No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report

by Peter Erskine

  Steve Porcaro wound up loaning his GS-1 to Weather Report for a day at Village Recorders a couple of months later while we were finishing up the Weather Report album. Joe remarked afterwards, “That Steve Porcaro is a nice motherfucker.”

  17. In Praise of Zildjian

  The music industry companies that design, manufacture, and market the instruments we musicians play are models of old-world craftsmanship with new-world technology. I’ve been endorsing instruments for over forty years.

  The two longest product associations I’ve enjoyed are with Evans Drumheads and the Avedis Zildjian Company. I have played Zildjians since I was five years old. However, my formal relationship with both companies began in 1972 when I became the drummer for Stan Kenton. The Kenton band required the drummer to play on Stan’s cymbals, all selected at the factory by Lennie DiMuzio. What was remarkable about these particular cymbals was their size: the ride cymbal was a whopping 27 inches in diameter, and the two crashes were each 24 inches. My 22-inch Swish cymbal was the smallest cymbal of the lot. Eventually I was able to work in a 19-inch crash, much to Stan’s displeasure. He liked those big cymbals. Zildjian patriarch Armand Zildjian and Lennie both loved big bands, and they were frequent guests at our many concerts in the Boston area over the three-year period I worked for Stan. This was also true during the two years I played with Maynard Ferguson’s band — on smaller cymbals I might add.

  My relationship with Zildjian began to evolve once I started working with Weather Report. The band’s popularity, musical notoriety, and importance provided an ideal opportunity for Zildjian and myself to capitalize on this career opportunity. Even though I’d already made it into the Zildjian Drummers’ Setup book and appeared in several ads, my role within the company expanded to where my ideas and suggestions were sought out, listened to, and acted upon. This is the most dynamic and valuable part of a drummer’s relationship with a manufacturer. A performing drummer is on the front line and in the trenches, night after night, and it’s the smart company that listens to him or her.

  The real years of interaction and product development began in the ’80s when Zildjian began researching the way in which to make a ride cymbal that sounded, played, and felt like those few-and-far-between classic K Zildjian cymbals of old. Shapes, new and vintage, were experimented with while novel hammering schemes preoccupied the designers and workers in the factory. Drummer feedback was crucial, and Zildjian listened.

  Zildjian now markets the “Left Side Ride,” designed with me over an intense two-year period of experimentation. It has all of the combinations of sound that I look for in a cymbal: clarity, darkness in tone, a silky touch, and the textural quality that three rivets placed close to its edge can bring. Rivets, much like spice, are sometimes best used sparingly to add flavor. It speaks as a ride but also functions as a crash, like any good cymbal. I came up with the moniker of “Left Side Ride” to distinguish it from the main or primary ride. For drum nerds: the Left Side comes in 20- and 22-inch sizes; my main ride cymbal is a 22-inch Medium Constantinople K Ride, low-pitched yet distinct in its enunciation. I also play on a 22-inch Swish Knocker, a cymbal that is very similar to the swish cymbal that Mel Lewis played; an 18-inch K Medium Thin Dark Crash, and I like to have a smaller crash or splash cymbal for accents and highlights; I will often play this cymbal “alone,” that is, without the added benefit of a simultaneous striking of the snare or bass drum. The effect is not unlike that of water splashing upon the music. I’ve tried switching to different models of Zildjian hi-hats over the years, often with success, but always return to a pair of 14-inch New Beat hi-hats; they can do anything and everything.

  Regrettably, Armand Zildjian passed away several years ago. As I wrote in a letter to the Zildjian family, “Armand had so much love in him, love for his wife and children and love for his extended family — the Zildjian family of artisans and fellow enthusiasts... I can’t so much say ‘workers’ or ‘businesspeople’ because he didn’t run the company like that... Armand, whether by instinct or cleverness, virtually invented the drumming community we live in. Indeed, the entire music industry bears his stamp.”

