A meeting between Matti Caspi and members of the website team

A: wow… how a song is born. I can give you two options. The first option is that the artist decides to write a song, and he makes efforts, writes, erases, thinks again and so on, until he’s got something. That’s one way, and it isn’t mine. My way is, I wait until inspiration comes to me. When it happens I feel something happening inside me. The adrenaline starts working and I feel there’s something I want to release outside. I go to the piano or the guitar, and start to scribble. If it turns out to be only nonsense, I let it go and don’t even try. But when it does happen, I just keep playing the same verse over and over until I get a full musical verse, and then a full song. If I’m not touched by it - then it’s not good. I just forget it purposely. I never keep songs. I don’t have a song drawer. And If I do, it’s only song I’d written a long time ago and they never had any lyrics to go with them. The only song I wrote consciously was “Eliezer Ben Yehuda” to the lyrics of Yaron London. I was still a soldier and the year was 1969 or 1970. The song was commissioned by the radio program “Do Re Mi and more” on the radio station “Kol Israel”. This was the only song I wrote in a technical way. I didn’t wait for inspiration, I just tried. I planned my steps. It’s a one-time thing I did. I wrote two other songs with a break in the middle, under a sudden inspiration. In “Everlasting Alliance” I wrote the first two parts as a movie soundtrack for “A Snooker Celebration” (Classic Israeli movie). It was a romantic piece without lyrics. I knew the song was incomplete, that it was missing something. That missing part came to me three years later. And when it was finished I knew this was the song and I brought it to Ehud Manor for the lyrics. Another example is “My Girl”. I composed a part, waited two-three years and while always keeping Nathan Zach’s book in front of my eyes, and nothing came. And then suddenly everything came. Some songs had difficult births since they came without lyrics. “My Second Childhood” is an example of that. Yossi Bannai was my neighbor and I brought him the melody, because he writes lyrics beautifully. He said he loved the song and would love to write lyrics to it. So I waited a week, two weeks, a month, two months, several months, and the only line he came up with was: “If it’s really true”. And that’s it. Eventually I brought the song to Ehud Manor and he immediately said: “This is my second childhood”. With Ehud Manor I really have an interesting story. He probably feels my music very fast and in such a right way, even though I mostly don’t tell him what I’m thinking of when I compose. For instance, I wrote the melody for Riki Gal’s “Tokyo is Big”, and she asked to give it to a friend of hers to write the lyrics. The lyrics her friend wrote were about camels, and Bedouins and the desert. Even before that I had told Riki I wanted her to sing it like a Geisha. Riki then asked to give the song to someone else to write the lyrics, and so it passed on through five different people, who all wrote about camels, Bedouins and the desert. I didn’t want that to be the theme of the song. So I finally brought the song to Ehud Manor and just as I finished playing it to him, he said “it sounds to me like a sort of Japanese ballade”. The same happened with another song of mine when my dog died. I called him Igloo. I travelled to London where Ehud was studying at Oxford back then. I stayed at his place for a week and wrote the entire content of the album “Twilight”. Ehud wrote the lyrics to most of the songs. When I gave him the melody about Igloo I said nothing… he went to the other room and returned with the lyrics about Igloo. So I guess there’s a special connection with Ehud Manor that bounds me to him professionally for so long, even though I appreciate so many other talented lyricists like Yehonatan Gefen, Yaankale Rothblit, Nathan Zach, Yehuda Amichai, and more. But with Manor, whenever the melodies come first, I go straight to him. And sometimes lately I turn to myself. But it comes with much more effort from me. I try hard and before I feel like I want to write lyrics I back off, I have no strength for it. It’s a huge effort for me and I feel completely drained. Music is a lot easier…

A: when I receive the lyrics first it makes me compose faster than usual because I see the theme already. I see a song and then it’s much easier for me to get the inspiration. Inspiration doesn’t come very fast without lyrics. It could take years sometimes. I once had a two-year break from composing anything. It was from 1971/2 to 1973. Back then I wrote music for commercials. Like Mustang, Paper House, I worked at the Argeman halls in Holon. Judging by your age you don’t know it. The break I took was so big because I tried composing and I felt something was happening inside me and when I played I got a thirty minute jingle. I decided it was either me or the jingles. After two years I finally wrote something. Shmulick Kraus put me out of my misery. He gave me lyrics he wanted Josie Katz to perform in an album he was producing for her. I really liked them and took them home. Two hours later I returned to him with the song ready, and it was “You Took my Hand in Yours”. I apologized to Shmulick and told him the song doesn’t suit Josie and I gave it to Yehudith Ravitz instead.

