Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language.

If you all just go calmly towards the exit,

ladies and gentlemen.

I had the protection of Mr Jaussi.

You know, even when...

Because it went on fire, a lot of people were against me.

He stood beside me, even with the mayor.

Mr Jaussi would go and fight for me.

And he was running the town.

Who would fight against him?

It was our playground.

And he would put the money in the jazz festival

in Montreux.

I always have additional love for singers.

The voice, which is even better emotionally

than any instrument.

APPLAUSE

I am curious about something.

How many of you do speak English or understand it?

CHEERING

Oh, right!

This is the first time that I've played anywhere

outside the United States ever.

And it's really a gas. I love it.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

# When you're down and troubled

# And you need some lovin' care

# And nothin'

# Oh, nothin' is goin' right

# Close your eyes and think of me

# And soon I will be there

# To brighten up

# Even your darkest night

# You just call out my name

# And you know, wherever I am

# I'll come runnin'

# To see you again

# Winter, spring, summer or fall

# All you have to do is call

# And I'll be there

# Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

# You've got a friend... #

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

The casino was rebuilt within three years

with one innovation that Claude had again -

we should have a recording studio.

From the start, Claude was a record man.

Claude recorded and taped every show.

So it had that aura and reach that other festivals didn't have.

David Richards, he went there at the beginning in 1975.

Dave was in the studio recording and mixing these things live.

The live mix that Dave would do

was just recorded onto videotapes,

and that's kind of what you hear most of the time.

Each year, the Montreux Jazz Festival

was a marathon for my dad.

It was two weeks' intense recording,

24 hours, seven days a week,

late night jams and sound checks.

When it was first built,

it was state of the art.

Beautiful studio, tape machines,

and then the Neve analogue mixing console -

that was absolutely state of the art

and it's a beautiful-sounding desk.

Because the studio was connected to the concert stage,

everything was recorded through the studio.

So you didn't need a mobile recording truck.

The studio had its own recording room

above the control room.

A lot of big acts would rent out part of the concert hall.

Claude encouraged a lot of artists to come and record.

Persuaded, then, the record companies

that they should also encourage and send the artists

to Montreux because it was a quiet place.

They weren't going to be disturbed by press.

The first act that came was the Rolling Stones,

which wasn't a bad starting point.

I was living straight up the mountain from Montreux.

I really couldn't at that point leave Switzerland.

Ian Stewart, the piano player from the Rolling Stones,

got me in touch with Claude,

who was like an oasis of culture.

Lo and behold, the Stones came to Mountain Studios.

I think we broke that studio in, which is a great room.

Queen came in as well,

and David Bowie moved into the area to live.

He was often in.

AC/DC came to do an album.

That was fun.

HE LAUGHS

Claude realised early on that one of the ways

to put Montreux on the map

was to create live albums from the festival.

Then the name Montreux would be sitting in record bins

around the world.

Nobody knew where Montreux was.

Most people thought it was a ski resort.

Albums are turning up in the United States

that say "Bill Evans at Montreux".

Bill Evans, he recorded with the trio with Jack DeJohnette,

and the recording was released in America

and got a Grammy Award,

which was the first time a jazz record

recorded outside America got in and won.

And the jacket had a big colour picture

of the castle of Chillon,

made famous by Lord Byron, who wrote, you know,

The Prisoner of Chillon.

All the record shops around the world

suddenly heard the name Montreux.

As I was coming up,

there were already a couple of really famous

"Live in Montreux" albums.

We began to go, you know,

"What is this place, and where is it?"

We had no idea where it was.

We had no idea what it was.

But we knew that the music was awesome.

"Montrex". We didn't know how to say it.

HE LAUGHS

It's creating a mystique in the United States.

What is this Montreux place?

What is this castle?

So the jazz fans here, you know, their ears perked up

and they were equating Montreux with elegance and top-level jazz.

Everybody was talking about it.

I just woke up in the morning

and I looked out at the lake and at the mountains.

I couldn't believe I was here.

At that point, the old guys were still around.

I got to hear some of the old jazz greats

that were here from the older generation.

I mean, it was one thing playing in New York.

And then to come to Montreux - it blew my mind.

It was a wonderful surprise to receive an invitation

to go play music there.

Coming into Europe was like a fairy-tale.

Because the Europeans struck me as being even more appreciative

of our real American music.

The greatest American music is this thing called jazz.

Claude Nobs became one of the greatest producers

in the history of jazz.

How he brought the whole world to that little town of Montreux

is an unbelievable experience and accomplishment.

He provided a haven in Montreux.

