As I already told you before I have enjoyed your new album Orphan... a lot. In fact it's the first full-length albums of CHANGES I listen
to. Before today I've heard your tracks only on compilations. Orphan... is a perfect combination of romantic ballads and - let's call them that
way - revolutionary songs. Well, it's pretty unusual combination. What do you like better - to write nice ballads or to create songs that raise people's spirit and make them think? What side of CHANGES you prefer?
Thank you for your kind words concerning "Orphan in the Storm". In addition to the two forms of songs included in your question is a third that doesn't exactly fit into either definition and these are songs about legendary and/or mythical figures. Our main body of work is, of course "love" songs while the remaining works have been a combination of these heroic and apocalyptic songs. Rather than saying that I prefer one form over the other I'd like to say that each type of song has a different emotive force which is, I believe, equal in preference to me. The love gained and love lost songs were written from emotions that were very real at the time the song was written and we can only hope to convey at least some of that emotion through our music. The
songs of heroism and mythology ("Song of Pan", "Aphrodite", all of "Legends", etc.) are deeply-rooted in our souls and for all of our lives Robert and I have studied and savored stories of heroism carried down through the ages. The apocalyptic songs ("Fire of Life", "Waiting For the Fall", "Twilight of the West", etc.) are from our point of view of seeing what the death of civilization can do to the world around us.
The song "Icarus" that Robert wrote is one that has combined the second and third type, taking the Greek myth and combining it with the errors of present day society and how these excesses and abuses can lead to self-destruction. So, therefore, in trying to impart our love of mythology and our warning of what the future may hold, our emotions run rampant and again we can only hope to convey these emotions, as we feel them, through our songs.
Your new album is dedicated to E. A. Poe. For 'average' Russian-speaking person Poe is the guy who wrote 'horror-stories'. But English-speaking people honor him as a great poet. So, could you explain to your Russian fans why did CHANGES decided to pay a tribute E. A. Poe?
Edgar Allan Poe was a rather complex character. His horror stories were in fact some of the most thought-provoking and suspenseful stories ever written. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story that can haunt you for a long time once you've read it. His poetry was very eloquent and well written. "The Raven" being one of his most famous is a mysterious, haunting tale. One of my favorite poems is "The Bells", in which he used words that sounded like the type of bell he was describing from very small bells to large iron bells. Additionally, he was also one of the pioneers of modern cryptography, and the story "The
Gold Bug" from which my painting was derived, shows his insightfulness in character substitution in order to create a code which can only be perceived by another who is familiar with what are to be used for the substitute characters. Though there have always been stories of him dying of vagrancy and starvation, there have been recent findings that he may have been bitten by a rabid dog and actually died of rabies.
Here is my last question about your new album. How much Orphan... differs from upcoming The Ballad of Robert De Bruce? What we all should expect?
"Orphan" is a collection of short songs as was our first album "Fire of Life". Our second album "Legends" was one song comprised of six sections, being a Pan-European ballad, each illustrating the heroic saga of a country or section of Europe. The Ballad of Robert de Bruce is, similarly, a six part song vividly describing the trials and tribulations of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland (who followed William Wallace of "Braveheart" fame) in his ascent to the throne. The song, including the spoken introduction is close to one-half hour long. We are also planning to include four or five traditional Scottish pieces, thanks to Michael Moynihan and Annabel Lee, so the album will be a "full length" one of about 45 minutes.
Was it surprise for you when after almost 20 years of silence you have found that there is a demand for your Art? And even more, your songs become actual as never before?
It was, in fact, a great pleasure for us that our music was discovered, especially after all these years. Surprising in the fact that the music that we always believed in had finally found a very receptive audience. When Changes was formed in the late sixties, we had not fit into the "mold" of the music scene of that time. We had a small following in Chicago and other cities in which we had performed, but aside from the love ballads, which are generally universal, many people did not quite know what to make of our heroic and apocalyptic music.
Thus, we felt then like we might be "ahead of our time". Even though our song "Twilight of the West" was based on writings penned earlier in the century, it was a very prophetic work which shows more evidence in today's society than it did even in the early seventies when it was written. Another factor is that our music is developed from our European roots and it could have been that Americans at that time could not quite identify with that. So the most important point of creating our "third incarnation" was that of our music being distributed and discovered in Europe. I cannot say enough about the appreciation shown to us by the people overseas. Through our recent concert in New York City and word of mouth, Americans are beginning to learn of our
music also which is great as it would be good to have a listenership of people in our own country.
