Normal Give or Take: A Conversation with Fred Frith (Part One)

When first learning about music, students are often taught to classify instruments by their sound. In the abstract, this basic exercise appears helpful. Woodwind reeds will inevitably produce a different tone than one can get on a brass mouthpiece. Tapping fingers on a string will likely not sound close to that produced by the same motion on a drumhead. But, in another sense, these distinctions distort perceptions of artistic expression. Ultimately, an instrument is nothing more than an assemblage of metal, strings, or wood. An artist’s voice shines through regardless of the material in their hands. This projection beyond the physical is evident in Fred Frith’s work on both guitar and homemade instruments. He will present a solo performance on the former at Roulette on December 6, 2024, and the latter with a trio, Normal Give or Take, at the same venue a day later.

Frith’s solo works extend back five decades. After five years with the experimental rock collective Henry Cow, which he co-founded with Tim Hodgkinson, Frith found himself in the studio working on the unaccompanied guitar album that would become Guitar Solos (Caroline, 1974). One of the pioneers of prepared guitar – placing objects on and against the strings to generate new timbres – his solo outing found a way to incorporate multiple sound sources through an extra pickup, alligator clips, and a capo on the fretboard. His innovative approach challenged concepts of what a guitar can do while inspiring generations of musicians yearning for sounds outside the traditional limits of their tools of choice. Even half a century later, the record, especially on a track like the closer “No Birds,” seems like the soundtrack of an exotic futuristic unknown. Frith would return to the solo form several times throughout his career, most recently on Fifty (Week-End, 2024). Hardly beholden to convention, each release built upon the freedom discovered in Guitar Solos and used it to push into a new direction.

But equally as notable are the moments Frith has put aside his axe entirely. Throughout the early 1980s, he crafted his own string instruments – mostly slabs of wood with a pickup, bridge, and strings stretched over metal screws. Despite returning to the guitar after a few years, the allure of creating music in spaces far from traditional bounds proved too strong. He would occasionally revisit the idea of creating his own instruments, making many over the last two decades with his former student, Sudhu Tewari. The duo, going by the name Normal, emphasizes the freedom possible in the deconstruction – and reconstruction – of norms. Through the Portable Street Piano, Post Hole Tone Music Box, Super Strut Bandshaw Bass, No Strings Guitar, and more, Frith shows that the artistic genius evident in Guitar Solos and its progeny was never dependent on the instrument for which that work is named.

We sat down with Frith to discuss his solo guitar performances, homemade instruments, and more.

PostGenre: To start with a random question, Roulette’s website has a quote from Miles Davis: “Fred Frith is a great drummer.” What’s the story?

Fred Frith: [Laughing] So, Miles said that in an interview he did for Jazz Mag in France. It must have been about a year before he died. The guy who conducted the interview did it in the French language, which Miles spoke. The interviewer asked Miles, “Qu’est-ce qui fait battre votre cœur?” which means “What’s making your heart beat at the moment?” but “battre” is also another name used for drum. Miles responded that I was a great drummer, and so was Sheila E. 

When the magazine’s editor saw the interview transcript, he said it couldn’t have been right since I’m a guitar player, not a drummer. He told the interviewer that Miles must have made a mistake and to ask him what he meant to say. So, the journalist called Miles, who was annoyed by the journalist daring to question him. So the quote stood. We’ll never know exactly what Miles meant, but I like it. 

PG: [Laughing] To be fair, you have also expanded beyond the guitar at times, not only for your homemade instruments but also to play the electric bass. Most notably, you were the bassist in the band Naked City. How did you get involved with that group? 

FF: Well, I was invited to play bass with them. In later conversations with John [Zorn], I understood that he wanted to mix genres. He wanted to add stuff to the music that we would define as rock. The people he knew were capable of doing the things he wanted to do – namely Bill [Frisell], Joey [Baron], and Wayne [Horvitz] – were all coming from a jazz background. I was the only one from a rock background and I came with those sensibilities. I was also the rare rock bass player who could read music. Most rock bass players work parts out as they go along, based on listening. But I could read bass parts, which was very useful to John. 

My rock background meant I had to work very hard to keep up with some of the jazz stuff, but I got better over time. I remember there was a piece in the New York Times [“POP/JAZZ; John Zorn Takes Over the Town”, February 24, 1989] where Peter Watrous, who hated me, said, “Fred Frith can’t walk a jazz bass line.” Which of course, is true. 

