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[00:00:00] If you have interesting people to talk to, right?
[00:00:15] I think that's the big thing.
[00:00:21] I do.
[00:00:22] I would have those conversations regardless of whether we were taping them or not.
[00:00:28] Those are things I ask questions about.
[00:00:30] I really want to know the answer to.
[00:00:35] What you're talking about is called First Look and we do it upon the release of every Blue
[00:00:41] Note album, talk to the artist.
[00:00:45] What I like about it is that we discovered that if you can get people to listen for
[00:00:51] five minutes, you're doing well.
[00:00:55] So it's a condensed conversation.
[00:00:59] I really try to extract the most salient questions that I personally would like to
[00:01:05] know the answer to about those records.
[00:01:08] And so it's interesting.
[00:01:11] I know you've known Iggy for a long time now that, you know, you can really hone in
[00:01:18] on the right questions to ask somebody when you know them that well.
[00:01:21] Well, sometimes when you know somebody, well, you already know the answer to the
[00:01:24] question.
[00:01:25] That's the hard part.
[00:01:26] You take for granted.
[00:01:28] And then you're either re-asking something that you already know the answer to,
[00:01:34] which I think you can hear that in an interview when it's not genuine curiosity.
[00:01:45] So sometimes it's better to start with a blank slate.
[00:01:52] What do you think?
[00:01:52] What have you found?
[00:01:54] Actually, a big part of the reason why I do the show specifically is it's longer
[00:01:58] form.
[00:01:59] And I find that it helps to have a previous relationship with somebody when
[00:02:06] you want to have a very conversational interview, which the podcast format
[00:02:10] allows.
[00:02:11] But I can also appreciate coming into a conversation.
[00:02:14] It sounds like you're not doing much actual editing post-conversations.
[00:02:19] So you actually have to do the editing or the pairing down yourself when
[00:02:23] you're putting together the questions.
[00:02:26] Yeah, absolutely right.
[00:02:27] I have just some editing involved, but...
[00:02:35] Yeah.
[00:02:36] Yes.
[00:02:39] You know what?
[00:02:40] You're an interviewer.
[00:02:41] You know, sometimes the answer is just yes and then you move on and ask the next one.
[00:02:45] I was watching the Wayne Shorter conversation that he did as well.
[00:02:49] I was thinking about it because I know that you had said that one of his
[00:02:54] albums arrived in your life at a very important time.
[00:02:59] And I get the sense, really set you on the path that you're on now.
[00:03:05] When you eventually meet those people that inspired you so much, do you
[00:03:11] bring that up to them?
[00:03:12] Oh yeah.
[00:03:13] I think it's...
[00:03:15] I think it's one of the nicest things you can do for an artist is to let them know
[00:03:22] that the things that they worked on really impacted your life.
[00:03:30] I'm kind of...
[00:03:34] I'm incredulous when people come up to me.
[00:03:36] People come up to me a lot about, I can't make you love me, the Bonnie
[00:03:40] Raitz song that I produced and strangers come up to me even now.
[00:03:45] You know, 30 some years after that.
[00:03:48] And they'll say, man, I have such a powerful record.
[00:03:54] My wife just kept playing it over and over and over again.
[00:03:58] I finally had to take it away from her.
[00:04:02] And we had...
[00:04:02] It was too powerful.
[00:04:03] Yeah.
[00:04:04] We had to talk it out.
[00:04:05] And you know, that song straightened our lives out.
[00:04:09] And it's kind of hard to believe, but it stays with you.
[00:04:15] It means something.
[00:04:16] That's why you do it.
[00:04:19] You do it to communicate something to strangers.
[00:04:24] And you hope that it's going to have some kind of positive impact on their lives.
[00:04:31] But particularly if you don't go out and play the songs live
[00:04:36] and all you do is work on the records in the studio, you're in isolation
[00:04:42] and you have no idea of the effect of it.
[00:04:46] Now I know that that Bonnie Raitt album sold like seven or eight million records.
[00:04:52] So sometimes I try to think of all those people being in one place.
[00:04:58] That's a lot of folks, you know?
[00:04:59] So...
[00:05:03] But it's still an abstract concept, but someone come up one on one.
[00:05:06] I had that opportunity the...
[00:05:10] I mean, really just last week.
[00:05:15] For next August, you know, Rick Rubin's podcast, Broken Record?
[00:05:19] As a matter of fact, that was one of the sources that I used listening to
[00:05:23] great conversation with you.
[00:05:25] Yeah, well, I'm going to fill in for him for four weeks in August.
[00:05:30] And we're talking to...
[00:05:32] It's part of a celebration of Blue Notes, the 85th anniversary.
[00:05:36] So there are four artists that we're going to interview.
[00:05:41] And one of them is Charles Lloyd, who we did the interview with last week.
