| Chuck: | Did any of the musicians you worked with ever offer you any advice or make musical comments that struck you as interesting? |
| Paul: | I remember Monk asked me to sing him my ride beat. He said, "Sing me what you're playing on the cymbal." So I sang, "ding DING-a ding, DING-a ding, DING-a ding, DING-a ding." He said, "The next time you play, play 'ding din GA-ding, din GA-ding, din GA-ding'." So that's what I did. And that helped my feel and the way I felt, the way my time is my beat. That helped me grow in how I play time. To try to think of all the notes, man, all the notes that you're playing on the cymbal, and the quality of the notes. |
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One time Lennie Tristano said something to me about what he heard in my sound. He wasn't suggesting anything to me. He just said, "Paul, when we play fours, your fours sound like a drunk falling down a flight of stairs!" (laughs) So, for me, I took that as a compliment, and the next time I took my fours I tried to think as if I was a drunk falling down the stairs, and tried to improve what I did the time before, you know? |
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| Chuck: | A lot of people wouldn't take that as a compliment. Why did that strike you as a compliment? |
| Paul: | Because it was different, it meant that I played different. I played something else, you know? I played something that wasn't usual. |
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Another time I remember reading in a Downbeat blindfold test by Lennie White, played one of my records, and he kind of put me down in a way, he said, "Boy, that drummer sounds like he's playing on tin cans." I took that as a compliment! I thought that was great, I mean, what a sound that is! That's a great sound, man, tin cans? I love that sound, man. Even now, sometimes I'll play where I hit the drum more on the rim than the drum, and get that sound. That's a different kind of sound, almost just playing as if the stick is hardly hittin' the drum, it's more hittin' the rim, but it's not just the rim sound, it's the drum sound too. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like an echo kind of a thing? I love that, man. |
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| Chuck: | When you play a roll, you don't usually play it with both sticks on the same drum at the same time. You'll have one stick on one drum, and one stick on another, or you'll be moving around the whole drumset, distributing the strokes between the cymbals, the drums, the hi-hat. I don't know any other drummer who does that. |
| Paul: | I don't know! (laughs) I know that I do that, but I don't know why. I guess that when I've done it, what happened I thought was good and I liked the sound. |
| Chuck: | Most people focus on one component at a time. But you're always blending different parts of the drumset into one sound. |
| Paul: | Well, that's nice, that's nice! (laughs) See, I didn't really know that, man, that's interesting. I know that I do that, but I never thought about it. I wouldn't consciously say to myself, "OK, now I want to play a roll on two different drums." That thought would never come to me. That's automatic. That just comes out. I mean, think of a piano player. A piano player's playing, he's not thinking "I'm going to play a…" I mean there's no time to think of that shit beforehand, right? If a piano player thought, "Well, now I'm going to play this chord, now I'm going to play that chord, now I'm going to play this run," fuck it, that shit past, it's gone already. There's not time to think about that shit.The same thing with the drums, man. If I started thinking about that before I played it, I'd be behind! (laughs) People'd be steppin' all over my ass, man! Shit! (laughs) |
| Chuck: | I'd like to ask you something about your ballad playing. Most drummers during ballads are just doing timekeeping, but there's another element that you add to ballads that they don't even think about, and that's the way you alternate different tone colors and sounds. For example, you might be doing a roll on your rivet cymbal. Then you'll let it ring for a moment. Then there might be two beats of silence, then you might play on the snare drum for a couple measures. Then you might start playing a time-keeping pattern on the ride cymbal. Every time you change the sound and the tone color, it creates a dramatic musical effect, and that's something you did that no one else has done. |
| Paul: | That relates to what I was saying before about my approach to the drums, trying to think musically, trying to make sense out of what I'm doing and trying to relate it to what else is happening. |
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If you had to sit down, you'd probably have to be a computer if you tried to put down on paper or in words what is actually going on during a piece of music. You'd probably fill twenty fuckin' volumes, it'd be an encyclopedia, just from one tune, if you start actually putting down exactly what thoughts are happening… you know what I mean? It's not so simple. Sometimes the simpler it sounds the more complicated the shit is. |
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| Chuck: | I can see that. Because to make things simpler, you have to make a decision what to leave out just like you have to make a decision what to put in. |
| Paul: | Exactly. |
| Chuck: | When you left Bill Evans and you started playing with Paul Bley, how did that different music alter your concept of drumming? |
