LeBlanc, Guy (Nathan Mahl) (October 2000)

Nathan Mahlicious

This interview marks Guy Le Blanc's very first visit to Belgium as a musician. Instead of fronting his own band Nathan Mahl he is here as keyboard player with none other than Camel. However, instead of delving into the depths of Camel, I'm here to know more about Nathan Mahl and Guy Le Blanc the solo artist.

The very first Nathan Mahl album was recorded on 2-track whereas you now have your very own 48-track digital recording studio, if my information is correct. Don't you feel the need to re-record parts or all of the earlier stuff because you might have been restricted during the original recordings?

Actually Parallel Eccentricities was recorded on 16-track analogue, but mastered onto two track. Digital recording is so much easier to work with in a personal studio anyway. There really are no more barriers as to what we can do with the layering of textures. We really can take the music anywhere we wanna go now.

It took you and the band around fifteen years before the first Nathan Mahl album was released, but in a short space of time we were treated to The Clever Use Of Shadows , your own solo album Subversia and now the upcoming brand-new Heretik masterpiece. Was there so much material written within a space of fifteen years?

Plenty of material was recorded. We recorded some of the stuff in 1986 and again in 1989 and I think again in 1991 and also in 1995, always different material. The line-up would pretty much change each time around as well, so we would do some material with one line-up and once we started recording again we had a different line-up! Usually it was the clashing of the characters which meant we could no longer work together. Basically it was the clashing of various ideas which each of the band members wanted to do. Now I have come to the point were basically I'm the leader of the band and I tell them what to do, and they're happy with that. So the only thing they have to be is be creative. All of the administrative tasks I take care of. I even go as far as mapping out their solos! If they feel good about it, sure they can improvise, but on like The Clever Use Of Shadows I think I was the only one who improvised.

What would you say is the main difference between Nathan Mahl and Guy Le Blanc as a solo artist?

My idea of what the sound of Nathan Mahl is has certain limitations of exploration, more in the progressive and a little bit of fusion areas. My solo stuff has no limitations so I can do what I want which makes room for both definately.

Was it an obvious choice not to use the Nathan Mahl personnel for the recording of Subversia, your solo album?

Yes. Definately. I didn't want to have the exact same sound as the Nathan Mahl disc as I would have called it Nathan Mahl otherwise. However I did use José Bergeron on one track and Mark Spénard, the original Nathan Mahl guitarist, on two tracks.

You use Scott McGill on most of the other tracks I believe? How did you two meet?

We met at NEARfest last year. NEARfest for me was a very healthy situation as I met lots of musicians and some great friends and contacts. Scott played there with the Handfarm, and we had spoken on the phone once before and he expressed an interest into working together. My solo album fitted the bill perfectly and it worked out just great!

One of your favourite instruments both on the Nathan Mahl output as well as your solo album certainly has to be the Hammond. How did you come using it so much and what other artists playing that instrument do you like?

I started listening to organ-rock music I think in the very early seventies. People like Keith Emerson and Vincent Crane and even the keyboard player with Mountain [Steve Knights - JB], because very few people realize this but he really was a very, very good keyboard player. Leslie West was up front and he was way in the back, but if you listen closely then you'll notice he's doing amazing stuff. Another guy I used to listen to was Billy Preston. I was listening to all this amazing stuff at the same time, and I had never played organ as I played piano since I was a child. I didn't start playing the organ until I was nineteen. I was in a band so I had a reason to go out and buy an organ and I did.

Was it a Hammond?

No, in fact it was a Korg.

Cheaper than a Hammond no doubt?

In fact, it wasn't that cheap. Twenty years ago I think it was a few thousand dollars and Hammond wasn't making organs anymore at that time. I bought a Korg CX3 and I still have it and I would have brought it along on the Camel tour if not for the fact that it sort of died on me, it wasn't sounding right, it was a little "sick" so I went out and bought a Hammond just for this tour. It's not a B3 or a C3 but a brandnew XK2, a killer sounding organ. It's a digital model and I think it works with samples but you still have full drawbar control and it's got some really, really good built in distortion and reverb and a fabulous Leslie sound. The actual feel of this model is so close to the Hammond they actually used real Hammond keys. So you no longer get these cheap plastic things but the real solid keys. I tried it out in the shop and I was like "yeah I must get one of those"!

When you listen to the Nathan Mahl material, the phrase "Canterbury scene" springs to mind. Now we can discuss what the Canterbury scene is, in fact, as I believe people from the area still say there has never been a scene in the first place. Yet when I listen to the material which you released under the banner of Mahl Dynasty, this sounds much more Canterbury to me than any of the other material you wrote.

