Derek Bailey has died

[Johnny E]

Who's Derek Bailey?

[EKE BBB]

Small photographic hommage to Derek Bailey on Tomajazz:

http://www.tomajazz.com/chaminera/bailey_derek_homenaje.htm

(pictures taken on February 6, 2005, in Barcelona)

[EKE BBB]

Obituary by Steve Voce, published in The Independent:

Derek Bailey

Avant-garde jazz guitarist

Published: 29 December 2005

Derek Bailey, guitarist: born Sheffield 29 January 1930; twice married (one son); died London 25 December 2005.

Oddly, for an avant-garde player whose music was so intense and uncompromising that his following was devoted but small, the guitarist Derek Bailey appeared at the 1968 Royal Command Performance. In his time he also worked as an accompanist to Gracie Fields and Kathy Kirby - and it should be pointed out that for the royal concert he was in the pit band.

He turned his back on commercial music and rose to become the most renowned member of the British free-form jazz movement.

Bailey had an uncompromising philosophy that involved exterminating music that he had already played. It led him rigorously to move on from one group of musicians to the next: he believed that familiarity bred predictability. He was perhaps at his happiest in his metamorphosis to solo guitar player. Paradoxically his improvisations were recorded many times and the resultant albums were much sought by his followers across the world.

He believed in turbulence and musical aggression, although it was notable that, when more conventional musicians like Tony Coe or Steve Lacy were drawn into his orbit, he softened to form exquisite musical partnerships that led non-believers to wonder at what could have been. In his regular conversations with his audiences he showed a beguiling sense of humour that perhaps didn't chime with the density of the music.

But Bailey, like the musicians he mixed with, was a man convinced and possessed. From his playing he stripped out rhythm and conventional harmony and cast aside anything recognisable as jazz tradition. Over the years he withdrew from group playing and played without accompaniment. He worked often on the Continent, mostly in Germany, but chose to stay in England.

"He was rapidly arriving at the stage where he saw the nearest parallel to his own role in those of a writer or a painter," wrote the trumpeter Ian Carr, who described Bailey as "fastidious and ascetic" in his music:

He is austere, uncompromising and formidably committed to exploring and expressing his own interior vision . . . With monastic vigilance he tries to avoid the habitual side of playing.

Bailey was a key figure in the 13-hour concert played in Camden Town, London, in the summer of 1978 by the London Musicians Collective - this was in itself a compromise, because the saxophonist Evan Parker, a close comrade of Bailey's, had planned for the musicians to play around the clock.

Derek Bailey's grandfather was a professional banjo player and his uncle a professional guitarist. He took to the guitar when he was 11 and became a professional musician in Sheffield during the Fifties, working mostly at music that he didn't like. But, before leaving for London in 1966, he formed his own avant-garde band that included the like-spirited drummer Tony Oxley.

In London Bailey fell in with Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Barry Guy and other free-form players and played regularly with the drummer John Stevens's Spontaneous Music Ensemble. He joined the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra and formed the trio Iskra 1903 with the trombonist Rutherford and bassist Guy, whilst he was also a member of the Music Improvisation Company. His frequent partnerships with Evan Parker gained him fame across Europe and he was soon working with musicians on the Continent and with visiting Americans including Anthony Braxton and Steve Lacy.

With Rutherford, Guy and Bailey's wife Karen, Bailey in 1970 founded the record company Incus, the first musician-run label in Britain, to distribute their music. He eventually came to own the label himself and continued its policy of never deleting albums. In 1976 he formed Company, an ensemble bringing together groups of British and international improvisers. An annual Company week was held for 17 years until 1994. Bailey was a member of Kenny Wheeler's band in 1978 but from then on mainly played as a soloist or at best in duos.

He made an exception during the Eighties when the avant-garde Ganelin Trio came from Russia to work in Britain for a period. Bailey worked happily with them until the leader, the pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin, emigrated to Israel.

Bailey influenced guitarists as far away as Japan and in 1997 worked with the avant-rock Japanese duo Ruins. In that period he also played with the drummer Tony Williams and the guitarist Pat Metheny.

His book Improvisation: its nature and practice in music (1980) led to the Channel 4 television series On the Edge (1989-91).

Steve Voce

Edited December 29, 2005 by EKE BBB

[Alexander Hawkins]

Obituary by Steve Voce, published in The Independent:

Derek Bailey

Avant-garde jazz guitarist

Published: 29 December 2005

Derek Bailey, guitarist: born Sheffield 29 January 1930; twice married (one son); died London 25 December 2005.

Oddly, for an avant-garde player whose music was so intense and uncompromising that his following was devoted but small, the guitarist Derek Bailey appeared at the 1968 Royal Command Performance. In his time he also worked as an accompanist to Gracie Fields and Kathy Kirby - and it should be pointed out that for the royal concert he was in the pit band.

He turned his back on commercial music and rose to become the most renowned member of the British free-form jazz movement.

Bailey had an uncompromising philosophy that involved exterminating music that he had already played. It led him rigorously to move on from one group of musicians to the next: he believed that familiarity bred predictability. He was perhaps at his happiest in his metamorphosis to solo guitar player. Paradoxically his improvisations were recorded many times and the resultant albums were much sought by his followers across the world.

He believed in turbulence and musical aggression, although it was notable that, when more conventional musicians like Tony Coe or Steve Lacy were drawn into his orbit, he softened to form exquisite musical partnerships that led non-believers to wonder at what could have been. In his regular conversations with his audiences he showed a beguiling sense of humour that perhaps didn't chime with the density of the music.