[00:05:45] And he was kind of
[00:05:49] lamenting the fact that some of his music,
[00:05:56] you know, he felt got past people wasn't heard properly.
[00:06:01] And I stopped him and I said, no, you don't understand me.
[00:06:05] But because I was a bit of a fan of his since the 1960s.
[00:06:09] I saw him when I was 15 years old.
[00:06:12] I saw his group with Keith Jarrett and Jack Degenerate play in Detroit.
[00:06:17] And that music really had such a huge impact on my life.
[00:06:23] And in a number of ways, man, you know, not the least of which is the most subtle,
[00:06:31] which is that there's something in his tone that's soothing and calming and grounding.
[00:06:41] And I can't count the number of times that I put on one of his records to make myself feel good again.
[00:06:52] And I said, so if I'm out there and that's happened to me,
[00:06:59] I mean, I know Forest Flower sold a million records.
[00:07:02] So there are other people who you've had that effect on.
[00:07:05] You may not meet them.
[00:07:06] They may not get the chance to tell you this.
[00:07:11] And we both got pretty choked up during the interview.
[00:07:15] I don't know if that will come through.
[00:07:17] I haven't heard it back yet, but it meant a lot to me to be able to tell him that.
[00:07:23] And it meant a lot for him to hear that.
[00:07:26] He was, you know, he's 86 and reassessing his life's work and the impact it might have had.
[00:07:37] And so it, I forgot how we started talking about that.
[00:07:43] I like interviewing young and upcoming artists.
[00:07:47] I find them interesting that there's something about talking to somebody who's been through it
[00:07:51] and who's on the other side of it.
[00:07:53] Their, their insights are, I think, far better thought out.
[00:07:58] When getting back to Wayne Shorter specifically, Speak No Evil was the album.
[00:08:07] And I'm curious in that specific instance, I mean, I think probably everybody listening to this
[00:08:12] and most people have had some piece of music that they feel has changed them in some way.
[00:08:19] But what did it, what did it really mean for a record like that to effectively alter the course of your life?
[00:08:27] I'll tell you the story.
[00:08:29] I was, I was going to the University of Michigan.
[00:08:32] I had moved to Ann Arbor this is like in 1970.
[00:08:35] I wanted to be in a band like the Stooges or the MC5.
[00:08:40] They were local bands at the time and that was something to aspire to.
[00:08:44] And they were doing something and I got what they were doing.
[00:08:48] And I wanted to be part of it as a musician.
[00:08:53] But, you know, I was in the music school and in 1970, if you were in the music school, that meant
[00:09:00] you were either in the symphony orchestra or you weren't in the music school.
[00:09:05] And that was not my orientation.
[00:09:08] Now, in retrospect, I wish I'd have stuck it out and learned more.
[00:09:11] I could have made a lot of things, eat much easier for myself if I'd just gotten some basic knowledge of theory and technique back then.
[00:09:20] So I dropped out of school and the only gig I could get was at a bowling alley in Ypsilanti, Michigan near the trailer park where Iggy grew up in fact.
[00:09:31] And we were doing like covers of Carpenter songs.
[00:09:35] It was gruesome, man.
[00:09:37] And I had this girlfriend who was just more than I could handle at 19 and I was pretty lost.
[00:09:45] So when I was feeling lost, I'd go back to my apartment, lock myself in my room and I'd play side two, Speak No Evil.
[00:09:55] And there was something about it that got me grounded.
[00:09:58] I'd put on a first track.
[00:10:00] Elvin Jones was the drummer on it.
[00:10:03] And Elvin Jones was a guy from Detroit, so he had that Motor City energy.
[00:10:10] He was like a sophisticated jazz version of the MC5.
[00:10:17] And he was just, you know, like an ounce too rambunctious for this music, which is great.
[00:10:25] And so I could relate to the energy.
[00:10:28] And then I heard on the other speaker coming, I was Herbie Hancock was a pianist on it who even at 25 understood more about harmony than maybe anyone else in music at that time.
[00:10:42] And I knew that and I could relate to that.
[00:10:47] I thought, well, you know, yeah, I'm a smart guy like Herbie.
[00:10:50] So I'm like him.
[00:10:51] But it was really Wayne who jumped out.
[00:10:54] And when I'd listened to that music, I didn't hear a guy playing a saxophone.
[00:10:59] I didn't hear technique or reeds or keys or anything.
[00:11:03] It was conversation.
[00:11:04] He was speaking to me.
[00:11:06] And what I envisioned was us walking down Main Street in Ann Arbor.
[00:11:12] And Wayne was teaching me like to stay out of the way of trouble, just to sort of duck and dive and not to be thrown off when adversity came our way.
[00:11:25] And by the time I got to the end of that record, the conversation I had with Wayne in my mind put me back on track.
[00:11:35] I remember who I was, what my dreams were, where I needed to, what I needed to do to get to that place of fulfillment of those dreams.
