Stewart Lee on Derek Bailey

Pioneering improvisational guitarist Derek Bailey was born in Sheffield on 29th January 1930.  Outside of his work as a session musician, he made and released a mind-boggling array of music both solo and in collaboration with the likes of Tony Oxley, Gavin Bryars, John Stevens, Evan Parker, Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, Eugene Chadbourne, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Lacy, Wadada Leo Smith, John Zorn, Ruins, Keiji Haino, Thurston Moore, David Sylvian and so very many more.

The music he made will perhaps always repel far more people than it attracts. It can be an intensely challenging listen but equally also a rewarding one that eschews conventional sounds and structures breaking free of conventional constraints of 'musicality'.

The comedian Stewart Lee has long been a champion of Bailey's music, even choosing him as his specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind in 2009 (see below), and in 2025 he discussed his love of Bailey on a, let's say tetchy, episode of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives, which he subsequently wrote about for The Guardian

Read it here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/15/petula-clarks-downtown-stewart-lee-improv-guitar-hero-derek-bailey

Bailey died on Christmas Day 2005 following a diagnosis of motor neurone disease, which he had, rather beautifully, turned into a creative tool that forced him to adapt his playing.  20 years on his impact isn't and will probably never be fully appreciated, but it can be seen to have spread from experimental collaborations with like minded souls in the tiniest of backroom venues to inspiring musicians with global reputations and to who knows where in the future.

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