Two very different Mike Ratledge interviews are printed for you this issue: the first is taken from a bootleg and was conducted in the heady period between Volume Two and Third, sometime in late 1969 ....

(fade in) .... extension of the personnel of the Soft Machine. Who are the new members ?


The new members are Lyn Dobson, who plays soprano and tenor, flute, harmonica and sitar (but not with us) and Elton Dean who plays alto, who is also playing with Keith Tippett.


Why did you take them in the group?


Because the idea of expanding the group was simply that you are more and more into writing; spending more time writing than playing, and every time we write something we have to kind of cut it down to limit it, because there is a definite amount that three people can. So we felt the need to have other instruments to be able to carry other lines, to give sufficient complexity to what we originally have written.


How do you arrange it, how do you rehearse, how do you build up your show ?


Well it starts off, any kind of writing is used, but suppose one person definitely writes a number, then he usually writes out all the parts; and there are various areas that are free : either as a solo for someone, or they're kind of cooperatively free, I mean everyone has a free hand. Then we go and rehearse it (if possible, because we're working too much at the moment). And then we hope in performance it loosens up, ie everybody knows the basic arrangements, and the more familiar you get with it the more you can depart from the basic arrangement and you know exactly what other people are going to be working to .... and it's like the old medieval principle of composition : you compose the tenor line, then write two lines that fit the tenor but not that necessarily fit each other. I mean you don't know whether they're going to fit each other, but because they've got the same arrangement / reference point, you know it's going to work more or less.


To me it seems that there is some similarity between the development that Frank Zappa has been making in the last few years and your development.


Yeah, well, basically in terms of the fact that we're both getting away from the commercial pop song and going more into kind of the instrumental things .... but I think there are other groups that are doing that too. There is a similarity, but there is also a big difference, I hope.


I agree.


It's not that I don't like the Mothers - I like them very very much, but if we were both doing the same thing it would be a waste of time for one of us.


Finally, about the name of the group : first of all where did it come from and how did you get it ?


Well it came second-hand through a book by William Burroughs called 'The Soft Machine' and he in turn had taken it from a lecture by a physiologist in America (I can't remember what his name was) and Soft Machine is like a generic term for the whole of humanity and we are all Soft Machines and at that time being kind of ... we hope to be a pop group: ie; we hope to appeal ... well our basic assumption is what we like, everybody is going to like as well .... we all have things in common and therefore we are all Soft Machines and we're all going to like Soft Machine music. It might have been a wrong or false assumption.

	The second interview comes from I glossy Italian magazine 'covering everything from Led Zeppelin to free jazz' called GONG. It was translated and subtitled by Saverio Pechini .....

Would you like to put in perspective the early Soft Machine period and your coeval feelings?


The band had been together for a long time when the first album was recorded. It was only a tiny episode in the overall history of the Soft Machine. The recording session followed four months of exhausting tours in the USA, but maybe that was the best period concerning human relationships between us (the festivals in the South of France above all). In a way everyone of us felt that something different was happening : many bands then appearing for the first time were breaking barriers. The main feeling was that everything was possible and people would have accepted everything we played. Many things, unbelievable things, happened between then and now : many changes occurred in the group's line-up.

The problem is: people followed our music by records only, and they saw them as stages of a continuous evolution. So people always noticed a huge difference between records, as between Second and Third. From our point of view, there were never exaggerated gaps between Second and Third, but only a gradual process. When someone decided to quit, that was the outcome of an ongoing evolution and not the start of it.


Criticisms fly concerning the absolute lack of cultural weight in Soft Machine's recent music.


Well in a way it never pretended to have one. To me, a cultural message is a decal job from the outside: if there is one, I reckon it should be the sociologists' task, or something like that, to pigeon-hole it, within a century. Anyway, if ever one of us was interested in any form of message, that was Kevin (and he still is), but I don't believe you could tag the early Soft Machine with Kevin as a group committed to any kind of message. Music is a medium, which in some ways, requires musical solutions.


Prior to recording the Third album, were you aware of the important evolutive stage to come?


It's really difficult to answer. We played for fun, we had a really naive attitude ... you see, people are very intricate : they always see more than music actually offers. People nurse every kind of illusion about what they are doing: I think it is something innate. Sure, our early tunes were about Dadaism and Pataphysics - things we were, as individuals, really into - but actually there weren't any links with the music, save the ones people want to find in it. Anyway, a link does exist, because it's us who play that music and who are into that kind of stuff, and that's influencing you. You see, nowadays I'm mainly interested in the same things of yore, but it's also true that, since they are outside the group's area of interest, they are more feebly linked to the musical things, or at least compared to Third. In this way, I really hate interviews. To me, to deliver a good interview actually means to lie: and I'm less and less interested in lies. Fact is that you can't take too seriously what you are saying, because there isn't so much to say about the music.


Nevertheless, you are the only original member of Soft Machine still playing in the group. From Sixth to Bundles, compared to Jenkins' ever expanding composing vein, your role seems more and more removed from the music Soft Machine is developing now. What is your actual role and commitment in the 1976 Soft Machine?


Well ... truth ... truth is I'm leaving the group to follow my own direction: in a way I stopped composing music for five elements to concentrate on something more personal. You see, after Sixth I felt like I should develop something that was really mine. After that record, I became more and more involved in things which had nothing to do with the group and I became less and less interested in composing. I think that, compared to the prior period when I was forced to compose since no other did it, now Karl is able to do it, and I've obviously stopped. The present line-up will go on as Soft Machine: I'm unmoved about that; nevertheless many people hate those kind of changes, without understanding how difficult a situation is involving many persons. When Kevin quitted, then maybe we had to change the group's name but we didn't. And then people have their point of view about it, and sometimes you're criticized because you are no more the one you were yesterday. Every band always generated an enthusiasm due to the musicians who played in it for a certain period of time, but a person quitting is just a person quitting. I'm unfavourable to the chaos due to a person quitting the band: it only means that the other members of the band actually flogged a dead horse. Not to diminish the contribution of the musicians who play in the group: Marshall, Holdsworth, Jenkins, but it'll take a little time to re-shape an identity, which now is missing. Music is always more than the persons involved in it: probably that's why it's all right to go on playing how they do. It's up to each one of them to be main or less involved. By this time, to be in the Soft Machine was a drudgery, and playing music should never be like that. You see, there was never a leader (if so, everything would have been different) totally responsible for the music played by the others, and one of the reasons that drove me to stop composing was that I felt trapped in the whole Soft Machine's legendary image; trapped in the overall needless tagging about It. I think it was the same with Robert and Kevin. To be the only original member is horrible: this probably is the main reason for quitting and losing interest in it. When people want to identify you with an entity called Soft Machine and to consider you responsible for what's happening, your first reaction is to get away ..... you feel responsible for, without being obsessed by people, by critics, and the legendary '68. Yes, Sixth, I was rather involved in it, but not 100 per cent; Fifth was an incredibly unsuccessful album, due to changes in the line-up; Fourth is OK; Third, probably the last time I enjoyed what I was doing. It's really difficult to see these things from the outside. It's like peering up at a family in a house. When someone quits, automatically you figure the remaining people are maybe in a better situation compared to the one waiting for the person to leave, but there is the other side of the coin, because that person suddenly make difficulties for the ones who stayed. Trouble is, you can never actually escape from misunderstandings and myths created by the press and by the people. For now, I'm glad to escape from just one thing, that is the thing which journalists call Soft Machine.