No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report

by Peter Erskine

  The band is a three-way cooperative at this point, but we all go our separate ways for the most part to work on our own tunes — never a good sign. With more than half of the album under our belt, we do a tour of Europe while playing the new music, and then we fly to Japan for the 1985 Madarao Jazz Festival.

  photo: Ebet Roberts

  37. Madarao, Japan

  By this point in time I’ve had a number of bachelor adventures in New York and abroad — lovely women all, and apologies for the short shrift this book gives to the multitude of muses in my life. More about discretion than dereliction of duty, I am grateful to all who have held my hand.

  One woman who may not be so receptive to this entreaty would be my live-in girlfriend, Mami, who flew from Japan to move in with me in my one-bedroom/two-story co-op apartment on 29th Street in Manhattan. It’s a great place, and she and I have a lot of fun playing house, but my being away for much of the time with Steps Ahead is not good for our fledgling relationship. I’m afraid we both go our own ways without admitting to it — hmmm, similar to what’s beginning to happen in the band. By the end of summer ’85, the band flies to Japan and spends the first night in Tokyo, preparing to train and bus it from there the next morning to a ski resort in Nagano prefecture known as Madarao. That following morning, as I’m standing in the lobby, a Japanese woman comes up to me rather quickly and, looking me right in the eyes, she asks, “Peter, do you remember me?” And I, who normally hates that question and can’t remember most people’s faces and names very well after repeated introductions, I just blurt out, “MUTSY!” as though seven years’ worth of time has elapsed in mere seconds from when we met during my first Weather Report tour.

  Background: I had made the mistake of telling Mutsy about my girlfriend when I first met her — “mistake” in that I knew pretty quickly how strongly I was attracted to her, and knowing enough about the Japanese that she would never consider my attentions as anything other than scandalous or lecherous. Nevertheless, I could not help myself by that tour’s end and I bought a dozen roses for her from the New Otani Hotel flower shop. This amounted to a lot of money in those days, especially for a not-so-incredibly-well-paid sideman, but I was happy to do this, smiling at the thought of presenting her with these beautiful flowers. Little did I think or realize that touring bands receive flower bouquets from fans all of the time in Japan, and so when I chose a quiet moment before the band’s final concert appearance in Tokyo to present the flowers to her — “Mutsy, these are for you!” — she merely accepted them and casually remarked, “Oh, thanks,” and walked away. No kiss. No eyes filled with that soulmate-recognition-mirrored effect, she just walked away. “Hmmm,” I thought, “THAT didn't go as planned.” So that was that. Mutsy later realized that I had gotten those flowers for her and that I did not find them sitting around the band’s dressing room. In the meantime, she had gotten married — to a drummer! — and I went on to love and live with two different Japanese women; I can only think that both of us were practicing for the real thing when it would finally come along. Destiny took my hand that morning in Tokyo, and destiny had the most beautiful smile in the world.

  The festival is located high up in the mountains, but this does not prevent the temperatures from reaching incredible highs (ski resorts tend not to have hotel rooms with air conditioners). I’m in love and I don’t care. But I don't know if she is feeling the same way about me. Victor Bailey finally solves this riddle for me when he points out, “Hey, you notice how she’s TOUCHING YOU every time she walks by you? Check it out, man; I think she likes you.” Sure enough, her next pass by me includes a soft touch of my arm, and all of a sudden I get it. Whoopee! We’re in love, even though we don’t know it yet. The beauty of the Nagano mountains combined with a full moon and too-little time that we have to steal away, all of these elements conspire to form a heady brew of dumbstruck love, and somehow I know my life has changed forever.

