Lindsay Cooper, 1951-2013

Lindsay Cooper with Henry Cow in the ’70s. From the fore­ground, clock­wise: John Greaves, Cooper, Tim Hodgkinson, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, roadie/sound engin­eer Maggie Thomas

Last night, after tak­ing the stage with a large band at Brooklyn’s Roulette, Fred Frith, about to play the entirety of his won­der­ful 1980 album Gravity, told the audi­ence, “I know some of you have already heard that my dear friend and col­league Lindsay Cooper passed away yea­t­er­day. This is for her.” Frith’s voice cracked as he made the announce­ment and it was clear his hear was broken. Mine broke a little bit too. The open­ing band last night was a horns-and-reeds-led combo led by Aaron Novik, who was also in Frith’s band. They were pretty won­der­ful, but I also thought as I listened that they did their thing very well, and their thing was one of about ten things that Henry Cow did amaz­ingly well. Which led me to think of Lindsay Cooper, the multi-instrumentalist (although she was most pro­fi­cient on bas­soon and oboe) and com­poser whose work I first heard in the con­text of that great British pro­gress­ive (in every sense of the word) band. Cooper, I knew, had been ill with mul­tiple scler­osis for sev­er­al years, and was in an ever-increasingly debil­it­ated state. She was being looked after by sev­er­al friends, includ­ing the dir­ect­or Sally Potter, to whom I inquired about Cooper’s con­di­tion when Potter vis­ited the New York Film Festival last year. I sensed it was a pain­ful con­ver­sa­tion for Potter to have, but she also seemed glad someone asked after Cooper. When Novik’s group was play­ing, I wondered how she was doing. Frith, sadly, answered my ques­tion. Here’s a short news item from a music website. 

I’d like to be able to put on my crit­ic’s hat and dis­cuss how she redefined the place of the oboe in rock music (ar ar ar),  or her sig­ni­fic­ance as a fem­in­ist in the avant-garde (an area in which much of what’s termed fem­in­ist cri­ti­cism is loath to tread for reas­ons that con­tinu­ously elude me) but… It’s odd to live in a cul­ture where the con­di­tions are such that you kind of have to pre-explain why an artist who worked in the kind of rel­at­ive obscur­ity in which Cooper did is/was great. If I feel a per­son­al sense of loss at the passing of someone I only ever met once, and briefly (I believe it was at a show at Maxwell’s where she per­formed with drum­mer Chris Cutler, back­ing David Thomas), it’s because the music she made was/is such a strong part of my life and my sensibility. 

Cooper’s con­nec­tion with Potter, incid­ent­ally, was very strong. Potter wrote lyr­ics and lib­ret­tos for Cooper, and was a found­ing mem­ber with Cooper of the col­lect­ive Feminist Improvising Group. Cooper in fact co-wrote the screen­play for Potter’s still-provocative 1983 film The Gold Diggers, star­ring Julie Christie, who also co-produced. I wrote about that film here. 

UPDATE: Sarah Maude, who helped admin­is­trate Lindsay Cooper’s care dur­ing her ill­ness, e‑mailed the musi­cian’s fans and friends this morn­ing, September 23. Here is the text of the note: 

Dear won­der­ful friends, admirers and fans of Lindsay,

I am sorry to have to let you know that Lindsay died on 18^th September – it was as she wished, peace­fully at home, sur­roun­ded by her spe­cial friends – her cour­ageous battle against MS was helped by the won­der­ful sup­port she was giv­en by her care work­ers, med­ic­al pro­fes­sion­als and her lov­ing group of friends

Although many of you are not in the UK, we would like you to know that her funer­al will be held in the West Chapel of Golders Green Crematorium at 5.00pm on Wednesday 25^th September, so that you can offer up pray­ers, think lov­ing thoughts, chant, hold her in the light or do whatever you would like to do in memory of her – Lindsay was a won­der­fully tal­en­ted per­son who will be remembered with affec­tion and admir­a­tion – a Memorial Service is planned at some stage in the future:  if you would like to be kept up to date on those plans, please go to lindsaycoopermemorial@gmail.com

 I want to send a spe­cial thank you to you all, for your sup­port of Lindsay over the years, your emails, your gifts, your thoughts – it was an enorm­ous com­fort to her to know that there were people in so many coun­tries who admired her tal­ent and appre­ci­ated her music – please know that you were an import­ant part of her life.

With best wishes,

Sarah

Here are some examples of Cooper’s  work, which deserve to be heard in bet­ter formats than YouTube. I encour­age you to seek them out. 

From the final Henry Cow record­ing, a sec­tion of a suite com­posed by Cooper. With Frith, Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson on alto sax/clarinet/organ, Anne-Marie Roelofs on violin/trombone, and Irene Schweizer on piano.

While the band Art Bears (the word “bears” in its name is a verb, appar­ently, which I admit I was rather dis­ap­poin­ted to learn) was formed after a dis­agree­ment with­in Henry Cow as to wheth­er it was meant to be a song-based band, the per­son­nel on its amaz­ing debut album Hopes and Fears is that of Cow minus John Greaves, who had decamped to National Health. This tune, which Frith played as part of his encore last night, does­n’t fea­ture Cooper and Hodgkinson until a couple of minutes in, but is a won­der­fully char­ac­ter­ist­ic one. 

News From Babel was a group for which Cooper com­posed the music; Cutler wrote texts and drummed; Zeena Parkins played harp and accor­d­i­an, and the great Dagmar Krause sang. The clos­ing words to this song are: “I rage/I feel my love/Trapped/In a world/Of stillness/Like a wast­ing illness.”