Martin Bisi

from fog machine operator to record producer 1978-1980

Dec 17, 2021

I’m so happy to include a video interview with Martin Bisi in this post. There are many things I wanted to talk about with him but we were not able to get to them all. In this part we talk about how he got started in music and the role that Giorgio Gomelsky played. I hope to talk more with Martin in future posts.

Martin Bisi Interview:

Martin Bisi is a great guy to talk to. I met him briefly a couple of years ago when he was touring through San Francisco. He had no idea who I was but was happy to try and meet me prior to his gig to talk about my interest in Giorgio Gomelsky. Our talk was brief since he was getting ready to perform, but his enthusiasm for sharing his love of music with a fan like me was readily apparent. So two years later when I contacted him for a remote video interview, I was thrilled to pick up on that enthusiasm again.

Giorgio Gomelsky’s career as a producer/manager can be roughly divided into three main sections: the London years, the French years, and the New York years. Martin Bisi is a prime witness to help me tell the story about the beginnings of the New York years. In some ways, he’s an innocent bystander. In 1978, the year Gomelsky (and Brian Eno) arrived in NY, Bisi finds himself rooming with Michael Beinhorn. Both of them are still in high school, although not at the same school and Beinhorn is a year older than Bisi. They are mates in a band called 1121 and they post flyers for their gigs proclaiming they are “NY’s Best Progressive Rock”. Bisi uses his stage craft training from high school to turn on the fog machine for 1121 shows. Beinhorn’s other mate in the band is 13 year-old drummer Fred Maher. In 1121, the band Material is conceived, but not yet born.

THE CREATION OF 11:21

In NYC, Gomelsky wasted no time scouting talent and inviting them to his small 3 story building to rehearse. Bill Laswell takes him up on this and is crashing, as well as rehearsing at the Zu House. Eager to get a band going for Laswell, an ad is placed for musicians. I would love to know how many people showed up in response to this ad. The only two people I know of for sure are the 18 year-old Michael Beinhorn and the 14 year-old Fred Maher. It’s not clear to me yet if the 23 year-old Laswell, or the 44 year-old Gomelsky asked these young guys to perform, or if they just talked. Martin Bisi remembers his friends returning from this visit with an invitation for him to meet Laswell too. Bisi is 17.

Bisi walks into the Zu House for the first time. His first sight is several musicians whom he does not recognize playing an improvised piece that appears to be directed by one of them. That director would be a pony-tailed John Zorn, and the guy playing balloons along with his guitar is Eugene Chadbourne. Laswell is not playing with this ensemble. Bisi finds Laswell and their meeting goes well, but he doesn’t get to meet Gomelsky. He does remember his dogs.

In about a month, the 12 hour long Zu Manifestival would happen. Gomelsky invited, and paid for some of the European avant-garde to come to NY and play with the local avant-garde. The main attraction would be Daevid Allen. His band Gong was well known. Gomelsky produced some of their records. His idea now was to have Laswell form a band around Allen and use this new Gong to promote the fusion of the Euro-NY avant-garde to America. Martin Bisi would play a critical role in this Manifestival. As the festival got underway on a day in Oct of 78, Gomelsky quickly realized that his stage manager was not up to the task. Seeing Martin in the crowd, he recruits him to take over the task, which he does with all his 17 year-old gusto. As Bisi recalls, his “claim to fame” was helping to move Fred Frith’s table of prepared guitar objects on and off the stage.

By April of 1979 the rotating cast of musicians playing in Daevid Allen’s Gong had been whittled down to a crew ready to tour North America in a hastily refurbished yellow school bus. Martin Bisi is in his senior year of high school, and seizes this opportunity to join the tour as “roadie”, AND get school credit for this as his senior project. For him, and most of his NY band mates, this was their first time seeing any place outside of the NY area. Bisi describes the culture shock that both he and the local sheriff felt when the hippie pixie Allen didn’t care for the scallops he was served at a midwest eatery. He also recalls the stunning landscape scenery he was seeing from the bus windows as they drove through Arizona, and how puzzled he was that the others did not take notice. For Bisi, the high point of this tour was the LA show.

Gong performing in LA 1979:

When the tour ends, Gomelsky soon takes the band to Woodstock to record their first EP Temporary Music 1 as Material. Bisi was not along for these sessions, but he was not wasting time either. He was scouting studio space in NY. By the time September rolls around, the band has a tour lined up in France, and Bisi has a studio space rented. The question now is, should Martin go on the tour in France? The French promoters say no to this added expense. Laswell and Gomelsky both say yes, he should go, he fixes problems (and he’s fluent in French!). He goes and he takes in a lot, including a recording session at a farm house (bootleg anyone?). The quality and comfort of touring in France was way above what they experienced on the North American tour. No sleeping in a school bus this time. However, to Laswell and some others from the NY crew, this comfort was no advantage. To them, the hard-scrabble life of bombed out NYC was way more inspiring to creating great music.

As soon as they get back to NY, Bisi and the team get right to work on converting the loft he had rented into a rehearsal studio, soon to become the recording studio OAO, and later BC Studio. It’s been about 40 years of recording sessions in this location for Martin Bisi. My record collection is full of his work. Somehow I knew about Martin Bisi from the very beginnings of all this. As Bisi told me about those early days, Laswell was always very generous about giving him album credits as part of his desire to build a loyal team. Still, it seems funny to me that I knew so much about Bisi, but absolutely nothing about Gomelsky – the man who helped start The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Soft Machine, Magma, Gong, and Material – until a few years ago. By then he was already dead for a year. There’s a nice memorial service for him that I soon found on Youtube. It was great to see one of those young guys from 1978 giving a heartfelt tribute. Thank you Martin.

Giorgio Gomelsky Memorial:

The Non-Writer

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