Eric Gorfain
September 2001
NBC Studios/Tonight Show

For every one of us who loathed violin lessons as a kid and gave them up out of teenage rebellion, there are the few that persist into adulthood. Eric Gorfain is a professional violinist who grew up blasting rock ‘n’ roll when not performing onstage with symphony orchestras. Over the years, he crossed over into studio and performance work with musicians of all styles. Gorfain has collaborated with the likes of musical legends Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and Dwight Yoakum, and newer artists such as Sinead O'Connor, Natalie Cole, Faith Hill, Clint Black, and Ricky Martin.

Gorfain has also incorporated his mutual love and respect for both genres towards efforts that translate rock music into classical arrangements, giving new life to each form and helping fans look at all kinds of music in more open ways. He has completed classical arrangements representing the spectrum of rock and pop’s most influential names, including Bjork, Led Zeppelin, and U2. Gorfain’s most recently took Radiohead’s 1997 mind-blowing critical accomplishment OK Computer and presented its entirety as interpreted by string quartet.

We meet to talk about his work at NBC Studios in Burbank, California, just before he’s set to tape a performance with the band Live on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”.

What brought you into my radar was the announcement of your string quartet arrangement of OK Computer, but obviously you’ve got quite a background that led you to this point. How and when did you begin playing violin?

I started when I was four. My father played violin when he was a kid and played up until his mid-teens and the way I remember it is that he wanted me to start playing. The way he tells me is that I was bugging him to let me play. Regardless, it worked out okay. (Laughs) So I started just before I turned five, just about this time of the year in 1974.

Were you ever tempted at any point in your teens or later on to switch over to a “cooler” instrument, something more rock ‘n’ roll?

No, I never thought that, but one summer I did stop - I didn’t practice for like three or four months, and it was kind of like, “Do I continue? Do I not continue?” I must’ve been somewhere around the age of nine to twelve, I don’t remember exactly when it was. I used to play sports and I was into that, but in high school I got back to playing in orchestras and finally it came to a point where I had to make a choice because of time. I chose music.

And how did you move from school stuff like that to doing things of a more public nature?

I guess it was kind of natural. I grew up in Sacramento, California, and joined the Sacramento Youth Symphony at the back of the second violins in 7th grade and I ended up in my senior year of high school as concertmaster. Then I went to college as a music major. I went to UCLA and went into a university rather than a conservatory for a number of reasons, mainly because I didn’t know if I wanted to do music for a living or even finish a music degree. So I went into a place where I could switch if I needed or wanted to, but I ended up getting into it and by the end of the first year I knew it was what I wanted to do.

There was one moment, actually - it’s kind of corny, but we did a concert at UCLA with Henry Mancini and Mel Torme. And it was really cool - I was concertmaster and I got to play a little duet with Henry…standing backstage before I went out to tune the orchestra, it was Henry Mancini, Mel Torme, Gregory Peck and me, this little nineteen-year-old punk. (Grins) So I guess I was kind of bitten by it.

As it seems you’d been on more of a classical track, how unnatural was the progression to rock music?

I’d always messed around with my friends’ electric guitars and had been listening to rock ever since I was a little kid. I would say the US Festival in 1983 was a big influence on a lot of people our age. (Grins) And heavy metal - Scorpions, Judas Priest, Ozzy - we were into that! All my friends started getting guitars. In orchestra I got infatuated with the timpani and drums in general, and I got a kit and ended up teaching myself how to play. Also, in high school I got a guitar and taught myself to play and kept playing and writing songs in college.

I didn’t make the connection of violin in rock music that early; it took me a while. In fact, I kind of didn’t do it on purpose - not consciously, but I just didn’t see the need for it. In hindsight I wish I would’ve gotten into that a little bit sooner - you know, like improvising and stuff like that. I was obviously classically trained but also into rock and heavy metal and when I got to college I was into what became alternative music. Then, finally, it hit me - “Well, violin can fit in this, too!”

Which musicians demonstrated that kind of crossover to you most?