[00:11:48] And over time I became aware of what a powerful thing that was that he was making this music that didn't even have lyrics, you know, that could speak to me so clearly like that and help me out.
[00:12:04] And I thought, well, that's a really good way to spend your life.
[00:12:09] I'm going to remember that and try to dedicate myself to that.
[00:12:13] And I really did.
[00:12:14] I never forgot it.
[00:12:15] And by the way, I never forgot about that album either.
[00:12:18] I live, it takes me about an hour in traffic to get to the Blue Note offices from where I live.
[00:12:27] And sometimes coming back at the end of the day can be rough.
[00:12:32] And if I put that record on, which I do regularly by the time I get home, I'm good to go.
[00:12:40] That's a strong testimony to the power of music.
[00:12:44] It's interesting this idea of being in conversation with a record without any lyrics, especially as somebody who's worked with, you've worked with some of the best lyricists, including one of the probably the best lyricists of all time.
[00:12:58] It was, I'm just going to have to sing a lot of great quote.
[00:13:03] I'm going to quote you quoting Bob Dylan if I'm allowed to do that.
[00:13:09] I can't even remember which song it was, but you asked him why he was able to write that and Gates of Eden.
[00:13:19] And he said he didn't remember writing it.
[00:13:22] And that it is almost a very jazz like answer, isn't it?
[00:13:28] Of really just sort of being in that moment and channeling something.
[00:13:31] Channeling something. That was really what it was about.
[00:13:33] He said he didn't remember writing it, but he remembered moving the pencil over the paper.
[00:13:37] He just didn't know where it came from, but he knew it came from without.
[00:13:41] Which, by the way, is something I've heard from the greatest, all the greatest people I ever had the privilege to work with.
[00:13:51] Keith Richards when he's in the studio, he never says, hold it, hold it.
[00:13:55] I've got an idea.
[00:13:57] He always says, hold it, hold it incoming, incoming.
[00:14:01] The antenna goes up.
[00:14:03] Yeah, that's it.
[00:14:06] I started developing this image of a creative ether floating way out there and an artist can reach up and pull something down.
[00:14:20] That's there, but all the good stuff is at the top.
[00:14:23] So if you don't have long enough tentacles, you can't get to the good stuff and only a few people can get to it.
[00:14:31] I can't tell you exactly why certain individuals have been chosen to be the messengers of the most powerful musical elixirs.
[00:14:46] But there are definitely people who've been given this gift.
[00:14:51] Bob Dylan, you...
[00:14:53] I remember someone...
[00:14:55] I'm not going to mention the artist, but I was sitting with an artist, one time country artist who said,
[00:15:00] I just don't get Bob Dylan.
[00:15:02] He sings through his nose and I said, well, fuck man.
[00:15:05] I said, you know, not wrong, not wrong, but missing the point.
[00:15:11] Definitely.
[00:15:12] I said, you write songs, right?
[00:15:14] He said, yeah.
[00:15:15] So I played...
[00:15:16] I sat down at the piano with him and I played Times The Era changing.
[00:15:20] Now this guy took an old English ballad form and instead of just telling a story, tells a story.
[00:15:29] It's not about the 1960s and, you know, getting Lyndon Johnson out of office.
[00:15:35] It's about the shifting of generational tides and the turnover that occurs.
[00:15:45] And essentially he's conveying the deepest message in the form of this little English folk ballad.
[00:15:54] And he said, all right, I get that.
[00:15:56] Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:15:57] I said, all right, so he's got another 700 songs that are just as good as that one.
[00:16:04] It's the sheer quantity and quality combined that just makes Bob Dylan superhuman, you know, his accomplishment.
[00:16:19] As you're describing the ether and, you know, we're talking about some people would call it the muse
[00:16:26] and almost channeling something from outside of you.
[00:16:30] Is there a spiritual dimension to that?
[00:16:35] Yeah.
[00:16:36] Who's giving you the stuff?
[00:16:38] Where is it coming from?
[00:16:40] Well, yeah, this is why I ask.
[00:16:42] Yeah, I mean, you can, you know, doesn't have to be some big guy with a beard, you know, it's...
[00:16:52] But you certainly become aware of...
[00:16:57] At the very least, you become aware of the fact that there are things going on that we don't know and probably can't grasp.
[00:17:06] Have you felt that at times?
[00:17:09] Have you felt that where you're almost powerless and...
[00:17:13] Well, I've never felt powerless, but I've felt connected to something larger that's humbling, you know.
[00:17:24] I've felt, yeah, connected to...
[00:17:31] You know, I mean, a really great example is playing a band with Bob Weir, right?
[00:17:39] So we go around and play to these audiences that if they're not all on mushrooms, they're of the sensibility of the mushrooms,
[00:17:50] which is primarily a beautiful thing where you just...
