by James Jensen (1997) “Nouveau Classical?”
Ottmar Liebert has achieved phenomenal success in the last decade matched by only a few mainstream pop/rock acts. The thing that makes his story so unbelievable is that he is an instrumental guitarist, not the stuff of Gold and Platinum success... normally. Liebert is a self described “mutt” born of Chinese and German heritage, and raised in Europe as a boy. His journey brought him to America where he followed his pop/rock muse through many frustrating years. Looking for a change of pace, Liebert was playing nylon string acoustic guitar in Restaurants in his temporary home (now it is eleven years, and looking more permanent) of Santa Fe, New Mexico. A local artist funded a vanity pressing of 1,000 copies of what turned out to be “Nouveau Flamenco” and when radio got a hold of this unique hybrid of Flamenco cum-pop instrumental tunes, a genre was born. Even though the public took to Lieberts Quasi-Flamenco, some purists were, and still are, outraged. I met with Liebert after he had just finished mixing his newest project, “Leaning Into The Night” for Sony Classical. I was fortunate enough to be given a preview of this gorgeous recording, and I have the feeling that Liebert will again find himself in the eye of a storm of controversy with this one as well. This newest recording finds Liebert playing originals and some standard classical repertoire with an Orchestra. While he has never studied formally, Liebert just may have recorded what will become the most popular classical guitar release of all time.
JJ: When I heard your first CD “Nouveau Flamenco” It seemed like a very pop-oriented treatment of Flamenco styles, with a lot of repetition and musical hooks.
O: I had been playing mostly in Rock bands so I am one of those people who thinks in verse/chorus/verse.
JJ: Even though you have released a half dozen records since, the first one is still popular.
O: Higher Octave (the record label) are still working that first album, because I only did three with them before signing with Sony. That little album by now is Platinum in the U.S. and Canada, and New Zealand, and Australia..it was an amazing little record.
JJ: You’re experience with Flamenco wasn’t all that great when you recorded that first record in Santa Fe?
O: A couple of years from the time I arrived, after taking a bunch of Flamenco lessons, and picking up on stuff from records, I was developing the material for “Nouveau Flamenco”. When I recorded that album I had only been playing Flamenco for about a year, so I had very rudimentary technique. It was interesting because calling it “Nouveau Flamenco” was kind of a joke, because if I had pretended to be Spanish I would have called it Nuevo Flamenco , my title was supposed to be funny .. like Nouveau Cuisine. I kind of stepped right into a hornets nest with that title , and then got kind of provoked thinking that where is everybodys sense of humor? Here is a guy who was just getting started out with a style he was interested in, and applying it to what he had already, and these guys where getting so upset. I actually decided to keep it going, because it was becoming funny to me. The people that are the most stern about “tradition” are not the players , they are the critics, the people removed from it, and wanting a purity for their little thing. Their attitude is “this is mine, I found it, I can’t play it , but I know what it’s supposed to be”, and you have to take it with a sense of humor. I take some of the traditional meters, and apply them. In the beginning , to show people where I got them from, I would write underneath (Buleria), and by no means is it a Buleria in a Spanish sense where it is in this key , and with this chord sequence, but... it was a Buleria in rhythm. One time my guitar builder made me aware of an email newsletter, and I got involved, which was funny because they didn’t believe it was me writing back. They had been writing about me forever, and one faction was saying “Ottmar Sucks” and the other group was saying “He’s introduced so many people to Flamenco, etc” and they had never checked the meter of the song, just that it wasn’t a “true” Buleria because of a very narrow idea of what Flamenco is. It is like... Chuck Berry is Rock ‘n Roll , but King Crimson isn’t. To me sometimes it’s humorous, but it is really a non-issue.
JJ: True Flamenco is full of passion and technique, but it’s ....
O: Hard to listen to.
JJ: I would imagine that Paco De Lucia, and Paco Pena are more popular than ever due to you!