There was one person in particular - Mark O’Connor, who was a child prodigy and is known more as a traditional fiddle player. He’s a musical genius and oddly enough someone played me one of his records in college and I didn’t make the connection in my head of how it applied to me. But a few years later I got one of his CDs featuring all his Nashville friends - there were like a hundred people on the record and it’s just the most amazing record, musically and technically speaking. I explain who he is to people by saying that he is to violin what Eric Clapton is to the guitar. He’s got that same kind of “slowhand” thing - you hear all these notes coming out but his hand’s not moving. (Grins) I’ve gotten to know him a little bit and we played a duet once; I was sitting there watching his technique and it was amazing to hear what was coming out of his hands. So Mark O’Connor was the biggest influence.

Who were the first bands or musicians that you ended up playing rock music with as a violinist?

I actually started my professional career in Japan, where I lived for four years after college. I hadn’t gotten into playing until the end of my stay there when I worked with a couple of singers. I got into making my own parts, playing along with a song and understanding how that works.

I came back here and within two months got a gig working with an artist on Virgin Records named Danny Tate. He was a singer-songwriter and I ended up going on the road with him, playing acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin and violin. That was kind of a crash-course in learning how to play in that vein, because it was kind of country-southern-rock but with a definite edge to it. And then six months later I was touring with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, so it progressed quite quickly! (Laughs)

Yeah, I would say so! There are big differences between sitting in a concert hall performing a classical piece and going on tour with a rock band. Besides the obvious - sitting down versus standing up, being dressed nicely verses all punked out - what are the differences in the way that you had to learn to play with those other musicians?

In a way it’s the same, because you’re part of an ensemble. The main difference is one audience is sitting quietly and the other is screaming and drinking beer - which is, let’s face it, a lot more fun! (Laughing) When I was growing up playing in orchestras I was also going to rock concerts so I knew what it was like. But to actually be on stage at a rock concert was a different thing for me - and I liked it.

I have always wondered about popular music of 18th and 19th centuries and how people reacted to it then. I’m sure they sat placidly through a lot of it - they needed to be quiet to hear, before the days of amplification - but when they got really excited...

It’s something I never really thought about, but it’s an interesting question. Where did the reverence come from? When I did the Jimmy [Page] and Robert [Plant] tour a few years ago, we were in Japan and the audiences there are very reverent and very quiet. In between songs, they’d clap and scream and hoot and whatever, but during the songs they’d sit there and actually watch quietly. And when Robert was going to say something on the mic in between songs, they’d stop and listen. We were in Budokan and you could hear a pin drop! (Laughing) It drove Robert crazy.

Well, when you’re so used to people being irreverent to you...

Exactly! (Laughs)

What is the competition like in being a violinist for rock musicians - are there a lot of you around?

There are a lot of us, yes. Here in Los Angeles, there are a lot of freelancers and a lot in New York and Nashville. Whatever I’ve gotten hasn’t really been competition, it’s just been timing - who you happen to meet and if they need you. For example, today I’m playing with Live. Last summer, one of the cello players called me up and said, “I’ve got this session at seven, can you make it?” And I thought, “Well, okay I guess.” I show up and Ed Kowalcyk is sitting there and I go, “Okay - this is going to be cool!” And it did turn out to be very cool and here we are a year later to recreate the parts we played on that song in the studio.

That’s a lot about your performance work, but let’s talk about the kind of stuff you did with OK Computer. You had done some arranging of this nature before, is that correct?

Yes. I’ve been working with Vitamin Records for the past three years; the first project I did with them was a Zeppelin record on which I did two songs. But I just finished a full album of Zeppelin songs for them and that will come out in January [2002]. I’ve done a few others - an Alanis Morissette tribute, a U2 thing, one for Bjork - and then this year I’ve done four more, just a whole slew of them in six months.

It was actually my idea to do OK Computer; I pitched it to them. At first they wanted to do maybe like a greatest hits kind of thing, and I thought while that wouldn’t be bad, the idea of doing OK Computer in its entirety was a much more intriguing idea because it is such a piece of work. But to do something like was a bit of a task -there’s a lot of music there.

In the Radiohead world there’s so much debate and fanaticism about everything they do. A lot of that talk has been about OK Computer being a “theme” album, compared to other opus records like “The Wall”.

I think it’s totally relevant.

Well, that explains why, you felt it was important to keep the cohesiveness of the entire album.

