Derek Bailey

Personally, I’ve found one of the more stimulating ways of playing in recent times has been to kind of move outside the free improvised area and work with people who are probably improvisers but they have a particular way of working.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

For me, playing is about playing with other people.

In fact it’s quite gratifying for me to see some of the people who really objected to this method of working now being quite so profligate in their use of it.

I’m not much into current electronic stuff, what I think of as lounge electronics, mumbling electronics.

I think the blues is fine for blues players, but free blues has never made much sense to me.

Solo concerts are murder, I find; I don’t like doing them.

Nowadays, I really like playing in studios.

Playing music is not really susceptible to theory much. Circumstances affect it so much.

I think playing solo is a second rate activity, really. For me, playing is about playing with other people.

In the absence of that, I am happy to play solo, but I don’t think there is any comparison.

I don’t research anything.

Even if it is difficult playing with other people – sometimes it’s great, sometimes it isn’t, but that is kind of the point of it. It loses its point playing solo.

I like duos with percussionists. I like the songs that percussionists sing.

I’ve always liked the effect of having somebody in there who hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on.

I have always been attracted to the cottage industry side of this business.

For me, Company is still the best way for me to work.

I am reactive.

Personally, I’ve found that the kind of thing that I like is going into somebody else’s area and not playing their music but doing whatever I do in their area.

I wouldn’t want to be ideological about it but I think of it as being the best way to approach this kind of playing. I don’t think it works in other music, other kinds of playing.