In Conversation with Ian Salmon of Arena

Jan-Jaap de Haan

Jan-Jaap de Haan (JJ): Hello Ian, welcome to The Cage, How's the tour been until now?

Ian Salmon (IS): It's been great, yeah, we've had some great crowds, who've been very enthusiastic. Obviously I've got a job to do, to fill some shoes of John Jowitt. I've known him for ages and I know the sort of response that he gets from people, so that's always a bit scary to do, but people have been very supportive and I think the band has gone from strength to strength. Obviously the first one was like ' well, what's it gonna be like?', although we knew it was sounding good in the studio and the vibe amongst anybody in the band is very strong. And from the first gig it kept on going upwards.

JJ: You've played with Arena once before, could you make a comparison between then and now? IS: It was very different it was just a one-off gig, there was just one album worth of material, and somehow I was just doing a job then. I knew that I was filling in for somebody else.

JJ: Was there a musical difference? IS: I'm not sure if there's a massive musical difference, but obviously they've progressed and The Visitor, as I think everybody is aware, is the latest of a number of steps forward. But in general I've known Clive for a long time and I know the sort of music that he does. I don't know Mick that long, but of course his pedigree is fairly obvious to everybody. And I think there are still strains from what they've done in their pasts, that are coming through along with progressing along similar lines. I think there's a slightly more aggressive kind of edge, I'm not sure if 'heavier' is the right word, but just a bit harder...

JJ: Of course, unlike Rob, you were already quite familiar with the Arena material... IS: Yes, you're completely right, I used to live in the same house as Mick and Clive, for three years. I was moving in there around the time that they were rehearsing for their original gigs, I think, I cannot remember exactly. And I moved out of Shutteroaks about a year ago.

JJ: Did you already have any favourites, before you were asked to join? IS: No, not particularly, but I do now, having played them. I like The Visitor a lot. I like Crack In The Ice, and I really enjoy playing Solomon, that's quite a sort of challenge. We really get into it and rock out on it. That's good fun.

JJ: Rob told me that he really liked some of the Pride-songs but there isn't much played last tour and neither on this one. Is there a particular reason? Is Rob the only one who asked to do for example Empire of a Thousand Days? IS: Errr... If someone would really put forward to play any of that material... I don't have a problem with playing any of it, but I think that we do have a very strong set at the moment and I think we have a nice acoustic set as well. Medusa's in there, so there's nice balance of some of the older stuff and the more recent stuff. That's a nice balance for the time being, considering also that the band went out with the Visitor as a whole package.

JJ: About that acoustic set, you're playing some acoustic guitar, when will we notice that?

IS: I play just a little bit in The Hanging Tree, and then we play Medusa, and Pins and Needles....

JJ: That's something new for Arena, to have an acoustic part in an electric set, how come?

IS: I think they already decided to do that before I was along, although they may have been helped by the fact that I'm very happy playing acoustic guitar, so they thought it wouldn't be a problem. And Rob as well, he's very happy playing acoustic guitar. So we have many people in the band that feel happy doing that. I'm not sure whose idea it was but it just seems to work very well.

JJ: Can we expect you playing guitar on Chosen as well?

IS: There's a possibility that I might play a little bit of acoustic, but obviously Tarquin's entirely capable of covering just about everything that anybody could want, so that would just be silly. He's got the right flavour for Arena and he is the kid for the job, so I'm very unliely to be playing very much.

JJ: You're also doing some other projects, like Shadowland and Janison Edge and I probably forget many...

IS: I also played on Peter Gee's albums, bass on the first one and guitar on the second one and I also did a bit of guitar and bass on the Jabberwocky and a bit of guitar and bass on The Greatest Show on Earth, the Martin Darvill-thing. So I've done quite a few prog-sessions. I've been a bit of a prog-session player.

JJ: You've been playing jazz as well?

IS: I don't originally come from the jazz-circuit, I was in a rock-band before I got into this circuit. But I listened to some jazz and played a little bit of jazz, but I've always into the rock-thing. Well, Shadowland was obviously good fun, we were delighted to have seen it gone a little bit further, but it didn't happen and in the mean time I did lots of different things to keep busy. And these things came up because I was known to all these people, because of Shadowland, and I enjoyed doing all the different things.

JJ: One of them being the Janison Edge album, which has been released last year, can you tell us anything about it?

IS: Janison Edge was originally put together by Mike Varty, who is the live-keyboardplayer for Shadowland, and Sue Element. We got Dave Wagstaffe from Landmarq involved, because he was around the Thin Ice crowd and also Paul Brown, because we'd heard him playing in the studio and he sounded like the right type of player. But most of the material, well in fact all of it, is written by Mike and Sue. A lot of the ideas come from some sort of concept, which Sue came out with when she was at school. So there's a kind of theme running through quite a lot of the songs. Apart from that, all I can say is: 'you should listen to it and if you like it, like it'.

JJ: Are you going to do live gigs?

IS: Yes, we have one in a couple of weeks time at Progfarm in Holland and we'd like to do more but it's very difficult to find the gigs that we can get to. And of course, now with Arena, that's obviously the number one, so it's very difficult to commit to the two things, but I'm sure we will be playing more gigs, as soon as we can get them.

JJ: Are you originally a bass-player or a guitar-player?