[00:17:53] There's enough residual mushrooms.
[00:17:55] Yeah, it's done its work.
[00:17:59] You don't need it anymore, I guess.
[00:18:01] But you feel this connection with this audience.
[00:18:05] So when you play a note, you can feel it resonating and moving through these people who are listening so intently out there
[00:18:21] and something comes back from them that makes you play your next note.
[00:18:28] It's a wild phenomenon, but you feel this incredible...
[00:18:33] Not just connection, but it's one...
[00:18:36] You're all part of one being.
[00:18:39] And when that comes together, which happens two or three times a night,
[00:18:45] when the thing elevates and it comes together, you could blow the roof off the theater with that.
[00:18:52] It's so powerful, and I don't know what that is.
[00:18:56] I think a lot of that comes from having this generational fan base and people who know the music really well.
[00:19:03] But is there...
[00:19:06] In playing live jazz, in playing with this Detroit ensemble that you're playing with now,
[00:19:11] are you able to connect with the audience in a similar way?
[00:19:16] I'm hoping so.
[00:19:17] We're speaking before the first tour, right?
[00:19:21] So here's what I can tell you about it.
[00:19:25] We got together and played, and some of these guys I've played with for 40-some years,
[00:19:32] so I already know that there's a connection there.
[00:19:37] But these nine people, man, when we started playing, it just...
[00:19:43] The whole thing elevated.
[00:19:45] It became one thing, and we were swept away in it.
[00:19:49] When I listened to tapes of these first rehearsals we did last October.
[00:19:54] And I don't know how I played those notes.
[00:19:56] I don't know where they came from, but it was from the connection there.
[00:20:01] So when you can get, especially a large group, nine people,
[00:20:06] and everyone's operating on the same wavelength, great things can happen.
[00:20:13] So I'm pretty sure that audience...
[00:20:16] I wouldn't have taken it out.
[00:20:19] I don't have to go play shows, you know, to eat or anything like that.
[00:20:25] So it's the only reason to do it is to get that connection,
[00:20:30] because it is an addictive feeling to go out.
[00:20:35] There's something about going out on a stage.
[00:20:39] First of all, no one can bug you while you're out there.
[00:20:43] It's the most beautiful time that you get to...
[00:20:47] It's like meditating, but the phone doesn't ring.
[00:20:51] No one comes up and taps you on the shoulder to try to...
[00:20:55] You're locked in.
[00:20:58] You're locked in, man.
[00:21:00] And you're focused.
[00:21:02] It's like meditating for a couple hours.
[00:21:06] And that feeling of connecting with other people,
[00:21:10] connecting with the other musicians,
[00:21:12] the audience becomes a member of the band.
[00:21:16] It's the best thing I've ever experienced.
[00:21:20] And you just want more of it.
[00:21:22] I probably wouldn't have put my own band together
[00:21:25] if Bob Weir would go out and play 300 shows a year,
[00:21:29] because I do 300 shows a year with him.
[00:21:31] He's been through that though.
[00:21:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:35] What does it mean for the audience to be another member of the band?
[00:21:40] What does it mean to me or to the audience?
[00:21:44] What is your sense of the role they're playing?
[00:21:48] They're impacting your choices.
[00:21:52] A lot of things impact your choices.
[00:21:55] I took a bass lesson this year from Ron Carter,
[00:22:00] who's probably the greatest of them all.
[00:22:03] It was just an honor to be able to sit in a room with him,
[00:22:06] let alone have him tell me things about what I was doing with my fingers.
[00:22:10] And he played with us at Radio City Music Hall.
[00:22:13] He sat in with Bob Weir, and he played my bass.
[00:22:16] And we record all the shows.
[00:22:18] So the next day, I listened to it, I soloed his track.
[00:22:22] Everything was the same except for the fingers, right?
[00:22:26] I listened to his track playing my bass
[00:22:28] with the same sound I play with.
[00:22:30] And then I listened to me on the next song.
[00:22:33] And I called Meister Carter up and I said,
[00:22:37] how come your tone sounds perfectly round and symmetrical and warm?
[00:22:43] And by comparison, mine sounds like it's made out of Swiss cheese with holes in it.
[00:22:49] This is almost the question you asked Bob Dylan, really?
[00:22:52] Yeah, except I don't think there's anything I could do to write Gates of Eden.
[00:22:59] I'm just not connected on that whatever telephone he's got.
[00:23:06] I don't have that one.
[00:23:08] But there were some practical things that Ron Carter showed me.
[00:23:11] He said, you're not lifting your fingers off of the strings.
[00:23:18] You're not releasing the note soon enough before you play the next note.
[00:23:22] So he gave me some exercises to practice releasing the notes.
[00:23:27] And he said, if you'll do this faithfully for a month,
[00:23:31] you'll notice that you start playing differently
[00:23:35] and you'll see that everybody in your band plays differently as a result.