| Paul: | Well, it seemed to me that that was an extension. Here I was playing with Bill, and at times with Gary Peacock, and then here I was playing with Paul Bley and Gary Peacock. And to me that was kind of an extension… well, I don't know, it was different, I don't know if extension is the right word. But it seemed to me at the time that happened that that was the direction to go into. It seemed to me that Bill Evans at that time was standing still, and we weren't going anywhere. We had reached (laughs) the mountain top and that was it! And I kind of felt like with Paul Bley that there was another mountain here, man. And at that time, which was the mid-sixties, there was a lot of changes going on in music in New York. And hooking up with Paul Bley, it seemed like the music got even freer, even more open, and it was possible to play different, to extend the shit from what I was doing before.We kind of talked about just getting away from the normal way of playing, sort of playing more with the music as it was happening. I don't think it changed me radically. Playing with Bill Evans I felt like I opened up some things just from what I was hearing from Scott. And playing with Paul and with Gary Peacock just seemed to open it up more, I just played what I heard and what these guys were playing, and I kind of went along with that and played… Some of the things we were doing with Paul, all of a sudden there was no restrictions, you know, there was not even any form, it was completely free, almost chaotic, you know? With Paul there was form on a lot of things, but for the first time shit was happening where it really just opened up. And then playing with Keith later just really took that again, even more. |
| Chuck: | When you first heard people actually playing free, how did it strike you, coming from a background rooted so strongly in hardbop? |
| Paul: | I know what you're getting at, but actually it didn't strike me as being real radical or real different. |
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A lot of people at that time were into this thing about wanting to play different, wanting to explore more and get into different areas. Almost just for the fact to be different, you know? |
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| Chuck: | Do you miss that spirit today? |
| Paul: | No. I feel pretty much settled now in what I'm doing. I don't feel like experimenting anymore, I really don't. I feel like I can play however I want to play now, and it's O.K. |
| Chuck: | What's the attraction of playing free? What appeals to you about that as opposed to a different situation? |
| Paul: | Just that it's very open and it let's me play whatever I want to play. If I have an idea and it makes musical sense to do it, then I can go ahead and do it, I'm not restricted in any way to bar lines or form. |
| Chuck: | What do you latch on to, though? For example, if you're playing time, you know how the beat's being subdivided, you know what the vocabulary is, you know you can move this here, you can leave this out. But if you're playing completely free, it's a completely blank slate. What do you latch on to that's logical to determine what you play? |
| Paul: | You're latching on to what you're hearing, what the other people are playing, what you're playing, what you started out playing, what melody is going on in your head, everything. You just latch on to whatever you can latch on to, man. And hopefully there's plenty of things to latch on to. |
| Chuck: | When I listen to you play free, I can tell you obviously find clear ideas to play and I can follow your thinking. But some other drummer playing in the same situation might say, "This music sounds good, but what in the world could I ever play to it?" |
| Paul: | Well, thank god I don't never think about that. I don't think like that. I just let it happen. I just go by what I hear and I just let it happen. |
| Chuck: | So you're not self-conscious. |
| Paul: | No. I'm acting on what I'm hearing and what I'm doing. |
| Chuck: | You have a clear idea of what you should do and shouldn't do. |
| Paul: | It's not like what I should do or shouldn't do, it's what I do. And I have enough faith and confidence in myself and what I do that it's right. If I start thinking about what I should do and I shouldn't do, it would suck. It's like the story Jimmy Garrison told me about the centipede. He's walking along on the branch groovin', and then some fuckin' monkey looks at him and says "Hey, man, look at how you got all them legs, man, how do you know which leg to put down first?" And as soon as he says that the motherfucker trips and falls off the tree. It's the same thing. You can't stop to think about that shit. |
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Once when I was playing with Charlie Haden, I told him that I couldn't really get with the music, I can't find what it is that I should do, whether I should play time or I play free. And Charlie said to me, "well, you're the one that can do it and whatever you do, you be in control, you do what you think is right, I'm going to take it from what you're doing." In other words, instead of me thinking about what I should do or what I shouldn't do, I should just do, and everything will be O.K. And that's what happened. When I was thinking about what I should do and what I shouldn't do, shit wasn't happening. Wasn't happening, man. After I talked to Charlie and he said to me whatever I do is O.K., and I should be in control, then I felt free to do what I wanted to do. And as soon as I did that, everything fell into place. Shit was swinging like a motherfucker. |
