BeatRoute Magazine AB Edition November 2018

Soon after Malcolm Cecil had turned 30 years old, he found
himself leaving his native Britain in search of a better
environment for his ailing lungs. South Africa had a warmer
climate, but apartheid made it miserable. When he set sail to leave
the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt erupted in June, 1967 Cecil
diverted course and found himself on safer shores tinkering away
with recording studios in Los Angeles.
The time between his years growing up in London, England to
his arrival in the United States is a long convoluted and incredible
affair that involves Cecil working on rather hush-hush projects with
the British military while cradling his love for jazz as a top-seeded
bass player. In a nutshell, while developing sensitive radar systems for
aircraft bombers, he was also an integral part of Britain’s burgeoning
jazz scene in the early ‘60s with residencies in the best clubs, playing
on a number of significant recordings, making TV appearances even
sharing the stage with Miles Davis.
Over the course of an hour-long phone conversation from his
home in upstate New York, it’s no surprise that this jazz intellect and
electronic whiz would become the mastermind behind the greatest
grandmaster flash synthesizers of them all — TONTO.
Cecil, now in his early 80s, is clearly a gifted storyteller who
leaves no stone unturned when tracing the origins through to the
end point of his adventures. Clever, witty and extremely articulate,
TONTO is largely a reflection of Cecil’s own complex personality
and imagination. While the seeds to TONTO’s development extend
far back into Cecil’s inquisitive nature as a young child, California is
where it all starts to take shape.
“I spent a year building studios in L.A., putting the first 16
track studio in for Pat Boone,” recalls Cecil. “My reputation
went around… the Record Plant (in New York) got a hold of me
and I had just been turned down for a third time for my Green
Card. ‘So okay,’ I thought. ‘I better start heading back east
towards England,’” chuckles Cecil. On route the Record Plant
people asked if he’d stop in and look at some equipment that
needed a “crack maintenance engineer.”
The business mind behind the Record Plant was Chris Stone, an
MBA who saw fields of green in the music industry as it started to
flourish. There was some financial hijinks going on behind the scenes
at the studio that Cecil helped to stabilize. In return, Stone sponsored
Cecil allowing him to obtain legit employment in the States. It also
led him to a fresh new studio called Mediasound where the already
famous Moog synthesizer sat off in a corner not fully utilized but
tweaking Cecil’s attention.
“I noticed there was a car ignition switch on it. All I need is a quick
lead around that (to start it up), but I also have morals, ethics and
standards. Anybody who puts an ignition switch on that doesn’t
want somebody jumping it. Hands off, just wait. And so I did.”
Soon after Cecil describes his first encounter with Robert Margouleff,
who he would form an uneasy relationship with to transform
the idle Moog into TONTO.
“I was in the control room, fixing the board, and a guy walks in
with his hair down his back and a fur coat on, clearly his father was a
rich fellow here. That was Bob Margouleff.”
Wealthy Margouleff was, coming from an affluent and influential
family in Long Island, NY. Cecil found him somewhat annoying: “He
was one of those entitled kids, he had the attitude to fit. He walks
over to me and says, ‘You must be the new tech… Tell me, do you
know how to run this thing (the control board)?’ I says, ‘I better, I
have to fix it.’”
Cecil learned that Margouleff, even though he was the resident
studio “synthesist,” was regulated to only one channel on the board
that produced sound effects and nothing else. Frustrated, Margouleff
asked if Cecil would teach him how to run the entire board,
to which Cecil asked if Margouleff could operate the Moog sitting it
the corner.
“I better,” said Margouleff, “I own it!” The two shook on an agreement
not only to teach each other how to run the equipment, but
also to partner on a venture that saw the Moog blossom into a
much more sophisticated beast.
TONTO, The Original New Timbral Orchestra, translates into
an orchestrated sound generator that produces new and different
musical qualities. Cecil and Margouleff ran with that fast and
furious salvaging other Moog synthesizers, building and modifying
circuit boards while incorporating other synthesizers including
ARPs and Oberheims. They housed everything in giant wood
panel cabinets stacked on top of each other and acquired electrical
wiring from decommissioned Boeing 747s to string their creation
together. TONTO grew to the portions of an expansive control
room that bore more resemblance to a NASA laboratory than it
did a musical instrument.
The duo went on to produce and record music under the
moniker of the Expanded Head Band. Their 1971 album Zero
Time certainly turned a few heads and opened some minds, most
notably Stevie Wonder who employed TONTO and its operators
on several of his recordings. The Isley Brothers, Gene Parsons,
Randy Newman, Steve Hillage and Billy Preston were a few others
who took a shine to the big, mean, weird machine.
As fascinating as TONTO was, it was also a work in process that
required a lot of care and attention. Cecil clearly remembers when
the end of his partnership with Margouleff came about during a
live broadcast on the ‘70s TV music show, The Midnight Special.
“We were in there for 24 hours (previous to the broadcast)
tuning, blooping and bleeping, getting everything ready for a
live performance with Billy Preston. Everything went fine during
rehearsal. Then they brought in the audience, turned on the stage
lights that hit TONTO. Well, TONTO is black, an absorbent surface.
The Moogs went sharp, the ARPs went flat, the Oberheims went
sideways and I was running around trying to keep it in tune, and
Bob is panicking… his hands were shaking like a leaf.”
The incident was so traumatizing that after the show Cecil
claims Margouleff said, “That’s it I don’t want ever to do this again.
TONTO is nothing but a big ol’ white elephant, I don’t want to be
part of it.” To which Cecil replied, “Alright, I’ll buy you out.”
When he speaks of variable frequency oscillators or advanced
musical scales Malcolm Cecil’s mind goes off like a mathematical
amusement park. He probes and penetrates these landscapes with
pure pleasure and delight — it’s the stuff TONTO is made of. When
asked how he conceived of new sonic textures when nothing like
that had existed before, Cecil resorts to Hegel and his philosophy
on thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
“What is the antithesis, what is the opposite of sound? Silence!
And I searched the world for silence, I’ve been searching for it for a
very long time.”
In so doing, Cecil found himself locked deep inside a deprivation
tank thinking that this is where no sound at all would finally exist.
But lying there waiting for the pumps filling the tank to shut down,
he realized, “Wait a minute, those aren’t pumps, that’s my heart.
That’s me, and all the sounds in my body. Well then, there ain’t no
silence in the real world. So where is it? It’s in your imagination. And
if silence only exists in your imagination, then out of your imagination
must come the new sounds.”
That logic is the masterplan that guides TONTO’s design and
reason to be.
“What is its purpose?” says Cecil. “Its purpose is not to just make
new sounds. Its purpose is make new rhythms, to make completely
new and different music to play in different scales. The limit is
your imagination. TONTO is not the synthesis of new sounds, but
the synthesis of new music. Its capabilities are limited only by the
person who’s using it.”
“What is the antithesis,
what is the opposite
of sound? Silence!
And I searched the
world for silence,
I’ve been searching
for it for a very
long time.”
Malcolm Cecil will share more of his mind and
imagination during TONTO Week and the
National Music Centre from Nov. 14-18.
JUCY BEATROUTE • NOVEMBER 2018 | 29