via energythefilm.co.uk

Damo Suzuki, the legendary singer of Can, Dunkelziffer, Damo Suzuki Band and Damo Suzuki’s Network, is the subject of the upcoming documentary Energy. Director Michelle Heighway’s Indiegogo campaign to finish the movie runs through June 20. I never imagined I would speak to Damo Suzuki, and I leapt at the chance to call him by long-distance videophone, Los Angeles to Cologne, earlier this week.

When he said authority was against God’s will, I thought of the English Peasants’ Revolt, and John Ball’s sermon at Blackheath on June 13, 1381:

In the beginning all men were created equal; servitude of man to man was introduced by the unjust dealings of the wicked, and is contrary to God’s will. For, if God had intended some to be serfs and others lords, He would have made a distinction between them at the beginning.

I understand if you’re tired of talking about your health, but if you can just briefly tell us what’s been going on with you over the last few years…

It was end of August until last year, March. But I’m not still 100 percent good condition. I had really heavy-duty during that time—I had cancer. After the cancer, they made some mistakes, and things like this, so that’s why I have to stay so long. And still not that good. Maybe two hours after I wake up it’s not such really good condition, I must take medicine. Then this effect comes, maybe, after two hours, then I feel okay. I can live quite normal. But many things are handicapped, because I cannot carry stuff. More than 20 kilograms, maybe less, I cannot carry. So my work is quite limited. So it’s not sort of really like Californian sun [laughter].

It must be frustrating for you, because you’ve traveled so much and you play music all the time. Has it been hard for you to tour?

No no no, it’s not so bad like I thought. Actually, it’s good, because it’s kind of a therapy that [gives] me a little bit of motivation and enjoyable moment that I’m together with the audience, and I make things which I really like to make. So that way I feel really comfortable. So that’s my answer, not so bad to have this time.

But actually it’s not me traveling. Everybody’s traveling, you too, you are traveling too, every day, in a way. My thing is both sides: geographically and also spiritual way, so I am traveling quite hard. But it’s okay; I survived it already twice. I had once, also, in the middle of the Eighties, I had same sickness, and I survive after that 30 years. So now I survived, maybe I can live for another 30 years.

Mainly I perform in England, UK, and I have quite a young audience. Some of them is really teenagers. So I can perform another 40, 50 years, until they get old. [laughter] Maybe they can find their grandkids, you know, things like that, will come to my concert. So it’s really a nice thing, because I don’t have any kind of a special epoch, you know? I’m always quite into the times. I like it, because I just improvise music, so you cannot say, “This is old, but this is new”—actually, these are not the things that people like to hear in improvised music. They like to hear just what Damo Suzuki is doing, is all. It’s not a matter of “30 years before” or “30 years later,” the main thing is that I’m doing something, because I’m not singing every day the same songs 300 or 400 times. That I cannot make. Like everybody else, I’m doing things which are, for me, easier to make. So life is as simple as possible this way. What I’m doing for myself is the best way. Then I don’t get so much stress.

Much more after the jump…

 
Energy: A Documentary about Damo Suzuki will be the first feature-length movie about the singer of “Vitamin C,” “Mother Sky,” “Mushroom,” “Spoon,” “Halleluwah,” and “Moonshake,” who once said he composed his lyrics in “the language of the Stone Age,” and whose inspired approach to life is of a piece with the way he sings.

A commitment to total spontaneity can be fruitful, if you happen to be Damo Suzuki. One day in 1970, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit saw him busking in a Munich street, “screaming and sort of adoring the sun,” and invited him to front Can at their show that night. Czukay later recalled:

I told him there’d be no rehearsal, that we’d see him on stage and he could just go ahead. And it worked out in a totally unexpected way. On stage he started out very calm and peaceful, then suddenly – like a Samurai warrior – he switched and became the exact opposite. The audience were frightened by him. It was like when the Sex Pistols first came out.

Director Michelle Heighway has been filming Suzuki since 2014, the year the singer was diagnosed with colon cancer. Despite his illness—the press material for Energy describes Suzuki’s good spirits even when “hooked up to a drip by a Hickman line fed directly into his heart”—he continues to perform with the ever-changing lineup of “sound carriers” who comprise Damo Suzuki’s Network. (In Berlin on June 9, Budgie and Knox Chandler will be in Damo’s band.)

Watch this space for the upcoming Dangerous Minds interview with Damo Suzuki. The Indiegogo campaign for Energy runs through June 20.
 

 
Hilarious ‘shopped image of You Are Damo Suzuki book, appropriately “penned” by Mark E. Smith.

Below, The Fall performing “I am Damo Suzuki” live at The Hacienda in 1985:
 

 
Via Post Punk Tumblr

 
Yes, ‘The Can” is the ‘Can’ we all know and love - Holger, Jaki, Michael, Irmin and, in this early 70s incarnation, the iconic Damo Suzuki. Here is a clip of the band performing the title track of the Roland Klick film ‘Deadlock’ in 1970 on Germany’s Westdeutscher Rundfunk television station.

When I first stumbled upon this clip, I assumed the TV producers had made an amusing mistake by adding an unwanted definitive article to the start of the band’s name. However, after checking the Can wiki page, it turns out that the additional “The” may not have been a mistake after all:

[By 1968] the band used the names “Inner Space” and “The Can” before finally settling on “CAN”. Liebezeit subsequently suggested the backronym “communism, anarchism, nihilism” for the band’s name. [Wow, what an amazing backronym!]

However, by the time this footage was recorded in 1970 the band had already released two records as ‘Can’ - Monster Movies and Soundtracks, which mostly featured Malcolm Mooney on vocals rather than Suzuki. So I think a little chortle can be had without feeling too foolish, but who knows, maybe it was a genuine mistake or maybe the bad flirted with a new name for a new singer? Either way, if it’s ‘The Can’ or just plain old ‘Can’ this is some great early footage of true musical pioneers: 

The Can “Deadlock” live 1970
 

 
After the jump, the awesome ‘Mother Sky’ from the same session…

 
Mr. Laner’s Krautrock post from earlier this week put me in a Can kind of mood (although it takes very little).  What follows below is a kinda wonderful fan-made video for Future Days, the epically dreamy title track from the final Can album to feature the vocal stylings of former street busker, Damo Suzuki.  The vid’s creator cribbed its imagery from banned films from the 20’s and 30’s.  Trippy visuals aside, as we ease into what should be a sunny Memorial Day weekend here in LA, make Future Days part of your soundtrack!