I mean, Europe in many respects saved American acoustic jazz,

gave these musicians a place to earn a living,

gives them places to escape to.

Because if they didn't have that,

these American musicians would have gone into academia,

they would have disappeared into universities.

And I don't know that jazz would have survived the way it did

without Montreux's role as a major performing space.

The casino, when they rebuilt it, allowed us a much bigger capacity

so we could grow with the growth of the bands that were coming.

When the casino was newly built,

the ceiling for the stage was too low.

The backstage was very funky.

I think the striptease club at the casino

was then the regular dressing rooms.

The casino was a piece of shit.

The backstage was useless.

I mean, it had two dressing rooms

which were about two metres by three metres.

There was no stage.

Every time a show was on

the stage had to be built up in the public area.

I mean, to work there, it was a nightmare.

You could not even go with the upright bass

down the stairs because it was too narrow.

It was not made for big concerts.

I mean, I wonder how we did it -

20 years in that building!

There's something about loading in to a place like that

where you're almost walking through the audience

to get to the stage, you know?

And it's little and funky.

You really, really get the intimacy of what the music

is about in a venue like that.

And the little casino like that - it was just always magical.

You could see, touch, feel, taste,

and all the senses were stimulated.

To this day, those are some of the most exciting and fun times

I've ever had playing.

The casino experience - that was pure magic!

A lot of freedom. A lot of improvisation.

Claude's job was to make the relation

between the audience and the artist.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The artist was able to play in front

of real lovers of their music.

I saw so many people where the music is their second skin.

Claude always preferred to tell the artist,

"I give you carte blanche,"

because when the artists are touring,

they play the same thing in each city.

But Claude wanted something very exclusive.

I never wanted Montreux to be just a stopover

on a circuit of tours or, you know, different festivals

that artists would do around Europe.

I tried to get the artists to stay for more than one day -

possibly two or three days.

They found that it was a relaxing place.

It was a different atmosphere than big cities.

The record company said,

"Hey, if we go to Montreux, we can do something different.

"Different set-up."

And Norman Granz was one of the first to find out

that this would be a great place to do the jam session.

That's where we got a lot of great encounters.

You know, Count Basie with Peterson, which is a very rare encounter.

I even had one year Oscar Peterson and Herbie Hancock.

And I asked Herbie after the set they did, I said,

"How was it to play with Oscar?"

And he said, "He laid velvet under my finger."

LAUGHTER

Letting me go.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

OK. Amen.

Amen.

Claude became like an oasis for me.

Going to Claude's library and just look through

the record collection and play Meade Lux Lewis,

you name it.

Blues, especially piano blues, boogie-woogie

and barrelhouse piano blues -

I mean, this was incredible.

I think that his love for that was the fulcrum

of everything that he did.

That was his thing, man.

Muddy and Buddy Guy, they loved playing Europe,

but I have no doubt it was an uphill struggle

in places for Claude to actually get them there

and bring people that would never have been heard otherwise.

He did a hell of a job, you know? HE LAUGHS

Those old blues guys had something from the balls, from the blood,

from their whatever, which is unique.

When you hear a Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf

or Sonny Boy Williamson - all those guys -

it's something that nobody has ever been able to copy.

# I've got a gypsy woman

# Giving me advice

# I've got a gypsy woman

# Giving me advice

# I've got a whole lot of tricks

# Keep her here all night

# I'm going down to Louisiana

# To get me a mojo hand

# I'm going down to Louisiana

# To get me a mojo hand

# I'm going to have all you women

# Getcha under my command

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# But it just don't work on you...

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# My mojo working

# Got my mojo working

# But it just don't work on you. #

BAND PLAYS

Claude had a vision and he lived by it.

This passion that he had for music was the heart

of the Montreux Festival.

You have the sense of freedom and liberty

which affects the entire town.

Vous allez ou? Je vais a Montreux.

When you have all these wild hippies hanging out in sleeping bags

on this lakeside, it was a bit hard to take at first.

So that was a bit of a culture clash.

Hashish and LSD, and the image was really shocking.

People were not necessarily happy about that.

Anybody who had any criticism of Claude,

and there were probably plenty who did,

it was either born out of jealousy

or the fact that there were always going to be people

who didn't want their town overpopulated

for a couple of weeks of crazy time.

Claude is not representing the Swiss culture or behaviour,

because he was too much.

Claude knew since the beginning that he was not

going to be the friend of everyone in the area.

When we opened the new convention centre,

two guys came to me and said, "Mr Nobs, follow us."

They had a police car.

And they showed me a pink paper, saying, "You're under arrest."

I said, "What for? What did I do wrong?"

