Some aging New Age type interviews Roger Miller

[ll-xn!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor (Twice the speed of silence)]

Here is the transcript of a conversation with Roger "Maximum Electric Piano"
Miller that will appear in some form in the upcoming issue of OPTION. Even
if you're the sort of person who's intensely suspicious of *anything* I'd
like, you should go see Roger anyhow, if only for his Hendrix covers. He
claims to *love* "Kerosene" and sing it in the tub.


____________begin big-time gabfest with Greg___________________________
                 The Roger Miller Interview
                     by Gregory Taylor
        (copyright 1986. Use this wrong and you die)



At some fashionably late hour they'll be seeing  another  of
those  jangly American neo-garage outfits that owe a debt to
REM the way that portrait  photographers  owe  Diane  Arbus.
For now, the crowd is intent on the equipment of the opening
act-"Maximum Electronic Piano," says  the  sign  out  front.
It's  just that: a piano.  Not a guitar or drumkit in sight.
Roger Miller won't hear the mumbles of apprehension from the
crowd,  though.   He's outside talking to us.  He's heard it
before, though, and seems to enjoy  the  clash  of  expecta-
tions.  What is the ex-guitarist from Mission of Burma doing
with this bashed up Yamaha acoustic grand? It's the kind  of
50,000  watt  clear-channel  suspicion you get from a "cool"
crowd.  When he sits down at the piano, Roger Miller's first
note  isn't  a  piano  at all-more like this big GANK! sound
left over from when the lawn mower hit a  big  rock  in  the
front yard last summer.  A couple of seconds later, he's got
this whole unholy coolection of beaten metals flying around,
and is doing a fuzztone solo on the acoustic piano.  He runs
through a sizeable slab of his first solo record "No Man  is
Hurting  Me",  covers  Jimi Hendrix' "Manic Depression," and
finishes his new piano  piece  "The  Big  Industry"  off  by
shearing  this  wall  of  very unpiano-like Industrial Noise
into big slabs, punctuated by this  beautiful  ostinato-some
of  the  only  "recognizeable"  grand  piano  we'll hear all
night.  The masses are impressed and surprised, and even the
local   newspaper critic decides that Miller is pretty cool,
except for the de rigeur sneer at his  "pretty  stuff."  Box
score: Expectations 0, Art and Subversion 1.  Now let's play
back that little pre-game chat we had with Roger...  .

     Since we're talking about sound,  let's  start  with  a
     question  about  making  noise.   Lots  of it.  Did you
     really leave Mission of Burma for your hearing?

Yep.  Not a doubt whatsoever.  A Lot of  people  think,  "Oh
yeah.   Sure." and assume that that's a facade.  No way.  My
ears wouldn't stop ringing.  They probably won't  ever  stop
ringing.   By  the  time I quit Burma, I wasn't hearing just
one note ringing, I was hearing CHORDS.  I had  it  analyzed
once.......   I think it was a C#m6 with an inversion in the
other ear.  I figured that if I didn't stop, I'd be  50  and
trying  to  compose  and  I'd  be hearing all kinds of wierd
stuff and none of what I was trying to write down.   It  was
and  is  pretty  frightening.   What I do like about playing
what I'm doing now in terms of  playing  smaller  places  is
that I don't have to be loud.

     You've got the option of silence.  It  seems  like  the
     big  problem  with  clubs  is that when you stop making
     noise, that's regarded as signaling the audience's turn
     to  make  noise.  In, say, a gallery situation, a crowd
     might conclude that maybe being quiet was  part of  the
     general idea.

Or they'd make noise throughout the whole thing.  With luck,
you're  so  busy  that you don't notice much.  I'd hope that
they listen.  I don't really think about it on  that  level.
Generally, it's got something to do more with the place than
some set of ideas about who is listening  and  who  is  not.
When I'm on stage, I've got no monitors aimed at my head, so
I'm relatively safe.  Other places I  play  loud  enough  so
that  the sound fills the room and I leave it at that.  Some
places, the audience doesn't talk at all.   At  Northwestern
University,  I played in this kind of fraternity type place-
it was like being in  a  living  room-dogs  running  in  and
out.......   There  was  dead silence between songs.  It was
pretty different than most places, and I guess  I  liked  it
pretty  well.   That's  the  exception rather than the rule,
though.

