How little we need to be happy

June 2009 marks 25 years of the solo career of David Sylvian, whose music has made a major contribution to settling the serotonin and other neuro-transmitters in my brain over half my lifetime. It had seemed like a brave and cruel decision to ditch Japan at the height of their hard-won fame in 1982. Hard on the band, hard on the fans. But, for Sylvian, fame was the problem. With a lifetime of interior travelling still to do, fame was an exterior journey he was not prepared to take. Being voted the world’s most beautiful man had seemed like the last straw. When Brilliant Trees emerged, however, Sylvian still had much of his loyal retinue. Red Guitar was a Top 20 hit. It was to be his only one. For, with his first solo album, Sylvian had jumped in the deep end and most Japan fans either couldn’t swim or found that the water would not support the weight of their bodies. The music was too philosophical, profound, inward-looking. The jump from the thoughtful pop of The Art Of Parties to the avant-jazz of Weathered Wall was cavernous. From this point on, by his own contrivance, Sylvian was ‘hiding in backwaters’. To find him, you had to be on a similar inward journey. I remember how, late one morning in June 1984, I asked permission from my employer, an antiques dealer in London’s Mayfair, to take a couple of hours out to go and queue outside HMV Records at the junction of Oxford Street and South Molton Street. The first so many hundred copies of Brilliant Trees had been autographed by the man himself. On my way around the corner from Bond Street, I remember encountering Griff Rhys Jones pushing a small child in a pram. The first series of Alas Smith and Jones had just run on the BBC. Our eyes met as I joined the end of the queue. I was very excited. That sense of anticipation and heightened consciousness has remained with me whenever it’s been time for a David Sylvian music release over the last quarter of a century. His very personal journey from the edge of pop to the jazz avant garde has been one I’ve been very willing to accompany him on. We’ve had a lot to share. And he’s been a good listener. I’ll have much more to say about this long-standing relationship. But, in the meantime, occupying various rooms in my head, here are 25 for the 25. My favourite is Camp Fire: Coyote Country from the Gone To Earth album of 1986. It doesn’t even feature Sylvian’s voice, an instrument in its own right – just the most sublime piece of Robert Fripp guitar work I’m ever likely to hear. There’s a special crystal-lined corridor in my mind that’s purely dedicated to it. The only piece of music that’s ever approached it was the version of Threnody For Souls In Torment I heard Fripp play in Coventry Cathedral a month back. But that’s typical of David Sylvian’s collaborative work. He contains the genius of so many others, just as they contain him. His next LP, Manofon, due out in September, I eagerly await. And I look forward to our next 25 years together.

A New Career In A New Town (from Gentlemen Take Polaroids LP, 1980)
Nightporter (from Gentlemen Take Polaroids LP, 1980)
Ghosts (single from Tin Drum LP, 1982)
Forbidden Colours (with Riuchi Sakamoto – single, from soundtrack of film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, 1983)
The Ink In The Well (single from Brilliant Trees LP, 1984)
Words With The Shaman, Part 2: Incantation (from cassette LP, Alchemy: An Index Of Possibilities, 1985)
Taking The Veil (from Gone To Earth LP, 1986)
Before The Bullfight (from Gone To Earth LP, 1986)
Camp Fire: Coyote Country (from Gone To Earth LP, 1986)
Upon This Earth (from Gone To Earth LP, 1986)
Maria (from Secrets Of The Beehive LP, 1987)
Mother and Child (from Secrets Of The Beehive LP, 1987)
Premonition (Giant Empty Iron Vessel) (with Holger Czukay - from Plight & Premonition LP, 1988)
Pop Song (single from Pop Song EP, 1989)
Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki) (with Riuchi Sakamoto – single, from Sakamoto LP, Heartbeat, 1991)
Pocket Full Of Change (with Rain Tree Crow/ex-Japan members, from Rain Tree Crow LP, 1991)
Cries & Whispers (with Rain Tree Crow/ex-Japan members, from Rain Tree Crow LP, 1991)
Thalheim (from Dead Bees On A Cake LP, 1999)
Café Europa (from Dead Bees On A Cake LP, 1999)
All Of My Mother’s Names (from Dead Bees On A Cake LP, 1999)
Linoleum (with Tweaker – from Tweaker LP, The Attraction To All Things Uncertain, 2001)
Late Night Shopping (from Blemish LP, 2003)
How Little We Need To Be Happy (from Blemish LP, 2003)
The Librarian (with Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit – on their Out In The Sticks EP, 2005)
A History Of Holes (with Nine Horses – from the Nine Horses LP, Snow Borne Sorrow, 2005)

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk