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The First International MelloFest 2008
INTERVIEW No. 3

DAVE COUSINS & ROBERT KIRBY
(Strawbs)

Nick Awde: I'd like to bring Dave Cousins and Robert Kirby up to the stage. We're fortunate to have a star line-up tonight and here is a uniquely wonderful double act. They'll be playing for us tonight - and you'll see Robert go from one Mellotron to the other.

Robert Kirby: I'll fly over the stage!

NA: Now, as Dave has repeatedly told me, he's not a Mellotron player. However he has been the central figure of the Strawbs ever since he started the band, one that has been a consistent Mellotron band, and which very much cut its own furrow. Robert Kirby joined them for much of that journey. Today Dave runs several versions simultaneously of the Strawbs. There's the Acoustic Strawbs - in fact, I remember reviewing their first ever gig.

Dave Cousins: I hope you enjoyed it!

NA: And there are also the electric Strawbs and classic era Strawbs. How do you label them now?

DC: Christ knows - because the band continually evolves! I tell you what, it was lovely seeing David Cross here because I think the best shows the Strawbs ever did was when we were doing a double bill with King Crimson in America. That was absolutely phenomenal because, despite the fact that both bands used Mellotron, we used it in different ways and the sounds we created were quite different. And of course Robert Fripp played guitar in a different way in Crimson to the way we did. The Strawbs were much more in, I suppose, in a rock vein and Crimson were much more experimental than we were. But without a shadow of a doubt the most satisfying gigs I ever did in my life were when we did a double bill with King Crimson in the 70s.

NA: Did you swap as headliners on that tour?

DC: Mostly Crimson headlined but when we went to Canada we headlined for a couple of shows. I felt embarrassed then because I thought they were so bloody good. I thought: "Christ I don't want to follow that lot!" But what we always tried to do was to make sure that the people who followed us had a bloody difficult time to do.

NA: Robert Kirby came into the band as a playing member slightly later although his association reaches back much further as arranger on various Strawbs albums. Very famously you started off as Nick Drake's arranger - you were at college together. In the "Mellotron" book it becomes quickly clear that not only did most of you come from the same regions of Britain but also most of you have known each other from the beginning, worked with each other, toured with each other or even borrowed each other's--

DC: --wives--

NA: --Mellotrons! Tony Banks of Genesis bought his first Tron off Robert Fripp, Robert Webb of England ended up with anther Genesis Mellotron and so on. What happened to your own Mellotrons?

DC: I don't know, but we ended up using a double manual Mellotron which was specially reinforced for the road. It took four people to carry the thing - and when Robert passed out on top of it, it took eight men. We took this bloody great thing all around the States.

RK: The roadies certainly hated it, they said it was twice as heavy as a grand piano.

DC: But [former Strawbs keyboardist/Mellotronist] John Hawken at that time had just left the band and we decided: "Right, we're going to carry on." So we got in John Mealing to play piano and organ. But then I said: "Hang on a tick, let's get Robert as well" - so we had two keyboard players touring the States. We had a grand piano with that bloody great pickup thing they used to clamp onto them plus John also played a Hammond B3 and a Moog. Robert had the double manual Mellotron and a Fender Rhodes and another Moog on top of that. So it was an enormous sound.

NA: And how many roadies was that?

DC: About two. We were cheapskates.

NA: So what are you going to play for us tonight?

DC: Well, first let me explain that the first time I met Robert I'd heard the arrangements he had with Nick Drake and I thought: "This is wonderful!" I got in touch with him and said: "We're making this album could you come and do some arrangements for us?" And he did the arrangements on the "Grave New World" album. One song was called "Heavy Disguise", an incredibly difficult part. In fact the first quartet of players couldn't play the thing--

RK: --five of them. A quintet!

DC: Quintet was it? Well we had to say to the five of them: "We're awfully sorry chaps..." We paid them but nonetheless they couldn't play the bloody arrangement. So Robert then got the principals of the London Symphony Orchestra in each section to play it and they found it difficult. But since it was a beautifully written part, it eventually worked out fantastically. Robert then did arrangements for us over the years and when we decide to go out on tour after John left we brought Robert along. What he did was to do the orchestral arrangements he'd done on the albums by putting them onto the Mellotron, something I think was a different approach to what most other people were doing, which was to treat the Mellotron as an instrument in its own right. Instead Robert brought the orchestral touch via the Mellotron to what we did. And there's something I had never realised until tonight when he produced the same sheet music which he used at the time. I always thought he was busking it but I realise now that he was reading it all the time!

RK: The stuff that people know from earlier Strawbs like "New World" are either Blue Weaver or John Hawken Mellotron parts, so I had to replicate what they did when I joined. I'm not a busker so I had to write it all out. I used to have a stuffed monkey on my Mellotron and what they didn't know was as soon as Dave or [guitarist] Dave Lambert looked over I'd hide the music under the stuffed monkey. I was reading all the time, I had to read. Well, obviously the latest stuff I knew without having to read.

DC: Shame on you. I've only just found this out. If I'd known at the time I'd have fired him immediately! But the Strawbs songs were different to what other people do because they derived from acoustic guitar songs, if you like, rather than being prog rock songs or parts. So Robert had to make things sound as though they were big brass sections. And we also found when we recorded a Mellotron you had to double-track it because it sounded such a load of crap on its own just as one section. So everything we ever did with a Mellotron was double-tracked. So, this is the song "New World" from the "Grave New World" album.

[They play "New World"]

DC: That song Robert inherited from the original recording which Blue Weaver played. This next song is "Grace Darling" for which Robert did the arrangement. It was written about the heroine who died about 180 years ago rescuing people from the wreck of a shipwreck. We went down to Charterhouse School and recorded the song in the chapel there. Robert did an arrangement with 12-year-old choir boys as well as the organ part. He's going to demonstrate his superior virtuosity by rushing from doing from the choir part on one Mellotron to the organ part on the second Mellotron on the other part of the stage here.

RK: I'm going to do the choir and YOU'RE going to do the organ part.

DC: But anyway it started with unaccompanied choristers...

[They play "Grace Darling"]

RK: Thank you very, very much!

DC: Now you know why they double-tracked the Mellotron!

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Mellotron progressive rock prog rock British invasion Tony Banks (Genesis), Mike Pinder (Moody Blues), Ian McDonald (King Crimson, Foreigner), Woolly Wolstenholme (Barclay James Harvest), Greg Lake (King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer), John Wetton (King Crimson, UK, Asia), Nick Magnus (Autumn, Steve Hackett Band), Martin Orford (IQ, Jadis), Roine Stolt (Flower Kings, Transatlantic, Tangent), Jakko Jakszyk (Level 42, 21st Century Schizoid Band, Tangent), John Hawken (Renaissance, Strawbs), Doug Rayburn (Pavlov's Dog), Tony Clarke (Moody Blues), David Cross (King Crimson), Dave Cousins (Strawbs), Blue Weaver (Strawbs, Bee Gees), Robert Kirby (Strawbs), Robert Webb (England), Dave Gregory (XTC), Andy McCluskey (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson) provides a drummer's view of working with four classic Mellotron bands, and there are perspectives from Geoff Unwin, the first Mellotronics demonstrator, John Bradley & Martin Smith of Streetly Electronics, the original makers of the Mellotron, and Planet Mellotron's Andy Thompson Nick Awde