A world class guitar hero, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, an international recording artist, and a soundtrack composer for film and television, GARY LUCAS is on the move in 2024.
The former Captain Beefheart guitarist has recorded over 50 acclaimed albums to date in his own right in a variety of genres—jazz, rock, classical, folk, blues, avant-garde and world music—and has performed in over 40 countries—including the UK, Canada, Australia, all over Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, Israel, South Korea, Serbia, China, Russia, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Morocco, India, and elsewhere.
Gary has received several Lifetime Achievement awards for his songwriting with Jeff Buckley (he co-wrote Jeff’s anthems “Grace” and “Mojo Pin”) and many honors—including performing solo before the General Assembly of the UN to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
He has performed and collaborated with a who’s who of musical luminaries, including Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet), Jeff Buckley, Leonard Bernstein, Lou Reed, John Cale, Patti Smith, Chris Cornell, Bryan Ferry, Nona Hendryx, Los Van Van, Bob Weir, Nick Cave, Thurston Moore, Lukas Ligeti, Martha Wainwright, Camille O’Sullivan, Steve Kilbey, and many others, and he has given Masterclasses in guitar and songwriting at his alma mater Yale University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the Amsterdam Musik Conservatorium, the Henri Dutilleux Conservatoire in Paris, The New School, and other academic institutions.
Dubbed “The Thinking Man’s Guitar Hero” by The New Yorker, “The world’s most popular avant-rock guitarist” by The Independent (UK), “One of the 100 Greatest Living Guitarists” (Classic Rock), “Legendary Leftfield guitarist” by The Guardian (UK), “Guitarist of 1000 Ideas” by The New York Times, “a true axe God” by Melody Maker, and “One of the five best guitarists in the world” by the national Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny; the British world music magazine fRoots recently described Gary Lucas as “without question, the most innovative and challenging guitarist playing today.” Rolling Stone’s David Fricke wrote: “Gary Lucas is one of the best and most original guitarists in America…a modern guitar miracle.” Best-selling author/producer Dan Levitin (“This Is Your Brain On Music”) recently cited Gary as “the greatest living electric guitarist”. Gary was also dubbed “one of the world’s greatest guitar players” by HITS Magazine. Pete Frame, music journalist, founder/editor of legendary UK music magazine ZigZag, and author/creator of 5 volumes of “Rock Family Trees” said of Gary, “Can there be another musician as adventurous, ingenious, accomplished, diverse, intrepid, hard-working and well-travelled as Gary Lucas?”
Quotable quotes about Gary Lucas:
“You’re a phenomenal guitarist” —Bruce Springsteen
“Man can play guitar!” —Captain Beefheart
“I could listen to you play for hours, Gary…beyond cool” —Lou Reed
“An incredible guitarist” —Nick Cave
“Man, you were really wailing!” —Leonard Bernstein
“Magical guitarness…I carry Gary in my fingers” —Jeff Buckley
“One of the best and most original guitarists in America…a modern guitar miracle” —Rolling Stone
“The Thinking Man’s Guitar Hero…an A-list musician” —The New Yorker
“One of the 100 Greatest Living Guitarists” —Classic Rock Magazine
“One of the world’s greatest guitarists” —HITS Magazine
“Legendary left-field guitarist” —The Guardian
“Gary Lucas plays guitar like Salvador Dali paints…guitarist with a global beat.” —New York Times
“Can there be another musician as adventurous, ingenious, accomplished, diverse, intrepid, hard-working and well-travelled as Gary Lucas?” —Pete Frame, music journalist, founder/editor of legendary UK music magazine ZigZag, and author/creator of 5 volumes of “Rock Family Trees”
Below are the questions I put to Gary over a few weeks, covering a wide range of subjects.
Starting with a discussion about books,and reading,and moving on to music and life in general.
Gary, you won a school award for your writing at the age of nine. Do you remember what you wrote about?
