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Stewart Lee talks to Nerve about Free Improv, Scooby Doo, and the dissolution of artistic expression

By Vicky Hodgskin with Ben Cronkshanklingly

Interviewing Stewart Lee was a daunting prospect. A very culturally aware man and, naturally, a fan of Nerve Magazine. And us; bumbling fans with caffeine addictions and a tendency to over-excitement. We started off with his Mastermind subject, Derek Bailey, and how his love of musical improv leaks into comedy.

S: I don't like the louder side of improv as much because I'm older and going deaf. I like it when you can hear them scratching away. For the first 20 years of listening to it, I didn’t really understand anything about it. If I go and see theatre or comedy, I am wondering ‘how has that been written?’ Whereas with improvisation I had no understanding of what it was whatsoever. So I liked to sit and get really lost in it. When I came to write the book about stand-up I realised how much thinking about free improvisation had gone in.

By the 100th time you do a show, you have run out of places to go, so I try to back myself into a corner and that is, I think, a Derek Bailey sort of thing. In the last 20 years, he started to improvise with people when he didn’t even know who they were or what they did. He preferred to be taken by surprise.

I’ll tell you what else is good about free improv musicians is that there is no money in it, but the better known people do seem to make it. Doing really great art on a micro economy was the opposite of where I was in stand-up 15 years ago, which was doing average things in a sort of blizzard of money, none of which finds its way back to you!

Whilst Stewart pondered the progression of comedy and his own experiences, he naturally regaled us with Tales of Scooby Doo.

S: As you get older it becomes a lot harder to know what to talk about, because obviously nothing happens to you. I mean now, with my life, I just look after kids or do gigs. So in this show I am trying to work out if there is a way to do ‘Dad stuff’ that doesn’t automatically make you groan. I mean I know loads about Scooby Doo now, because my son really loves it. There is one episode where an artist, who is based on Andy Warhol comes to town and forms a Velvet Underground type group. He gets Fred to wear just jeans and a neckerchief. Then Scooby Doo is put in a blonde wig and there are all these jokes about how he can’t sing and he sounds like a dog, and I think some of them must be actual quotes about Nico’s voice.

Art is a big part of his life and he is aware it’s becoming increasingly difficult to produce work with little commercial place.

S: Lots of the political stuff, and the weirder stuff is still being done by people in their 40s, 50s, which is strange. I think it’s partly economics. We had housing benefit, dole, student grants, squats even, and you could spend 5 years working out what you were doing. And in that time you can make uncommercial art, and maybe it would find an audience. But that’s just gone now. There’s no breathing space for them. One day, David Cameron will be in an Airport bookshop, and all the books will be mass produced thrillers. And he’d wish he could read something a little bit better, and he’ll go, “Oh yeah, I did that.”

Penicillin was discovered by accident wasn’t it? And that’s what happens with a lot of art. No one sits there and says’ I’m gonna make a million quid’, only a wanker thinks that.

So how can any artists expect to make money these days?

S: Well, I don't know...you've got a generation of people who don't expect to have to pay for anything, so it's difficult. I don’t know how long the production of music will be a commercial idea. If someone can download something illegally, they're gonna do it. I think you have to solidify it in some way and say 'this actually counts for something'.

At the time of writing, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is on BBC 2 on Saturday nights at 10pm. Indeterminacy by John Cage featuring Stewart Lee is at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on 28th March 2014.

www.stewartlee.co.uk

COMPETITION TIME!

Here's a chance for a lucky Nerve reader to win some great Stewart Lee goodies including a signed copy of his book 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate, The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian'.

Just email us with 'Stewart Lee Nerve Competition' in the subject field at nervemagazine@gmail.com with your name, address and the answer to the following question:- Who was Stewart Lee's comedic partner in the 1990's BBC TV series 'Fist of Fun'?

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