Mayo Thompson Interview [1997]

If we put Corky's Debt to His Father up here,

Drag City would get not happy.

So, go find it and dig.

in lieu of

here's a long chat

i had with Mayo back in 1997

it was a lot of fun and honor to boot

[just found this on an ancient 80GB harddrive]

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An Interview with Mayo Thompson.

Conducted Friday, April 11, 1997, between 9 and 10am PST

Via telephones terminating in San Francisco (me), and Pasadena (Mayo).

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Wednesday, Claudia calls to tell me that Drag City operatives are leaving cryptic messages on her machine (surprise) -- something to the effect that Mayo Thompson had read a piece I wrote in which he was a character and liked it (to say it was a live show review would be misleading, cf. Homotiller #12).

Thursday the label has left me a message stating that Mayo wants to do an interview with me for HT. Great, I think, quite flattering. Maybe we’ll get together and have a right civil chat, an exchange of ideas maybe. How quaint and unlikely, of course: Claudia’s deadline and Red Krayola’s current tour coincide next Tuesday, Tax-Day, so, I am told, it’s tomorrow morning or...

Friday I get to work early and prepare myself to make the call. I’ve already spent the previous evening “boning up” with copious quantities of grass, a set of headphones, and “Corky’s Debt to His Father,” Mayo’s one and only official “solo” record, recorded in Texas, 1970. The next morning I’ve scribbled down some generic interview questions so I’ll at least have something to look at while on the phone. Ride my bike in to work and slink into my cubicle trying to appear like I’m doing the Man’s work. I punch up the number and the rest is transcript. [Edited, natch, to make me read smarter than I sounded...]

Phone rings three times...

“Yes?”

HT: Hello, may I speak with Mayo Thompson?

MT: Speaking.

HT: Hi, This is Bay. I talked to Levi Nook [fictional Drag City agent] the other day?

MT: Yes.

HT: So how are you doing this morning?

MT: Better. I’m doing alright. How are you?

HT: I’m doing pretty good.

MT: Good. Where are you?

HT: I’m at Work.

MT: Where are you?

HT: I’m in San Francisco, and you’re down in...?

MT: Pasadena. So you wrote this piece in this magazine called Homotiller?

HT: Yes, I did.

MT: Nice writing, very good writing. I enjoyed this piece.

HT: I’m glad you liked it. It’s interesting, as I didn’t really cover the music.Can I ask you what specifically struck you about it?

MT: I thought it was very well-written.

HT: Sometimes people take offense if you’re not covering their sounds. I tend to write more about my subjective experience of the evening.

MT: I think that’s absolutely legitimate, for one thing. And when you did mention the band or me, you were exceedingly flattering. What interested me was what you chose to write about and the relation you took. It seemed quite good to me and I liked it.

HT: I’m surprised that stuff ever made it back to you.

MT: Drag City are very fastidious.

HT: They are that. That brings me to one caveat I must make: while I am a large fan, I’m not a complete fan. I mean, I know there are many people more familiar with your work.

MT: I have no idea what a complete fan is. But there are people who know more about me than I know about them. We take any kind of interest that we get, in whatever ways or forms it comes and are grateful for it.

HT: That makes sense. OK. Second caveat being I hate the telephone. Ideally I’d like to do this in a casual setting, face-to-face. I feel kind of awkward.

MT: Yeah, telephone is awkward. That’s true. Sorry.

HT: And I’m far from a seasoned interviewer [ha! “rookie” is putting it kindly]

MT: I appreciate the caveats in advance, but you don’t have to apologize to me, certainly, for anything like that. I mean, I’m not very...I can talk on the telephone, I do it alot. I talk freely and willingly to my friends, but “doing business” is a bit awkard and strange for me, too.

HT: Right. OK, well if you’d just consider this a chat with a friend...

MT: Alright. Well, let’s have a bash at it.

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HT: Ok. I’ve got two or three questions written down here. Some are more general and abstract, and a few are questions about specific people and periods. Do you mind if I turn a tape on? [Mayo assents and I fiddle with the gear.] Let’s see if that works...

Your first album, “The Parable of Arable Land” came out in 1967, right?

MT: Yeah.

HT: The CD re-issue I have also contains “And all who Sail on it,” which came out shortly afterwards. I really love the contrast between these two albums. I know you’ve gone all over the musical and geographical map in the succeeding thirty years, and I like to think that these two are almost like a template, that they mark the outer ends of the spectrum, If that’s not getting too extreme. I mean, the first is marked by these fantastic free-form jams, while the second is marked by the short bursts of guitar,bass, drum. How did this happen? Were there two totally different environments going on? Was it a conscious attempt? A desire to taste two different jars of honey?

MT: All three of those, and I think there were other things as well.

HT: Were they both with same personnel?

MT: No. Only Steve Cunningham and I were constant between those two records. Rick Barthelme, by that time, had gone away -- after the first album. And we had a drummer named Tony [ ]. There was actually an album in between those two called “Coconut Hotel” which people have seldom heard, and it is abstract music. It’s got a certain improvisational base to parts of it, but other bits were all worked out. But, anyway, yeah, those records do represent two poles, if you like: one being coherent songwrinting, the other is free-formness. The free-form has, over the years, been neglected most, or left to one side, in favor of improvisation incorporated into song structures. I think that’s how one deals with it these days. The “free” aspect has to do with negotiating in relation to the structure.

HT: So whereas you used to do one or the other, now you try and incorporate the chaos in the structure?

MT: Well...both...mmm, how should I put this. The songs are written, but not every note is orchestrated. The main melody exists: the armature, or backbone of the song.

HT: A skeleton fleshed out differently each time you play it?

MT: Yes. Each of the individual players has a certain latitude and the extent of that latitude is limited on one side by the limits of their capacities and imagination, and on the other side, by just what I will put up with.

HT: Given the current Red Krayola line-up, you must put up with a lot.

MT: Not really. It takes a lot to make me say “don’t do that.” Generally, the only time I’ll ever say something like that is when I hear that I know all too well, or that I can nail down in some sort of referential way to other music. I mean, I’m not...I’ve got nothing against other music per se; I’m interested in what’s possible. When I have an idea, there’s a certain sound which I hear, and when I don’t hear it [being played], I’ll ask for something else, look for other things. Also, there has been an effort over the years to not repeat. Of course, one is repeating in some very inescapable senses. This line is punctuated by the sound of glass clinking against tile. Basically, we wanted every record to have it’s own character; for each one to be different. Don’t want to do the same record twice, or even a different record with the same feel to it.

HT: Red Krayola has had several incarnations, no?

MT: Yeah well, the band started the way bands start: young people know each other. And start working together.

HT: When did it transcend being a friend thing and become an associate thing?

MT: After the second album [“Coconut Hotel”]. Cunningham and I were friends...

HT: Cunningham was on “Coconut?”

MT: Yes, with Barthelme. The three of us made the first two records together and then Steve and I made another one with Tommy [Smith], and then that collapsed. I made a solo album after that and then met Art & Language in the beginning of the 70’s and made one album.

HT: Your solo record, “Corky’s Debt to His Father,” is really wonderful. It’s one of my favorites. This one sounds quite different from the preceding Red Krayola releases. If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s just pure, sweet pop.

MT: That’s my interest. I’ve always characterized myself as a popular musician. I like to make popular music.

HT: What can you tell me about the track “Dear Betty Baby” on this record? Recollections, or impressions of when you were doing this song, how the melody evolved, etc...

MT: deep sigh, long pause. You know...I...I don’t even know how to characterize that it. I mean, what I had to say about that song is in that song, you know?. I mean what I had to say was...well...another deep sigh...it’s...

HT: Was there a unified inspiration for these songs? Could you identify something different between this batch and your “band” work?

MT: Well, one distinction I could readily make is that the difference between the solo album and a Red Krayola album is that when I say “I” -- when I use the first-person pronoun -- in regards to the solo album, I’m talking about me. In Red Krayola work, when you hear the word “I” it’s not always referring to the “I” the singer, or “I” Mayo Thompson, or “I” anybody.

HT: So on “Corky’s” were you orchestrating and arranging more than you would on a Red Krayola record?

