KB: In September '69 it was not called MAGMA, it wasn't another band either, it was sort of...
AG: You were just rehearsing and playing?
KB: Yes, just for a month, I'd met Christian in August. He was with Claude Engel. I was asking Claude to get a band together and he said, "Yes, if you want, but first why don't you come and see these guys". I was with a group (BLUES CONVENTION), and then it was kind of a circus. I used to see them practice, I was not the singer but I learned and just listened. Then after three days, Claude said, "Can you sing to help us practice?" I said, yes and I started like that. It wasn't called MAGMA until October / December 1969 at first it was MAGMA ORKESTRA STUNDUHNDEHRA ... a big long name.
(Ed. According to Antoine de Caunes the original name was "Uniwerïa Zekt Magma Composedra Arguezdra", so I assume that Klaus had just forgotten the exact name at that point.)AG: I see, yes I'll probably come on to that, I've prepared various questions.
KB: Do you have the little book by Antoine de Caunes?
AG: The MAGMA book? I certainly do, it's very, very good, the definitive...
KB: It's not VERY good.
AG: Yes, but without knowing any more than what I've read in interviews over the years it's good. It does not go into great detail but it seems to get the basic things right, I think. I've been trying to translate the thing myself.
KB: So maybe you have to change MAGMA No 1 to MAGMA No -1 on your family tree.
AG: I've divided my questions up into three parts. The Earlier days: around the time of the first couple of albums. Then sort of the rest, and finally you pursuing your own projects. My first question was how did you come to join MAGMA? Which you have obviously just answered, which is through Claude Engel, he asked you to come and sing.
KB: Yes, I had seen him about a month before and he was playing in a band called...
AG: CRUCIFERUS?
KB: No, with his brother Marcel Engel on drums, I don't remember the name of the group. He was playing guitar, singing and playing flute; it was perfect. Then I asked him "Would you like to join me?" and he said, "Yes, but now I am practising with kind of crazy people come and see them". The first time I saw the group, Francis was not there. It was a very long time before the concept of MAGMA. He was in a band very different from ours, Zabu was practising in the band for fifteen days and then he stopped because of politics you know, for eight months, political meetings etc.
AG: He was more into that than the musical side?
KB: Yes, at that time, so anyway, I learned very easily and quickly. So I started just to help them and then by chance one day I was singing just beside a grand piano they were recording, not me but the piano and drums and everything, just to listen to the tape. Then Zebu was coming back so I stopped practising with them, it was not my place. Then one week later I saw them in a club, a kind of delegation of them Christian, Laurent Thibault etc and they said "We have heard your voice in the back of the keyboard track that's the voice we need" and I said "Yes but you have to make a choice between me and Zabu".
AG: At that point I gather you had been playing with quite a lot of groups.
KB: Yes, rock groups and blues bands.
AG: How did you come into music in the first place, did you have any classical training?
KB: No, I just listened to the first Beatles tunes and I started about 1962.
AG: When Christian Vander asked you to join MAGMA how far had the Kobaïan thing gone or had it even started? Because that is always something that has intrigued people in Britain, in that everybody thinks that everything to do with that was done by Christian. They think that apart from you and Christian everybody else just seemed to come and go, contributing musically. But the Kobaïan thing has always been totally attributed to Christian. Now when you joined had he already got an idea of that or to what extent did you collaborate?
KB: Yes, a lot. Because Christian had a very non-personalised idea of what he wanted to do, he said, "That's the story, we are going out of the Earth" so the story of the first double album was set, and then it was improvising actually. It was very difficult to sing, improvising in the same way that he wrote. So he decided to let me write it down exactly, so that was my first job.
AG: So you in a way drew up the Kobaïan alphabet so that with 'Mekanïk' you were able to write a lyric sheet. What is Kobaïan drawn from, is it drawn from totally made up sounds or does it actually draw from linguistic principles?
KB: Both of them because I am a drawing teacher and three years before I had tried to turn all sounds into symbols not thinking of the grammar just like the Chinese idea. But I stopped a few months later because it is very difficult work and I did not have the time to do it, even the parts without music, it has too much importance.
AG: How long did it take you to get that together? The actual language, did it come together so that you could actually write like a normal person?
KB: No, it's improvised it's not finished; it is never finished because it changes each year with the evolution of the music.
