In Conversation - TWR chats to Guillermo Cazenave about his career and work with Anthony Phillips. Interview conducted by Alan Hewitt. Photographs courtesy Guillermo Cazenave.

TWR: Hello Guillermo, it's great to chat to you at last! What were your earliest musical influences?

GC: I started playing bagpipes at a very young age. I could barely blow it! My grandmother gave it to me saying that it was a sacred instrument from our ancesters. Her family were originally from the Isle of Skye; a very poor clan (Mac Innes) who were invaded several times by bigger clans. Her grandfather, William, emigrated to the Mull of Kintyre, fleeing poverty. They had a small farm very close to where Jane Asher (Paul MacCartney’s girlfriend) found a farm for Paul up there in the mid 60s. And from there, my great-grandfather emigrated to Argentina. That's why my first contact with music was directly related to Scotland. Once, I travel to visit my grandmother and saw her crying, listening the song Mull of Kintyre. Unfortunately I couldn't play that bagpipe properly.

One year later, when I was 8 years old, my brothers Marcel and Ines, traveled to New York, and thanks to my uncle Charlie from London, who was vice president of Citroil, which manufactured Pepsi) they had the chance to see the Beatles. That was in 1964. Then, 3 or 4 months later, they returned to Argentina with those first Beatles albums. I remember that one of them was The Beatles with Tony Sheridan. I loved that album, that sound… And a few months later I saw The Dave Clark Five on TV (Shindig show) and both groups (Beatles & Dave Clark band) drove me completely crazy.
I just wanted to play drums and be like them.

So I asked for a drum set as a gift for my 1965 birthday and my auntie bought me a Rex drum-kit, so I was listening to the early Beatles recordings and to one LP called Session with by Dave Clark Five. I followed the rhythm of each and sang them many times. I learned all the lyrics and I grew my hair longer. I was studying in an Irish school (Cardinal Newman College), and the Christian Brothers insisted that I had to cut my hair. My mum found a drum teacher for me, named Sam Lerman. He was an Ukrainian drummer with whom I studied for two years. And then I started playing guitar and writing my own songs at 12 years old. I didn’t now that I was writing songs! I had a percentage of Asperger's and despite my shyness I was successful with girls.

I stayed most of the time in my room playing chess alone, and playing drums and guitar. Our neighbours didn’t complain because they “knew” that my mother had two strange and crazy sons: my older brother Marcel, who in 1969 was taking LSD with the psychoanalyst Luisa Kremer, and me, who did not communicate well with people, except through music.

TWR: How did you get into music?

GC: In 1973 I recorded for the first time in a professional studio, playing drums and flute for a theatre play in Buenos Aires. Then, in 1974, already in New York, I was firstly living with my auntie Martha. She was an artist, a painter…, feminist, vegetarian, a Bob Dylan and Joan Baez fan since the mid 60s. She had that old studio on 33rd street, with rats that sometimes ate the grass that she hid in the scrolls of her paintings and started running crazy. She also had a lover, Evarist, who was a Catalan painter; a friend of Dalí. Once I picked up the phone and it was Dalí very angry and shouting "I am Salvador Dalí, where the hell is Evarist?”. It was clear that Dalí had the phone number of my aunt's studio. Auntie Martha introduced me in every corner of New York. Through a friend of her, a Cuban journalist named Mariano Ros, I met several famous rock musicians (Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed) and famous tenist players. Through Mariano I managed to remastered some of my early songs at the Electric Lady Studios. At that time I had all these songs in two 90 minutes metal-tape cassettes. I was only able to stay there, in the studio, a few hours two or three times. The Who's manager was there. She once said to me "with these songs you will only play in the Little League". And I rebelled against these opinions from people ten years older than me. I was going to play in my own league even if I had to stay alone and isolated like a virus.

And at that moment of crises and misunderstanding I thought that perhaps I should try to get seriously into music. That was my first important step, because although I was 18 years old, I was already deciding to be a musician who would have his own career.