  As much as we all miss him, Armand left the company and Zildjian legacy in good hands. His daughter Craigie now runs the company as its CEO, ably assisted by her sister Debbie and brother Robert, plus a dedicated team of true believers. John DeChristopher, who recently retired, was director of artist relations for many years and the primary contact for most drummers associated with Zildjian. Colin Schofield ably performed those duties before John. Other names of note include cymbal tester Leon Chiappini, and R&D specialist Paul Francis. Paul is the closest thing today to an alchemist of old; he works wonders with metal, taking Zildjian’s secret formula to new places, always in search of a sound that is timeless — no small feat considering we’re talking about capturing the ephemeral and casting it into metal.

  One other virtue bears mentioning, and that is Zildjian’s long-standing commitment to education. One of the company’s more outstanding efforts in this area has been the American Drumming Achievement Awards program that honors living drumming legends and provides scholarship educational opportunities for a lucky next generation of drumming students. In 1998, I was fortunate enough to participate in the first ADAA event in Boston, paying tribute to a then very much alive Elvin Jones. Louis Bellson, Roy Haynes, and Max Roach were also honored that night (by Steve Gadd, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Marvin “Smitty” Smith).

  Here is some of what I said:

  While everyone else was speaking bebop “English,” Elvin Jones was busy creating a new sort of drumming Esperanto..., except his language endured, and influenced the rest of the world with far greater import than that other post-War linguistic dream... His is much more of a “revolutionary” than “evolutionary” advent. The fascinating thing about Elvin’s drumming is that Elvin brought drumming full-circle back to its African roots. Elvin has explained that the inspiration for his use of the 18-inch bass drum was that it was the only sized bass drum which could fit in the trunk of the car he was traveling in. (Elvin’s gift for the practical was also evident when he answered the following question at a drum clinic in New York a few years back: “Mr. Jones, how can I improve my reading?” His response: “Get a light for your music stand.”) Anyway, to my ears, by his use of a bass drum that was tuned more in the range of the tom-toms as opposed to the larger “boom-boom-boom” reminiscent of “swing” or marching bass drums, coupled with the use of his trademark polyrhythmic statements on the drumset, Elvin became the African drum choir incarnate. All the while, his ride cymbal playing held it all together. Einstein couldn’t describe the concept of time nearly as well as Elvin has done... “relative” to all things, then, “E,” which stands for Elvin, “equals” TIME, nothing “square” about it, multiplied by passion and “a love supreme.” His affiliation with John Coltrane stands as one of the most important associations in musical history.

  This was met with a standing ovation when Elvin came up to the stage to receive his award from the Zildjian family and emcee Bill Cosby. Of course, stating an accolade for Elvin is merely stating the obvious, but still, it felt good to be able to acknowledge the man as my hero in front of so many drumming colleagues. Elvin is a hero to all us drummers.

  photos: Shigeru Uchiyama

  18. In Further Praise of Elvin

  I celebrate the mind, body, and soul of Elvin Jones. I declare that today and every day is “Elvin Jones Day.” This makes great sense to me as a drummer. Elvin is the musician who redefined the drums. He’s also the one contemporary of John Coltrane who not only helped shape that music, but could keep up with the relentless musical searching and finding that ’Trane vigorously pursued; their duets are the stuff of legend. Elvin went from being an essential sideman to an essential leader, and he commanded some mighty bands. His style of timekeeping was its own language; his world of soloing was its own universe. His warmth and wit rank with other great humanists who love life and love
what they do.