AG: So Christian had got this idea that he wanted to use this unique language and he did not have any organisational capability. You came in and said, "Well I can use this language, but we will have to draw it out so that we can repeat the same sounds, so that it is a Language". So your initial job was to organise?
KB: To organise and the same for equipment and practising time and things like that.
AG: Because Christian is not a particularly well-organised person?
KB: In that sense, to practice drums he is organised. But that's all.
AG: Everything else he has to have done for him?
KB: (Laughs) Incredible!
AG: Going on from that, there are a lot of things in the Kobaïan mythology about the Uniwerïa Zekt. Now the Uniwerïa Zekt seems to me to be distinct from MAGMA. It is something I have never quite grasped. What in fact was the Uniwerïa Zekt? Was it another name for MAGMA or was it something else?
KB: It's kind of another name because we thought after the beginning that there were some people in MAGMA who were not in the same spirit so Uniïeria Zekt was approved as the concept of MAGMA. The group MAGMA was just an instrument to project the idea so it's different and there were some people outside of MAGMA in the Uniwerïa Zekt.
AG: Because you recorded an LP under the name Univerïa Zekt on which...
KB: It does not mean anything, I don't mean the music; I mean the name.
AG: No, but it didn't matter that much. In the book he keeps stressing that Uniwerïa Zekt and MAGMA are very separate, I think, but it's not that important.
KB: It is difficult to say, it's not precise.
AG: This LP that you recorded under the name Univerïa Zekt, it's just because you wished to play music that was outside the MAGMA story, so you used that name.
KB: That's right.
AG: How difficult was it to sing in Kobaïan at the beginning? Did you have to do a lot of rehearsing or once you had drawn up the Kobaïan was it easier?
KB: No, we started to rehearse in September '69 then we recorded the LP six months later.
AG: You said that a lot of people were not in the same spirit for MAGMA because Christian demanded you should give everything to the group. How many people sort of came and went during the initial rehearsals? Did people find it was too much for them or what?
KB: Yes, because we were without money, and we needed facilities and instruments, so it was hard to work with these people not in the same spirit. In a sense because we were too close a family and there were ten or fifteen people.
AG: Whose decision was it for them to leave?
KB: Together, it was in the air you know. So Christian was perhaps often by himself or sometimes with someone else. The music was very hard, not especially in the way of spirit, and it was new. We had seen a lot of Rock'n'Roll players who had not learned anything else other than Rock'n'Roll so MAGMA was a Rock'n'Roll band, but with a background of jazz and classical music. So sometimes we got a piece of classical music and they could not do it because it was not in 4/4. You know they did not understand 7/4 or 7/8 or even 3/4!
AG: So initially most of the musicians were from rock backgrounds, did you find that essentially you had to look for musicians from a jazz background?
KB: Yes, because it's easier to find a jazz player who knows Rock'n'Roll and Rhythm'n'Blues and classical rather than a Rock'n'Roll guy knowing nothing else.
AG: Was the music initially improvised and then finally somehow it came together?
KB: That is the way that Christian works. He does a recording at home (a lot of tapes) and then he listens to the tapes and he brings it in. That's the way he writes music.
AG: So he presents an idea to the group.
KB: Sometimes it's an idea but most of the time it's a tune with parts, you know with riffs. So he says, "I think that's the way you have to sing it and that's the bass riff". But he does not think of the drums, just the timbre and rhythms. Then he goes to the drum set and says "Well let's try something!"
AG: Really, so he's composed the music at home on the piano and singing and then he comes in and directs all the instruments and gets exactly what he wants and then he finally comes to the drum part and realises it does not fit, is that what you are saying?
KB: Yes (Laughs)
AG: Incredible, he's even more disorganised than I thought.
KB: No no! It's not a question of organisation, because he does not feel that the drums are a musical instrument in this music. He really plays them like a musical instrument not a just a rhythm instrument. But the most important thing is the harmony, the rhythm in the harmony and the keyboards and the voice. The voice is it.
AG: The voice has always been an integral part of it.
KB: Yes. He does not think of the guitar parts, but the bass is very important.
AG: I've always noticed that, does he have a reason?
KB: Yes he always liked Bass instruments sounds and then we have had a lot of good bass payers in MAGMA, some of the most important bass players in Europe, Jannick Top, Francis Moze.
AG: MAGMA has always been noted for it's bass work.
KB: The SOUND.
