12/7/2022 0 Comments Bill bruford prism kigb crimson![]() ![]() Way back then, was it your life’s goal to play jazz? Would you have bypassed rock entirely if you’d had your choice? So your new box set traces Earthworks from 1987 through the mid-2000s, but you’d been deeply into jazz since you were a teenager. Oh, I don’t know - “Grapevine,” probably. ![]() What was your favorite Motown song to play? It was great.īut since then: No, I don’t play anymore, and a lot of people seem to find that very weird, but I don’t find that strange at all. We had a nine-piece band, I think, horns and the lot. We had a local Motown band which was great for a couple of weeks. ![]() And playing Motown music is such fun - holy cow. … I mean, I may have played a couple of Motown things in the first year off. When was the last time you actually sat down at the drums? In a wide-ranging chat with RS, Bruford reflected on why he never looked back after quitting Yes, the thrills and frustrations of playing with King Crimson, his short-lived tenure with Genesis, making the jump from rock to jazz, his mixed feelings on the word “prog,” and more. (Click here to read Bruford’s thoughts on 12 of his favorite moments from his extensive discography.) In a broader way, it drives home how serious Bruford’s engagement with jazz was - and how, from the moment he left Yes at the height of their success to join King Crimson, a band that had blown his mind in 1969 and that he would play with on and off through 1997, he was always a musician who followed his own compass. Across more than 20 CDs and DVDs, the collection charts Earthworks’ evolution from a quirky, eclectic group built around Bruford’s Simmons electronic drums to a lean, muscular acoustic postbop outfit. BILL BRUFORD PRISM KIGB CRIMSON PLUSOne of Bruford’s latest archival projects is Earthworks Complete, a massive box set featuring the band’s entire studio and live output, plus extensive bonus material. “I confess to being very soppy about all this, and I cannot help but acknowledge the weakness of wanting my work to live on after I’ve gone.” “I’m afraid I’ve got sucked into that whole ‘managing your legacy’ thing,” Bruford says. There’s other things I want to do now: write books and be with my grandkids and so forth.” And I’m at the stage in life now where I just can’t summon up that commitment to play any kind of music, really. “You can’t half-ass play at rock, or at jazz, either, you’ve got to play jazz or play rock - or something in between like I always was. “I think to play rock - to play any kind of music, actually, but particularly rock - for a drummer, you have to be completely committed to it,” he tells RS via phone from his home in Surrey, England. Since he announced he was calling it quits in 2009, the prog drumming legend - who worked with Yes, King Crimson, and Genesis before founding his own long-running jazz group, Earthworks, and came in at number 16 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Drummers list - hasn’t performed in public a single time, and he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. Retirement is a fluid concept in music, but at 10 years and counting, Bill Bruford’s just might be the real deal. ![]()
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