Interview: Ron Geesin

If the wider world knows the name Ron Geesin at all, it is as a footnote in the Pink Floyd story. He co-composed and orchestrated the band’s chart-topping 1970 album Atom Heart Mother. Geesin also collaborated with Roger Waters on the soundtrack to The Body documentary. But there’s a lot more to the veteran, John Peel-approved, audience-baiting, self-styled ‘sound architect’ than that, from poet to comedian and composer of film soundtracks. Warm new documentary An Improvised Life attempts to wrangle it all into some semblance of order, with contributions from Geesin’s celebrity admirers, including David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel and Pete Townshend. As part of Filmic 2016, he’s at the Watershed on May 8 with An Improvised Life director Tom McInnes for a screening of the film and to talk about his life and soundtrack work.

These days, Geesin (it’s pronounced with a hard ‘g’ – he’s very particular about that) lives in East Sussex but retains his Scottish burr and is just as mischievous and playful as ever. He’s also eager to talk. “Let’s go, man,” he chivvies.

OK, how did An Improvised Life come about?

I was down to do a solo live performance in Glasgow at the City Hall. I think it was March 2013. My dear lady wife Frankie contacted a friend of ours, Tom McInnes. She said, “Tom, Ron’s gonna do this thing and it might be his last performance due to the arthritis setting in.” She thought he’d turn up with a camera and just shoot a bit. But he turned up with four cameras and two sound recorders. Then he thought that he’d build a documentary round it, using it as a core. He then set off to make a full-blown documentary. And in fact, there wasn’t much of the performance left in the end.

Did you have any editorial input?

No, it was his project. In all matters to do with media work and live performing, I’ve always tended to let things go the way they’re gonna go rather than interfere in any way. In the live performance arena, that might be accepting whatever piano might be in the hall. I’ve played pianos where they’ve been unplayable. I take the action out and play them like a harp.

Are you satisfied with the portrait the film paints of you?

Not bad. Not bad. Nothing’s complete. I’m too complicated, too convoluted and too much of a neo-Renaissance man to have a complete portrait painted in one session. [Laughs] When you’ve seen all the angles, there’s another one.

You probably need a series.

Yeah, the big problem commercially is that I’ve never been above the radar to be worthy of a series. That’s an interesting problem. In some ways, I’ve worked through my life to be anonymous. And yet you can’t be anonymous when you’re doing original things.

Nonetheless, you do seem to attract musical celebrities.

Ha ha. I don’t think so any more. They were all attracted. This would be past tense. It was reported that some current group wanted to work with me, but I never heard anything. I’m not into working with other people, anyway. Yes, the Peter Gabriels and Pete Townshends and stuff, I don’t see them. We don’t meet up on a regular basis, obviously, cos they’re operating in a different stratum.

They all have warm memories of working with you, but you haven’t been kind about their music or rock music in general.

No, no. Rock music to me is the dire end of art. I have always been into classic early jazz and ethnic music before it was called World Music, and all the best classical music. Everything from mediaeval right through the French impressionists and the futurists.

So would it be fair to say that the interaction between yourself and the rock world has been a one-way street? They’re impressed by you but you’re not impressed by them.

Er, yeah, that’s true. You can put that down.

Let’s talk about Music from the Body. That seems to be one of those rare soundtracks which is better known than the film for which it was composed.

Oh yes. True.

It also kicked off your relationship with Pink Floyd.

The involvement had been growing for at least a year before that. The reason for my working with Roger [Waters] was that the producer, Tony Garnett, and Roy Battersby, the director, came to me recommended by John Peel. And they said, “Do you do songs?” And I said, “Certainly not. I do not do songs. But I know a man who does.” And that was Roger Waters.

And that led to Atom Heart Mother.

Because of the problem of trying to stick together bits of what was then called The Amazing Pudding, they said: “Ron, what can you do with this? It’s a rough edit of a piece we’re trying to make for side one of an album.” So they trusted me a great deal to say that. There was an element of trust and an element of panic and desperation.

Is it fair to say that you have a fairly ambivalent attitude towards being best known to the wider world for Atom Heart Mother, in that you’re pleased to have done it but are eager not to be defined by it.

