Simeon Coxe III, Stockholm 2011. © Carl A
Want legend? Want demi-god? Want a juicy Silver Apple to chew on? Meet Simeon Coxe III, who qualifies for all of that and then some. Silver Apples’ (originally Coxe and drummer Danny Taylor, who died in 2005) mind-boggling mix of rock, poetry and electronics in the late 60s transcended everything, and I mean everything. Eerie singing, strange melodies and ultramodern rhythms lovingly hugging electronic oscillations galore from their own gadget called, aptly, “The Simeon”. Thus was a foundation chiseled for German Kraut-explorations, Suicide’s suavely brutal synth evergreens, Throbbing Gristle’s homemade and existential electronics, Stephen Morris’ drumming, Martin Hannett’s production values and a million more ripples on the water into which Silver Apples threw the very first gemstone of creation.
Mr Coxe is seemingly as young as then, energized by success and by the respect of both young and old fans alike. What a guy! Not only a sonic pioneer in so many ways, but also a great human being. Yes, he builds his own synths! Yes, he’s an accomplished painter! Yes, he broke his neck in a car crash and was paralyzed! Yes, he survived and worked his way back! When Coxe enters the stage and revs up his sonic gadgets and audio-emotional vessels, he moves from nice, well mannered, hard working artist to a vibrating poetic and equally peyotic space person. Still beyond and still ahead after almost 45 years of music- and art making. Who can beat that?
Could you ever imagine that you'd be here in Stockholm in 2011 in some club with loads of multi-generations of fans?
The multi-generational thing never occurred to me. I was never looking that far into the future but I always wanted to play in Europe back in the day. I imagine this is what you're talking about. Back in the 60s and 70s, when Danny (Taylor) and I were the original Silver Apples, we envisioned playing in Europe a lot, and I think that it was on the books to do it. But when the record label found itself in financial trouble and they started pulling back on the touring and the sponsorship, we just never made it across. But I always envisioned playing Stockholm and the whole Scandinavian area, because we knew there were record sales here. So I always wanted to come.
If one could sum up the early phase, I would say there was a lot of spontaneity, in the concept and the live stuff and the recordings. It was just really spontaneous stuff. Has that spirit stuck with you?
Absolutely. Always. I don't have the patience to be a meticulous recording person/musician. I work pretty much from the gut, from the heart, and I kind of just let the mind follow along. I try not to think too much. I find that if I think too much I get in my own way, so I want to record spontaneously, one cut. That’s how I do it because it's more like performing, which I really love to do. That's my main love in life, performing, so that's the way I do it.
Do you think that there is the possibility of creativity within a perfect structure, a perfect order, or do you think there needs to be some chance element to make things exciting?
I think it has to be according to your own individuality. I know that there are certain artists out there who do beautiful stuff that work on this meticulous, almost engineering kind of level. One that quickly comes to mind is Damon Albarn. I just think he's a marvelous musician, but he is meticulous and precise. Another one I would mention is Geoff Barrow, who can be that way when he records with Portishead, but he can also be spontaneous, as with BEAK>. So there is a guy who works both ways and I'm envious of that. I can only work the one way. I just play and what happens happens.
Do you believe that frequency affects emotion?
Probably. I don't understand the science of it. I just know that there are certain levels and also certain pitches that make me feel good, so I tend to gravitate towards them.
Is that something that you consciously use to make people feel good in a live setting?
Yeah, I think that if it makes me happy, then it must be making somebody else happy, if they are being sensitive to it.
You've been performing for a long time and in different phases. Do you ever feel that you get high on performing, almost like a psychedelic high?
Every night. I never get bored. Every time I do a song is a new thing. It could be anyone from the ones that have sort of a loose structure where I can do what I want to pretty much on it, to others that are fairly rigid. I wouldn't say rigid but fairly formally structured, where I know I have to change chords at a certain time and all that kind of stuff, in order to stay true to the melody. I don't even get tired of those because every night, there's just some different little thing that happens that makes it a new song for me. And I feel excited about it as though I'm doing it for the first time.
I can't really see that happening in a rock context. Your music is loose enough to make it happen.
I deliberately structure my set so that I can have a formal kind of piece and then a loose one. And then a formal one, and then a loose one, and it's kind of like a discipline thing for me to do the formal thing. I don't want to let it get just out of control-loose you know, one after another, so I kind of alternate them like that to keep myself in control.
In terms of a general high or a buzz, have you ever experienced something like an extra sensory stuff or lost yourself on stage?