MT: Well, it was similar to the manner we discussed before: give the players a backbone, and let them have a go. But, yes, directing more in some cases to the extent of saying “the drums should be this way” or “a little more herky-jerky” or blablabla. I played a lot of the instruments myself, on “Dear Betty Baby” there’s a bass drum and a guitar. That horn section was written by Joe Dugan. He’s the piano player on all those tunes; the one constant throughout.

HT: Have you worked with any of the people that appear on the solo album since?

MT: I’ve worked with [Rock Romano] susequently on one project called Saddlesore, where Barthelme and I came back together and tried to do something. We wrote a couple of tunes and made a single called “Old Tom Clark.”

HT: Any intent to make another solo album?

MT: I do intend to, but not with those guys. Not that I have anything against them, it’s just that I don’t know where some of them are. And I probably will not make this album in Texas.

HT: Was all of this early material recorded in Texas?

MT: Yep. The first three Red Krayola, and the solo. In Houston.

HT: What was the scene in Houston at the time? I assume [Roky Erickson] was around?

MT: Roky was in deep trouble by that time. When we first got started, some members of the [Thirteenth Floor] Elevators were living in Houston, but they were going to California, they were playing in California. They were already having problems. They were making “Easter Everywhere,” in Houston recording, and there was some incident in a hotel involving controlled substances and police and...it was the beginning of the end for them already, they had real problems. But Roky plays on our first album. He played keyboard on “Hurricane Fighter Plane” and mouth organ on “Transparent Radiation.”

HT: And how did Cunningham enter the picture?

MT: Steve Cunningham had started off...y’know his first associations with music were in California, he was a drum roadie for a guy named [John Ike], and made a record with a guy named Malachi (sp?) out here.

HT: You’ve lived in a number of places, right?

MT: I was born in Houston and the first place I wanted to go was someplace else. Y’know, where the action was. I mean, there was some action in Houston, the scene was interesting, there were interesting people there, and there was certainly a lot of good music being made. But I didn’t personally see much of a horizon there for myself, I wanted other things. I tried my hand in California a little bit in ‘67 after the band broke up the first time, but it didn’t work out. I went to New York later on and spent some time there, then finally wound up going to England for ten years starting in ‘77. After that I spent 6 or 7 years in Germany, say ‘87 to ‘93. Then I came back, or started coming back. I’m 53 years old now.

HT: When you were in the States did you play with people, I mean did you try to put something together on both coasts?

MT: I had my bash in both places, but nothing much really ever worked out in either place. Nothing I was very satisfied with, nothing ever really came together.

HT: What drew you to these different places? Was it talk of people or scenes or connections?

MT: Just, y’know...feeling the need to be away from where I was from. Not because Houston was a bad place or anything like that, it’s just that I wanted something else; I was driven by some other desire.

HT: Would you consider yourself a musical nomad?

MT: I wouldn’t say I’m a nomad, I mean, I like to sit down someplace and stay there if I can. And I have parked myself here and there for long periods of time.

HT: Let’s talk about your time in England I know you’ve worked with a large number of people, including The Fall and The Raincoats. How did this come about?

MT: I co-produced a lot of records for Rough Trade with [Geoff Travis], including The Raincoats, Stiff Little Fingers, and The Fall.

HT: Specifically, which Fall tracks?

MT: A number of singles tracks: “Fiery Jack,” “How I Wrote Elastic Man,” “Big City Hobgoblins,” “Totally Wired.”

HT: How was it that you came from abroad and got involved with these people?

MT: Through Rough Trade. When I got to England I was working with Art & Language at the time. I fell out with them and decided I would start playing music, I mean, there I was in England and I had decided I wanted to stay there, at least to try and make the best of it for a while because it was an interesting place, an interesting scene. So I met these people at Rough Trade, and Red Krayola got a contract with Radar Records, who knew about the old Red Krayola material from the ‘60’s, and in fact had just licensed it and were about to put it out. They let us make a new record called “Soldier Talk.” It was released in 1978.

HT: A notoriously difficult record to find. Is there any talk of re-issuing it?

MT: I would love to have it, but I don’t have the rights to it. It belongs to Warner Bros.

