FZ on Varèse

Well, the fact of the matter is that if I had a power trio and just a wall of Marshall amplifiers and a minimal PA system that all you put through was the vocals, and we traveled around in limousines and lived in first-class hotels forever, I could still make 10 times the amount of money that I make on tour right now. But that's not the reason I tour, I like to play music, and I like to hear music come out as good as possible for the largest number of people, and so if I earn a profit from doing concerts or making records, a large portion of that is reinvested into the equipmеnt that produces the sound onstage or to usе extra amounts of studio time to try and get a better performance both, technically from the musicians' standpoint and from the audio standpoint of the music that I write. And I think Varèse would have done the same thing

He was hampered by composing at a time when the electronic facilities to make his ideas a reality were not readily available to him. I have that luxury, and I don't think I should sit back on my butt and just let it go along

I started writing so-called "serious music" or non-rock-and-roll music about the time I was 14, and I didn't write anything that even resembled rock and roll or rhythm and blues until I was 20. I rejected most of 20th-century music. I made quite a study of it. I'd buy every record that was available on new pieces, and most of them are horrible. They don't have any musicality to 'em, they're intellectual exercises that don't do anything for me. And I liked Varèse's music from the minute that I heard it. It was beautiful. And I couldn't understand it when my mother started screaming at me to take it in the other room 'cause it bothered her while she was ironing. You know, I'd say, "But listen to the siren in this! Listen to the drums!" She wouldn't get off on that. And I found that I would bring people home from school and say, "Have I got a record for you." And I would play that for 'em, and they would look at me like I was crazy. But I insisted that what he was writing was really beautiful and I would tell everybody about it when I got a chance, and in putting that little quote on the first few albums that "that present-day composer refuses to die," by putting his name on the albums, I led a lot of people in the direction of his music, and people still come up to me and say that they're glad I put that on there, 'cause they heard the music and they really got off on it. And I think if you get a chance, you oughta check it out, too

The works I like the best is the performance of the Arcana by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and there's a good record on Nonesuch that has some interesting recording techniques and good performances of some of his pieces