Yes, it was an essay entitled “Child of the Media”. It was about my feelings regarding the constant media bombardment via tv, advertising,radio, newspapers and magazines and how it was transforming me / us into obedient androids of the media superstate—told how to think, dress, buy, eat, read, vote, what to believe, etc. Very Orwellian / Burroughsian come to think of it with a soupcon of Marshall McLuhan thrown in for good measure.
You were also learning the French Horn and guitar at the same age, having decided you wanted to be a singer at the age of three. Looking back, do you consider yourself to have been something of a ‘wunderkind’?
I guess so. But in all modesty really. I just figured I wasn’t really all that unique at that young age—I felt guilty about my abilities / facility at learning / passion for music and literature and film —and that plenty of kids my age surely must have similar skills and that it was just a matter of meeting them. I was tremendously self-effacing and shy. Later on I reconciled myself to the fact that I was kind of, um, “different” –and with the exception of a few close friends made my peace with my lonely outsider status (I could relate to the X-Men). I still love touring solo for instance!
Later on, you went on to Yale University and studied English. You were still involved with music but abandoned the possibility of studying it as a subject as you felt it was not being taught in a way you could identify/relate to. Is this a fair assessment of the situation?
Yes. I had no keyboard technique at all, which was the main problem there – and outside of general History of Music courses which I loved and found fun and easy, Music Composition, Harmony and so forth seemed like deadly pedagogical grinds.
I recall going to one basic Music Harmony class at zYale and the teacher played a recording of the current pop hit “Love is Blue” (the Paul Mauriat version not the Jeff Beck version—which btw is lifted from Prokofiev’s “Lt. Kije Suite”) on an old victrola for the class and then asked us all to write down on music stave paper the chord progression of the song we’d just heard by ear. I struggled with trying to do this, and then a hotshot keyboard whiz jumped up and walked over to the piano in the room and proceeded to play the whole tune flawlessly by ear. I was outta there!! I was blessed with a very good ear, still, and was tested in 5th grade for music aptitude and scored 100 on the test which includes evaluating Pitch, Harmon, Rhythm, and Timbre, and thus was ordered to take up the French horn by imperial mandate of the new-con fascist band leader, despite the fact that I barely have an upper lip and thus did not have a suitable embouchure for playing that instrument. But I played it for 7 years or so in various school bands and orchestras until the conductor threw me out of the concert band for wearing sandals to a rehearsal (he also caught me improvising on a March, which was verboten. I thought I was “jazzing it up” Dixieland style).
In several interviews you have name checked quite a few authors. Some you probably studied at Yale, others you read along the way.Your reading spans the centuries from Chaucer to Jim Thompson, others include Shakespear, Hamsun, Joyce, Marquez and Wyndham Lewis*. As you once said “I probably missed a few out.”
Have you ever read any of the Beats ? Either before you went to Yale, or while you were there?
Yes I loved Allen Ginsberg’s poems from the get-go, also Ferlinghetti, and later on voraciously absorbed everything I could get my hands on by William Burroughs (who essentially wrote the same book over and over and over). When my friend Max Rudin the Publisher of the Library of America series published a Jack Kerouac anthology I was in clover. I also loved neo-beat hipsters and black humorists including Louis-Ferdinand Celine, JP Donleavy, the Marquis De Sade, Charles Bukowksi, Phillip Dick, Apollinaire, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Iris Owens (a/k/a Harriet Daimler), Robert Coover, Michel Faber, Richard Meltzer, Boris Vian,Robert Sheckley, Robert Bloch, Bob Dylan’s liner notes, James Joyce, Charles Willeford, Bruce Jay Friedman, Samuel Beckett, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bruno Schulz, Terry Southern, Norman Mailer, and most recently Michel Houellbecq—whatever writer I stumbled on who was transgressive and darkly funny and pushing the literary envelope was for me! But really like all sorts of writers although not too many current ones, I dunno why. Same as my taste in music these days. Growing up in what seemed a Golden Age of art efflorescence I find the current crop somehow lacking in…what’s the word…soul.