Yeah - I have a hard time listening to those songs one by one; it doesn’t make sense.

When you were arranging it, did you find that theme changed at all?

I didn’t arrange it in order; I thought about doing that, but I really didn’t have a method to the madness when I was writing the arrangements. I would basically going into my studio and go, “What song do I feel like doing right now?” So I didn’t go from start to finish - which is fine, because I don’t think it was necessary to do it that way.

I’m sure the original album wasn’t done that way either.

Exactly, and in fact I’ve heard that there were various running orders and track listings for it, although I don’t know what those were.

When I first heard your record, my reaction was overwhelmingly positive, which surprised me because when somebody says “tribute album” there’s a stigma of sorts attached to that. You think the cover artist is thinking, “I’m going to try and capture the greatness of what went on, but do it my way and get some of the credit off the original effort.” But yours really does come off as your own interpretation, and I think that a lot of people - especially Radiohead fans - will feel that way before they listen to it.

Maybe - I’ve been reading the Radiohead message boards and after we let one track out [“Let Down”] it’s been everything from “an awful abomination” to “brilliant”. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but I don’t know what people expected. A lot of the comments people make are along the lines of “I wish it was an orchestra”, to which I say that this was never billed as anything other than a string quartet, so I don’t have any answer to that.

My first inclination was to recreate the album - with all of its overdubs and parts and weird little things - with string instruments and some digital technology. Which would’ve been fine and fun and would’ve turned out really cool, but then I thought, the essence of OK Computer is that it’s just great music, and after all the blips and bleeps and wah peddles and effects and drums are taken away, it’s still amazing music. So I decided to make it work so that a string quartet could play it live. And all these tracks were done live - just four musicians. Radiohead is a quintet so when they do it live, they do it with five musicians.

I did it so it could be very organic; I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel because they did a good job of doing it themselves. I added a few things here and there, I mean, some counterpoint lines and stuff, but for the most part I wanted to show that the music is strong and stands on its own.

The other remarkable thing, which immediately jumped out at me was the strength of the vocal melodies in this interpretation. People can get distracted by both Thom Yorke’s singing style and the words that he’s singing, especially since the lyrics have had such resonance. And since Radiohead is such a vocal band politically and socially, people are always paying attention to what he’s saying rather than the way that he’s singing it.

And his voice is an acquired taste. I love his voice, but it’s not for everyone.

But you demonstrated its merit - its incredible range and tone - and it really brought back home that that particular part of the music is stunning if you strip it down.

There are no lyrics on the record so you have to use your imagination. Having listened to the record so often, I knew all the words and phrasing and it was hard to notate. I ended up playing a lot of the melodies myself as the first violinist mainly because I knew I could just scratch out the notation and would know it in my head. When we were playing it, I could hear him singing it and I was trying to capture his phrasing - I didn’t get it exact, but that wasn’t the entire point of it - so that you could imagine the words being there. At the same time, they’re not there and you don’t necessarily miss them because this is different. By the same token you could get someone to do a spoken word album of all the lyrics of the songs; it would be the compliment to this.

I almost wish that when I’d first heard your record, and even now, that I had never heard OK Computer so that I could hear it just in that context without imagining the words or the missing parts.

That’s why I wasn’t trying to change it. I wasn’t trying to do you said other tribute albums do, where either it’s a novelty kind of thing or you’re trying to inject your own thing into it. It’s though my quartet’s playing that we put ourselves into it. One of the guys in the quartet knew OK Computer very well, and the other two didn’t know it and they were coming at it from a different perspective which I thought was good - it was a fresh attitude. One of those guys thought it was great; he wanted to go back and hear the record afterwards, which is the opposite of where you are. He wanted to go back and hear what the original was like.

Is it hard to find people to play with you for projects like this?

No, not at all. My second violinist, Roland Hartwell, has his own rock band called Cynic Guru, and he sings and plays guitar and electric violin onstage. So he’s into that. The cellist, Richard Dodd, used to tour with a group called Lowen & Navarro, who are singer-songwriters who are pretty well known. Piotr Jandula [viola] is mainly a classical player with great tone, so he’s a little more unfamiliar with a lot of the rock stuff - but always gets into it and enjoys it because we’re showing him a little different side of music, a different side of life.

