Q: How has your experience in Japan been so far? Is this your first time in this country?

HR: Yes this is our first time in Japan except Sam Aliano.

SA: I was here with Tom Jones Tribute Band in 2000.

Would you tell us a little bit about your band history?

BL: I started with Gong when they started recording Expresso II and played with these folks for a few years and then Gong stopped playing, I was doing something in the US, and got back together with HR in 93 and started recording my first solo record, that's when we decided to bring Gong back together, with Pierre Moerlen, Benoit, brought Allan over, but at the last minute Pierre cancelled, and it turned into Gongzilla.

When you started playing with Gong, were there people from the old Gong formation?

HR: Yes, we had Didier Marlherbe, Benoit Moerlen, Mireille Bauer and of course Pierre Moerlen.

So there was a little convergence there?

BL: I guess the band stared to change even before I joined the band, around Shamal when Daevid Allen left the band.

Gong then was said to have been led by Pierre Moerlen. Was he the main composer?

HR: Yes, he did the most of the writing, but what we did was we contributed to each other's composition a lot. We gave credit to the one who had the original idea or did the majority of the composition.

The name Gongzilla has to do with Godzilla, right?

HR: Yes, it's a pun of Gong and Godzilla. I guess it started from Godzilla that "zilla" became suffix to anything big and powerful, so we attached that to Gong. A name is hard to come by and equally it's hard to get rid of it even if you are tired of it. I'm sure Pierre felt the same way about the name Pierre Moerlen's Gong, but we didn't want to call it Pierre Moerlen's Gong without Pierre. (LOL)

And you Japanese people made clear the importance of old material, so we are going to play some of the old songs. We need all the help we can use to promote our music, just like any other instrumental prog bands do, right?

I see you are playing Gong songs for the first set of the show.

HR: Yes, we play Soli and Three Blind Mice regularly. More Soli then Three Blind Mice. Jingo-Lo-Ba we started playing again. It's a good live tune.

And you are playing Gongzilla for the second set.

HR: We are playing some new songs, including one that is not on the record yet, called "French Grass", and also some other people's songs as well, such as "Peaches en Regalia" by Frank Zappa, and "Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix.

How do you write songs in Gongzilla?

BL: We bring ideas and work on them together.

HR: That's what we did in the old days, but for credit we go opposite way now. We all participate in writing music and we give credit as a collective work as Gongzilla.

On a bit of a personal side, what sort of music do you listen to in private?

BL: I listen to singer-songwriter a lot.

Like Happy Rhodes?

BL: Yes, Happy Rhodes.

How did you find out about Happy Rhodes?

BL: I heard her on the radio, and called her manager and asked if she'd sing for my record, as I was so impressed by her singing. We've been playing together ever since, almost for 10 years. She sings like a cross between David Bowie and Kate Bush.

How did you come to play with Gary Husband?

HR: I've known Gary Husband since 1980 or something and we played a show together as a trio with Allan Holdsworth, around the time Gong was breaking up. Then when we recorded "Thrive", we needed a good drummer and Gary Husband was a perfect fit. Then we did more shows and recorded "East Village Sessions". For this tour he is busy with his band Force Majeure with Randy Brecker, Jerry Goodman and other good musicians. We wanted to have a band member we can tour together easily, and I started looking and found Sam Aliano.

How did you find out about Sam Aliano?

HR: Our new distributor in Australia told me about Sam Aliano and Virgil Donati as two virtuoso drummers in Australia. I listened to his fusion record (*) and I had a chance to meet him in person at NAMM show this year in January, and we liked each other, and we decided to play together. He's great, and he fits neatly in the band, while it's really hard to fit in the band because on top of proficiency you'd have to have a little bit of America, and a little bit of Europe,and a little bit of prog, and a little bit of jazz and a little bit of fusion, and mix them. Also you'd have to be on the road and work consistently together, which is not easily done.

SA: To me it's an honor to play with the boys. When I walked into the project I didn't know so much about the history of Gong and the history of these boys but as we got on tour the shows have gotten better and better. I'm happy to be a part of the new Gongzilla.

I read on your website that you are associated with Joe Bergamini(**).

SA: Right, Joe and I are good friends. When I lived in New Jersey another drummer friend told me of Joe who lived around the corner from my house. It was before his solo album "Arrival". He is a nice drummer and has good albums with his band 4 Front.

At a 1998 show you had Vic Stevens. What happened to him?

HR: Last time I heard he was in Colorado. First he moved to LA and then to Colorado, but I don't know too much about what he is up to. For a while he was recording with Scott McGill and Michael Manring.

There seem to be other projects around Gongzilla. What are they like?

HR: I have solo record and Project Lo. I'll probably do another solo record eventually. Actually there is a new compilation just released. It's a compilation of Bon's two solo albums with to new songs, and it's called "Two plus Two". But for the next couple of years we'll concentrate on touring with Gongzilla. We are planning on a new record next year.

Are you going to do more festivals?

