JOHN ETHERIDGE MASTERCLASS Interview & video lesson
Soft Machine’s John Etheridge talks David Mead through the band’s inner workings and reveals what it’s like to be the six-string driving force for one of the most legendary of British jazz-fusion outfits.
John Etheridge is a stalwart of the blues, jazz and prog-rock scene boasting the longest tenure of any guitarist with UK prog kings Soft Machine. Here John shares some of his secrets.
Soft Machine first appeared in the mid-60s as part of the Canterbury scene along with bands such as Caravan, Gong, Egg and Henry Cow. Initially, they were seen as part of the psychedelic movement and contemporaries of Pink Floyd, often appearing at London’s infamous UFO Club and other progressive underground hotspots including
The Speakeasy and Middle Earth. They even supported Jimi Hendrix on his North American tour in 1968. The band has seen a few guitarists pass through in its lifetime, including art rockers Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers, but most notably fusion guitarists supreme, Allan Holdsworth and the man joining us today, John Etheridge, who first joined Soft Machine in the mid-70s.
The Softs officially came to an end in 1984, but rose again in 2004 under the name Soft Machine Legacy; but with their latest album, last year’s Hidden Details, they’re back to being known simply as Soft Machine. We’ll be the first to admit that all this sounds as confusing as the average Olde English family tree and so we’ll leave it to Mr Etheridge to clear matters up for you.
“We’ve been going since 2004,” he tells us. “So, in a sense it’s the same band that made Live Adventures in 2009 and Burden Of Proof in 2013, which came out as Soft Machine Legacy. People kept saying, ‘Why don’t you drop the ‘Legacy’?’ It was like, ‘Hmm…’ so we finally went, ‘Okay, let’s call it Soft Machine.’ Because it is Soft Machine.” Everyone clear?
Speaking of the latest album John continues: “So, technically, it’s the 50th anniversary of the first Soft Machine album, which came out in 1968…”
How do you view the legacy of Soft Machine, 50 years or so down the line?
“Soft Machine stood for a lot of different things between 1967 and 1980. Each incarnation of Soft Machine was quite different. You’ve got the early psychedelic, then you’ve got the song-y thing, with Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt. Then you’ve got the sort of free improv thing. Then it became a kind of jazz-rock-y, fusion-y thing. They were all, in their own way, really, really good, and they didn’t necessarily have a lot to do with each other.”
How do you view your role in the band?
“Sometimes when I’m playing some of these tunes, I almost imagine I’m Syd Barrett doing Interstellar Overdrive at UFO. I almost try deliberately to play the guitar as if I don’t really play the guitar. I think that’s very important. In my own personal playing with Soft Machine, I like to cover the ground from scratching your head and going, ‘What’s that going to sound like?’ kind of vibe, to being in complete command. In other words, I sometimes try and imagine I’m not in command of the instrument, and I don’t really know what I’m doing. Then you get all those kind of early psychedelic sounds, which to me have tremendous value, because they’re coming from people who haven’t worked out the template, as it were.”
So, there’s still a tremendous amount of weight given to improvisation?
“When we’re doing these sonic improvisations, I just imagine I haven’t a clue and am trying things out. I am trying things out; it’s not all imagination. The thing about early Pink Floyd and Soft Machine was, it was almost amateur, in the best way. In other words, they wanted to play jazz, but they hadn’t been to school, and they hadn’t studied it, they had just listened to it, and were doing it in their own way.
“If you listen to the first track on the album, Hidden Details, I get going at the end on my solo. It doesn’t often happen in the studio – it just exploded. I like that solo because it’s all totally live, and it’s not very deep, and it’s probably too many notes, but I really like it because it has got a feeling. It just went, ‘Whoa!’ We’d only played the tune two or three times, and rehearsed it a couple of times, and then we had a take and off we went. My bit comes in in D minor, and it just took off, you know? Funnily enough, we’ve played that so much since and I think my solo on the
EARLY PINK FLOYD AND SOFT MACHINE WAS ALMOST AMATEUR, IN THE BEST WAY. THEY HADN’T STUDIED JAZZ, SO WERE DOING IT THEIR OWN WAY
record is just as good as any of the solos I’ve done live, which is really encouraging.”
Recording in the 21st century is a whole different ball game when compared with the time that the band started. How does that change the music?