How would you register the experience of reading Beats in terms of an influence?
The classical Beat writers along with the lyrics of Don Van Vliet (who once told me “I’m really just an old Beatnik”) help shape and expand my world-view of what could be described…maybe better would be the word “posited”— by the written word regarding the phenomenological world around us and the turbulent inner landscapes within. These writers along with select music, films, and occasional (this was a long time ago—kids, don’t try this at home) mind-manifesting soft drugs.
Allen Ginsberg once gave you an autographed copy of one of his poems, ‘Ballad of the Skeletons’ after you accompanied him at the “World War Three Gallery” in NYC. Do you still have the poem?
Do you remember what it was about?
Yes it was basically an anti-war poem used as lyrics to a song. I have it in a frame. Here ‘tis:
Said the Presidential skeleton “I won’t sign the bill”
Said the Speaker skeleton “Yes you will” Said the Representative skeleton “I object!” Said the Supreme Court skeleton “Whaddya expect?”
Said the Old Christ skeleton “Care for the poor”
Said the Son of God skeleton “AIDS needs cure”
Said the homophobe skeleton “Gay folk suck”
Said the Heritage Policy skeleton “Blacks’re outta luck”
Said the macho skeleton “Women in their place”
Said the fundamentalist skeleton “Increase the human race”
Said Nancy skeleton “Just Say No”
Said the Rasta skeleton “Blow Nancy Blow”
Said the Demagogue skeleton “Don’t smoke pot”
Said the alcoholic skeleton “Let your liver rot”
Said the junkie skeleton “Can’t we get a fix?”
Said the big brother skeleton “Tail the jerks for kicks”
Said the mirror skeleton “Hey good looking”
Said the electric chair skeleton “Hey what’s cooking?”
Said the talkshow skeleton “Muck you in the face”
Said the family values skeleton “My family values mace”
Said the New York Times skeleton “That’s not fit to print”
Said the CIA skeleton “Can’t you take a hint?”
Said the network skeleton “Believe my eyes”
Said the advertising skeleton
“Don’t get wise” said the media skeleton “Believe you me”
Said the couch potato skeleton
“What me worry?” said the TV skeleton
“Eat sound bites” said the newscast skeleton “That’s all, goodnight”
Did you meet Allen Ginsberg at all after that?
No, sad to say.
You once said that you had musically accompanied poets/writers at readings – I may be wrong but you didn’t sound enthusiastic about the idea or results. Is that a fair assessment?
Some were better than others. I didn’t think sometimes it gelled the way it should have been. There still needs to be a basic telepathy between the poet and the musician for best results. I am still up for the experience again.esp. if there is an honorarium attached to it.
I mentioned that because I once interviewed the Liverpool poet Brian Patten (Mersey Poets) and he wasn’t enamoured with the results. Almost saying ‘I’m a poet, I recite – musicians play music. Best keep it that way.’ Was that the only collaboration, musically or otherwise that you had with the Beats?
I’ve done some performances with the Bowery Poetry Club’s Bob Holman here. He is a published poet who tours all over the world. Some of these collaborations were fun to do, he’s a big Beefheart fan. Ed Sanders (The Fugs) who is a neo-beat poet and musician organized a huge concert at the St Marks Poetry Project in Saint Marks Church in the East Village called “New Amazing Grace” where he assembled a whole bunch of poets including Anne Waldman to put new lyrics to “Amazing Grace” and recite /sing them over the music. I led the house band. We must have had about 50 poets participating but honestly I can’t recall them all. Taylor Mead could have been one of them. Also Jim Carroll, and possibly Robert Creeley, Jane Wodening, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Pauline Oliveros, Diane Wakoski, Tuli Kupferberg, Bob Holman, Maureen Owen, Robert Hunter, Eileen Myles plus musicians Coby Batty and Rebecca Moore. (copied off the internet).When Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground died I backed up Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye at a wake for him at Tramps nightclub here. I think that’s it for my beatnik interface to date.