  Going back to my analysis, I should add that the influence of marching or military types of drumming is clearly as evident in Elvin’s playing as are his influences and incorporations of African and Caribbean rhythmic styles. He quotes from a lexicon of field and snare drum cadences both in his soloing and timekeeping. (Elvin did spend three years in the military.) Then, there are bits of Philly Joe Jones discernible here, a touch of Shadow Wilson there, and the assorted assertiveness as practiced by Art Blakey everywhere. (Elvin on first hearing Shadow Wilson: “I loved the way he played, he was flawless, and such a gentleman. He had perfect time. He understood percussive dynamics… He was so in tune with the composition.”) But no other drummer sounds as original to my ears as Elvin does when playing time or soloing, and I am hard pressed to accurately pinpoint his stylistic antecedents. On the other hand, there sure are plenty of us playing today who incorporate his timekeeping vocabulary into our own style of playing. As a press release from the Berklee College of Music stated (announcing the conferring of an Honorary Doctor of Music degree upon Mr. Jones): “Jones remains one of the preeminent jazz percussionists performing today. His influence has extended beyond jazz to rock and other styles of music. His contributions to the development of free improvisation, which underplays or ignores a regular pulse altogether, were adopted by numerous avant-garde players… Jones developed a new role for jazz drummers, diverging from simply keeping the beat, to becoming an equal, collaborative improviser. His simultaneous use of several metrically contrasting rhythms, irregularly shifting accents, and interjections of counter-rhythmic motives against the prevailing pulse became hallmarks of his style.”

  As I write in Drumset Essentials, “All my life, I've tended to be an idealist, and whenever I‘ve thought of drum solos, I’ve thought of Elvin Jones. I’ve thought of being the listener and hearing an Elvin Jones drum solo, which had nothing to do with playing for effect. This, to me, had everything to do with pure emotional expression and velocity, and being in tune or somehow plugged into a higher awareness of things.”

  Elvin Jones to Loren Schoenberg, Jazz UK: “Whenever I've heard people sounding like me — well, it's often when I'm there, they see me walk in and play some of my licks. I take it as a compliment. And it’s part of the continuity of all music.”

  LS: Please talk about the significance of playing the bass drum in all styles of jazz.

  EJ: Well, other than the cymbal and the snare, it’s the most important part of the kit. When I first started, everybody went boom-boom-boom. But when I did that, I found I couldn’t hear the piano or the bass. I thought I needed to hear it, so I stopped doing it, or played it very light, just touch the head. Anybody can play soft for 30 seconds, but do it for an hour, then you learn.

  And from an article in The Philadelphia City Paper dated October 16–23, 1997, Nate Chinen interviews Elvin and describes how, “During his tenure with Trane, a number of jazz critics alluded to the African flavor of their music, due largely to Elvin's polyrhythmic drumming, the use of rhythmic groupings that suggested a pulse of three beats where there would usually be four. ‘[The African influence] was subconscious. You know, I’m an African American,’ Jones laughs. ‘I heard rhythms that are all related. I think American Indians have the same kind, people in the South Pacific. You can hear it in these various places, not always related to Africa particularly. I listened to the real authentic African music from the United Nations record store — you can buy ethnic recordings there — and I heard some of the more tribal gatherings, festivals, and things like that. They weren't individual drummers, they were a whole group, maybe three or four hundred people, all using the same tempo, but their rhythms were varied. That contributed to the complexity of what you hear. So I would listen to it as a whole and I would imagine: What if I could do that? But you know, it’s just something that you feel; it’s feeling-based more than anything else, more than an intellectual concept. It’s extremely spiritual and extremely emotional.’”

  So there it is: Elvin sounds like Elvin because he was trying to sound like “three or four hundred people.” Makes perfect sense! And so I celebrate Elvin Jones every day, precisely because his drumming is the most universal of musical sounds I have ever heard. He passed away on May 18, 2004. When I was asked to contribute some words of condolence by the good people at the Zildjian cymbal company, I sent them the following: “There will never be a more pure or powerful drumming force, or a higher level of drumming intelligence and passion, than that of Mr. Elvin Jones. Elvin represented everything that was good and great about jazz and life: the swingin’est beat, the brightest smile, the warmest (and most sweat-stoked!) embrace... Elvin was the life force of our music. And as hard as it is to imagine life and jazz without his bodily presence, he lives on in the tremendous body of recorded work he left us, and in the memories of those who were lucky enough to know him or see him in person. Elvin Jones left the world a much better place.”

  Elvin came to visit Weather Report when we were soundchecking in Japan on my second tour there with the band. He picked up Zawinul in one arm and Wayne with the other and lifted them both up off the ground at the same time for a real Elvin hug.