PG: But you are well known for your skills on the guitar. You were self-taught on the instrument. Do you feel teaching the guitar to yourself gave you more freedom on the instrument compared to if you had taken a more formal path? 

FF: Not having formally studied guitar probably helped me because I developed a completely different way of thinking about technique. My techniques are very personal. I can now do things that a conventional guitar player can. I’ve gotten better. But mostly, that’s not what I have ever been about. When I first started playing, I tried to do everything. I tried to play the Blues, flamenco, and classical. I was probably relatively lousy at some of it but you establish a basic expressivity through doing those things, and it is helpful to have certain things end up in your fingers in a useful way. You end up creating a language that belongs to you, and you work with it. 

PG: Part of your language is built around extended techniques and preparations on the guitar. How did you get involved in those areas?

FF: I was initially interested in the actual mechanics of the guitar. I was interested in how I could hear notes coming from my left hand when I played an acoustic guitar but when you hammer on, you’re hearing another note. I was always curious about that. Back around 1969, I tried to pick up those notes by taking the mouthpiece out of a phone and then gluing it onto my headstock of an acoustic guitar. I was curious to see what that would do. Of course, it didn’t work on an acoustic guitar. All you would hear is a loud thump. But I decided to try it on an electric guitar with a pickup. So, I had a friend build a mount on an electric guitar to put a pick up there to see what would happen. And that led to a whole exploration of the guitar in two directions, at once. I developed my techniques. I noted the logarithmic scale on the other side. There’s a whole bunch of work that went into that. 

This was all back in 1971. Around that time, Henry Cow had a thing called The Explorers Club. We invited other musicians to play with us. One was Rain in the Face with David Toop on guitar and Paul Burwell on drums. I didn’t know them at the time. But David was using alligator clips on the guitar. I saw that and thought it was cool. [Laughing]. So I started experimenting with attaching alligator clips to the strings as well, which is one of the things happening on Guitar Solos. 

But because I was using a tapping technique and David was using a picking technique, I sounded different. Using the tapping technique with two volume pedals, I had a stereo guitar. There were three gradations of sound controlled by my feet. The clips produce overtones that disappear if you switch off one pedal. Then they pick up and come back again if you switch it on. You can vary the instrument’s timbre using your feet while the clips are on the string. So, the clips provide a fascinating exploration of possibilities. I seldom use them anymore, but back then, I was excited. And that was the beginning of the process. Since then, I’ve pretty much established a fixed group of things I use on the guitar. Now, I use chopsticks, tin cans, a paintbrush, a shoe brush, a couple of chains, a baking tin, and a goat horn. They are always there, though I don’t always use them. 

PG: Since you use a fixed group of items, do you always have a sense of how things will sound when you use a particular object, or is there some chance of things not sounding as you anticipated? 

FF: Of course, I have a very good idea of how something will sound. I’ve been doing this for a long time and have been using these things for a long time. But what’s always fascinating is that sometimes you think you know what something sounds like and do the thing that produces the sound you think you will get, and then you don’t get it. There are always variabilities, variations, and things you didn’t expect. Something like the precise placement of a baking tray on the strings or whether you have a brush on the strings changes things. They always lead you to explore something differently. I think the joy is in the fact that even though my vocabulary is relatively static, what happens, without fail, always brings me to places I haven’t been before. I don’t know why, but it happens. I think it has to do with having an understanding that when something unexpected happens, you can make it into something interesting. 

PG: A minute ago, you mentioned Guitar Solos. Fifty is partly a reflection on the decades since that album. How did Guitar Solos come together? 

FF: Back in 1974, Henry Cow was signed to Virgin Records. As was fairly common in those days, the record company thought it would be good to have a solo record from the person they had designated as the star. Of course, that was ridiculous for us because we were a collective. In any case, my idea of a solo record probably wasn’t what they had in mind. I think they wanted some rock’n’roll stuff, but I was much more interested in conceptually exploring what a guitar actually is. Given this opportunity, I could look at the guitar, what the instrument might become, what I can make of it. So, they downgraded the project immediately and put it on their sub-label, Caroline Records!

They gave me a small budget to go into a very eccentric studio, Kaleidophon Studios. It was run by a guy named David Vorhaus, who was a  South African electronic musician who had been a computer engineer. He had built a multi-track recording studio using his experience with computers. Computers in those days used tape, and he turned computer tape into audio tape. So, we were recording with a computer that he had converted into a tape recorder. But the mechanical noise it made was very loud, and it was in the control room. The noise made it so that when we were listening back, we couldn’t hear much of what we were doing in any detail. The result of this was that we started equalizing it based on what we were hearing. But when we heard the recordings in a different place, we discovered that we had added frequencies that were not what you would expect to hear. And that became interesting. 