O: Oh, yeah. We have had arguments about that, and Paco has been very outspoken saying that every kid in the street in Spain is a better guitarist than me. He talks badly about me, and I have never said a bad word about him, and I dedicated an album to him. Yet, his own record company three years back said “After the repopularization of Flamenco Guitar in America due to Ottmar Liebert, and Strunz & Farah, we now present ...Paco” , he’s using my name for sales & marketing , which I don’t mind, and then bashing me, which I do have a problem with. The Super Trio with him and Mclaughlin , who I love, and Di Meola even use in their full page ads...”Before Nouveau Flamenco their was the trio”. It really comes down to who do you want to communicate to? To me, I could have just said that these songs aren’t guitaristic enough, and I want to be a part of the “Guitar Olympics” and let me study for another twenty years to produce a complex piece which might stun guitar players , while every body else’s reaction is like ...yeah? I have had a development in my playing in the last several years, but I wouldn’t say that “Opium” is better than “Nouveau Flamenco”, it’s different, there is a beauty to the innocence of the first album. I think it comes down to melodies, if you’ve got a pretty melody you can do anything behind it. I have done stuff with as much weird noise as possible , and then seduce people with the melody into diggin it anyway. I know guitar players who are afraid of being accessible, like as soon as the audience goes, Yeah! they have to go off on some half tone scale or something.
JJ: Some players think that they have to be real scary busy with the left hand for people to be impressed.
O: Yeah, and that’s why it was so fun to tour with Santana last year , because we did three duets together, and they were just melodies. It wasn’t like ,”hey, check this out”, or “look how cool this is”, it was just two people celebrating melodies.
JJ: Santana real plays simple beautiful melodies with great tone.
O: I played his guitar, the Paul Reed Smith, ...and is it loud!
JJ: You covered Peter Greens’ classic instrumental “Albatross”, that is not a well known tune in America, where did you hear it?
O: The first concert I ever went to was Santana, and when I was fifteen I listened to “Lotus” with “Samba Pa Ti “ so I covered that one. And the other one that really stuck in my head from my teenage years was “Albatross”, because Peter Green and Santana play melodies which stick in your head, they never play to impress. The conga player in his band told me “ The only thing that counts is express, not impress” , and he is a very heavy player but he is always supporting the music. It was really great to go full circle after twenty years, from being inspired hearing “Samba pa Ti” the first time to playing it with him on stage.
JJ: Both of those players get to the point don’t they?
O: Guitarists are doodlers, there’s no doubt about it. When you listen to phone messages and you just start scribbling, that’s what most guitar players do. Most players don’t focus enough on melody, they think “here’s my scale , I’ll just do something with it”. I definitely think in songs, and often in the studio I will discard things that are flashy if they are getting away from the essence of the song.
JJ: I have heard you say that you prefer instrumentals because the listener is not being told what to think about, can you elaborate?
O: Well I think that instrumental music somehow involves the listener, and without that involvement it is just background. Instrumental music is very much like a relationship, you get more out of it depending on how much you put into it. A song is more like, here check me out I’ve got something to say!, and the listener is just receiving more than involved, and the better lyricists will involve you, but some of the pop-schlock is not involving. It is fine for me if someone wants to refer to it as background music , because I think it is beautiful that music can have those different levels.
JJ: On your early releases you overdubbed rhythm and lead parts, when you began to tour did you hire additional players for those parts?
O: I just did it by myself and kind of faked it, I also had a new percussionist that was really hot so it kind of worked. This year, to celebrate seven years of Luna Negra (Ottmars group) we will do a tour with a nine piece band which will consist of: three guitar players, three drummers, a horn section, and a bass player. There are a lot of tunes from “Borrasca” (Liebert's sophomore effort) which features Rumbas that shouldn’t be faked.
JJ: You have a pretty respectable speed with your picking , do you use a pick ever or is it always im (index and middle finger alternating)?
O: It is always im , and the tremolo is ima, and the tremolo is always triplets with the first note starting on the a and the thumb. I only use a pick when I play live on the electric, and it is a pick made out of stone, I also use a sterling silver pick I found at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas when we played there.
JJ: What did you do to build up speed, and develop a tremolo?
