By Todd Ellison

A sultry night in New Milford, Connecticut. Pierre Bensusan (pronounced: ben-sues-on) sits comfortably in front of an audience of guitar players at the National Guitar Summer Workshop, just a man and an acoustic guitar. And a voice—his show typically includes some vocals and some wordless vocalizing. And an easy, charming manner spiced with a charming French accent. But no bass, no drums, no rhythm player, no keyboards, no nothing.

Well, there is a foot pedal for volume control. Oh, and a bank of MIDI footswitch controls hooked to an inauspicious rack of programmable effects units and signal processing gear speckled with LED status displays twinkling like faint stars. But at center stage it’s just a guy and a guitar—seated, not standing.

The room lights start to dim and a couple of rock ‘n’ roll guitar students next to me are conversing about the prospects for tonight’s performance. One says: “Who is this guy? I don’t really like acoustic guitar all that much.” But this concert is almost part of the curriculum, so they stay.

An hour later the young rock ‘n’ rollers next to me—along with the rest of us—are on their feet, raucously applauding, whooping, gesticulating to express their appreciation for one of the most awesome solo performances any of us in the room had ever experienced. We all left with a new respect for the power of a single acoustic guitar in the hands of a master fingerstyle guitarist…with a little help from state-of-the-art electronics. Welcome to the Pierre Bensusan of today.

Emphasis on today. Those of us who learned about Pierre Bensusan from his handful of commercial recordings made between 1975 and 1988 might think of him as a Euro-folkie, or a folk-jazz sort of guy with clearly romantic — sometimes pop-oriented — musical leanings. Unfortunately, no Bensusan live performance has yet to find its way onto a recording, so you’ll be stuck with a very incomplete musical picture if you haven’t seen him on stage.

Bensusan is an original; an unclassifiable, one-of-a-kind musician. His guitar technique is wizardly, his compositions imaginative and complex. His songs tend to be romantic in lyric and delivery, with delicate, beautiful melodies. His scat singing and masterful use of electronics turns him into a one-man orchestra. Beyond these modest attributes, how many guitarists do you know who have authored their own guitar book that comes complete with recipes and poetry? How many guitarists do you know who have made such a strong commitment to their favorite open tuning—DADGAD—that they named their record company after it?

As a guitarist and composer, Pierre Bensusan is a painter. His compositions reflect an unusual diversity of ethnic influences, yet are uniquely Pierre Bensusan. His instrumental performances are richly textured, eloquent and refined, with improvisational sections almost inseparable from the tunes themselves. Whether fundamentally simple or complex, in live performances his compositions develop musical lives of their own, becoming tapestries woven of stuff that melts when the guitar stops, never to be seen or heard again in quite the same way. The late, great jazz drummer and wit Shelley Manne once described improvisation as “the art of never playing a tune the same way once.” Bensusan’s live performances are like this.

One of the techniques he uses to enlarge his musical canvas on stage is to electronically sample and record guitar sequences up to a minute long—live, mind you—and then improvise over them using different voices—sounds—to create the effect of an ensemble. It’s pretty magical to watch when it really clicks.

Of course he also uses effects to alter the tone color of his instrument. Imagine you are in an intimate folk-type club listening to his arty, world-flavored acoustic guitar and romantic vocals. Shazzam! An invisible tap of a footswitch, and a searing rock lead with a heavy-metal distortion sound seemingly rips loose from the gentle wood of Bensusan’s Lowden guitar. The guitarist smiles coyly at his little joke with the audience, courtesy of digital technology.

Who is this guy, this Frenchman who was born in Algeria in 1957 and raised in Paris? This guitar phenom who was presented with the prestigious “Grand Prix Du Disque” award at the 1976 Montreux Festival when he was just 17. This philosopher- musician who is truly a guitarists’ guitarist but far too little known in this country?

I had this conversation with a shirtless, laid-back Bensusan taking a day off by the San Francisco bay.