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| Chuck: | Are you switching over from your conscious mind to you're subconscious mind? |
| Paul: | Yeah, in a way. In others words, when something starts happening and I start playing time, I'm not debating in my head, "well, I should play time now or I shouldn't play time." I just go ahead and do what I feel I should do. And when I do that, it happens, everything falls into place. If I feel like playing a rumba beat on a fuckin' tom-tom, that's what I do without thinking about it, it's O.K.! |
| Chuck: | So it sounds like the key is to get rid of any sort of deliberation. |
| Paul: | Yeah. Definitely. Definitely, man. Oh yeah. Sure. As soon as you start deliberating and thinking it's that story I just told you, man. That's the key. Definitely. |
| Chuck: | How did playing in the Keith Jarrett Quartet with Keith Jarrett, Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden alter your concept of drumming? It's strange to me that that band never got more recognition. What's your own assessment of that band and that music? |
| Paul: | It is strange in a way, what you say, because I go to Europe often now. And every time I go, no doubt someone will always mention Bill Evans to me, or the time when I played with Bill. Happens all the time. It just happened recently now in Italy. Hardly anyone ever says anything about Keith, or that band. And I don't really know what the reason is. I guess the people hooked on to Bill more than with Keith somehow. And it seems like everywhere I go people associate me more with Bill and that trio than with Keith, whereas the time I spent with Bill and the time I spent with Keith is almost equal. Actually there was more records made with Keith. |
| Chuck: | But how about in importance to you to your development, how would you assess both periods. Equal also? |
| Paul: | No. Well, I think with Keith there seemed to be more room for development. There was more time and more space left open to develop further than with Bill, because the music we were playing was more experimental. Bill wouldn't experiment at all. In fact, I remember one time when I was playing with Bill with Gary Peacock, Gary and I tried to get Bill to play more experimentally and more free, and to play some more open kinds of pieces. He wouldn't do it, he didn't want to do it. He has no thoughts along those lines (laughs). As a matter of fact, one time when we were playing at the Vanguard I said to him "why don't you start the set with that little Bach piece you played for me at your house." No way, he wouldn't do that. Bill didn't want to take chances too much. He kind of had his way of doing things, and that's what he wanted to do. Whereas Keith was more open and would take more chances, was willing to experiment more and try different things more. |
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It seemed to me with Keith it was more fun in a way. It was so open and so free that you could almost do whatever you wanted. It was almost like you didn't even care whether the audience was there or not, or whether they liked it or whether they didn't. It was quite different with Bill. |
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| Chuck: | The material you played with Keith was very eclectic. Some tunes were completely free, some of them were Bill Evans-ish, some of them were rock-flavored tunes, some of them were quasi-Latin tunes… |
| Paul: | Yeah, well I think that was the influence of the times too, you know? I mean, playing with Bill there wasn't much rock and roll around, really. But playing with Keith, that was a whole different thing. Bob Dylan was strong on the scene, and the Beatles. That influenced Keith, it influenced all of us, especially Keith, and the music he was writing too. So we were getting into other areas. We'd never play semi-rock and roll kinds of things with Bill, never. But with Keith that was the times, you know? We're talking about the very late sixties and the early seventies. |
| Chuck: | And how did you react to playing that music and those rhythms? |
| Paul: | Fine. I mean I loved that shit too. It's great, I loved Bob Dylan. I saw Bob Dylan on TV the other night, man, I couldn't stand him, now, I would never go to a Dylan concert or buy a Dylan record. But in those days I think I owned about ten albums by Bob Dylan, and the Beatles and all that. I listened to all that shit, man, that shit was strong, so that influenced us, I know Keith loved that stuff. I think we recorded a Dylan tune. It was just fun to play, it was part of the scene, it was part of music. |
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Everything that's going on around me that I'm aware of, it's going to creep into the music, it's going to creep into my playing. Sometimes consciously or unconsciously, it's going to be there. Playing the music is me, it's part of my life, and what influences me and my life is going to come out in my playing too. |
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| Chuck: | When you were with Keith Jarrett, you rarely played any swing music with walking bass and ride rhythms. Why was that? |
| Paul: | We weren't into it! (laughs) We wanted to get away from that traditional stuff. |