"Why you had an affair with some younger guys?"

I said, "What do you mean, 'younger guys'?"

"They were not 20."

Claude being gay was vulnerable to being set-up

with a rendezvous in a hotel,

and then, you know, a detective and a photographer burst in.

And then that was the scandal

that the elders in Montreux perpetuated.

Some people find out that I was gay,

but I was very much, you know, still hiding.

I don't go to parade.

I am what I am, and that's the way I am.

And that's it.

SIRENS BLARE

They said, "You're under arrest.

"You have to go to prison."

In Switzerland, unless you could prove that you were innocent,

they could put you in jail as long as they wanted.

And they take my clothes away,

and they give me a toothbrush

and they give me a razor to commit suicide.

In the meantime, in Montreux, people heard about it.

All the newspaper headlines was

"The Pope of Rock arrested."

All over Switzerland, all around the world.

And there was a petition circulating in Montreux,

signed by hundreds of people, to free me.

This is bullshit.

The day I got freed, Ahmet calls me.

He said, "Claude, fuck all of this," you know?

"You come and work for us. We want you.

"We don't give a shit who you sleep with," you know?

"I mean, that's your affair.

"So just split from Montreux,

"come and work with us."

And that was very touching.

I said, no, I just wanted to carry on, to show that...

..you know, my private life's my private life. It's my affair.

Claude being gay, at that time, that was very complicated.

But, of course, he could have escaped

and just lived in a big city.

The love of his hometown was stronger than that,

and he decided to stay.

Instead of escaping,

he just brought the people who interest him home.

I mean, he could've gone and worked anywhere in the world,

that's for sure.

In '73, when Nesuhi said,

"I would like to have somebody represent WEA in Europe,"

he made it as a condition that, yeah, he would do it,

but it would have to be in Montreux.

Claude - of course, he had his own ego,

which is normal,

but he really did this for the town where he was born.

I think we have to give him this particular credit.

What it meant to Claude and how much he had to fight

to establish this festival

and to keep it going after a very ugly,

manipulated scandal was incredible.

There is Claude Nobs - one in a million. One in a million.

But just being around him, he was really a man

who had his own way of looking at life.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

Au revoir. Ciao, merci.

Jackie?

Yes? Do you have Barclays changed number in Geneva?

Sorry? Barclay - the changed number in Geneva?

Er...

It was 1974, beginning of July.

I'm living in Montreux.

I'm teaching French literature.

And Claude and Nesuhi came to me and said,

"Well, Claude needs an assistant.

"What do you think?"

I needed somebody, and a friend of mine told me about

this girl who speaks English, and she's very nice.

This is how I met Claude.

I was like, "I have no idea how I can help.

"But do you know what? I'll give you six months and we'll see."

And it lasted 35 years.

At that time, Claude was still living down in Territet

in an apartment.

Next to the kitchen,

there was this little couple of rooms.

And we were just three of us.

It was Daniel Wihler, who was doing the accounting,

Claude and I.

I did the tour with Bette Midler, with AC/DC,

with the Stones,

and then with the other Warner groups.

You know, with Paul Simon, with Neil Young.

And this was heavy stuff to do

because I was alone and Jackie was in the office.

It was a two-man operation.

Now this business has become business,

but at the time

I would have not used the word music business

the way we intend it now.

It was still done by a lot of people who were passionate about music,

and everything was...

I wouldn't say amateur,

because obviously we had a job to do,

but compared to what it has become,

it would look amateur, that's for sure.

Who does the microphones?

Could I please see you?

There's too much reverb in this.

It's too much...

Oh, I see.

# Down, down, down. #

I mean, Claude will always stay

somebody who opened a whole different world for me.

Was it easy to work with him?

Certainly not.

If you make the mistake to be afraid of him,

boy, he would eat you alive and spit the bones for breakfast.

I mean, he was not a tyrant,

but he was somebody who knew what he wanted,

who had more ideas flying in one minute

than some people in their whole lives.

One thing I learned extremely quickly

once I started working with Claude,

there was one word you just could not use,

and that was,

"No, it's not possible."

"What do you mean, 'It's not possible?'

" 'Everything is possible.' "

Because he had that enthusiasm.

I mean, he would sweep you off your feet.

That's the only way I can function,

is to say yes or no quickly.

And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And if I'm right, I'm right.

It's a big puzzle, you know,

and you have to put all the pieces together.

I don't want just to be a big machine

where the control is pretty much lost.

It was a big challenge to work for him

because he was very demanding and he had no limits.

You know? For him, it was, "everything is possible".

That was his sort of mantra.

And he just went for it.