BENSUSAN. I would say a good 35 percent. I have tunes that I start that I never know what I’m going to go into. I know that there is a beginning where there is a movement which has to establish the tune. Then, entering into the really…grease of the tune, anything is possible. I let myself open up and every night is different. And, in fact, even where my parts are well defined I still fool around. I try to leave it open; not stiff, but variable.

A lot of my pieces are written and structured, and I can play on and on, 100 times, and it works, because I’ve been thinking of it. But then my interpretations can be radically different. You saw two shows at McCabe’s in Santa Monica. The second show had nothing to do with the first show. In the second show, the fact of David Crosby being in the room really inspired me a lot, because I love this man. In fact, I played for him and I never had even thought that one day I would play for him. I felt perfectly open. Those are the most beautiful moments; there is no fear, everything is open, and there’s a real magic at work.

BENSUSAN. There were some people in Brazil, like Milton Nascimento; people in Africa, where they just hum—an organized humming—which can be a part of the composition. It’s like a color. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t use another color when you play a guitar. A guitar is a color, the sounds are color, the voices are color. Voice is an instrument, you know.

BENSUSAN. Since I was 7, using my voice with the piano, singing along with melodies. And after that, when I played the guitar, I was singing a lot. In fact, my first introduction to guitar was just as a rhythm instrument and I was mainly a singer. For years I’ve been a singer. It was only years later that I found out that I could—on a guitar—express myself as a musician like I could on the piano. And then I started to sing less and less and less, and play more and more and more. And then there was a meeting where I was doing songs and instrumental music, but also vocalizations.

Today, I would say that I have several passions which I try to present to the audience in the same concert. Guitar playing, of course. And singing songs—communicating lyrics with a voice; meaning something, saying something in a musical way. And singing with no lyrics; all of sudden leaving this [lyric] territory to go into more mysterious and magic stuff, where the same voice starts to get real weird and do other things.

BENSUSAN. I did in the beginning. I didn’t want to hear about the electronics. It was a world I didn’t know and I was afraid of it. To me, electronics was a heavy metal rock guitarist world and it seemed to me like a huge, total mystery.

When I started to realize that I could apply some of those ingredients to what I was doing, it’s like I had opened a door, and I have never closed this door since. It, in fact, opened many other doors. And this did not take anything away from inspiration, from my being an acoustic guitarist or being a composer. It has enhanced my technique; now my electronics are part of my instrument, just an extension of expression on a guitar. Each is the same thing to me.

BENSUSAN. About, I would say, 12 years ago. First using pickups, then volume pedals, delay pedals, booster pedals, reverbs. Then better delays and better pickups…da da da da da da. Then amplifiers, and then three amps. The whole chain. Now I’m using some really great equipment, but it took me 12 years to find out exactly what I wanted to do with electronics.

BENSUSAN. I am not a rock ‘n’ roll guitarist, not even a rock ‘n’ roll musician. But rock ‘n’ roll is part of my background and my culture; I’ve been raised in the middle of it, so I know it, I feel for it and I can appreciate the good and the bad. At the same time, I think that the most important thing for a musician is to define where he stands and to choose his side. And when that is done, then he can really further expand and go.

So, I found out that I was not going to be an electric guitarist, that my skill was into composing, into using this electronic acoustic instrument, and writing and singing. And anything which can make this work is welcome. Any sound, as long as it is well used and makes sense, is welcome.

BENSUSAN. Yes. It’s fun to do and, yes, they like it. If they don’t like it, it means that this has been used in a way that it has not been really taken good advantage of. And that could happen. It has happened for me.

In the beginning when I was using electronics I was overwhelmed by it. It was like a new toy. I would put too much of this, too much of that, and people complained. They were critical and I didn’t understand their criticism. I had to internalize it and to live with it until it made sense.

Now I feel I don’t have to use a lot of echoes or reverb. But when this echo comes, it’s a killer, because it has been so little used. That’s what I care for. This direction is something I feel is totally, 100% right for me, so do it.