I suppose that what I should say at  the  beginning  what  I
consider  to  be  original about what I do isn't necessarily
where I'm doing it, although  that  certainly  figures  into
things.   My  work  is  a  sum of the work of other persons-
Hendrix, Cage, and-to a lesser extent-Brian Eno's  work.   I
thnk  that  it's unlikely that you'll get either that admis-
sion of sources or precisely that list from anyone else.

     What are you doing  on  your  own  that  you  think  is
     interesting?

In some ways, you can only answer that question with a short
history  of  my life, right? When I was a little kid, I took
piano lessons like everybody else.  It was okay, doing reci-
tals  and  all that.  But once I found out about the Beatles
and Rock and Roll, I quit doing all that.  A couple of years
later when all The psychedelic stuff hit, there was suddenly
this free form approach to everything,  so  I  started  back
into  getting  into  The  piano.  But I never ever wanted to
play keyboards.  If you  were  a  keyboard  player  and  you
wanted to play an electric instrument, all you really had to
use was a Farfisa, which was kinda cool but brutally limited
compared  to  a bass or a guitar that I was used to playing.
Eventually, in the seventies you had The Fender-Rhodes.   As
far  as  I'm concerned, the only time a Fender-Rhodes sounds
okay  is through a fuzztone.  Otherwise, I can't  take  'em.
They're not pianos.

     What bugged you about  them...   that  sort  of  watery
     noise that is associated with them?

They're okay, but they're not pianos at all.  They're  elec-
tric keyboards that  are like keyboard-oriented vibraphones.
But there was nothing really there that I could use.  And so
when  the  Yamaha electric pianos came along, it was like...
kind of a miracle.  You know, I played guitar in Mission  of
Burma,  and  I  probably did a couple of things that I think
were different-things that someone maybe  hadn't  done  yet.
Still,  everything  that I did was treading in The footsteps
of Jimi Hendrix.  I could do something that would be unique,
but  I  would  still be walking in The shadows.  And so here
was the chance when I got one of these pianos to  really  go
all the way.  Here was something that I could push the boun-
daries on in a way that no one else had really done.  I know
that  Herbie  Hancock had one of these pianos-that was how I
initially heard of them-but I found that he was  just  using
the  piano  straight-as if it was just a kind of grand piano
that was electric and that you could lug  around  with  you.
So  I  figured that hereit was-a chance to take the way that
the instrument was used and change it in the way that  some-
one  like Jimi Hendrix did with The guitar-to take it to its
extreme.  Once I got this piano and I got this digital loop-
ing  box  (an  Electro-Harmonix 16-second digital delay line
-The fabled and sorely missed "Fripp in The Box"), it  meant
that  I could layer myself up.  It meant that I could play a
riff into it, freeze that riff, do something else, and  then
freeze that, and then put another riff into it and so forth.
That technique, combined with running the  piano  through  a
fuzz  tone  and  a  chintzy  little echo unit and using some
prepared piano stuff a la John Cage brings you  up  to  what
you see me doing now.

     Do you use a lot of effects on your live performances?

Electronically, I use three things, mainly:  I  use  a  fuzz
tone,  an  old  cheap  Ibanez echo unit that does this great
wobbly vibrato when the echo  return  rate  is  messed  with
live,   this other distortion unit that  is not as brutal as
the fuzz, and the 16-second delay.  the delay  is  right  up
there with me, so I've got all.  Fortunately, there's a foot
pedal that allow me to switch the delay while  I'm  working.
If  there's  any  occasional trouble, it's that most effects
gear isn't meant to be used without hands.  That requires  a
lot of special "one handed playing techniques".  I prefer to
do the maximum amount of work.

     What sort of preparations are you using live? Alligator
     clips? Felt?