[00:23:40] And he was right.
[00:23:42] This is like a movement of a millimeter.
[00:23:48] It's a tiny adjustment but it opened up a whole new universe
[00:23:53] because having that space there makes you make a different choice.
[00:23:59] Well, it's the same thing in dealing with the audience.
[00:24:02] The audience, when you feel connected to them,
[00:24:05] that you're getting something back and you react to that,
[00:24:09] it's not really something that you can describe.
[00:24:17] It's maybe like surfing a little bit, you know,
[00:24:20] that you feel that you're on the wave
[00:24:23] and you react a certain way to keep your balance.
[00:24:26] But if the wave moves a different way, you move a different way.
[00:24:30] The audience is like that.
[00:24:31] The other musicians are like that too.
[00:24:35] Hopefully musicians are listening to the other people in the band
[00:24:38] and it's a conversation that's going on.
[00:24:41] And what somebody plays changes what you're going to play.
[00:24:46] That's what keeps it exciting every night.
[00:24:48] As long as you're not in a band that does the same exact show
[00:24:52] every single night and has to play the same notes.
[00:24:55] And even then, you know, you think of classical music,
[00:24:59] there are all sorts of nuanced, not just tiny avenues,
[00:25:05] there are universes of variation that you can put in there.
[00:25:09] But it's highly nuanced.
[00:25:10] You still have to play the notes that are written.
[00:25:12] But how you hit the key of a piano can affect so many things.
[00:25:19] Years ago, I was speaking to a professor of classical music
[00:25:25] primarily, he's primarily interested in Bach
[00:25:29] and I told him at the time that I had tried
[00:25:32] but had never been able to get into classical music
[00:25:34] for whatever reason.
[00:25:36] And he told me to get Glenn Gould's two versions
[00:25:41] of the Goldberg variations, one recorded in his 20s
[00:25:45] and one recorded at the end of his life.
[00:25:48] And that better, I mean, the guy obviously knew what he was talking about
[00:25:52] but that to me, better than anything else puts into perspective
[00:25:55] how important the interpretation and the player are.
[00:26:00] Yeah.
[00:26:01] Yeah.
[00:26:02] It's true.
[00:26:03] It's like many other things in life.
[00:26:07] So I'm certainly like sports, you know.
[00:26:10] I made a decision this year to try to drown out
[00:26:14] some of the noise from the election by getting lost in baseball.
[00:26:21] So I've been following the Detroit Tigers
[00:26:25] and just little nuances of where a pitch goes
[00:26:31] and how a guy just moves his hand just a little bit differently.
[00:26:36] You know, the effect of that is so incredible.
[00:26:40] Let's say not anyone who's good at anything, you know, a surgeon.
[00:26:44] Yeah.
[00:26:46] I mean, go on and on.
[00:26:48] Everyone's got something that they excel at.
[00:26:52] Not everyone can commodify it and beat a family.
[00:26:57] Not everybody wants to watch or listen to it.
[00:27:00] It's interesting because I was thinking about this in relation to
[00:27:04] another interview you did where you were discussing the early times
[00:27:07] that you were playing with Bob Weir and I'm not a...
[00:27:12] I should preface this by saying that I'm not a musician myself
[00:27:15] which is why I can't quite wrap my brain around some of this
[00:27:18] but you described those early sessions as sounding like a bar band playing the dead
[00:27:25] which strikes me as... I think what you're saying is that the competence was there
[00:27:32] but it was lacking in something.
[00:27:34] Was it groove? What was it lacking?
[00:27:36] Well, it was lacking in spirit.
[00:27:39] This was... I think what I was talking about was...
[00:27:42] I drove up with John Mayer when he went to play with them for the first time
[00:27:48] before, you know, really before the seeds of dead in company were even planted.
[00:27:55] Bobby and Mickey came to my office at Blue Note to talk about putting out some of their records
[00:28:00] and I knew John was a fanatic from the time I'd spent with him.
[00:28:05] Every time I got in John Mayer's car he had the Grateful Dead Channel on Sirius Sun
[00:28:10] and he was one of those guys who could say...
[00:28:12] He could hear things and he said,
[00:28:13] No, that's not 1978 because Jerry's using a different pedal.
[00:28:18] This must be 77.
[00:28:20] So he was hip to the nuances of it.
[00:28:22] So when they showed up it just happened that John was downstairs in Capitol Studios
[00:28:27] and I called him and said, You better come up here.
[00:28:33] And that discussion led to an invitation to come up and play.
[00:28:38] So I played bass at one of the days when they were auditioning for Dead in Company
[00:28:43] and I hadn't studied the songs.
[00:28:48] I wasn't what you'd call a deadhead.
[00:28:50] I'd been to see him in the 70s in Detroit and I dug them.