You once said you “could have been a writer ” but you also said you could have been “a rabbi” or “a vampire magician”. Do you regret not being any of those things?
Not really. I think I am some combination of all those things in my own way and had I been stuck in any one fixed identity as one or the other iteration it would have become quite boring. I am really a very mutable soul being a double Gemini. In the last few years I;ve ramped up my writing, mainly for an online publication called CultureCatch. I’ve also released over 50 solo and collaborative albums with another 10 in various stages of composition nearly ready to release. I still tour as much as possible when and where it makes sense and have played in over 40 countries in my career.
If you had been a writer, would you have been an experimental writer like say Beckett or Joyce? Or especially Brion Gysin or William Burroughs? Writers who inspired David Bowie.
Probably a mix of experimental and naturalism . I mean I haven’t tried my hand with pure fiction to date, frankly. Maybe I will be inspired but I;m still trying to get more of my memoirs out. My first book “Touched By Grace” merely skimmed the surface of one particular creature phase in my life but I have accumulated enough hair-raising tales over the years– my adventures in the underground music biz—to write several
In one interview you confessed to wanting to return to the period when Modernism was flourishing in Paris with Dali, Picasso and Bunuel in residence (between the wars years). Would you update that wish, or are you happy to go back to the birth of Modernism?
I’d be happy to visit Paris during any time period frankly except under German occupation in the 40’s as I know I would feel extremely unsafe.
The Beats were very tuned into the Bebop generation of musicians: Miles, Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, etc. Did you find that particular bond between jazz musicians and a genre in writing appealing, especially as it did so for the Beats?
Yes I did. One of my favorite opening sequences in film (I am a cineaste) is the first scene of the great Roger Corman’s 1959 black and white opus “A Bucket of Blood”’, with Julian Burton’s beat poet Maxwell
H. Brock declaiming over a cool jazz obligato by west coast saxophonist Paul Horn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfB6X0SHZPY
Is it fair to say you had both a personal and a working relationship with the alternative music press in the 60s? Meltzer, Pearlman and at one time the legendary Lester Bangs? This must have been a very interesting experience.Do you look back on it with any sense of nostalgia?
Yes I have an affection for that first wave of rock critics and mags. I recall distinctly reading, very stoned, Richard Meltzer’s “Jimi Hendrix & Pythagoras the Cave Painter” in an early issue of Crawdaddy circa ’67 which got me tremendously excited about the possibilities of rock criticismi.e.,“This guy is fucking BRILLIANT!!” This came out btw before Robert Christgau’s infamous description of Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop Festival as “a psychedelic Uncle Tom” (wrong!) which I recall reading in ’68. And I later became friends with Richard Meltzer and his equally brilliant pal Sandy Pearlman who went on to produce Blue Oyster Cult and The Clash blah blah…also Leste3r Bangs, who gave me the ultimate compliment as a guitarist. He came over to my apartment in summer 1980 for a listening session to “Doc at the Radar Station” which had not yet come out, and when the last notes of the album had faded, asked me: “Which part did you play on ‘Flavor Bud Living’ Gary—the top of the bottom?””Lester”, I replied, “that;s all me playing everything in real time, no overdubs”. Before Crawdaddy there was Hit Parader (which included fantastic supposed lyrics of all the songs ‘o the day, obviously faultily transcribed from a listen to the record itself, not any official lyric sheet), along with good coverage4 of the burgeoning album scene, esp articles by Jim Delehant and Don Paulson.
Did you enjoy being a music critic?
Oh yeah, for a while. I got some free albums and some “exposure” such as it was back in the day. Basically I got a chance to ramble on and wax enthusiastic for underdogs like Captain Beefheart, who I believe deserved such exposure in spades–that’s the writing I am most proud of. I’m not all that proud of my snarky take-down reviews. It was kind of a blood sport back in the days of “gonzo” rock journalism and I dont think it adds that much to the conversation, ultimately. Opinions are like assholes, as they say—everybody’s got one.