What’s been the feedback from the prior projects that you’ve done - have you received much input from Bjork or Tool fans?

A little bit, but this is the first time that a real buzz has grown. It’s kind of funny because a couple of months ago in Maxim magazine, they had this little sidebar of “The World Tribute Albums in History” or something and the Alanis Morrisette album that I did four or five tracks on was listed. (Grinning) I thought that was kind of funny, and that was a kind of feedback. (Laughing) But what’s interesting now with the Internet and with such a rabid fan base that Radiohead has, I’m starting to get more feedback and see what people think. It’s a very small group of people that talk on these message boards....

But they’re very fervent and very vocal!

They are, and it’s interesting! Even the ones that think that I should be burned at the stake have their own reasons and their own opinions and I will say, on tape, nothing bad about them. (Laughing)

I’m glad you can take the bad with the good.

What am I gonna do? Not everybody’s going to like it, and going back to what I said earlier, some people got confused that it’s a literal translation - almost a transcription, which it isn’t. One guy was saying, “There’s just the bass part, and there’s the guitar part, and there’s the vocal part!” Well, yeah! What do you want me to do - rewrite the songs? If I did that, you’d be screaming at me for touching perfection. So that’s why I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

The point is to show that this music works and that it can work that way as a live performance. I would like to actually go out and perform some of these songs live with the quartet; that’s actually in the back of my mind at the moment.

That would be pretty stellar.

Yeah, I think people would be interested, now that I have not just Radiohead songs but Tool, Bjork, U2 and all these others, it could be a nice little program to do this variety of songs.

This reminds me of when The Beatles were hitting it big back in the 60’s and all these classical composers, critics and musicians were talking about their music, comparing them to the classical masters in terms of their arrangements and structures. And of course the four guys in the band had no clue about all this - they could barely read music!

(Grinning) Well, George Martin knew what he was doing.

Of course, but that whole scenario reminded me about the bridge between these two genres, types of music that people would consider vastly different. The bridge is that it’s all music.

That’s what I’ve tried to do, blend the two worlds of classical and rock, because I’ve been trained in both and I like to think that I have an ear for both. And they’re not different - just the instruments used are different.

That, and the presentation of it, the sense of rebellion and whatnot - but that goes back to what I was saying before about classical composers in their time. Tchaikovsky and Beethoven were revolutionary in their day, rebelling against the norm, and I’m sure they caused a stir back then even as now it seems comfortable and safe and not that daring. I’m curious as to what the modern classical enthusiasts feel about this adaptation of yours - have you played it to any other classical musicians or composers?

I really haven’t yet; I’ve been kind of keeping it under wraps in a way. One interesting thing happened at a session I was at for a TV show a few weeks ago. I noticed that one of the guys got out of his car which had Radiohead stickers on it. I didn’t know the guy but when I went in and we started talking, I asked him about it and he said, “Oh, I’m a huge fan!” He was a viola player. I said, “Well, I just did this record,” and he goes, “That’s you? I’ve been hearing about this!” He was just raving, “These guys are amazing - the composition, the structure and the arrangements really are amazing!” So there are younger classical musicians out there who are appreciative of this.

But if you listen to the quartet version, you may not even know what it was originally, so it could just be a string quartet playing a song and none of it is really abrasive or hard to listen to. Even if you didn’t know what you were listening to, I think you could appreciate it for what it is.

Sadly, I’m not too familiar with modern classical composition, but I assume you keep tabs on what’s developing with it - do you?

A little bit; I mean, when I was in college I played in the modern music ensemble, playing stuff that the graduate students were writing; the page was still wet, you know? Which was cool - it was really out-there, avant-garde kind of stuff; sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

What I think my version of OK Computer shows is that no matter how avant-garde or whatever it may have seemed, the song structure and the melodies are very classical in a way. Yeah, they take chord progressions from the Beatles and melodies from here and there, but who doesn’t? I mean, I think of OK Computer as a classical work with electric instruments and distortion. I don’t think of it as songs; even The Bends is much more song-oriented. With OK Computer there was that flow that went through it; whether it was literally songs being connected or whatever, it’s more of a concept album.