[00:28:54] I knew what they were about, I understood it, but I wasn't a fanatic
[00:28:58] and I didn't practice any songs.
[00:29:01] So I was terrible.
[00:29:03] I was just holding down like...
[00:29:07] Just very...
[00:29:09] It was a very prosaic approach as I think the way Bobby put it, to the songs.
[00:29:16] It was like hanging on for dear life.
[00:29:18] It sounds like...
[00:29:19] Well, it was like because they're way more complicated than you think they are.
[00:29:23] And if you don't know them, you can't fake it.
[00:29:26] You can't just watch somebody's hands and pick it up quick.
[00:29:30] But it's also the approach Phil, you know, Phil Lesh's approach to playing the bass
[00:29:35] is like nobody else and that was part of the sound.
[00:29:40] But what I learned is that the idea is not to...
[00:29:44] Don't study Phil and try to be Phil because you can't be Phil.
[00:29:48] And Phil was different every single night.
[00:29:52] But he was just being Phil.
[00:29:54] But the most authentic way to play Grateful Dead music is to be yourself.
[00:30:01] I had to be me as much as Phil was being Phil.
[00:30:06] If you do that, you find your own way into it.
[00:30:08] It's what Oteal does with Dead and Company.
[00:30:10] I love what he plays.
[00:30:12] And he doesn't play like Phil, but he...
[00:30:18] He's a...
[00:30:22] How would you describe it?
[00:30:24] He's an important voice in the conversation.
[00:30:27] He holds up his end of the conversation, but he does it in his own way.
[00:30:32] So the most Grateful Dead-like thing you can do is to be yourself,
[00:30:38] but be a really good version of it.
[00:30:42] Authenticity is such an interesting word and it's a word that comes up a lot
[00:30:46] around jazz specifically.
[00:30:48] Starting out and when you first really started playing jazz,
[00:30:53] was there a fear that you weren't necessarily being authentic
[00:30:59] or coming from a place of authenticity?
[00:31:01] If you're really talking about starting out, the fear was just that
[00:31:05] I wasn't any good, you know.
[00:31:09] So at a certain point when you're learning, you're trying to play well.
[00:31:15] And I mean this is what everybody goes through.
[00:31:18] You go to music school, you're not fully formed.
[00:31:22] You study what other people did before you.
[00:31:28] And the great musicians take that knowledge and then use all of that
[00:31:33] to create something brand new.
[00:31:35] But that's really kind of a rare musician.
[00:31:38] When I became president of Blue Note, that was something...
[00:31:41] That was the first mission, was to find out why is this music
[00:31:46] that was recorded 50, 60 years ago, why does it still feel fresh
[00:31:51] and vibrant and relevant and new?
[00:31:56] And the thing that became clear was that in every era,
[00:32:02] the founders of the company and the people who followed their ethos
[00:32:09] understood that you had to sign artists who had mastered the fundamentals
[00:32:15] but then broke through and tried to push the boundaries of the music.
[00:32:21] That was the loneliest monk in the 40s.
[00:32:23] Art Blakey and Horace Silver in the 50s.
[00:32:26] That was Wayne Shorter and Herbie and Ornette and Eric Dolphy in the 60s.
[00:32:30] That's Robert Glasper in 2011.
[00:32:33] That's guys like Joel Ross and Emmanuel Wilkins and Domi and JD Beck
[00:32:42] and Melissa Aldana today.
[00:32:44] They're doing stuff that no one's done before.
[00:32:47] All the piano players in the history of the label could go back
[00:32:52] and play like Duke Ellington, but their choice was not to curate a museum
[00:32:59] of what had happened in bygone days
[00:33:03] but to make something that was relevant today.
[00:33:08] A museum is a great way of putting it.
[00:33:11] It strikes me as an outsider that one of the ongoing things
[00:33:16] with jazz over the last couple of decades is this
[00:33:20] the impulse to continue to be cutting edge
[00:33:24] and the impulse to be almost overly referential.
[00:33:28] There's almost two schools, it seems,
[00:33:30] like when it comes to approaching that music.
[00:33:34] One time I read an interview with Martin Scorsese
[00:33:37] where he was talking about getting out of film school
[00:33:39] and having all these great ideas about things he was going to do
[00:33:44] and he was going to be a big boy in his movies.
[00:33:47] And then after you get that out of your system
[00:33:50] after about three or four movies
[00:33:52] and you do all these stylistic, slash ephemeral things,
[00:34:02] you understand that at the core of it you've got to tell the story.
[00:34:06] Tell a great story.
[00:34:08] Tell it well.
[00:34:10] You don't need any tricks to do that
[00:34:12] and you can see Scorsese mature into that
[00:34:16] and you can see the same thing with musicians in any genre music.
[00:34:22] They first they learn some flash
[00:34:27] and then the great ones know that they got to get past that
[00:34:33] and they have to communicate with people.
