Interview with Eddie Shaw of The Monks

So you read my old interview with Gary Burger from The Monks? (Click here if you didn't) Well, how about another? Here, for your intrigue, is Eddie Shaw of the legendary Monks! For your info, this was an interview from a while ago, which first appeared on PopJunkie (now defunct).

Hi Eddie, how are you and what are you up to these days?

I am well and have been doing lots of travel.  I am working on a new book, my fourth, and I am writing new music, not so much Monk style, but more jazz oriented pieces with some minimalist/Dada stuff thrown in the mix.  What am I going to do with it?  I don't know.  I never know.

You're playing with The Monks in the UK soon... a first?

I was in the UK in 1972 to do a recording for Tony Stratton Smith and Charisma Records.  I was there with a group known as Copperheard, then Minnesoda on Capitol Records (writing and playing trumpet).  We had come there with some relationship with Graham Bell (Bell and Arc), Lindesfarne, and my old friend Ian Wallace.  I expect the Dirty Water Club to be an interesting experience, The Monks' first time in the UK and, for me, these appearances do not happen often, because we only do them when it sounds interesting.  It's never about the money or any of that.  In Spain, we played because we were promised that hundreds of people would come dressed and monks and nuns - and they did.  We'll see what an appearance in London will be like.

What the fuck happened to turn a little beat group called The Torquays into the mutated Monks?

It was boredom of playing seven nights a week, six hours on stage every night except Sundays when we were on stage eight hours - and we did this for about a year and a half before we began looking for another form - which caused us to collaborate with our managers and create something new.  The world was changing, and with or without us, music was changing. We were the reaction to the moment - the anti-anti.  As in all art forms there is a reaction and in rock and roll we might have become the first to react. That I don't know for sure.  At the time I do know that rock was not considered an art form. We became the anti purists. There is no purity in rock music - perhaps that's why we became known as the anti - anti's. Actually there is no purity in art, period.

What are your memories of recording Black Monk Time?

The music sounds easy to play, but it isn't.  There are no standard 8 or 12 bar changes. The lyrics are cut down to the most basic meanings. The music was repetitive and intended to create tension.  It was exciting to record this music, knowing that it had some kind of subconscious meaning.

Was the LP too wild for '66?

One magazine couldn't get over the idea that we wrote 'Oh How to Do' with those same words repeated 39 times (about that I think).  Some people felt insulted.  Others dismissed us as idiots or guys looking for a trick. We weren't received very well and it was a disappointment. Ironically the image turned out to be the scary thing that it was and as all styles, probably is no longer relevant today, but the music survived and is still played forty years later - much to my own astonishment.

In '66, many bands were looking away from traditional love song and gettin' a little deeper with philosophy and love conquering the world... then you unleashed the ferocious sentiment of 'I Hate You'...

It's a universal love song.  People say these kinds of words all the time.  At the time, there were people asking, what does it mean - but then it has become all to obvious..

You played in the big clubs in Hamburg... how important was that to developing your sound?

Like New Orleans was famous for a sound.  And Chicago jazz - The San Francisco Summer of Love - The Liverpool sound - there was the Hamburg school of music and we were part of it - the only Americans there. Alan Dein of BBC said that  the Hamburg era began with Tony Sheridan (who hated The Monks), reached its peak of activity with The Beatles and was finally brought to an end by The Monks.  As the Beatles say, themselves - it was a place where a band worked long hours and developed their chops.

You must have got up to quite a bit of mischief in Hamburg?

To us Monks, after being in Southern Germany, Hamburg felt like our place - like we belonged there.  We had lots of friends - and yes, it is an easy place to get into mischief.

Gary sang "Why do you kill all those kids in Vietnam/ Mad Vietcong!/ My brother died in Vietnam." How was this taken by the crowds, and how did it feel singing it after being G.I.s yourselves?

My brother was our brothers.  We were GIs and it is never easy to say something about the very brothers, who protect each others backs.  More than 58,000 American kids died there, not to mention all those other kids, mothers, and fathers.  I never felt easy about that statement, but then knew that our message had been correct when Robert McNamera apologized 30 years later.  In fact about 8 years ago I met a guy in a bar in my hometown.  Both of us were drinking beer in a bar when he mentioned that he had served in Vietnam.  In our conversation he talked about going to some club in Germany, after he was sent there from Vietnam, with a heroin habit, to recuperate before coming home to the U.S. He said he saw some American band in a club singing, "Why do you kill all those kids" and he hated them.  When I told him that I was in that band, he looked at me and said, "And I still hate them." But then he added, "You know what?  You guys were right - and now I know it. So do most of the other guys, who were there."  I saw him a few times but we never talked to each other much after that.

The band have been quoted as saying "The English bands thought they were big time... Until they heard us play".

I think that is a bit of an overstatement.  Some of our best friends were Brits.  We all traveled together and worked the same clubs.  I even began to speak like a Brit, saying "Wha?"  "Bloody Hell!" I do know that Tony Sheridan hated us and used to yell at us in the Top Ten Club where the Beatles had also played, "You fucking yanks have lost it!  We own the music!" And he would ape Dave in front of the stage while we tried to ignore him.  And then there was the famous incident between Dave Day and Dave Davies - not really anything important other than Dave going to the rescue of a young girl who had been insulted and was in tears.  Every country has its contingent of nationalists and they will look for any reason to make themselves feel good. I don't think we were part of that.

Is it true that you were thrown out of a monastery whilst on tour in Sweden? What happened?

We were booked to stay the night in a hotel in Sweden. We did not know it was a monastery.  After we had played somewhere, we had a wild party in our room which scandalized the other monks who were staying there (unknown to us).  We did not know until the next morning that it was a monastery until the monk at the front desk berated us for our horrible behavior, when we checked out.  That's the world of rock and roll - when managers set up their entertainers to unsuspectingly fall into some funny trap.  We weren't amused.

What next?

Roger died a couple of years ago, of lung cancer and heart disease. He was happy to leave The Monk experience behind. Larry lives in Tennessee and enjoys a quiet life, preferring to let the past stay in the past.  Dave still loves the life on stage and he is every monk fan's working class hero.  Everyone loves him.  Gary is the mayor of Turtle River, Minnesota.  He still does music and also produces videos. I have published three books and many more by other writers, who I work for.  Besides a new book, I am also writing new music.  My latest obsession is collecting photos of cranes (all kinds of cranes including construction cranes) the subject of a deep philosophical book (Dada bullshit if you know what I mean) and I am writing music to go with the photos and words (mostly orchestral and jazz oriented).  I'll continue to do this kind of work until the day I travel into outer space.

I have been a musician all my life.  I was on stage when I was 16 years old, playing trumpet.  One of my first gigs was at the Carson City, NV Nugget Casino where Wayne Newton (14 years old at the time) was on the front stage with his brother and I was in the back room with a dixieland group.  My aunt and uncle played blue grass music on the casino floor.  I was 16 when I was featured in my first recording.  My family is a musical family.  who had connections to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. I knew them when I was small (and avoided them when I could).  One of my great uncles wrote gospel music and he would drink a quart of whiskey a day to get the spirit before writing many of these well known songs that good moral Christians sing in church every Sunday.  My great uncles, on my grandmother's side were the Stamp Brothers who Elvis talked about as being an inspiration to him. Actually I was assigned to a very nice job, playing trumpet in the 6th Army band (in San Francisco) when I was in army, but instead I wanted to see the world.  I still play music and I still write stories - because it's the only thing I know how to do - And it keeps me alive.

Mof Gimmers