Then, in 1978, I settled in London and lived for a while with ‘The Screamers’, Jenny James's Atlantis community, which followed the teachings and therapies of Janov's “primal scream”, that John Lennon also recorded screaming to his parents at the end of the song Mother. And I fell in love with Becky, Jenny's daughter, and spent many years in London and also on the island of Inishfree, in the north of Ireland. During that period of my life I’ve been taking a lot of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, and composing new music that was obviously more psychedelic. And my English friends nicknamed me “Guill, the Argentine Barrett”.

It was a difficult time for me because even when, after a 5 or 6 months, I stopped using psychotropics, I was still in that mental state and it was like I couldn't return to Earth. We lived in 5 squats in Brixton and there were many Irish girls and that community of free-love. The Clash were my neighbours. I didn't know who they were and I once played drums with them. So, with an enormous effort, I completed two ‘unofficial albums’ with no expectations for releasing them as an LP: Vikings and Inishfree. They were all demos, recorded on my Revox and on a Teac recorder that I had managed to buy in a musical store where when I entered, a slim man came out carrying a huge box and about to fall. And suddenly I realized it was Roger Waters and no one was helping him to carry that box to his van. But, returning to these houses in Canterbury Crescent, Brixton, in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister, they began to restructure the squats. They wanted to kick-off us or making us paying a certain amount of money to the Council; around 5000 pounds for each house to be owners.

So, my partner was an astrologer whose father had an abandoned house in Sitges, near Barcelona, and we decided to move there. In 1983 I created my own label (Astral Music) and surprisingly, through some magazines, people started to buy my cassettes and later on, my firsts cds. It was psychedelic music, experimental sounds, relaxing melodies, space age music, but the following years, 1985 or 86, they started to classified it only as new age, and then it sold even more.

TWR: Where do your musical ideas come from?

GC: Most of my influences come from great artists of the 60s and 70s (pop groups, progressive rock bands, Krautrock bands, and of course from my beginnings listening Scottish music with my grandmother teaching me, and from Irish traditional songs at school, as through some doses of different melodies that continuosly comes to my head or mind, and whose origin I do not know). Music and melodies always comes to my head and usually with the lyrics at the same time, both in Spanish and English. Sometimes they are only phrases that I try to redefine and translate into music. Concepts, ideas...
I don't know where all this comes from but it is something that happens all the time, at any time and in my dreams.

When I was a kid I always had these two situations: melodies in my mind and that I couldn't stop counting. I stared a plate of gnocchi and guess exactly the quantity. I was like a ‘mental scanner’. I knew that my mother was really worried. I had that thing about not being able to stop counting, and my obsession with chess and musical melodies easily coming to my mind. In the 80s I composed a 2 minutes piece of music called Counting Universes, which was inspired by that mental situation that I had when I was a kid.

TWR: Eastern philosophy seems to be a part of a lot of your music, what does it bring to your music?

GC: Yes! In 1983 or 1984 I met Ronald Lloyd, a musician who was born in Surrey but that spent his childhood in India and who later became the first oboist of the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester, in times of conductor Sir John Barbirolli. And Ronald had lived many years in Baghdad and learned to build Persian santoors with different geometric designs prepared for microtonic tunings. He knew a lot about modal scales, serial music, minimalism and, of course, classical music. And he taught me so many things... We played together for 15 years. In the 80s and 90s I had to play many times in the United States and Mexico, and he joined me and enriched my music with his oboe, cor anglais, etc. I now got some of these santoors at home.

We made three albums together. I also play sitar and other Eastern instruments but without a proper technique. I love music and Eastern philosophy. I am a bit hinduist, vegan and I like yoga and meditation, although I do not follow any guru or any religion in particular. Once again, in my opinion, artists like George, Paul Horn, Donovan, Brian Jones or Shawn Phillips helped to improve that bridge between the tradition of India and the West. These recordings I made of Eastern music gave me another perspective, another approach for understanding music also as a philosophy. Playing without electronic instruments and plugs, with instruments sometimes out of tune, without this Western schematization or perfectionism without colour, and many times tuning during 15 minutes between each song... It is another path and there is something in that rhythm of the Indian percussion that connects me with the cybernetic, with computers. I think that that's why Indians are so good in computers.