You say that your song "Twilight of the West" was written really long time ago. Unbelievable! The song sounds like it was written today... As far as I know the situation in the States wasn't bad 20-30 years ago... not like these days. Am I wrong? What has influenced on writing such a song back then?
The process of being prophetic is usually through observation of situations that have happened during similar events in history. "Twilight of the West", now simply called "Twilight" on our recently released 7 inch record, available through HauRuck! (excuse the spot advertising), is an observation of how societies of the past evolved when their civilization was on a decline and relating it to the society of today. Though today's society is showing more signs of decay than that of the sixties, that era was a turbulent time and showed the beginnings of where the world would evolve to present day and beyond.
Don't you think that it would be a good idea for Soviet propaganda to release CHANGES' record back in 70-ies :) Imagine, Soviet people would listen to underground band that sing about how ugly and bad life in the States :)) There is no need to make stories - pure American reality from America itself :)) What do you think about that? And would you agree if such proposal would come :))
One problem with that theory was that these issues were not and are not isolated only to America but all of Western civilization (I'm afraid that includes your people too :o) ). And frankly, I believe propaganda is something that the governments came up with to keep the cold war perpetuated :o). Mostly, the populace of our respective countries didn't care what the citizens of the other country were doing, but were more concerned with the other country's power as a whole and what could happen if our countries decided to fight as two superpowers. It would not have been an honorable battle of people fighting one-on-one, but the fear was that whomever got mad first would try to bring about genocide on the other. I remember thinking during the 60s and 70s how
hard it would be to live under the oppressive rule of the higher dictatorial powers of the U.S.S.R., but the people of your country may have been thinking the same about us in the U.S. And the people that were singing about how "bad" life was in the States were (to name a few) Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Pete Seeger who were propagandists in their own right trying to bring down any and all of the values that we stood for and cause unrest within our own borders. Robert and I were just stating facts as they existed like "This is the way it is...now what are we going to do about it?"
CHANGES exists for really long time. I guess it's one of the oldest bands in our scene. What do you consider your (CHANGES') greatest achievement so far?
Staying alive :o). No, really, the fact that we are still at it and writing new material which may in many cases be as good as or better than some of the songs we wrote early on. Of course, some songs like "The Saddest Thing", "Memorabilia", and "Twilight" to name a few may always be the ones that we consider our "classic" songs but we have some songs on our upcoming releases that the lyrics, melodies, arrangements and vocal harmonies make them (excuse my lack of modesty) excellent songs and hopefully they will be received that way. One of our newer songs entitled "The Waves That Washed My Mind" (which will appear on our album Lament) is, I think, one of the best ballads we have ever written.
Writing a song is like sharing your own soul with others. In most cases songs and poems contain a lot of very personal feelings, even painful ones. Don't you afraid that you expose yourself to completely alien or even unfriendly people? How much personal you share with others? And do you somehow 'censor' yourself from exposing too much through poems or songs?
I don't believe that we have had to censor ourselves at all. Our music should not really be considered offensive to any group of people. Though there was a group that did a report on racially motivated music on National Public Radio some years back and for one of the songs they played the chorus of "Twilight"! However, in order to turn our song into something cruel, they used a voice-over of another group's hate music which attacked black people to make our song sound racially biased. Unfortunately, people who had never heard our song may have thought that the flagrant addition of that other song was actually part
of ours! Robert and I were upset by that propaganda campaign and still are to this day. I'm not normally a litigious person, but there was certainly material for a lawsuit toward those people if we would have had the money to cover the expenses. That is how people can twist and turn anything to suit their own means. And, believe me, no one is safe from that, no matter what kind of music they write!
Great Soviet director Tarkovsky said once that Art is a way to share your pain with others. Do you agree with him?
That is one good way of putting it. It always seems like depression over a life changing event such as a death or divorce can stir up emotions which get the creativity pumping. As Robert said once (or possibly many times), "It's all grist for the mill". But, for instance, sometimes the emotion of happiness and a new love can also stimulate creativity. Speaking for myself, there is the one song that I wrote myself on the Orphan in the Storm album entitled "Never So True". I remember writing the lyrics quite vividly as my now ex-wife and I had been married only a short time, and we were spending the
weekend at a cabin in Estes Park, Colorado. We had spent an evening of passion and as I'd stepped outside into the cool mountain air, the feelings and concept for the song came to me in a rush. It was one of the happiest times in my life up to that point. Later when we returned home, I took my guitar and wrote the music to complete the song again at one sitting. But to answer your question, all of the emotions, hate, love, sadness, happiness, fear, pain, aggression are to one degree or another capable of stirring up the adrenaline of creative flow. But definitely pain seems to stir the hardest.