Any reflections on how it felt being a musician commenting on other musicians’ work?
Again, I cringe at some of my more pejorative pronouncements than in the cold light of 2024. I think you should try and encourage other folks basically, and to take down another musician in print or on YouTube or whatever is just petty and willfully destructive . I think it says more about the person making with the judgements than the person you’re critiquing. Unless they are making a gazillion bucks churning out shit of course 🙂 Just kidding! Honestly, I salute anybody trying to do anything creative on any level, as I do know how hard it is to get your music across
So did Lester Bangs or Richard Meltzer have any interest in the Beats, or have they moved onto the sixties counterculture?
Well I would have to say the answer is yes, they obviously knew and appreciated aspects of the Beats. But I never got into any kind of in-depth discussion with either of them on this topic.
Lester Bangs and Patti Smith went to visit William Burroughs when he got back from Tangiers in 1975. Were you around at the time?
In 1975 I was in NYC for a few months before heading to Taiwan in June. But while I was living in NYC I was in the middle of a very heavy relationship with a 56-year old woman on the upper West Side here– and we didn;t go out much other than hit Chinatown restaurants after midnight.
We started with the Beats, as I said we would. Let’s move on.
I know you have been involved in music for many years (singing at the age of three), from a 6th Grade Combo playing Aker Bilk/Al Hart music, then playing Blues and Jazz in clubs during your teens.
Did you enjoy playing the clubs?
Was that a good way to ‘cut your teeth’?
Yes it was lots of fun.
Later working with Captain Beefheart both on the albums and touring (You were also co-manager), you took part in all future ‘manifestations’ of Captain Beefheart projects after Don Van Vliet retired. Would you say that was one of the happiest times of your life musically, or have you never thought about your musical career in terms of ‘highs or lows’?
I know you have written extensively about relationships with Don Van Vliet. Is it a relationship you still often think about?
Yes Don was the person who has had the most profound impact on me in my entire life (save perhaps for my mom and dad). I never met anyone remotely like him. He was the funniest, most creative and most unique personality I’ve ever encountered.
I think my work with Jeff Buckley is probably the highest point of my music career to date but my 5 years working closely with Don previous to that give me all the tools I needed to build my subsequent career on,
Your collaboration with Jeff Buckley was incredibly successful, producing amazing music. Do you still have unreleased tracks? Will we get to hear them in the future?
Yes I do, I am sitting on hours of material. Their official release would have to be conditional on approval from the Jeff Buckley Estate.
Do you think; as my mother used to say ;”you make your own luck in life?”
Yes and no. You need to keep moving in any case—“standing still is losing” (“Hobo Chang Ba”, Captain Beefheart). You have to strive to make things happen for yourself but sometimes your best laid plans “Gang aft agley” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43816/to-a-mouse-56d222ab36e33
This is where Kismet, or Fate, or synchronicity comes into play. Sometimes things work out or at least happen for the best despite your not doing anything in an active sense to force the issue.
Or were you always that three-year-old wanting to be a singer, nine year old guitarist, teen playing blues and jazz in clubs, DJ, writer of film scores and avant garde composer? Man of many talents?
Well I would say I was kind of shy and self-effacing and somewhat embarrassed for many years about my creative facility—a typically Jewish state of mind (though one not shared by all Jewish people of course). For years on and off I would enter a state of inertia and not even try / go for it , whatever that thing was I wanted to achieve. I would psych myself out of even attempting to do anything but passively consume other people’s art.
They say if a shark stops moving, unpleasant things happen to it. God forbid that would happen to you Gary, but if like the shark you never seem to stop, how would you deal with the idea of ever ceasing to make music?
I think I would try and enjoy myself as best I could . Like I say, there have been periods of stasis mingled with other periods of intense production of new work. Since 1990 when I released my first solo album “Skeleton at the Feast” I would say it’s been full on without much stopping. Before that, maybe I was just shy/
How would you like to be remembered most of all?
