March 24, 2011
Morgan Fisher
After Mott the Hoople and Queen, the British keyboardist was ready for something different
By Metropolis
Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2011
Courtesy of Morgan Fisher
“I had already left the UK four years earlier and was living in Hollywood, which turned out to be not my cup of tea,” he says in an interview following the release of his new EP The Great White Obi. “Ocha was more my style… I had long been fascinated by the culture here: the films, music, design, clothes, calligraphy. It felt right as soon as I got off the plane.”
Penniless despite working with ’70s rock legends Mott the Hoople and Queen, Fisher soon found himself engaged on two fronts—commercial and underground—as he had been in England. “I am in love with the entire spectrum of music, and for me the real pleasure comes when, Zelig-like, I become that music,” he says about his endeavors, which over almost three decades in Japan have taken in everything from Honda TV spots to the live improvisation he continues to explore in his free, long-running Morgan’s Organ events.
“It’s all great music in my book, although naturally enough, some of the more broad-appeal music I’ve been involved with has brought me more material benefit and a bit of a reputation.”
The 61-year-old Morgan matches a child-like musical curiosity with the ability to find his way around just about any sort of keyboard imaginable. The kaleidoscopic, stream-of-consciousness live improvisations that he pulls off at Morgan’s Organ are matched by the ability to accompany other musicians with just the right amount of interplay—a skill that has found him in demand by Japanese musicians from Yoko Ono to Kiyoshiro Imawano.
Some of Fisher’s improvisations—The Great White Obi for example—fall loosely into the “electronica” category, but he explains that his approach predates the term itself. “‘Electronica’ as a word and genre did not really exist while I was in London,” he says. “Whenever I buy a new (or often old) keyboard and take it home and play with it for the first time, hours fly by and there is a freshness and innocence about what I play, and I often wish I had recorded it. So my brief [for Morgan’s Organ] is that each month I choose a different selection of keyboards and other toys from my fairly extensive collection, and see what I can do with them in front of an audience.”
The Great White Obi grew out of one such performance. “I have become so accustomed to creating new music spontaneously with the invaluable presence of my Morgan’s Organ audience that I decided that I would edit part of a live recording,” he explains. “Christophe [French DJ/producer Christophe Hetier aka Antipop] requested some analog synth sounds, so I chose a piece where I had played my favorite analog synth, the mighty Oberheim 4-Voice. This gorgeous-sounding synth is finished in beautiful pristine white and is often called an Obie for short. Voila, the title!”
Fisher’s sets are often accompanied by showings of his own inimitable Light Paintings, in which he points a camera at a source of light and then moves it, creating swirling visual displays that can be seen in exhibitions around Tokyo.
His shape-shifting sonic and visual creations have earned Fisher accusations of indulging in psychedelic drugs. “Terry Riley, the minimal music pioneer who appeared on my second Miniatures album in 2000, asked if I had been on acid when I came up with the concept, which he felt was a pretty wild idea,” Morgan laughs about his one-musician-one-minute concept album. “‘No,’ I said, I have never been into any drugs. But I guess I’ve been searching for ways to free my mind and let the art and music flow, and after all these busy years and rich experiences, I think I am, at the age of 61, finally beginning to get somewhere.”
To close the interview, we can’t resist asking how it was to work with Freddy Mercury, whom Fisher accompanied on Queen’s 1982 Europe tour. “Every night when we dined at some fancy restaurant, his boyfriend Pete told him to stop smoking. And every night, Fred told Pete to fuck off, through a cloud of cigarette smoke,” Fisher recalls.
“Fred was an utterly brilliant entertainer and I enjoyed the brief time we worked together. One never really got close to Freddie, but under all the banter and occasional angry outbursts I could sense an extraordinarily keen intelligence and a fearsome survival instinct.”
Morgan’s Organ
Morgan Fisher improvises on his collection of vintage keyboards. Apr 13, 7:30pm, free. SuperDeluxe, Nishi-Azabu. Tel: 03-5412-0515. The Great White Obi is available on Refuge Records. www.morgan-fisher.com
