Bill Bruford has played with the UK’s most influential prog bands, including King Crimson, Yes and Genesis, and launched a wide range of solo and collaborative experimental projects. Although he announced his retirement from live performance in 2009, two years ago he made a very special guest appearance behind the drumkit at a John Wetton tribute concert, which rekindled his passion for playing. He tells Prog about his career so far.
In 2001, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks released an album called The Sound Of Surprise, and it’s fair to say the drummer has delivered more than his fair share of surprises across a career that’s now in its seventh decade. The biggest eyebrow-raising moment for many was his retirement from live playing, which he announced to coincide with the publication of his autobiography, Bill Bruford: The Autobiography – Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks, And More, in 2009.
He decided to follow a path into academia, and after several years of hard work received a PhD from the University of Surrey in 2016. In 2018 his treatise Uncharted: Creativity And The Expert Drummer, was published by the University of Michigan Press.
He might have continued through the halls of learning, but for a pivotal experience when playing drums for just one number at Trading Boundaries’ John Wetton tribute concert in 2023. “It was fun playing – I realised I could still play a backbeat in 4/4!” he laughs. Speculation that he might return to the stage was confirmed when he was spotted playing several shows in the south of England in a trio featuring guitarist Pete Roth and bassist Mike Pratt.
“I do feel like a different person, much energised and still feeling that I have something to give on a drum set,” he says.
What had changed for you when you announced you were retiring from live performance?
I really wanted to do something else – anything else away from a drumkit. I was, in common parlance, burnt out. I wasn’t on any medication or crutches or anything. I was just exhausted with the trials and tribulations of being a bandleader, which is not a picnic.
Playing the drums just becomes a little thing on the side: 90 percent of your time seems to be involved with supporting a band on the road, getting gigs – the whole thing. That actually sort of pushed me out of the music business. I thought I’d take a rest; and by ‘rest,’ I meant ‘do something else.’
I wanted to stay connected to music in some way, so I thought I’d study it and maybe get a doctorate if I could; and I did. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and I fell into being an academic author. For those not in the know, it means that you generate work in your speciality field and hope it’s on the cutting edge of the discourse about creativity, drummers and musicians.
Half of my stuff is in Adrian Belew’s garage or onstage. Isn’t that amazing? It’s a lovely full circle
That was fascinating for about another five years. In my study, there’s been this drum set sitting there for about 11 years or something. Every morning I would say ‘good morning’ to it, and every evening as I left the office, I would say ‘good night.’ I never touched it.
After your performance at An Extraordinary Life, the John Wetton tribute concert, what led you back to wanting to take up drumming again?
I was at the end of being an author; I stopped that mostly because it’s pro bono work. If you’re not affiliated to a university or you don’t have a job, nobody pays you for academic work, and it’s heavy lifting – it’s hard work for sure.
So there was a lull in that, and suddenly the desire to play again raised its head powerfully, and for no reason that I could think of other than it was the next thing I did. I just sort of picked up sticks and started again and thought, “Oh, I could do this,” you know? So I thought I’d better buy some drums.
You’d auctioned off all your equipment in 2020, hadn’t you?
Yes – and you know who bought a lot of it? Danny Carey from Tool, who’s now working with [80s Crimson touring group] Beat. So half of my stuff is in either in Adrian Belew’s garage or onstage. Isn’t that amazing? It’s a lovely full circle. I’m thinking of buying it all back off Danny to complete it!
Was there no part of you tempted to join Beat when Adrian Belew approached you?
No part whatsoever. With deference to everybody in the band, my function as a musician is to try to find new things to amuse myself, and hopefully amuse you. I can’t be repetitively doing music from 45 years ago or whatever it is. It doesn’t suit me. I don’t want to play the Philadelphia Spectrum again – ever. Or Madison Square Garden.
I’m fully appreciative of the guys who have that capacity; but it’s not for me any more than staying with Genesis was, or going round playing Close To The Edge with Yes. I may be slightly unusual, but to me it’s all perfectly straightforward.
Robert Fripp would tell you to let the process occur without imposing yourself on it too much. He’d be right
The Best Of Bill Bruford: The Winterfold & Summerfold Years chronicles the Bruford band, both incarnations of your Earthworks groups, and several other collaborations, all of which might be labelled as jazz.