Oh I don’t even think about stuff like that. For sure I won’t be around “Topper”-like to either enjoy or rue the after effects of my time on earth!
A small part of your musical legacy is on your new CD perhaps?
Well I think “The Essential Gary Lucas” is a good start for people who don’t know me at all to come in to my work. Although God knows I could have switched-out half the tracks on it with other tracks that didst;t even occur to me when I was compiling it,
“His next album, The Essential Gary Lucas[7] (Knitting Factory Records), a 36- track, two-CD anthology was released in January, 2021, spanned 40 years of Lucas’s music”
Wikipedia
What’s next?
I have a bunch of albums finished and looking for a home fore them. Two new volumes of The Edge of Heaven , my Chinese pop project, the original volume of which dates back to a 2001 release. A solo acoustic album . An EP with Venezuelan rock vocalist Luis Accorsi, And a bunch I am still working on in
various stages of completion: Lucas and Lukas (with Lukas Ligeti). An album collaboration with Dorothy Moskowitz, vocalist of ’68 US psych band The United States of America). And more I can’t talk about yet.
My two sons Ben and Aaron have a Dutch mother (my ex-partner Nienke) and they live in the Netherlands.
They are bilingual and speak both Dutch and English fluently and are happy both in England and the Netherlands.
They asked me to ask you whether you had a special relationship with the Netherlands, and if so why?
The Netherlands is the first country in Europe that took to my live appearances in a big way going back to 1988–90. Most of my first album was recorded in Amsterdam’s BimHuis and at the Groningen Jazz Marathon. I love Dutch people and I love touring there, it feels like home to me. I have probably spent more time in Holland than any place other than NYC. I don’t know, maybe its the Van Vliet connection—but they got what I do musically from the get-go
My eldest son Aaron, aged 29 has just returned from Indonesia and the Java islands. While he was there he watched the ‘shadow puppets’, known as the Wayang Kulit (I’m sure you know it). I am also a lover of Wayang Theatre and music.
There was an Exhibition in Amsterdam in May focused on Indonesian history and culture. I went with my sons. Waylang was featured surprisingly in modern costume.
It got me thinking, would or has Gary ever written and played music for a type of theatre like Wayang?
Would you enjoy a collaboration like that?
I would love that. My ex-wife Ling who was born in Malaysia had shadow puppets from Jakarta that used to festoon our walls, Waylang Theatre is a very spiritual part of Indonesian life…..
I know you once lived in Taiwan with your first wife. And undertook several music projects there, which you have written about China and Singapore.
Did being in epicentre of the Far East turn you into an antenna for all the different musical influences in that part of the world..?
Could be. I am quite a lover of Asian culture and can’t wait to play there again, it’s been a few years.
So when I was listening to Miles Davis playing ‘Ascenseur Pour l’ÉChafaud’ lately I could imagine you playing your guitar as accompaniment to a film like the Louis Malle one.
Do you like film music in the format they used on ‘Zabriskie Point ‘ or say ‘Easy Rider’? Would you prefer one artist covering the whole film score, instead of a compilation approach, say like in ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth ‘ (Nicholas Roeg)?
Bowie thought he could score it with his ‘Low’ period music, and Roeg scored it completely differently – because he thought Bowie’s music wouldn’t work.
Yes I love that Miles score. As you may know I have worked extensively live-scoring both silent and sound films all over the word since 1989 when I rolled out my score for the 1920 German expressionist classic “The Golem” with my childhood friend Walter Horn on keyboards. Since then I;ve developed at least a dozen live scores: http://garylucas.com/film.shtml
Is there a film project you would like to work on? To write and play a score for?
Yes but I don’t want to give it away here as someone is sure to steal the idea.
You played solo guitar to accompany the 1920 silent classic ‘Golem’. It’s an amazing piece of work.
Will you be doing more such projects?
Yes I hope so,
Are you waiting for a call for a film you would like to do?
No comment.
Despite all the many musical galaxies you have explored over your long career in music, the countless genres that you have visited, I’m still very much struck by what you wrote about the Blues once.
