Glenn Branca - Biography
You can’t accuse him of not having a Look: salt ‘n’ pepper pompadour, high like an oiled tsunami; black suit jacket (thin lapels, of course); dress shirt; cuffed black jeans; tattered combat boots; short stature; furrowed brow; exaggerated rock ‘n’ roll posture; combative attitude; gesticulating wildly as he conducts a jet-engine loud “orchestra” of electric guitars. Glenn Branca’s got his schtick down cold, and it’s led him from the fetid No Wave scene of the late 1970s to high-profile gigs at Europe’s most storied opera houses. He has more or less succeeded in his overt efforts to fuse the solemnity and prestige of the classical realm with the volume, aggression and theatricality of rock. Wielding pomp and bluster, Glenn Branca just might be the Napoleon of the avant garde, with nary a Waterloo in sight.
He’s from Harrisburg, PA. In the early 70s he got into glam and Alice Cooper and early Aerosmith. Working at a Boston record shop, he got introduced to Olivier Messiaen, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich. The theatricality aspect of his work is key, because he has roots in experimental theater. Branca relates:
"Since age 11, I was planning on being in theater. My parents would buy me these old tape recorders for Christmas and birthdays, and I'd sit there, really immersed, and make these tape collages. But I'd never play them for anyone. I always loved rock music desperately, but for many years, theater is what I lived and dreamed about 24 hours a day. Eventually, that's what I went to school for at Emerson College. I wasn't interested in creating plots or writing characters, though. I liked large forces -- playing with huge numbers of people and sound and lights and imagery.”
“I was interested in spaces where magical things might happen. The closest influence was Dada. The pieces were about whatever the fuck I wanted them to be about. I wanted to fuck with people's heads. I was concerned with Richard Wagner's idea of total theater.”
Richard Wagner. This is where we jump to a notorious incident. It’s a tired old pony that gets trotted out in every article ever written about Glenn Branca, but we’ll do it, anyway. John Cage attended a Branca concert in 1982, and was none too impressed. He criticized the constant barrage of sound; the fact that Branca had to be in attendance for the piece to be performed; that his presence is thoroughly dominant; there is no room for the individual voices of the performers. Then transposing the concert stage to society as a whole, Cage said he “wouldn’t want to live in a society” like that, and it would be “something resembling fascism.”
Do Branca’s shock-and-awe tactics have brutal, domineering aspects? Of course. It’s because while Branca revels in the ostensible and ostentatious trappings of post-classicism, he is, for the most part making highly advanced, innovative rock ‘n’ roll. Branca may fancy himself as an electric Messiaen, but with the volume, theatrics, first-person involvement, and costume (sorry, but you know what I mean), his true peers are Motorhead, Alice Cooper, and other rock acts. It’s no surprise that Cage didn’t dig it, but do you really think Cage spent a lot of time hanging out at CBGB or listening to Aerosmith? (Let’s imagine that he did, anyway; John and Merce bopping through the loft to Toys in the Attic.)
In the same interview, Cage also reveals his abject fuddy-duddiness by leveling similar criticisms at Laurie Anderson, because she has to be present at her performances, and he grouses that artists like her and Branca are steering things back to the “middle ages” because, unlike Cage’s own music, not just any guy off the street can play it. The logic here is bizarre. Like, “Alright, musicians. Drop your electric guitars. We’re going to redistribute them to non-musicians, and rely strictly on aleatoric music and chance operations.” That’s hilarious, actually — it saves me from an awkward exit from this tangent, because it’s a perfect description of No Wave.
In 1977 Branca moved to New York with plans to start a black-box theater company. However, how can you live in New York in 1977 and not want to start a band? He got a guitar. He didn’t know how to play, but that was pretty much a prerequisite to starting a band in New York in 1977. The Theoretical Girls were pretty standard No Wave, which is to say they were pretty good. They only played about 20 shows, and released a single 7”, but are notable for featuring producer Wharton Tiers on drums; Margaret DeWys was on keys; Jeffrey Lohn on guitar and vocals. However, it was another connection that would really set the stage for the rest of Branca’s career. He joined the ensemble of composer Rhys Chatham.
