Trascrizione dell'intervista trasmessa il 29 Settembre 2000 su BBc London Live.
Leggi la traduzione in italiano.

You're hearing "Ghosts" - David Sylvian and Japan. David was in London earlier this week. Our very own Paul Malone went to interview him and so Paul asked David how the new album came about...

DS: Because I was asked to put one together. I was asked originally about six years ago - at that time I didn't feel right about getting into creating a compilation album. I was right in the middle of recording a solo album which was the first in many, many years. So I really wanted to see that through before I dove into looking back over the past 20 years or so. Having completed that solo album I found myself on the move a great deal. I'm living in America but I hadn't put down roots and we were travelling back and forth across the States looking for a suitable home. So I wasn't really in a position to write new material.

I thought "I'd like to keep my hand in - what can I do? I'll start looking back over that material. See what's there."
And to keep myself interested I just tried to come up with a slightly different approach to the notion of what a compilation ought to consist of, or could consist of. And there was a fair amount of outtake material that had been floundering in the vaults for years and I thought "This is pretty strong material, it would be wonderful if it saw the light of day. This could be my last opportunity to really get to grips with that material. This is what I should do. I should incorporate the numerous outtakes recorded over the past 10 years or so and also go back and look at the earlier material - the material I did with Japan and the earlier years of my solo work - and possibly have another crack at that, in terms of remixing the material and so on and so forth."

So "comprehensive, concise overview" was my aim and I've come pretty close to that, I think.

PM: Because you've made it quite clear - it's not a greatest hits album. It is a retrospective. It includes some favourite works that people will associate you with like, of course, "Ghosts". But there's a lot of stuff you have left out like, say, "Forbidden Colours" which was a big international hit with Ryuichi Sakamoto and then "I Seconds That Emotion" which was one of your other big chart hits and possibly not a favourite with you, but you've chosen to leave these ones out...

DS: I was basically trying to focus on the solo work and the collaborative work done since Japan broke up in '82. I included "Ghosts" because it was a pivotal piece for me - it was like a breakthrough of some kind. And also, you know, it was our biggest hit and that sort of gave me the confidence to pursue that avenue of enquiry in my writing. That was why I included that. There's one other Japan track [Some Kind Of Fool] and it's the only previously unreleased track that was there. And again I included it because it's a pretty standard ballad, it didn't feel as though it was particularly of its time - it's kind of a classic ballad, and I felt comfortable incorporating it. But outside of those two pieces basically I'm focussing on the solo work and the collaborative work since '82/'83 onwards.

PM: There are 29 tracks on the double album. It must have been quite good sitting there and going through all the archives - even stuff from 1982, eighteen years ago, just listening to all this stuff again and reassociating yourself with it?

DS: Basically I knew what I wanted to include prior to ever sitting down with the material. I made a long list of multitracks that I wanted Virgin to try and dig up for me. That was quite a drawn out process - actually finding the material in the vault. Pieces came to me piecemeal - they were sent to me in America and I would work on them as they arrived basically. But yes, there was... well it's something of a nostalgic journey to take: to be standing in the studio, with headphones on, listening to a band perform "Ghosts" for example, or something from "Brilliant Trees", was to be taken back in time. I'm not a musician that goes back and listens to my own work - once it's done it's done and I move on - so it was interesting, sometimes quite refreshing, to hear this material for the first time in many, many years.

PM: In 1974 when you started - that's when Japan first formed - Rod Stewart was number one with "Sailing", Japan were probably, I don't know, some might have said they were a little avant-garde, maybe in the earlier days and that whole kind of scene that you moved through... And then the whole punk and ska movement at the turn of the decade and Japan were not fitting into any of these pigeonholes at all...

DS: I don't feel that we did fit in anywhere, as you say. And I still feel somewhat on the periphery of things. I don't feel uncomfortable with that position. It's mirrored in my own life in numerous ways and I've come to terms with that over the years. I've tried to move more to the centre in terms of social circles in my own life but it doesn't work for me. I always find myself back out on the periphery and realise that that, in a sense, is where I belong. I'm actually very comfortable there. I feel I move with a greater ease, a greater sense of freedom there than if I was to attempt to belong to any given group or genre or even social circle.