Well, for me, felt doesn't cut it  much.   Alligator  clips,
bronze  or  brass  bolts placed between the strings, mostly.
The clips are used where there's just one bass string that I
want  to  do  something to.  Sometimes, when I want to "mass
prepare" a section of The keyboard, I use  a  comb.   A  big
comb,  with  lots of tines.  I just kind of cram it into The
strings on the fly.  It does a whole octave at once.  When I
do  this  live stuff, the idea is that I want to keep things
moving.  When I perform, it's not  a  rock  concert,  but  I
don't  want  it to be the kind of traditional prepared piano
concert where there's one piece played  and  then  everybody
takes  a  5-minute break and the piano gets changed and then
they play another piece and then There's another wait and so
on.

     Does that way of working so quickly provide  a  lot  of
     problems?  Does The piano go out of tune and get messed
     up in the heat of The moment?

Going out of tune isn't a problem, but I have destroyed some
strings,  and I have to replace them every so often.  On The
lower  strings,  The  brass  or  copper  winding   sometimes
separates  from The metal string underneath when I put stuff
into The piano.

     So you work live with The piano open?

Yeah, I've removed the top of the piano, so I've got  access
to  all  the  strings.   When  you think of it, it's kind of
bizarre to me that there isn't anybody else doing this  kind
of thing.

     Well, in classical literature, there is a lot of  music
     that explores that possibility.

Sure.  Henry Cowell was the guy who started that  stuff  and
more  or  less opened it all up.  Earl Browne, and all those
people.  But people don't do that with  electrified  instru-
ments.  It's not electric stuff.

     The advantage you've got  is  that  you're  essentially
     adapting  those kind of piano techniques to an electric
     instrument.

Right.  It's an electric  piano in much the same sense  that
an  electric  guitar  used  to be an acoustic guitar but now
it's got pickups on it, and they totally change the way  The
instrument  acts.   Sure, my instrument is like a baby grand
piano, but now with pickups instead  of  a  soundboard.   In
that sense, making a piano electric and then doing more than
just amplifying it-taking it and altering what you get  from
that  kind  of change, making it do as much as I can imagine
it doing-that's what interests me.  I'm  sure  that  there's
more  I'll  discover about what it will do as I keep working
with it.  It's offered me the way to do what I think is  the
most  original  work  that  I've ever done.  Nobody else has
been there yet.  It's like an open field-this big open place
where  I'm  standing  and  saying,  "Hey.   I  think I'll do
this.... "

     Isn't part of this is a result of your doing solo work?
     In  a  sense, you're not constrained  by other players.
     You've got the advantage  of  working  alone,  and  the
     "loop and freeze" system you use gives you the illusion
     of a lot of other  players  when  in  fact  the  "other
     players" are under your complete control...  .

Yeah.  I guess that's so.  For years, I'd do a lot  of  work
when I didn't have bands.  I'd do sound-on-sound, multitrack
stuff...  .

     A lot of your stuff with, say, Birdsongs Of  the  Meso-
     zoic...   that  stuff is rehearsed.  In a sense, you've
     also got some constraints of your own, imposed  by  the
     technology  that you use.  How do you wind up structur-
     ing your performances  for  a  live  audience  so  that
     there's the most amount of room to move?

My pieces are generally pretty well laid  out,  but  there's
room in them for improvisations.  The way that they are com-
posed is improvisatory itself.  The pieces are more or  less
fixed  improvisations.   I  can come up with a riff and just
keep working on it until I figure out what I like about  it.
Since  I am The whole band as well as the composer, the fac-
tor of intuition is really immense.

     That plus The fact that you're drilling  it  regularly.
     You've  got  the time to really work through a piece in
     live situations and you're doing it on a regular basis.
     How  much  input  into  what's  going on does Ross (The
     soundman) have into what's going on?

In terms of what's going on on stage, nothing.   He  doesn't
mess  around  with   what I'm doing on stage.  As we've been
out on the road, there are things that he's starting  to  do
and  incorporate  on a regular basis, and we're finding that
we're coming to work together better.  Some  of  the  things
I've  done in the studio, like looping snatches of the vocal
track (on Jabberwocky) I didn't intend to do live.  But  now
Ross  can  catch  things like that live from the sound.  For
The first time live, he's started to have a direct effect on
what's  gong on.  That's starting to happen in other places,
as well.  He's also starting to work a lot more with  delays
and EQs on the voice throughout the show.