But Bailey, like the musicians he mixed with, was a man convinced and possessed. From his playing he stripped out rhythm and conventional harmony and cast aside anything recognisable as jazz tradition. Over the years he withdrew from group playing and played without accompaniment. He worked often on the Continent, mostly in Germany, but chose to stay in England.

"He was rapidly arriving at the stage where he saw the nearest parallel to his own role in those of a writer or a painter," wrote the trumpeter Ian Carr, who described Bailey as "fastidious and ascetic" in his music:

He is austere, uncompromising and formidably committed to exploring and expressing his own interior vision . . . With monastic vigilance he tries to avoid the habitual side of playing.

Bailey was a key figure in the 13-hour concert played in Camden Town, London, in the summer of 1978 by the London Musicians Collective - this was in itself a compromise, because the saxophonist Evan Parker, a close comrade of Bailey's, had planned for the musicians to play around the clock.

Derek Bailey's grandfather was a professional banjo player and his uncle a professional guitarist. He took to the guitar when he was 11 and became a professional musician in Sheffield during the Fifties, working mostly at music that he didn't like. But, before leaving for London in 1966, he formed his own avant-garde band that included the like-spirited drummer Tony Oxley.

In London Bailey fell in with Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Barry Guy and other free-form players and played regularly with the drummer John Stevens's Spontaneous Music Ensemble. He joined the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra and formed the trio Iskra 1903 with the trombonist Rutherford and bassist Guy, whilst he was also a member of the Music Improvisation Company. His frequent partnerships with Evan Parker gained him fame across Europe and he was soon working with musicians on the Continent and with visiting Americans including Anthony Braxton and Steve Lacy.

With Rutherford, Guy and Bailey's wife Karen, Bailey in 1970 founded the record company Incus, the first musician-run label in Britain, to distribute their music. He eventually came to own the label himself and continued its policy of never deleting albums. In 1976 he formed Company, an ensemble bringing together groups of British and international improvisers. An annual Company week was held for 17 years until 1994. Bailey was a member of Kenny Wheeler's band in 1978 but from then on mainly played as a soloist or at best in duos.

He made an exception during the Eighties when the avant-garde Ganelin Trio came from Russia to work in Britain for a period. Bailey worked happily with them until the leader, the pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin, emigrated to Israel.

Bailey influenced guitarists as far away as Japan and in 1997 worked with the avant-rock Japanese duo Ruins. In that period he also played with the drummer Tony Williams and the guitarist Pat Metheny.

His book Improvisation: its nature and practice in music (1980) led to the Channel 4 television series On the Edge (1989-91).

Steve Voce

I read this in the paper this morning - struck me as interesting that he should be called a 'jazz' guitarist. I don't necessarily disagree, but don't imagine Derek would have been too impressed!

[John B]

WMFU has archived a show they did on Bailey here. You can listen to selections from many albums and many eras.

[king ubu]

Very sad news, just heard about it elsewhere.

[7/4]

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/06/06/music-burk.php

[7/4]

Obituary

Derek Bailey

Restlessly creative guitarist forever pushing at the boundaries of music

John Fordham

Thursday December 29, 2005

The Guardian

On and off over the past decade, I would meet Derek Bailey in the same Chinese restaurant in Dalston, north London. As well as being a wonderful raconteur, the Yorkshire-born guitarist regularly blew holes in convenient wisdoms sitting smugly on some shelf in my head. His provocativeness was not oneupmanship, or a parade of erudition; it was the way his brain was wired. He had done the same for musicians and listeners all over the world for 40 years or more as a free-player and a freethinker, a Frank Zappa for the world of spontaneous performance.

Bailey, who has died aged 75 of complications from motor neurone disease, was a guru without self-importance, a teacher without a rulebook, a guitar-hero without hot licks and a one-man counterculture without ever believing he knew all the answers - or maybe any at all. With his passing, the world has lost an inimitable musician and an implacable enemy of commercialised art.

Bailey once described his friend John Zorn, the American avant-garde composer and improviser, as "a Diaghilev of contemporary music" for his catalytic influence. But he could as easily have been describing himself. He worked with performers as different as free-jazz piano legend Cecil Taylor, cool school saxist Lee Konitz, Harlem bop-and-swing hoofer Will Gaines, naked Japanese improvising dancer Min Tanaka, fusion guitar star Pat Metheny and the drum virtuoso Tony Williams. In later years, he collaborated with Japanese art-of-noise rock band the Ruins, and - when he had already passed 70 - with young drum and bass DJs.

Singlemindedly devoted to unpremeditated improvisation, Bailey published a book on the subject in 1980 called Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music. Twelve years later, it led to Jeremy Marre's revealing Channel 4 four-parter On the Edge: Improvisation in Music, an ambitious venture that Bailey both scripted and presented. The project tracked the improvising impulse through the most radical interpreters of Mozart, the methods of the organist at the Sacré Coeur, Paris, in baroque music or the blues, and in locations from the Hebrides to the Ganges.

Bailey was born to George and Lily Bailey, in the Abbeydale district of Sheffield. His father was a barber, his uncle a professional guitarist who gave the boy his first instrument and some haphazard lessons. By a process of osmosis from musicians he met, sustenance from odd jobs, record-listening (bebop guitar pioneer Charlie Christian was his early model) and some later self-education in theory and arranging, Bailey became a pro on the UK dance-band and studio circuit in the early 1950s. By 1965, he was playing Blackpool seasons for Morecambe and Wise.

