REAL GONE
Jaki Liebezeit, Overend Watts, Mike Kellie, Maggie Roche, John Wetton, Deke Leonard and others, we salute you.
Jaki Liebezeit, the peerless drumming superpower of Can, left us on January 22.
When Jaki Liebezeit – whose surname translates as ‘Lovetime’ – joined Can in Cologne in 1968, he found himself in the company of like-minded musicians who wanted to de-learn what they had been taught and create something entirely new. Born in Dresden in 1938, Liebezeit was a young devotee of Indian, Turkish and Arabic music, as well as jazz. He was a reluctant free jazz drummer, when he recalled being collared by “some kind of freak” after a gig who told him that he “must play monotonously”. That famous exchange may have gained both in translation and the retelling, but it nevertheless represented a moment of epiphany, for after joining Can, Liebezeit began exploring rhythm in the most singular manner. Whether playing straight 4/4 or more complex compound rhythms, his drumming had both a formidable precision and an elegant ‘feel’ in the timing and weight of each beat, which provided its hypnotic quality, and made him both enormously influential and impossible to emulate. In 1974, journalist Ian McDonald joked that the drummer could “stop clocks at will”. Creating spontaneously with Can, his playing could be flamboyant and expansive, and of the competing elements within that most telepathic of groups his was arguably the most important. He admitted that 1971’s mighty Tago Mago was his favourite of their albums, and that he was less keen on later, more technically accomplished works. After Can’s dissolution in 1979, with collaborators including Phantom Band, Jah Wobble’s Solaris, Club Off Chaos, Burnt Friedman and Cyclopean, he pared down his drumming style as if in single-minded pursuit of some underlying rhythmic truth. He also stripped down his kit, with the bass drum deemed redundant. Liebezeit described sitting behind it, perched on his drum stool, as too much like “riding a horse”. Singer, guitarist and songwriter Robert Coyne recorded three albums with Liebezeit from 2013. He was surprised that Liebezeit had also ditched the hi-hat. “He’d devised a kit that would oblige him to be more creative,” says Coyne. “He was still trying very hard to improve and refine what he was doing. He was particularly disdainful of hi-hats, saying, ‘It was invented to play the Charleston! I am not often playing the Charleston these days.’ He had a very dry wit. He played simple but perfectly conceived and executed parts to everything. After one take, he said to me, ‘I’m not trying to show off, or show you how much I can play. I just want to make music.’” A man not given to unnecessary talk – in 2012, he described his modus to MOJO simply as “I must obey the rhythm” – Liebezeit had planned to write a book on his theories of rhythm, titled, with typical economy, Drum Rhythm Theory. He continued playing until his death from pneumonia, and had been looking forward to appearing at The Can Project concert at The Barbican in April, with bandmates Irmin Schmidt and Malcolm Mooney. “He was quiet, gentle and thoughtful,” says Coyne. “An incredible musician and a wonderful man.”
Mike Barnes
MAGGIE ROCHE SIBLING, SINGER, SONGWRITER BORN 1951
The eldest of three harmonising sisters from Park Ridge, New Jersey, some of Maggie Roche’s early public performances were singing at fund-raisers for the Democratic party. With her outgoing siblings Terre and Suzzy, she would later lay the foundation of The Roches with her strong contralto, contributing to a smart, cheering and sometimes caustic body of work that deserved wider recognition. After singing in a duo with Terre – they featured on Paul Simon’s 1973 LP There Goes Rhymin’ Simon – Maggie would enter the studio with both her sisters for 1979’s Robert Fripp-produced folk-pop gem The Roches. Among her tracks on that album were Hammond Song and Quitting Time, compositions of sensitivity, insight and weight that gained in impact amid the group’s unserious, swinging live performances and her sisters’ more upbeat writing. Maggie would sing on another 10 Roches albums, which included Christmas songs, music for kids and their 2007 farewell Moonswept, and worked with her sisters separately. She died on January 21 after fighting cancer. Suzzy paid tribute to her as “a private person, too sensitive and shy for this world, but brimming with life, love and talent.” Ian Harrison worked with everyone from Bowie to Tom Jones, before George Martin poached him to help set up Air studios. There he manned the console for Pink Floyd, Harry Nilsson and Paul McCartney sessions, jumping ship to Wessex studios in Highbury New Park just as UK punk flowered in 1976. After helping to create the classic ‘Wessex sound’, he became hugely in demand, and was drafted in to rescue Guns N’Roses’ mega-selling Use Your Illusion LPs. An entertaining interviewee, whose estimation of the damage maverick producer Guy Stevens caused to Wessex’s piano seemingly increased with every retelling, he lost his battle with cancer on December 22. Pat Gilbert
MIKE KELLIE PAN-GENERATIONAL NOMAD OF THE DRUMS BORN 1947
Driven by hard, relentless yet economical drums, The Only Ones’ classic Another Girl, Another Planet would not be what it is without its flying rhythmic base. The same applies to Spooky Tooth’s Sunshine Help Me, whose funky percussion was sampled on the Kanye West-Jay Z track No Church In The Wild in 2011. The first of these beats was issued in 1978, the second in 1968. The drummer in both bands, bridging the decade between genres, was Birminghamborn Mike Kellie. Straight-backed and solid, he was all over his kit but without flash. Yet despite playing drums from his early teens, his was a life ducking in and out of music. In 1967, he joined the soul-inclined V.I.P.s, who, under the guidance of producer Guy Stevens, became Art. After a brief diversion with Hapshash And The Coloured Coat, Kellie was back with Art, now renamed Spooky Tooth. They recorded four albums, including 1969’s Pierre Henry collaboration Ceremony: An Electronic Mass, an outlandish collision of blues rock and electronics of which Kellie reflected, “I got castigated for saying it was crap when the album came out.” In 1976 he joined The Only Ones, who recorded three albums and, in 1978, backed the wayward Johnny Thunders as ad hoc band The Living Dead. After The Only Ones’ messy, drug-assisted collapse in 1981, Kellie lived in isolation outside Toronto in Canada for four years, and spent the mid-’80s as a hill farmer in Wales and Scotland. Reunions with Spooky Tooth followed – the last was in 2008 – while in 2007, against most expectations, The Only Ones got back together for international touring. Throughout there were abundant session credits, for Jim Capaldi, Joe Cocker, Peter Frampton, Steve Gibbons, Johnny Thunders, Pat Travers, The Who’s Tommy soundtrack and even, in 2011, off-beam Manchester punks The Distractions, plus his solo collection Music From… The Hidden in 2012. Kellie might have been a discographer’s nightmare, but his path was his own. His look never changed, and his manner was formal but not unfriendly. In 2007, on being asked to sign the sleeve of the 12-inch version of Another Girl, Another Planet he held it at arm’s length, then brought it close to peer quizzically at his photo on the cover. “Ah, this,” Kellie said. “Not much has changed then.” Kieron Tyler