“The ‘Teau Nailed”
- By Philip Bradley
- International Musician & Recording World
- Nov 1990
Philip Bradley wades through the swirling smoke, beats back the imaginary flying dragons, fends off the 100 foot centipede and all because… of the Cocteau Twins.
The Cocteau Twins are looking well relaxed - not a shroud of mystical smoke in sight.
It’s Friday afternoon and they are all sat in a comfortable West London rehearsal studio, drinking tea and coffee and desperately searching for some decent tobacco. The Benson and Hedges pack of 20 is empty, so too is the Silk Cut. Attention turns to the ashtray and the snub ends peppering the cheap yellow container; but to no avail. The standard issue Rizla packets are not the custom for this band.
SIMON RAYMONDE is sitting back on a big chair whilst his two companions ROBIN GUTHRIE and ELIZABETH FRASER are slouched lazily on the settee opposite. The two new members, MITSUO TATE and BEN BLAKEMAN are seated beside me on another settee and on the floor, respectively. But more of them later.
Formed in the early ’80s, the Cocteaus very quickly became the darlings of the weekly music press who just loved to write wonderful things about what they saw as the independent scene’s greatest hopes for the ’90s.
Almost 10 years later and we’re still getting the same kind of deal. “It is a bit of a formula we’ve got,” admits Simon, sitting forward in eager school boy attentiveness.”We don’t real get bored with it ‘cos we all do different things to keep the interest up. We don’t have any rules in that we don’t say, ‘Oh, don’t do that’.
“Anything’s possible with a guitar or a bass. You’ve got no restriction and you go in and you don’t know what the fuck you’re gonna come up with. By the end of the day you’ve got something, so it’s a constant suprise.”
‘Surprise’ for the Cocteaus has meant sticking to the familiar pastures, year after year.
“We don’t like to sweat over our music,” reckons an almost ambient Guthrie. “We don’t do demos. We go into the studio, put down a drum track and it sort of turns itself into a song.”
Hmmm, very mystical but…
“We’ll just say we’ll go into the studio next Tuesday, regardless of having thought about a song,” smiles Guthrie. “It’s quite frightening, really.”
Yes, but…
“Usually it’s just me and Simon doing the music,” he interrupts. “Robin might have put down a drumbeat last thing at night and I might get in early and might have recorded something by the time Robin gets in,” agrees Simon.
Good Technology
Ever since Head Over Heels, Guthrie believes the Twins have had the confidence to go into the studio and make their music up on the spot. Inspiration can range from endless external experiences or just simply a new piece of equipment.
“Quite often I’ll buy a new FX unit, plug it in and play with it all day and get these sounds. The sounds are inspiring.
“I bought an Ibanez guitar for this album and did a couple of songs in a couple of days. Old drum machines and beatboxes; I like to pick up a lot of them—CS78s, Doctor Rhythms…”
“A lot of our music comes out of the sound. The tune comes out of the sound. If you just plug the guitar into an amplifier that sounds quite dull,” reckons Simon.
“We started off with a 16-track. We did three records with it. It was fairly basic but we’ve always had a lot of outboard gear. You could say our outboard gear is very excessive but to get one sound I may hook up ten effects. The end justifies the means.”
Once the music has been written Liz sets to work constructing a tune.
“She’s written the lyrics before she comes in,” says Simon nodding in the enigmatic Fraser’s direction.
“But it doesn’t always happen that we’ve put all the music down first. On Blue Bell Knoll [last LP] there’s a song called [A Kissed Out Red] Floatboat. On that track there’s a drum machine firing resonant chords on a P770—creating notes—to which Liz had a set of lyrics which she harmonized to. She made up the whole melody of that song from basically nothing and we put the music on that.”
More than most, The Cocteau Twins rely heavily on finding the right vibe. They know what sounds good and anything else just isn’t worth it.
“There’s only 10 (songs) with vocals ever put on. And maybe there’s another six with just music,” believes Guthrie. “We lose interest if we don’t like the sound of something. We never turn round and say, ‘Oh, this is shite’, we just stop working on it.”
You won’t go back and finish them, then?
“No,” says Simon. “You know, you’re too interested in what you might do next. I think if you started going back it would mean something’s going wrong. A lack of desire to do something new.” Guthrie agrees.
“If you started using your head you’d be getting into problems. “Although, one song we had real trouble recording the vocals,” admits Guthrie. “It’s the second song on the LP and Liz was singing so quietly you expected her to come blasting in… she didn’t.”
New Blood
Having completed the Heaven or Las Vegas sessions, the band decided on a world tour; a traditional stomping ground for most, but not the Cocteaus.