Oh absolutely correct. That’s why I called the book The Flaming Cow [that’s The Flaming Cow: The Making of Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother, published by The History Press]. It’s a minced oath for The Fucking Cow.

You’ve been reported as saying various contradictory things about it from being proud of it and delighted with the regular royalty cheques to saying that it’s a complete disaster. What’s the truth?

I don’t ever remember saying it was a complete disaster. The early performances were. The live performances were a disgrace. They were uncoordinated. They famous awful one was the Hyde Park one, just after we’d recorded it. The actual EMI session had to come out reasonably, otherwise the album wouldn’t have been issued at all. One section was recorded a beat out, but that worked out all right. That’s another example of doing something and letting it find its own slot. My best phrase for the whole thing is that it was ‘a good piece of crafting’. Because I had to craft art and new melodies given an existing framework which was the backing tape. That was all they could get together. I mean, they left me with a tape and fucked off to America. In a lot of ways that was fortunate, because I was able to get on with it without being titted about.

Were you surprised when the album subsequently topped the chart?

Oh yeah. In those days, one just did the next thing, whatever it was. I never had a manager. I never had any kind of official advice from anybody.

There’s an argument that back in the late ’60s and early ’70s it was a bit of a golden age for creative musicians, because record companies didn’t have a clue what was going on but were happy to chuck money at the unlikeliest of experimental bands in the hope that they might secure a hit. As a result, artists were given unprecedented latitude.

Yeah, well mind you, so they should. But there’s a lot of control. You might see that scene then as you have just described. But there’s a lot of knowing where the bread’s buttered. I was particular friends with Roger Waters at that time and he used to say to me quite a lot that he thought he should get out of the Floyd and get on with his proper creativity. And I said, “Yes, so you should.” But he never did, because he knew in which area his cake was jammed. Whereas, if I wanted to be really properly outrageous I was. Getting back to An Improvised Life, it’s very funny to hear Pete Townshend saying that I was very badly behaved. I thought that was fantastic. Especially coming from him. That must have been extremely badly behaved. And of course I wasn’t. I was just playing with the audience and pushing the edges a bit.

Do you feel you benefited from your association with Floyd?

The Music from the Body album is still available on CD. But that hasn’t benefited my output. I’m sure people who are Floyd fanatics have got Music from the Body. They haven’t gone and bought much of my original material. So it’s not helped really. I only believe in doing something, and if people find it that’s jolly good. I’m hopeless at promoting anything.

You’ve got to earn enough to get by, though.

Well, that’s right. But I only just have. It’s what I’m still doing. I’ve been getting on with the next album this morning. I won’t stop doing things, because that’s all I know.

The other interesting thing about your relationship with Pink Floyd is that you’ve managed to maintain your friendship with both David Gilmour and Roger Waters. That must be something of a high-wire act given the acrimony between them.

David was the one I didn’t know that well at the time. We never had reason to not be friends. He doesn’t live far from me. We don’t meet up for a pint. It would be good, but we don’t. Yet. It might happen. There’s still time. I might have a few blues records that we’d have in common. I fell out with Roger, because he was being an arse. He was being overblown and paranoid. Then recently I got this very nice email from him. It was to do with permission to use something. He said very nice things in that email. So that’s fine. But I’m not really interested in friendship problems. I’m interested in proceeding. It’s a bit like if you’re a parent and you’ve got kids who have problems, you can’t really advise them. You can be ready for when they need help.

So essentially you’re comparing the members of Pink Floyd to naughty children?

Ha ha ha. No no no. You might well say that. I couldn’t possibly comment. You’re trying to put phrases into my brain. This is the problem with talking. As I have said in one of my little aphorisms: talking is all right, if accompanied by an adult.

Let’s talk about your film soundtrack work. When you come to Bristol the Watershed is showing Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Yes, I think that’s overkill. Christ, there’s an hour of me and then Sunday Bloody Sunday.

How did you get involved in doing film soundtracks then?

That’s a big question. Right. I started off doing a few commercials. A 30 second commercial in those days was 28-and-a-half seconds of sound because you had to have a bit of silence in between. I remember doing a gig in Wimbledon. It was an unsuitable situation. It was a works party.

