As a group, we can’t really be categorized, says MFÖ’s Fuat Güner

Fuat Güner -- the “F” of the long-running Turkish pop-rock band MFÖ, a.k.a. Mazhar-Fuat-Özkan -- is experiencing the serenity of witnessing his music just get better and better these days, despite the fact that he already has 40 years in music behind him. The group's members, who represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest twice -- in 1985 in Sweden with “Didai Didai Dai” and in 1988 in Ireland with “Sufi” -- have now been together for over three decades, though they have on occasion worked separately, releasing solo albums and appearing in movies, TV series and commercials and even hosting TV game shows. Among them, Güner has always remained in the background, rarely making solo appearances without the group. In an interview with Today's Zaman, Güner, now producing a new program for TRT FM, explains what lies behind the trio's success.

What is it that makes you feel like you are having a kind of a second golden period in life?

Well, we have recently been a very much sought after group, and really, people have just been showing us so much love and interest. Usually, as the years pass, fans start to diminish, but with us, the opposite has happened. Just think, some of our fans come to our concerts with their children now. That's why we're really looking at this period as our second golden era.

How have you managed to keep adding new listeners to your fan base?

Well, with each passing day, we play and sing better. If your performance is good and the sounds you are making are great, listeners can feel this immediately. The moment a listener exclaims, “Wow, they're playing really well!” it all comes around. We enjoy very much playing and making good music. In fact, there have been many times when even we exclaimed amongst ourselves on stage, [saying,] “Wow, that went very well!” We were recently in Ankara for a concert. There were around 30,000 people there. We appeared at a concert in Central Park in New York, and there were 5,000 concertgoers with another 1,000 stuck outside. People told us that that was the first time they had seen such an enormous gathering there. After that, the concert organizer in New York called us and proposed that we do concerts in Los Angeles, Washington and Boston. This is also what makes us say we are experiencing a resurgence, a second golden era, so to speak.

So can we say that as a group, you are not really worried about capturing what is current?

Well, that has never been our concern. Our songs, at the time they came out, were 10 or 20 years ahead of where Turkish [music] was. When we used reggae samples in our song “Deli Deli Kulakları Küpeli,” there was nothing like that in Turkey at the time. When writing our songs, we were always interested in finding pieces that we would like ourselves, that definitely had artistic value and that people would love. So when we play concerts, we find ourselves playing around 20 of our hits. … We get great pleasure when playing music, and people see that we are enjoying ourselves as we play, so they enter into this mood along with us.

Difficult situations can emerge in relationships over time. Is it the maturity that the passing of years has granted you that has allowed you to repair these types of situations?

Well, MFÖ is a group wherein the members have always showed each other tolerance and understanding during each others' difficult times. So despite all these years, we are still together. When someone in our group says something, the others don't take it personally.

Were there any periods in your life when you felt limited in a musical sense?

There have been such situations when I felt pressed or limited. [When MFÖ was first formed] we went to Germany and did a recording in a studio there. [Upon returning to Turkey] a record label owner here listened to our recording and told me, “Son, you three aren't even able to sing in harmony!” So, it was one of those times when you find yourself in a situation where you have to negotiate with people who have less musical knowledge than you. … You know, Turkey is a country where [solo] singers are more valued and [the concept of] a music group never really catches on. … And the fact that a group of 35-year-old, balding men were loved so much by people is sort of a miracle. They loved our songs. We never ruined the [musical] profile we set for ourselves. We have always done what we thought was right and the music that we loved. We offered a sampling of world music to our listeners, samples from rap, from reggae. Actually, “Ali Desidero” is Turkey's first example of rap music. So we passed over those bridges; we are really a group without a particular category of music. We really can't answer when people ask us what sort of music we make.

When you see street musicians, do you stop by and listen?

I do, and if they play well, I take out money and give it to them. I learned what it meant to be a street musician when I was in Paris. There, you must sing the songs that people love. I had a great friend who played music there in the metro. His name was Sadık. He and I would go and play music on the metros. We would learn great pieces, play them and the money would rain down on us! Playing street music is a great way to rid yourself of embarrassment and shyness.

As MFÖ, you are signing off on a bunch of separate projects. But it seems as though you are the name in the group that prefers to stay in the background the most.

Doing separate projects actually helps us as a group. If your counterpart tells you, “You shouldn't do that,” this starts to create stress, and this also suppresses people's own special talents from emerging, which is of course not a good thing. Mazhar [Alanson] was originally an actor from the State Theaters [DT]. And Özkan [Uğur] has this natural acting talent. Now, can I really tell Özkan not to act in series or commercials? In fact, both Mazhar and Özkan are very talented actors. I have tried my hand in this arena, too, but I just had too much extra going on. In fact, I recently received an offer to act in a TV series, but I turned it down due to too much else happening. I have my own company, and I also own a recording studio. We make albums there with new talents.

What are your complaints or objections when it comes to the music sector in Turkey?

I object to just one type of music being made and to the practice of trying to imitate over and over again something which has become popular. I object to people not trying to introduce new ideas, or not trying to “make inventions,” if you will. … You have to widen your horizons, take a look at what is happening. I am not saying people should alter their characters or their principles, but you need to learn, examine and make your own decisions. I even listen to music I don't like. But nobody these days is trying to make good music; rather, they try to come up with interesting lyrics and create slogans. Unfortunately, many songs these days seem to resemble one another.

A man who has achieved spiritual satisfaction

“There's something I'll never forget: I was all alone on the eighth floor of a hospital in Boston, a floor where there was no one else under the age of 80. I was to have an operation the next day, and if I had died, no one would have even known. I like to take care of things on my own, not to have anyone be bothered. While I was at that hospital, I wrote the following on a piece of paper to myself: ‘We are no longer able to see the small happiness in life because of all the time we spend pursuing great hopes and dreams.’ And it's true, our ambition drives us to pursue certain things, and in the process, we forget to appreciate smaller pleasures and joys. There is nothing in my life which, if I were to die now, I would look back and regret and say, ‘I wish I had done that.’ Well, maybe I would just have wanted to see MFÖ do something on the world music market.”