And it means when a piece is a classic piece of music, it’s classic in the sense that it’s going to withstand time and criticism and it will translate between genres.

Right - it’s like what people say: a good song is a good song, whether it’s with an acoustic guitar and a vocal or with a symphony and Metallica. If it’s a good song it’s going to work, no matter what form you put it into.

There’s the very fine line between interpretation and just copying something.. How did you tread that line and your own debates over it?

I just had to trust my ear and my instinct. Right now I’m actually doing the next record, which is the Cure, and I kind of said it before but there’s no need to reinvent these songs because they’re done very well. I don’t do like one song as a bossa nova and the next one in the style of Bach - I don’t like that kind of stuff.

When I did a version of “Dazed and Confused” for the first Zeppelin tribute, I had some jazz chords in there and just some weird dissonance. I like dissonance so I don’t mind adding weird stuff like that. The Cure doesn’t lend itself to that - at least the songs I’ve done so far - but some of the Zeppelin stuff I put some weird stuff in there, the Tool stuff definitely had some dissonance in there.... I’m not afraid to add that kind of stuff as long as it works; if it’s too freaky, I don’t want to scare people. But I just go with my instinct, you know, where does this song need to go, how out can I take it, how out should I take it.

It sees like it could get translated into this really moral dilemma of, “Am I changing the artist’s work to make it my own?”

Yeah, I guess.... But I really don’t think that what I’m doing has that big of a moral impact, even on myself. But for OK Computer, definitely - I did feel that it was a piece of work that I needed to treat in such a way as to not alter it unrecognizable. So yeah, it’ s just more of what sounds cool; it’s very basic. I’ve always been very ear-oriented -does it sound right - whether it’s technically composed or arranged or orchestrated correctly doesn’t matter. It's what sounds right.

When I listened to your interpretation for the first time I pretty much expected you to have skipped “Fitter Happier”...but then I heard music and it made me realize that there is music in the song! It was tough thinking about how you wee going to pull some of something like that or “Paranoid Android”.

(Laughing) That was a tough one!

I imagine it was! Tell me how you did them.

Well, “Fitter Happier” was my big dilemma, because it was like, I’ve got a Mac, so should I just plug it in and let it do its thing? (Laughing) My first idea was to do something completely wacky, translate it into Japanese and have it read in Japanese, because I speak Japanese. I know that Radiohead’s had this whole connection to Japan and this whole kind of technology-thing, so I knew there was a little bit of a connection; in fact, for their songbook for OK Computer, there’s a shot of them in Tokyo. Anyway, I finally said, “There is music under there!” Which you probably never even noticed but maybe went back and listened to later.

And going back to what we were saying about Radiohead’s vocals and lyrics, it’s those particulars that most people are paying attention to, especially in this song, and not what’s underneath them.

I always liked the piano underneath; I’d always clued in on that. The monotone of the computer voice to me was always more background that the music; that’s just how I heard it - “That melody’s kind of nice!” I’d been told that [Thom] was just improving that in the studio and they ended up using it, so I just decided to take it in that direction.

Oh, and another idea was to have had an instrument going “eh-eh, eh-eh-eh, eh-eh-eh-eh”, mimicking the computer voice, which probably would not have worked.

(Laughing) You’re right--that would’ve been just annoying.

Yeah, but all these different concepts just flashed through my mind in deciding how to take it. Then I just got rid of the voice - again, because I hadn’t put any other vocals on there - and because there wasn’t really a melody, it was very spoken, obviously, even by a computer with the inflections that they got in the voice.

What about “Paranoid Android” - what was tough about that?

There’s just so much going on in that song, the rhythmic and melodic parts of it and then breaking down to the very classical parts - I did almost a literal transcription of what’s between the vocal layerings and the keyboard stuff, because that is classical music on the original. There’s no getting around it so I didn’t try to screw with it; I just did it as I heard it.

Actually, when I listen to [Strung Out] now, it sounds like it’s more than four musicians at times - it sounds bigger than that. But back to the question, just because of the fact that it’s a tricky song and goes in and out of different tempos and stuff.