By that time, he had begun rehearsing regularly with two adventurous younger players in Sheffield - classical percussionist turned jazz drummer Tony Oxley and bassist (later to become classical composer) Gavin Bryars. The three formed the group Joseph Holbrooke (named after an obscure British composer whose work they never played), and, from 1963 to 1966, its jazz beginnings in John Coltrane and the Bill Evans Trio were crossbred with ideas from John Cage, Stockhausen, serialism, Oxley's labyrinthine rhythm variations, and much more. Gradually, the group moved from jazz into a non-idiomatic approach - free-improvisation.

From 1966, Bailey began visiting the Little Theatre Club, a West End bolthole where the drummer John Stevens ran all-comers' sessions and young improvisers (including Evan Parker, Trevor Watts and Paul Rutherford), jazz virtuosi (Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler) and contemporary classical players like Barry Guy gathered. With various versions of Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Oxley's sextet, the Music Improvisation Company (electronics, percussion and Parker's sax) and the trio Iskra 1903 (with trombonist Rutherford and bassist Guy), Bailey began to build a completely new vocabulary for the guitar.

Though he never abandoned the conventional instrument, he was mixing warped chordal ideas, serialism's lateral melodies, Cage's elevation of silence, pedal-operated electronics and a brittle attack borrowed from percussionists. From 1970, he also ran the Incus Records label, first with Oxley and Parker, then with his partner (and later third wife) Karen Brookman - their Hackney flat is still the Incus HQ.

Bailey's Diaghilev qualities came to the fore in 1976, when he began his Company project, an improvisers' festival that involved 400 players each year up to 1994 in Britain, the US and Japan, with Zorn, Lee Konitz, saxist Steve Lacy, classical violinist Alexander Balanescu, bassoonist Lindsey Cooper and composer/saxist Anthony Braxton among those taking part. He also invited dancers, performance-artists, electronica-specialists and avant-rockers to join in, with the artists deciding who would improvise with who.

He likened improvisation to spontaneous relationships and conversation - full of accidental harmonies, misunderstandings, passion and indifference. Though a sophisticated instrumentalist himself, he did not mind playing with people who had comparatively few skills; something interesting might always happen. He worked with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Tony Williams in the trio Arcana in 1995, and collaborated with Pat Metheny and two percussionists on The Sign Of Four in 1996.

He described that encounter to me thus: "The equipment I use I bought in Canal Street 15 years ago. Pat's sitting in the middle of what looks like the console of a 747, with four guitars and a distortion unit that could be used for dispersing mobs. There were two guys with huge percussion kits, and I'm making a lot of noise, and then he switches this thing on, and it's like there's three dogs playing around a little, and suddenly an elephant lands on top of them."

Yet for all that raw-noise energy, Bailey continued to be a delicate acoustic improviser, often unaccompanied or in duets. Just in time, he was caught by the ideal biographer, Ben Watson, in the book Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation. And, though his combativeness never left him, he seemed to take heart from the musical eclecticism and dissolution of idiomatic differences he had done so much to encourage.

"The kids don't mind whatever it is these days," he told me once. "Maybe there's a lot of stuff out there now that is by its nature odd. But they seem to be able to take anything. Which is great to somebody like me. I find it very comfortable. In an uncomfortable sort of way." Karen survives him, as does Simon, the son of his second marriage.

Richard Williams writes: The least typical recording Derek Bailey ever made also turned out (not that he would have appreciated the compliment) to be one of the great jazz recordings of the last 40 years. Titled simply Ballads, and recorded in 2002 for John Zorn's Tzadik label, it consisted of solo guitar meditations on 14 songs from the standard repertoire, including Laura, Body and Soul, What's New, Stella by Starlight and You Go to My Head.

Although this was the last project one might have expected from a professed enemy of composed music, it was no surprise to discover that in these songs - their musical and emotional contours long since flattened by overuse - Bailey found brand new angles and meanings, thanks to the application of his highly personal imagination and unique instrumental language. Extraordinary renditions, indeed, and utterly spellbinding.

By the time he recorded another solo CD for Tzadik, entitled Carpal Tunnel, three years later, his refined technique had all but disappeared. No longer able to grasp a plectrum with his right hand, he adapted by striking the strings with his thumb. The album's title came from the condition, carpal tunnel syndrome, that was said by doctors to explain his reduced dexterity. In fact, it marked the onset of the motor neurone disease from which he died.

In these pieces, the spiky elegance of Ballads is replaced by a halting delicacy reminiscent both of Japanese koto music and of the last paintings of Willem de Kooning, when illness had robbed the great abstract expressionist of the power to do anything other than trace a haunting shadow of the shapes and colours that had once burst from the canvas.

· Derek Bailey, improvising guitarist, born January 29 1930; died December 25 2005

[Guest Chaney]

sfSoundRadio is currently playing all Derek Bailey.