You see, Radar Records was a Warner label built around Elvis Costello.

HT: So that’s moot point? Not even up for debate?

MT: Waner Bros. is not very cooperative or friendly. I can’t imagine that it’s of any interest to them whatsoever, unless they secretly think that I’m going to make it and that one day they’re going to cash in. I doubt that, though, I think that they’re just, y’know, “doin’ their thing, man.” You know? Being Big and Powerful.

HT: You think that this is a malicious witholding?

MT: I don’t know. Actually, I don’t think that they even think about it, frankly. It’s sort of like what does the elephant think about the mosquito at the end of it’s tail? Probably not much.

HT: So has your current label approached them?

MT: Yeah, we’ve tried to get it. At one time, there was a moment when there was a ray of light: we thought there was a limit on the contract, and that the material would revert to me after a certain amount of time. Then somebody read the contract and said “nope, this record’s still ours.”

HT: In perpetuity?

MT: Yes. Forever. “For all carriers now existent or ever to be invented in the future.” That’s what they say in the contracts, y’know. They’re anticipating dumb discs and whatever they’re gonna press records on in the future. Whatever “carriers” they’re going to invent.

HT: You’ve undoubtedly dealt with a number of labels and companies over the years.

MT: I have. Rough Trade was fun because it was self-activism. The punk scene was very vital. Of course, it was about dead, too. That was right about when the Sex Pistols came here and broke up onstage in San Francisco. Maybe that was the beginning of the end, though it took a long time to wither.

HT: I find it nice to think that it happened here...
So how did you start working for Rough Trade?

MT: Well, Rough Trade had such success with the distribution thing, and they wanted to make records, but they didn’t have anyone. [Geoff] had no experience in the studio, and I was the logical candidate because I had actually been in studios and had done some work in a few. It was a case of the right place at the right time. A natural progression of things. Or perhaps I should say a “normal” progression -- I don’t think any reference to “nature” is appropriate this early.

HT: Do you consider yourself a hands-off producer?

MT: I keep hands-off as much as possible. I intervene where I think it’s absolutely neccessary; you know, where I can’t hold my tongue any longer and it appears something’s got to be done. In the case of The Raincoats I went along to rehearsal and heard the tunes and was asked what I thought about this and the other thing. I suggested a few things in respect to the violin playing, for example, like suggesting they check out The Velvet Underground and their use of the violin, specifically the drone overtones, stuff like that, music that comes out of Tony Conrad. It seemed appropriate that they should hear the lesson of that. Especially as [Vicky Aspinall] was a trained classical musician, and she was not familiar with that.

HT: Was the aim to “unlearn” her?

MT: Not to unlearn her; the classical aspect of her was fine, I mean, when she did bow and play melodies and figures like that it worked perfectly well. But there were certain other tunes which benefitted enormously from this other aspect the violin has got, which is the ability to sustain a tone for a long, long, long, long time.

HT: To return to my hidden agenda, that’s one of the things that strikes me about “Dear Betty Baby.” Specifically, the way that the tone and sustain of the horns create this overwhelming sense of melancholia.

MT: That’s partly a function of the horns responding to the modal aspect of the music. That particular song structure is modal: it’s not a key based in the usual blues sense. I mean, all the chords are built out of ...well, there are modulations. Of course, you could legitimately consider that song in E minor, or A or G, or whatever, but the main harmonic core of that tune is D major. From my point of view, the interesting problem there was how to create a melancholy tune with, a major, rather than minor tuning.

HT: So it achieves a melancholy feel without the standard minor key.

MT: Yeah, I like this challenge, this aspect of it. In the West we think of the minor key as somehow melancholy, wheareas Asians smile when they hear a minor chord. (laughs). They get happy, the sun comes out, I dunno, y’know? It’s funny, but that’s the thing about the horns at least, they respond to this modal thing and carry it to new heights. A wonderful thing he wrote there [reffering to Joe Dugan again]. I’ve always had the luck of working with people like that; individuals who are capable of all sorts of things.