BENSUSAN. I have to look at this like in a play, like in theater where actors are interacting together. My actors, are, in fact, belonging to various ethnic musics put together as one, always together. And this can be blues meeting African music. This can be jazz meeting Arabic music. This can be classical meeting Egyptian music.

I was in Washington, D.C. a while ago, in this very famous jazz club called Blues Alley. In the room there were 20 French people, about 20 Japanese people, a few Arabs, some Indians and Americans. You can imagine the mix. And at the end of the concert, everybody was happy and everybody found what he was looking for.

BENSUSAN. I would say, “many.” But to me, the most important were Django Reinhardt, Martin Carthy, Ry Cooder, Big Bill Broonzy, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, Jimi Hendrix, John McLaughlin, Ralph Towner, Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny, Paco DeLucia. Just to name a few. And friends; I could name them, but you won’t know them.

BENSUSAN. Currently? Now I listen to orchestra music, symphony music. And I receive my influence from diverse people, even from my students. I’m going to hang out with them and they’re going to inspire me. I get an immediate bunch of energy from people, which I try to keep for a long time with me. So I get inspired by a lot of different stuff.

Everyday life is enough to get inspiration from. It’s not necessarily “music,” because I have “music” in me. I am more careful finding the time to work on this music, to make it happen, to work with my skills as a practicing musician, on my ability to evoke, aloud, my imagination inside.

And sometimes it’s distracting to listen to other people. Sometimes I even don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t like it; it’s that I feel it’s not appropriate. But some of the time it’s totally appropriate.

So I go through periods where I listen to a lot of crazy stuff, like Arabic music, Flamenco. My wife is a Flamenco dancer and a modern dancer. So at home there is always Flamenco music.

My family comes from Spain, Spanish Morocco and Algeria. My great, great uncles were Flamenco musicians; even my uncle was a Tango singer and concertina player. So I think music is not necessarily to be learned in order to be digested. I didn’t learn Flamenco, but I digested it. I understand it. It talks to me, although I don’t want to play it because I know that a lot of people are going to be playing Flamenco better than I could ever do because it was not right there at the beginning of my life. Tango, Flamenco, all those musics are musics that you have to be drawn and born into it. So it’s like I had to create an imaginary idiom for me, because I’m nothing; I was uprooted right away from Algeria, where I was born.

BENSUSAN. Not always. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. A lot of my compositions have been improvisations, and a lot of those improvisations, even before being improvised, have been imagination, ideas that I had. And one day, I would just go ahead and sing them or sing and play at the same time. And then from there, I would listen, and I would start to work on this material, thinking: “There is too much,” or “There is not enough.” “It’s too long.” “Let’s not be…blah, blah, blah.” “Let’s make it tight and only what is required, nothing else, just the essential.”

And, I’ve also worked from an improvisation where, two months later, I listen and find one very simple idea, and make this idea like a symphony. This is what I did this winter, during the war. I listened. I reviewed all my tapes. When I’m at home working, I have a DAT always recording. Always. And then I listen. I destroy a lot of it and I keep what I think is interesting.

There were only, maybe, three ideas there, but I made a 25 minute piece with it, just by melting the scenes together and letting it develop by itself. I think it’s very important in composition to be able to select, to decide when something is appropriate, when it’s not, and also to be able to throw away what is not required.

BENSUSAN. I play everyday, from morning until evening, but I have no routine. Basically, I play my own stuff and I improvise a lot. I just go from scratch and build, and record and listen. Or I take my pieces and I work on them. My only routine would be to work with chords until I find beautiful chords, to always expand my chord vocabulary. And I love notes—different ways of putting notes together. So I try to work on a few notes and to play them on the guitar different ways. And I work with arpeggios and a lot of right hand stuff. I work on technique by playing.