Claude loved chaos because it's an adventure.

I'm sure he was astonished himself sometimes

that it actually worked out.

SHE LAUGHS

Music first. A good concert.

That was his first aim.

Etta James!

For the first time in Europe, Etta James!

APPLAUSE

Hi!

CROWD: Hi!

Hi!

Hi!

I can't hear you! Hi!

Hi!

All right!

# If you disrespect everybody that you run into

# Yeah

# How in the world do you expect anybody to respect you?

# When you don't give a damn about the man with the Bible in his hand

# Just get out of here and let the gentleman do his thing

# Respect yourself

# Respect yourself

# Respect yourself, yeah

# Worried for your love

# If you don't respect yourself

# Ain't nobody gonna give a good goddamn

# No, no, no, no...

# Talk about the forever dead

# It won't stop the air pollution

# Put your hand over your mouth when you cough

# That'll help the solution

# Don't give a good goddamn

# About the man with the Bible in his hand

# Oh, oh, oh

# Just get out of the way and let the gentleman do his thing

# Respect yourself

# Respect yourself

# Respect yourself

# Respect yourself

# If you don't respect yourself

# Ain't nobody gonna give a good goddamn

# No, no, no, no... #

All these bands became so famous.

So we grew with them, and Claude was very good at communication,

branding the festival.

The festival was part of the internationalisation

of the name of Montreux.

# Iya

# Iya

# Iya. #

When you went to Montreux,

you realised that you were part of this enormous community.

And all your little preconceptions about race,

you had to let them go

and just really enjoy the mixing of cultures.

The festival was his child and it was his sandbox.

Everybody was invited to bring their own shovel

and their own bucket, you know? HE LAUGHS

Release ourselves towards the skies.

Travelling in your rhythm, sounds and colours,

atmospheric highs,

infinite vibrations through finite minds.

Expressing expressions of ultra super love,

vibrations,

time, space, evolutionary.

Check this out now.

Christ, Christ, infinite, divine in nature,

all related to the first great source

and universe centre of paradise.

# From Africa to both the Americas

# North and Latin

# A jungle drum was brought

# And got the white God to get in

# A pagan dance until he had no other chance

# Unless the sin

# Yes, the sin

# Of black and white, day and night

# Soul and mind magic

# Woo!

# The European Goddess fainted under jungle drum's sound

# Yeah, she fainted

# She was fertilised by some afro God

# While on the ground

# So the begotten sons as samba, mambo, rumba, rhythm 'n' blues

# Ah!

# Became the ancestrals of what today we call rock and roll

# Rock and roll is magic, baby

# Rock and roll is mixture... #

The Montreux Jazz Festival was like a laboratory

where people create alchemy,

create miracles and blessings before your eyes.

Claude was Merlin.

He was the Merlin of jazz festivals.

I really believe that he's a big part

of how the musicians from these different worlds

got together.

Because he gave them the format for that to happen

and created situations where they would coexist.

I think that it's great to dip into each other's

nationalistic reservoirs

and appreciated the differences in each other.

People socially and creatively like to come together

to mingle and merge the diversified cultures.

And that's what's great about it. It's all gumbo.

I call it global gumbo.

Everybody in the world wants to play this festival.

It's just the most amazing evolution I've ever seen.

The end result is the audience being happy,

the artist being happy.

And you get this sort of great, you know, atmosphere,

which is very unique to Montreux.

There's no security around, no barrier.

It's not like the rock and roll thing where the artist

is, like, in a cage onstage and the audience is way back.

It's like a real big club.

And it has to be a festival, it has to be a big fiesta.

# Maajo, maajo

# Maajo, maajo, maajo... #

Give the creativity to the art.

That's my deepest respect,

is the artists,

that they have a place which is not just a gig

on a set around Europe or around the world,

and they can expand and do different things and invite friends there.

"Come on, come with me and we'll do something together."

And it started with the idea that they are going to do

a masterpiece immediately,

but maybe it's going to happen.

And when Queen was living in Montreux,

and David Bowie also,

I did a dinner at my house one day, a barbecue,

and at midnight I said,

"Why don't you go to Mountain Studio and do something together?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you're here. Just go and do some work."

They went to the studio and they came back two hours later

and said, "OK, we did it."

"What is this?" "Under Pressure."

# Pressure pushing down on me

# Pressing down on you

# No man ask for

# Under pressure... #

One, two, three, four!