But on this side of the planet, Bach well-tempered clavier gentrified our hearing ability, and a piano is, in fact, a harp trapped in a sarcophagus. It is a hijacking of microtony to create a limited Western music always in the same ‘tones’. That’s why sometimes I’m against classical music and of course against pop and rock music. My relationship with classical and rock music is, definitely, a love-hate relationship.

Eastern music is full of cosmic elements that surely move or vibrate to the rhythm of the universe and that also help us to connect with infinity in a different way. When we reach 50G or Windows30 and we can travel through time, I think that we will be able to recupe many lost melodies, probably in the ether, but that are still there, in the Universe, waiting someone to pick them up.

TWR: Do you think your music should be classed as "New Age"? What did you think of the New Age movement?

GC: Yes, I produced 5 or 6 albums that could perfectly be new age music. The rest is more psychedelic or progressive music, cosmic and even folk music with Celtic or Eastern elements. The original new age; that new age music of Paul Horn, when he recorded in 1968 at the Taj Mahal while he was with the Beatles in Rijikesh, or that new age of Steven Halpern, it was music that sought a kind of inner harmony. But the new age that emerged in the 1980s, was more a product of the recording industry with the intention to sell a fusion of styles that had no depth. It was mainly wall paper music. Lounge music or to play on a piano in a cruise for retired tourists. Unfortunately, most people met this fake new age and didn’t have the chance to know the true, the genuine one.

TWR: Tell us about some of the instruments you use, do you have any favourites?

GC: I am not a faithful lover of my keyboards but I am polygamous and faithful with all my guitars, to which I have been married for many years. Especially a Yacopi concert guitar that belonged to my father, who was a lawyer, a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi follower and a singer of French traditional songs. It was a Yacopi guitar that he gave it to me and that originally belonged to the Spanish concertist Narciso Yepes, and it is something really beautiful. I am also always in love with an Ibanez double-neck electric guitar from the 70s and with an early Gibson from the 60s. I’ve got many 6 and 12 string Alvarez acoustics. And many Eastern instruments that I adore and that are something religious for me.

TWR: I'm intrigued by the Tibetan Journey album, how did that come about?

GC: I knew Lama Wangchen, director of the House of Tibet in Barcelona, and he once asked me if I could film the Dalai Lama for 3 days in a row from the beginning of his day until the evening. So, through a film producer, friend of mine (José López) that later on produced The Meadows of Englewood video, we recorded a documental called “One day with the Dalai Lama”.

And at that time, the monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery were on tour, singing traditional Tibetan chants. And they also asked me if I could help them a bit with my keyboards so that the audience wouldn't get bored during an hour of Tibetan chants. So I was playing with them with a lot of difficulty because the frequencies of their voices were in very low octaves and I couldn't interfere too much with my keyboards. Plus that they never rehearsed and that many different songs had always the same name! So, for example, I wrote down the name Choed in a notebook and it turned out that Tibetans had 2000 songs named Choeds! (one different Choed chant or song for each monastery!). It's as if the 200 or 300 Beatles songs were all called Help! And then they always decided which chants they would sing each night, but after doing a tea ceremony in the afternoon, in which they served the tea in beatiful cups but did not drink it. They were praying and praying in these low voices with those very low frequencies, and I was next to the table waiting half an hour to find out what we would play that night. In the midst of so much meditation I was very stressed. When they collected money, they placed the money on the ground, in the street, and the money flew with the wind, but they didn’t care. They asked me to produce that album just when Ant arrived in Barcelona to promote Meadows.