[00:34:37] They play something that gets under the skin
[00:34:40] that makes them feel something.
[00:34:43] That's what good art communicates, makes you feel something
[00:34:46] and hopefully helps you deal with a world of adversity
[00:34:53] but also reminds you of the beauty that's everywhere
[00:34:58] and ultimately helps you and makes the whole place better.
[00:35:06] It's interesting, he mentions Scorsese
[00:35:08] and I guess almost bookending his career with quotes.
[00:35:13] I don't know if you saw or heard this
[00:35:16] within the last year or two he said this
[00:35:20] that there was a point in the 70s when he
[00:35:23] and I believe George Lucas were presenting Kurosawa
[00:35:27] with a lifetime achievement award
[00:35:29] and Kurosawa broke down
[00:35:31] and they asked him why.
[00:35:33] Something to the effect of I'm so and so years old
[00:35:38] I have so many years left
[00:35:40] and I finally figured out how to tell the stories
[00:35:43] that I want to tell which is it's at once heartbreaking
[00:35:48] but I think there's also something hopeful in that
[00:35:51] knowing that there's always room to grow.
[00:35:56] That's the beauty of it man.
[00:35:59] The beauty of it is that you keep discovering new things
[00:36:03] and they may be very nuanced
[00:36:05] and they may be invisible to the audience
[00:36:09] but the things that you come to realize
[00:36:11] the old thing between any two points
[00:36:15] there's always another point, right?
[00:36:17] There's always another degree of refinement
[00:36:20] that you can add and the quest for it
[00:36:23] or as Ron Carter puts it, the search for the perfect note
[00:36:26] he's still searching for the right notes at 86.
[00:36:30] It's a rewarding, eternal hunt
[00:36:38] and it'll keep you young and vibrant
[00:36:42] and healthy and interested in life.
[00:36:46] It's the greatest thing.
[00:36:48] One thing that to my mind has defined a lot of your career is
[00:36:52] we're talking about playing with the jazz band
[00:36:56] and being of like mind and being able to play together
[00:36:59] but it strikes me that it's always been interesting
[00:37:02] to you to present a challenge
[00:37:04] and to introduce seemingly disparate ideas
[00:37:08] and was not was is a perfect example of that.
[00:37:10] I had Rest in Peace, I had Wayne Cramer on the show
[00:37:13] before he passed
[00:37:15] and I know you recorded with Ozzy
[00:37:19] and Iggy again and it seemed like you were almost going out of your way
[00:37:23] to see what happened when you ran these two opposing forces into one another.
[00:37:31] Yeah, well that's the thrill of it.
[00:37:34] Make something new, don't keep doing the same thing.
[00:37:37] Think of like cooking.
[00:37:39] If you were making a jambalaya
[00:37:47] you wouldn't want your onions to taste like carrots
[00:37:54] because you already put carrots in, you know?
[00:37:56] That's the whole thrill is putting all these different
[00:37:59] it's French cooking, man, you know, contrasting flavors
[00:38:03] and creating something great and new out of it.
[00:38:09] Keeping it different and shaking things up
[00:38:13] it not only like keeps the sport in it
[00:38:16] but it makes you stay on your toes
[00:38:20] and again, like we're saying, you react to what's around you.
[00:38:25] You'll play differently, everyone will play differently
[00:38:28] and you come up with something new and hopefully better.
[00:38:34] Sometimes it's not better.
[00:38:38] I was talking to somebody about this the other day
[00:38:40] and I always felt that the sign of a great producer
[00:38:45] is somebody who not takes a back seat
[00:38:47] but really understands what the musicians are looking for
[00:38:50] and does their best to bring that out of it.
[00:38:52] But he countered, and I think there's something to this
[00:38:55] that a lot of the great producers are ones
[00:38:58] that have their own personality
[00:39:00] and put their footprint on it
[00:39:02] and it's clear that they are the person who produced that record.
[00:39:05] Where do you see yourself when it comes to being in the recording studio?
[00:39:10] The former, I prefer the former.
[00:39:13] The fun for me is to go in with somebody great
[00:39:17] get inside their head and help them figure out
[00:39:22] where they're trying to get to
[00:39:24] and just to help them get to that place.
[00:39:27] That's just me personally.
[00:39:29] You know, what was I listening to?
[00:39:31] I was listening to a song off a deep well
[00:39:37] Ami Lou Harris off a wrecking ball
[00:39:39] which Daniel Landwall produced
[00:39:41] and I love Daniel.
[00:39:42] He's made some great records
[00:39:44] but that's more of a Daniel Landwall record
[00:39:49] than an Ami Lou Harris record.
[00:39:51] That's not a bad thing.
[00:39:53] That's a great album.
[00:39:54] But you hear he's an auteur producer.
[00:40:01] There are things that he brings to certain records
[00:40:04] and people hire him to come in and do that
[00:40:07] because they want that sound.