“We never felt like we were much cop live,” reckons Elizabeth. Part of the problem being the sheer number of guitar parts—Guthrie could not ably communicate the desired effect using just a single guitar. The solution was to employ two new guitarists, Mitsuo Tate from Tokyo and Ben Blakeman from London. Simon picks up the story.
“We put an advert in Melody Maker: ‘Wanted Guitar Player - Must Like Cocteau Twins.’ To even put an advert in the Melody Maker was quite a big step, really. We tried to find someone from someone we knew but they were all involved in other stuff.”
“While Liz was having the baby and Robin was doing the album, I went out to meet about 60 people. I just wanted to know if we could all get on with them. I knew when I met Ben that he was a good bloke and we’d all get on. He really was the only one, really. I can tell within five minutes whether I like somebody or not. By about the fourth week I was waking up thinking, ‘Oh’…”
Guthrie: “We were suggested loads of people by friends, but they were all very obvious musos.”
Simon: “We wanted someone who was enthusiastic, had a bit of an interest in the band but didn’t have some sort of problem with it. There were a few people who were real sort of Cocteau fans and the problem with them was that they were too wrapped up in the myth of it all. Ben didn’t wasn’t in awe of it at all He was a very straight up front kind of bloke.
“I interviewed this guy of about 45/50 and I felt like crying after that… He had this black greased quiff and he was in a band and he said he’d loved all our work. And I just knew it wasn’t true. I knew he hadn’t heard anything. Then Ben came along.”
“I met Simon for a pint down the pub,” says Ben. “Then I think I met him for another one,” he adds, helpfully.
“I wasn’t overly familiar with the music. I was well aware of the Cocteau Twins, but ‘cos they never got played on the radio I didn’t know much about their music. My girlfriend got hold of Blue Bell Knoll because she works for a magazine. I thought it was really good. Then I was excited that I was into the music. They told me that this was going to be the group and then it took months for anything to happen.”
Having rocked a thousand Londoners to the sound of Psychobilly band THE HlGHLINERS, Ben seemed to have less than ideal qualifications for a gig with the ‘Teaus. Mitsuo Tate took a more traditional route, having been a friend of the band for six years or so.
Guthrie: “We met him in Tokyo six years ago. He’s still around. He came to London last year and we thought this was a good thing.”
Simon: “It was good ‘cos when we rehearsed we dug out a few old multi-tracks and said, ‘play along with this; then’. One of the parts was an acoustic guitar but it had been done in an open tuning so I hadn’t a clue what any of the strings were tuned to.
“Amazingly enough, Ben just knew it He worked it out in a normal tuning. Mitsuo’s the same—he even transcribes things from key boards.” ▣
Sidebar
Guthrie’s Guitar
Robin Guthrie has been a long-time fan of the guitar and especially the effects that the new technology allow him to create with a simple six-string. Indeed, long time fans often equate the Guthrie effect with banks upon banks of speakers. Not so, he argues.
“For this tour I’ve cut down a lot of equipment. I’m using a Paul A. Smith guitar and a Fender Jazzmaster. My effects loop contains Super Chorus, enhancer circuit selector, high band phaser, flanger and vibrato, D50 digital delay, assorted wah-wah and volume pedals, Ibanez harmoniser, and two gates.”
With the help of a MIDI system he is able to change all guitar effects, including those of Mitsuo, Ben and Simon, for each song. Robin holds 36 guitars in reserve.
Tate’s Guitar
A Russell Fong six-string through an SPX 90, plus a Power Exciter (a kind of aural exciter) from Japan that costs about £4 and boosts top end.
Raymonde’s Bass
“I use a Russell Fong bass with high C, Fender Bass 5 and Telecaster bass. It’s perfect for this kind of stuff. Russell Fong is a guy who’s going to do our front-of-house sound, and his brother Lincoln is going to do the guitar maintenance.
“This is the second bass he’s made. He normally makes classical guitars. It’s got an even tone all the way across. I find the Fender bass equally as good, though. The Fong is good for chords whereas the Bass 5 is slightly brighter. I paid £500 to have Russell make it.
“We’ve got all this equipment and three plectrums.”
Blakeman’s Guitar
“I’ve had this guitar (a CBS Fender Strat) for 11 years plus a sustainer into a super chorus into a D1500 which splits into two amps.”
Note: The original text of this interview mistakenly referred to Russell Fong as “Russell Thorne.” Also, on the Heaven or Las Vegas tour, Lincoln handled the front-of-house sound and Russell was responsible for guitar maintenance.
