I’m not saying I would have lost my faith in music without your work with Can, but I would have enjoyed music far less without it. Thank you, sir.
I tried for a while to get interested in the music of Can without Damo Suzuki, but he really did it for me. Always the feeling that he was 100% upfront with his heart and his mind, and that made for exciting music. RIP.
A fitting homage (I hope) by a man (Mark E. Smith) who died years before his idol:
I just read an obituary and was reminded of the story how Suzuki came to be Can’s lead singer. In 1970, the band had just lost their singer Malcolm Mooney due to depression. They had a gig in Munich, and in the afternoon before, Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay were walking the Munich streets when they saw a Japanese guy performing chants or prayers in his now iconic improvisional style. One said to the other “This is our next singer”. They approached Suzuki and asked him if he had time in the evening to sing for them, no rehearsal needed. He agreed, played the gig and from that on stayed with the band for their artistically most successful years.
You didn’t like the Malcolm Mooney records? I like them both equally, really.
Yes indeed. I’m a big fan of both of them.
Yeah, that is a great story. He was certainly a unique performer. I absolutely wouldn’t have the guts to attempt that, not with vocals.
Is that Monster Movie and Soundtracks? Yeah, those didn’t grab me so much. Sometimes it’s the first one you hear that latches on…
Yeah, those are the two he sang on. It was the first I heard, so Suzuki’s records were the one I had to adjust to, but it was easy. By the time I got to “Mushroom” and realized The Flaming Lips had basically covered it on A Priest Driven Ambulance with “Take Meta Mars”*, I was sold. It was comfy and familiar.
*My understanding is they didn’t remember how it actually went, so they just wrote a new song that sounded like how they remembered it.