Now, take a song like “Electioneering”, which is pretty heavy and distorted - the original version almost beats you over the head. Did you ever think with this or any of the other songs that you might lose something in stripping them down, that part of their power was the heaviness and the electric instruments with which they are originally played?

“Electioneering” was another one of those dilemmas, yes, because that is kind of the heaviest one on there. Finally we did it in a very...I mean, you can hear the wood of the bow rubbing against the strings, you know, we were all digging in so hard. And I wanted that; I told the guys, “Play it heavy and hard and noisy - I don’t care if it sounds ugly! I want it to sound aggressive and percussive.”

Another was at the beginning of “Airbag”; do I just let the cello do its thing? And I decided to let it do it, because why change it? It was so perfect! I almost wanted to do it where the viola stops playing like the electric guitar does at the beginning, but I thought, “Okay, let’s not go crazy.”

One of the dilemmas inherent in what I was doing was the fact that there was no percussion and no drums and no rhythmic instruments - we had to create that ourselves. But that’s just part of what we’re doing; all of the albums that I’ve done so far like this, we’ve had to remove drums from the picture but still think that they’re there.

There in what way - just to guide you?

No, for the song - to support the music. We have to play our instruments in a rhythmic enough way. Obviously, there’s ensemble issues, just to play together, but we have to play in a rhythmic enough way that you can feel; it’s not there, but you can feel the pulse and you can feel the drums that aren’t there anymore. That’s not a huge dilemma because that’s what we do for a living and a lot of the times we play stuff just as a quartet or a duo or a trio. Even today, there’s no drums on the song today, just a piano and luckily that keeps the rhythm going.

Were there any things that you discovered that were easier than you thought or that jumped out at you as unexpectedly spectacular?

Some of the melodies, like in “Let Down” when it kicks in towards the end of the song with “you know who you are with” and that whole part where it gets really big. The beauty of the music, you know; some of these melodies really work over these chord changes and you just hear the music. You don’t hear his voice, you don’t hear the lyrics, you don’t hear the technology - you just hear the music and it’s strong enough to work.

You do something like this and you put it out there, and there are the fans to worry about as well as your contemporaries but then there’s the band itself that originated this piece. Do you put this out there and think, “I’m not going to worry about if they hear it or not,” or do you want to know what they think?

Oh, I’m very curious! As far as I know, they have received the album; my next door neighbor works for Capitol and I heard the other day that she did give it to the band, but I don’t know what that means. (Grinning) But they haven’t called! I know they had issues with the OK Computer tour, so they may not want to even hear it. I mean, I hope they do; maybe they’ll think it’s dinner music, I don’t know. It would be nice to talk with them musician-to-musician but it wasn’t my driving force behind doing the record.

In the past, had you actually consulted with the other artists whose work you’d arranged?

No - as far as I know, none of the other artists has even heard these albums. We just kind of put them out there; this is the first time that I’ve discovered the power of the Internet. I mean, I’ve been online for years, but this is the first time that I’ve realized the power of just a couple of people, how they got the ball got rolling.

I get emails from New Zealand and Finland and all over the place asking about this project, so I’m very excited about it and I welcome people’s comments, good or bad! I don’t think it’s a perfect piece of work, and I’ll go back and think I should’ve or could’ve done something differently, because there’s no right or wrong. It’s just an interpretation and there is no correct way to do it. And that’s what people have to remember: they may like it or not like it, but it doesn’t mean it’s crap - it’s just not their cup of tea.

Well, one of the aspects of Radiohead in particular is that they spark so much debate in what they do, and everybody has their own interpretation of those things, so this is just one more of those, one more person saying, “This is what their work means to me.”

Right! Everyone has their own relationship with OK Computer, and you’ve put it very well - this is how I hear it. Not that I discount the lyrics in any way, but I’m a musician first and foremost and so I love the music on that record.

Are there any bands whose work you’d want to do but wouldn’t think would be suitable for such an interpretation?

Tool. Tool was the one that I didn’t think could work. The record label came to me with the idea and I thought, “They’re insane.”

Was that because you weren’t too familiar with their music?

