First of all, thank you Les, for having accepted this interview,
it’s a real honor to speak with the man who contributed so much in
the success of Mike Oldfield’s instrumental pieces such as
Portsmouth, In Dulci Jubilo and Ommadawn!
Next December, a new album by Les Penning will be released, and
it’s called BELERION. What's the concept behind the album?
My album,
'Belerion' is a journey of melodies - there is a connection between them
which I am not going to explain! There is also a musical tying
together, joining the first to the last. Perhaps you can find that too.
Why did you chose this title, and what does it mean?
'Belerion'
may seem a strange and arcane name for an album. It is a very ancient
name for Cornwall or 'Shining Land'. I do not live there, not bodily,
but always a part of me remains where I have walked and spent so much of
the best moments of my life. The album was originally to have been
called '.......and the stones feel warm in Belerion', this is because
once, in winter, I walked to the ancient well in Sancreed and along the
watery path I felt the moss covered stones along the way and found to my
surprise that they were indeed warm, and memory of this led me to
explore what seemed to be a strange but usual property of the standing
stones- they are warm. Cornwall is a place of stones. Stones arranged by
man into circles and patterns ; there are designs in the landscape
which defy explanation but excite the curiosity and invoke the
inevitable mystery.
Actually Belerion is your first solo album ever, isn't it?
Belerion
is not the first album I have released. Some years ago I wrote and
recorded 'The Worldes Goodnyte' which is still available. It is
cherished by me because it owes nothing to past influences and that is
probably the reason many people who have known my other work can't quite
understand it.
But, why didn't you release more solo albums in your career?
The
making of albums has not featured greatly in my life because of being
quite busy with other musical happenings which tended to pay the bills. I
have made singles, though, with Polydor and Plant Life and there is a
lot of recorded music out there which I have produced for the media and
theatricals.
Les Penning, Phil Bates and Robert Reed
Two great musicians have collaborated with you on the album, Phil
Bates (ELO Part II) on guitars, and Robert Reed (Magenta) as a
multi-instrumentalist. How much did they contribute in recording these
new materials?
Without the glory that is Phil Bates I could
not have recorded this and without the genius of Rob Reed the album
would never have been finished let alone pressed. The problem with
albums is that I am not a very good guitarist! I
play quite a lot of instruments but I do not play the all-important
guitar. When Phil Bates and I became friends some years ago, I decided
it was time to write some music we could perform together. Very much
influenced by early music, I wrote some pieces which Phil said were
'definitely out of his comfort zone', it turned out, of course, that his
comfort zone was infinitely bigger than he ever thought and his playing
is magnificent. These pieces and others are on the new album,
'Belerion'.
The album will contain re-recordings of some previously
unreleased songs recorded with Mike Oldfield in early
1976, right?
Yes, when Mike Oldfield left Bradnor Hill
and we no longer graced the halls of Penrhos Court we still recorded at
his new home at Througham Slad in Gloucestershire and it was there we we
recorded seven pieces that were representative of our repertoire at
Penrhos. Although they were intended to form part of an album I was
making, somehow, it never got made.
In 2014, an album has been released with the lost sessions from
Througham Slad, but then it appeared to be a scam containing fake demos of Portsmouth and
Argiers. What happened exactly?
I kept the original
quarter inch tape master for about 40 years and was finally persuaded to
allow it's release by a man in Spain who I thought was trustworthy -
indeed he appeared to have my best interests at heart. He made a second
rate CD, added spurious, supposed demos, sold it for an exorbitant
amount of money, then vanished into the mountains!
Mike is going to release the sequel of Ommadawn. Have you kept in touch with him since the first opus?
Mike
eventually moved quite far away and the days of Ommadawn receded into
history. It is possible his new album 'Return to Ommadawn' may invoke a
feeling of those earlier times, I hope so.
Thank you Les !
Interview by Orabidooblog (14/11/2016)
Here is the first single of the album performed by Les and Rob, Portsmouth :
Follow Les Penning and Robert Reed on the official FB pages:
1 commentaire:
The Maestro Les Penning .
Miguel Engel Arcengelus Christmas 2015: https://youtu.be/lL5pA6HWzT4
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