That was a thorough experiment that I did in the studio, just completely improvised music between myself and a drummer. It sounded like fun and when I listen to it in the end it does hold some resemblances to Soft Machine in a way.

A typical instrument to me during those Canterbury years has to be the Fender Rhodes piano which is an instrument that pops up now and again in your music as well.

I started playing Rhodes a bit later in my development, probably because I liked the sound of the instrument but I didn't like the action. Of course I can only refer to the instruments that I played on and maybe they were some old ones that needed a lot of work, but I didn't like the action. To me it was too "bouncy" and not fast enough. As soon as I had some synths that produced decent Rhodes samples, that's when I started using that sound because I really like the sound! The action of the actual instrument can, in a way, maybe be compared with the mellotron, which in fact is a dreadful machine to use. I think I might have used a mellotron only once.

When we say Canterbury, what were the main influences for you?

Definitely Soft Machine, but certainly Dave Stewart, the National Health guy not the Eurythmics bonzo. A brilliant keyboard player, composer and a very funny and nice fellow.

Listening to Nathan Mahl you must have listened to National Health over the years?

I did. I think I first heard Dave Stewart perform with Bill Bruford and then I traced this guy back to what he did before that era. Albums like Feels Good To Me and One Of A Kind really ignited the spark!

Is there a way you can compare the prog situation in Canada as opposed to America and Europe?

From what I can hear and see it has to be rather similar, yet you have many more people living in the States and in Europe than you have in Canada. Furthermore, it's a smaller population all spread out, which makes it rather difficult where touring is concerned. However, once you're able to reach those people, they're very enthusiastic about the music, enjoying every minute of it!

When I listen to what is regarded as being prog in Europe and the States, I seem to detect a certain difference. In Europe prog and neo-prog sounds much more melodic than what is regarded as prog in the States, where the music gets closer to fusion and jazz. How about Canada?

Well, Canada has always had more European influences, cultural influences than the States. The French scene in Canada obviously has more European influences. The US doesn't have that kind of input, they have to go looking for it. Their "roots" lie more into jazz and blues.

In what way would you say the music of Nathan Mahl has matured over the years?

We have all grown older! Compositionally speaking I have to say my writing has become better over the years, at least I like it better now than I used to back then.

If my information is correct, Nathan Mahl was scheduled to play at ProgDay, yet you were in Liverpool and Sheffield with Camel during that time. However, in an interview for Progression magazine [Issue 35 -ed] you told John Collinge that you would do your utmost to make sure that everything was well in balance so you could easily do the Camel tour and still be present during ProgDay!

I know. That interview was done before the actual tour dates were finalized and in the end this tour turned out longer than what was originally planned. So I knew I had to back out and I did this as soon as I could to make sure Peter Renfro had plenty of time to find a suitable replacement before all the posters and flyers were printed. We probably would have performed the Heretik parts I to IV which runs for about 45 minutes plus, of course [also] some material from the previous albums.

Talking about Heretik I was informed this would be a double disc, yet I read something about Heretik Volume 1 or something?

Initially it would indeed have been a double disc but now it's going to be a ... triple disc! However, I will release each disc seperately: volume one, volume two and volume three. I see it as three seperate "hearings" and normally speaking, the first one should have been out by now. I have, however, come to a point where I no longer make compromises like I did in previous productions, such as have the album out by a certain date. I decided about a week before I left home to rehearse with Camel, that there was no way that a) I would be ready for the tour with Camel and b) have the disc done at the same time. Right now I'm in the middle of mixing it. So I just postponed it, although a couple of ads had already been published. As all three volumes will be released seperately, I do have to make sure the balance is perfect on each recording, as in the end they have to make a unit anyhow. Heretik: Volume One should be available by the end of November 2000. The only stable, continuing member on all three releases will of course be me, but as far as the rest of the musicians are concerned, this can vary on each album. It might even be that Andy Latimer steps in to guest on one of the volumes, as he has expressed a wish to contribute on other people's recordings in the future.

When you released Parallel Eccentricities on CD [it had been a vinyl album before - JB] you added a multimedia segment which was fairly new at the time. Why this gimmick?

From the moment we released the album, it was always regarded as being too short to be a full album. The actual music only lasts for about 29 minutes, which was what could fit on a vinyl album at the time. We had other songs ready when we recorded the album, but as they were all very long we would have exceeded the 40-minute mark, which was kind of the maximum to put onto vinyl anyway. When we decided to put it out onto CD we definately had to add something extra. The guy who put the multimedia segment together worked on it for a whole year, an incredible graphic artist who did everything by himself. There's stuff on that disc which even to this day is very daring and very new. I haven't seen that many complete CD-ROM releases for bands anyway.