  I fly back home from Japan — having sent a flower bouquet to Mutsy by Japanese FTD this time — with love in my brain, smile, and heart, but also a heavy knowledge in my heart because I know that I will have to confess this change of heart to Mami as soon as I get back to the New York apartment. The conversation goes like any of those conversations go: not well. I resigned myself to sleeping on the couch and telling Mami that she was welcome to stay there as long as she needed to — I would be traveling much of the time anyway — but that she had to go. But we’re scheduled to visit my parents down in New Jersey the NEXT DAY, and I insist that we both go. So we take the bus from Port Authority to one of the Atlantic City casinos where my parents meet us. We all go to my parents’ house. I can't wait to tell my Dad about Mutsy, while Mami and my mother carry on an awkward conversation. I think Mami has broken the news to her but isn't getting much sympathy; my Mom is happy at the news. The visit lasts for a day or two. And so…

  Mami stays at the apartment in New York while I go to Europe to tour with John Abercrombie and Marc Johnson. I’m daydreaming about Mutsy the entire time. Imagine my shock when I get a letter informing me that she’s called the New York apartment to leave a nice message for me, but a Japanese woman answers the telephone and Mutsy is terribly confused and hurt by my deception.

  More fences to mend.

  My propensity to live a double life — more accurately to live the life where I am while maintaining that other life where I was or normally would be, etc. — is getting complicated. But this is more important to me than anything in the world, so I explain everything to Mutsy. Bless her soul, she’s an understanding and forgiving woman.

  Mutsy and I finally meet face to face during a series of rendezvous, including my flying out to L.A. where she has taken part-time work as a translator for a Japanese animation company. (Mutsy was one of the most famous music-biz interpreters in Japan, having worked for Stevie Wonder, Queen, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rod Stewart, John Denver, Sting, and even Frank Sinatra, who personally requested that she do his on-stage translation during his shows in Japan.) I’ve neglected to mention the other best part of falling in love with Mutsy. Her son Taichi! And while long-past warnings of an instant family echo faintly in my ear (“Don’t marry into a ready-made family,” according to one of my Kenton bandmates), I’m delighted and scared at the prospect.

  We finally are able to plan a trip where she and Taichi will visit me in New York, from where we will ride the bus to visit my parents in south Jersey. We are met again at a casino and drive to my childhood home. I’m proud as punch of the two of them; meanwhile my father is asking Mutsy all sorts of questions about her health and religion, and then my mother asks: “Oh, you read Japanese of course, right? Could you please tell me what this says?” and she leads us both to a nightstand by the bed where Mami and I slept during our swan-song visit. Scrawled into the paint and wood by deeply-etched ballpoint pen ink and impression is a letter “to the next woman,” which basically says, “This guy is a scumbag and his parents are bastards and he’s going to do the same thing to you that he’s done to me.” Mutsy is still getting to know me, she’s just met my parents, and my Mom is standing there smiling, waiting to know what the inscription means. Mutsy translates as follows: “She says that she’s really sorry that things didn’t work out so well.”

  With that, my parents have both fallen in love with her and Taichi.

  38. Tachikawa to Santa Monica

  Former site of the largest U.S. airbase in Japan, this is where Mutsy grew up and where she now lives with Taichi, and where I must travel to court her and realize our destiny. My trip winds up contributing to costing me membership in Steps Ahead due to the Magnetic album’s late but now rushed completion schedule — that, and my opportunity to work once again with Joe Zawinul, who has invited me to participate in what will be Weather Report’s final album.

  All of that aside, I feel marvelously at home and at peace in Japan. There’s no question that I want to spend the rest of my life with this woman and this child. And when she becomes pregnant w
ith our baby girl, that seals the deal.

  Meanwhile, there’s that final Weather Report album to make. I love being back in the company of Zawinul and find working with him a much more pleasant task these days. I’m more confident, and he’s in an interesting place. It soon becomes apparent that the band is shutting its doors for business, and that this album is a swan song — hence my involvement. Joe looks to a familiar hand to help chart his next course. That will become “Weather Update,” a clever name that is all but reviled by most people who resent the use of the word “Weather” anywhere in a new band’s name that doesn’t have both Wayne and Joe in it.

