“Younger readers or potential younger readers are unlikely to remember the beginnings of social media,” said Stephen Emmer. “There was MySpace at the time. With MySpace, artists were able to create their demos. So I put together a few things that I worked on, I didn’t think anything of it and I got a call six months later. The man says, “I’m Joe D’Ambrosio.” He sounded like he was something out of the sopranos, it was that Italian voice. He said he had a customer who was interested in my work and I might have heard of him. The customer was Tony Visconti”.
Emmer giggles knowingly and is confident that a music journalist has sufficient knowledge to recognize the name. “Tony is a music encyclopedia,” laughs Emmer. “When I told the men on the phone that I couldn’t afford the services, I was told,” Tony Visconti is not there for the money at this stage of his career. “So I flew to New York. I was told that I shouldn’t be there while mixing. That was the time to go shopping. But when I wanted to go, Tony of course told me that we were going to mix. It’s not just Bolan and T-Rex. He’s with Ralph McTell too , Prefab Sprout and Gentle Giant worked together. One of my tracks reminded him of Low with Davie Bowie. And another time he asked me what kind of bass I wanted? I said like everyone who had heard rock, I wanted Paul McCartney. Tony said he worked with Sir Paul in Lagos, did you know he was working on Band On The Run, so Tony had recorded what Paul McCartney was playing on bass, and Tony also told me about the album he was doing with Morrissey had finished making the crackle almost brought Marc Bolan’s voice to a track. While I was with Tony, he got a call from John Frusciante from Chili Peppers. He wanted to ask if he could help get this T-Rex guitar from the production side. “I don’t really do that anymore,” said Tony.
Emmer isn’t here to spill Bowie / Bolan producer Tony Visconti’s beans, as there are enough stories to hear about his latest neoclassical project. “When people describe my work as conceptual, it’s almost as if they think I’m writing a yes album,” Emmer replies. “Stories from topographical oceans. I’m from the New Wave days! I took this as a challenge to withdraw everything. I wrote for a string quartet, very simple. Just like it was hundreds of years ago. But I wanted to add a little oomph to the music. There is not much pep in classical music that I hear. An artist should be recognized for what he writes, like Miles Davis. If he plays the trumpet, you know he is.“
The yes comparison is valid. Maison Melody is peppered with the resonant wisdom that shimmers through the astonishing, miraculous stories. Similar to Rick Wakeman, Emmer fuses texture and tempo through an instrument best known for false virtuosity. He played keyboards with The Lotus Eaters, a band moderated by a singer whose voice resonated with Jon Anderson’s response. “The singer Peter Coyle loved Jon Anderson and Peter Gabriel,” admits Emmer. “Nowadays, the octave jump that Peter makes can be fixed by automatic tuning. These were people from Liverpool and I knew Michael Dempsey, who played with The Cure and The Associates. The Associates had a singer named Billy Mackenzie. Billy died at a very young age. He recorded a duet with Annie Lennox that was not released. It was such a bold shot. It’s my plan to finish an album for Billy. It’s going to be kind of a posthumous thing with Nick Drake. Midge Ure said Billy was a real singer. Bono from U2 also said something like that. Bono said that when U2 and other bands were successful, none of them could really sing. But Billy, said Bono, Billy really could sing. Since he said that, I wonder if Bono would sing on the album?“
The stories don’t stop there. Emmer is very familiar with the Beatles’ traditions and has even managed to work with two members of the Lennon family. “The presses and fans are still trying Yoko,” sighs Emmer. “I read a lot of Beatle material and they never mention that Paul and Yoko had an artistic relationship. It was through John Cage and people like that. It was on an album I did with Tony Visconti that I was allowed to work with Yoko. I felt privileged to work alongside Tony, but he felt privileged to work on this album with people like Allen Ginsberg and Richard Burton. I had footage of Yoko speaking what was like a nursery rhyme. It was a capella: “Snow falls”. Yoko contacted another Japanese New York artist, Blond Redhead’s Kazu Makino, to work on the track. Sung as nursery rhyme, it feels scary. I also know Julian Lennon. He seems to have lost interest in music and moved to other areas. He has the White Feather Foundation. Do you know this story John Lennon told Julian that if something happened to him, he would come to him like a white feather. When Julian was in Australia, a white feather came to him. That’s where it comes from.“
At the end of this pandemic, readers will likely have their own stories after conquering an unprecedented stay indoors. “What has become my personal decision to voluntarily isolate myself has become a universal problem,” admits Emmer. “When I lived in the UK, I visited the BBC Radiophonic. They were wearing these Star Trek uniforms. I found it fascinating that people could do this for a living. I recently read an article in which Moby said that he could not incriminate anyone at the moment. So I thought “ok”.“
Maison Melody is published free of charge. Listeners are invited to one of the freshest classic projects in decades. Classical music is the new rock’n’roll these days. “There are some music venues here in the Netherlands,” says Emmer. “There’s the Paradiso in Amsterdam. I think it’s like the Hammersmith Odeon. They opened for an event, but they only let in about thirty people. I think it will be strange for people. There is room for so much more!“
[Daniel Menchaca - Bulletin Mail - 26 May 2020]
Listen to or Download (4 FREE) Maison Melody here.