I wasn’t, but after listening to it I was going, “Wait a minute - how the hell can this be done?” But I got into it! And I’m still not rushing out and buying their records, even though it is kind of old school heavy metal in a way, but it really worked in the classical setting. It came out very minimalistic because there’s a lot of little riffs of repetition, but it really came out great. (Laughing) I was very surprised, and it’s selling well, too!

Tool seems to have a depth to their work that would support it translating this way. Did this type of project - adapting rock in a classical manner - happen as the result of a demand for it or was it just a random idea from the record company?

I saw on a newsgroup one day that [Vitamin Records] was looking for people to produce this stuff. I answered it and it turned out that they were doing the Led Zeppelin record, and I’d worked with [Zeppelin] only a couple of years before. The match was correct - it was exactly what I was looking for and they were looking for someone like me.

I’m glad that there’s more attention being paid to these albums now, and I’m getting better at doing it - I feel more comfortable doing it. That’s the other thing - I feel more competent doing these things and now I’m more interested in getting the albums to the artists to get their opinions. It doesn’t mean anything; it’s just more out of curiosity to see what they might think. And if I get the chance to work with them sometime in the future as a player or arranger, that’s a bonus.

It really seems that if more of this stuff gets out there and starts circulating that it might just lead to more open dialogue between the two types of musicians.

And more collaborations. Elvis Costello did a record with a quartet; Bjork’s new record has got an orchestra and she’s touring with them. Jimmy and Robert obviously did a tour with an orchestra; Rod Stewart did it and Metallica was obviously the big one. So there have been some really interesting collaborations and I hope it continues. There are a lot of bands out there that are open to it just as there are a lot of bands that are not open to it. A lot of times it’s the guitar players who are worried about their parts getting buried; if an orchestra is in the mix, from a sonic point of view, the guitar player is the first one that will lose out. But at the same time I just wrote two string arrangements for a heavy metal band, and we did these big epic orchestra things and you’re still going to hear plenty of guitars riffing away, but the addition of the orchestra just kind of takes the songwriting to a whole new level and it works really well.

You mentioned the Cure project earlier - was that your idea or the record company’s?

They came to me.

So when they come to you and present you with these things, do they have the songs in mind that they want you to do or is it you going through a back catalogue trying to decide what will be best?

It’s been both; with Zeppelin I chose the songs and they approved them. With Bjork, Tool and the Cure they’ve assigned me songs, but I’ve picked a couple of songs for the Cure. I’m not incredibly familiar with the Cure but interestingly enough in going back to listen, I knew a lot more of the Cure songs than I thought I did, and they’re good! I’m actually really surprised. (Laughing) I’m like a new fan; I’m really into it!

They are good, and my only complaint about them is that Robert’s voice sometimes can be grating.

Everyone says that.

It’s what we said earlier about Radiohead: the music is great but the voice can sometimes be irritating. To be fair, sometimes it can be the best thing about the song. The interesting thing about both Radiohead and the Cure is that they tend to keep really good tabs on what people are saying or doing about them. There was a play done here in L.A. a few years ago where all of the dialogue was Radiohead lyrics, and several band members actually came to see it. The Cure itself has a pretty fanatic online presence and the band is always maintaining their Web site and stuff like that. So it just seems like both bands would want to hear this.

Yeah, and I think that’s one thing we did tap into with Radiohead, their online presence and community - but it makes sense that kind of a fan base would be most interested in a project like this.

That’s a good point - this particular group of fans would want to hear it most because they’re the most active. Can you give any details about the Cure thing?

Tracks I’m working on are “Love Song”, “Bloodflowers”, “Pictures of You”, “Hot Hot Hot!”, “Just Like Heaven” and “Maybe Someday.” Vitamin [Records] has decided to include one original “inspired by the artist” on these collections - they wanted to give the arranger the chance to compose something. This is the first one and for it, they asked me to write something as if the Cure was writing for string quartet.

When you do stuff when you’re doing half the record or just a couple of tracks, aren’t you worried about how your interpretations are going to fit in with the other contributors’?

Yes and no. Vitamin is very open in that they let us do what we want to do. On the Tool record the other half was done by Jim McMillan, and he did some interesting stuff kind of outside the quartet box, so it was really interesting to juxtapose the two. For example, he used an upright bass and was pretty percussive, while mine was very classical in nature. So they did kind of fit together well.