AG: Yes, it has a unique mix because the main body of sound is vocals and bass and percussion with the sonorous ringing piano in the background. But the guitar and other instruments are further down. The bass is much further up than any other group I know of.
KB: But England is more specialised in guitar, it is different because the bass player and drummer are thought less important. But in France we regard the bass player as equal so we were surprised to find good ones.
AG: So, you recorded the first album, when it came out how well did it go? Did it sell well; did the band profit from it much?
KB: Well, we just started to go on tour when the first album was released it was very hard because there were no places to play that kind of music at that time. So we had to create them. It was hard because we could not find enough money to live. The album was not a bad seller, but not enough for all the people in the band. So the first two years were funny because it was a kind of journey.
AG: So you were going round France not finding places but creating places to play in.
KB: Places and audiences.
AG: In that case then, it was not that you were playing to an audience that had previously seen pop groups; they had not seen anyone.
KB: Even rock bands, they were very small and very few.
AG: So really you were playing to an audience who had not seen much live music before by anyone. You started a circuit on which other rock groups followed your lead. You must have had quite a big following in France as a result.
KB: Yes, but fame, not money so it was very hard and then the MAGMA musicians were in demand to play in sessions. So Claude Engel started to play in many recording sessions and then he started to have a lot of money and then it was possible for him to see the differences. He saw other bands going on tour with little hotels, much money, big audiences and stage facilities, so he decided to stop going on tour for about a year and a half. I was very surprised by that. For me he was a very important part of MAGMA, at first I thought it was a joke when he said "I'm going to leave the band" and I laughed but he said "no no it's true" and he said that with a smile "It's true, goodbye, so long".
AG: So at that point, if you regarded him so highly, did you think that maybe MAGMA was not going to last very long?
KB: No, we decided to go on regardless, The MAGMA spirit was so strong we just had to go on. We decided to stop having a guitar player because to find a better one was impossible.
AG: Did you get to the level where there was only two or three of you at one point? What was the lowest number of musicians you had?
KB: The lowest? Nine, I think, at the time we are talking about. Yes, Nine! It averaged about twelve or thirteen.
AG: Putting that lot on the road must have been a feat.
KB: Yes, two cars and a truck.
AG: How often did you tour then at that time? Did you just do the one tour after the album?
KB: It was not like that. It was not tours, it was just gigs and not a proper tour for three years because we were not organised.
AG: So you played anywhere you could find in France.
KB: Yes, even in clubs in Paris; small clubs with not enough room to get the band on stage. Sometimes we used to put the amplifiers and some musicians onstage and some other musicians were offstage; twelve of us, including two bassists.
AG: That's not something that comes over in the book how many musicians you had at that time. Somewhere between nine and twelve, there must have been a lot of changes, like you had two bassists originally. Jacky Vidal, he was playing the upright bass wasn't he?
KB: A fiddle with a microphone and Francis Moze on electric bass. But before Francis there was Laurent Thibault and between them there were a lot of short appearances by bass players (one or two days).
AG: When you played live, did you have a set number of pieces of music to play or was the gig improvised every night?
KB: The first two years we only played the records from the beginning to the end because it was a story. It was the double album we were playing onstage.
AG: That would constitute the main body of the set.
KB: Not only the main body but the entire set, the whole thing. Because it was a story so we started 'Kobaïa' with English lyrics just to explain to everybody "Well we're going out of the earth and then so on and so on" and after it was the story followed by the music.
AG: Going on from the story to this concept of Theusz Hamtaahk what exactly is Theusz Hamtaahk? Does that refer to the story of the Kobaïan thing or what?
KB: Yes. The first LP was the story of the journey. We decided to stop there. When we are on Kobaïa that's another story. We had to fight against the earth. We had to fight against the Earthmen on Kobaïa, defend ourselves against ourselves, that's the story of Theusz Hamtaahk. 'Mekanïk Kommandöh' is just a part of it.
AG: I see, because you have three parts to Theusz Hamtaahk: 'Wurdah Ïtah', 'Wurdah Glao' and 'Mekanïk'. Now of the first two which LP represents which part?
KB: 'Wurdah Ïtah' is the Tristan et Yseult LP which is the first part. 'Mekanïk Kommandöh' is the third part and then we have not yet released the second part.
AG: The Tristan et Yseult album, according to the book you recorded it in 1971 originally?
