Wreckless Eric

The art school legend gives it up for Ornette Coleman’s The Art Of The Improvisers (Atlantic, 1970).

I could have chosen a Kinks, Beatles, Stones or Small Faces LP, but they didn’t change my life like this did.

I’d read about people I admired like Jack Bruce and Graham Bond, who were into jazz, in Melody Maker. From there, I bought Beefheart’s Strictly Personal, and I read he was into Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman.

When Virgin Records opened in Brighton, it was life-changing. I went to buy Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, but they’d sold out – and then I clocked The Art Of The Improvisers. I rushed home with it and – fuck me, what is this? I loved how alien and dissonant it sounded. The sleevenotes said Just Like You was a ballad, but instead of something Matt Monro and syrupy, Ornette was playing and Don Cherry would come in with a couple of notes and just collide with it. The drummer almost seemed to have nothing do with the front line… there was no apparent way how it all related, which is how things were in my head, which is the important thing about it.

I never had the pretention of being a jazz musician. I don’t even know if I’m a musician. But Improvisers was my introduction to the possibility that things didn’t have to be melodic in the accepted sense. Like, [1977 debut single] Whole Wide World had two extra beats, and no one wanted to play it that way. Or people would say, “Play the chord sequence and we’ll put a solo on after”, and I’d think, Why can’t you just blow up and do something that comes out of your head, and the rest of the outfit can follow?

When I started making music, there were a lot of tyrants around, making these rules. I wasn’t someone who freed themselves from the outset, but I knew the possibility was there, and I got there in the end.

Wreckless Eric’s Leisureland is released on August 25 on Tapete Records.