Chatham had studied with both Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, and absorbed the droning, microtonal roar that the two had perfected from 1962 through 1966 as the Dream Syndicate, along with subsequent Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale. However in 1976, Chatham, when confronted with punk in general, and The Ramones in particular, had an insight. Cale and Conrad had perfected their original version of loud, raw, ecstatic New York minimalism using amplified violin and viola. Chatham would fuse minimalism with the energy and ethos of punk, and enlist an army of guitarists to create his own epic brand of droning strings and soaring harmonics.
Branca absorbed it all — microtonal tunings; just intonation; blast-furnace volumes; massed musicians; one-chord masterpieces; arch manipulation of the harmonic series — and then he raised a guitar army of his own. Branca’s new style was a world away from Theoretical Girls, and it was breathtaking. His earliest records remain classics. The first is the EP Lesson No. 1 (1980 99 Records). It’s a joy. The title track is full of chiming, ringing guitars, in the competent hands of Thurston and Lee, among others. The B-side is noisier stuff, but Branca demonstates that, all bluster aside, he’s developed a fine ear for texture.
The Ascension (1981 99 Records) is arguably Branca’s best record. That’s not to suggest that he peaked in 1981, it’s just that all of his subsequent work is contained within The Ascension. And that’s what it does. It ascends. It soars. It climbs and climbs. It peaks and peaks and peaks, and then it peaks. It is violent beauty; epic ferocity. With four guitars, bass, and drums, Branca enters a realm of minimal maximalism. It grooves; it has vivid clouds of harmonics. It’s sort of trite to say, but the title track is downright orgasmic. If it wasn’t already taken, Branca could have just called it “Stairway to Heaven.”
Then, from here on out, it’s symphonies. Branca calls them that, and there have been thirteen to date. Some standout more than others, but some are brilliant, like hulking menacing extensions of “The Ascension.” Symphony No.1 [Tonal Plexus] (1983 ROIR), is pretty difficult to find, although worth it for the post-punk shronk, with keys, brass, and percussion. Symphony No.2 [The Peak of the Sacred] (1992 Atavistic) also has some great, gritty moments with Z’ev wailing on percussion; Symphony No.3 [Gloria] (1983 Atavistic) might be the best of them all, glorious, as the title suggests full of pealing elegant bombast. Thurston and Lee appear as well.
Symphony No.5 [Describing Planes of an Expanding Hypersphere] (1984 Atavistic) is sheer cacophony; Symphonies No.8/10 [The Mysteries] (1994 Atavistic) contains a pair of massive requiem. Branca even composes for a conventional orchestra in The World Turned Upside Down (1990 Atavistic).
Branca’s ambitions are boundless, and sometimes mildly amusing. Branca and Chatham have been competing for years to see who can assemble larger numbers. Chatham’s massed-guitar ensemble from 1989, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, features 100 guitars; so does Branca’s more recent Symphony No.13 (Hallucination City). Clips on YouTube reveal it to be just as strident and mesmerizing as we’ve come to expect. Branca himself elaborates:
"Hallucination City came about because my agent in Europe had an idea of doing a gig for 2,000 guitars for the year 2000. I told her, ‘Do you know how much money it takes to feed that many people?' As each piece of the bureaucracy got their piece of the pie, the budget went up — from $250,000 to $500,000 to almost a million. Then the massive millennium celebrations turned into a big fart. No one gave a damn about the millennium. A performance didn't come together until 2001, when I got a call from [public-art organization] Creative Time. They were curating this festival downtown, and wanted the theme to involve New York City. They liked the idea of 100 guitars.
"How do I describe the piece? Well, I wouldn't talk in terms of dissonance but in terms of clusters — large, almost architectural blocks of sound that move around each other, inside of each other, on top of each other. In a way I almost see my music as a kind of structured collage. Collage got written off because of the way [John] Cage used it, but I like that sound. That's what I liked about Mahler. I like the way music sucks you in, and takes you somewhere solely for the purpose of turning back on you, and hitting you in the head."