IS: That's difficult... I guess guitar did come before bass, but fairly early on I was mucking about with a bass-guitar as well. So they've always come hand-in-hand.

JJ: As a bass-players, do you have any idols?

IS: I guess anybody that picks up a bass-guitar and makes it sound good. Specifically, I think one of the first people that I listened to was Roger Glover in Deep Purple. I can remember playing along with a number of those albums. I like Jaco Pastorious from Weather Report a lot, especially his fretless playing, but also his whole musicianship is fantastic. I like what Tony Levin does, I'm very interested in the stick. I've just managed to get my hands on one for the first time and start mucking about on it. So it's a possibility for the future.

IS: I think Chosen will be a bit too quick for that, 'cause I won't have mastered the instrument, because it is a very different instrument. The one I've been playing has ten strings, that's sort of the 'normal' model, but there are a number of different models, there's a bass-version with eight strings and there's a twelve string version. You can do a lot with it, it a very interesting instrument, I'm fascinated by it. But I think it would certainly take an amount of time to really master it. I don't want to be playing it too quickly, like 'I've been playing one note on it, and now I'm playing stick'.

JJ: What kind of instruments are you using?

IS: At the moment I have a rather cheap bass-guitar, which seems to have been voted as my main bass-guitar. I've got a Fender bass-guitar and I've got another one, that I'm putting together, but my main guitar for this tour is a Westone, which is a fairly cheap bass-guitar, and I've punt a Fender pick-up in it and it sounds great and it plays well. These are guitars that came out in the late 80's and they're good quality, but fairly basic.

JJ: So you're not a Rickenbacker fanatic?

IS: I've tried one once. They're legendary because of the Chris Squire sound, but the odd thing about a lot of these instruments is that you have an idea about somebody else's sound, so you play the instrument that they play, but I tend to end up not sounding like them at all. And then I get something else, and I want to find my own sound and that's probably one of the good things of the Westone, that it's not particularly like somebody else's.

JJ: You're playing a four-string bass, does that give you any trouble playing the lines Jowitt played on his 5-string Bogard?

IS: Yeah, which is obviously a great instrument either, I'd love to play on it. But actually it's not been a horrific problem, as I originally thought it was going to be. I've got around it by using an octave pedal for some thing, just to meet up the sounds, you get a lower octave as well as the note that I'm playing and in some other places I'm just going up the octave where it would have gone down. And it seems I've got around the problem, for the time being. I'm sort of reticent to go out and buy a 5-string, because you have to pay a lot of money for a decent one. And, as I said, I'm thinking of trying to get into the Stick, which would cover a lot of that. So it's a question of which way I've got to go.

JJ: In which way are you involved in Chosen?

IS: So far, I've just listen to the tracks and they sound very good, very meaty, we're going along the same lines, but progressing further, with some different influences, some more modern sounds as well as paying homage to what's gone before. And again, as I said, a slightly harder edge in some areas, which is pretty interesting I think. But for the time being, the writing team that is there is very good and I certainly wasn't taken on board with any kind of promise that I would be writing. That wasn't part of the deal, but at the same time I'm sure it wouldn't be completely ruled out if things went that way... But I'm sure there will be an amount of free reign on the bass-lines, and that's enough for me now, that's plenty to get on with...

JJ: Which bands have you been listening to, recently?

IS: Arena! Just to learn the bass-lines over the last months, and Janison Edge, trying to learn that as well. But before that? Err... a bit of jazz, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, a bit of Led Zeppelin, some earlier influences, a bit of King's X, which I really like, a little bit of King Crimson, the Discipline-period.

JJ: If you had to go to a deserted island and you were only allowed to take three albums with you, which ones would they be?

IS: That's an impossible question, that changes every day! It's funny, more recently I haven't had that, but in my record collection from older, a lot of albums are very, very special to me. I'd include some Led Zeppelin, probably Physical Graffiti, a Deep Purple album, err.... Kind of Blue, that's a Miles Davis album, which is a sort classic jazz-album, and like I said: Discipline by King Crimson.

JJ: It's funny you mention Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis, because Rob mentioned those too. Is this a common heritage, honoured by several members of the band?

IS: No, but obviously Rob and I have listened to some jazz. But I think there's a sort of openness to, I think, about anything. I went through a period when I was really into a lot of bands like U2, Big Country and recently I've got a Massive Attack-album. There's nothing that I won't listen to, even if it's a Country and Western-album, which I would generally not enjoy, but I would not 'not listen to it', because someone said it was in 'this category', because that's not really how music works. You have to listen to everything and enjoy the bits that you enjoy.

JJ: What do you think of being in a Cage?

IS: Obviously, that's a fantastic feeling, I'm doing gigs and, like I said, it could have been every difficult, because John Jowitt was incredibly popular and he's just a lovely bloke. And it's very difficult to fill those shoes. And what has happened? Everybody has been really supportive. Being in this band is great, because there's this feeling, like: "we've had a lot to deal with, but we're still strong and we're still a unit called Arena, whoever happens to be". And it's nice to feel that strength. And everybody else that I meet, well, I seem to get the same atmosphere from that. The reactions we've been getting from the crowds have been very enthusiastic. Straight away, when we thought: "is anyone going to be happy with this?". So it's a lovely experience.

JJ: Well, thank you very much for this conversation

IS: Thanks a lot, JJ!