“With Pro Tools, you can bugger about if there are any little mistakes. In the old days, that would mean, ‘Oh shit, I dropped a note, right at the end; we’ll have to do another take.’ You can hear this all through recorded music. I remember when my son got interested in jazz and we got these early Charlie Parker recordings. They play the tune the first time all great, and then everybody does a solo, and then right at the end of the last time playing the tune, somebody makes a mistake. You can almost hear them going, ‘Oh God. We’ve got to do the whole thing again.’ So, really, I think modern technology has liberated jazz recording, because you can really go and play live, and if your finger does slip off the fretboard, you don’t have to go, ‘Oh God.’
“When I played with Stéphane Grappelli and guys like that, when they recorded they were so careful, because they knew that if they made a mistake that’s a whole new take. They hadn’t learnt that actually, okay, we can probably do something with that, so they played very carefully. We don’t have to do it. So, it was enjoyable to record, and we’re very, very pleased with the results.”
You’ve toured this album extensively…
“The thing about touring at this stage of the band is we have to be careful, particularly someone like John Marshall, who is playing the hell out of the drums and is 77 years old – and he plays fantastically. One of the great things about our touring thing, I think, is to see John settling back into playing every night. It just goes to show, if you can do something, you get back into the groove of it, you can do it, practically till you fall off your trolley. When we went to America, for instance, it was a three-week tour, and he elected to do half of it, because his wife is not very well and he was worried about that. We got Gary Husband to do a half. Actually, John really wished he had done it all now, I think, because he was really getting into it.
“It’s the first time Soft Machine has been to America since 1974, and I think the highlight was five nights at the Iridium in New York, three of which were sold out, and two of which were pretty good. That was a real thrill, and that was really something. I’ve toured America quite a lot with John Williams, but that’s on the classical circuit, playing big concert halls, and that sort of thing. So, to play in a New York jazz club with Soft Machine… and people were really, really keen to see us. Of course, Japan was fantastic because it’s so different and everything is so correct, so precise, and everything goes like clockwork. In so many ways that’s great when you’re touring; you don’t have to think, ‘Oh God, will there be a meal?’ It’s all there. The audiences are quite hard to read, of course, but we get good audiences there.”
How do you think your own guitar playing has evolved over the years?
“Basically, I think everybody reverts, in later life, to how they were as a teenager or early 20s. I’ve noticed that Pat Metheny is getting more and more jazzy and I’m getting just more and more rocky – I really just am, you know? It’s like how I came in, really wanting to combine Eric Clapton and Django Reinhardt, which is what basically all us jazz-rockers were doing, wanting to combine jazz fluency with rock sound.
“When I heard Ollie Halsall for the first time I thought, ‘Oh yes, he’s getting there, he’s bloody well getting there!’ And Allan Holdsworth: I thought that this is my crowd, as it were, and that’s what we were trying to do. So, that’s basically where I’m at, whereas Pat is basically Wes Montgomery.”
Soft Machine is only one of several projects that you’re currently involved with. So tell us how 2019 is shaping up for you in other musical areas?
“This is a funny question, because I’m good at analysis, I’m good at talking about the past, but whenever anybody asks me what’s coming up… Umm, we’ve got a Sweet Chorus tour in May. Sweet Chorus is my, how would you call it, Grappelli-ish, Django-ish band. I say ‘ish’ because I deliberately don’t play a Maccaferristyle guitar, because there are so many amazing players who play that style so incredibly well. I don’t even consider myself in that style. It’s acoustic jazz, if you like.
“Because I’m quite enjoying playing loud electric guitar again, through Soft Machine, I do want to make an album – definitely this year – probably to release the year after, which will be my 50th year in professional music. Vimala Rowe and I are still doing duo
I’M GETTING MORE AND MORE ROCKY. IT’S LIKE HOW I CAME IN, REALLY WANTING TO COMBINE ERIC CLAPTON AND DJANGO REINHARDT
stuff, which is a completely different discipline for me.
“Also, I’d like to do a double-CD compilation of everything. I’ve got loads of very good live recordings with Stéphane Grappelli and people that should see the light of day. I think that’s a project. I’ve had a few significant birthdays that I haven’t caned for gigs, so I think I might do 50 years in the business with an album. One new album and a compilation album, so it’s going forward and looking back, which is okay, isn’t it?”
Soft Machine’s latest album, Hidden Details, is available now on Dyad Records. For more info on John, visit www.john-etheridge.com