I don’t know that most people would realize different people did different tracks -

That’s fine for them to think that.

But I would be very worried myself about what quality of stuff was getting lumped with mine. (Laughs)

Well, yeah, if someone else’s pieces sound bad I wouldn’t want people to think it’s my track, but everything’s labeled. A lot of the times when it comes down to it, I don’t have time to do a full album, so there’s nothing I can do about that.

What about doing your own stuff - do you compose?

Yeah, I’ve done everything from songwriting and collaborating with singer-songwriters to composing stuff for video games, and I’ve produced rock bands both here and in Japan. I’m not a very prolific writer nor do I take time for myself in the studio to write and record, but I’m so busy working on other people’s music or writing for a specific purpose I just get caught up in that. One of these days I’ll do my own record, I suppose, out of the fact that I have my own gear and I gotta use it for myself at some point.

You’re doing these projects that the label asks you to do, but what about bands that you’d like to interpret?

I’ve got a few, but I probably wouldn’t want to talk about them now. (Laughing) I have an idea, my next pitch to the label, but it’s off the record for now. But bands that would fit that would be great to do might be Peter Gabriel, King Crimson - all that progressive rock stuff, which is kind of a limited audience, but still. Then there are the ones you wouldn’t think would work, like Tool.

Right, or Nine Inch Nails, which is a band known for being very heavy yet when it comes down to it there’s incredible texture to the music. Do you still do any classical performing?

Occasionally - I do everything from quartet stuff to pick-up orchestras for churches and stuff. I don’t really do a lot of the orchestral work around town, but that’s by choice. I realized after taking a couple of orchestral auditions in my younger days that I didn’t want to do that. I like the variety of studio work, I like the quickness of it, I don’t like rehearsing for days and days and days and days for just one concert. People who work like I do like to fly by the seat of our pants and just make music and capture the moment, whatever you’re feeling, whether you’re angry, happy, sad or, uh, warm. (Laughs)

How has your playing changed from when you were doing symphony?

That’s hard to tell! I mean, I’m better; playing studios you get your intonation together real quick, and rhythmically I think I’m fine. (Laughing) I’m older, I’m better; it’s been 26 years since I’ve been doing this, so I better be good at it by now or else I should get another job! But this is really all that I’ve ever considered doing and I’ve been pretty fortunate to make a living at it.

It seems at this day and age that there’s not a lot of attention not being paid to classical musicians and because of that one might think that it’s much harder to be one than even a rock musician.

Well, it is - there are kids coming out of conservatories every year and only so many orchestra positions even open. It’s very lopsided; it’s like, why even attempt to do that?

Although it is encouraging that there are still kids going into conservatories, wanting to study this type of music.

Yeah, but the one thing that I didn’t learn in college was how to make a living as a musician. They didn’t teach you that, which was unfortunate, especially being in L.A.; I had to figure it out myself and it was fine, but I think there are very few schools out there, conservatories or universities, that teach you how to make a living as a musician. They train you to be a musician, but they don’t teach you how to make money at it.

It’s survival of the fittest, maybe.

Yeah, and it’s not just about playing, either - there are plenty of people out there who are not the greatest players but make a good living.

And vice versa - the genius prodigies who are starving. Do you have anything else in the works?

I’ve got some progressive rock projects from Japan in the works; we’ll be recording at my studio with some of the guys from back in the day and my business partner, Frank Scarpelli, engineering the sessions. [Years ago] I discovered a Japanese band and ended up producing two EPs, a single and an album with them. Oddly enough, the guitar player in particular was very Radiohead influenced - this was right around 1997 - and he was the one who introduced me to Radiohead. When we did the record we put some touches on there that were, sonically speaking, very Radiohead, some production ideas. (Laughing) Yeah, we stole! But we were paying homage.

Gorfain has completed work on The Cure tribute, which will be available early 2002, and has also completed string arrangements for producer Jason Slater and the band Edify. He will be performing live with quartet The Section - which performs on the OK Computer tribute - in Los Angeles. Gorfain is currently undertaking string quartet arrangements of work by industrial rock innovator Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. Find out more about The Section at www.thesection.net.