Paul Roland | Interview | New Album, ‘Through the Spectral Gates’
It never was a problem to do an interview with sir Paul Roland, but each time it’s a problem to stop asking questions.
For each time he has a new musical release or a book, even more things which are in progress and something always happened between our interviews as well. A natural disaster! Baroque pop, psychedelic rock, Victorian rock, folk – he plays and plays a lot of everything and always keeps his mark of quality on each album he records. Our current agenda is Paul’s collaborative album with Mick Crossley – a spellful and cosmic rock masterpiece ‘Through the Spectral Gates’; forthcoming release of Lovecraft’s biography in English and the premiere of ballet Nosferatu which happened this Spring. Oh… this, that and even more.
Thanks for your time, I see that you’re busy as ever and it’s good regarding all things going around. As I remember you have a new album ‘Through the Spectral Gates’ and the release of Lovecraft’s biography in English. Let’s start with these questions if you do not mind. So you recorded another album with Mick Crossley, ‘Through the Spectral Gates’, and from a first glimpse this material sounds differently in comparison with your previous collaborations. What was the leading motive behind this album? Did you have a concept behind it?
Paul Roland: This detour into the Twilight Zone, musically speaking, is mainly down to Mick’s inclination towards psychedelic guitar and secondary to my mystical leanings. I knew Mick had a whole bunker full of unreleased solo recordings (on which he had played drums, bass, electric and acoustic guitars and sang) and I was simply curious to hear them. I thought the only way I can tempt him to blow the cobwebs off them and finish some of the unfinished tracks is if I offer to collaborate with him on an album. Every other album I made with Mick was a group album in which I brought all the songs to the project and invited him to add his vocals, guitar and bass. So, this was the first time we had shared writing credits and I was following him by writing songs to dovetail into or out from his previously recorded tracks. I also played instruments on his finished tracks where I “heard” another instrument that he hadn’t thought of and that was very pleasurable. That’s why it is credited to the two of us as equals and is not a Paul Roland album featuring Mick as one of the musicians. I think he is criminally underrated as a songwriter and hopefully this will bring him some of the recognition he deserves.
“I wanted to create an album that might have been recorded in the late 60s”
What kind of mystical leanings did you express through these songs?
I wanted to create an album that might have been recorded in the late 60s or very early 70s with a space rock sound and mystical themes, but songs like ‘The Third Eye’ turned out very tongue in cheek. If I had kept a “straight face” throughout it would have sounded pretentious so it had to be a post punk psych album with the cynicism of our time. At the same time, I am serious about my own psychic experiences which began with an out-of-body-experience when I was a child and so you have the two conflicting attitudes on here – a real yearning to explore the inner and outer worlds and a nagging reminder that there are numerous fake gurus out there preying on the gullibility of their followers (‘The Third Eye’). There might even be a touch of the Moody Blues in there (‘Come In My Mind’) who were ambivalent about their belief in eastern mysticism and then there is the homage to Jack Kirkby’s ‘Silver Surfer’ which says life is a comic book a cosmic ride – so dig it!
Did the lockdown and your work with Italian musicians over White Zombie album finally set you on distant work?
No, the lockdown didn’t affect me creatively as I’ve always lived in my own world and worked in isolation. I only summoned musicians when I felt ready to record and since the early 90s I’ve learned to play a lot of the parts and instruments myself, whereas prior to that I relied on an arranger and classically trained musicians to add the baroque chamber ensemble elements to my acoustic and psych pop group songs (in a style similar to The Left Banke, Donovan and David McWilliams’ ‘The Days of Pearly Spencer’). The Italian label has however offered me a completely new platform to write contemporary classical music such as my gothic ballet Nosferatu which was performed in Italy on April 29 and I now have an Italian band. If I want additional female vocals or anything else I can send the files of my finished album over there and they will add them. It’s perfect. The only problem is with my prolific output the albums are stacking up over there waiting to be released at “sensible” intervals!
Paul, please accept my belated congratulations with the Nosferatu premiere! Were your expectations fulfilled? What was the critics’ response?