You did a works party?

A works party. Because of my humour in performance, I slipped into a bit of cabaret. So I got some bookings that were in the cabaret range. So at this gig, this chap came up to me and he was a producer of TV commercials. He said: “I really enjoyed that piano solo. Would you like to make the soundtrack for a headache commercial?” It was Phensic, which was an aspirin product. So I did a bit of clattering piano playing.

You were soundtracking a headache?

That’s the idea. I don’t know if that was the very first, but that was the kind of thing that would have drawn me in to that world. Because all I had was cheek and a bit of technique, generally. Self taught.

But it’s a fairly big leap from a commercial to a film soundtrack.

Well, wait a minute. We’ve not done that bit yet. So I did one or two commercials, because when you’re in that world you meet someone else. If you work through an advertising agency, they’re likely to use you for something else unless you make a complete balls-up. I soon got fed up with commercials. It wasn’t original enough for me. I couldn’t develop my expression. I could do a crafting job, with possibly an original melody. So I slid sideways into documentaries. That allowed me much more creativity, for less money. I took a step down financially in order to take a step up creatively. Out of that, I did the music and sound for a documentary called Shapes in the Wilderness for BBC Omnibus. It was about art therapy in mental hospitals. The film was good and what I did for it was good. John Schlesinger happened to see that, and he said to his henchmen: “I’ve got to have that man to do the music.” So the men in big black coats came round. That’s how it happened. I know that because Schlesinger told me so. I got Steve O’Rourke, Floyd’s manager, to do the deal, because I couldn’t stand the idea of bargaining in the big time. I didn’t know who John Schlesinger was. I phoned a mate in an advertising agency and said “Who’s John Schlesinger?” So I found out that he was quite famous and had just done Midnight Cowboy. So I did that. There isn’t a lot of original music in the film, but all that there is is mine. Mozart did the rest.

You said you don’t like working with other people, but composing a film soundtrack is surely a collaborative effort in some respects?

If it’s done well, it comes out looking like a collaboration. It goes back to crafting. The good bit of crafting is the ability to make something look as though it was all grown at once, when in fact it was grown in two parts completely separately. In all the works I’ve done for film, that’s not always been the case. If I’ve not enjoyed the film, or bits of it, I’ve been rather sarcastic in the music. It’s got little jokes saying, “This is fucking rubbish.”

What films are we talking about?

I can’t remember.

Oh, how very convenient.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Nothing big. I’d have walked out because I couldn’t do it.

Is there a particular discipline involved in composing film soundtracks that doesn’t apply to your ordinary work?

Wait a minute. Define ‘ordinary work’.

I’m not going to because you don’t do ordinary work. Let’s call it your creative work.

Well, everything’s creative. I can’t help it. I cannot copy anything. It comes out rubbish.

OK, let’s come at this from another angle: did you enjoy doing soundtrack work?

Oh yeah. For two reasons. One, it gave me a framework. Going back to your question, one of the reasons why I was good at film work was that I enjoyed the restriction of the framework. I accepted the framework. Exceptionally, you could go to the director and say, “The only way I can do this is if you lengthen the picture by 20 seconds, because there’s no way I can get from here to there in 23 and a half seconds. I need 43 and a half seconds.” One might say that, if you’re getting on very well with the director. But when I was banging away flat out, the picture was done and you filled the holes.

Would you have liked to have done more of them?

Yes. The one thing I really regret is not being asked to do a super-huge futuristic science fiction kind of thing.

You wanted to do Star Wars?

Ha ha. No, no, no, no. That’s too trite a Hollywood story.

2001 then?

Yeah. Something like that. I don’t know what these pictures are. But because of my sound palette, I could have done a great job. I’m still available.

Your albums used to say ‘File Under Ron Geesin’. And your work is notoriously difficult to pin down. Do you enjoy confusing people?

Oh yeah. I think it’s essential. That was a sarcastic comment about the mindless need for pigeonholing. The fact that if someone says, “What do you do?” they just want a convenient phrase. And once they’ve got the convenient phrase they don’t look at your work at all.