O: Well, the tremolo was more about getting it back , because when I was a kid I spent countless hours reading and doing a tremolo at the same time for hours at a time. The Picato (the i a rest strokes) it was just practicing. The Picato was really easier than the Rasqueados (these are the Flamenco strums) because they are very unnatural motions for the hands to make. I worked on them for every day for a couple of years. I recently had a studio musician in New York tell me about several recordings by famous classical guitarists of Rodrigos Concerto De Aranjas , and they would keep a pick near their guitar for the passages requiring the Rasqueados because they didn’t have that technique. The first time that Concerto has been recorded correctly rhythmically was when Paco De Lucia recorded it a few years ago. The slow movements are not as beautiful as say Julian Bream, because I think Flamenco players are not as used to setting the note perfectly with an orchestra , because the guitar tone is dead so quickly. I think Pacos rendition was so beautiful, and it had never been played like it before him, and I think he blurred the line between Classical and Flamenco.
JJ: Do you still have a practice routine?
O: Mm mm, it is not even every day, its loose, but I find if I don’t practice for an hour or two every day I get edgy, physically weird. My wife will tell me to go into the studio and practice. I am kind of a high-strung , scattered person, and am very unorganized. I get distracted by my computer, or phone calls, etc. Some of the practice is just physical and you need to practice like a runner. Sometimes , however, I will spend time just playing around with melodies, not to practice technique, but to practice my mind.
JJ: You sound like you play what you hear not what you find on the guitar.
O: Yes, I hear the next note or I don’t play it.
Gear section
Liebert carries a DAT recorder with him to record the ideas he comes up with. Liebert
applies his own finish on his nails, “I put a little bit of Crazy glue, and then I
keep baking soda in film canisters, which can cause you trouble at the border, so I know
how to say baking soda in a few different languages. This combination creates an instantly
hard shell. I try to take them off once a year to let my nails breathe and rest. A couple
of years ago I went on vacation to Spain , and I figured that since I hadn’t been
without my guitar for about twenty years for a two week period I would like to try it, and
I was climbing the walls at the end. It has become a thing that I need.”
Liebert eschews pickups in his guitars, “ I hate pickups, I’ve always played into a microphone. It used to be a AKGC460 with a 63 capsule, now it’s a C480 which is a wonderful new mic with a higher output and incredible range. Live, sometimes I need to use a pickup depending on the size of the venue, and I’ll use an Acoustech, which is a mic-pickup combination and it helps on the low end. We’ve kind of based the new band around the guitar, and the drums are hand drums or sampled , the bass goes directly into a preamp and has no speaker on stage, and we all wear in-ear monitors. The stage is really, really quiet, but you get the best frequency spectrum, because we need so little of the pickup”.
Liebert's Flamenco Guitars are made by Keith Vizcarra, of Santa Fe, and are Negras (cedar top / rosewood back and sides). They are fitted with revolutionary V-pegs that Vizcarra designed. “The idea behind them is that normal machine heads don’t have the connection to the wood that friction pegs have, but friction pegs need to be geared to tune correctly. Vizcarra invented “geared friction pegs”, and they have a geared ratio with material that looks like wood, and has wood on the end, so they are the best of both worlds. So you get the best of both worlds, the sound of friction, and the reliability of geared. they are absolutely brilliant.” The strings that Liebert prefers are, “the new composite set by D’Addario, the new silver are just a little more clear!”
Discography:
Nouveau Flamenco - 1990 Higher Octave (Platinum sales)
Poets and Angels - 1990 Higher Octave
Borrasca - 1991 Higher Octave (Grammy Nominated, Gold sales )
Solo Para Ti - 1992 (Gold sales) Epic
Euphoria (remix EP) - 1995 Epic
Viva! (live recording) - 1995 Epic
Opium (double CD) - 1996 Epic (Grammy Nominated)
Wide-Eyed and Dreaming (PBS special, also on VHS and LaserDisc) -
1996 Epic
Leaning Into The Night - 1997 Sony Classical