Well, I’m a jazz musician. There is perhaps one common component for all styles of jazz, which is interactivity. It’s vital that something happens onstage that probably didn’t happen the night before – that different notes were played in different orders, and that people were reacting and interacting with their colleagues live onstage as they make it up.
Of course, some of it is pre-prepared; but the essence, the spirit of it, is to find those little corners that haven’t been found in the previous night’s work. How can you reinterpret this melody in a different way? You play it in a different time signature. How do we do it tonight? That kind of thinking is what we would call interactive music.
Can you describe what’s going through your mind as you’re in that situation?
I tend to put my head and my mind, as it were, out towards the back of the auditorium, looking at the stage, thinking, “What are these people getting here? How does it sound? Oh, that’s too loud or that’s horrible.” I’m monitoring the music, not really listening to my own playing. It’s much better to listen to others. That way I’m getting the information to play what I play next.
It’s a bit like a potter at a potter’s wheel. You know, the hands go together and magically this pot kind of appears and you can shape it; you can dip your thumbs in a bit there and it gets narrower at the neck, and then it gets louder in the last chorus, kind of thing. You’re fashioning it as it happens in front of your very eyes. Robert Fripp would tell you the best thing to do is stay out of the way of the process – try to let the process occur without imposing yourself on it too much. And he’d be right.
I asked a 12-string guitarist to play bebop… it’s outside the range of the instrument. I was making clownish errors
A good example of that would be your partnership with the Dutch pianist Michiel Borstlap.
That’s right. The 16 Kingdoms Of The Five Barbarians from 2004’s Every Step A Dance, Every Word A Song is a story that’s entirely improvised from the word go. I started playing something and then Michiel was in, and from then on this thing developed, took on its own life; and, it seemed, because the drums can very much control the dynamics and the form, we nudged and bludgeoned each other into this kind of shape. Two people, if you like, at a potter’s wheel. That’s how we felt, and that came out really well. Most people think that’s written from beginning to end.
From The Source, We Tumble Headlong, on 2007’s In Two Minds – the other Bruford/Borstlap album – is arguably the best song that Weather Report never recorded.
That’s another improvisation. I think probably the governing factor was the very fast tempo, it’s frantic; we’re tumbling from the source. I don’t go any faster. Not unless you pay me a whole lot more money! In those circumstances you’re operating at multiple levels. You’re intensely aware of what the other person is playing, and trying to see around the corner to where this music’s going next.
You worked with ECM Records star, guitarist Ralph Towner, and bassist Eddie Gomez on 1997’s If Summer Had Its Ghosts. They’re both legends in their respective fields. What was that experience like?
I went through probably a fairly extreme form of kind of vetting before either of them said yes, because, you know, “Who is this rock guy? Does he know what jazz is? does he care about it?” But happily I passed the test. That album was me at full stretch. Certainly, I did very stupid things.
First of all was the first reading of the music before we recorded. Some things went wrong and I’d written too much music. I had also asked a 12-string guitarist to play some bebop. That’s not easy – it’s outside of the range of the instrument. I was making clownish errors, but they were very sweet.
The words ‘rock’ and ‘jazz,’ I think, are all but discredited now
There wasn’t that much time with them. It was going to be a two- or three-day album. That might sound generous, but it’s people who have not met before, have not rehearsed before, and have not played this music before. I was completely exhausted at the end of it and thrilled that I had got through it safely and nobody was hurt. I look back on it with great fondness, and I particularly like the title track, If Summer Had Its Ghosts. The album has sold very well, so I’m thrilled with the whole thing.
Do you ever encounter the jazz police, suspicious of your jazz credentials because you came from a rock background?
You do – but I often work with jazz musicians because they’re highly skilled, then don’t always ask them to do jazz-like things. I often work with rock musicians and don’t always ask them to do rock-like things either. So I’m in the grey area between the two, and most musicians who are mad enough to wish to cooperate with me know it will have elements of both – even though the words ‘rock’ and ‘jazz,’ I think, are all but discredited now. These days with the Pete Roth Trio we tend to steer away from the term ‘jazz’ because it’s been disfigured. And depending on who you’re talking to, nobody has a clue what jazz is about.
