Deborah Conway: 1998 Willy Zygier Interview
In October 1998 I was fortunate enough to be able to interview the much admired Willy Zygier. I was shattered to learn that although I consider myself a devoted fan there is much I would not have guessed about Willy Zygier.Many thanks to Willy for taking part in this interview, to the Bitch Listers for submitting questions (most of which i used), and Nicky Pelletier for editing this and reassuring me that perhaps I am not as much a monkey as I think I am.
Where were you born?
I was born at the Jessie McPherson hospital in Melbourne. You know the Jessie Mac, it doesn't exist any more, it's a vacant lot in Swanston Street. It was the maternity wing of the Queen Vic. It's no longer,it's now a part of Kennett's legacy.
Sorry but that's a really dumb question, who cares where I was born?
When did you start playing guitar?
I started playing guitar when I was thirteen years old and why? Because pop was so important.I was thirteen in 1970 or 1971. You know, it was still the legacy of the sixties. Music was so exciting & was such a strong cultural force. It was great to do.
What sort of music did you play?
I was a big Beatles freak when I first started playing. A family friend was a guitar teacher so I had immediate proper lessons and learnt how to read music and stuff like that.
So do you remember what the first thing you played was?
The first day I got a guitar, before I had a lesson, I wrote a little piece on it using one finger 'cos I didn't know what chords were and I somehow wrote this. No lyrics, just an instrumental piece and I remember getting an enormous blister on my strumming thumb cos I played it all day. I just thought "this is it", as soon as I picked up a guitar I thought, "I love doing this" .
What was your first guitar?
A really bad Canora which was a Japanese make back in the days when made in Japan was a derogatory but true thing to say.
What kinds of music/playing did you focus on while you were learning to play?
I was kind of at the mercy of my guitar teacher. I did classical things. I learnt all those Beatles songs. I was kind of into Robert Fripp after a while. He had a band called King Crimson which was a kind of art rock, prog rock band, he's an amazing guitarist, real cerebral, the ultimate white man kind of guitar player.
Who were your early influences?
Robert Fripp. I really got into the whole jazz and jazz rock era too. John McLaughlin, Pat Metheney all those horrible things that people are embarrassed to say they like know.
Any other instruments?
I played the oboe at school. I played a bit of saxophone. I dabbled on keyboards but nothing I could say I could actually play other than guitar. I'd love to be a really good piano player because I like doing arrangements and composing and stuff like that. Piano is the instrument to play if you want to write for an orchestra or something.
Do you have a favourite guitar?
No. A guitar is a guitar is a guitar.
How do you care for your guitars?
When I got the blue guitar I did polish it a lot, I was very proud of it. Actually I did polish it the other day when i got it back from being repaired & noticed that I hadn't polished it for years, it was a bit grubby.
Do you have a concert or performance that sticks in your mind or do they all merge into one big memory?
What generally sticks in my mind are the big outdoor ones that we have done.I've got a concert that really sticks in my mind.There was this great disasterous one we did called The Big Barbecue, I think it was in New South Wales, Wollongong or something. We were out there and started playing Release Me, well Deborah started, she started playing it. She was playing the weirdest chord shapes, something happened in her brain and she was strumming Release Me but fingering completely, like chords that no human has ever played before and it actuallysounded good in a weird twisted abstract jazz way but it wasn't Release Me, and she was just looking at her fingers saying "I'm playing it, this must be right, why does it sound so wrong?" and we were up there on this stage and finally she just stopped because she didn't know what else to do. I said to her "It's a G shape" and she said "right" and started playing it correctly and then I came in and it was my turn to sound horribly wrong and I thought "what the fuck has happened now" and I looked over and noticed that she had the capo on the wrong fret but I couldn't stop this song again so I just had to transpose on the spot and it was just the worst thing and then, to top it off, in the middle of the song, these skydivers came down from the sky in their parachutes and the whole audience en masse just turned around and had their backs to us to watch these twenty sky divers. One of those brilliant comedic moments that life throws at you.
What kind of input do you have into the songwriting process. Do you work out the guitar solos? Do you ever clash over arrangements and sounds?
You clash all the time about how things might go or not go, that happens. Guitar solos are improvised normally in the demo stage but then you have to recreate them for the record.
What is the process of writing a song between the two of you?
it varies enormously. Someone will have a fragment of something. Sometimes we will just stare at each other and we have our guitars.
Do you have the lyrics first?
Generally we don't, it's better if we do but ninety percent of the time we don't. Deborah mainly writes the lyrics, I have a little bit of input. Change a line here or there, suggest where a song might go. I probably write most of music these days. That's just the roles we've slipped into.
It's a mysterious process. You sit down and you just think, you just strum, then something just clicks, you sing a certain note against a chord and it sounds good and you think "this might lead somewhere", you play two chords together and that sounds good. Another day it all sounds terrible, it really is a very abstract thing.
How do you know when you've got the end state rather than the transition state?
That's always the problem. That's the big tendency that lots of people have, to overdo it. To write too much, to put too much into the music. You don't know, often that's what a producer is for because they're not as attached to bits as you are. they're happy to say "throw the whole verse out, you don't need a forth verse". And if you trust them you trust them and hopefully it works out. I think with all these new songs we've been writing we might go and play them for a few friends and stuff and get opinions.
Have you ever had an urge to play grunge/heavy rock/the triangle ?
Grunge I don't mind, you know. Heavy rock impossible, you've got to have a particular personality I believe. The triangle, no. You've got to have a particular personality for that too. I have a friend who is a classical percussionist, he had the big cymbol clash and he missed. He counted his thirty bars rest and stood up and went like this and somehow didn't do it and said it was the most embarrassing moment of his life with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. You've got to be a meticulous person to play the cymbals or the triangle.