HT: Yes. I think that’s something that strikes anyone who’s followed your work: you tend to fall in withvery capable people, and somehow engender an environment in which the disparate elements coalesce. It’s almost alchemical. In the new configuration of Red Krayola, you’re working with some younger folks who also have distinguished reputations: George Hurley of The Minutemen / fIREHOSE, David Grubbs of Squirrelbait / Bastro / Gastr del Sol, and Tom Watson of Slovenly. Frankly, this is pretty much my short list as far as favorite contemporary American bands go. I could easily attribute our talking here today to the Minutemen, for example, who had an eye-opening, empowering influence on me in high school. All of these groups are characterized by the intelligence of their musical ideas; by their unique, grassroots interpretations of “punk.” I always admired the way that Squirrelbait took the form a little farther, incorporating these poetic non-punk lyrics. When I heard later Grubbs’ stuff, like Bastro, I wasn’t familiar with your oeuvre. When I finally put the two together, it was like “ah! this is not coming out of a void, it’s got a definite precursor.” In sum, I realized that he, too, was impressed at some point, and it was by you. How does it feel to see new generations of musicians shaped by your work?

MT: Well, thank you for that. The situation for me now is very satisfying, of course. That there are people who know what one has done to some extent and have been moved by it in whatever way, either aggressively for or against, and it happens in this case that there has been sympathy. We have a good productive capacity right now. The people I have the luck of calling colleagues are very, very capable; we have so many strings to our bow. It’s quite possible that we can do even more interesting things, we’ll see. It all comes down to having a decent song; a tune to work on.

HT: Where do those come from in this unit? Do different people present ideas?

MT: People are always welcome to present me with ideas, as long as they understand that I won’t neccessarily be able to do anything with it, or be able to react to it. It’s taken Grubbs and I, for example, awhile to work out how we would handle it. He’s wanted to contribute lyrics and music, and he did contribute song-structures, if you like, to this new album [“Hazel”]. I brought in some vocal melodies, and we worked out the words; how the vocals would work, things like that. So we’ve sorted out a way of collaborating at that level. [Preen] has presented a tune, and eventually will present others, I’m sure. Albert [Oehlin] is a German friend of mine, and he and I have beenworking together since 1987, collaborating on various things, in art and in music, he contributes a lot of the music. He and I have been writing together for quite a while. So, I’m definitely open, and always interested in an idea, a point of departure, whatever. I think we have a lot of possibilities.

HT: It is a rather eclectic blend. A sort of avant-intellectual supergroup.

MT: Well, I certainly hope we can take over the Western Hemisphere (laughs). That would be very pleasant. ...The Minutemen were a wonderful, incredible band.

HT: Yeah, “Double Nickels” just about turned my head inside out when I was fourteen.

MT: A great record. It catches something, has a flair of something authentically --if I dare use this word -- American. And in that sense, blue-collar, but at the same time exceedingly intelligent. In fact, it makes a complete nonsense of this distinction we have between blue-collar and art. It trashes this idea, and shows that intelligence is not peculiar to one class of people. Plus, they were also really a band: they had been playing for together for years and you could just feel this in the relation between them. It’s real fun to work with someone like George, and a real challenge as well, as he’s got such a unique way of playing.

HT: And how about the Slovenly connection?

MT: Slovenly is a very, very good band. Watson, I found, is also somebody who knew what I had done. For my money, Watson is as heavy a musical genius as I’ve ever met. The guy is a master guitarist, also exceedingly intelligent, and a great sense of humor. He’s zany in some ways.

HT: What’s it like putting all these people in one room, and saying, “OK, let’s jam.”

MT: (sighs)..Well, it’s never actually happened that we’ve been able to get everybody together. We have had a considerable number of us in the same room, and it’s a quite extraordinary power we have. We can blaze like hell. It has been said to me that if we were ever to make a “live” album and play rock versions of our tunes, we could have a career as a Rock Band, no trouble. Of course, I’m not very keen on this, and while I wouldn’t mind a bit more success, I don’t want to “cut the cloth” in that direction.

HT: It could get very limiting very quickly.

MT: Yes, it could get boring.

HT: You could become this technically scintillating King Crimson-type act.

MT: Yeah, King Crimson never touched me.

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