Ivan Julian at a 1990 gig with Richard Hell at Club Citta in Kawasaki,
Japan. Regarding the
pants, Julian says “Jet lag makes you do weird
things—but it’s fun!” Photo by Gin Saton
Listen to Julian's "Sticky" and "A Young Man's Money" from The Naked Flame:
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You might not recognize Ivan
Julian’s name, but there’s a
pretty good chance you’ve heard
him in one context or another.
In the mid 1970s, when he was
still a teenager, Julian toured the
UK with the Foundations, a pop
group best known for their hits
“Build Me Up Buttercup” and
“Baby Now That I Found You.”
In the late ’70s, he played in the
seminal punk/new wave group
Richard Hell & the Voidoids,
whose album
Blank Generation
is regarded as one of the finest
examples of that genre. Julian
has also performed and recorded
with a list of artists as diverse
as the Clash, the Isley Brothers,
and Matthew Sweet, and as an
engineer and producer he has
left his imprint on the music of
artists like Jon Spencer.
As wide-ranging as his work
has been, it wasn’t until recently
that Julian released his first
solo album,
The Naked Flame.
And he says he wouldn’t have
even done so if it weren’t for
the members of an Argentinean
band called Capsula insisting
upon it while he was mixing
their 2009 album,
Rising
Mountains. Fittingly, Capsula
joins Julian on his long-overdue
solo debut. The music is raw
and cathartic and filled with
all sorts of fascinatingly multifaceted
guitar parts—from the
explosive leads of the title track
to the funky minor-7th rhythm
work on “The Funky Beat in
Siamese” to the country-blues
inspired octaves of “You Is
Dead.” We talked with Julian
about how he got these sounds
and, more broadly, how he conceives
music in general.
I understand you have the
distinction of possibly being
one of the only guitarists alive
who first played the bassoon.
Julian onstage in 2009 with a Lace Sensor-equipped
1989 Fernandes S-style guitar plugged into a silverface
Fender Twin Reverb. Photo by Berlén |
Yes, but before that I played the
alto saxophone, since my father
was a big Charlie Parker fan.
Then somebody broke into the
school and stole my sax. So,
the band and music instructor
had me switch to the bassoon,
which at first I found to be an
odd instrument. I came to really
love it, but what made me
switch to the guitar was that I
wanted to create music outside
of the structure and hierarchy
found in classical music. I
didn’t want to just go to a conservatory
and then find a job in
an orchestra playing the same
old compositions.
You also absorbed a bit of
theory in high school. Did
that shape your approach to
the guitar?
It’s more like an analytical thing:
I know my scales and my intervals,
and I can easily communicate
with other musicians. I don’t
really think about theory when I
play guitar, as you can probably
tell from my playing. [
Laughs.]
To me, it’s more about geometry
than anything else—I make
triangles, squares, and trapezoids
on the fretboard with my fingers
and see what happens.
What was it like to make geometric
shapes with Richard
Hell & the Voidoids as part of
the first wave of punk?
It was always interesting
[
laughs]. Richard Hell got a
lot of criticism back in the day
for his lack of prowess on bass,
but I always defended him.
While he wasn’t technically
accomplished, he was always
coming from a place far from
the mundane. He invented
these great bass lines that
almost sounded illustrated—
like cartoon characters—and
Bob [Quine] and I would try
to fit something around those
lines. On the other hand, it
could sometimes drive us crazy
to work with Richard. Because
he wasn’t a “real” bass player,
we could spend up to a month
rehearsing a song in order for
him to get up to speed.
How did you and Quine
distribute the guitar
responsibilities?
Bob and I agreed we’d never
play on the same part of the
neck at the same time. I’ve
always found that it’s redundant
for two guitarists to be playing
the same open G chord. One
should find something different
to play, to make things
interesting, and both guitarists
needn’t be constantly playing at
the same time. Another thing
about working with Bob was
that he was heavily jazz influenced,
and he turned me on to
a lot of great music like Albert
Ayler records and odd Charlie
Parker outtakes—nonstandard
stuff that got me to incorporate
subtle nuances when soloing
and encouraged me to be more
adventurous in general.