CUO BRON ALIFE ON THE ROADRUC tance mee eer PSE e nat Ts current popularity of the guitar is due te SOS u cnn mt rey pwn lighting and carries his een SOUT nears} Palmer has travelle rt with him in Europe and America drawing out from essentially private Julian Bream his views on his art cd on his the world of music. Here the maestro discusses the history of his beloved guitar, and ts role as a solo instrument, as well as his relationships Son CURcU en ue ante Ta Ata? SOEUR Cia AERTS ting wit, he gives an impression of all that s life on the road: where he’s, does, why he carries on, h Stormin ing, commissioning, ‘the old musicke racket’, his home Danie! Meadows accompanied them, and his beau add to this unusual and curious! Sort ens ph exhilarating of nothing, starti Eve Tate EUnet hey Sree eee PSSJULIAN BREAM ALIFE ON THE ROADJULIAN BREAM ALIFE ON THE ROAD TONY PALMER Daniel MeadowsCopyright © Julian Bream and Tony Palmer 1982 First published in Great Britain in 1982 by Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd London & Sydney Maxwell House 74 Worship Street London EC2A 2EN ISBN 0 356 078809 Filmset, printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, BucksContents Car ANnraWNHE 10 a 12 ‘The loneliness of the long-distance guitar player? ‘A mistake to overstay your welcome.’ ‘Just a few pieces of wood glued together.” ‘Quietly excessive.” “Bangs and crackles.’ ‘Blow me up bigger.’ ‘Without a map. “We're in this together,” ‘Minimizing the squeak.’ ‘Members of the Savage Club’ ‘Consuming people.’ A life on the road. Discography 21 41 62 B 117 137 154 170 182 193 2041 The loneliness of the long-distance guitar player? The tour was not going well. Six major concerts in ten days would be enough to frighten most people. But for Julian Bream this lunatic schedule, repeated month after month, year after year, has become a way of life. What is even more extraordinary is that, almost alone among international virtuosos, Bream makes all his own travel arrangements, selects the concert halls, supervises the lighting and presentation of his recitals, sometimes negotiates his fees, often collects the money, chooses his programmes and decides when and where he will play. On this tour, in Italy, he has decided to drive himself from concert to concert. He is alone, apart from one suitcase and one guitar. ‘Never go anywhere without the old box,’ he says cheerfully. The journey from Milan to Rome had been particularly unpleas- ant. Seven hours in filthy weather and Italian traffic, both apparently intent on putting Bream into a foul temper. Still, the prospect of a warm bath and a comfortable hotel room in ‘Claridge’s’, not to mention a touch of the spag bols and Chianti classico, had spurred him along. We arrived after dark and were immediately trapped in one of those Roman traffic jams which Fellini might have invented, all honk and not much movement. No, no one had ever heard of Claridge’s Hotel. “Better have another tube of joy,’ said Bream, lighting his sixth cigarette of the last twenty minutes. Round and round, back and forth, and eventually, two hours later, home sweet home in the shape of Claridge’s, an ordinary pension, almost in Milan, so it seemed to Bream, on a major road out of the city along which passed a stream of ten-ton lorries rattling the very founda tions of the hotel. Yes, they were expecting a Mr Breemo, but no his room did not have a bath, only a shower. ‘But it is a very nice shower,’ said the concierge. ‘Are there any messages for me?’ asked Bream. ‘Ah no, signor, except that the young lady is waiting, when you are ready.’ ‘Bit of a turn up this,’ Bream said, ‘Trouble is, I don’t know where the concert hall is, or what time tomorrow's concert is supposed to start.” ‘The young lady was indeed waiting, and had been doing so for some hours. She was from the local concert management and wanted to show Bream the hall. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘domani. At 5'—a few hours before the concert started, so that he could try out the lighting and the chair they proposed he should sit on during his recital. ‘OK,’ she said, and flashed out, not bothering to enquire ifA Life on the Road 1 ‘All honk and not much movement..."Julian Bream Bream needed anything, whether the hotel was adequate, what the ticket sales were like or what his programme was to be. Nor was she too helpful when Bream eventually visited the hall the following day. The lighting facilities were almost non-existent, not even suitable for the cinema screen which was the hall’s regular enter- tainment. Bream’s dressing room looked like an extension of the public lavatory, and the hall's acoustic was the worst he could remember in a long time. He had not played in Rome for ten years and was already terrified. ‘This halll is as dead as a dodo,’ he said to me gloomily. ‘At least they could draw back the proscenium curtains which may liven this deadly place up a bit. Where's that woman? I can’t go through with it. The acoustics here are absurd.’ Another woman, from the British Council, appeared and apolo- gized that no one was here to greet him. ‘We've got eight Members of Parliament in town,’ she said as if by way of explanation. ‘And I'm afraid there will only be a small audience tonight, mostly the aficionados and their friends.’ The lady from the local agency disappeared as Bream became more and more irritable. In his anxiety about the lights, or lack of them, he had clambered up into the wings of the stage to see if anything could be moved, but in doing so had damaged a nail on his right hand, one of the nails which plucks the strings on his guitar. His ear had also begun to trouble him, no doubt aggravated by the chaos—he had been suffering from acute labyrinthitis (an inflammation of the middle ear) for over six months now; it affects his walking, although not apparently his concentration. The agency lady now reappeared with a broad smile. ‘The concert begin at 9,’ she said, ‘and my mother will come at 8 to pick you up from the hotel.’ Back at Claridge’s, Bream is now almost suicidally depressed. Grimly, he takes his guitar out of its case, and suddenly in a cry of anguish notices that, in the back of his instrument, a hairline crack has appeared. ‘Bloody mountains,’ he says. ‘Went up to the bloody mountains in Switzerland for a few days’ respite last week and look what happens! Must have been the high altitude and the dry air. Dry air or damp can often do terrible things to the old box, you know. Still—it's still in one piece so I should count myself lucky for I remark that his guitar is somewhat smaller than I expected, and extremely light. ‘In fact,’ he says, ‘it’s so light you can pick it up with one finger. It's about half the weight of many of the instruments that are in use today, although it’s only about five per cent smaller. The string length is just over 64cms, whereas the string length of some modern instruments can be as much as 66 or 67cms. It was made specially for me in 1973 by José Romanillos, a Spaniard who came to England a good many years ago and now lives virtually next door to my home in Wiltshire. ‘Great instrument makers are a special breed and often a bit eccentric, you know, most probably because they're dealing with the unknown, in a sense. They're working with a living medium— wood. So, although the wood is fashioned to very fine measure-ments, you've finally got to feel the wood for its appropriate thicknesses. Literally. You can’t just say to yourself, well, I'm going to make this sound-board an eighth of an inch thick because I made the last one an eighth of an inch thick and that worked well. Each piece of wood is unique and must be treated separately for its innate characteristics. You can’t really teach a person how to understand wood, to feel the density of the grain, to feel what humidity is left in the wood, to fee! the tensile strength of the wood when you bend it. These are things that come from an inner knowledge, which is almost impossible to learn. And that's why there are very few great makers. It's a question of the intuitive process, largely in contrast to the intellectual one. “The fact that my guitar is a little smaller than average, however, does not mean that it lacks a strong bass resonance. It does not always follow that the bigger the instrument, the greater is its bass resonance. The important considerations are of proportion and balance within the integral design. The bigger the guitar, the greater can be the chance of losing that proportion, and hence harmonic balance within it. Carried to the extreme, you might even create a condition of sound-distortion. Also, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you're sitting in a room playing a large modern instrument, it may often seem to make a large sound. But when you hear it in the concert hall, it can often surprise you that the sound doesn’t travel in quite the same way or have the same presence as the sound, for instance, of my own guitar. It's a question mainly of the focus of the sound; it’s as though the sound of many modern instruments can somehow dissipate itself as it travels through the air, whereas my instrument actually sounds better and, paradoxi- cally, even louder a little farther away than it does when you're close to it. It is rather like decanting an old bottle of burgundy. As the wine flows into the decanter, the contact through the air not only purifies it, but also helps to focus the quality of its character- istics. Moreover, there’s no doubt that the best sound-quality from almost any guitar comes, approximately, when you are utilizing about 70 per cent of its volume.” Bream places his cracked guitar carefully back in its case. “Provided the crack doesn’t get any worse, I'll probably manage,’ he says disconsolately. ‘I can always borrow one, I suppose, if the worst should happen. I’ve twice had an instrument just fall apart, you know in the terrible cold of a Canadian winter, and on both occasions I had to borrow one. On the second occasion the borrowed guitar turned out to be a rather better instrument than the one I owned, which was a bit galling because the chap who owned it could only play three or four chords. If I was really stuck, I know I could give a concert on an old orange box if need be, though I don't think either myself or my audience would enjoy it particularly. But I must say my instruments generally hold up, and in any case, you've got to simplify things when you're on the road; you can’t carry around two million instruments; one instrument hhas to be quite enough. ‘Hell’s bells, life could get so complicated if you took two A Life on the Road 1