# You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

# You may find yourself in another part of the world

# You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

# You may find yourself in a beautiful house

# With a beautiful wife

# You may ask yourself

# "Well, how did I get here?"

# Letting the days go by

# Let the water hold me down

# Letting the days go by

# Water flowing underground

# Into the blue again

# After the money's gone

# Once in a lifetime

# Water flowing underground

# You may ask yourself

# "How do I work this?"

# You may ask yourself

# "Where is that large automobile?"

# You may ask yourself

# "This is not my beautiful house."

# You may tell yourself

# "This is not my beautiful wife."

# Letting the days go by

# Let the water hold me down

# Letting the days go by

# Water flowing underground

# Into the blue again

# After the money's gone

# Once in a lifetime

# Water flowing underground

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was... #

A meeting of the minds is the exact way

of saying what Montreux was.

Musicians stayed for five days sometimes,

just because they loved the place so much.

It's a beautiful scenery.

The artists could be amongst themselves.

You wanted to spend time there

and you had time to get acquainted.

I was bumped into by Bob Dylan cycling.

HE LAUGHS It's kind of like a membership.

If there was a hole in Europe on the tour,

they all came here.

They hung out here because it was a nice place. Private.

Claude invited everybody to his house,

so it gave the artists,

who were the biggest artists of these years,

familiarity with the place, and they liked it.

Claude would be more than happy to have them

for dinner or lunch.

We would take them up in the mountains.

You know, it was just like sharing.

And when you have that kind of relation with artists,

you trust each other.

It gave us that very special possibility

of meeting them in a totally different way.

I remember one evening we were having dinner

at Claude's place, just a couple of us.

The door rang, so, you know, I went to open the door,

and there was Van Morrison with his girlfriend.

They had decided to go on a holiday to Switzerland.

And, of course, if you go to Switzerland,

you go and say hello to Claude.

He was like a walking encyclopaedia of jazz and blues.

So that's how I connected with Claude.

I was kind of burnt out, so I was just taking a break.

I think Montreux was the only gig that I had booked.

At that point, I didn't have a band.

There were other musicians there

who sort of came to the rescue.

Pete Wingfield and Jerome Rimson

and Dallas Taylor.

So that's how that came together.

And we had a bit of a rehearsal

and then did the gig in the evening.

# I'm kicking off from centre field

# A question of being down for the game

# The one shot deal don't matter

# The other one's all the same

# Oh! My friend, I see you

# Want you to come through

# And you're standing in the shadows

# Where the street lights all turn blue

# Leaving Pan American

# Suitcase in her hand

# Her brothers and her sisters

# They're all on Atlantic sand

# But you're screaming through the alley way

# I hear the lonely cry

# Why can't you?

# And her batteries are corroded

# And her hundred watt bulb just blew

# La, la, la, la, la, la

# Hu, hu, hu

# La, la, la, la, la

# La, la, la, la, la, la

# La, la, la, la, la... #

First he had a very little apartment in Territet,

but there were extraordinary parties there.

Then he bought a little chalet up in Caux.

When he bought the chalet,

it was not for him.

It was to share.

That's all it was about.

He built his new chalet

not even 100 metres away from the old chalet.

But the old chalet became the archive and the museum,

and Claude's new chalet became his private home.

Part of his joy, really, was to show off his chalet

and his collection of stuff.

The only thing that was important for Claude

was having people around him.

Cooking for them -

that's when he was the happiest.

He was such a connector.

It was really nice to share this camaraderie backstage

and enjoy music and friendship behind the scenes,

sharing the community spirit in Montreux.

What Claude gave everybody was an experience.

And that experience was born not out of expertise

and entrepreneurial calculation.

It was born out of being a fan.

His passion was deep.

I mean, he loved music.

He loved musicians to the death.

His whole life,

his existence revolved around the festival,

music and musicians.

He made his dreams come true.

He made lots of people's dreams come true.

What a dream to have,

to take such a risk, you know,

for love and unbelievable passion.

And now I'd like to thank everybody.

Merci beaucoup.

But now, chante avec moi, James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James Brown! James Brown!

James... James Brown!

..Brown!

Thank you!

# Try me

# Try me

# Try me

# Try me

# Darling, tell me

# "I need you."

# Whoa, now, come on.

# Try me

# Try me

# Oh, baby, try me

# Try me

# And your love

# Will always be true

# I need you

# Oh, yeah

# Sure enough, I do

# Hold me

# Hold me

# Baby, hold me

# Hold me

# I want you right here

# By my side

# Whoa, now, come on

# Hold me

# Hold me

# Oh, baby, hold me

# Hold me

# And your love

# We won't hide

# Whoa, I need you

# I need you

# Oh!

# Sure enough, I do

# Yeah!

# Oh, yeah!

# Me

# You

# Ooh! #