Recently I was reading a story... long time ago one Dutch painter was looking for a model for his painting - he needed a young woman who could look like a saint. Well, he spent years searching and finally he have found one. She was so good that when the painting was ready the painter has presented expensive dress and jewelry to that women - he was very grateful... after years the same painter wanted to create another painting and this time he needed a really ugly old woman and again he spent years looking for one. He was looking everywhere, even in most dangerous places where lived various criminals and whores. He has found a woman. And when he was working on his new painting the woman said that she already had an experience of being a model - one painter used her for portrait of a saint. Yes, it was the same woman - not really old but very bad looking degraded whore... if we come back to CHANGES, you music was born decades ago and it wasn't successful back then. Today CHANGES is truly cult band and there is a demand for your music as far away as in Russia or Belarus... You are the same people, you play the same songs... what happened? World has changed? People? Or the States wasn't the right place to start in?
All of the above :o). The world has changed somewhat for as we previously stated, "Twilight" is more prophetic now than it was then. And the States probably weren't the right place at that time nor even in 1996 when "Fire of Life" was released. In America it sold nowhere near the amount of copies as were sold overseas even though our music was fairly popular in Portland, Oregon for a while where it was marketed over here by Storm Records. Even now, though we have begun to have a fan base in America it still has yet to compare to the amount of listeners we have on the other side of the ocean, which, as I've
stated, we are certainly grateful for. I would like to have a wider listenership in America, being our home country, but it has sometimes seemed to me that Americans are more pop music oriented, so may not be as open to the type of music we're playing. And maybe it will take just a bit more exposure here for when we performed recently in New York City with Blood Axis, our music was introduced to a lot of people who were previously unaware of us.
CHANGES is duo. Is it hard to work with someone else? Do you have any conflicts in process of song-writing?
Being first cousins (our mother's were sisters), Robert and I have been together off and on throughout our lives. We are good friends as well.
Though we have had a few differences during our lives, our basic genetic makeup is the same. Being a song writing team has always been comfortable ever since we began in 1970. There may have been a few times early in our song writing career, where I may have written music to his lyrics which I tried to make kind of "pop" sounding so the music didn't fit well, and there were a few times when his lyrics were not quite on the mark (they can't all be gems :o) ), but after we'd matured it has since seemed like we can almost read each other's minds as to what will work when the music and lyrics are combined. This doesn't mean that everything we write or have written is going to find its way to a future release, but there have only been a few discards :o). Robert has written poetry his entire life and some of his lyrics are probably the most poetic and beautiful lyrics ever written. The songs that I have written, (there will be more on Lament), I believe, add another dimension to our music, for, though my lyrics aren't as poetic they offer another style to our repertoire.
And he has written excellent songs on his own like "Orphan in the Storm", "Icarus" and "Waiting for the Fall" and as he has stated, his songs are a bit less complex musically than the ones that I have written music for, but the interesting part is that I admire the fact that he can write simpler melodies that are very memorable. So, in summary, it seems like we balance each other out quite well.
I know that during all those years CHANGES exist you have met a lot of interesting people, you have visited a lot of interesting places... is there anything you are proud of and what happened to you because of CHANGES, what would never happen to you otherwise?
Again, speaking for myself, before 2003, I had never traveled overseas to visit Europe. Robert had been there a few times, but though I had always wanted to travel there since I have always felt close to my European roots, I figured that I would probably never be able to get there in my lifetime. So the opportunity and pleasure to travel to Leipzig to perform at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen that year was extremely exciting to me, and wouldn't have happened if it weren't due to the popularity of CHANGES. Robert and I have both enjoyed the opportunity to visit countries overseas and to have met enthusiastic fans of our music. And, as my son told me when I last went overseas, "I hope you appreciate the fact that organizers are enthusiastic enough to bring you over there to perform", to which I replied, "I am and will always be extremely appreciative".
Could you tell me a bit about people who you met on your way and who dramatically influenced your life? I'm sure you have encountered a lot of extraordinary and interesting personalities.
