An Interview With Craig Leon

Recall for us the first time you ever became aware of Suicide and your impressions of the band. Why do you wanted to produce / be involved with the band?

Suicide was active very, very early on in the history of the NY underground scene. Actually they predate CBGB’s. I saw Suicide before I’d even moved up there on one of my earlier trips to New York in ’72 or ’73. They’re from the New York Dolls era. They were part of the Mercer Arts Center scene, which was the precursor to CBGB’s, although Max’s Kansas City was also around then. Alan and Marty were always doing the same style as what they did later.

Suicide were one of the first bands I saw in New York as an A&R guy. A writer and A&R friend of mine named Paul Nelson introduced me to a couple of other labels saying, “If you don’t like the deal from Sire, maybe you can get a job somewhere else.” So I auditioned for a job at this one label; it was after I had just seen Suicide. They asked me what band I would sign out of all the bands I’d seen in New York during the few weeks that I’d been there. I said “Suicide” and they kicked me out the door immediately so I went to work at Sire.

When you went into the studio to record Suicide (1977), it’s said that you wanted an “Americanized Rock’n’Roll Can” with dub influences. Specifically, it’s been said you were looking for a sound similar to Can’s ‘Yoo Doo Right’ from Monster Movie (1969). Can you tell us how you came to put those influences together?

I thought about the American Rock and Roll tradition which I felt that Suicide evoked to an even greater extent than keyboard based avant-garde. They loved old Rockabilly like Sun Records releases and Soul like James Brown. Actually Suicide wasn’t a synth band. They didn’t even have a synth. The Suicide record just had a combo organ and an old cocktail lounge organ that had a little rhythm box on the side. All their rhythms are from that. No synthesizer at all.

Marty Rev, the keyboard genius, ran everything through a bunch of old valve tube radios, which distorted everything to death. It all came out of one output and that was the sound on the record. I just applied some of the reggae stuff I’d learned from Lee Perry, like repeat echoes, and echo feeding back on itself, which is also from Sun Records, and microtonal EQ, which comes from records by Can and a number of the German bands’ recordings of the early 1970s.

Can you share with us the reported concept behind your solo album, Nommos (1981)? Your album shares some of the same sound elements; urban, primitive and electronic. The music was inspired by the Dogon tribe of Mali. The Nommos, according to the Dogon legend, lived on a planet that orbits another star in the Sirius system. How did this story become important to you?

Back in the early 70s the Brooklyn Museum hosted a comprehensive collection of sculptures and other forms of visual art of the Dogon tribe of Mali whose religion is based in reveries and recollections of a visit from an extraterrestrial species they named the “Nommos.” Years after experiencing the exhibit, I remained fascinated by the idea of the alien visitors and the very precise information that the elders of the tribe related to the anthropologists who they encountered.

I was not so much intrigued by the actual music of the tribe, In fact I knew very little about it. It was something about their art. Virtually all of the art of the Dogon relates to events that they claim took place in their early history. These events have shaped their culture, mythology and religion.They don’t think it’s a mythology, they think it’s real, so for them it is real. They have a theory that extraterrestrial beings from another planet, called “ Nommos” came and accomplished the same task that angels in our culture did (Catholic culture, Protestant culture or whatever). Apparently, the “Nommos” came from the sky and taught them how to create the basic tools of civilization, construction of buildings, farming and so on.

The Dogon were very specific about quite a bit regarding these beings. They knew how they looked, they knew how they functioned on the Earth, differently than the way people did, but more interestingly, they had a very complicated philosophical system that they said this was taught to them by these other beings and was passed down from generation to generation orally.

This oral tradition becomes the roots of the Egyptian religion, which is very close by African standards to where the Dogon live, and it is indeed very similar.

Their story also describes where the Nommos came from. They said that they knew specifically where they came from and they described a double star planet system (Sirius) that revolves around itself, that has planet and that this one is a dead planet and that one is alive. It takes a number of Earth seasons for one to go around the other; and they knew that planets go around their Sun. That’s old stuff that’s not so modern, it was forgotten for a thousand years or so, but the ancients knew that.

So they were very specific and there is a star system that does that and it is in the place where the Dogon said the Nommos came from, so it’s kind of a good coincidence.

I thought “Maybe they were correct, maybe this is true,” so I decided make a bit of a speculative fiction piece of music about not so much making the music of the Dogon, but what the music of the “people” from the other planet might be. What was the indigenous music of their planet?

Nommos was originally released on the Takoma record label founded by guitarist John Fahey in the 50s. The label has a amazing history of releasing blues, raga and even avant-garde albums during its history. How did your album find it’s way onto the Takoma label?

John Fahey’s manager, Denny Bruce, was and still is a good friend of mine. He was running the Takoma label with John at the time as well as managing John, Leo Kottke, Jack Nitzsche and quite a few other artists. One day Denny mentioned to me that there was a slot open at the label for a synthesizer project and asked if would I be interested in filling it.

At first this seems incongruous since most record collectors and fans associate Takoma with being the home of eclectic acoustic guitar driven Americana material. However, Fahey was an early champion of and participant in the mid 20th century American avant garde composition scene. A number of his early projects utilized the techniques of musique concrète for instance. He also had released recordings of synthesiser pioneers on the label in the past. So it wasn’t all that strange.

After some initial loose conversations we went in for a more official meeting with John to discuss the project. John was an avid fan of Harry Smith’s seminal Anthology of American Folk Music set. I told him about the proposed “Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music” set that I wanted to do with the first piece being about the Dogon story. He expressed great enthusiasm about the idea and we were off to the races.

Originally, I wanted the record to be orchestral with live percussionists and other instruments as well as synths but there wasn’t remotely enough of a budget to do that. So it became a purely electronic recording.

Can you tell us about the relationship between the Nommos sessions and another album of yours from the 80s, Visiting (1982). Are the Visiting recordings from the same sessions as Nommos?

The original concept was to have the two records, Nommos and Visiting recorded together and released as volume1 (two record set) of the Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music. This was in keeping with Harry Smith’s format (see above). However, the label was sold so it was only later that Visiting was recorded and released through another distributor. They were both supposed to be part of the same set.

In the story line of the two recordings, Visiting takes place after the Nommos had come to Earth and absorbed elements of the new planet into their culture.

How was Nommos influenced by all the music happening around you at the time of its creation? You were working with bands like DMZ , The Voidoids and the Ramones. Were you influenced by the sound or DIY attitude of these bands?

Nommos was not influenced by any of the bands I was working with at the time with the exception of some of the extreme studio work I brought to the first Suicide album. That group created a special environment that was unique to them. The influences on Nommos were some of the same German and other European artists who I admired and I hoped to use to enhance Suicide’s soundscape.

Interview by Shawn Ciavattone (May 2020)

(Read Craig Leon’s Three Wishes here)

www.craigleon.com

(Both, Nommos and Visiting were released in the original concept format as “The Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music vol. 1” on RVNG Intl. in 2014. It is available on vinyl and download. CD is sold out.  The follow up album “The Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music vol. 2 : The Canon” was also released on RVNG Intl. in 2019 and received wide attention and great reviews. The Canon is available on vinyl, CD and download.