[00:40:09] And I'm not that...
[00:40:14] I kind of like the fact that you really couldn't...
[00:40:18] I try not to leave a fingerprint on it.
[00:40:20] I want the artist's fingerprint to be on it.
[00:40:23] It came from...
[00:40:25] could be misguided humility, I don't know
[00:40:29] but I just thought, you know, like a pretty audacious man
[00:40:32] to leave your thumbprint on Mick Jagger's forehead.
[00:40:37] Why would you do that, man?
[00:40:40] Bring out the best in Mick.
[00:40:43] That would be the idea.
[00:40:45] Getting back to this idea of bringing together
[00:40:48] Posing Forces as a president of Blue Note
[00:40:51] I've heard you discuss some of the people
[00:40:54] who you'd be interested in bringing on.
[00:40:56] You know, we talked a little bit about the work
[00:40:59] that Iggy was doing, for example.
[00:41:02] When reading a quote with you
[00:41:06] and somebody asked you which jazz artists you would bring on
[00:41:10] you said Lucinda Williams and Paul Westerberg.
[00:41:13] You know, Lucinda Williams...
[00:41:15] I kind of get Lucinda Williams, I think that makes sense.
[00:41:17] And I'm a huge replacements fan
[00:41:20] but what role do you see Paul playing?
[00:41:23] They didn't ask me what jazz artists.
[00:41:25] They said, what artists would you bring on
[00:41:27] to further the ethos?
[00:41:29] One of the first things I did was I went back
[00:41:31] and Jim Kurosman who has worked at Blue Note
[00:41:35] for a very long time, even though he's half my age.
[00:41:37] He was like his only job
[00:41:39] but in life was working at Blue Note right out of college.
[00:41:43] My first day on the job he hit me to a manifesto
[00:41:47] that our founders wrote in 1939
[00:41:50] where they dedicate themselves
[00:41:53] to the pursuit of authentic music
[00:41:56] and to providing uncompromising artistic freedom
[00:42:01] for the artists.
[00:42:03] So the authentic thing resonated with me
[00:42:07] because at the time Van Morrison was signed to Blue Note
[00:42:10] when I got hired
[00:42:12] and I thought, well, alright, I get it.
[00:42:14] Van is like Wayne Shorter
[00:42:16] in that he can step up to the microphone
[00:42:18] and you don't have to put all kinds of effects on him.
[00:42:22] He doesn't have to sing 30 takes
[00:42:25] and you start comping the words together.
[00:42:27] He steps up and he delivers something from his heart
[00:42:30] and it resonates with people.
[00:42:33] People get it.
[00:42:34] He sings like jazz in a way.
[00:42:36] Even though I wouldn't call him a jazz artist,
[00:42:39] but the intention is the same thing.
[00:42:43] And I thought the same of Paul Westerberg.
[00:42:46] I think he's a great writer
[00:42:48] and he certainly responds in the moment.
[00:42:54] And I would sign him today if he wanted to make a record.
[00:42:58] And Lucinda too.
[00:42:59] Lucinda, just before I got the job
[00:43:02] I produced an album for her
[00:43:04] and I think she's incredible man.
[00:43:06] But she wanted to start her own record company
[00:43:08] and I respect that.
[00:43:10] She's done pretty well with it.
[00:43:12] Another thing I think, you know,
[00:43:13] out of that same conversation
[00:43:15] you had mentioned being around
[00:43:17] for the Dylan Sinatra sessions
[00:43:19] and I'll bring this background to the beginning
[00:43:21] because we were talking a little bit about Sinatra,
[00:43:24] about Sinatra, a little bit about Dylan singing.
[00:43:27] You know, obviously Dylan haters,
[00:43:29] he gets a lot of flack for his singing.
[00:43:32] But you would have signed him to Blue Note
[00:43:36] as a jazz singer.
[00:43:42] He was working downstairs at Capitol Studios
[00:43:44] and one day he just rode the elevator up
[00:43:46] and came to my office at Blue Note
[00:43:49] and we sat around talking
[00:43:51] and he said, come on down and listen to some of this.
[00:43:54] And I thought, I thought he was singing really well.
[00:43:57] I thought he cut to the meat
[00:44:00] of those songs.
[00:44:03] He, Bob got it, you know?
[00:44:06] And I said to him, I said,
[00:44:08] you know, yeah, we could use a singer like you
[00:44:10] on Blue Note.
[00:44:12] And I could see, he thought about it for two seconds
[00:44:15] before he remembered that he had a contract somewhere else.
[00:44:19] But I think Bob's one of the most expressive singers
[00:44:22] I've ever heard.
[00:44:24] I think he's awesome.
[00:44:26] I think he's, you know, just as great
[00:44:29] an artist as there can be.
[00:44:45] Thank you.
