Zappa alumnus Don Preston speaks at UMass Lowell
HellPopeHuey
http://www.lowellsu n.com/lifestyles /ci_4380539
Perfect dissonance Mothers of Invention pioneer Don Preston brings
passion for experimental music to UMass Lowell
By DAVID PERRY, Sun Staff
Lowell Sun
"By now," Don Preston told a room of about 40 young music students at
UMass Lowell, "I have a lot of stories to tell. A lot of things have
happened to me that may not have happened to you yet, but they will."
A week shy of his 74th birthday, Preston spent more than an hour on
Thursday, Sept. 14, discussing the history of electronic music, his
place in it, sprinkling the talk with anecdotes.
There are few folks roaming the planet more equipped for the task.
He has battle scars. Thanks to "playing in rock bands and not
protecting myself," he cocks his head to accommodate a bum right ear.
Though he is best known by many as the man who held down the
keyboardist/ synthesist job in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention from
1966-74, Preston has helped usher the synthesizer and other more
experimental sounds into rock music.
He also toured with Nat King Cole, and performed with John Lennon and
Yoko Ono, The Residents, the London and Los Angeles Philharmonics,
Lou Rawls and jazz masters Elvin Jones, Yusef Lateef and Gil Evans.
He has composed more than 20 feature film scores, and was among the
key players on the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse
Now.
While Preston is perfectly capable of performing pop music, his
passion is for experimental and electronic compositions.
When John Shirley, who chairs UMass Lowell's Music Department, heard
Preston would be touring in the area, he booked him.
"He's a pioneer of electronic music," said Shirley, himself an
electronic composer.
Preston and his Akashic Ensemble performed for hundreds of students,
then Preston settled into his talk, which covered everything from
seminal electronic stalwarts Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen,
John Cage, and Paul Beaver to Robert Moog, whose Moog Synthesizer
brought the sounds to a single electronic instrument that Preston and
others had been using many to make.
Preston, the son of a composer-in- residence to the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra, took up the piano at age 5. Though not Catholic, his
parents sent him to parochial school for its strictness. The nuns
beat his hands with a ruler when he messed up.
"I never did have a really good teacher," he said. "I feel cheated
about that."
The moment that crystallized his love of dissonance was in a 1940
Disney film.
"When I was a kid, I saw Fantasia. Like 25 times. My favorite part
was the dinosaurs, and behind them was Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring.'
It was one of the most dissonant pieces Stravinsky ever wrote. And
it's probably what led to me thinking like that. It was one of the
most powerful things in my life."
At 17, while serving in the Army in Italy, Preston took some
Benzedrine and walked eight miles into a town, where a band was
playing in a restaurant.
"Their bassist hadn't shown up and I felt like playing, so I got up
and played with them for three hours. Then I walked eight miles back
to the barracks."
He played with the Army band, and began rigorous practice sessions.
"I started to play the bass and got pretty good at it."
It began a practice regimen that continues today.
"I still practice because I didn't really have a strong background
when I was little."
He listens to Stockhausen and other experimental composers, as well
as early Miles Davis, his friend Paul Bley and the likes of Art Bears
and the experimental/ industrial band Throbbing Gristle.
He spoke to the students of envelope generators and oscillators, of
music concrete and writing music for the Apocalypse scene where
Marlon Brando's character tosses a human head on the floor.
"I had to watch that scene like 300 times and the first time, I
almost threw up."
The half-dozen college lectures on his tour "have been really
exciting for me," he says in an interview following the lecture. "I'm
not a talker. Some people are, and other people are listeners. I'm a
listener. But when probed, I can talk. I was a little surprised by
this group. They didn't seem to know anybody I was talking about. But
I think some of what I said got through to them."
He failed two auditions before Zappa hired him. After the second,
when his ignorance of rock music showed, he joined a cover band to
build his chops. After his third audition, Zappa hired him.
Preston says he earned just $200 a week while playing with The
Mothers.
"That's how it worked with Zappa. Zappa disbanded the band because he
said he couldn't afford $200 a week per person. But he hired nine
other people to work in the band. If you can't afford it, don't hire
them."
Preston says it was Zappa's natural ability to communicate and write
music that continues to fascinate people today.
"He did things that could stand up. Not against Stockhausen, maybe,
but they do stand up incredibly well in the world of rock music. And
his lyrics were brilliant. I do have a slight problem with his
orchestral work. It doesn't hold up for me."
The Mothers of Invention's classic 1967 We're Only In It for the
Money LP sported a cover that mocked The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band art.
"We called Paul and talked to him. And it took six months to get the
OK, and that was only if we used it on the inside of the cover, which
is why it's backwards."
A dazzling Preston solo on the title cut of 1972's Waka Jawaka caused
Robert Moog to proclaim it "impossible" to play.
Preston laughs. "I still haven't told Bob how I did it."
When Zappa disbanded the Mothers in 1974, "it was a total shock, like
the woman you've been living with for 20 years saying, 'I don't love
you anymore.'" (Zappa died from cancer in 1993. A band of former
Mothers, the Grandmothers, continues as an entity.)
In 1976, Preston got a call to see if he'd be interested in working
with a new singer, Leo Sayer.
Sayer cut a series of hit records, including the chart-topping "You
Make Me Feel Like Dancing" and "When I Need You," and Preston became
his musical director.
"I liked him a lot. I basically made sure everyone was doing what
they needed to. The music was OK, not really my cup of tea. But it
was a job and it paid very good money."
Otherwise, Preston has very little interest in commercial music.
He relishes his time with John Carter, the jazz clarinetist and
composer, the "brilliant" jazzman Gil Evans.
"But the one, for me, that was a milestone, was the last opera by
Michael Mantler, The School of Understanding. " Preston was a vocalist
on the project.
But there's more to come.
"It's hard work and I have to make sure I don't overtax myself." But
he's in good shape and watches his diet.
"I think I'm capable of doing this for 10 more years, at least."
--
HellPope Huey
Author of "Jenny Has Two Heads" and
"Daddy Drinks Because A Small Demon
Lives In His Frontal Lobes."
Major Strasser:
What is your nationality?
Rick Blaine:
I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault:
And that makes Rick a citizen of the world.
~ "Casablanca"
"What is it?"
"Its a girl."
"Oh look, its gonna have a beard!"
~ "Freaks"
Zontar Johnson
be hip in any way..