hope to find moments of enlightenment on their performance of old repertoire: “Oh, that’s an interesting way to look at that.” Their schedule requires Olympian levels of stamina from the participants, some of whom are no longer in the prime of youth. Were I in the band, I fear I would spend much time thinking: “I really haven’t got time for this; I should be doing something useful.” So I’m clearly the wrong guy.

UKJN: What does the family think of you venturing out again?

BB: My wife mutters darkly about it not being quite the type of retirement she had in mind. But secretly, she knows how much music – and, in my case, drumming – is good for mind, body and spirit. She’d never tell you, though. As has been noted, you don’t stop drumming when you get old – you get old when you stop drumming.

UKJN: When you introduced Yes in London on the 50th anniversary tour, did anyone in the band point hopefully at the drum stool?

BB: I’m not much good at reunions, nostalgia, and “old times’ sake”. I’m quietly allergic. I think the Yes Union tour of 1991 had something to do with that. The audience tends to want what they had yesterday, which is bit tough on the artistically minded who consider their job is to peer into the future. One of the advantages of a start-up like PRT is that we have no recorded history, so the listener has de facto to listen in the present.

UKJN: You’ve likened the newness and creativity of the current trio to Yes in 1970 forging progressive rock. Of course that band was playing stadiums and making Tales from Topographic Oceans within three years. I imagine the new band’s trajectory will be more gentle but I do see you have Japan in the tour diary.

BB: Our organisation is unusual; a trio with two less well-known individuals, one of whom is the leader, and one better-known, who is not the leader. It’s Pete’s band, his choices, his final say. I’m there as something of a tour guide who can provide an international platform, and hopefully some nifty drums. It’s a balance of needs: the wise old dog needs the energy and red-blooded invention of the young pups; the young pups might use some of the old growler’s wisdom and experience. We’ll do this as long as it’s fun to do, but I confess I do prefer gigs within two hours of my own bed and shower. I think we may have played all those, though.

Tour Dates – for full list follow link below

27 March – The Bear Club, Luton,
29 March – Trading Boundaries – Fletching, Uckfield, E Sussex
03 Apr – Lantern Theatre Sheffield,
05 Apr The Sound Lounge , Sutton, Surrey
10 Apr The Lighthouse Deal, Kent