What is it like being the silent partner in Deborah Conway the Band?
This is a bit personal. I hate it and I suffer terribly for it but there's no way out [shouts into microphone] do you hear me? NO WAY OUT!! I don't give a fuck. Well a little bit. Sometimes I think people, cos Deborah's famous, sometimes people in the business think that Deborah has the sole responsibility for what has come out. Sometimes that's a bit annoying. That's all. I don't care about being in the papers or being on TV, give me the money any day. When someone rings and says "maybe you could write some music for a film or whatever", not that it happens very often, and addresses it to Deborah thinking that Deborah has done everything, it can be a trifle annoying.
You were the driving force behind Tootieville...
I did feel comfortable as a front person but I didn't think I was a particularly good singer. I can sing..... just, but I don't feel that the voice is my instrument. I don't miss it.
Do you play/write with anyone other than DC these days?
No, not enough time.
If you weren't playing with DC, what kind of other musical project(s) do you imagine you'd get into?
I'd probably do abstract instrumental music. We've been doing this together for so long now that it's hard to imagine not doing it.
Favourite Bands?
I don't know anything about bands. It's not like I listen to the radio and go "they're my thing now, I really love them". Just being in our society you hear things all the time.You just hear too much music, you need to get away from it, especially being a musician it's just overload.
Do you think you've lost the capacity to enjoy really crap music?
Yes, but I lost that a long time ago. I think I lost that in my teens being a musician. People often accuse me of being a snob. I'm very critical and really don't go out of my way to seek music. There's too much noise in the world. I make noise all day every day and don't need more of it. It's good just to keep up a little bit occasionally, to keep up with what people are doing.
Whenever you listen to past recordings of yourself, do you
a. cringe ever so slightly?
Yes.
b. enjoy the good bits and forgive yourself for the bloopers?
I enjoy the good bits but kind of wish there was a way to put some of it out of its misery.
c. get a sense of satisfaction at contributing something towards the annals of music history?
Never think like that at all. I don't listen to my music very much . It's not like I ever put on the records, very occasionally you hear them for whatever reason. I don't sit back and smoke my cigar. I fear that probably most of it has joined the anals.
If stranded on a desert island, what 5 cd's would you take?
That's a terrible question, that's a really bad question, I hate that question. I'd probably take some seeds and plant them. If I had to, I'd probably take a Beatles album, maybe Revolver or Rubber Soul, Remain In Light by Talking Heads, that's a great record, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Swordfish Trombones by Tom Waits, Kultrum by Dino Saluzzi & then get terribly bored.
Fashion tips - Did you pick out 'the pants'?
Do you want the truth? I picked out the pants AND the dress.
Did you try the stupid stunt the people on the list did?
That was great - i can't believe they got told off. The shop assistant is there to help them, I think it was outrageous, they should have gotten angry. We did go shopping for clothes and we did think it would be great to wear something matching cos we'd never done that before and then the dress was in a window and I said to Deborah "look at this dress, it's amazing, you'd look fantastic in this" she bought the dress. We didn't know that three shops down they would have the pants, so this was just a purchase for Deborah to wear. It turns out this material is everywhere.
After showering, do you dress from the feet up, or head down ?
I dress from the inside out, doesn't everybody?, don't you start with the inner layers first? Well I don't put my socks on first I put my socks on last.
I put on my underpants first followed by my singlet if I'm wearing a singlet. I do occasionally wear singlets. Then I pick and choose, it could be any order.
Are you superstitious?
No. I've got a horrible dry scientific kind of personality.
If you were woken from a deep sleep and asked your age what would you say?
twenty......... I am glad that I answered twenty and not thirteen, I'm sure that's how some people would answer, and act.
Future plans?
To get my baby to sleep [Alma was crying]. I plan to be the second President of the Republic.
I plan to send my children to boarding school [Alma was crying even louder]. I plan one day at a time. No future plans.
Does a musician ever actually retire?
Lots do. Lots of my friends have retired from being musicians. They retire from being musicians because they can't make a living out of it. If they stay a musician they just keep strumming along until they drop.
Will you retire, where do you see yourself spending it, and what do you think might consume your time in the older years?
I feel like I'm only just beginning. It's too early to say. I know at the age of forty it's a silly thing to say.
What do you think about people discussing you and Deborah to the nth degree on the Bitch List?
It's so abstract. It doesn't matter, it's not real anyhow, they're just fantasy figures, the people who are being discussed. It's nice that people do it, it's funny. Most of what's discussed is amusing anyway, it's a bit removed from life at home with the kids & the cleaning. The whole nature of people being famous and in the media and stuff, there is some sort of aura about someone who you see a lot, or hear a lot. I feel the same thing when I meet someone famous and I think "of course, you really are real aren't you, you really are a real person." It's weird, it's a weird state to be in at the end of the twentieth century. You know people intimately through the media but you don't know them really, they're fictional figures. We don't think we're famous at all. Deborah doesn't act famous . She doesn't take it for granted in anyway either,but nor does she expect things because she is famous. It's just normal life. I don't know what it would be like to be Madonna, perhaps that would be very weird.
You can't hold onto anything. the music I make, that music is away from you too, it's like someone else has done it. Well it's not quite like someone else has done it, you still cringe at the bad bits but at the same time you wonder if that was really you who thought of the good bits. Life is this strange ephemeral thing and one drifts though it.
Is having the immediate feedback via the internet a comfort or a hindrance?
It's not a hindrance. It's good to know that there are some people out there supporting you so you can still carry on.
added Saturday, 23 May, 1998