I don’t do silly, stupid exercises—although maybe I should, because friends of mine do that. It doesn’t mean that because they do those silly things that they lose the music idea behind it. In fact, it can be great. Some Flamenco guitarists have those little wood blocks—with strings—attached to their belt. And they’re working with their right hand at the same time they’re talking to you. They actually do that.

BENSUSAN. I use a thumb pick part of the time and nothing except nails (or acrylic on the nails) and flesh. I use all four fingers to pluck chords. These days I am also using my right hand more and more to play on the neck, to create harmonic rhythmic effects, as well as melodies.

BENSUSAN. The story behind the book was to offer to the reader a lot about guitar music, but also about what can incite and create a mood to be in a creative process. It was a six year project overall; the last two years were very intense. The result is an art/guitar book where music has a predominant and center position. The addition of about 80 illustrations—drawings, reproductions of paintings, photos, engravings, anatomic and technical sketches—and the poems, quotes, recipes, etc., are like a perfume, to add pleasure. It seems to me it is always good to suggest that what makes music is much more than notes and sounds.

I did this book because there was a demand from several sources: the audience and the people producing and managing me then. I did it also because, being completely self-taught, maybe I needed to clarify my own vision of where I was and how to get to the next step. I am glad I was able—with my wife Doatea, whose help and spirit are predominant in this book—to bring a project like this from nothing to its end. Some days I didn’t feel like working on it, but I had to. This is also why I did not record anything at that time; my head was filled.

The book was first published in France in 1986 by myself. It cost about $50,000 which I paid from my tours. I found a distributor in France and later one in the USA—Hal Leonard Publishing—for the English version.

BENSUSAN. And some transcriptions of things which I haven’t done before, like Tango, and accordian music. It was in ‘78, ‘79. “Musiques” was a very important record for me because before I had been somehow fitting myself into a kind of folk environment in France and Europe. I was evolving away from that, but very, very slowly. I wanted to escape, to go away from it, to become independent. “Musiques” was my new uniform.

BENSUSAN. In 1981 I went to a studio in Germany and met with German producer, Gunter Pauler. He expressed his vision and suggestions, I expressed mine, and we found a good compromise. This record was made before I became more technologic, which explains why it is completely acoustic and very much solo, except for my three guest artists.

BENSUSAN. “Spices” came out first on CBS-Sony in 1988 and was the result of several years of tours, compositions and various collaborations. I felt it was time for me to share this music with other musicians. The best format was to put a band together and stick to it. After this record and after a difficult touring life with the band, I felt I had to go back to my solo life, my guitar playing, and be more relieved of all the responsibilities of having to keep a band together. But it was a marvellous experience and I will do it again later, if I can.

BENSUSAN. I recently bought the masters of my two CBS albums. I had already bought my three other masters from Cezame/RCA a long time ago. The fact of owning my five masters pointed me toward the adventure of creating my own record label—DADGAD Records. It is only a personal label, with the aim of a permanent, safe and solid home to my music.

I am currently preparing a new album of songs and instrumentals with a few guests, which I hope will be out before Christmas. Soon after will be a vocal album which will, soon after, be followed by an instrumental album. I’m also working on a new version of my guitar book for the European market.

BENSUSAN. You know, little stupid things. To broaden their horizons right away, as often as they can. To listen to a lot of different music, not just guitar music. In other words, they don’t have to wear the “guitar uniform.” Not to play too fast, but slow and beautiful. To watch out how they approach something. To get a lot of ear training. To watch the tone. To care for vibrato. To play in tune. Little, stupid, musical things.

Bensusan’s own DADGAD Records label is currently producing the following records.  A US distributor has not yet been named.

“Prix de Paris/Pierre Bensusan #2” — DADGAG Records. A compilation of Bensusan’s first two albums which were recorded in 1975 and 1977 respectively.

“Musiques/Solilai” — DADGAD Records. A compilation of two albums originally recorded in 1979 and 1981-88 respectively.

“Spices” — DADGAG Records. Originally released in 1988.

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