HOW FAR BACK IN TIME MUST WE GO
A CONVERSATION WITH TERRY DRAPER (EX-KLAATU)
“If I hadn’t discovered The Beatles and rock and roll, I would have been an archeologist. I still dream about being Howard Carter and opening Tut’s tomb, and the magnificence of it all. The shock and surprise and the awe of discovery.”
Terry Draper is off and talking about one of his favourite subjects, history and ancient civilizations. But, he is also a very busy individual. He has recently released his 14th solo studio album, In The Beginning, which features songs about historical places. I caught up with him recently and talked about his new album and the fact that he is showing no signs of slowing down.
“I got down here in Florida, and wrapped up the new album, sent off the master to Oregon, and loaded up the packages. I start thinking, I haven’t written a new song in four months. I spent the whole summer taking last year’s work and doing it up. Buffing it, looking under the microscope one last time and I haven’t had time to write a song. But, in the last week I have written two new ones.”
But at the moment, it is his new album that is keeping him busy.
“I’ve been really obsessed with travelling around Turkey. I have been there three times in the past three years because our knucklehead son moved there,” laughed Terry. “And one of the things, even before we went there, was that I was fascinated with Göbekli Tepe and the Younger Dryas and the events that happened 12,000 years ago that they think Göbekli Tepe could be about. And the building of the city of Cappadocia, also because of that event. I wanted to sing about it and try to work it into a song, but it wasn’t easy. So, I started with the mounds in England, Stonehenge, and the Mayans and the Pharaohs. I went right back to when we crawled out of the ocean and went to 12,000 years ago. I ask more questions than I answer but that is kind of the idea when you are trying to get people interested in stuff.”
And like an archeologist, Draper has dug out some older songs for the album. Some of the songs date back to the days of Klaatu and sound fantastic, which begs the question why it has taken so long for these songs to reach the ears of fans.
“They have been lying around for a long time and I always thought they had merit, but you know other stuff comes along and I didn’t have as many new songs, well actually I’m lying, I had a bunch of new songs, but they weren’t very good. So I started to go back to the archives to see if there are any gems lying around. I never thought the song “For The Few Who Couldn’t Be Friends” was much of anything to be honest, and then I played it for Jamie Grant who does all of the videos and he got all excited about it. It’s funny because I wrote it in 1978 for Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. That is what I am singing about, and what could be more topical than that today?”
IN THE BEGINNING ALBUM REVIEW
Jamie Grant, who plays guitar on In The Beginning and has worked with Draper in the past had a part in getting the older songs recorded for the album.
“Jamie Grant said, ‘What else you got hidden?’. I sent him about 30 songs, most of them were demoed in the 70 and 80s on four tracks, and every song I sent him he would say ‘who are you, Elton John? There are a lot of them and he thinks they are really good, but I have mixed feelings about them. He sent me a photograph where someone has taken a photo of me sitting at my piano and he has copied me and put me beside myself, so there are two of me at the piano. He said, ‘Let’s put an album of these B-sides and call it Besides Myself’.” Draper laughed as he told this story.
There are other songs that are making their debut that are fairly old. And sometimes, Draper is his own harshest critic. “Another one is “Lost Without You”. I always liked it, and it is only three minutes, which is good, but it is hard to be objective about your own stuff.”
And as for new songs, Draper is a writer who is moved to write a song, rather than simply sitting down and writing the song as a task. “Sometimes, stuff just comes along. I don’t sit at the piano and try to write, because I will come up with a melody or chord progression that is uninteresting to me. If I don’t have an idea of what I want to sing about, I don’t bother starting the song. I want the music to invoke the lyrics, I want the perfect marriage.”
Draper is somewhat of a traditionalist and the new album comes packaged like an album from the 1970s complete with a poster and postcards. And this leads to Draper’s take on AI. “I haven’t dabbled there yet. I think it is cheating to some degree. These AI generators have at the fingertips the whole world of history, philosophy, poetry, literature. These AI machines know everything Shakespeare has done, well I have only read about ten of them, so there is a whole pile I haven’t got to yet, which means I can’t access it in my mind because I don’t have access to it. I can’t regurgitate it like the AI machines can. So that is why I feel it is cheating. If you want to be honest with yourself, you have to draw upon the things that you think and the things you know about and learned about. Do research, that counts, but then you can’t just regurgitate the facts but you discuss how you feel about it.
Which leads to the last song on the album, “Lost At Sea”. This is like a mini prog rock epic to close. “I knew it was going to be the last song on the album, but I wasn’t happy with how it ended because it ended abruptly. Of course, we have the sound effects of the sea and stuff. I am going to do a little bit of the verse a cappella, and then to make it even more weird, I got Brenda Webb to sing the exact same thing but I didn’t use her voice, I used the echo or reverb of her voice on mine. It then goes into a giant bath of echoes and reverb and safely drifts away at the end of the album.”
Now that the album is done, Draper has his hopes for the album and how it will land with fans and new fans. “I don’t have a lot of expectations. I go into my pirate mode. This is when I say something like ‘if you like what I do, that’s really great and I appreciate it and enjoy it. If you don’t like what I do, go fuck yourself,’ laughs Draper. “You can’t please everybody, although, you know I try. Every album has a dozen or more songs and I try to make them go from progressive rock, to ridiculous pop. As much variety as possible on each album is the goal. I learned that with Klaatu. We wanted to make it so we could never be pigeonholed. I have tried to keep faith with that. Here’s the bottom line, if I can make myself amused, there is a chance I can amuse you.”
But in the end, Draper sees this as the album in which he gets things right. I’ve been doing this for 50 odd years, and I am finally getting the hang of it.”
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