Back in the early stages of CHANGES, I would have to say that my Uncle George and Aunt Mary (Robert's father and mother who were very dear to me) would hear us play a song soon after we had composed it were very important with their enthusiasm towards our music and this helped guide us on our way. Later my parents were able to attend some of our concerts and also encouraged us. Flashing forward again to 1996 when Michael Moynihan and Willie Stasch heard our music and wanted to produce it, that was certainly a turning point in our lives (both musically and otherwise). We are eternally grateful to them, and
besides that, they are great people whom I consider true friends. From then on, I won't mention names as they are too numerous and for fear that I might leave someone out and offend them, but I have to say that through this underground musical culture (of which the "antifa" will try to defame as something monstrous), I have met some of the greatest and kindest people that I have ever encountered in my entire life. People who've worked with us from Germany, Austria, Britain, France and now even the U.S.A are friendships that I've made for life and through my communications with them, I consider them as "family".
As you may know Soviet Union had a concept of social realism: they believed that Art should express and show surrounding reality, it should influence people on some actions. Pretty the same concept existed in Nazi Germany and many other countries... for example we all remember neorealism in Italian cinematography. What do you think about role of artist in this world? Should he be a pert of this world, affect it, 'boil with it' or should he distance himself from reality and create 'pure Art'? How do you see your own role?
There is no one correct answer to that question. It depends on the mood and the concept of a particular piece of art. For example, as I've stated Robert's song "Icarus" shows the ugliness and devastation that can be brought about by modern society, cloaked within an allegorical story from mythology. On the other hand some songs can be based totally on imagination which can transport the listener to another place and time or just on fantasy. These songs,
rather than bringing down or depressing the listener can actually have the person forget everyday problems and just get "lost" in the song. Having a variety of song types, helps to eliminate the boredom of one single dogmatic point of view. Plus performing a variety of types makes a performance more interesting for us.
This question repeats a bit 5a. But I think it should be asked. Some believe that great Art always born in Pain, and happy people can not create true values. What do you think about that? How was written your best songs?
I believe I answered that question in 5a but as I said, painful and broken hearted experiences seem to be the strongest emotions toward creating art. Our song "The Saddest Thing" is a song that is one of many people's favorites and that was, of course, created through pain of loss. Our album Lament will mostly consist of songs that we wrote during our relatively recent divorces (Robert after 25 years and me after 23 years of marriage). The painful experiences will be reflected in our lamentations so, in that case, yes much of that album will be an outgrowth of our pain. On the other hand, some of our mythological songs such as "Song of Pan" and "Aphrodite" seem to be well liked and are created from a love of their myths and were not painful at all and were, in fact, joyous to write an to perform. So there again is not one single answer, however, I reiterate, pain is a pretty strong emotion.
My last question for this time. Looking back into the past... do you think that it was a good idea for you both to start CHANGES?
Actually, there was no choice in the matter :o). It seemed predestined! I can remember the actual day that the "sperm buried itself in the egg" so to speak. To preface the story, about four years before, I had bought a "Supro" electric guitar (this was during the era of the "British Invasion" of music so everyone was getting electric guitars) and had taken guitar lessons for some months which taught me the basics of this instrument. I had not really become "one" with this particular guitar especially since the string action was high which made it rather difficult to play. I had always written little melodies
from when I was young but nothing seriously. Flash forward to 1970, the year after I graduated college, in summer Robert and I would hang out at the Chicago beaches a lot for something to do on weekends (which was something we had been doing on many summer evenings while I went to a school in Chicago). I then lived about 30 miles from Chicago but it was an easy drive to visit him. He began bringing his acoustic guitar with us for another something to do. When I started playing his guitar in the open air on the pier of the beach, I found that I loved the sound it made and that I was more comfortable and excited with acoustic styles and sounds than I had been with electric. On the fateful day of "conception" that year in the month of July (sorry, I don't remember the exact date), I began to strum a chord progression which I had just invented and Robert wrote an impromptu set of lyrics to the music which
became our seminal song entitled "You're Always With Me". No one will ever hear it because, frankly, it isn't a very good song, but it was the song that started it all. It was and is also the only song that we have written, as a team, with music first and lyrics last. All of the other songs we've written have been me writing music around his beautiful lyrics. Later that year when I was actually earning money, I purchased the Gibson B45-12, 12 string acoustic that I still use for our performances. It is my "baby" and my friend (no I'm not crazy...or at least I don't think so :o) ). With the purchase of that instrument, and the love of practicing and working on our music due to the beautiful sounds it produced, is what led to the development of whatever style I may have.
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