Mani Neumeier originally trained to be a plumber, because he was supposed to take over his uncle’s company. He remembers: “I had to get through that training, and sometimes I also worked as a sales representative for compressor machines. That’s how I got the car that we used for our concerts. I had saved a little money, so there was a small reserve, and after 1965 I did nothing but music. An amateur doesn’t have his head free for music, even if he’s good, because he is burdened by all kinds of other duties. I’d guess we didn’t earn more than 200 marks per person back then. There was never more than 1000 marks for the whole band. I made phone calls and got a lot of gigs; I did the driving and I talked to everybody. Of course Irène was also approached about it. I’d say she organized half the gigs.”
The Political Was Always Important: We Started a Fire
Looking back at the time of his trio with Han Bennink and Fred Van Hove, political aspects were always important, at least to him and Van Hove, says Brötzmann: “Bennink didn’t give a damn, but of course he didn’t necessarily have the worries about survival we had. That’s always part of it, and I mean, who could be happy with the political direction that West Germany was taking at that time? Jazz has always been music that, wherever it arose, had an important social background. I’ve always been fascinated by that when it comes to this music and its history, because it was important for us too. It wasn’t until later that I learned that the music of Sun Ra and his band in their early Chicago period had a political significance, absolutely, and we tried to do that in our own way later. FMP had a political meaning and made a political statement, especially in Berlin, and my own basic attitude hasn’t changed much. I’ve come to learn a lot—of course we didn’t change the world, but we are able to give people a push, and show them the possibility of a different way of thinking about things. Just to open someone’s consciousness to completely different possibilities, new possibilities, that is still my main goal. When I’m in the States, I experience that again and again: this European comes and plays this weird music, and nowadays there are many young people who don’t know anything about the history of American jazz at all, but they suddenly realize that there’s something there that speaks to them. And fortunately that is happening more and more often. That’s when it makes sense to keep doing it; it gives you a bit more strength to keep going and keep trying.”
Hamid Drake also sees a fusing of music and political commitment in Irène Schweizer: “Irène also had a very social and political consciousness. I mean, I could tell that in her music, sometimes also by things that we’d be playing, certain things that she might quote when she played. And we had some discussions about those things, but I can tell that she was very socially and politically aware.”
Rüdiger Carl says that although he saw himself first and foremost as a musician and not as a politician, “it’s true that we were pissed off about all sorts of things, and Irène especially was, given her role as a woman in music and society. I was always against conformist ideas, and the music depicted that too, the whole attitude was political. Of course we were rebels; the music was rebellious and the whole inner driving force of the free music scene was rebellious. We were setting fire to the negative things we saw in society, and that included the language of the music then.”
Mani Neumeier says that from the beginning they wanted to “do away with hierarchies. The idea that, as a collective, we played together as equals came more from Uli. The consciousness of collective improvisation, that was part of the time. No bosses, down with dirty capitalism, which was also very true. And yet she was the leader. We were on the left, what else is there if you have a clear head and don’t play for a radio orchestra or a boss? If you’re self-employed, that’s actually already political.”
First Criticisms: Boos and Tumult
Schweizer was publicly criticized for the first time in 1967, the year in which her playing became freer and more radical. In the section “Nachdenkliches” [Reflections] in the Schaffhauser Nachrichten, her long-time supporter Gustav Sigg wrote about a well-attended Sunday afternoon concert she gave with her quartet in the Schaffhausen Jugendkeller on January 15, 1967. In a plea for “good and authentic jazz,” he criticizes the “shock effect” of the avant-garde. Sigg even sees the successful cultivation of a loyal audience for modern jazz as endangered:
It was left to the tenor saxophonist and guest soloist of the trio, Alex Rohr, to gently inform the young audience, in a short statement, that what was previously called ‘swing’ is also present in this music, but here it no longer has the meaning of intensive rhythm, but rather intensive playing. The music should run without interruption, and the tension must never let up. The concept in her group now is that every musician and soloist has, and must take advantage of, the greatest possible freedom.
There’s no shortage of listeners who could not avoid the impression that in the Irène Schweizer Quartet, in practical terms, everyone is playing for themselves and the ultimate goal is simply for all four players to end the number together. So if, for many, ‘art’ has to involve ‘skill’—and one must certainly acknowledge that the Irène Schweizer Trio, which has been working professionally for more than a year, has a mastery of skill—one cannot dismiss those who after this concert concluded that ‘avant-garde jazz’ equates to musical ‘masturbation.’
On negative reactions from the audience, Schweizer told the author Bert Noglik, in his book Jazz-Werkstatt International: “When we started playing free with the trio, around 1966-67, we were often booed. We had a hard time back then.” (Noglik, p. 325).
1967 – The International Breakthrough: Attacking the Piano in Montreux
On January 26th, 1967, the Irène Schweizer Trio recorded in Munich, hoping to release its first LP soon afterwards. But the recording wasn’t released until 1978, by FMP, with the title Early Tapes.
In March 1967, the Trio embarked on an extensive tour of North German jazz clubs, under the motto “New Action Jazz.” At the end of the month, they performed in a Berlin art gallery, and in July they appeared in South German clubs and played an engagement of several days at the Domicile in Munich.
Again under the motto “New Action Jazz,” the Irène Schweizer Trio plus Alex Rohr, the Peter Brötzmann Trio, and the Gunter Hampel Quartet performed on August 6th and 7th at the jazz festival in Comblain-La-Tour, Belgium. After this, the trio made recordings for Belgian radio and television in Brussels. On August 30th, the trio was broadcast live in a radio concert by FERA, the Swiss Exhibition of Television, Radio, Phonograph, and Tape Recorders. “Quite a few listeners will have perceived this second part, demanding completely new rules of the game, as ‘jazz of the day after tomorrow,’ although the trio, who have been working as professional musicians for some time now, takes the view that their music, often met with hostility, is meant for the present,” wrote the Schaffhauser Nachrichten. “In the first piece ‘Hinten’ (‘behind’—that is, the opposite of ‘in front of’) the drummer Mani Neumeier’s wild escapades were the center of attention, while in the following original piece, ‘Dollar’s Mood,’ the two melodic instruments—pianist Irène Schweizer and bassist Uli Trepte—were featured more.”
As the Trio’s concerts became more frequent, media attention also grew. Under the headline “Gedanken zu einem ‘Ärgernis’” [Thoughts on a ‘Nuisance’], the Swiss paper National-Zeitung reported on September 6, 1967 that Schweizer “is running into gruff resistance to her new sounds.” Her most recent concert in Basel had been panned by local jazz critics as “nerve-wracking,” “navel-gazing,” and “self-indulgent chaos.” The deliberate absence of swing irritated the jazz audience, and the influences of John Cage, electronic music, Indian music, and rock were misunderstood as a kind of genre fraud. Jazz audiences were now expected to do some “inconvenient catch-up work”: “The music called ‘free jazz’ or ‘new jazz’ is no longer understandable by those who want to keep listening according to the musical criteria considered essential by fans of traditional