So yes we never really felt as a band, as Japan, that we belonged to any particular group. We were seen to be a part of the New Romantic movement when that came along but we never really were. We were already well in our stride by the time that movement reared its head. So yes, outsiders for sure - that was certainly the way we felt.

PM: It was unfortunate possibly, in your own eyes, that it was the New Romantic movement that you were lumped into. When Spandau Ballet first came out, and Duran Duran, it was all the frills and the wedge haircuts and the New Romantic traditional look, and you had been lumped into that category. How did you feel about that?

DS: There weren't any strong feelings either way about being put into one category or another. I don't have strong feelings about being categorized. I've always picked a generic term of pop music/pop musician rather than try to more specifically define the work I do or the area that I work in.

A lot more attention was focussed upon us as a result of the New Romantic movement and so that could only be seen as a positive thing - people were beginning to listen to the music more - particularly in Europe - though we always really maintained our position that we weren't really a part of any movement and that we'd actually been following this path for some time.

PM: Japan were a very glamorous band at the time and I think you were once voted the Most Handsome Man in the World, or something like that. But yet it seemed to be something that you were keen to be not associated with at all. Why was that? Surely most people would be chomping at the bit to have a title like that foisted upon them?

DS [laughing]: It's a dubious title to be given I think. It's kind of like somebody pinning a "Kick Me Hard" sign on your back. It's obviously something that you don't take seriously and nothing more than that.

PM: Japan called it a day in 1982/'83 - that was when you were starting to have your first taste of chart success, in singles terms anyway, and I suppose the albums that followed from there. But then why did you decide "OK, that's it"?

DS: Things just came to a head within the band: the politics within the band. As I said earlier I'd had something of a breakthrough with "Ghosts" as a writer, and I really wanted to pursue that path. I didn't feel that the context of the band was the right context in which to pursue that style of writing. And also, as I said, the politics within the band... the band was basically falling apart. So it wasn't a decision that had to be made, it was a set of circumstances that had to be consciously recognised as basically unworkable, and then the decision made itself.

PM: A lot of musicians say the music is much more important than the fame and the trappings that go with it. Very few, of course, actually mean it. But you do seem to be one of the people are not that keen on the whole Fame Game. Did you find that the people around you, like the producers or the management, the record company, were keen to cash in on the success of the single and album and push you into a "Let's play the Fame Game" thing and cash in on it?

DS: Management were but I'm a pretty stubborn person. When I know what I want I'll go straight for it and no other opinion is really going to influence that. In the earlier years of Japan we were heavily influenced by the industry people around us and so on, and we made errors of judgement and we learnt from that and so in later years I was able to make the call and stick with it, regardless of the pressure.

But there was surprisingly little pressure, actually, outside the immediate pressure from the management. The label just went with whatever I wanted to do. They trusted me. I think that was because of the success of "Ghosts". I really pushed for "Ghosts" to be released as a single when few people could recognise it as such. And as a result of its success they trusted me, rightly or wrongly, to just pursue my own interests and goals.

PM: In the early 90s/late 80s you formed the Rain Tree Crow project, which was you and Mick Karn getting back together and everyone saying "Japan mkII": a version, different name. And it was a well-received project because, of course, the whole of the late 80s was probably one of the worst periods of music in history - that's the kind of title it's been given. It was probably refreshing for people to see, at last, some serious music, some quality music, but it was a short-lived project...

DS: The Rain Tree Crow project was borne out of the work I'd been doing with Holger Czukay. We'd made a couple of albums together based around the notion of improvisation and I enjoyed that work enormously, but I wanted to expand further upon it with a larger group of musicians. So I thought of putting a band together specifically for that purpose. And ultimately I began to think about the ex-members of Japan as being the ideal group to explore that territory with because we shared a common vocabulary - a musical vocabulary -, which is quite rare. As a solo artist I'd begun to appreciate that, and it's very rare that you stumble across a musician that you share that vocabulary with. You actually have to work very hard to establish common ground.

So I thought, well we have this common vocabulary, we didn't really explore this relationship to the full in the years that we were together before and we never really set up in a room together as musicians and just played. We were always working with my compositions, or ways of working with them and arranging them. What happened if you didn't have a direction and just went into a studio and see what happens? So that's what we did. We didn't discuss a musical direction. We didn't discuss music at all prior to entering the studio, set up the equipment, got the tapes rolling and started performing together. And there were some very interesting and exciting results.

