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part one | part two
Martin: I don't have complete control over IQ's business decisions; the band is run on a democratic principle. However it is nice to be in control of the label side of things, and I like to think I do a good job. Unfortunately I am less and less able to get involved with newer artists as releasing our existing acts and looking after the back catalogue takes up a great deal of time. I am careful not to have too many projects on the label, otherwise it severely limits the time I have to spend writing and recording my own music. I am after all one of the label's best-selling artists! 14 - Talking about record labels…When you regained the rights to your records from your former manager, he sold those rights simultaneously to French label MSI, which promptly began to sell the IQ back catalogue that it had acquired the rights to. The MSI records, however, seem to have disappeared as of late. Was there any direct conflict between MSI and GEP, or did things just kind of happen by themselves? Martin: I don't know if MSI knew they were buying bootleg masters, but they probably wouldn't have been too bothered if they had. In the end, we issued our own versions of those CD's which were remastered and better packaged, and MSI just started buying our version instead of making their own, because that's what most people wanted.
Martin: I have not rejoined Jadis [Ed. note: Someone told me otherwise, I'm sure that certain someone is reading this, and I'm gonna kill him as soon as I see him]; I simply work for the band as a session musician. This suits me and it suits the band, and we regard it as a very satisfactory long-term arrangement, though Gary writes most of the music these days.
Martin: It wasn't a question of most of the songs not fitting with IQ - they just didn't like them. As IQ is a democracy, once an idea is rejected by the majority, it's generally consigned to the scrapheap forever. I thought that a lot of my songs were far too good for that and that's why I released the solo album. I don't work particularly easily with other people and it was a really enjoyable experience for me to be completely in control of every single note on that album. Having had over 20 years of doing band albums where my ideas get changed and modified by others, it was a breath of fresh air for me to be able to record my ideas as they were originally conceived. I will certainly be making more solo albums in the future as CMAPS was very well received and sold very well too. 17 - You once mentioned that you believed that it was possible to write classical music in the 20th century that didn't sound like a complete atonal mess. Did you mean to make a statement about that with your solo album? Do you feel as if classical music has somehow lost its way during the last few decades? Martin: I think most of the so-called classical music of the late 20th century is pretentious arty rubbish [Ed. note: Yes! Someone finally agrees with me! If Shostakovich could only see this…]. Music is supposed to be about entertainment, and as soon as composers stopped writing melodies and started experimenting just for the hell of it, serious music lost its public support , and serves it right. Personally I would abolish all state funding for things like opera/ballet and let them exist in the commercial world like we all have to. Classical music has been a fat and pompous creature that's been propped up by taxpayers for far too long, and it's only going to get anywhere in the future if it's dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Why not have Karaoke opera, for instance? You don't need an orchestra to perform an opera, and you generally don't see them anyway, so why not bring it down to a couple of synths or even a minidisc player. Karaoke opera could be performed in the smallest village hall and would go a long way in returning the music to its traditional audience and taking it away from the art snobs. As you may have guessed, I don't have a great deal of time for the classical lot, and that's why I operate in the more down-to-earth field of rock music even though my music itself perhaps has more in common with classical influences.
Martin: I have never really been that much of a rock fan, but I feel far more at home in that part of the music industry. Although my roots are in classical music, I really got thrown out by the classical crowd for not conforming. They said I had a lousy piano technique, and my hands were too small - stuff like that, and it just made me all the more determined to say "Well F*ck you, I am going to make a go of this!"
Martin: I was in a very difficult position writing-wise with The Seventh House as I didn't really want to make an IQ album last year. I had set the year aside to finally do the solo project, which I have to say was my main objective. I find it very hard to work on two musical projects simultaneously, so I would be the first to admit that The Seventh House did not receive as much attention from me as perhaps it warranted. As it worked out, the fact that Mike and John were the main writers this time probably helped give the album a slightly different flavour, and it certainly seems to have gone down well with most people. However despite not being involved so much at the writing stage, I still took care of my usual duties such as pre-production (including programming a lot of the keyboard parts and all the backing tracks) and helping with the recording of the vocals, so my contribution in the studio was about the same as it normally is for an IQ record. 20 - You've been known to describe IQ's music at times to be "heavy metal with keyboards", and at others to be "pop." The description seems rather appropriate when one mixes both elements and adds a certain level of complexity and occasional epic magnitude to the mix. Do you feel as if The Seventh House follows such a musical vein? Martin: I think the heavy metal comment is no longer particularly valid, as metal in the last ten years seems to have got itself into a rather childish rut of harder/louder/faster [Ed. note: Ouch!], and IQ is certainly no part of that. I still think we write a good pop song, though, even if sometimes they are disguised as sections of epic length tracks! 21 - The Seventh House is in many ways musically similar to your previous record, Subterranea, while previous outings, such as Ever, were a bit different in their complexity and general approach. Do you think that with The Seventh House the band has found a comfortable stylistical plane in which to develop itself for a few more years? Martin: I would disagree that The Seventh House is similar to Subterranea; I think it's much more like a modern development of Ever. I am not quite sure what a "stylistical plane" is [Ed. note: Point taken. I'll stop using the term], so we probably don't have one! Suffice it to say that each IQ album seems to develop its own identity during the writing and recording irrespective of what we, the writers do. 22 - IQ's area of concert activity concentrates mostly on the United Kingdom and the occasional gig in mainland Europe. Are fans in other parts of the world to expect seeing IQ live near them anytime soon? Martin: Basically IQ is a very part-time band, and because all the members have other jobs in professions outside of music, we are restricted to about 10 days worth of gigging per year as that's all the holiday time that some of the members can get. For this reason, we generally try to use that time to play the maximum number of gigs we can, and normally that means that they're mostly in the UK and Western Europe. There is no point in us playing a gig somewhere where it takes us two days to get there and two days to get back. However we do manage the occasional foray into new territory (we've been to Canada, the USA and South America over the last three years), but overall it's fair to say that there are no plans to make IQ more of a full-time thing, or to tour more frequently.
Martin: I don't mind IQ being described as a progressive rock band at all. However you want to define that term, our music is a lot more progressive in its rhythmical and harmonic content than most of the music that's around at the moment, so certainly as a comparative term, it's valid. What I do hate is the band being described as "Neo-progressive". This is a completely bogus term that seems to have come out of the USA in recent years, and frankly I take it as a major insult to our music. The "neo" part of the expression seems to infer that the music is somehow a fake parody of "real" progressive rock (normally meaning some awful bands with keyboards that belong in a museum!). IQ has been going strong for 20 years, and if we were fakes, I think people would have noticed by now! 24 - Last question. Do you ever miss Mr. Nosey [Ed.note: Mr.Nosey was a green toy with a large nose that was placed on Orford's keyboards during IQ's gigs in the early eighties]? Martin:
No, to hell with the little green traitor! We used to take Mr. Nosey
round to all our gigs, and then suddenly he wandered off during a gig
in the North of England, and we haven't seen him since. Let a soft toy
into the band and that's the gratitude you get! For more information, visit: IQ Official Website |