Derek Bailey and the story of free improvisation - Ben Watson

This outstanding biography of the cult guitar player will likely cause you to abandon everything you thought you knew about jazz improvisation, post-punk and the avant-garde. Derek Bailey was at the top of his profession as a dance band and record-session guitarist when, in the early 1960s, he began playing an uncompromisingly abstract form of music. Today his anti-idiom of 'Free Improvisation' has become the lingua franca of the 'avant' scene, with Pat Metheny, John Zorn, David Sylvian and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore among his admirers.