Bob Moog
interview by Skylaire Alfvegren
SECONDS: In 1973, Moog Music became a division of Norland Music. At that time did the name 'Moog' became a trademark belonging to Norland and is that why you've been working under the name Big Briar since 1978?
MOOG: 'Moog' was a trademark for us since the Sixties. The whole company was sold to Norland and so the trademark went along with that. Norland remained in ownership of it until they sold the company in 1984. Yes, that's why I use the name Big Briar.
SECONDS: I've read you're planning to release new products under the name Moog.
MOOG: That's right. What's happened since 1984 is that Norland's gone out of business and the people they sold Moog Music to in 1984 have also gone out of business. The new owners have not used the Moog trademark for many years. No Moog synthesizers have been made, no Moog Music products at all have been made or advertised. That puts the Moog trademark in a status of having been abandoned. Once it's been abandoned, anyone who wants to can apply for registration of the name. At the present time, there are three separate organizations who are applying for the use of the name. I am one and there are two other people trying to get the name — as a matter of fact, I'm suing one of them now. We have a formal lawsuit in process against a company called Moog Music Of Cincinnati.
SECONDS: Have they been releasing products under the Moog name?
MOOG: Yes. When you apply for the name, the trademark office allows you to use the name with a little 'TM' next to it, which means your application is in process. If you are awarded the registration of the trademark, then you can put an 'R' in a circle after it. That's a little lesson in trademark law that I'm not sure that I knew a few years ago but I sure know now. Our position is that nobody else has the right to use it because it's my name and I'm a living person with a reputation.
SECONDS: That brings me to sort of a silly question. What is the background of the name 'Moog'?
MOOG: There's nothing exotic about it, it's just a traditional Dutch name that goes back hundreds of years.
SECONDS: At the demonstration in L.A., you mentioned The Cosmic Sounds Of The Zodiac album. What was your affiliation with it?
MOOG: In the spring of 1967, we came out to the Audio Engineering Society convention at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. We brought a modular synthesizer and that was the first time anybody on the West Coast had seen one, so there was a big buzz. Halfway through the convention, my Hollywood representative, Paul Beaver, asked if we could take the modular synthesizer out of the exhibit overnight and take it to a recording session for an album he was involved in. I said sure and went with him. That was one of the recording sessions for Cosmic Sounds and I got to hear Paul Beaver make the sounds on that modular Moog synthesizer for the album. I'm one-hundred-percent sure those are the first Moog sounds that ever made it on an album made on the West Coast.
[Describe this record]
SECONDS: Have you ever done any record production?
MOOG: No. I'm the instrument builder, the tool maker. I've gotten credits for this or that on a lot of records but I've never actually played anything. It's not my schtick.
SECONDS: Are you still in touch with Wendy Carlos?
MOOG: Yes.
SECONDS: My editor at this magazine has interviewed her and he seems to think that she downplays your role in her early records.
MOOG: Well, she may very well downplay my role. I built the instrument for her, but I didn't help her make the music. She had some supernatural powers, she knew immediately how to use it. She didn't need me at all.
SECONDS: Have you found that some people are really adept with the Moog, that they've got a sixth sense?
MOOG: Absolutely. Certainly Keith Emerson was like that. He didn't understand the electronics behind it but he'd fool around with an instrument that you put in front of him, get a sound he likes and ten seconds later come up with a whole way of using the sound that was very musical.