     But he didn't initially start out doing  any  of  that.
     in  terms  of performing live, right.  That's only hap-
     pened with performing more often.

Yeah.  When this started out,  he  offered  to  engineer  my
first  album for very little money.  As we worked on The LP,
our relationship changed-he wound up  being  listed  as  co-
producer.   It  turns  out  that  some  of that same kind of
interaction is possible in a live show.   The  next  record,
which  will  be  a  3-song EP out in January, lists him as a
joint producer.  At this stage  of  the  game,  he  probably
understands some parts of what I'm doing better than I do...
because he can be objective about things in  a  way  that  I
can't.

     The impression I get from your first album is that  the
     first side of the record is a solo recording.  It's the
     record you'd imagine a person in a band doing on  their
     own-free  from  the expectations of what a band is sup-
     posed to sound like.  "What I do on my own" The  second
     side  of  the   piano work is more directly related the
     kind of techniques you've been talking about  in  terms
     of your live work.  It's almost like two records.

It is, in some respects.  I agree  that  they're  very  dif-
ferent,  but  I think that my live stuff is getting the kind
of vocal stuff and the cacophony of the first side to  blend
with  the  more  pure  pianistic  stuff  on the second side.
Being out on the road and working more, I think my live work
kind  of falls into the crevice.  My next recordings will be
like that also.  I think they'll be more directly related to
what  I'm  doing  live.   Some  with more overdub, some with
less-they'll all be more  intimately  related  to  the  live
material.   It'll  all  be more incorporated as a whole into
the record.

     Which of those two kinds of albums did "No Man Is Hurt-
     ing Me" start out to be?

It started out to be just  what  it  was,  although  when  I
started  out, I didn't really plan on doing any vocals live.
Obviously, that's changed a lot.

     The obvious question on the part of anyone who's  fami-
     liar  with  either  The  Mission of Burma recordings or
     Birdsongs of The Mesozoic will be involved  with  their
     expectations  of  your  work  given  where  they begin.
     That's true for anyone who's primarily known for  their
     work  within the confines of a group as such.  You want
     to know what comes  out  when  your  own  choices  aren
     subordinated  to  a larger set of group decisions.  One
     of the things that interested me about your work is the
     difference  between your work-the "new Music" aspect of
     it-and your audience and  the  places  you  customarily
     perform.   A  lot of "No Man Is Hurting Me"   isn't The
     kind of work you'd exactly do as  an  opening  act  for
     either  The  Swans or 54-40, yet you've opened for both
     of them.  You'd expect to find it in The  "Art  World."
     How do you bridge that distance?

It's true that when that record was made, most of  what  was
there  was  the instrumental stuff.  On The Maximum Electric
Piano side, there was really only one piece with any  vocals
on  it at all-Jabberwocky.  Things have changed considerably
since then, so that The Roger  Miller  who  opened  for  The
Swans was doing more, uh......  band type work.  It was dif-
ferent stuff than The first album would lead you to think.

     The new piano stuff you're doing is more ah...   indus-
     trial.   It's  a  loaded  term, but for all intents and
     purposes, you're using The electric piano as  a  source
     for  non-tonal  material,  that  you  periodically tear
     aside from time to time to reveal this pianistic stuff.

I'm trying to make it a sonic source.  In that  sense,  it's
coming out of the psychedelic era, like Jimi Hendrix did, or
Syd Barrett.  I consider my work in that vein to be strongly
influenced  by  both  of  those  veins of stuff.  But on the
other hand, there's Edgar Varese who used sirens and  stuff-
and Cage.  It is all those things mixed together.

     But even so, It'd never occur to a lot of people to  do
     what you do in the environment you're working in.

It's a peculiar dilemma that I'm involved in  right  now  in
that my entrire history to date has been involved with being
a rock musican.  Even with the Bridsongs stuff, the  primary
place  to play has been in rock clubs.  So when I start out,
I think, "Oh yeah.  Let's play Clubs." It  comes  naturally.
Perhaps  if  I become better known, that'll change.  Some of
The places I'm playing on  this  tour  are  Art  Center-type
places.   But  I like doing a mixture of rock clubs and more
Arty type shows.