17:19:01 DerekBailey_NewSightsOldSounds_LiveInKalavinka Current Song

17:02:36 Bailey+Stevens+Watts_DynamicsOfTheImpromptu_02

16:54:05 DerekBailey_SoloGuitarVol1_WhereIsThePolice

16:51:20 DerekBailey_SoloGuitarVol1_Improvisation3

16:40:26 DerekBailey_Iskra1903_2_05

16:33:45 DerekBailey_SoloGuitarVol2_Ten28

16:24:33 Bailey+Stevens+Watts_DynamicsOfTheImpromptu_01

16:18:56 SpontaneousMusicEnsemble_KaryobinPt.2

16:14:49 DerekBailey+TonyOxley_SohoSuites(1977&1995)_Leonard

16:02:15 DerekBailey+TonyOxley_SohoSuites(1977&1995)_Kenmare

15:59:02 DerekBailey_NewSightsOldSounds_AWandererFromTheBritishWorldOFashion

15:55:18 DerekBailey_Iskra1903_2_08

15:53:22 DerekBailey_Playing_AfterEnding

15:41:20 JohnStevens+KentCarter+DerekBailey_OneTime

15:36:10 DerekBailey_Iskra1903_1_04

15:33:21 DerekBailey_SoloGuitarVol2_Three05

15:31:24 DerekBailey_SoloGuitarVol1_Improvisation9

15:14:23 DerekBailey_NewSightsOldSounds_LiveInNagoyapart1

15:02:53 DerekBailey+DJNinj_GuitarDrums`n`Bass_Ninj(De-Mix)

14:57:50 DerekBailey_StringTheory_F_B(N)Acoustic

[Nate Dorward]

Best writeup yet, by Steve Smith--

http://nightafternight.blogs.com/night_aft..._bailey_19.html

[7/4]

Best writeup yet, by Steve Smith--

http://nightafternight.blogs.com/night_aft..._bailey_19.html

Yes, it's damm good.

[Alexander Hawkins]

‘Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone’ from ‘Ballads’ is particularly poignant just at the moment.

[Craig23]

From a Downtown Music Gallery email.

DEREK BAILEY 1930-2005

On December 25th, avant/jazz/guitar legend Derek Bailey passed away at

the age of 75. He suffered what was at first diagnosed as Carpal Tunnel

Syndrome for the past few years and eventually succumbed to motor

neuron disease. He was living in Barcelona, Spain for the past few years,

but was back in London when he flew from this world.

Derek Bailey was perhaps the most influential and adventurous

experimental guitarist to come from England, evolving out of the trad-jazz

scene of the fifties into the avant/jazz scene in '60s London. By the

late sixties he was a member of the Joseph Holbrooke Trio (w/ Evan

Parker & Gavin Bryars), Spontaneous Music Ensemble (w/ John Stevens & Trevor

Watts) and Music Improvisation Company [with Parker, Hugh Davies, and

Jamie Muir], which later became the amorphous Company under his

leadership. These groups were at the birth and center of the British free-jazz

scene. Derek Bailey and Evan Parker started their own record label

called Incus in the early seventies, one of the first artist-run outfits.

Although Derek and Evan had long since parted ways, the Incus label

continued with 60+ releases, many of which are now sadly unavailable.

Derek's playing was absolutely unique and idiosyncratic - nobody

sounded quite like him. His style was constantly evolving and, when

playing electric, he developed a distinctive way of using feedback.

Although he played with the best members of the British free/jazz scene, he

also forged relationships with a number of European players like Han

Bennink & Peter Brotzmann, Japanese free players like Kaoru Abe, Toshinori

Kondo and Motoharu Yoshizawa, as well as American improvisers like

Anthony Braxton, George Lewis and John Zorn. Derek organized an annual

festival called Company Week in the 80's & 90's, which brought together a

unique group of international improvisers from varied backgrounds.

What set Derek apart is that he was always 'game' to play with

just about any "interesting" player, no matter where they were coming

from. Due to his friendship with John Zorn, Derek had performed and

recorded with an unlikely cast of characters: The Ruins, Haino Keiji,

Jamaaladeen Tacuma & Calvin Weston, Tony Williams & Bill Laswell, et al. Over

the past decade, Derek & Zorn organized a few Company festivals at

Tonic, again putting together unrelated musicians for their first time. At

the last of these festivals a few years back, Derek brought the members

of IST (Simon H. Fell, Mark Wastell & Rhodri Davies), as well as the

veteran tapdancing legend Will Gaines.

Although Derek enjoyed playing with other avant guitarists (Eugene

Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Noel Akchote & even Pat Metheny),

he has played more duos with drummers than any other combination. Check

out this list: Tony Oxley, Louis Moholo. Han Bennink, John Stevens,

Eddie Prevost, Cyro Baptista, Gregg Bendian, Susie Ibarra, Jamie Muir,

Ingar Zach, Shoji Hano & Michael Welch. Other amazing duos would include

Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker and Joelle Leandre.

Almost exactly four years ago, Derek Bailey played a solo

acoustic guitar concert at our old store on 5th Street. It was one of the

proudest moments for me in the near 15-year history of DMG. It was captured

on video and released on DVD by our pal Robert O'Hare and it makes me

smile whenever I view it.

Derek told a story at that performance about working in a

record/musical instrument store that was pretty hilarious. He had such a dry yet

gentle wit. Morever, his playing will always be a constant source of

inspiration to adventurous musicians and listeners the world over. He will

be sorely missed. - BLG

Derek would have turned 76 this coming January 29th

[AllenLowe]

I just ordered that DVD - I hope it was worth $20 -

[7/4]

I just ordered that DVD - I hope it was worth $20 -

Hm...I was there. I even show up in the video for a moment.

If you're understand where he's coming from, it's da shit. If not, you may wonder where he's coming from.

Edited December 30, 2005 by 7/4

[7/4]

Happy Birthday Derek. 1932-2005.

[7/4]

I expected WKCR to feature Derek on Jazz Profiles this afternoon, instead we get Joshua Redman. WTF

[clifford_thornton]

Happy Birthday Derek. 1932-2005.