A: just normal life, you know. You wake up at seven to get the girls ready for school, vacuum, wash the dishes… just act normally and the songs will suddenly come. Song like those in “Tomato Juice” for example, I have many more silly songs like them. Maybe I will release something similar, like “Orange Juice” or something. I need to assemble them because they’re mostly very short funny pieces I need to work on. They need to be as embarrassing and as funny as possible. It’s some sort of therapy, to spill out all the nonsense you have. But it probably only happens once in every fifteen or twenty years. I’ve done it in my biggest times of crisis, actually in my former life. Then I made “Songs in a Tomato Juice”. As to upbeat songs - there will be upbeat songs in the next album, I know, I’ve heard them… don’t worry it will come.

A: in the Kibbutz I learned how to play the recorder like everybody else in first grade, and I was fed up with it. When I was six years old I asked to perform at the Kibbutz’s dining hall in Hanukah. I played: “Mother has Baked me a Latke“ with the recorder and I hummed a second voice to it. And that’s when I was finished with that instrument which I thought at first, was broken since it had many holes in it… after that I went to the Mandolin. It didn’t work so much, they decided we all had to be part of the mandolin orchestra in the Kibbutz and it didn’t work for me. The right hand tremolo came out stuttered, so I just gave it up. At ten I started taking piano lessons. That is my instrument. I’ve learned classical music for six years and I’ve used that knowledge in my later works. I learned how play the guitar and the accordion because they simply were in the music room. The accordion was really hard to learn because it requires three actions at once, basses here, keys there, and the stretching in between. I always managed two actions. Later in the army I was introduced to the rest of the instruments such as the drum set, the bass, some electric guitar. I started playing the harmonica as well when I was ten, inspired by harmonica player Shmuel Gogol. I asked my parents to buy me a harmonica because I think I know how to play. They didn’t believe me because they never heard me play. But I nagged them and eventually they bought me one. I immediately started playing it and even asked for a button like the big guys… Only later I really understood what it was. I also know a little flute and clarinet from the times of the military band. That is actually the base. The musicians who influenced me are George Brassens, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, and classical music, mostly Chopin - and many other composers close to Chopin’s style. I also really really liked gypsy music, and fortunately I used to listen once a week to a radio program of world folk music, where they played all kinds of folk music from all over the world, and that’s what influenced my. Music from India, Africa, Brazil, North America, Europe, the Balkan, etc.. My grandfather who was from Romania sang to me for the first time something with an uneven rhythm. And I didn’t understand it, I didn’t understand when the first beat came. And he just rolled out an entirely new horizon in front of me - music from the Balkan. Later on I had the opportunity to get involved with a radio program of Brazilian music that was called: “A Beautiful Tropical Land”, and it became a success and spread like fire. A few months after I made a program of the Balkan. It didn’t spread like fire, but I did it with love. As for Israeli music - I listened to Sasha Argov and I loved his music very much.

A: Yaakov Gilad gave me the lyrics. I often put the lyrics on the piano or next to the guitar. This time they were next to the guitar. I just stared at them, I always stare silently. It’s as if I’m doing nothing. But the truth is it slowly enters inside, the music. And I slowly start hearing it forming inside my head. At first I see it happening on the lyrics, like they are moving. Then suddenly I start feeling it in my stomach and I feel ready for it. I took the guitar and it all started. It surprised even me. It began as you all know it. I had a little struggle in the beginning with the coordination of what I wanted to play and what I wanted to sing. But slowly, in an hour, it worked.

