Barry Adamson: Chat With TheCat

Fri 6th Jun, 2008 in Features

Now you may not know the name Barry Adamson, but you sure as hell will have heard his music. Getting his first break playing bass with ex-Buzzcocks frontman Howard Devoto’s band Magazine, and moving on to play in the original line-up of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and write film scores for David Lynch, Adamson’s career has been as smooth, intricate and intriguing as the dapper chap himself. With his new album Back To The Cat out now and an upcoming national tour, Barry took some time out of his incredibly busy schedule to sit down and chat.

He’s a tall man, head shaven, wears a goatee, and despite the overcast weather casting a pallid gloom across the London streets, he wears dark sunglasses. How did you start playing with Magazine? “Well, it was during the punk era, and that was the ignition key to getting the whole thing started up. Before I knew it, I’d quit college and got a bass. It had two strings and I played all night on it, went out and bought another two strings, played all night on it and I joined Magazine the next day.

“Such was the enthusiastic drive of the times. It came about, really, as a question of will and desire. I was very much learning on my feet, and I think the punk era really gave you permission to do that. Rather than like, okay, you’ve got to get to a certain grade or a certain level before you even start to think about playing in a band. So that was lucky. And you don’t really see that anymore, just look at those shows where you have to sing like somebody else.”

He speaks in a smooth British accent, heavy with tones of professional disinterest. He idly stirs at his coffee, responding to my questions with the practised ease of a career musician, tired of dealing with impudent reporters like me.

So what then led you to start working with Visage? “Well, Howard was the leader of Magazine and he didn’t really want to have that band any more after a few years, which was fair enough. So I did a few little things with him, then that lead me into being a sort of freelance guy. It started the idea that you could go wherever you wanted and I guess I did a little session thing for a couple of years with Visage to sort of keep my hand in. I was a bit of a gun for hire really, the keyboard player from Magazine was working with them, and he told me to come along and do a few things. It wasn’t really my thing, I sort of just went along with it really, but I was writing the whole time.

“Then the opportunity came along to join up with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. I took that as I’d seen them play for the first time when I was in Australia, and then they came to London with The Birthday Party. I found it all very exciting. Another wave, another era was now beginning, which then led onto to the whole solo thing really, after playing three years with The Bad Seeds.”

Was it a difficult transition going from playing with a live band to session work? “I guess so, although when you drop into a studio and do a session it’s just like any other part of the recording world. It’s like you were working with another band anyway – it’s just that you didn’t have the live aspect really, you’d leave it there. It was like a working job, like if you went and wrote for another paper then came back to the guys you were writing with once they’d stopped all the in-fighting.”

Working in a studio environment did you find you missed playing live and working with a band? “Yeah, even with my solo work it involved a lot of writing, and I did a lot of stuff for film and television. I had like a five year period where I’d pretty much just get up, go to the studio and come home, and write every day. I really did miss it.”

Is that what got you back to doing more live-based work? “I’d had that whole thing of being in bands. The stuff I was writing myself seemed to me that I was, maybe unconsciously, trying to get myself back into the live thing by the kind of music I was writing, as it went from a sort of film sound back into a sort of band sound again.”

Back To The Cat seemed to me to have a very funky, big band sort of feel. Was that part of Adamson’s natural progression towards live based music? “Possibly either that or it’s just a selling tactic,” he quips, the beginning of a smile creeping under his goatee. “The album is full of different elements. There are elements of things that have driven me since I was young, and there are elements of things I just think are really good, and there are elements of a writing style that I really admire. I think you have to be careful a little bit Mikey, because it’s easy to default to a certain genre a certain type of music.

“I feel like what I try and do is like bring all the different elements of what inspires me together. I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s just big band or funky. There are a lot of elements in there that form a whole kind of smorgasbord for your musical palette. But on this record particularly there is an emphasis on – I wouldn’t say funk – but more on jazz and blues, and that’s purposeful.”

How was it working with David Lynch, was he very involved in the process? At this he raises an eyebrow and slowly removes his glasses. “He starts with what you bring to the table, and he picks that up from your work. He then makes suggestions about certain areas, or plays you some stuff by older composers as a sort of indication of mood, and sort of says this is what’s happening in the scene. He’s very good at showing you through the scene. Then you’ll start making sketches, which he’ll play to the film and watch with a group of people and see if that’s working. Then you’re more likely to kind of colour things in.”

He speaks with a slow, methodical intensity, and his eyes, now unsheathed, glow with a wealth of experience and savoir-faire. “He’s probably one of the best directors around, especially through the process of putting the music and film together. I’ve had directors who I’ve turned to and asked, – œI was thinking this or wanting to do this, what do you think?’ and they’ve kind of just shrugged their shoulders and gone – œwhatever’. [They’re] missing out such a big area of expression. But David’s really in tune with that whole thing and the whole importance of how music and film work together.”

So is the job of writing music for a film to set the atmosphere; paint a picture? “Well the picture is already there, and I think it’s very much of a misconception,” he muses. “I mean, that’s what I thought for many years, but I think you’re actually adding a third dimension, which is the sort of link between the emotion and character. I think therefore you can veer off that and make it about the exterior or location and then go back into the interior world of the character; switch between those two things. I think the real trick is to make that almost invisible, so when you grab someone who’s just left the cinema and you ask them – œwhat did you think of the music?’, and they reply – œwhat music?’ They won’t realise it’s there, and that’s what I’ve found the real art to writing scores is.”

He sips his coffee, realises it has long since gone cold, excuses himself, walks out of the café and hops in a cab. While our chat may have been short, Barry Adamson personifies what a true career musician should be.

Barry Adamson is bringing his band to Australia this June for a special run of dates.

18 Jun – The Zoo, Brisbane
19 Jun – The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
20 Jun – Factory Theatre, Sydney
21 Jun – The Bakery – Artrage Complex, Perth