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| The Exclusive Interview With Percy Jones! |
| When it comes to innovations in the field of bass playing, nobody has scratched the surface quite like Percy Jones. I would have to say that Percy has perhaps the most distinguished and inimitable styles in all genres of music. His technique can not only be heard, but felt on the entire Brand X catalogue, as well as collaborations with such artists as Brian Eno, Roy Harper, Steve Hackett, David Sylvian, Sarah Pillow, and his newest power trio, Tunnels. Yes, Percy is still making great music, and he is still leading the pack in originality! Percy was very kind to squeeze time between moving and touring to join me here for some questions, and the results are a wonderful interview with a great and talented guy! |
| Q: Percy, thank you so much for Your time to join Me here on my site! I am thrilled to have you here. I want to start off here by asking You about your new CD “Progressivity” with Your band Tunnels. What can we expect from the new album and the upcoming tour? A: The new Tunnels album, "Progressivitty" is pretty much a continuation of the previous one except that we have John Goodsall and Mark Feldman playing on a few tracks as guests. Most of the writing this time is by Marc Wagnon and I contributed two tunes with some co-writing on a couple of other tracks. I used a rather different approach on this CD with a bit more in the way of sampling and synthesis. There is still a lot of improv within the structures and this is will be very obvious in any gigs that the band does. Q: It’s very interesting to note that John Goodsall makes an appearance on this album with You. When is the last time that John and Yourself have played together? A: Actually the previous time that I worked with John was just a few months earlier when we did the Nouve Musiche tour. We have worked together on and off through recent years when we did the odd Brand X tour as a trio and when we recorded Xcommunication and Manifest Destiny, then more recently with Sarah Pillow in Nouve Musiche. Q: It is great to see that you are bringing Tunnels to the United States for a brief tour! I hope I will get the opportunity to catch you live. Is this the first time that Tunnels has toured the U.S? A: Tunnels is based in New York and this is where I have been living since 1977. So far Tunnels has only gigged along the East Coast and about as far west as Chicago. I have only played in England once in the past 20 years. Q: You were part of one of the most exciting and adventurous fusion-rock acts of the 70’s in Brand X, a band with more talent than any band could possibly handle. In retrospect, what do you feel Brand X contributed to the varied music scene in the late 70’s? A: It's hard to say what we contributed, possibly we added a somewhat European sound to the fusion music scene since the majority of the bands doing that stuff came from the USA. I think we added a humourous aspect also since we never tried to take it too seriously. Q: You were half of the Rhythm section along with some incredibly talented drummers during the band’s tenure, playing along with Phil Collins, Chuck Burgi, Kenwood Dennard, Mike Clarke, and Frank Katz, not to mention percussionist extraordinare Morris Pert. What are your thoughts on all of these drummers and I was wondering if it was fair to ask who You enjoyed playing with the most? A: I can't pick out one drummer in particular as a favourite above all the others. Actually, I consider myself very lucky to have been able to play with such good drummers. Phil Collins was very musical in that he had a great sense of spaciousness. Mike Clark was very funky and was also excellent at playing straight ahead jazz, which was maybe a facet that was not obvious when he played with us. Playing with him helped me develop my own sense of time since his syncopation used to get pretty deep at times. Kenwood Denard was such a strong player overall, the band sounded like something with a new battery pack with him pushing it along. Frank Katz is immensly gifted, he has a handle on quite diverse styles from jazz across to techno and with him I can experiment with practically any direction I feel like messing with. Q: Do you still see a possibility of a reunion amongst the original members, or at least, most of them? Are you still in contact with the others besides John? A: I don't see a reunion of original members happening. I think it was music for a certain period of time that we have now moved on from. I think there is a very deep connection between music and the time period it was played in, and you can't completely re-create that. I'm not in contact with the other guys apart from John. As far as I know, Robin lives in Australia, Morris is in the Highlands of Scotland and Phil is in Switzerland. Q: Percy, you are one of the most legendary bass players around with a totally unique style that is truly often imitated but never close to duplicated. Who were your earliest influences for bass playing? A: The biggest influences when I was learning to play electric bass were almost all upright players. I think the biggest of these was Charles Mingus. I loved his playing because it was aggressive, soulful and unpredictable. His compositions had all the same attributes and his bands all seemed to have a great anarchistic quality to them. Electric bassplaying developed rapidly in the mid 70's, Alphonso Johnson and of course Jaco Pastorius were favourites because their playing was so lyrical and technically proficient. I think Alphonso deserves much more recognition than he gets. A more recent player that I was impressd with was Michael Manring. Q: Percy, I want to thank You so much for joining me here and I just wanted to ask what else you have planned in the upcoming months as far as music projects or your great web site? A: We are currently in the middle of a Nouve Musiche record with Sarah Pillow. Everything ground to a halt since everyone took off on vacations. That will be finished off in the coming couple of months. I'm planning to do a solo record maybe sometime in the coming year and I have been writing stuff for that. Tunnels will be out gigging in the coming months and these will be posted on my web site and the Buckyball Records site. My site could use some more graphics, that is simply a case of finding time to sit down and get stuck in with Povray. |
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