  Guitarist Steve Khan joins the band along with me, plus Victor Bailey and Bobby Thomas, Jr. It’s an important transitional vehicle for Joe to get from WR to his “Syndicate” bands, but we don't amount to much more than that in the fusion history books. The one-chord groove, vamp thing is starting to take center stage in Joe’s musical universe. At one point of the tour, after a concert in New York, I bring some old VHS tapes of Weather Report from 1978 that my father shot of the band in concert (with direct sound coming from house engineer Brian Risner’s board mix; this video has made it to the Internet several times over), and we play it during an overnight bus ride from New York to Washington, D.C. Joe turns and says to me, “You know what? We were actually playing better tunes in those days.” We finish the tour on the West Coast and plan to start anew in the New Year with a new band. So for that reason and more, Mutsy and Taichi and baby and I will live in Los Angeles, which represents the halfway mark between Tokyo and New Jersey. Mutsy’s father has just passed away, but her mother is very much alive, as are my parents at that point. We go house hunting in L.A. and almost land a place in Glendale. When we mention this to our mutual friends Darlene Chan and Peter Donald, they almost yell out loud, “Glendale? Uh-uh, you guys are going to live in Santa Monica!” and they hooked us up to their real estate agents, who found us our dream home in two days. We have lived there for 26 years. Small, but wonderful. When my brother, who I hired to move my stuff from New York to California, drove up to the house with the moving truck — knowing how much we were paying for it — he drove right past it thinking, “This can't be the place.” He was used to Vermont home prices. Welcome to L.A. In addition to my brother helping unload the U-Haul truck, I’ve consigned a crew of USC drum students to help in return for future drum lessons, Mutsy, Taichi, and I have just gotten off the plane from Tokyo, and we’re all set to begin our new lives as Californians and as Erskines.

  39. What the Hell?

  As soon as we settle in and start living as Santa Monicans, I read an interview in DownBeat magazine where drummer Dennis Chambers mentions that Joe has invited him to join his new band. This is one of the more unpleasant ways to find out that you’re out. I go to my Macintosh 512K computer and print out a letter on its ImageWriter printer that mercifully decides not to eat up reams of paper in the process this time around, and I mail my thoughts off to Joe.

  L.A. mail is quick. The next day the phone rings and I pick it up and I hear without warning or “hello”: “What the fuck is with this crazy fucking letter?!” I reply (now knowing how this game is played), “What the FUCK is with this crazy fucking bullshit in DownBeat magazine?” to which Joe then meekly says, “Okay, man, okay… How you doin’?” and we talk. As pissed off as Joe could make me, it was never easy to stay angry at the man for too long. He was a genius as far as I was concerned, and geniuses — even boorish ones — get wide latitude in my book.

  So any Zawinul-related enterprise is now out. I book myself fairly solid European tours and New York gigs, and I spend a lot of time flying and playing all over the place, mostly Manhattan, Italy, Germany, England, and France, with John Abercrombie’s trio or the powerhouse band Bass Desires with John Scofield and Bill Frisell, put together by Marc Johnson. The house payments are demanding, and I’ve yet to sell my co-op in New York. So we really work hard to set ourselves up as family and to make ends meet, and Mutsy is doing so much of this while pregnant. Now, in addition to the touring, I’ve got a composing gig for a play up north in Solvang, California — everything seems to be happening at once — A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by my high school friend Jack Fletcher. The birth date for our daughter comes just as planned, and that morning in May, 1987 ranks as the single greatest moment in my life. Welcome, Maya!

  40. And Baby Makes 4

  Diapers and feedings and naptimes and walking around the room at midnight humming the theme from “Davy Crockett” (a pentatonic melody that works like magic with most crying babies — try it!). Shouldn’t I be playing a gig somewhere?

  Zawinul had been saying to me for some time, “You will play better once you are a father.” He was right. Everything simply makes better sense and has more meaning. Note choices are more important while being completely less important. “There are no bad notes.” It’s simpler to negotiate gig fees, too. Now I have a reason to ask for more money and the guilt monkey stays away, though I did hear about one European producer’s response to a fee request: “Who does this guy think he is, RINGO STARR?”

