#jack interview

Oct 11, 1968: Jack at the New Haven Arena [Photo: Steve Potter]

Bruce

Jack Bruce is an incredibly serious musician. His face is young and calm but up close it hardens around intense eyes. During performances, he sings with that intensity of his eyes and then retreats to a corner while Clapton takes his solos. His conversation was the most egocentric of the three. But, after all, the man can hear four-part harmony in his head. His is unquestionably the unifying force of the group, writing most of the songs, doing 90 per cent of the singing and responsible for harnassing the explosive energies of Clapton and Baker.

While Clapton and Baker are entirely into their own virtuosity, Bruce's musciality is inexhaustible. At present he is working on the Bach Cello Suites ("the most perfect music ever written.") His art on the cello is well documented in "As You Said" on the last album. He may have the most extraordinary taste of any rock musician. "My favorite of the contemporary composers is Olivier Messiaen. I have this tape of the 'Turangalila Symphony' that I made off a radio broadcast and I keep returning to it. It's great music. I went to some of his (Messiaen's) lectures in Brighton. He's very much underrated."

Bruce also spoke of a new record he had just finished cutting called "Things We Like." All the selections on it are compositions of his written over the last five years. Bruce plays string bass. The other players are relatively unknown. "The whole album is serialized improvisation. I've written all the tops and bottoms and provided serialized rhythms and pitches for the others to improvise upon." Influences of Schoenberg? "No, probably more Webern than anyone else, especially since many of the cuts are so short. One is fifty seconds long. Webern, man, he was too much! Years ahead of his time. People still haven't caught on to him."

Bruce doesn't feel that rock will change greatly. "Rock depends very much on certain cliches. They're the essential vocabulary of rock. When-ever you add something new like, for instance, electronic sounds, you always risk destroying it." He is also anxious about whether he will be recognized apart from his Cream identity. "I had a terrible hassle just trying to find a company willing to produce my new disc." Meanwhile, Bruce continues his struggle to increase his musical powers by writing inventions in the style of Bach. "Two part inventions are hard, but it's the three-part ones that are a real gas." He does all this without the help of a piano. His songs are always conceived as total entities. Most of the cuts on "Fresh Cream" were written out in full score, again without the aid of a piano. I asked him the meaning of the title to one of these songs, "N.S.U." "That stands for nonspecific urethritis which is a disease of the urethra you catch from women... from fucking. We dedicated it to a mutual friend."