Andy Mackay______
The Roxy Music man mixes classical, prog and art rock on his latest album, 3 Psalms.
“Iwas brought up a Methodist, so we sang a lot of hymns and went to chapel twice every Sunday when I was growing up in London. We sang hymns as they do in Welsh choirs, with lots of enthusiasm,” says Andy Mackay to Prog during a break in rehearsals for his 3 Psalms concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall back in November (you can read our review on page 124).
“Methodism was the Anglican or the British equivalent of gospel music really,” he continues. “I’m sure that was an influence on me.”
For Mackay, making and enjoying music has always been an act of inclusivity rather than something to be dogmatic about. His new album, 3 Psalms, reflects this lifelong approach, and includes an almost kaleidoscopic swirl of stylistic traits and influences that feature elements of church music, electronica, classical music, jazzy daubings and a subtle rock undertow in places. Utilising a string orchestra and choir – who also joined him at the live show – the album reflects Mackay’s love of classical music, which dates back to his days learning oboe and being a devotee of the Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall as a teenager in the early 60s.
“I still want to see this music in the context of rock’n’roll,” he explains. “I’m a rock musician. I’m not actually a classical composer. They have a much more rigorous and disciplined approach to music than I do. I just write and play the music that feels right to me and it reflects my varied musical background. But I still feel that this is a rock album.”
3 Psalms may be recently released, but its genesis dates back to the mid-90s. It was also very much a personal challenge for Mackay.
“I was terribly excited because I’d got the new music software that was around then, Cubase, working on a second-generation Mac with a 1GB hard drive. It was considered quite miraculous at the time,” Mackay remembers. “So I got excited about the idea of samples and loops and so on. I wanted to work with a human voice so I wanted something that was speech-based. I’ve never been comfortable writing lyrics. I can’t quite get the balance and simplicity without it sounding a bit banal. I thought I’d use someone else’s words and it ended up with the Psalms. Initially, it was Psalm 130, ‘Out of the depths’, which appealed to me because it seemed like a movement from despair to hope. Which, in the mid-90s, seemed right. My personal life had been had been quite difficult at that time, and writing the music around Psalm 130 was a good way to focus.
“Then I added the other two to sort of make a symphonic set-up so it has three movements. There’s a reflective, slightly doomier Psalm to start with, then Psalm 90, which is really about human mortality: ‘the days of our years are threescore years and 10’, and ‘you are dust and to dust you will return’, all of that stuff.”
Mackay came face to face with the spectre of his own mortality in 2017, when he was successfully operated on after being diagnosed with throat cancer. The addition of Psalm 150,
It may have began its inception in the 90s, but now Andy Mackay’s new music is finally coming to light, and though he takes inspiration from classical music and Psalms, he’s adamant that it’s still rock’n’roll. The Roxy Music founding member tells more to Prog… “I JUST WRITE AND PLAY THE MUSIC THAT FEELS RIGHT TO ME AND IT REFLECTS MY VARIED MUSICAL BACKGROUND. BUT I STILL FEEL THAT THIS IS A ROCK ALBUM.”