It was a surreal experience because I had composed and recorded the music and narration but had only made suggestions as to how it should be dramatized by the dancers. So, I didn’t see it staged until the final rehearsal the day before the first performance. Having my music played back to me while the dancers acted it out on a real stage in front of me was a thrill and one which was quite different from playing songs to an audience. This was my creation come to life. Added to that, it was a great success – we had twice as many people queuing for tickets as we could accommodate and the audience – some of whom had come from as far away as Switzerland I was told – sat as still as statues throughout. Only the local paper reviewed it but they said it was a triumph, so I couldn’t have asked for more. We are hoping to stage a second performance in a castle later this summer and I expect that might lead to further performances. It has opened an entirely new world for me in terms of what I can compose and have performed. I am already working on a thematically related project which is the next logical development of the ballet.
How did working over ‘Through the Spectral Gates’ material differ from the recording of ‘Lair of the White Worm’? It’s strange but I’ve found almost zero feedback regarding this album?
It was an entirely different process. For my additions to ‘Through The Spectral Gate’ I had to reverse engineer the segments and songs I wrote, making sure I was in the same key and playing at the same tempo so they could be cross-faded. It was a different method of writing because the first or second part of the track already existed. And also I was either playing a new part to an existing track that someone else had written and recorded, or I was writing a new segment to Mick’s song or instrumental. It gave me all the ingredients and the feel and so we were both working in the same direction and to a shared end but with our own distinctive slants on psych and space rock. I felt it was the right place to write a homage to my favourite Marvel character The Silver Surfer and to poke fun at a real life character who had always fascinated me – the mystic con man Cyril Hoskin, an English plumber who claimed to be a Tibetan monk. In the 1960s he wrote a series of bestsellers under the pen name T. Lobsang Rampa and fooled everyone (including me!) not believing that he was revealing the secrets of the Tibetan mystics. So there is some tongue in cheek humour in the album too (‘The Third Eye’) as well as acoustic vibes (‘Witch’s Brew’) and some Hawkwind-style wig out (‘The Silver Surfer’). ‘Lair of the White Worm’ and the other group albums which Mick contributed to were quite a different process – I brought all the songs to the studio and we recorded them in one or two takes then Mick took the tracks back to his bunker studio and added psych guitar embellishments and vocals which I then edited and mixed in. I think the only reason ‘Lair’ did not get the attention it deserved (definitely my strongest album in so many ways) is that it was released in December 2020 and so was too late to be eligible for a “best album of the year” and wasn’t considered for 2021 because it had been released at the tail end of the previous year!
You had to delete all of your albums in Bandcamp, does digital streaming influence CDs’ sales critically?
I was persuaded not to delete them. It appears my Italian label did not object to me uploading my old albums to Bandcamp, only to me offering them at “name your own price” which they saw as inviting people to download them for free. So I simply set a nominal price of 6 euros and then everyone was happy. But to answer your question, I have come to the conclusion that CDs are effectively a dead format. How can you expect people to pay a high price for new releases plus shipping and on top of that risk incurring import duty levied at random by customs when they can download virtually every album ever made for free and store thousands of tracks on their phones in high quality?
Don’t you see limited runs of vinyl as a possible solution to this issue?
No. As much as I loved having the ‘Lair of the White Worm’ album on white vinyl in a gatefold sleeve and an inner sleeve with lyrics, these are luxury collectibles and have a very limited appeal. I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer practical to manufacture CDs or LPs and that downloads are the only viable method of distribution. You can even compile your own “director’s cut” of an album and create your own artwork at a fraction of the cost of buying the “official” release. For an artist it also seems the best solution as we receive whatever the provider receives minus a small percentage, whereas royalties from sales of CDs and Vinyl can take years to come through collection agencies and some of us never receive our share!
Paul, you are known for your musical exercises in baroque or Victorian folk, hard and psychedelic rock, ballet and so on. Can you pick a most successful period in your career as a musician?