A: One time I went to see the play “Kriza” by Yehoshua Sobol, played by the Haifa theatre company. One of the actors was Dov Glickman. I had heard the story from the stage, but as a very short story: there were neighbors, she was doing the laundry every day and hanging it to dry outside, and he had a dovecote, and his pigeons would always sully her laundry, and the neighbors would always argue why they say the pigeon brings the peace. And that’s it. It was very short. A year or two later I was on Galatz recording for Dorri Ben Zeev. When I was done I asked the technician to role the film. And suddenly it came out, accent and all, the whole story down to the last detail. I hadn’t given it a minute of thought and it just flowed. I was in such a silly state of mind. It was of course longer than what you know, I had made it a little shorter, because I went wild with the whole laundry hanging bit. I scrambled the words more and more until it sounded like completely different words. But I had a feeling it would be too much and people will soon tire of it. So I cut it. Later in the album I repeated the exact performance to be better recorded, since the original was stolen from Galatz and Elli Israeli who would play it every day, had asked the listeners to return the film, and then someone sent him a very poor quality recording from the radio. So eventually I decided to record it again while working on “Songs in a Tomato Juice”. The only original sound I left in it was Dorri Ben Zeev’s laugh through the control room. I left it because it was just so funny, the way he laughed. Only he can laugh like that. So that is the story of Moris and the Pigeons. Now to perform it here? I feel a little embarrassed (remarks from the audience: should we leave?) there was once a show where I asked the audience to leave the hall because I said I wanted to sing the song behind closed doors. And someone asked: how will we know when it’s over? And I said: by the applause...

A: I don’t know. In the first album that piece was part of ”Colonel on Reserve Duty”. There came out some copies of it, but later the lyricist objected to it. I respected his wish and asked the record company to stop distributing them. We re-edited it without that song (remark: the song is “Condition” by lyricist Carmy, which was included in Caspi’s first album in the first edition only). As for “The Peace was in my Home”, it will be released someday, I’m not sure when yet. Some songs I recorded feel more like a musical practice to me. Not deep enough. So let’s wait and see, maybe something will happen with it, maybe it will be an instrumental piece.

A: Not exactly. There are some songs I’ve been singing since I wrote them and I never get tired of them. It has a reason. The term “fed up” just doesn’t fit here. Maybe I got a little tired from singing them but they will never get old for me. So I just take a break from singing them for a while and then revive them a few years later. For years I’ve been singing “Friday is Back” until I got a little tired from it, but then I returned to it and now I perform it with my musicians. I think my luck lies in my classical music education. The classic harmonies are what guides me. Unfortunately Yamaha ruined it a little bit by starting to teach music fast and commercially, or in other words, how and when to press the right button on electric keyboards. With the piano it isn’t like that. You either play loud or you don’t. it all depends on your fingers. You create the dynamics. That’s why whoever plays the piano will be able to play any other keyboard instrument. Sometimes I sense the crowd and know it’s time to shake things up a bit. Very soon I will record a new album and go on a new production which will be completely fresh, since the material is completely new, from the start till the end. I will also be including my friend Nassim Daquar, who’s a wonderful violin and oud player, and who’s learned classical violin since he was a little boy. He also knows how to play in accurate half tones and quarter tones. And it sounds like a guitar that sounds like an oud. It’s very interesting. I use that instrument to my advantage, however, I don’t succumb to the oriental vibe. In this album, for example, there will be a song with a fast Argentinian samba rhythm. To that I’m adding the oud. So I actually use its special sound in my work. In this particular song Ahinoam Nini will sing with me in a duet, and we’ll be singing it also in French, Portuguese, and maybe even Arabic.

A: It’s in my blood, despite my parents being Romanian. It’s a wonder. When I first thought about “Wagtail” I didn’t have a melody yet, but I knew I wanted that word to be in there because it accurately expresses the Morroccan way of thinking and the rhythm. (Demonstration) And that’s where the song came from. Then with the melody and lyrics. Just as this is in my blood, other rhythms like the Balkan ones are too. These things will be manifested in the new album as well - the uneven rhythms from the Balkan, as well as classical different things. Maybe to your ears they will be very different, I can’t be objective…

A: First of all it’s a matter of great luck, because it happened only once in 1970 and didn’t reoccur even when we tried it again fourteen years later. It was one of those moments that never repeats itself, though recently we’ve written a song together and it will be included in the program. We intend to meet and try to work together and see what happens. Maybe something will come. But it really depends on inspiration. We inspire one another - we sit in front of the text, I start something and he completes it and vice versa. I really want something to come out of this because he is crazy and I’m not, and I affect him with the lack of craziness, and he affects me with craziness. So together we make very interesting things. I really hope we’ll have a song or two and we’ll be able to add them to the program. We also owe our wives a song they could sing together.