7. Silver ApplesSilver Apples
I did an Apple iTunes show at the Roundhouse, and they asked me ‘if you could have anybody in the world playing with you, who would it be?’ And I said ‘oh, Silver Apples’. I’d seen him play the Knitting Factory in New York, and I thought that if I asked him to play with me his response would be a resounding ‘no’, but he was really enthusiastic and happy to do it, he’s just this cool guy with a nice hippy girlfriend. Everything about them, the fact that he invented his own equipment, and he did kind of single-handedly invent electronic dance music. You listen to ‘Oscillations’ and maybe someone would challenge me on this, but I think that’s the moment when… before that, electronic dance music didn’t exist. It’s got the four on the floor kick, all the different synth textures, even the subject matter, singing about technology. That’s techno in 1968.
Silver Apples came out of that Lower Manhattan performance art scene, starting as them playing music for artists on LSD dancing in lofts. There’s one song that they’ve done that I’ve always wanted to cover, the song ‘I Have Known Love’, and every couple of years I go back to it and try and cover it, but every version I’ve tried to do of it is terrible. At some point in my life I want to try and find someone to do it with because it’s a really beautiful song… Maybe I should just accept the fact that the original is perfect and it doesn’t need to be covered.
