“At heart, I am an optimist,” declares Chilly Gonzales, dressed like a 17th-century vampire composer, all ruffs, moustache and slicked back hair, a man with the perpetual air of a prankster-seer. “I am a glass half-full person. Or indeed, a venue half-full person.”
It is a pithy but not resentful remark about the Albert Hall having many empty seats on this wet Monday night, something which is more London’s fault than his. Where is everyone? This show was quite obviously going to be one of the highlights of the autumn featuring one of music’s true cult heroes, with guest star Jarvis Cocker and support from Peter Serafinowicz doing Elvis.
I mean, come on Londoners, what are you doing with your lives?
Later, in one of his frequent funny/serious (and few do funny/serious quite as well as Gonzales) monologues, he reminisces about his rise to prominence in the early 2000s, when this Canadian first took on the Chilly Gonzales moniker, moved to Germany and declared himself the President of the Berlin Underground, and made good use of this new internet thing. Gonzalez embraced MySpace and that there YouTube to find an audience for his eccentric form of genius, working with the likes of Peaches, Jane Birkin and Daft Punk before surprising everyone with the release of his acclaimed, beautiful Solo Piano albums.
“But then capitalism got hold of it,” he says, “And now we have the Spotify playlist and I find myself classed as ‘Neo-Classicalism’.” Expanding on his point, he talks of the blanding out of music as the streamers seek to categorise musicians into convenient categories and new musicians rush to fill such categories with their own takes on the ‘genre’ to please the algorithms. Now all music is ending up as “muzak” – that old term for cheesy background shopping centre banalities.
Gonzales then plays his retort to this: a song called Neoclassical Massacre. He both rages against and lampoons such music in way that will probably actually please the algorithms despite him rapping over it, “I was the first underground dude, to make a piano record with a pop attitude/...Today they call it neoclassical but don’t confuse it, it’s a stretch to even call that s**t yoga music.”
One might think that amid the terribly dull music scene over the last few years – amounting to a depressing slew of ‘let’s get this viral’ social media pop and sentimental corporate balladeers – that the genuine eccentrics which music used to breed are on the way out. Except, the evidence right up there on stage. There is still hope for musical maniacs in what turns out to be a triumphant show, where the increasingly ecstatic noise from the crowd makes the place feel more than full.
It’s ultimately triumphant due to the sheer charisma of the man up there, and the sheer unpredictability of the show. Gonzalez veers from virtuoso piano displays, to dance epics with his band, to chanteuse wanderings from his seat to hold the crowd in the palm of his hand.
At one stage, he muses on Richard Wagner and the difficulty of separating the art from the artist, given how Wagner “literally wrote a book about hating Jewish people,” before launching furiously into playing timpani drums as he raps over the thunder: ‘F-*-*-* Richard Wagner, what a motherf***ing monster/King Kong conquered Western culture, F**k him and his Nazi granddaughter.”
Then he segues into a bit how he is (genuinely) running a campaign to get Wagner Strasse in Cologne renamed Tina Turner Strasse’ since she was a Cologne resident for a time and, you know, a nice human being. At which point Jarvis Cocker ambles on stage to sing a slinky version of Private Dancer accompanied by Gonzales on the piano. It’s very funny and oddly moving, and nearly brings the house down.
Look, you had to be there. Really, you had to be there. Where were you?
It being half-term, there were a lot of children in the audience, my 12 year old included. As Gonzales talked of his separation from the music industry in favour of “just being myself”, I thought what finer role model is there than this guy, our eccentrically dressed, insanely gifted, quip-loaded, Nazi-hating, Spotify-rejecting, mediocrity-defying, warm-hearted Chilly Gonzales?