I was particulary interested in the live video segment which illustrates perfectly what the band was capable of at the time. To me it sounds as if a lot of the material was worked around some pretty complex basslines.

Our bass player at the time was very much into melodic basslines. He was very much into John Wetton, even Stanley Clarke. He used to listen to that stuff all of the time. He's working on a disc of his own now and still plays in the same vein.

Apparently Happy the Man guitarist Stanley Whitaker came looking for you and asked where he could find Nathan Mahl, not knowing that this is your band's name, whilst you are in fact Guy Le Blanc!

Somebody told him about the band and he thought the keyboard player was called Nathan Mahl. In fact, we made up that name to be a character who isn't in the band. It's sort of like a ghost figure, a fictitious character that is the group itself. It also enables me to sneak through the back alley when someone asks to interview Mister Nathan Mahl and I don't feel like it!

Would you say that festivals like NEARfest, Progday and Progfest are the nucleus of the prog revival, where like-minded people and musicians concentrate, resulting in new collaborations? I mean, if it weren't for these kind of festivals, Happy the Man probably would never have reformed in the first place!

I think it was a discovery for Stanley Whitaker to find out how many people still remembered Happy the Man. I remember seeing how radiant Stanley was [at] seeing how many people still showed an interest in the band. When they announced at ProgDay that Happy the Man would be performing at the next NEARfest the following June, it clearly was a wondrous moment for him.

Would you agree that the Internet is THE saviour of the genre, enabling people from all over the world to have instant access to all the information and links?

If it wasn't for the Internet, who the hell would ever have heard of a Canadian band called Nathan Mahl? There were people back in the eighties who had bought somehow, somewhere, our first album, and they didn't know how to contact the band, they didn't know anything about the band other than that record. The album was being recorded onto various tapes that did the rounds at festivals. They would play it on the PA system and ask people if they knew what happened to that band. I found out about this about five years ago when I first got on the Internet. I also found out that vinyl copies of our first album were being sold for $60 to $80.

You have also expressed the wish to get bands over to Ottawa, maybe even organize a festival. Do you want to get as many bands over as possible, simply to spread the prog word and thus also make sure the entire genre can grow and survive?

By playing these festivals with Nathan Mahl, I have discovered so many talented bands that, of course, I'd like to get them over. There are enough people in our area, Ottawa and Montreal, and that whole circle of about 100 km or so that would enjoy hearing those bands and that music.

You are now kind of a member of Camel. We know how it came about, but how were you approached and are you a permanent member of the band or just an extra pair of hands on tour?

I got an e-mail first from Susan [Hoover, at Camel Productions] and then a phone call from Andy [Latimer]. At that point, we exchanged recordings because I hadn't heard Camel since their heydays and Andy knew nothing about me. I sent him Subversia. That was my demo! Although initially we're all a bit cautious about what might happen, I feel confident enough to say that we all feel relaxed about working together and want to continue working together also when the tour is over. This not only applies to me but also to our drummer Denis Clement. He has certainly become an integral part of the band. I got Denis in the band and he's mainly a session musician who also performs live, yet mainly in jazz in the Ottawa region.

Whilst Andy Latimer has been working with Colin Bass for many, many years now, he seems to have a problem where the choice of keyboard player is concerned. Undoubtedly you must know that Ton Scherpenzeel is one of Andy's all-time favourites, but due to his "fear of flying" there is no way Ton would join Camel on tour. With his own band Kayak, Scherpenzeel uses a fair amount of medieval elements, which I also find in some of your material such as "Machiavélique" or even the title track "The Clever Use Of Shadows" ...

I love playing that kind of stuff, as it's the kind of material I play on clavinet, which of course has this medieval flavour, two handed arrangements, and stuff like that. As you rightly point out, Ton is in a better position than I am because he has the rich European culture and history, whereas I only know these things from reading books about that period. You could say I'm fascinated by it all, trying to reflect the impact it has on me by means of my music.

[Sep 2015: in updating this interview, I learned that Guy LeBlanc passed away on April 27, 2015 of kidney cancer -ed.]

Discography:
Parallel Eccentricities (1983/1997)
The Clever Use Of Shadow (1998)
Heretik Volume I: Body Of Accusations (2000)
Heretik Volume II: The Trial (2001)
Heretik Volume III: The Sentence (2002)
Shadows Unbound (2003)
Live At NEARFest '99 (2004)
Exodus (2009)
Justify (2014)