I was told recently that my reputation has never been higher and that is the impression I have too, plus I feel as if I can realise any project that I fancy now and that is simply because I have found myself able to access a highly receptive state in which music seems to just pour out of me. It’s also partly because I have been making music for so many years that I expect it to come easily, just as a swimmer expects to float when they enter the water. The thought of sinking simply doesn’t occur to them. So the secret of writing songs or any other creative endeavour, I believe, is to have no doubts that ideas will come, that they are “out there” just waiting to be “channelled” by you, as the psychics would term it. No doubt the critical approval I have had has nurtured this feeling but also years of experience. When I recorded my first album (‘The Werewolf Of London’) in 1980 my voice was insecure plus I was recording in low budget demo studios which can hamper a vocal performance, though I didn’t know this at the time. And now I not only have the platform to release any type of project that I wish to make, but I also have the technology that makes it possible for a person like me with very limited musical skills (I can’t read a score and so can’t compose in the conventional way) to play parts that only a trained pianist or orchestral musician could be expected to play. I see no problem with using any means possible to create a piece of music provided that the music itself is effective and can be listened to without anyone being aware of the method which made it possible. So, to answer your question, this year right now has to be my most “successful” year ever.
Do you have a strict plan of how an album will sound when you start composing it nowadays? Let’s say, don’t you set yourself a goal like to write Gargoyles II or like that?
I often have a yearning to create an album on a specific theme and in a specific genre but that can be very limiting. It’s best just to write songs and then step back and see what you have and how best to present it.
I suppose that self-promotion isn’t your cup of tea, but didn’t you see a way to put more energy in this direction as your music still has commercial potential?
I have always been a bit of a shameless self-publicist, but then I had to be as I had no manager or major label promoting my releases. Some labels that I was associated with were more effective than others in getting reviews and interviews (New Rose in France had their own publicity department and my Greek label Di Di organised festivals at which I performed many times and got lots of radio play so I had “turntable hits” over there), but otherwise it’s been a case of accepting my role as a “niche” or “cult” artist and having to be content with that. But now with social media I can generate interest in my music and “network” with radio people, podcasts, webzines and bloggers all over the world and “share” posts with like-minded groups using a single image (a new tour poster or an event that is only tenuously related to me) which gets seen, liked and commented upon by people in countries or towns that I would not be able to visit in person. But the one thing I learnt from having many indie labels in various countries over the years is that each label is only effective in their own country. Imports do not get reviewed or airplay. That is why I had four different labels releasing ‘Duel’ in 1989 – each did a reasonable job of distributing and promoting the album in their own country but they made no impact whatsoever outside the “market” that they knew and could reach. Now every artist can be their own PR agency and generate tweets, shared posts et cetera that help spread the word. Besides, I’ve been told that reviews don’t sell CDs these days and that only personal appearances in the form of gigs have any serious impact on sales. But which indie artist can play every major town and city in all countries? No, I think it is now down to social media to act as a virtual concert platform, radio show and distributor.
How did it end with your searches for a publisher for your grim and macabre detective story?
I submitted both my novels to every literary agent I could find, but I was told they only sign one new author in a thousand these days, so I self-published by book of short crime fiction (Bitter & Twisted Tales) on Lulu.com and that did OK, but I wouldn’t self-publish my novels. I’m just waiting for someone to recommend an enthusiastic small press publisher that I can submit them to. One day my prince will come!
Impossible… And don’t you have a sort of modern Weird Tales almanac to publish some of your stories?
I don’t have an outlet for my fiction at the moment, but I am actively looking for one. It may be like my music in that it will take a small press publisher in another country to show interest and then that book might later appear in English. England is sadly not a very encouraging place for writers or artists at the moment!
Didn’t you offer some of your stories for a film’s scenario?
Not that I remember, unless I did it in my sleep!
I remember well that you had Lovecraft’s biography written, but honestly I didn’t know that it was only in Italian. How did it come to the English edition now?
I originally wrote a Lovecraft biography for UK publisher Plexus but they completely ruined it by refusing to include all the images I wanted of memorabilia, film posters, book covers and so on. It was to have been a large format highly illustrated book with a wealth of coloured photos, but they put it out as a simple paperback and of course nobody was interested. I had been hawking the idea of a Lovecraft biography since the early 1990s when there was nothing on him aside from dry academic works published in America by University Presses. So, when Plexus failed miserably, I wrote a completely new HPL biography and found an Italian publisher and translator. Now, it’s some years later and I have started an esoteric publishing company with a like-minded partner and I proposed that we publish the original English text of that ‘Italian’ biography which we will do very shortly.
