An Interview with Stephen Schible

Stephen Schible, co-producer for the 2003 Academy Award winning film Lost in Translation is the director / producer of the new APT Premium Service pledge special, ERIC CLAPTON – SESSIONS FOR ROBERT J

Q: What inspired you to direct this program with Eric Clapton and his tribute to the blues legend, Robert Johnson?

A: I have a two-fold answer. First of all, an old friend of mine called Hiroshi Fujiwara, who I have known for nearly 20 years, happens to be a good friend of Eric Clapton's. They started talking initially about creating a music video for an album that Eric came out with last year, called Me and Mr. Johnson, a tribute album that he made with all Robert Johnson cover material. My friend Hiroshi is a very creative person, but he's not a movie producer. I was brought on board to help them out and hone their ideas.

We all discussed several ideas and determined we didn't want this to become a typical "lip-sync music video." After that, we determined we would record a live session with Eric and his band. I'm more of a person who has grown up listening to hip-hop and more contemporary genres of music. When I was fortunate enough to meet Eric, I bought a lot of Eric's previous recordings and listened to them. I bought Robert Johnson's complete recording set. The complete recording set came with pretty extensive liner notes and I discovered that Eric Clapton had written an essay as a part of the liner note booklet about his life-long admiration of Robert Johnson and his music. I realized then that this was something that was quite important to him. He's been covering Robert Johnson material on-and-off during his entire career and perhaps he considered Robert Johnson's music to be his foremost musical influence. When I did have the opportunity to sit and talk with Eric about the initial video shoot, I said, "hey perhaps we could extend this into a larger, longer format DVD project or TV program, something that would describe not only the musical aspects of it, but give us an opportunity to explore the story behind Eric's life-long admiration for Robert's material."

Q: What are your personal thoughts on the impact of these two great musicians on music and artists today?

A: There is not a single person that I have met who doesn't know who Eric Clapton is. I think he is one of the most prominent guitarists out there. When you think of blues guitar or rock-n-roll guitar, one of the first names that comes to mind is Eric Clapton.

When I did my homework about Robert Johnson, I learned more about the material. I learned that he'd influenced a whole generation of musicians – during Eric's time at least. For example, bands like Cream, Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones – all these guys, who to me represent the classic rock-n-roll sound. I learned that they all discovered Robert's material in the late 60s and then interpreted Robert Johnson's performances into their craft and their form. In that sense perhaps, Eric Clapton is one of the interpreters of whatever messages Robert Johnson had left behind for posterity's sake. He transformed what he took from Robert Johnson into aspects that we recognize as clearly the rock-n-roll genre today. Also, I think it's really neat that there are bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and The White Stripes that cater to a younger more contemporary audience today, in the 2000s, that cover Robert Johnson's material as well. Robert Johnson's appeal is quite unique. It's not just Eric's generation that drew a lot from Robert's material. It seems to be a process that continues onwards.

Q: You've been involved in a number of different productions – is most of your work focused around music and musicians?

A: To be honest, not particularly. Perhaps I should back track a bit and explain my cultural background. My mother's Japanese, my father's American, and I grew up in Tokyo. I'm quite bilingual and speak Japanese and English fairly well. I went to film school over here in New York but I was born and raised in Tokyo. When I finished film school, my main area of focus for awhile was working on projects that had something to do with Japan. I got to work on Lost in Translation and several other co-productions of that nature.

In many respects this project is really the first where I was one of the initiators and got to see it through to the end. It just happens to be that the topic was music.

Q: How was it to work with such a legendary musician, Eric Clapton and watch as he paid tribute to another legendary musician?

A: When I arrived in London, we didn't have too many meetings or discussions about how we were going to shoot the material. We were allowed an opportunity to visit Clapton during his rehearsal sessions for his European tour which later on led to the U.S. tour that he had last year. It was just quite amazing to be able to watch him as he performed and rehearsed with his fellow musicians, to really just sit and absorb and see what their process was.

A few musicians would be playing pool in a side room at the studio they were working at. Eric would start working on a riff or something and Steve Gadd would return back into the studio and he'd start playing drums to Eric's riff. Then, Nathan East, the bassist, would return and he'd start playing bass. Then, Chris Stainton, the pianist, would show up. One-by-one they would just kind of add on to a riff Eric was working on. Without speaking to one another, they would make a transition into a song and just play right through it.

