The comeback gig which made Bill say Yes
Bill Bruford has drummed for some of the world's biggest progressive rock and jazz bands but this month’s trip to Tyneside never looked likely. Simon Rushworth reports.
In 2022 legendary drummer Bill Bruford was 13 years retired from gigging and firmly focused on life after live performance. Then the Yes, King Crimson and Genesis alumnus experienced a lightbulb moment — fast forward four years and he’s back behind the kit as a member of the Pete Roth Trio.
“I really can’t exaggerate this enough,” says Bill, a founding member of Yes, a key contributor to the King Crimson back catalogue and a vital cog in the wheel of post-Peter Gabriel Genesis. “It was a Damascene conversion.
“One day I never dreamed of drumming live again and the next I’d joined a band!”
So what changed?
“I did a long time without playing at all — 12 or 13 years I suppose — and I genuinely didn’t miss it,” explains Bill, who was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, as a member of Yes, in 2017.
“My drum kit was in my study, I was an academic at the time, I’d got a doctorate, turned into a psychologist and I was working in a different world. And that was just fine.
“I walked past the kit every morning and said ‘hello’ to my drums and then walked past it again every evening without touching it. I had no desire to play but then stuff changes.
“What can I say? Suddenly there was availability, things all fell into place, there was a guitar player there, there was somebody who wanted to play, there was somewhere to play. There was all of the above without any of the baggage.”
Back in the day it was invariably the ‘baggage’ that meant Bruford bounced from one band to the next, never quite settling down and often seemingly at odds with the people and personalities he performed alongside.
Famously falling out with band mates right, left and centre, one of rock music’s self-styled nomads followed his own path, made his own bed and gradually gravitated towards the less linear world of jazz.
Which brings us back to the here and now and January’s Gosforth Civic Theatre gig with the Pete Roth Trio. Pete is the ‘somebody who wanted to play’ and just happens to be one of Bill’s former students. His expansive jazz trio is built around a mutual trust, respect and admiration… with absolutely no baggage.
“Pete and I just started tinkering about and I was astonished to discover that he’d matured into this really serious guitar player,” adds Bill. “We started out as an acoustic trio, the music began to fire up and we’re heading to Newcastle as a fully electric band!
“I guess when I bumped into Pete again my batteries were finally recharged after what had been an energy-sapping period working in the music business for many, many years. The reason I stopped was because I was effectively burnt out by the late noughties.
“I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t ill, I didn’t go to hospital and I wasn’t mentally ill. Nothing like that. But I was whacked and what’s always been exhausting is the speed at which the music business moves at.
“It was a heavy load running my jazz band Earthworks for about 20 years. Even though I still loved music I just didn’t want to perform on a drum kit in public any longer. I was sick of the usual things — people over-praising you, under-praising you, promising to pay you and then not paying you and just the general chaos of the music industry. It took 12 years for my batteries to recharge but right now it feels so good to be back.”
Predictably, the Pete Roth Trio continues to earn rave reviews wherever they rock up and Bill can’t overstate the enduring power of live music. “I think, for younger people in particular, the best thing they can do is to attend a live gig,” he adds.
“We’re very much a live band, you know. We don’t particularly like it when people record us or film us — we’d rather you were there in the moment, enjoying what will be a unique evening.
“We can’t reproduce the same show, night after night. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do or what we’re going to play next but that’s the wonderful nature of performance. Sometimes it’s absolutely brilliant and you can’t imagine how good it can be and sometimes it’s not so good. But it’s a live performance.”
These days, concludes Bill, playing to loyal fans in the North East is a relative breeze. It wasn’t always the case. “When I started, in 1968, 1969, they’d barely built the M1,” he recalls. “In fact, I’m not even sure they had built the M1!
“Anything north of Watford was, you know, unknown territory as far as we were concerned. Newcastle was just so far away but it was always very exciting to go up there.
“In the early days of Yes we played Redcar a lot and South Shields. We were up there a fair bit for some reason and I still don’t really know why. But I’m not entirely unknown in Newcastle, which is lovely!”
Pete Roth Trio feat. Bill Bruford plays Gosforth Civic Theatre on January 30. Tickets available from the website.