AC : Do you think that singing, using the voice, creates a more direct
relationship with an audience than expressing yourself through the medium of some instrument?
KH : At the moment I don't feel any difference between them. There's a
tendency to use the word "voice," to describe it as an instrument–I don't
agree with this. I am most definitely a singer. When you use the word "voice"
I just have an image of someone playing around with methods of voice production,
whereas what I do is I sing. For me what I do are songs, though maybe some people
might not agree. Maybe there is a slight difference between singing a song and playing
an instrument, but because I use both to make music I look upon them as being the same.
AC : How important are the actual words to you when you sing?
KH : If lyrics come to me then I'll sing lyrics, if they don't then I'll sing
something else. The best situation for me to sing lyrics is darkness. (laughs)
So if you want me to sing, you can forget about having a video crew around. (laughs)
For me the best song is one where I surprise myself, where I sing melodies and rhythms
that I've never sung before. And if I can attach lyrics to that, then that's the best
kind of song for me. But for some reason, if there is any light, I can't sing. This links
back to another image that I always use–where does music come from? I personify that
every time I play live.
AC : Are there any singers that you would identify as definite influences?
KH : There's so many. But that word "influence" . . . . I'm going to
put this bluntly–it's not a word you should use towards people, they can be offended by it.
Especially if you ask them who they've been influenced by. There are a lot of people whom I
like, but I think that influence is really only limited to one part of what I am, there was
some influence at one particular time upon one particular part of me. Maybe I learnt
something from them, but this idea of influence means that you can never go beyond what that
person did. And that's why I get pissed off when people ask me who I've been influenced by.
I've never said that I was influenced by Blue Cheer. My sound is far wilder than theirs
anyway. (laughs) Maybe I liked them back when I was in high school, that's only
natural. Everyone was given birth to by their mother, they didn't just suddenly materialize.
But I don't think I was influenced by them. In one sense, I still like things that I once
liked. Everyone talks about growing out of a certain kind of music, don't they? They say
that they used to like hard rock, but they've grown out of that now. I don't feel like
that at all. I still love to listen to Blue Cheer. It makes me feel like dancing. Or if I
listen to Charlie Christian I can still really get into it. Probably the stuff that I've
stopped listening to the most is contemporary 20th century composition. Definitely. Too
much of it just coming from the head. When I talk with people I try to make these ideas as
easy as possible to understand. I use simple words. Like I always say, any conversation
that a child can't understand is a lie. If you don't do that then you'll end up playing
with vocabulary, playing off the words you know against the person you're listening to.
If you do that then there's absolutely no way that the ideas of music as therapy, or a
tool to become closer to people can exist.
AC : Moving on to something totally different. You present a very defined image,
a definite style, don't you?
KH : Again this is something that I've said before–if I were to shave my head
and wear white robes it would be too close to what I sing about. (laughs)
AC : Is there any sense that as a musician you feel you have a certain role
in society, and you then wear certain clothes to differentiate yourself from other people?
KH : It's got nothing to do with feeling. I've been doing the same thing now
for over twenty years–so this is the only way I can be.
AC : But still, there must have been some point when you made a decision to
dress a certain way. You weren't born looking that way.
KH : Priests are the same, they're not born wearing robes.
AC : So what made you decide to adopt that particular style?
KH : Because I like it, obviously. I'm not being sarcastic or anything, but if I
don't dress like this then I feel uncomfortable and can't relax. That's certainly true now.
For example, if someone worked as a wage-slave at a company for forty years and then
retired, the day after they retired they'd probably get up in the morning and put on a
suit and tie. I'm probably close to that. Now, if I had some clothes that weren't black
and I put them on by mistake and went out, I think that I'd run straight back home and
change. I wouldn't be able to relax. Rather than deliberately choosing any particular
style, like everything else I do it has to be this way. Do you understand? This
is my reality. I've got to wear something–the police would arrest me if I went out naked.
For me, it's not a question of wearing, it's a principle. I don't tell you to wear black
or grow your hair long–they're my own principles. This is the way I want to be. Just
like when I was small and I'd play by myself in the sand-pit when everyone else was
playing with building bricks. Of course the way I look now is a pose, but I don't want to
look any other way. If I hated people looking at me and kids pointing then I could cut
my hair. I could do it anytime I wanted. But for the moment I want to look this way.
Maybe I'll change tomorrow, who knows. I enjoy being this way. If I didn't like it
then I'd change.