I think we were all very excited by what was happening and I think we saw it as a long-term project actually. We talked about a second and third album and tours and so on and so forth. But then external pressures came into play from the record label at that time and it basically divided us as a band. Things fell apart unfortunately which is one regret that I have. That's the only time I've ever felt pressure from the industry, in my adult life, that really had a negative effect on the work that was... could have been done. The album itself stands alone. It wasn't compromised, but more could have come from that set-up.

PM: Any chance of it reforming again? Do you think you'll all get back together? Because you do a lot of collaborations: you work with people like Robert Fripp who is also quite improvisational in his style - the League of Crafty Guitarists, and the stuff that he does - he's kind of known for that as well. You obviously enjoy that sort of freeform music.

DS: It's an area of work that gives me a great deal of satisfaction. In a sense the idea is to stretch myself as a writer and a performer under those circumstances. You're basically responding to a stimuli, by the environment that you put yourself in. That was wonderful working with Holger, Rain Tree Crow and Robert Fripp in that manner. But I do enjoy working with structures. I do enjoy having more control over the material ultimately, but it is an area of music that I'll walk back into from time to time, just to push the boundaries for myself a little. And so that I can move back to my own writing, my own work, with renewed enthusiasm and a fresh approach, a fresh outlook.

PM: So what influences you musically? You've been around since 1974 as a musician. Over that period of time has anything leapt out and struck you musically from any of the bands and singers or whoever in that period of time?

DS: I don't think I can single any one musician or band out and say well that artist was a certain influence at that point in time, but I do soak up a great deal of music. I'm an avid listener and have very broad taste in music so I do take in a great deal. But the main influence has to be life experience. It's whatever is going on in my life that provokes me to want to write and share that experience to some degree.

PM: What do you think of the music scene now? The music scene generally in the UK? I know you're in America now, but in the UK how do you think it fares compared to what's been before?

DS: Again I can't talk specifically - I don't really tap into the culture to that degree - but I can say that the industry is probably at a pretty low ebb. In the years that I've been involved in music I've felt it's been up and down, but generally there's a healthy climate. There are people out there with ideas and they're being heard. And I don't feel that that is the case now, I think there's generally a clamping down, focussing only on those artists that can sell so many millions and so on and so forth, basically focussing in on a very narrow field which is a teenage audience. And the mature audience are left with a couple of super-successful artists and little else. But I know through friends and experience that there are many good artists out there with so much to give that are having an enormous struggle getting themselves heard: mature artists that have been working in music all their lives and are reaching a peak in their creativity. I think it's sad to see that the industry doesn't recognise that fully and to explore that talent, to even exploit it... to find a market for it because the market is there, they just haven't really exploited it enough to find out how to reach the audience.

PM: So where do you know think David Sylvian fits into the scheme of things? How would you position yourself at the moment?

DS [laughing]: At the periphery. Where I'll remain, no doubt. Like I've said I feel comfortable there. It's hard you know, I'm still with a major label, who knows for how long, but I've been with Virgin for 20 years and although there are major changes going on somehow I still seem to be able to work within the system without conforming to it. I'm quite happy to move away from the major labels and to work independently should that be the case. I think I'll always be able to find an outlet for my work and I'm very fortunate in that there are enough people out there who are interested enough in what I'm doing that allows me to continue.

PM: Well you've got the new album "Everything And Nothing" which is out on the 9th October. Any plans for any live dates on the back of this?

DS: I would like to perform live but only under the right conditions. Again because of the climate the conditions aren't right now. But maybe in time they'll be right again. Right now the climates all wrong. I couldn't put a band together and take it out on the road. It just wouldn't be financially feasible, but should the conditions be right again I would like to give it a crack again.

I've enjoyed live performance - well particularly the tour I did with Robert [Fripp] and I did a solo tour in. '95 I believe it was. That was an eye-opener for me. I'd never really enjoyed touring that much up until that point and now I'm quite open to the idea of going out on the road and performing material. It's not an essential part of what I do, but I've begun to get more and more pleasure out of the act of live performance, so I'm very open to giving it a try.