The play that changed my life: “Waiting for Godot revealed to me that less is more – it made me fearless” | platform

ShUntil I was twelve I was in the French school system, where the theater was Molière, Corneille, and Racine. Going to the theater means The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady. Then it was decided that I would move to school in England. So, at the age of 13, I arrived at Westminster School. It was 1968, and the world opened up.

I went to see a school production of Waiting for Godot in French in a small room with a small stage, and I was sitting in the back. Musically, I was pretty sophisticated – I already knew all the psychedelic music that was going on. I’ve seen the Mothers of Invention. I’ve seen a lot, a lot, a lot. But I didn’t know there were such things. I suddenly realized that, as in music, there was a whole new world out there.

I don’t know how good the French were, but it didn’t really matter what they were saying. It was very abstract, vivid and lively, with a kind of pent-up tension. And then, of course, it all blows up with the arrival of Pozo and Lucky. The show was presented by the older boys including Nigel Planer as Lucky. He was such a presence on stage. And he has to deliver this extraordinary kind of baroque monologue. In French. It was amazing.

I liked the idea that nothing has to happen, you know? This thing happens and then it goes on and on, and then you have a little kid at the end explaining that Godot’s not coming today. She talked about time, work, and plot. Or its lack thereof.

We’ve learned all these rules about what theater is, but none of them apply here. I was completely blown away by how little was going on. And much later, when I was mixing records, I was trying to turn them into something similar. When a new instrument came along, I would intentionally pull out the other instruments and isolate them. I really heard that piano or that guitar or whatever. This feeling of less is more…I learned that with Godot.

However, it has a story. It really is. I mean, they’re fully realized characters. They are alive, Vladimir and Estragon, in love with each other, like an old married couple. I don’t know what my life would have been like if I hadn’t gone to this show. To that school and that show after that. It awakened something inside me.

We were let out on Saturday afternoons and I started going to matinees at the Royal Court every time there was a new production. So you’ll see plays by Pinter, John Osborne and Simon Gray. But the gateway to all of this was Godot.

I remember very little of the performance itself, except that I know it was never boring – it kept me on the edge of my seat. What I took away is that there don’t have to be any rules. It definitely influenced the way I worked with the bands I signed with Ze Records. I even had waitresses [of Christmas Wrapping fame] Write a song about “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” I just told them: “I want a song with that title.”

I think it made me braver too, because you don’t have to worry about failure if you buy into Beckett’s worldview.

After his Ze music label folded in the 1980s, Michael Zylka spent 35 years in the energy industry before starting Ze Books in 2019.