Miss Gardiner interviews Virginia Scott for DECODE Magazine 2006.
Beggars Opera were a Scottish band who formed in late '69. They were an integral part of early 1970's progressive rock music, and a mainstay on the seminal Vertigo label.
Their first album 'Act One' in 1970 has been noted to have pushed classical progressive boundaries that could stand by Emmerson Lake and Palmer's 'Pictures at an Exhibition'. They moved on to their second album, 'Water's of Change' which brought the psychedelic sounds of the mellotron played by Virginia Scott, the only female mellotronist around at the time.
Six albums, world tours and sharing vinyl with Kraftwerk the musical direction of the band temporarily changed.
With Beggars on a back burner, pastures new glowed in the from of other genre's including punk rock, opera, classical, chamber music, contemporary improvisation, surrealism, meditation music and electro-magnetic illness.
They now declare themselves a 'cyber band' who will only be performing over internet web casting, they have a new album pending which has a certain romantic air of Glam, prog and the surrealism of having a spaceman on horse back!
Miss Gardiner catches Virginia Scott in Bath en route to catch Joanna McGregor.
Miss Gardiner: Beggars Opera have changed so much in the last thirty years that now you describe yourselves as being a 'cyber band'. What does this mean?
Virginia Scott: Ricky Gardiner, founder of Beggar's Opera in 1969, now suffers from Electro Magnetic Hyper Sensitivity, which means he can not inhabit or frequent areas which subscribe to heavy use of computers, strip lighting, microwaves, mobile phones and their relevant masts etc.
This piece of debatable fortune has given rise to an intensely surreal existence, one might say, and as a result precludes any possibility of 'live' performance,
in the conventional sense of the word, in today's monumentally digitized venues.
After 11 or so years of experimentation and due to the sainted assistance of a pair of distance goggles (opera glasses) which allow Ricky to distance himself
from a computer screen and the etc's, it will be possible to arrange 'cyber' events. The challenge however is ongoing, but very inspiring
Miss G: You're in the final mixes of a new Beggars Opera album after only releasing meditation music and contemporary improvisations. What inspired you to revisit this particular incarnation?
Virginia: The revisiting of the 'song' forms resulted from Ricky's EMS. Ricky at his most intensely sensitive had no recourse but to experiment with short ludes (3-5 minutes).
These become songs.
Miss G: In 1970 when Beggars Opera's 'Act One' came out, were there many other women working in music?
Virginia: As far as I recall, Mo Tucker, batteuse of the Velvet Underground, was one of the rare rock female instrumentalists of the time.
I remember being empowered at the Great British Rocky Meeting/ Speyer Germany /1971 when I saw Christine Perfect at the keys with Fleetwood Mac.
We were the only two women instrumental musicians playing and far as I know I was the only female mellotronist of the Prog era.
Miss G: What were some of the attitudes you had to endure and how has it changed now?
Virginia: I remember how audiences loved it. Fans would like to sit around me and touch me to see if I was real.
Reporters liked to talk to me.
Roadies were very accommodating and mythologies were generated at the time, which had a destabilizing effect on some. Some gazed in wonder and I felt very connected to my role.
Looking back I suppose it was a unique privilege and psycho pathologically speaking a fertile experience. I am sure that women rock instrumentalists are still viewed through gorgeously tinted glass.
Miss G: What were the feelings surrounding the decision for you to take over vocal duties after Linnie Paterson died?
Virginia: In 1974 I was working on the Beggars Opera 'rock opera', which featured a Glam Rock figurine called Diana Demon.
We were setting up the 'imaginary landscape' of a tour of Germany.
Originally Jean Bramble of Alkasura in the King's Road made a costume for Diana Demon.
I met Angie Bowie at a Biba's night (I think it was when we played with the New York Dolls).
We hit it off and she offered some beautiful costumes for a photo shoot with Terry O'Neil, which developed Diana Demon even further.
Then Angie's then husband David moved in on Ricky. The Beggars Opera 'opera' was put on hold.
When Ricky's condition heralded a song phase, it just seemed and felt right to pick up where we left off, with me on vocals.
Miss G: How do you go about writing the lyrics and the songs?
Virginia: Improvisation is the key to all the music.
In the 80's I started composing so-called serious music. It became obvious that 'free improvisation' was central to these scores.
I had started improvising in response to hearing Grete Sultan's performance of John Cage's Etudes Australes for pianoforte.
I met Lucy Lucy (part of an improvising duo, with violinist Phil Durrant, called 'Paradise Mislaid') through Women in Music.
We produced a thunderous improvised piano duet called 'Welcome Rain After Drought' I had also started to record my improvisations on tape. (I later used Logic for the same purpose).
The musical material I accumulated was transcribed and then cut up a la Tristan Tzara/ Burroughs and compositions were constructed.
One of the most important of these scores was perhaps 'Terma' for two pianos, which was premiered at the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary music in 1993, by German pianists Rainer Buerk (who also became an improvising partner and we produced several free improvisations for 2 pianos) and Robert Ruhle.
This led to an interesting commission from the Arts Council of Wales and the Lynne Plowmann/ Sally Hillier duo, for a piece for flute and acoustic guitar, 'Sky dancer', which was constructed using the same methods and performed at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff on the 13 /10/ 1995.