  The Abercrombie and Bass Desires groups have each made a pair of albums for Manfred Eicher’s ECM label at this point, and I’m involved with more and more free-lance ECM album work, all of which will lead up to my being offered the chance to make a solo album for the label. None of this would have happened without my having worked with Kenny Wheeler and the indulgent assistance of one of the tour bookers, Nick Purnell. Nick is one of those kindhearted guys that easily gets overlooked or pushed around because he’s too nice and too sensitive to deal with pushy or arrogant people. I’m pushy, and Manfred Eicher asserts himself without apology. Nick gets me a record deal with Manfred, almost lands himself a job at the label but gets pushed out of the picture by Manfred’s rudeness — that shark-poking madness that is supposed to rule out the weak from the strong. (These Germanic people and their Nietzschean perspectivism!) In any event, by Nick’s good graces and confidence in my music I am led to an ECM album deal that will last for four albums, plus incredible work opportunities with Kenny Wheeler both in a large and small group setting, composition commissions, and the inspiration ultimately to start my own record label. Just wanted to mention all of that as a big thank you to Nick.

  Nature takes care of itself, and the puzzlement of wondering how we’ll manage in that unimaginable future, or the amazement from looking back and seeing everything we did to the point of getting tired just thinking about it, it all makes sense and it all gets done and we all survive; as Joe liked to say, “We’re all just doing the best that we can,” and if you couple that with Jaco’s admonition to “pay attention,” then it all makes sense because we were doing just that. Having a baby in the picture will do that for you. It will also make you wonder what you used to do with all of that spare time. As my friend Jack Fletcher reminds me, “The universe is right on schedule.” This has become my favorite saying. I’m also scheduled to deliver this music for “Midsummer Night’s Dream”!

  photo: Peter Erskine

  41. The Play’s the Thing

  The written word, especially those written by Shakespeare, seems to inspire more compositional flights of fancy than anything else I’ve tried, and since I don't have the necessary technique to be able to sit and write without inspiration, I count myself as fortunate that so many plays come down the creative pike from Jack, and from these come the songs I will use for my solo albums.

  Director Jack Fletcher and I met up in Interlochen, Michigan, when I heard the sounds of the Don Ellis big band coming from his dorm room, thinking at that point that I must be the only high schooler hip enough to be into this music. Even though Jack was a theatre major — his parents well known and acclaimed in the theatrical world — his passion was in drumming; even though my major was music, my passion was for things theatrical and/or cinematic. Perfect match. He hips me to the finer production points of Cyrano de Bergerac while I tell him about Elvin Jones an
d Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. Years later, during a visit to my New York apartment, he will ask me if I’d be “at all interested in scoring a production of Richard the Secon…” “Yes, I’d love to do it.”

  I write most all of this on my own but am not confident about the scoring I have done for French horn, and I’m planning to have Jerry Peel come to the studio to multitrack the end-of-show hymn. I’m so impressed by the work of a college student I’ve met recently in Columbus, Ohio — a young trumpet player-arranger named Vince Mendoza — that I send him the music I have scored and ask for his corrections and voicing suggestions. What comes back in the mail is an “I can’t help it, had to fix it” rescoring of the hymn that is absolutely correct and brilliant. Counterpoint and voice leading exemplar. Welcome, Vince Mendoza.

  This begins a series of associations that will intersect and overlap over the years. If nothing else, I become known as a great dot connector. I am also known, to myself at least, as someone who benefits from the kindness of friends and ridiculously talented people, and if nothing else I know how to spot talented people a mile away.

  The world of scoring for the theatre opens up a universe of musical possibilities for me. Zawinul hears my Richard II score and tells me that I write “in the Viennese tradition,” which is thrilling to hear from him, especially since he introduced me to the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold back in the Weather Report days. My second score, this time for Midsummer Night’s Dream, garners an L.A. Drama Critics Circle prize for Best Original Music Score, and our next collaboration in San Francisco, Twelfth Night, will earn a similar award there. Vince and I begin a collaboration that continues to this day.