     The idea of doing it in a rock club is  interesting  in
     that you're doing something subversive as well.  If you
     can get an audience to sit through what  you're  doing,
     you can hook Them more easily, you can...  .  .

You can make a living (laughter).  In addition to all  this,
I  am,  at  heart, a pretty practical guy.  I want to make a
living doing what I do.  (Smile) Of course, I'd  prefer  not
to  change  my music in order to do that.  Once the audience
is there, they generally really like it.  Many of them  have
never  seen  anything like what I do, and most of them would
probably never go near people like Cage or Cowell.  I opened
for The Jazz Butcher at Maxwell's in NYC.  If you know their
stuff at all, then you'll know  that  they're  nothing  like
what  I do at all.  But The people went nuts, because no one
told them it wasn't cool to like it.  I even did  a  version
of  a Mission of Burma song, "This is not a Photograph." and
I had people singing along.  It was a  truly  amazing  show.
once they get to the show, I've got a good chance of getting
their interest.  It's  been  working  pretty  good  in  rock
clubs.


     I notice that working in rock  clubs  is  different  in
     that your rapport with your audience is more central to
     what you're doing than it would  be  in  a  more  uh...
     "Detached" gallery situation.

My real sense of interaction and aesthetics really lie some-
where  between  those  two places, I think.  Not that that's
easy, of course, Inevitably,  some  people  think  that  I'm
either not serious enough, or that "It doesn't rock."

It's not rock and roll, but it does rock.

     The advantage othat you've got  by  taking  that  stuff
     into a rock club is that The chances are that given the
     setup that you've got,  a  non-rockist  audience  would
     maybe know what you're doing technically.  But the more
     traditional audience is mystified by what you do.  That
     gives  you  room  to  maneuver and a kind of subversive
     quality that many people who do what  you  don't  have.
     You  might  even  sucker  peopole into hearing a little
     Cage.  Do you see yourself as running a kind of subver-
     sive game here?

Yeah, I guess so.  Instead of an ART audience,  I've  got  a
normal  bunch  of  people  here.  They've  belted back a few
beers, they're waiting for the Swans and I come out and do a
little magic.  Hopefully, my audiences will be a little more
willing to go looking for stuff  like  that.   I'd  like  to
think so anyway.  I don't know if that's the case.  At least
they might come back if I'm through town again.  With a  lot
of  luck,  I could open next time through town and find some
local people who are doing that same sort of thing  and  put
them on as the first act.  That would be great.

It is true also that what I do like about playing rock clubs
is  that  there is this kind of intense audience/performance
relationship-whether you're  manipulating  the  audience  or
whether  you're  dodging thrown beer bottles-which I haven't
had to do for quite a while.  I think that what I'm doing is
profound.   Sure  I think it's profound-it's the most impor-
tant thing I do.  But I don't want to go up  There  and  say
"THIS  IS  PROFOUND"  like in the sense of trying to "be" an
artist or trying to come off as one in that way.  I'd rather
try and demystify it a little bit and just say "this is what
I do." Sometimes the act of doing  that  mystifies  it  even
more.

I want people to realize that this is not "Roger's solo pro-
ject  that  he  does  between Birdsongs records." This is my
real work.  So much my real work, in fact, that the  records
I  do  from  now on will be determined more fully by my live
work.  That's why I'm out on the road.  It's  going  out  on
the  road,  sending the message.  "Hey.  this is really hap-
pening.  It's serious.  this is my real work now.   This  is
what  I  do."  Still,  being known as a group person doesn't
hurt.  I do get  a  certain  amount  of  crossover.   People
assume  that  you know what you're doing and they're maybe a
little more ready to cut you some slack, to trust you.  I've
definitely  had  people  who  came and said "I knew you from
Burma, didn't care for Birdsongs, but I thought I'd see what
it was like.  It wasn't bad." Some nights you get solo fans,
Birdsongs fans and Burma fans in  the  same  crowd.   That's
what you hope for.  The biggest problem is getting people to
come and listen.  This woman at Northwestern came up  to  me
and  said,  "I wish my other friends would have come, They'd
have loved it.  They just didn't want to take  the  chance."
But  if you keep working, keep touring, the chances are that
you'll get more of those people.  I'll eventually find  them
all.