When you see artists of that caliber in a concert situation, you really don't get to see the way in which they communicate with one another and the way they work off of each other as musicians. Since we were blessed with the opportunity to join them during a private rehearsal sessions, we were able to absorb these things that non-musicians typically don't get to see and enjoy. As a filmmaker, I tried to capture how they work, how they perform their music and how they work on their craft. And try to do it in a manner that is as organic and natural as possible – try to convey that through my medium, which is film and video.

Q:In the film you travel to four different locations. Tell us about those trips – what kind of experience was it?

Initially, I started this project either to just shoot in one location, a place called Hook End studios in a suburb of London called Checkendon. This is the place where we filmed the first session that you see in the program video. We filmed a set of five songs, knowing that we would pull one or two from the set as music videos that would initially be released with the album. When I first got into this project, I knew for certain that there was some traveling involved and that I would go to England and assemble a crew over there to film this one rather spontaneous, free blues jam session that Eric would do covering Robert Johnson material. Afterwards, Eric, me and our co-producer Hiroshi, discussed the ideas of continuing the process and filming more sessions. Once we finished the London segment, we learned that perhaps we'd be able to join Eric during his United States tour and film in Dallas and also perhaps Los Angeles at the very end of his tour. Initially, I thought this project would be one journey to England. I guess you have to be careful what you wish for, because fortunately Eric did enjoy the process of filming the initial session very much and actually called me up and he said, "take this more seriously." That meant it would turn into nearly a full year of traveling for me.

Q: What about the time spent in Dallas, TX?

As soon as I learned we would be filming in Dallas, I became very excited about the possibility of being able to re-vist the actual place, where Robert made many of his key recordings with Eric. The first thing I did was hire a team of researchers, and we found out about what happened to the place. We learned that the building had been abandoned for some years but it was now owned by a liquor distributor called Glazer's Wholesale Distributors. We managed to get in touch with the owner of the building and we were able to work out the arrangements to film at the actual recording site. The building hadn't been accessed for a long time, so we had to clean it out a bit, let some fresh air in because it was pretty stuffy inside.

We started to set things up for Eric's visit. We brought in our camera equipment and a remote audio recording rig. During the day of shooting, we pretty much captured everything real-time, starting with Eric and Doyle's arrival at the warehouse until the point that they felt that they were done with their session. You can see the sky outside the windows behind them change colors as they play, since we filmed as the sun was setting — going from blue to a deeper and deeper blue and finally night. Our director of photography, Tom Richmond, did an amazing job capturing everything that went on in there. He's a very gifted movie cinematographer who has worked with people like Robert Altman before. It was a pretty intense shooting experience for my crew, since we had 4 HD cameras in a very small space, and Eric and Doyle were playing their hearts out right in front of them. There was very little space for moving around. Yet we had Tom tiptoe around and shoot his coverage hand-held, since we felt we needed to get that kind of coverage to convey the intensity of the moment. God forbid, if any of the camera operators knocked over anything, a precious recording would be ruined! So it felt like we were walking on thin ice. All the while the light outside was changing minute by minute… so there was a lot going on behind the scenes.

Q: What has been the reaction to the DVD?

So far, I think the reaction has been quite positive from what I've been able to see on the blogs and online reviews. These are essentially studio recordings or location recordings if you will. They are also "live" enough in the sense that none of the materials are re-recorded. Most contemporary material is done with so many over dubs — where people record the drum beat first, then the vocalist will come into the studio and record the vocal and guitar riffs over and over again until everything is polished and perfect. In this project we don't have a live, concert situation and yet everything was recorded in one shot. So you have the tension and intensity of a live performance and yet you also have a very private and closed setting. You feel like you're watching the material and you're in the same room with these musicians, experiencing it like a virtual experience — yet you're not in a big concert crowd situation. People were very drawn to the way in which we were able create this project and share the material with them.

*This interview is available for use in the marketing and/or promotion of Eric Clapton: Sessions for Robert J.(program guides and/or Web sites). No part of this interview may be used relating to any product or service, other than the program.