But perhaps the most arresting of all these compositions is 'How the Song Grows' for solo oboe d'amore in three movements. This is the longest piece ever written for this instrument.
It's most impressive performance was at the great Cathedral at Bangor in summer of 2003 by oboist Jennifer Porcas.
The acoustics there are fantastic. But I digress, in the sense that this applies more to the music than the lyrics.
It was as a result of these improvisational methods that, when the time of need came, I decided to try something similar with the lyrics. I therefore fell into the use of Andre Breton's aptly named 'Magnetic Fields' method of automatic writing.
So, back to the songs! It is like this. The chords are set down straight from Ricky's Fender in 3-5 minutes and that is what sticks.
I have the task of decoding this and constructing a song from said.
I move in with sheets of automatic writing and sing.
What you hear is pretty what happens as a result of this process.
Miss G: How important are lyrics in rock music?
Virginia: Lyrics in rock are the present day equivalent of fairy tales and mantras.
The postmodern 'Happy Ever After'.
Miss G: What was the most recent lyric that caught your ear and why?
Virginia: There are a few.
I like the lyrics Laurie Anderson comes up with. In her recent 'Life on a String', I just melted when I heard the first line of 'One White Whale' the first track.
It goes like this.
'How to find you maybe by your singing'.
I have recently become a fan of the incredible Diamanda Galas and was recently aurally arrested
by the amazing lyric sung in French of the track 'Artemis' from her Will and Testament double.
The first verse of this poesie written by Gerard de Nerval (which I will quote in it's translation by Geoffrey Wagner) is as follows
'The Thirteenth returns'¦once more she is first
And she is still the only one, or this the only moment
For you are surely Queen first and last?
For you are surely King O first and last lover?'
And then this band I found on myspace; The Starberks', the words to 'Flambodial Fetew'
As in'Flambodial Fetew is the best thing I ever knew'
Miss G: A painter yourself, How much has art had an influence over your work over the time?
Virginia: The Dadaists' energy is hugely liberating. It captivated me and inspires almost everything I do creatively.
It is a well that never runs dry, a floodgate that never closes. Abstract art is a form of atavism.
For example, on the day Lucy Lucy and I were working on Welcome, I had a 6x4 set up in the piano room! Now I work more with collage.
Thick paint has a high
environmental price now. Collage and the chance encounter with objets trouve are of a more viridian hue.
Miss G: What music fascinates you now? Where do you gather your inspiration from in music?
Virginia: I am obsessed with the music of Robert Schumann the great Romantic composer and his wife Clara Schumann.
John Cage inspires me.
The human voice both operatically, as in Jesse Norman singing Wagner and Richard Strauss, the shrieking Daimanda Galas and her amazing intoning vocals, 'Bond' songs and their singers and the beautiful speaking voice of art critic Brian Sewell.
Pianists too.Currently it is Joanna MacGregor, as she moves so effortlessly between the norms. It would be lovely if she were to record some free improvisation.
And then there is the cello and Jacqueline du Pre of course.
Miss G: How much attention do you pay to current 'rock and pop' music?
Virginia: The current Progressive scene seems to be shimmering in the wings.
I was listening to Spock's Beard's 'Ballet of Impact' and realised that the commodification of Prog was imminent, not only due to the elasticity of current contemporary digitalia , but also to an emerging ennui of the post punk safe certainty male four piece and it's semiquaver primary chord long introit and minimal formulaic chant.
Miss G: After reading an article recently in Wire about Sonic Youth, they explained that they were uninterested in pushing a sense of 'newness' in their albums, yet still being explorative. How important is it to push 'newness' whether it is re inventing the wheel or appropriating old for new the post-modern way? What is the Beggars Opera standpoint on that notion?
Virginia: In 1962, when Ricky Gardiner and I were musically conjoined in our first ever band The Vostok's, the notion of musical collaboration was inevitable.He to me was a cool slick guitarist, who could play 'Mystery Man' better than Hank Marvin of the Shadows. What was I to him? A singer with dark long black hair and blue eyes who could play anything, jam and hang out with guitars, keys and the vinyl of the day through Scottish dawns and gloamings? I was studying classical piano in Italy when Ricky formed Beggars Opera and on my return was appointed composer in residence. I still am.
The art/Dadaist link you refer to, and therefore the use of said as a means of producing the 'new' or the 'less predictable', does not apply to a 'reinvention' but to a 'revivification from cryonation' for Beggars Opera, or a link in the concatenation of retrospective musical aspirational energies invested in Beggars Opera's identity as a postmodern structure, which kept evolving subliminally.
I know little of Sonic Youth's music except through the 'Trainspotting 2' cd and an interesting track called 'Atmosphere'.I am more aware of Kim Gordon their bassist through her 'Her Noise' installation at the South London Gallery, which I read about in Modern Painter's. But I see what you mean by asking this interesting question.
Miss G: You have obviously made a living out of music, what would you say to those people that regard music as not a 'proper job'?
Virginia: What does 'proper job' mean?
Miss G: Are we to expect 'cyber performances' from a cyber band?
Virginia: Yes, of course.
Miss Gardiner 2006