[7/4]

The Wire

Derek Bailey

The Wire 264, February 2006

A full collection of tributes to the late musician, including a number of pieces which were not published in the magazine

On Christmas Day 2005, Derek Bailey died, aged 75, from complications arising from motor neurone disease. David Toop charts his determinedly nonidiomatic approach to guitar playing through a career that spanned television showbands backing comedians like Morecambe & Wise, the birth of European free improvisation, and the founding of the pioneering independent record label Incus. Plus, artists, colleagues and friends offer their personal tributes to one of free music's most enduring, radical figures

Han Bennink

Dearest Derek, Trying to get away from the yearly xmasstreefuss, I went to Addis Ababa to play with Jimmy Jimmel Mohammed and the legendary Getatchew Mikurya. I had a great time, but... Everything changed by the second Christmas Day when Mary phoned me and told me that you said goodbye to us. OK, I did not see you for a year or so, but!and!!NOW!!!WHAT? All memories came up: staying at the houseboat and you knocking politely on the door asking, 'May I have one of those little oranges, love?'

Making our first duo album, ICP004. By the way, Evan was the one who introduced you to us - you both coming in a Morris Minor with Gavin Bryars to Wuppertal - we all played in a large group (Machine Gun) with Brötzmann, and Paul Rutherford was there too. The work with ICP, especially Misha and also Wim T Schippers - man, we had such a great time! I r emember meeting your mum and Simon. On the duo tours in England you always booked in very cheap B&Bs and a couple of times including Leeds you didn't rent a drum kit for me because you told me, 'There are plenty of chairs and tables to play on!' The recording by Evan, Topography Of The Lungs. The many variations from Company. Unbelievable! You did soooo much for the music. The book about improvised music, the TV series, it seems endless. 'Bullocks!' you would answer. Later, when Karen came into your life it was another peak. Staying on Downs Road. I think that the last idea was 'Air Mail Special' - another great item. Thank you so much for everything. I will miss you very much. Lots of luv, Han

Steve Beresford (Unpublished)

When I think of the guitar, I hear Derek.

John Butcher

Around 1974, BBC TV aired a programme spotlighting British jazz. It ended with an awkward Spike Milligan introducing a few minutes of Bailey/Guy/Rutherford with something like, 'And now folks, you probably won't like this, but they're pushing forward musical boundaries.' I did like it. It was puzzling but extraordinary, and the fact that, 30 years on, the boundaries remain well and truly shoved, owes much to Derek Bailey's incisive thinking and profound musicality. Playing with him was terrific, but I also have a fondness for peripheral moments; a late lunch after a recording session, courtesy of the 'Incus expense account'; a 3am walk through the Lower East Side after a Tonic gig, with Derek at 70, full of energy. He was a man who repelled pretension, refused to be shoehorned into comfortable categories, and played amazing guitar.

Martin Davidson (Emanem Records)

Some Derek Bailey anecdotes from the 1970s: Driving across London to make a solo recording at my house and unloading his gear to discover that he'd brought one amplifier, two speakers, three pedals and numerous cables - everything, that is, except a guitar.

Handing out a (Michel Waisvisz) Crackle Box to audience members to accompany a solo concert. Confusing a provincial audience expecting a 'pleasant' guitar concert, by starting off with a football that was supposed to hit an amplified thunder-sheet, but which hit the audience instead. Showing his boredom with someone else's group by putting his guitar aside, attaching a contact mic to his throat and eating an apple.

Pulling an enormous (Gavin Bryars?) score across the whole stage, thereby hiding his playing partner (Han Bennink) from view.

Setting up his guitar and practice amp in the Wigmore Hall so that he could play an encore without leaving the dressing room.

THF Drenching

Discovering free improvisation, and particularly Derek, revolutionised my musical thinking. At the time I joined Limescale I was a guitarist, and proud that my instrumental technique was once compared unfavourably to that of a cat. Free improvisation dissolved these abstract musical moralisms. Here was music where instrumental proficiency no longer meant flaccid selfaggrandisement. And it wiped the floor with the composerly prejudice for abstract thought, proved you could knock out something like Stockhausen's Zugvogel sieben Tagen a week in a room above a pub.

Much is often made of Derek's formidable purism. I think of him as a musician who pushed his own purism to its breaking point. So much so that it actually becomes strikingly impure, wonderful and heterodox. There's no hairshirt on this shit. Full of chats, jokes, bird recordings, beauty, rubbish and invention spread out like an assault course for his guitar to negotiate. His only prerequisite was surprise, and the opportunity to play.

Agustí Fernández

I consider one of the greatest privileges to have shared music with Derek Bailey. The last time we played together was at a concert, 12 May 2005 in Barcelona, at La Pedrera, Gaudí's emblematic building. I knew Derek was very sick and I was ready for a solo concert in case he didn't show up. The organisation was also alerted. But he came to the venue and played with exquisite devotion for the whole set. Fantastic music. After the concert Derek was exhausted but very happy. His last words before getting in to the taxi were: 'Big ears! Big ears!' Some months later, on 24 December, I bought Carpal Tunnel, Derek's last solo recording. I listened to it on the 26th, just before I knew he had died on the 25th. I don't know what to think of this sequence of facts.

