Until I was twelve years old, I was educated in the French school system, where theatre meant classical French playwrights. Attending a play typically involved shows such as The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady. Then, it was decided that I would switch to an English school. So, at age 13, I started at Westminster School. It was the late sixties, and my horizons expanded.
I went to see a school production of Waiting for Godot in French in a compact space with a little stage, and I sat at the rear. Musically, I was quite advanced – I was familiar with all the psychedelic music that had been emerging. I’d experienced the Mothers of Invention. I’d seen lots and lots. But I was unaware there was material of this kind. I quickly realized that, similar to music, there was a whole new world out there.
I don’t know how fluent the French was, but it wasn’t important what they were saying. It was just so conceptual and lively, with a sort of pent-up tension. And then, naturally, it erupts with the entrance of Pozzo and Lucky. The performance was staged by older boys, including a talented actor as Lucky. He was a commanding figure on stage. And he has to deliver that highly elaborate speech. In French. It was astonishing.
I was captivated by the notion that nothing really had to happen, you know? That an event took place and then it just goes on and then you have the young messenger at the end explaining that Godot won’t be coming today. It addressed temporality and activity and narrative. Or their absence.
We had been taught all these rules about what drama was, but they were irrelevant here. I was deeply intrigued by how little was going on. Years afterward when I was mixing records, I would attempt to transform them into something similar. When a new instrument came in, I’d pull out other instruments and deliberately isolate them. So you clearly perceived that piano or that guitar or whatever it was. That sense of minimalism … I grasped that with Godot.
And yet it has a story. It truly does. I mean, they are fully realised characters. They are vibrant, the two protagonists, in their mutual affection, like an long-term partners. I don’t know how my life would have turned out if I did not attend that show. To that institution and that show then. It just sparked a realization in me.
We were released on weekend days, and I started going matinees at the theatre venue every time there was a fresh staging. So you would experience Pinter, John Osborne, Simon Gray plays. But the gateway to all of this was Godot.
I have minimal memory of the performance itself, except I know that it was consistently engaging – it had me at the edge of my seat. What I learned is that there need not be any rules. It definitely influenced how I worked with the bands that I brought into my label. I even had the musical group compose a track around “I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On”. I just instructed them: “I want a song with this title.”
I think it boosted my confidence, too, because you should not fret about failure if you subscribe to Beckett’s worldview.