  Despite the adversities he faced in life — as a black man in America, as one-half of a racially-mixed couple (his wife and now widow, Keiko, is Japanese), for being imprisoned unjustly — he seemed to meet life and all who admired him (and who didn’t?) with a warm smile and an open heart. Keiko was not so quick to forgive or forget an insult. She complained to me and my wife Mutsuko that no publisher in this country would put out the book she wrote that chronicled, catalogued, and detailed many of these hardships and inequities. Keiko went on and on about this, so I thought I would change the direction of the conversation a bit by asking her, “Keiko-san, what was the name of your book?” “Name of book?” she replied. “Name of book, America, Fuck You, THAT name of book!”

  19. Yamaha

  Back when I was playing in Kenton’s band (circa 1974), one horn player after another began playing Yamaha instruments. Pretty soon, Stan’s entire saxophone section and half of the brass players were all using Yamaha horns; the bass player had a Yamaha amp. When the Kenton band was touring Japan, a couple of the Yamaha horn designers came to meet with Stan’s Yamaha-playing musicians to ask their opinions and get their feedback. Most of the guys were simply polite and thanked Yamaha for making such a fine instrument, but one of the saxophonists insisted on demonstrating something or other to these two hapless Yamaha designers stuck in a backstage dressing room with him, and he was honking away on this baritone saxophone HONK! HONK! BLAT! BLEAT!, relentlessly trying to get some unreachable note out of the horn, and we’re all wondering what in the world is going on, but we know that the Yamaha guys are here and so no one says anything in protest. But finally Stan bellows from his dressing room: “SOMEBODY KILL IT AND PUT IT OUT OF ITS MISERY!”

  Although I was very happy with my Slingerland drums at the time, I must admit that I was feeling a bit left out of the Yamaha party. But when I asked their U.S. rep, “Hey, what about the drums? How are they?” he replied, “You might want to wait a few years.” As suggested, I did wait. Four years later, while doing my first Weather Report tour in Japan, the band was invited to visit the Yamaha factory and R&D center. Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius, and I got on a Bullet Train early one morning in Osaka and rode to Hamamatsu where the now legendary Takashi Hagiwara, or “Hagi,” met us. After receiving a tour of the piano factory (amazing), we were led to a small studio where there was a Yamaha synthesizer, a drumset, and an electric bass that was made fretless thanks to the all-night filing efforts of a dedicated craftsman. So the three of us jammed for a while, and then looked at some catalogs with Hagi while sipping green tea and jockeying for swag (free T-shirts and the like). Since I had come to Japan with a brand-new Slingerland kit, I was not tempted to change drum brands, yet was impressed by what I heard and saw that day.

  photo : Shigeru Uchiyama

  T
wo years later, for one of my then-frequent trips to Japan, I was informed that this particular jazz festival would not provide for the transport of my drums to Japan, and that Yamaha would be supplying all of the drumkits for the concerts. “Okay,” I thought, “Here’s a chance to really check out Yamaha drums.” I should mention that, by this point, I was not so happy with several aspects regarding my Slingerland kit, especially the hardware. Almost all of the hardware designed and made in the USA during those years suffered from poor engineering and manufacturing standards; I was having one problem after another with ever-bulkier cymbal stands, hi-hats, and bass drum pedals. And so I arrived in Japan during the summer of 1980, was greeted once again by Hagi, got a nice Yamaha T-shirt — and then I saw the drums: Beautiful. British racing-green finish on birch with hardware that was sharp, intelligent, and elegant. A cymbal stand that did anything yet only required a finger’s strength to tighten. The choir of angels’ voices began going “Aaaaahhhh” at that moment and I soon became a Yamaha artist.

  A few weeks after that festival experience in Japan, a truck pulled up in front of the house I was renting in Los Angeles and the driver asked, “Are you expecting some drums?” And I replied, “I guess so. Er, well, I wasn’t expecting them so soo….” My words were cut off as the driver said “Here!” and began handing me box after cardboard box, each of them with the name YAMAHA printed in large red letters. Two drumsets’ worth of drums. My first Yamaha kits were yellow-lacquered birch, and they looked and sounded great.