Was it a challenge to write your own H.P.’s biography when there are at least three books done – that massive Joshi’s book, August Derleth’s old work and Lyon Sprague de Camp’s first major book in this field?
Joshi’s book, in my opinion, is far too dense for the average, casual horror fan to read. It is spread over two heavy volumes and includes all manner of side issues and speculation on Lovecraft’s political views and such like that are only of interest to an absolute obsessive. I felt what was needed at the time was a comprehensive but tightly focused biography concentrating on the facts of the man’s life and how that may have impacted on his fiction. I mentioned his virulent racism and his awkward personal relationships as well as quoting from his voluminous correspondence, but I believed that the average horror fan is not interested in his extreme beliefs nor in his observations on matters which do not relate to his life’s work – his fiction.
What do you think about modern interpretations of Lovecraft’s legacy like Alan Moore’s graphic novels or that strange series Lovecraft Country?
I haven’t seen any of these. I prefer the master’s originals.
How does the English edition differ from the original Italian book?
It’s a more concise re-write, avoiding some of my speculations and armchair psychoanalysis of his peculiar personality!
I believe that Black Widow Records finally announced their tribute to Lovecraft. Do you have some information regarding this project? Did you prepare a new song or took some good old tunes from your back-catalogue?
It must have been about three years ago that they invited me to contribute a track to their HPL tribute album which they intended to release with a copy of my Italian biography. I wrote and recorded two extended narrative acoustic songs ‘The Music of Erich Zann’ and ‘The Cats of Ulthar’ (each comprised of several segments so as to relate the whole story and not just a scene) but when they repeatedly delayed the release I included them on my solo acoustic album ‘Wyrd Tales of an Antiquarian’ which was itself delayed until this September!
Is this totally new material or does the album also include acoustic interpretations of older songs?
No, all originals, though it includes songs that were originally written for other projects (an Italian label’s homage to Lovecraft and my own M R James album).
Paul, you took part in Metal Magic Festival in Denmark, how did it happen that you were invited to perform your songs for metal fans? What kind of tracks did you pick up for your set?
That was another surreal experience! It was our second appearance at that festival and it was even better than the first time in 2018. I expected to be pelted with bottles and worse the first time as I sat down with an acoustic guitar(!) while the band gave all they had around me. I think it was the stark contrast with the other hardcore metal bands that worked to our advantage that first time plus the strength of the songs and the occult themes (‘Aleister Crowley’, ‘Come To The Sabbat’ et cetera) plus the fact that we had no opportunity to rehearse all together before we performed. It was really raw and spontaneous; a flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type performance and the audience were clearly up for it. But the second time – on July 9 this year – I came with a new band and we were well rehearsed. I played standing up and had an electric guitar – the first time I had ever played one live – and we really came together as a band. It was our first performance together and we had the harder opening tracks from ‘Lair of the White Worm’ to grab their attention from the start. The audience sang along and clapped and at the end reached up to shake my hand and nearly pulled me off the stage. And this time there must have been twice as many people as there had been the first time.
You shared the stage with such notorious acts like Carpathian Forest, Death SS and even more extreme bands. Do you dig metal music?
I’ve always loved metal since I became addicted to rock in 1974 with Black Sabbath Vol:4 and the heavy blues rock of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. When I became a music journalist for Kerrang I was exposed to a lot more including Mercyful Fate and King Diamond, though I always found much of it derivative, contrived and shallow, Saxon and Whitesnake for example.
What are your impressions regarding this show? And do I get it right that you perform your songs with a new line-up there?
I love the metal crowd – they are always up for a good time and they don’t come with an “impress me” attitude. And I get the impression that they know when a band is simply posing and not seriously into the occult. They don’t mind a bit of grand guignol or macabre theatre, but if the band is sincere in its morbid fascination with the occult they don’t have to play sledgehammer riffs and snarl the vocals to impress the crowd. I can’t wait to go back there and do it all over again but louder!
Thanks for your time Paul, it’s often good to learn that your creative sources never dry, and I suspect we could skip something, didn’t we?
Aleksey Evdokimov
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