Derek Bailey > Quotes

“In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it’s usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It’s a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there’s a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything--intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music’s like that."

From “Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation” by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440.”
― Derek Bailey