This technology led us to understand the nature of the sound of the guitar differently. And that’s part of what the record was about; turning the guitar into an orchestral range of sound. There was also the fact that I was experimenting with the pickup at the wrong end of the neck and putting a capo in the middle. We explored all of that stuff, with no overdubs. 

PG: What do you feel is the biggest misconception, fifty years out, about that record?

FF: It’s interesting to me that one of the misstatements that seems to be made a lot about Guitar Solos is the idea that I had the guitar on a table. Actually, the guitar was played almost entirely in the conventional position on that record. There is only one track, [the final track, “No Birds”], where I have two guitars laid flat. All the others were not played on a table. 

PG: Why do you think people claim you laid the guitar on a table for most of the album?

FF: I think people have been misled into thinking that Keith Rowe, who had done a lot with playing the guitar flat on a table, was my mentor and that I worked under his shadow. In reality, I never even heard him play until ten years after I made Guitar Solos. I knew who he was and knew about him, but I hadn’t seen or heard him play until then. 

PG: So, who was your mentor then, Derek Bailey?

FF: If I had a mentor, it would be Derek Bailey. But, of course, we played in a completely different way. When Guitar Solos first came out in 1974, there was no shortage of journalists saying it sounded just like Derek. That used to make Derek laugh because in reality our approach was so different

PG: How do you feel your solo performance has changed and developed the most over the last five decades? Fifty makes clear reference to Guitar Solos, but it is also a different thing entirely. 

FF: Back when I made Guitar Solos, I wasn’t a solo performer. I also didn’t do more than one solo concert in the four years after Guitar Solos, between 1974 and 1978. 

PG: Why did you not perform any solo concerts in that time? 

FF: I was busy with Henry Cow. I occasionally played in different combinations with other people. But I didn’t play solo. The possibilities that Guitar Solos made for performance were set aside. I was busy with something else after I had made it. It was only when I went to New York in 1978 – and I didn’t take a guitar with me – that I played solo again.

PG: How did the return to solo performance occur?

FF: I was kind of bulldozed into doing a cameo appearance at The Zu Manifestival that Giorgio Gomelsky was presenting in October of 1978. I ended up borrowing two guitars and laying them flat, remembering the final track on Guitar Solos, and tried to go in that direction. I hadn’t planned or thought about it much. I just put them on the table and played for about ten minutes. Then I thought about how that approach could be the beginning of something. And that evolved into a period where I did a lot of on-the-table stuff. 

Then I more or less completely gave up the guitar as an improviser and started building homemade instruments. I made those between 1981 and 1984. So, when I was improvising during those years, I was very often using homemade instruments and not guitars. I later went back to the guitar, and started doing more solo stuff. I started doing solo guitar performances with the pickup on the wrong end going into one channel, all the other pickups going to the other channel, and having a stereo pedal array so that I could create landscapes and fade between different aspects of the guitar. It became a very orchestral way of playing and I followed that approach until fairly recently. 

Now I’m playing, I would say, in a much more traditional way, in a certain sense I’m no longer using a pickup on the wrong end of the neck. I do that sometimes, but mostly not. Now it feels more like I’m a channel for whatever shows up. The guitar is a suggestive instrument. You can change the tuning on the fly and suddenly have something that sounds like a mandolin or a banjo and that immediately invokes a certain tradition. Maybe a cultural tradition. Those things seem to find their way into what I’m doing. 

So, now, I go with the flow and see what happens. I don’t have a particular approach. While Fifty was very much made in the same way as the old solo records it also has a more traditional feel to it. At least it does to my ears. Guitar Solos seemed, to me, to be much more radical. It’s like, “What the fuck is going on here?” And the new album is not like that. 

Stay tuned for Part Two with Fred Frith, where we will get into his work on homemade instruments including with the group Normal, his duo with Sudhu Tewari.

Fred Frith will be performing solo at Roulette on December 6, 2024. More information is available here. It will also be available via livestream. The following day, December 7, 2024, he will be performing trio at Roulette with Sudhu Tewari and Lotte Anker. It too will be available for livestream. More information on Fred Frith is available on his website.