Most Prog readers won’t have come across Pete Roth before. How did you come to meet him?
He was my student. I knew him as a pretty good guitar player and I also knew him as a competent fellow in many areas. He wanted some work and to see a bit of England – he’s German and he wanted to hear a lot of music. So he came on as my drum tech on an Earthworks tour. He’d deal with merch, promoters and the settlement at the end of the evening; basically, the business. And while I drove him around the country in a very nice Mercedes-Benz, we did nothing but talk guitar for about two years.
Fast forward 20 years and I’m in the rehearsal room in Cranleigh Temple in Surrey, casting around for a colleague to play with, and Pete came into the frame. We started a rehearsal band with bassist Mike Pratt, and one thing led to another.
Was it inevitable that you would return to playing live? Was that always the plan?
As soon as you form a band somebody says, “You’ve got to play a gig.” So you play a gig and that’s all over the internet, and suddenly you’re back in the music business! Joking apart, it’s an entirely different context. The principal context for me is that I’m not the leader of the group. The leader of the group is Pete Roth.
A trio is small, it’s lovely, it’s light, it’s very effective. It’s very frugal. It doesn’t consume much diesel
It makes a huge psychological difference. If your name is stuck at the top of the O2 Arena, then it’s all on you. So, Pete Roth is a wonderful guy who’s got lots of stamina, lots of experience now and is a blazing guitar player in a jazz-ish way.
The gigs you’ve been playing are essentially ones where you can get back home at night.
There are different levels of the music industry; I want to play to my own benefit at an amateur level. I’ve downgraded myself deliberately and I have opted for a local level – let’s put it like that. That doesn’t mean I might not go to Paris, which I’m booked to do; and I might go somewhere else. But I’m not going on a tour that goes on forever and a day. I don’t have the stamina to do that. It’s a mental stamina.
What would you say works about the trio format you’ve chosen?
I think the more people onstage, the more you must arrange the music, otherwise everybody’s going to speak at once. With three people or even a duo, you can’t really speak too much. You’re having a conversation with the other people in a trio, so it’s lovely... it’s small, it’s lovely, it’s light, it’s very effective. It’s very frugal. It doesn’t consume much diesel. It’s inexpensive to run.
How do you go about selecting material for the Trio?
The group leader has the final say on where we go and what we play. We’re all grown-ups and we’re all chipping in like crazy, but Pete is the leader. It doesn’t really matter in some way if you’re going to play some standards – like, we play Wayne Shorter’s Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, John Coltrane’s Mr. P.C., and Billie’s Bounce and Donna Lee, both by Charlie Parker. It depends on what you do with it. That’s the whole essence of it: you take a standard; everybody knows what it is and then you change it, thereby displaying the characteristics of your particular ensemble and your own choices.
You also perform If Summer Had Its Ghosts. Are we likely to see more Bruford compositions arranged for trio such as Feels Good To Me, Beelzebub or anything else from the Winterfold catalogue?
I don’t think so. With If Summer Had Its Ghosts somebody said, “That thing you did with Ralph Towner is really lovely,” and Pete jumped on that because he loves it. But we’re not thinking of any others from my back catalogue. I’m playing what Pete wants us to play. I think Pete’s a very good writer himself, and very good with a melody. We seem to dispatch this music with a great deal of good humour and goodwill, so people are drawn into the group. We’re perfectly respectable playing a progressive rock festival, and probably perfectly respectable playing a jazz festival. We’re somewhere in that grey area of instrumental music.
I defend to the death anybody’s right to enjoy music that I’m involved with for any reason whatsoever
Would you accept that a lot of people are coming to see the Pete Roth Trio simply because you’re in it? And if so, how does that make you feel?
That’s quite possible – but it doesn’t make me feel anything. It’s just lovely if people can come for any reason whatsoever. And I defend to the death anybody’s right to enjoy the music that I’m involved with for any reason whatsoever. I don’t care whether they like my purple socks, you know, just as long as they’re there and they’re enjoying it. That’s what we’re there for.
Everything else leads up to that two hours onstage that makes life worth living for musicians. It’s why I ‘unretired’ myself: for that buzz of two hours of cooperation at a reasonably high level – we hope – of skilful colleagues. I absolutely adore it. I’m thrilled to be back onstage.
