JON HASSELL
The ‘Fourth World’ trumpet adventurer talks Miles Davis, Stockhausen and deep soul.
“M
Y BRAIN’S NOT wired up properly,” cautions 83-yearold sonic explorer Jon Hassell. “My schedule is either press interviews or MRI scans, and I’ve started mixing them up…” The scans relate to a broken thighbone sustained in a studio fall in spring. Hospital bills had the Memphis-born innovator on his uppers, but salvation arrived via a crowdfunding campaign, publicised by collaborators including Brian Eno. It’s over 40 years since the latter heard Hassell’s psychotropic Vernal Equinox and recognised a fellow traveller in imaginary ambient worlds, but with his recent Listening To Pictures and Seeing Through Sound LPs, Hassell remains relevant. “I’ve got enough ideas to keep me working for a decade,” he enthuses.
Your recent albums are badged as volumes in a ‘Pentimento’ series – named after the practice of stripping back paint to reveal older, unimagined textures.
It’s certainly a very useful metaphor. I’m always revisiting things that are already in the can and trying to make them into something new. I always work with the same musicians and whenever we’re together we create things that might eventually wind up on a record. It’s an on-going process.
The sound of your trumpet is something like an electronically enhanced conchshell moan. How did you arrive at it?
My father had an old cornet that he’d once played in the Georgia Tech marching band, so that’s what I started on. Luckily for me, Memphis was a great musical city with a strong African-American culture. There was a great AM radio station, WDIA, that played lots of deep blues and soul, the kind of thing I was initially trying to do. The real revolution for my playing came when I studied with [Indian classical singer] Pandit Pran Nath. I had to find a fluid way to simulate the slides and ornaments of the human voice. Of course, hearing the electric Miles Davis, with the trumpet going through a wah wah pedal, also opened some doors.
You studied in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen. What was that like?
He was very sweet, if very German! I loved how he incorporated things like children’s voices into electronic music. I happened to be in the same class as Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay. It was actually a great surprise when they later formed Can. I had no idea they’d go on to make music [specifically their Ethnological Forgery Series] that was so similar in intent to what I was doing.
Where did the so-called ‘coffeecoloured’ Fourth World idea come from?
You might not be familiar with the 20th century concept of the First World, which meant the prosperous, industrially advanced countries. The Second World was basically the Soviet empire and the Third World was everything else. I wanted to establish a connection between the technologically advanced and the so-called primitive. Again, Miles had an influence on this – especially albums like On The Corner.I thought this concept needed a name. Occasionally I turn into a great advertising guy, so I came up with ‘Fourth World’.
Brian Eno had you play on Talking Heads’ Remain In Light. You were also involved in his and David Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts but dropped out. Why?
They told me they were tired of the mainstream circuit and wanted to do something entirely new. I played them albums on [pan-global field recording label] Ocora. Of course, I was interested, but Talking Heads were a big sensation and I think I might have been a bit prima donna-ish about the potential ‘pop-ness’ of the project. It would be fair to say I found Brian and David’s attitude to African music at the time slightly touristic.
Do you regret dropping out now?
Yes, certainly in terms of money – I might now be sitting in a nice big house! Brian was already a very good friend, but he and David had management teams, whereas I had nothing like that. I do regret not arriving at some sort of compromise.
Tell us something you’ve never told a journalist before.
I have a book coming out, hopefully, soon – it’s called The North And South Of You. It’s a wide-ranging development of the Fourth World concept and more, and I’m reserving all my untold stories for that. You see, I’m still a great advertising guy!
David Sheppard
Jon Hassell’s Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) is out now on Ndeya.
“Occasionally I turn into a great advertising guy.” JON HASSELL