HR: In the States, yes. We'll be doing a lot of that. But not the Prog festivals. There are lots of jam band festivals, such as Bonaroo Music Festival, with bands such as moe., String Cheese Incident, Bela Fleck, Primus, attended by thousands of young people and older people as well. We hope to do more festivals like that next year. Jamming is more of a marketing genre than actual style of music. For example in Europe in the old days Gong was a jamming band in the sense that the music is relaxed, psychedelic, hippy-ish, enjoyed by people who are politically educated, embracing the music, open minded. It's a good scene. Bon just played at a moe. show with 7,000 audience attendance. (***)

Would you mind sharing some of your future plans?

BL: We are making a new Gongzilla record with good guests like Michael Kang, moe, String Cheese Incident. As I said earlier, we are focusing on touring as Gongzilla for the next couple of years. We are going to go to Hong Kong and Australia next year.

HR: We'd like to do more shows in Asia.

I'd like to ask each of you about the instrument.

Now starting from Hansford, I see you used to play the bass with staggered fret configuration. What exactly is that bass for?

HR: In fact I have several like that. They are on alternate tuning system on a harmonics system called just intonation tuning. I can't play those with orthodox 12 tone instruments. They use different notes and different intervals between the notes, and tuned differently, not just the strings but all the notes and the distances between the notes are different from the 12-tone system. So I can't play them except when Bon plays notes that we have agreed on and plays the slide guitar or some way of getting to the notes you can't get from 12 tone guitar. Sometimes we play live like that, but not a lot. On my solo record most of the songs are played in this tuning, 7 out of 10 tracks. In New York City I play with the just intonation guitar maestro, John Catler. With Gongzilla it is difficult to do because of vibes and marimba that are tuned in 12 tone tuning system. If we invested sizeable amount of money in developing just intonation marimba we could use that, just as an idea.

That sounds like possible with MIDI vibe.

HR: Oh, yes that'll be easy.

BM: But that won't produce notes the way I'd expect.

HR: But then again there are more notes than 12 in an octave with just intonation system. It's a system based on harmonics series. The harmonics you can make at half the distance of a string, then quarter of the distance, then half of it, so you can have infinite amount of notes in an octave. It's the tone system of the nature. Some of the notes are close to 12 tone notes and some sound out of tune, and some you cannot find intonation in 12-tone system. You can determine how many notes should be in an octave based on how you perceive the notes. So when you use the nature's own tuning system, it's just intonation. You are in tune with the harmonics system. Then you have a bigger language because you have more notes. That is playing in just intonation. Terry Riley and several other composers tried this system including Lamonte Young, whom I played with, with John Catler. He played extremely avant-garde music, but you can play other styles of music like blues. As you know, there are more than 12 tones in blues. Those blues slide guitar players play the blue note, which isn't quite just intonation but they went into microtones between the notes and they found what sounded good and called it blue note, which is just tone.

Bon, you have always played the Parker guitar. Are you married to it?

BL: I don't play that any more.

HR: He's divorced. Bon cheated. (LOL) He found Framus.

What happened?

BL: I was just offered another guitar, a Framus, and I liked it so I'm playing it. It's a single cut-away Les Paul style with f hole, semi-hollow body.

About Parker, what did you like about the guitar?

BL: It's the combination of its lightweight and the whammy bar that works extremely well. Also it had the cool wheel that you can adjust the tension of the whammy bar with. But I'm not playing that on this tour, it's sitting back home.

Benoit, you are not playing the MIDI vibe anymore. Is there a specific reason for that?

BM: The sound and the touch of the Marimba and Vibe. The MIDI vibe has rubber bars and has always small delay in generating sound. When I was playing Mallet Kat, I was spending more time trying to find the right tone than playing. And I bought a Marimba 5 years ago and I'm really happy with that. A beautiful Japanese marimba called Concord. I like that much more than MIDI Mallet Kat.

HR: "East Village Session" was homage to the sound to Marimba. We tried not to use anything synthetic. Everything was analog.

Besides playing with Gongzilla, what do you do?

BM: I play solo marimba and few duets with Stefan Traub who played with Gong, who is a great jazz vibe player, and I also play duet with my father who plays the piano.

Sam, how do you feel about playing with Gongzilla?

SA: What makes easy for me is that the band is already very good. It's easy for me to work with Hansford Rowe, and Bon and Benoit frame the music. On a part that Hansford was saying before, I was born in Australia and grew up part of my life in Italy and now I have moved to the US. I think that having traveled so much through my life and learning different types of swing that Europeans feel, the Americans feel and the Australians feel, having all those in different styles of music, definitely helped me fitting into Gongzilla very much. Benoit is from France, Bon is from Philadelphia, America, Hansford now lives in Montreal, and I now live in Los Angeles, I think all of our backgrounds and the culture we live in plays a big part in the sound of Gongzilla. So it wasn't hard at all to fit into the band. The hardest thing probably was to learn the old songs. But apart from that, the sound is there, and obviously that's the most important thing. Before joining this band I was playing in fusion bands. I was on the road with Allan Holdsworth and I was working with Planet X, and did support gigs with Chad Wackerman, these are part of my musical background.

Thank you for your time!

HR: My pleasure!

*:Sam Aliano "Emalgamation", 2001, Vorticity Music VM011801-1

**:Joe Bergamini has recently joined Happy the Man. For more info visit http://www.joebergamini.com/

***:Bon’s performance with moe on July 23, 2004 can be downloaded at http://www.archive.org/. Other shows are also available at http://bt.etree.org/ .