And Ant noticed how nervous I was and, ever so kind, he asked me if I was OK, and I remember me answering “no!”. So then he asked me if he could collaborate and help me on something. The next day we were on the radio talking about Meadows. So I asked him if he could play keyboards with the monks while I was also going to pick up an electric guitar with a volume pedal. And we ended up playing with the monks next to the Barcelona Cathedral. The Catholic bishop came to see us and I remember Ant asking me, and laughing, “are all the days of your life like this? Is that the bishop?” Truly in the midst of stress, we were experiencing a surreal situation. At one point during the performance, because of my nerves, I started to laugh. And the album came out pretty well. We recorded it in the recording studio I had at that time in the woods, close to Barcelona. And when the monk director of the choir played that horn so loudly, some dogs howled like wolves in the distance. It was like being in the movie Nosferatu or Dracula. Quite a karma. Lama Wangchen was a real authority for the Tibetan community, but Ant decided to call him Twochen or 2chen, but Wangchen’s secretary suddenly came and said to me “no, no, no! his name is Wangchen”

TWR: How did you get to know Ant?

GC: I think that it was because one of my neighbours in London knew an Argentine doctor called Martin, who was staying at Ant’s house for a few months. So he gave me his phone number and I called him because I thought that he could teach me new methods for tuning my 12 string guitars, but at that time Ant was very busy and teaching more basic musical subjects for students and I think that that was the time when he was finishing Sides or 1984. I can’t remember. I also had just finished my album Vikings. And I remember when I got to his studio and he had much more equipment than me; a Polymoog synth (on these days I only had a monophonic Korg). He also had an 8 tracks Brenell while I only had a Revox and a 4 channel Teac. So I remember I thought: “I wish I could have recorded Vikings and Inishfree with all these equipment and instruments!” Quique had just left, back to Buenos Aires and it was a pity that we didn't meet each other at that time.

I had The Geese… album and also listened to Wise…, and I encouraged him to continue creating new music. He was a little discouraged. We were living in the new wave and punk period etc., so no one knew what would happen in the new decade of the 1980s, that was just starting. Then I spent a few months in Buenos Aires and finally settled in Sitges, where I was able to study new ways for tuning my guitars and modal scales with Ronald Lloyd. But I always kept in touch with Ant and whenever I went to London I visited him. He also sometimes invited me to stay at his house. He is a great musician and a great man. Ant, Steve Hackett, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell and David Crosby were five major influences on me for playing 6 and 12 string guitar in a different way that I used to play at the end of the 60s, before I knew their music. Also I cannot forget Mike Oldfield, who was for me another dimension, another galaxy, and with whom I identified myself because I started in the 60s playing bagpipes, drums and then guitar and flute, long before playing piano or keyboards.

TWR: How do you and Ant go about creating a piece of music? Describe the process for us?

GC: I was collaborating in the direction of a TV program in Sitges (Barcelona) and I had recorded an album with American new age pianist Steve Halpern, that we broadcast there and that people like it a lot. Ant and me had once been playing and improvising music, so I proposed him of what do he thought about trying to jam together and if it turns out interesting, then we could carry on as I previously did with Steven and also with Ronald. And he liked the idea. But it was incredibly hot in London; 40 degrees. And I remember that for starting, he connected his keyboards while I was tuning the electric guitar, and that I brought two cameras from producer and business man Juan Bosch, from Barcelona.

Both cameras were enough for that time; a big one for the still shots and the portable one that Bosch managed filming us, etc. Ronald Lloyd was there too. And we started recording and Ant launched in a very inspired way with his keyboards and me, who had experience in jams since I was very young, in a musical dialogue with him through that Fender Strat guitar. And we played for more than 37 minutes non-stop, easily connecting each other across different musical routes as if we had been rehearsing for a long time. When we finished, we thought we had recorded 10 minutes, but when we saw the tape that marked 37 we couldn't believe it. We played that suite that we titled The Meadows of Englewood, as if we were in a trance-mode, and which many people from different countries compared to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and consider one of Ant's best albums and one of my best albums too. What happened in that jam is inexplicable to me. It's as if a higher force had dictated the music to us.

