Five questions for Simon Bonney, Crime & the City Solution founder
Ben Edmonds, Free Press special writer
October 18, 2012
http://www.freep.com/article/20121018/E ... mon-Bonney
The free Friday concert by Crime & the City Solution at the DIA's Rivera Court is part of the rock group's first tour in 20 years, but it can't be called a reunion. Instead, it opens a new chapter in the influential Australian band's story, one with a pronounced Detroit twist.
Calling Crime & the City Solution an Australian band may be a stretch at this point. Though the group emerged from the same Aussie scene that provided post-punk eminences Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and These Immortal Souls with their back stories, Crime's history is a map of the creative and geographical wanderlust of Simon Bonney. The singer and songwriter has been the only constant in several editions of the group, which he has based in several locales around the globe. Bonney's shifting environs have refreshed and informed his writing.
The group -- perhaps best known for its hypnotic performance in Wim Wenders' celebrated 1987 film "Wings of Desire" -- was mothballed by Bonney in 1991. In the years since, he has become such a regular visitor to Detroit that he now qualifies for semi-resident status. Bonney recruited Detroit musicians to back him on a tour promoting his second solo album in the late '90s and recorded a still-unreleased third solo album here. He was inspired by Detroit's freewheeling creative climate to assemble a new version of Crime & the City Solution, one that features a couple of local talents: ex-Dirtbomb Troy Gregory on bass and Outrageous Cherry leader Matt Smith on keyboards.
This tour is accompanied by the release of a compilation album called "A History of Crime," and the band's present lineup touches all Bonney's geographic and historic bases. In addition to the two Detroiters and violinist Bronwyn Adams (Bonney's wife), it features members from Australia (drummer Jim White), Berlin (guitarist Alexander Hacke) and rural America (guitarist David Eugene Edwards). "American Twilight," the album recorded by this new edition of Crime & the City Solution with Dave Feeney at the Tempermill studio in Ferndale, will be released early next year.
We were told that Bonney would be calling from Australia for this interview, but when the call came through, it turned out to be from a room in the Hotel St. Regis. Over a telephone line that spanned blocks, he talked about a journey that has spanned more than four decades.
QUESTION: What is the effect of geography on your music process?ANSWER: Oh, it can play a significant role. Berlin, for example, was a far more conducive atmosphere for us to work in than London was. There's a chaotic element to certain cities we tend to function well in. There are a lot of parallels between post-unification Berlin and modern Detroit. There's a collapsed splendor about both cities. I'm sitting here in what's called New Center, and I notice that the Fisher Building was built in 1928. It's the most ornate and jewel-encrusted building, and it went up a year before the collapse of the Western financial system. But if I walk a few blocks. I find burning trash cans and streets where more than half the buildings are boarded up. Somewhere in the space between these extremes, people are trying to live their lives.
Q: How does that manifest musically?A: The musicians here and in Berlin have a not-entirely-dissimilar approach. The Detroiters I'm working with have a very unrestricted view of music, and that's always been important to the way I approach writing songs. I wouldn't say that anybody sets out to deviate from accepted songwriting practices. There's just a lot of room here, as there is in Berlin, and it encourages you to find new and interesting ways of filling it. Anything goes, creatively speaking.
Musically, I admire people who've come to realize they don't fit into mainstream society but who've committed to being full-time musicians, which is basically a commitment to poverty. The financial side and the art side are not natural bedfellows, though every now and again, there'll be a crash of lightning and the two conflate and suddenly you can make a living at it. But that's rare, so you've got to be doing it for other reasons. Also, I had just been pretty badly burned by the experience of (second solo album) "Everyman," the most expensive record I've ever made. It was nice to get back to a more relaxed, less financially focused, much more organic relationship with music. That's what I found in Detroit.
Q: Were the songs for the new album written as well as recorded here?A: Yes, and the title song, "American Twilight," is about Detroit. I devoted time to studying "The Kwame Sutra" and the speeches of Coleman Young. I'm definitely not writing literal stories based on other people's lives, but when you go into a new environment, these are things you soak up and it all ferments into a piece of fiction. I do write social commentary songs, but they're not specific to any particular event -- in the same way as Gabriel Garcia Marquez would write a story that was heavily influenced by what was going on in his country at the time, but it wouldn't be tied to the boundaries of any real-life situation.
Q: How much of America have you experienced outside its urban centers?A: My last solo album, "Everyman," was the result of all the time I spent driving around the U.S. listening to Willie Nelson records and seeing firsthand the collapse of Main Street. You could see the urban collapse coming to quite small centers in rural Texas because all these big chain stores had set up on the outskirts of town and then Main Street would begin to wither. It has had a huge impact on people's lives, this changing model of how cities run and where the center is, or whether or not there even is a center anymore.
Q: I understand there is a unique visual element to the show we'll see at the DIA.A: The visuals are the work of Danielle de Picciotto. ... I've always wanted to bring a visual dimension to the songs, but it's something we haven't had the technology to do until recently. It involves drawings and collages that are her interpretations of the songs, but I can't do it justice -- so I won't try. I can only say that Danielle has become our eighth member. We're increasing in size as the years go by. By the end of the century we'll be up to 15 or 16 members and be the Crime & the City Solution Orchestra.
