Rock et Folk No. 78 - July 1973

Rock'n'roll in Phrance
MAGMA

R & F: Above all, let us liquidate this history of fascistic Magma, I suppose that weighs you a little.
Klaus: It is a myth which was diffused starting from pewters: on the one hand coming musicians who jalousaient us because we work. It was a vague noise, at the beginning, which was propagated of word of mount, and some critical, by ignorance or stupidity, hastened to transmit.

R & F: But was that concretized how for the public?
Klaus: The misunderstanding started before the first disc. At the time, Philippe Paringaux had come to the one from our repetitions and had made a formidable, marvellous article for us. But he said in a passage: “Christian Vander rises and makes a speech which could recall…” ; as of this moment, people came to see us on scene only because of this sentence a little ambiguity. They thought: “Hold, it will make the speech in Hitler”. At the beginning, that amused us and we outraged the thing much: what could appear equivocal a time became clear. People badly included/understood this sentence of Paringaux: they have their small racks, then they draw the rack “Hitler”. They came to see us at the end in the concerts: “It is true that you are Nazis?” We, one marrait ourselves like the insane ones, but in fact we were taken with our own play: certain journalists started to spread themselves: “Fascistic, pretentious Magma”, without us ever to have seen nor heard. It is there that the first furious interventions took place to prevent our concerts.
Christian: We never stopped a concert because of them.

R& F: You always scorned to explain you on these circumstances. Nothing was regulated, on the contrary!
Christian: We do not have to explain us with people who come especially for exhiber and who have in any event never anything to answer us. If they are really too weak not to realize that Magma was the first to create a circuit in concerts apart from the system, a circuit with 7 F the place where the musicians come in residence, everywhere, which they cops will spend in Olympia between three rows wisely their tickets. There, they will see what is really Fascism. Now, I would like that one speaks any more this business because that has nothing to do with Magma, really nothing.

R & F: How do you locate the music of Magma compared to the jazz and to the rock'n'roll?
Klaus: It is very difficult to define it in these terms. If one must be something, it is an rock group, surely not a jazz band!

R & F: However, Vander is “a seasoned veteran of the jazz”, even if the jazzmen fulminate because of its treason.
Christian: Because I play the pop one, I play binary. The musicians of jazz are turned sour because they feel forsaken; hardly one or two clubs survived Paris, and those which trail there do not vary: it does not occur anything any more in jazz. They see that those that they adored more it there has four years, when I was going to make ox with the Cat Which precisely Fishes where me was called the twister (I was rather proud) because of my binary play, these play binary! They cannot understand that the music widens blow very, they are believed betrayed when Miles Davis, the standard jazzman, gives up the ternary one (shabada, pulsation jâse) with the profit of rhythmic nearer to the rock'n'roll, whereas they came just, after thirty years of effort, to put itself at the ternary one! Free, bebop, all that are schools, vaults, a very restrictive and contained corporatism. Then, which one does is not at all jazz.
Klaus: Me, I found a formula for Magma: front, we were a group of advanced rock'n'roll with skilful musicians who played of the advanced rock'n'roll. Now, we will make a spiritual music. If you want, it is a little the practice of the “advanced” rock'n'roll which carried out us there, but it is the spirit of the musicians which changed in contact with the music.

R & F: Therefore, they are these three years in ceaseless concerts which led you to understand that the music of Magma had changed, or at least, that it had been specified much in your projects.
Klaus: II progression without jolt of the music had there, but I insist: it is before all the spirit which evolved/moved; we want to make a music with “pure” people. Beefheart chose men who were close to him but which had never played only one note. We, we seek musicians who exceeded any technical concern.
Christian: How the new bass player, Jannick Signal, an initiate, wise!

R & F: Does that mean that the musicians of before did not seek to exceed the performance?
Klaus: Yes, I believe, but not absolutely. It was rather their direction which had nothing to do with the spirituality of Magma.
Christian: Moreover, if you want, we come all from very different cultural horizons, and it is precisely this ethnic diversification which created the force of this music. For example I am with the German three-quarter, a Polish quarter and Gipsy. Klaus, is to him Basque with hundred percent. That also avoids us falling into a poor parochialism: French music, rough red wine, erection of the statue of Guy fried Luxes and steak.

R & F: Then, where is the music of Magma now? For eighteen months the public has especially attended the gestation of “Mekanïk Kommandöh”.
Christian: One can distinguish three phases in the music from Magma: discs, “Mekanïk Kommandöh”, and afterwards. On scene, from now on, it is after “Mekanïk”, to put people in a position to receive the new music, which the third phase will begin. It will be based on hypnotism.
Klaus: Absolutely. The first time that we played “Mekanïk Kommandöh” was the revolving one towards this spiritual music about which we speak. Impossible to further go if one had not included/understood, felt…

R & F: Felt up to which point?
Klaus: So much so that people leave while crying, as that arrived to Belgium, with only the piano and the voices, so much so that they are not able any more to be rehabilitated with reality, than they are said: “One cannot live any more like that, it is necessary all to change”.

R & F: In this case, two possibilities contradictory: the music of Magma wants to be a drug, or a more or less clear call to the revolution.
Klaus: Yes, with a kind of interior revolution. The music of Magma, it is the discovery of the man. It is a music of change. If the music of our time is sincere, it becomes timeless. Bach and Beethoven one does that of their time, one can listen to them now very well.
Christian: We would have many things to say on the spirituality of the music.

R & F: While speaking about Magma, one can really say YOU?
Christian: Yes. Now there is spiritual communion. Direction of our music changed forever: front, we sought already a climate of hypnosis, but we were not, me especially, enough strong spiritually to reach it; i.e. to try to reach an image to be it perfect which governs us, which governs the universe and its inhabitants. This image we let us call it KREUHN-KOHRMAHN.

Remarks collected by MIDDLE-CLASS François DUCRAY and Guillaume.
Rock'n'roll & Folk n° 78 - July 1973