I took the tapes to my studio and when I listened to them again, I fixed some details but everything was almost perfect. So I quickly sent a copy to Ant and he said “go ahead!”, publish it. Everything was very magical. For me, composing, writing, improvising and even dreaming a melody are the same thing. I don't make differences like in classical music. To compose is to devise something. It is a creation that does not always have to be artistic; It could be an idea, a recipe, a phrase...
Something that arises from we don't know where but that uses us as vehicles to express it.

We pollinate life by carrying species in our shoes from one town to another. If I masturbate in a forest and come back in ten thousand years, Manhattan will be there. Everything is creation and is interrelated. If a mosquito bites me and then it bites you, we are already cousins or relatives. So, in Meadows, Ant and me were musical brothers right at that moment, at that cosmic confluence. It can no longer be repeated. Woodstock was exactly on those days: three days in August 1969. They tried to repeat it but that confluence, those planets in the exact place, were no longer there. So, when we released our album, many letters arrived comparing that suite to Close to the Edge, to Tarkus of ELP, to Supper's Ready, but Meadows suite was without bass, without drums! It was an instrumental piece of music and I always saw it probably more closer to Tubular Bells. We also recorded pieces like Sortilege, and other songs, sometimes me on keyboards and Ant on guitar. But our best achievement was, without doubt, The Meadows of Englewood suite. It is always said that composers have 3 or 4 masterpieces and then rest less important compositions. I think that this happened to us, too. Ant has The Geese, Slow Dance, maybe 1984; excellent albums..., but Meadows could easily be in his top list. And I’ve got 2 or 3 albums that I know they are the best I could do, but I also got Meadows there…, next to me, just a few yards from my best works.

Ant always said to me that if the album was going to generate a certain amount of money, that I should earn more than him because I had done all the production, but I never agreed with his generosity and modesty, because without his force and inspiration playing keyboards, The Meadows of Englewood would have never existed.

Unfortunately Alan, the world of music, like the world of cinema, is full of false smiles and people hugging each other, etc., etc., but the reality is that most of the famous artists are very competitive and sometimes even destructive egos, and Genesis would not have been exist without Ant, because Genesis flourished in Foxtrot, Selling England, The Lamb... etc. That’s true. And it’s also obvious that Ant didn't flourish with them but he planted the seed in Trespass. So what is more important? To plant the tree or to plant the seed?

TWR: If you had the choice, which musicians, alive or dead would most like to work with and why?

GC: I love country-folk music and I am a fan of musicians like Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Alan Parsons, and of course Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, etc. I would like to play acoustic guitar joining them in a song. The same could be said for Crosby & Nash or Joni Mitchell. As a drummer..., having been in Liverpool with The Quarrymen or at the beginning of the Beatles, would have been my dream for several reincarnations. Playing in a simple way but with them up there, in the late 50s, watching them creating their first songs. I'm also a Buddy Holly fan. Also being the bass-guitar player for Jefferson Airplane, replacing Jack Casady! That would have been glorious to me. A tribal and completely psychedelic group. Guitarist with Ant on keyboards! I already did that. 37 minutes playing lead guitar non-stop. I don't know how that could happen. And also I would love to play keyboards with Steve Winwood on guitar and singing, who I admire. Also with other excellent musicians not well known in UK.

TWR: What are your current/future plans…?

GC: First of all to republish all of my books about music (The Sound Of The Universe/Astronomic Music/Biomusic etc) and publish my autobiography which I hope to have ready by 2026. Then I intend to remaster and release more of my demos of my early recordings and release box sets of my albums during the next couple of years and find a serious label to curate my catalogue as I’m gradually getting old!

Lots to look forward to then? Our thanks to Guillermo for taking the time to talk to us.