KB: No in '71 it was just a rehearsal, a practice session in the Chateau d'Herouville studio and then Laurent Thibault decided, without authority, to use that tape for a soundtrack. We saw the movie after they had put the music on - it is a very bad movie. It's a joke. I left the cinema twenty minutes after the beginning because of the film.
AG: I've never seen the film, the film used the original music that you laid down, the music had not been mixed with it in mind?
KB: No, we had not seen the movie and it really is a daft film. We were very angry so we decided to force Laurent Thibault to make a good record of that, so then we worked with him in the studio.
AG: You re-recorded the album or just remixed the original?
KB: No, re-recorded it entirely.
AG: And the film I take it still carries the original music?
KB: I don't know; I don't care!
AG: That would make it a collectable itself.
KB: It's just a rehearsal tape.
AG: Did you know that Laurent was going to use this tape? He didn't tell you he was going to put it on the film, you just saw the film and realised he was using MAGMA's music.
KB: No and I don't want to talk about it. Giorgio Gomelsky has done a lot of things like that.
AG: He's got a reputation for doing things like that though. Getting back to the touring side of things, in '71 and '72 you toured outside France, in Europe, how did you go down?
KB: Belgium and Switzerland, we started to go out of France to Belgium (Mons) it's a very funny story because there was a support band (ARKHAM) playing sort of like SOFT MACHINE, we didn't like the music, but the musicians were superb. When we came back to Paris we decided to write to them we asked the organist to join us, he was so precise and sensory, and they liked MAGMA … So Jean-Luc Manderlier joined us three months after that. The other musician, the drummer Daniel Denis decided to form another band and years after that he formed UNIVERS ZERO. Their first gig was supporting MAGMA.
AG: Did the Belgians or the Swiss know MAGMA at all?
KB: Yes not the records, but they read the French press: Best, Extra etc so they had heard of us. We started from the beginning again in Switzerland then Germany, England, Netherlands, Italy, Spain and then the United States.
AG: When did you go to the States?
KB: 1973.
AG: I imagine the Americans must have thought you were really hard at that time.
KB: Well, we had just realised (made) 'Mekanïk Kommandöh' with Jannick Top. That was his first session; he had not played onstage with us before. His first gig: We were going for maybe two or three weeks but then we decided in June to go to the United States for the Newport Festival in New York City. We decided to practice in a little house near Paris and then we went to New York in July it was 99% humidity and 40°C. First we played at the festival and another time with terrible sound equipment.
AG: So, getting back to the family tree, it is marked by the incredible number of changes along the way. Now when someone dropped out, was Christian looking for a replacement on the basis of another guy on the same instrument, or was he looking for somebody with expertise to carry on without bothering which instruments he employed?
KB: Sometimes he preferred a guitarist, Gabriel Federow was a kind of classical player and he decided, because he was very good, to employ him. And sometimes he played bass; it doesn't matter about the instrument, even violin. It was so surprising for the fans "A violinist, no brass, no horns... Oh its not MAGMA!" Every time that got the same reaction because MAGMA for them was the first version with the three horns, singer, bass player and one keyboard.
AG: Over the years the horn section gradually became less and less until it disappeared entirely somewhere around the time of the live album. Was it a conscious decision not to replace it with horns?
KB: It was, because we thought it impossible to find good players even the one we had got was not efficient. It did not matter if we had no horns because it was so difficult to play the MAGMA music in tune.
AG: So your main thought was to get somebody who could play the music. Did you find the music had to be altered at all according to which instrument was brought in?
KB: It does not matter about the instruments because the concept is keyboards, harmony, rhythm and melody. The rest is only orchestration. It is the music.
AG: So as long as you have got the basics how you want the rest is like icing on the cake. You have got the basic bits and then you just embellish it with other instruments.
KB: Yes, but we think it is important, but not the most important. First the music, it does not matter about the instruments, even if we are playing with only piano and voices it is the same music exactly.
AG: I don't find it incredible knowing MAGMA but to a lot of people the concept of a group is, if a guitarist leaves he is replaced with a guitarist. Even in jazz groups if the keyboard player leaves he has got to be replaced with a keyboard player.
KB: But MAGMA is not a conventional group, we are not playing average music so we are not an average band. It is just a matter of other formulae.
The interview concludes in the next issue, starting with the Jannick Top and Bernard Paganotti eras and running right up to Klaus' departure and his other projects.