Terry Riley

[dat93sbo@ludat.lth.se (Svante Borjesson)]

[This was written Wed. 23rd March, sent to wholist, and returned to me because
of misspelled e-address.]


Hi,

Terry Riley?, what the h*** kind of topic is that on wholist,you might
ask. Well, I saw him in concert yesterday in Malmoe,Sweden, and it's
widely known that he influenced many rockmusicians, notably Pete Townshend,
hence this longish e-mail review.

If you're _not_ interested in experimental music and its influence on
rockmusic, then just ignore the following.

I must admit that I had never heard Riley's music before, just heard _of_
him, and of course I'd heard Pete's/Who's "Baba O'Riley", the songtitle
indicating where Pete got his inspiration from. "Baba.." coming from Meher
Baba, Indian religious avatar/leader and, sort of, self proclaimed
Messiah. Meher Baba and his teachings was central to Pete's opera "Life-
house". Riley's influence can be heard through the impressive synthesizer
patterns throughout "Baba O'Riley". I'm not sure whether Riley himself
was a Baba follower, though.

This is what I knew before I went to the concert. Terry Riley started out
recording his own compositions in the early 60s, his compositions later
involved the prerecorded synth patterns, which he "invented". His live
performances are based much on improvising, as in "He never plays one
song the same way twice".

The Malmoe concert was to be held at the newly renovated "Hippodrome
theatre", but was moved to studio 7 at the Radiohouse, since the
acoustics at the hippodrome weren't sarisfactory. There were no 
advertisments of any kind in the newspaper promoting this concert, other than
a short article in the local newspaper titled "Cultartist visits Malmoe".

The concert began just after eight in the evening. Just 5 minutes before
that, a strange bearded figure dressed in a dark overcoat and a gray beret
had glided past the entire audience (40 or so people), noone much noticed
the man as he walked past the Piano and into a stage sideroom. When he
returned again, this time to sit down at the piano, people applauded
nervously, looking at eachother as to say "Is that him?". He had now
removed his overcoat, and had a sleeveless jacket on. The beret, still
neatly on top of his head, was about the same color as his beard.

He started playing some slow repeating notepatterns on the Piano, that
slowly increased in tempo and then he'd suddenly switch to a different
"melody", and expand on that melody for some time. Sometimes he would play
some melody with his left hand sounding a bit like like Grieg, while his
right hand was playing the upper keys a bit more eagerly. It's hard to
describe _what_ music he played. I mean, it wasn't jazz. It certainly wasn't
classical music, and it wasn't rock either. Sometimes I could sense some
bluesy Gershwin in there, and sometimes I'd sense something completely
different, an exotic, maybe Indian or Arabic melody.

It was a bit like a musical journey. His right hand would be in the fiords,
of Norway while his left would be at a noisy basaar in Turkey. 

Midway through the first song he suddenly stopped the melody he was
playing, and started playing just 3-4 notes repeating them extremely fast.
He would play this pattern maybe 2-3 minutes only changing it slightly.
This was the closest he came to the "Baba O'Riley" pattern.

Then he finished the first song, almost the way he had started it. The
audience was a bit uncertain whether he really had finished, since there
was such drastic change in tempo, and even short pauses, during the song,
so they applauded a bit nervously yet again. (They? er... we!)

He stood up to recieve the applause, and slowly bowed with both hands
below his chin the way a Chinese might greet a stranger. Then he introduced
the saxophone player George Brooks, from Berkeley, CA. The saxophone added
a bit more jazz to the music. They started to play the second song. This
time Riley also sang. Sang? Well, it sounded more like he spoke in tounges.
Slow tounges! He would sing in english and then switch to some other
language I don't know. Indian/Hindu?

One line he sang sticks to my mind: "There's no direction for the landing
eternal plane without meaning" Huh?!?

The third song was probably the best one and made the audience applaud wildly
(and spontaneously for a change). Riley and Brooks pushed themselves to the
limit on very complicated melodies and repeating patterns, and they were
always in synch. They would sometimes smile at eachother when they had hit
a tangent (Like Keith Moon/John Entwistle). Unfortunately I don't know the
name of this song, or any of the others either.

Then after 45 minutes there was a 15 minute break, to let the music sink
in and to stretch one's legs.

The second set after the intermission didn't seem quite as inspired as the
first, but they did do a good song possibly called "remember this", as this
was about the only thing Riley sang throughout the song.

I will remember this concert for a long time to come. I don't think I've seen/
heard anything as interesting as this since I saw Ginger Baker [of Cream] play
with bassplayer Jonas Hellborg's group also at an intimate club also in Malmoe.

If anyone else on wholist want's to find out more what influenced Pete Townshend
to write "Baba O'Riley", I can certainly recommend listening to Terry Riley.
But as I said, it's not really rock&roll.

- Svante