| Chuck: | But when I saw you reunited, playing with Keith again a few months ago, during the break I overheard him saying something to the effect of "Man, Paul's playing his ass off, he's swinging his ass off." And he said, "We never used to play that way when we played together, we never tried to just swing, we were always trying to do something different," as if he didn't know you could do it. And he seemed so happy about the new approach of that particular night. |
| Paul: | So it's exactly what I was saying to you, man, at that time when we were playing, in the late sixties and early seventies, that's what people were into, just to do their damnedest to do whatever they could do to change the shit, to play something different, to try to create something new. And people would do things different just to be different, no matter whether it was good or bad. So that's what was happening too, we were playing with Keith and all this different shit was happening with jazz, plus what I was saying before about Dylan and the Beatles. All that was happening, so that's what we were playing, we weren't playing swing. |
| Chuck: | I notice that you and Charlie Haden play a lot more straight-ahead in settings now than you used to during the Jarrett years. |
| Paul: | Well you're talking about a different period in music and a development in music. It's not like we played differently then, and then we threw it all away and now we're playing straight-ahead. That's all connected. |
| Chuck: | And what's the connection, what happened? |
| Paul: | That free kind of playing at that period is part of growing up, it's part of the tradition, it's part of development, it's part of evolution. It's there, it's still there. |
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If I could give you an example, it's like if I'm walking down the street, and walking in a regular, normal way, and somebody walks in front of me and I change my step, and whatever was in front of me is gone and I go back to walking how I was walking before, I'm still walking the same way, but what happened in-between still effects me too. That doesn't go away, it's still in my brain, it's still a part of me. |
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| Chuck: | With all the emphasis on tradition, not very many people are trying to write original music, like you do. I don't think much new has happened in jazz apart from your own groups, and I think a lot of the reason why your groups have produced such interesting music was because of the framework your compositions provided. A lot of people, including me, think that you are one of the most interesting composers around today. |
| Paul: | I don't consider myself a great composer. What comes out, comes out, you know, and a lot of it is kind of basic. I'll hear a little melody or find a melody on the piano that's appealing to me and I'll try to stretch that into a song, and I'll revise it until something comes out that's satisfactory to me, and then perform it. |
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A lot of the tunes that I'm playing now with the trio with Frisell and Lovano we've played for years, they've kind of grown in their own light too. I played on one of the tunes last night that we've been playing for years, and I always played a certain way on it, and last night I played something completely different than what I usually play. Joe and Bill were playing the melody to "Drum Music" [one of Paul's compositions] in the tempo that we usually play - it's not really a tempo, but it's in the area of a certain speed, right? - and I played at a little less than half time. And it worked! So, there's no rules, man, I guess is what I'm trying to say! (laughs) |
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| Chuck: | For you! But that's what makes you unique. |
| Paul: | But I'm also still learning, man. I guess what I'm trying to say about last night, I learned something there. Here I am, I've been playing since I've been twelve years old, I'm going to be 62, and I learned something from my playing last night. You know? |
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I realized the other day, when I went to what they call "A Conversation With Foreign Writers" - this was a conversation between John Riving and Michael Ondaatje - and they were talking about the way they write, and I realized, listening to them, that there are no rules. I mean the same thing applies to writing literature as in music, man. You can make up your own form. |
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| Chuck: | What's the most satisfying aspect of having your own band? |
| Paul: | Just that I can play the tunes I want to play! I can pick out the tunes and I can set the sets. I'm the boss, man. I'm excited about the Electric Bebop Band at this moment. For me that's more the main thing right now. |
| Chuck: | Now what is it that excites you about the Electric Bebop Band? |
| Paul: | It's different that I'm going backwards. (laughs) I'm finding new ways to play old music. |
| Chuck: | I think something that's great is that your career seems to keep getting better the older you get. You're more active now, playing with more people, more respected, better gigs, more recordings… |
| Paul: | Yeah, I'm at the best point of my life now than I've ever been, when I should be on the downgrade. And it's not. It keeps going up. It keeps getting better and the best is still yet to come, I feel it, I know it. It's incredible. |