“I think I got caught up in the Blues spirit from birth—you know, “no one here gets out alive.” Its expressing all the pain and joy of the universe in music. I love to travel and see the world and play music for folks so I guess that derives from seeing many great musicians on tour in my hometown of Syracuse when I was a boy. To want to become one with them and live that life to me was like running away to join the circus.”
Do you think that any amount of experimentation/musical exploring of different genres can ever match the visceral experience of either listening to or playing the Blues?
Well the Blues are pretty high up there. It is really the thing that infuses all my playing albeit Chinese pop or Italian soundtrack music or Wagner or what have you
During the pandemic; because my work at the time was Health and Social Care; my colleagues and I worked the Covid ‘frontline’ everyday, and went through some terrible times trying not always successfully to keep those in our care alive.
It was the most challenging time for myself and my staff in a long career of 40 years (I have since retired).
Just to say that on the very few days off I had, I would go back to my house and curl up on the settee and try to shut it all out (not possible), and just listen to Chicago Blues long into the night. I don’t think I could have got through those terrible years and kept my sanity without those sweet Chicago Blues. I’m eternally grateful to the musicians who played such incredible music.
Yes, I find the Blues to be incredibly comforting and nurturing and empowering.
Just a few more questions Gary, if you don’t mind.
You talked about present day music once, and you implied that the music nowadays lacked the ‘spirituality’ of the music created in the ‘sixties’.
Do you still believe that?
Yes but really of course it’s totally subjective. I’m sure a young person resonates with his favorite music just as much as I do with a lot of the Golden Age of late 60’s music. Still it sounds way too manicured and manufactured these days for my taste (I’m speaking here about the most popular hip hop r&b which pretty much has taken over the world).,
In the past, I believe you implied that what was the most important to you as a musician, was to be in the moment – that particular performance – giving a 100%.
Not being ‘streamed’, ‘filtered’, ‘sampled’. Nowadays it’s the diablo ex machina in the music world. Can our quest for a higher power and transcendence via music, ever be defeated by digitalisation and unlimited access to all the music in the world at the click of an internet finger?
Well I hope not. I wouldn’t pretend to “know the answer” except to say that in an age when music has become so accessible and commodified—like water from a tap, push a button and it just flows forth– it has in my estimation lost some of its sacred aura.
I would like to think not.
Surely musicians like John Coltrane, Sun Ra, John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana, Nick Cave and Bob Marley can use their music to explore a spiritual/transcendental aspect of their lives?
Just as it is in Soul, Blues, Jazz, Church music and World Music. Do you agree?
Yes but again the music you reference may not impact folks today when listened to by younger generations in quite the same way it impacted you and I. Context may be everything. Recall Bob Dylan’s song “Too Much of Nothing”. That is the age in which we live in currently I fear. Hopefully the truth and beauty of what is now considered to be “ancient music” will still resonate and move new listeners to it across generations. But they would have to come to it with open minds and hearts first.
Gary is there one question you’ve never been asked that you wish you had been asked?
What’s your favorite color? Blue.
Earlier we talked about the shark (it’s a friendly shark) that never stops.
I think you can’t ever imagine stopping the creation of the music you love so much.
But if you did, might we see Gary Lucas disappearing into the desert or retiring to a secluded island?
I don’t think so. In any case , if it is an island I am retiring to, I for sure am bringing along my 1941 Gibson J-45.
I for one certainly hope not.. Your gift is your music, your life.
Thank you very much for your time. I know I have asked a lot of questions and I appreciate the amount of effort that you put into answering them.
Thank You Malcolm.
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Malcolm Paul
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The permanent closure of the 
The worst case scenario is that I will have to put everything in storage and find a temporary studio space until January. But I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.
While attempting to clear out my studio I found a few left over art boxes from the 
I also found these Nestrip boxes by my friend and co-curator of the Berlin show 
I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be bringing the Hell Bus to the all day 
Thanks to everyone who has 