Fred Frith

Back in the 80s I took part in a Channel 4 programme dedicated to unorthodox guitar playing. Keith Rowe, Hans Reichel and I were invited, along with a couple of others and, of course, Derek. His response was wonderful: he would be happy to participate if the programme was only about him! Derek and I had hit it off from the moment I was the only audience member at a concert of his in 1971. He invited me home for tea, and we ate pork pies and talked about cricket. Meeting Derek changed my life, actually. His encouragement and support gave me the feeling that I was doing something that mattered. He came to Henry Cow gigs and radiated enthusiasm while unfailingly and cheerfully complaining that we weren't improvising enough. As a player Derek had a fearless and resolute clarity, and because he was so curious, and so willing to challenge himself, you never saw him perform without hearing things differently. Which made improvisation the most exciting and logical thing to be doing.

Will Gaines

I first met DEREK BAILEY in the early 60s, working with his group, in Sheffield & Cheshire, with TONY OXLEY, BUNNY THOMPSON... MAN, they were the swingingest musicians I'd heard since coming to Britain. In America, I'd been working with people like ERIC DOLPHY, THELONIOUS MONK & CHICO HAMILTON. DEREK & the group were the best heard since arriving in Europe... And that's saying something!!!! Along with JOHN STEVENS, DEREK was an energy, a spearhead, a futurist, a pulse of life, which won't die. What can I say about DEREK? In one word, CREATIVE!! I used to say to him, YOU PLAY IT MOTHER, I'LL DANCE IT!! I next came across DEREK when he booked me for a week in London with Company... THAT was an experience!! He then asked me to go to Sweden, Switzerland, then four days in New York. No gig was the same, except the NY venues in the middle of nowhere. I recorded a CD with DEREK, Rapping With Will. Another of DEREK'S ideas. Man, he was a one-off! I kept saying to him, 'I'M JUST A TAP DANCER'. He must have seen or heard something he liked. We did have the same sense of humour. RIGHT ON BABY!!!!!!

Keiji Haino

My greatest happiness comes when I experience rock from a new source. Derek Bailey once gave me such happiness. It was in London, when we were recording a radio show in the BBC studios, him on guitar and me on vocals. I made one request to him before we started - rather than one long track, I wanted us to divide the time into shorter segments. It was between these segments that I felt the vibrations of happiness. I was standing in front of the mic, a little behind Mr Bailey so I could see his back. Just before he started playing I could see him shake his shoulders slightly, marking out a rhythm. Involuntarily, my heart shouted out, 'Rock exists here, even here!' This happened several times during the set.

Someone once told me that when Mr Bailey was asked what he thought about me in an interview, he replied, 'He's just as strange as I am'. I took great pride in that. I dedicate these next words as my own prayer for the repose of his soul:

That, which while enfolding this now and present perfume, speaks, 'I will use to the fullest this form bestowed upon me' and blurs into the firmament - ah, where and in what form will it next be devised

Toby Hrycek-Robinson (Moat Studios)

In more than 30 years of recording music, I have never met anyone with Derek's charm, elegance and flair - as a performer and a person. Most people who heard him play were changed by the experience. My wife Kasia, having previously never heard a note of improvisation, beamed for days after hearing Derek play for the first time. She couldn't explain why. She simply felt uplifted. Work would invariably stop in our studios when Derek came to the Moat to record. Musicians of every genre would drop by from other rooms - initially to sneak a quick listen, mostly to end up staying all day. Derek had the great gift of making what can be an impenetrable form of music readily accessible to anyone with even half an ear open to something new.

But more than the enjoyment I got from recording Derek's music over many years is my pleasure in the man himself. Erudite, witty and plain-speaking, yet equally instinctive and profound, Derek was someone who never failed to delight me with his presence. I will miss him terribly.

Susie Ibarra

Derek was a true original, a romantic with a great sense of humour. From his dentist-gum guitar picks to his uncanny background of playing in a Latin salsa band, he always brought a presence of great pleasure, beautiful and outrageous music, and a soulful, childlike existence. I miss the white wine and fish dinners and long evenings of great conversation. I miss the great concerts of the unexpected and delightful surprises. I miss the dear friend who, with his wife, Karen, shared their passion and love of life with everyone. With a cigarette and dark shades, Derek has stamped an impression of one mean guitarist in my head... and heart.

Jak Kilby (photographer)

It must have been in the early 1970s. Usually I have the time and place logged in my picture files, but this was one of those instances when that did not happen, since, for a variety of reasons, I took no photographs. But John Stevens had roped me in to drive to a gig, in any case usually a pleasure. Lol Coxhill had organised this one and it was an oddball even as such things went at that time. Lol, together with John and Derek Bailey, were going to play free improvised music at an English boys' public school, somewhere in the Home Counties, and give a talk on this to those eager students.

During a verbal interlude, Lol and Derek ganged up on John, announcing to the attentive boys that their Uncle John Stevens would now entertain by tap dancing! Now, John had a childhood history of this art since his father was a tap dancer, but here he was wearing plimsolls (in those pre-trainer days). And John did dance, as hard as he could to get a sound to the free and fragmented accompaniment of Lol's soprano and Derek's guitar. And I just caught sight of that rare wry grin on Derek's face (which it later took me years to photograph!).

Joëlle Léandre

I met Derek in 82 in New York. I had received a French grant to be there, take time, play, meet people... Great time! I saw Derek's name in The Voice and I contacted him. We played all day and drank tea! It was fantastic; the only thing I remember in this place was a small matelas, a table and a huge pile of Incus discs on the floor... and we played and talked, drank and played. 'Le gentleman à la guitarre', I could call Derek; I learned a lot with him; later in New York, he invited me to Company, then we played in England, the BBC where we recorded, then we played quite a lot in duo in Europe and recorded again until the last time in duo, also in Liverpool, two or three years ago...

