Who is Carla Bley?
NM: Well, she’s an American jazz composer primarily, but she’s also a good keyboard player. Shes written an enormous amount of material. TV: Can’t get my motor started (sic) is a track that’s funky. NM: Yes. I think that Carla knows that I’ve got a particular weakness for cars and it’s something of an obsession shared with Mike Mantler, her husband. We spent an awful lot of time when we should have been recording or engineering, talking about cars, so I think she felt that was extremely well-suited. TV: How did you become associated with her then? NM: Originally through knowing Robert Wyatt. I think through Robert I met Gary Window, the saxophone player who’s also on this album and through both of them I met Carla when she came to England and was working on an album over here. TV: Uh huh. ‘Cos Robert Wyatt is if you like the most predominant vocalist. NM: Yes that’s right. I mean I think in many ways some people will see this record as a Robert Wyatt album as much as anything else. He