No. The only time I ever lost myself on stage was fairly recently, actually in May, in China, when they had like seven strobe lights that went on all at once at different rhythms and that threw me into such a feet-off-the-floor strange place that I didn't know if I was passed out or if I was going be sick. I just had to close my eyes and almost stopped playing, and just had some of the oscillators continue to cook until I could feel the strobes were calming down a little bit. And then when I did my encore I got hold of the light guy and said, “turn off the damn strobes, please! Or I'm not going to go back out there”, so he shut it off.
Yeah, that sounds potentially epileptic.
It had that effect. The strobes discombobulated my electrical impulses inside the brain that make me able to think.
When I’ve read what you've said about the early phase, you mentioned not being aware of that sort of more scholastic art music, and that that was something that you got caught up with afterwards. Can you see yourself as having integrated any notions or concepts or teachings from that more scholastic vein?
No. You know, I've been interested ever since I learned about the theory of atonal, the theory of dissonance, the theory of arhythmic structures and things like that. I've been interested but only from an amusement or entertainment point of view. I don't like to do it myself. I mean, I love dissonance. Dissonance to me is an amazing tension-relieving kind of tool, and I think that music that doesn't have dissonance gets boring after a while. But that's not because I learned it from some concept that somebody wrote in a book that I studied in school – it’s because of the way I feel. I just play music the way I feel it and I don't have any musicology background at all.
At that time, was there someone around that you could say was an inspiration in this very free-spirited sense, this experimental sense?
In a way, Sun Ra. I used to go to a little club in New York called “Slugs” which was way down on the lower East side, in what you would call a bad drug neighborhood, and I remember he played every Thursday night. My girlfriend and I and sometimes some friends used to go down and we'd sometimes be the only people in the whole club, and Sun Ra would just play all night long and I remember just being totally enthralled by what I heard and by the freedom that he allowed the music to have. He would have musicians standing out on the street corner or in the men’s room, standing on a toilet. He'd have a sax player there. You’d go in there to take a leak and there would be a guy playing the sax. His band was just all over the place. He'd go upstairs into the apartments and play out the window, during the set. And I just thought that was marvelous and I'm sure some of that has to have rubbed off. Music doesn't have to be a formal and serious matter. It's from the soul.
Even given that sort the proto-experimental attitude that you've always had, can you find some other strains or something, for instance in the music that you've grown up with?
I hear Fats Domino in everything I do…
Wow… Sun Ra and Fats Domino...
Yes, they are my two heroes. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, I used to go down to Rampart Street in New Orleans where all of the old artists were all playing in these bars – what they called at the time race music, which is now called R'n'B or soul. They weren't like the venues we think of today. They just played in bars. And I'd go there and there'd be Big Joe Turner or Big Mama Thornton or Little Richard or Fats Domino. I mean, you just never knew when you walked in the door who was going be there, and many times I'd be the only white person in the place and nobody cared. Everybody was there for the music. I was fifteen years old, underage, but they didn't care. New Orleans is very loose and so I'd stay in the back of the room and just listen to the music in a trance. I grew up with Fats Domino in my veins and I still hear him and the triplet pianos and the way he sings, the way he structures his songs, the simplicity of it all, all through my music, and I shout his name from the hilltop.
You've always been associated with the East Coast and a sort of harsher sound, but at the same time I can associate your style of singing on the two first albums with an almost West Coast-ish sort of psychedelic rock...
I don't know where that comes from. I'm definitely an East Coast person. I have a country background, and I was born and raised in the South, so there's maybe some bluegrass or some country music in my vocals, but it's not meant to be psychedelic. I have no idea what the word psychedelic means.
I think that the musicians on the West Coast just probably had the same sources of inspiration – blues and early American music. Anyway, early on, you collaborated with a poet on the lyrics?
There were several poets that I worked with. Stanley Warren was one. We worked a lot with the first record. We worked with, I guess, about five or six poets. We put a notice up on the bulletin board at in the bar at Max’s Kansas City that said, “Rock band would be interested in lyrics. Submit poetry”, and gave our phone number. We got dozens of poets who wanted to be involved. Stanley Warren had some nice stuff and there were several other people who had nice things, and we thought “OK, rather than write our own stuff for the first record, we'll involve these poets. Let's get them in here. Lets make this a group effort.” And so that's what we had there on the first record. The second record we still had a few poems left over from one or two of the other guys but I basically wrote the stuff on the second record. And the third I wrote totally.
And you continued in that vein, writing your own stuff?
Yeah. I thought it was an interesting idea to have poets submit lyrics, but that was just an idea for the first record and I really liked writing my own stuff.