Derek was a great 'elegance' person, with a lot of spirit, very funny sometimes and a 'strong' individualism, all his playing, his life and his musical life was an 'elegance': only this simplicity to be, to be a musician without any hierarchy in sounds, aesthetic, gentle, just 'making music together'... It's rare!!! We never talked about music after concerts!! But I learned this jubilation, this freedom to be 'you' and responsible. In any case Improvisation is a collective music (even if we sometimes like to play as soloist) but just play this unique result like a 'foods' is natural; this unique result can ask us a lot of questions, but also sometimes transcend us! Merci Derek, nous sommes un peu orphelins maintenant... so long.

George Lewis

Everyone who plays with Derek tells a different story, because he seemed to play differently with each person. For me, I imagined that a speeded-up recording of Derek would sound like white noise, with equal power at all frequencies. I would improvise a responsive multimodal filter, wrestling an octopus that seemed to anticipate everything you were doing - although Derek was anything but a Calvinist. Free will (and free improvisation) is largely about listening, something that Derek did supremely well while tempting the border separating tenacity and style from obstinacy and stasis. His landmark book on improvisation proved that musical experimentalism could engage a wide audience across many fields with issues of vital importance to humanity. Derek jumpstarted a new field of inquiry and inspired a new generation of organic musician-intellectuals, using nothing less than his musical approach, executed via other means - in which everyone came away telling a different story.

Alan Licht

I saw Derek perform numerous times in New York since 1990, including the notorious encounter with Pat Metheny at the Knitting Factory, but for me the most memorable concert was a duo with James 'Blood' Ulmer one afternoon at Tonic. The two had never played together before; Ulmer did a very nice, droney solo guitar set, and then Derek came on for the duo. Ulmer stayed in simple, tonal mode; Derek played a couple of pleasant sounding, empathetic jazz chords and then, for the next hour, played nothing but the most discordant clusters possible. It wasn't an attack - his manner, both during and after the concert, was utterly genial, as it tended to be, no matter where in the musical spectrum he'd been dropped into. It was a statement of purpose and of commitment to the alternative approach to the guitar and playing music with other people he'd pioneered since the 60s. That low-key determination was one of Derek's essential characteristics, and very, very inspiring.

I also recall Thurston Moore introducing Derek to The Stooges' Ron Asheton after a set at Tonic by Thurston, Derek and Loren Connors. 'Oh, I've heard a lot about you,' Derek said to Ron. 'Especially today...'

Oren Marshall

Derek was a big inspiration to me. He was a fantastic example of how open a musician can be. I played Company Week in 1992 and there was one night when everybody was playing at the same time. After a while I thought, 'What's the point? All this large group Improv stuff just ends up sounding the same.' I just stopped playing and went and sat in the audience. And then Derek came out and sat next to me. 'Are you all right?' he asked. 'Well, I just feel there's nothing I can really contribute.' And he said, 'You've just got to bathe in it.' And that completely changed my perception of improvising in that context and also gave me another way of looking at living in London. Rather than using up so much energy trying to decode or take on everything that's happening, just bathe in it. That was quite inspiring to see that level of openness in somebody as time-worn as Derek.

Tony Oxley

I find it difficult to contemplate 43 years of friendship and musical experiences in such a short time. I will say Derek was and remains THE UNCOMPROMISED CONSCIENCE OF IMPROVISED MUSIC. It was my privilege and pleasure. Thank you, Derek.

Eddie Prévost

I have known Derek Bailey for most of my adult life. 40 years ago or so we first met during the Little Theatre period and later we worked together in the Musicians' Cooperative. And, although we rarely performed together over the intervening years, I am pleased that we made a duet recording in 2000. However, we had different affiliations and a differing slant on the nature of improvisation. These differences do not obscure for me the impact that Derek had upon the development and continuity of a form of music that we call free improvisation.

Derek's passing has already been described as an end of an era. But I think that this proposition diminishes the effect and the value of Derek's music. I do not subscribe to the idea that free improvisation began or ends with any individual. This only suggests that somehow the music Derek made was so individualistic that it failed to communicate anything beyond personal expression. Given that the impact and the practice of improvised music is far wider now than it was in the 1960s, when this particular initiative began to gain momentum, Derek's music clearly has more punch than that: for we are undoubtedly not at the end of an era. Free improvisation is certainly impoverished with the demise of Derek Bailey. It would have been a greater pity if his music had not had the undoubted effect that it had (and will continue to have) upon others.

Keith Rowe

Derek... a towering presence 'I get jetlagged walking to the end of the road', was Derek's response to my enquiring after his health. Although Derek and I rarely saw each other, hardly ever played together (just once, I think), there was a certain comfort in knowing that there was this guy somewhere out there who took care of an aspect of guitar playing that (for me) summed up all the guitar playing that came before him. In Derek I found what I find in every great artist... He had developed his own language, something in the world is now missing, something irreplaceable. Something unique.

Paul Rutherford

Derek's musical and human input were totally incompatible with the prevailing twisted social dogma of Thatcherist/Blairism. Hardly surprising, in a warped society of subhuman puffballs. They merely survive, extravagantly. HE LIVES. Art, Music and Humanity are up for sale and privatisation. DEREK IS NOT. AND NEVER WAS.