AC : What do you think is the rôle of a musician in society, in the world?
KH : To warn people. To tell them that the world's getting worse, that they
should change, that they should try to make things better. It's different from the whole
hippy thing with everyone clapping and singing the lyrics. That comes down to "we're
all human so let's get on with each other." But if you reduce it to just a human
level then you can't expand that feeling to anything outside the human world. That's
why I hate sing-alongs.
AC : Has there been any change in the musician's rôle over the centuries?
KH : People often call me a shaman. Their form and style may have changed, but
I definitely believe that shamans still exist in this world. I really flatter myself
that I am one of them. People called me a shaman back when I was in Lost Aaraaff, when
I was about twenty, but I didn't understand what the word meant then. But even if I
didn't know the word I still had some idea of what they were getting at. I realized
that maybe there was something like that within me. A musician's rôle doesn't
change. The evil that was there at the start is there for all eternity, the same with
the good that was there at the start. If it wasn't like that then one would prevail, the
balance would be destroyed. The world isn't completely evil, there's no way that could
happen and it would have no meaning. But it's not completely good either. That's why I
used the word "warning."
AC : How do you visualize yourself in your sixties or seventies? What do you
see yourself doing?
KH : I'd like to be totally white-haired and still be playing hard rock.
(laughs) That's the way I'd like to be–I mean if I was doing percussion shows
with white hair down to here, the image would just be too close. (laughs)
Rather than that I'd like to keep on playing hard rock, though I don't know how long
I would be able to sustain the intensity. That would be cooler, I think. People might
think it was stupid though, this old guy singing and playing guitar. The problem is my
body–there will be a physical difference between the toughness of my body now and
twenty years later. Physically I'll be a lot weaker. The sound I could make will
probably be the same, that doesn't matter. My feeling of putting in 100% will be the
same. So the sound and feeling will be the same as twenty years previous, and maybe
the attack will still be the same. The sound and consciousness will be the same, but
what will be different is the toughness of my body–how hard I will actually be able
to perform.
AC : You don't think that your increased consciousness will compensate for
any physical deterioration? That it will enable you to find new, different techniques?
KH : I don't want it to be like that. In one sense, if I wanted to I think
I could. Maybe it's wasted effort, but I want to put my all into my playing. That's
why on the surface it looks like I'm performing extreme acts of violence on the
guitar. Depending on who's listening, it can look like someone cursing, or like an
extreme prayer. But I want to put my all into everything. It's hard on the guitar
though–they soon break. (laughs) But that's the way it's got to be. In that
sense, maybe the guitars are resigned to destruction from the moment they come into
my hands. What's different about my approach is that I think it's unfair to the
guitar to use pliers or hammers to play it. That's too easy–I don't feel any pain.
But I use my hands and that can hurt. In the same way it's pretty uncool to kill
someone with a gun, but very cool to do it with a sword. Because there's an equal
chance that you'll get killed first. I like to be prepared for the worst when I do
something. Not because it's good or whatever, just because I like it that way. I'm sure
about that. And that's the way I want to play guitar. I think that my guitar-playing
now is very tough–even if it hurts or I cut myself, I can just about keep on playing.
AC : Do you think your music will continue to exist after you're gone?
KH : I don't care. In one sense, if I'm going to try and look cool then I
want that to end with me. No succession. And for me, expression has got to be like
that if it's not going to be a lie. The point lies with the individual. By the individual
I don't mean egoism and vanity, I mean how much the individual is capable of offering up
himself to the universe. If you do that, individual convenience doesn't enter into it–and
if it does then you haven't thoroughly offered yourself up. If you've done something that
other people can imitate then you've shown your weak point. In other words, what you were
doing had no tension to it. Maybe there is one part of me that wants someone to succeed me,
but my methods are designed so that no one can imitate them. For example, even now there's
no one who can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. There are certain parts of what he
did that continue to exist in various types of music. You can copy his rhythms. But the
way his harmony depends on the fingers half-fretting certain strings, barely touching
others–that's amazing because it was something that he didn't sit down and think up.
Music that came after him has been analyzed more and more, been explained in really fine
detail. Going back to what I said earlier, the reason why people want to go back to a
primitive state is that they think that requires no thought. People are tired of having
to think. In their minds, they don't want to think but they are thinking all the time–about
their families, about what to eat. And that's why they came up with this idea of "world
music."
AC : You don't like to talk about what the future will bring, do you?
KH : If I'm making music properly then the future doesn't matter.
part 4