Can you see a recurring theme, lyrically? Can you see a pattern?
No. What comes out is always a surprise.
This will to experiment that you have, what would you ascribe it to? Where do you think it comes from?
I'm impatiently intolerant of boredom. I need to have something to tickle my fancy and make me feel challenged. And so I guess that's the root of it. I just can't stand to be bored.
I assume that when you were a kid, it was the same?
The same, it's always been that way.
Itchy pants… Were you encouraged into art and creative endeavors as a kid?
Yes, by my grandmother. My parents had no interest whatsoever. There wasn't even a record player in the house. There was no music whatsoever. But my grandmother had an art background. She had studied in Paris when she was a young lady and so forth. So she taught me how to paint when I was quite a young kid and that kind of interest in art stuck with me.
And you're still painting, right?
Oh yeah, I'm very active as a visual artist. Inbetween tours.
I assume it's a great thing to mix these two.
Oh, I love it, yeah. I can't do them both together, but I love to jump in head first into one or the other.
Well, except for the itchy pants, the boredom aspect, is there something you can see as a general inspiration for you, a creative source?
Just to be very broad, the human experience, the inter-relationship among all human beings whether it's a love thing, or a companionship thing or a group thing... I think human beings are fascinating creatures. I'm not one of those people that feels horribly guilty that we're here, that we're destroying the landscape. I don't think we are anymore than an elephant is... So I don't feel any guilt at all. I love being human and I love human beings, I love all things that we do. I'm very happy to be here. Maybe next time I'll come back as a worm? That's still okay. I have been a human and that was cool.
How would you yourself describe Silver Apples’ music to someone who's never ever heard of it?
Electronic pop. If you want to get just simple words. That tells you that it's electronic and that tells you that it's not one of these serious, studied laboratory experiments. These academic approaches to music that I have no interest in whatsoever... So “pop” is a big word for me. I'm proud of it, and “electronic” of course, because that's what I do.
I assume that bands or young people send you records all the time. Apart from that, do you also try to actively keep up with what's going on in this vein?
I'm not a real student. I don't go to record stores and seek out new stuff. I love it when the musicians come backstage and say, “give it a chance on the road, listen to this”. I love that, and I contact them back. So I have an awareness of the new music just because of that, because I'm close to the musicians, having been on the same stage with them. Playing festivals is a real rich thing for me because I get to meet with all these other guys and girls and exchange musical ideas and just move on. So in that sense I'm up on it, but I'm not a student of it.
I would say that it's not an understatement to say that your work in Silver Apples has been hugely influential on the electronica scene and on so many scenes, from Kraut, Suicide and onwards... What does it feel like, to have played such an instrumental part?
It's a huge honour for me. I feel completely overwhelmed that some of the most beautiful music that I've heard out there has its roots in my little ideas. It's a huge experience. It's humbling. I'm not sure I understand why. But it's there, so I accept it. I'm not going to say “no, no, no, that's not true”. I know it's true, because I've talked to enough guys about the way they feel, the way they compose, to know that I have had an influence. But to tell you the truth, I never started off thinking that it would be that way. I was always in awe of other people and wanting to be like them, and wanted to be as good as them and never thought I would ever be, you know. And now I have people telling me that they wish they could be as good as me.
So apart from that – the joy of being a human being and the joy of having these things projected on you – what else makes you really, really happy?
My little kittycat, that's one thing. My girlfriend. My boat, a sailing boat. Very simple and direct. I'm not a complicated person. Maybe that is why I'm bored unless I'm being creative, because I'm otherwise a simple person?
Just one final thing in terms of the recording stuff… Do you actually work with sequencing, computers and MIDI-stuff or is it just the same there: “Hands on”?
No, I do work with the new stuff when I'm recording. When I'm performing, the rhythm tracks, the drum tracks are sequenced and sampled, because Danny died. Rather than get a new drummer and teach the new drummer all of this stuff and then have him being unfairly compared to Danny, I just figured that Danny would be happy that I sampled him. I went through banks of tapes of him practicing in the studio, found all of his sounds, sampled them, categorized them, libraried them and now, when I go to make a new song, I can pull Danny's sounds out and figure out what I think he might have done, and so it's me working with Danny, the same as I've always done. We used to always work together like that. He would say: “what do you think of this?”, and I'd say, “try that”, and he would go (drum sounds)… I've always been a little bit involved in his rhythmic structures, so it's all the same. I think that he'd be very happy that I'm sampling him, and that he's out there on the stage with me still.
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