David Sylvian

Derek was a no-nonsense poet. Mischievous, provocative, elemental. He spoke a language recognised by many but with a syntax all his own. A discomforting amalgam of the elemental Hughes, Beckettian reductionism and Celan-like compounds and fractures, and it says something of his achievement that he appears to have been so many things to so many people (it's fascinating, judging from the numerous online testaments written since his death, that to facilitate discussion of his work and its impact, Derek is often compared, without pretension or aggrandisement, to artists working in mediums other than his own). A towering giant of the guitar. Singular, unique.

Alex Ward

Without Derek's initial encouragement and help, I might not be doing what I do now at all, and I'm sure fewer people would know I was doing it. However, the start he gave me is only part of what I have to thank him for. Both when playing with and listening to him, I've received more inspiration over the years from Derek's playing than from that of any other musician I can think of - not to mention sheer enjoyment. Nor has anyone been kinder to me or more of a joy to talk (and eat and drink) with - his humour, blunt honesty (his response to someone who praised a duo gig we'd just done: 'Yeah, it works all right when we don't get into that flowery shit', followed by a list of occasions when we'd perpetrated this), and sheer conviviality will be as missed by me as his irreplaceable guitar sound.

Mark Wastell

Simon Fell and I had just arrived in New York to take part in Company 2001. We knocked on his apartment door at the now famous Soho Suites Hotel and were greeted by Derek wearing his comfortable slippers and holding a tea towel. 'Cup of tea lads? Karen, where are the biscuits?' A few hours later we're on stage with Derek, John Zorn, Rhodri Davies, Joey Baron, Will Gaines, Annie Gosfield, Jennifer Choi and Min Xiao Fen. In front of a Derek-worshipping capacity crowd at Tonic, we played two sets a night for four nights. I have to keep reminding myself it wasn't a dream. A wonderful memory for me, another wonderful week at the office for Derek.

Alan Wilkinson

I first met Derek in the mid-80s in Leeds when I was running the Termite Club. He and Han Bennink did a fantastic gig for us at a pub called the Cardigan Arms (later released on Incus as Han). On another visit to our usual venue at the Adelphi, we all arrived to find the room double-booked. Without further ado, another pub within walking distance was phoned and the entire gig moved lock, stock and barrel up the road. Derek, landlord of new pub, audience, indeed everyone had a very memorable night at the new venue.

On these numerous visits to Yorkshire, the local musicians were encouraged to play by Derek, who made it very much part of his 'raison d'être' to check out new musicians wherever he went. It was as a result of this I received a gobsmacking invitation to play in a small Company line-up playing in Switzerland and Italy.

To an improvisor, that's like being asked to join John Coltrane's Quartet, The Rolling Stones, or something similarly momentous. The line-up included Derek, Barre Phillips, Ernst Reijseger, Steve Noble and myself. Ernst couldn't do the first gig in Geneva, and over dinner before the gig Derek suggested we start with him and Barre in duo and Steve and I in duo. I suggested we start with a quartet, since I'd only met Barre five minutes before, but was of course in awe of his reputation. Derek's immediate reply was, 'OK, we start with Barre and Alan in duo and Steve and I.' He always wanted to throw you into the deep end and enjoy watching you not drown, because he knew you wouldn't.

Davey Williams (Unpublished)

"Derek was more important than even he knew, or cared about to begin with. Anyway, I was watching him play solo at some gig in south London. Several college student-looking people, who clearly weren't liking the music, exited the auditorium. As they passed the front of the stage, they angrily threw their ticket stubs onto the stage at Derek's feet. Totally nonplussed, Derek remarked, "Yes, well I figured it was about time for a clear-out."

Derek was a fellow who did what he did (which was massively innovative), not because he thought he'd be famous or admired, but because he wanted to do it. As it turned out, he was both famous and admired, not that it made any difference to him. And that in itself is to be admired."

Otomo Yoshihide

His improvisation was his way of life. Living daily life like his improvisation. That I learnt from Derek et al best. And it is the most important philosophy for me Improvisation looks as though it always disappears somewhere. However, it incessantly is succeeded and is alive in our way of life.

Ingar Zach

I met Derek Bailey for the first time in at his house in Hackney in January 2000. A couple of months before, I rang him up to ask if I could stop by for a play and a chat. I had heard CDs with Derek in 1998-99, and I was totally taken by his music. I was just starting up with improvisation and I just knew that I had to play with him. For me, the most important side of Derek was his honesty, both as a person and in music. He didn't care about success, being famous and all that. He was a musician who was in constant search for his music. That's why his music always sounded so fresh and strong. I got to know him in the last five years of his life. Although it was a short time, I felt that I got to know him, just by playing with him. I am very grateful to have had the chance to know Derek and his music. I will miss him.

_____

These tributes, unless indicated otherwise, appeared in The Wire 264, February 2006

© 2006 The Wire.

Edited February 8, 2006 by 7/4

[clifford_thornton]

Thanks for posting that. Now I don't have to go buy the issue!

[7/4]

I'll get it anyway. I don't read it cover to cover, but there's always something interesting to check out.

[king ubu]

Yes, and you still miss the lenghty obit worth reading (by David Toop, if memory serves me right)

[clifford_thornton]

I'm not at all impressed with the article/obit up on AAJ by Kurt Gottschalk. What do you think?

AAJ Derek Bailey

[clifford_thornton]

Martin Davidson's contribution above is particularly great...

[WD45]

Han Bennink

Dearest Derek, Trying to get away from the yearly xmasstreefuss, I went to Addis Ababa to play with Jimmy Jimmel Mohammed and the legendary Getatchew Mikurya.

Oh, what I would give to hear that!