No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report

by Peter Erskine

  We finally got smart and began investing in a publicist, which has been a great help. It hasn’t increased sales ALL that much, but the visibility has improved and, besides, the whole idea of doing this is not so much about making money as to get the music out there. It’s my business, but it’s funded in great part by my drumming and other activities. Since most of the recordings we do are collaborative projects, we need very little money to put upfront because we can record in my home studio (Puck Productions). Everyone makes more money as a result of being a collaborative partner. I build the spreadsheets and databases, so when I get the sales statements, all the composers get their royalties, and then the performers get performance royalties each time an album is sold or a song is downloaded — it all adds up. So it’s a fair fight and it feels good and it’s fun. I mean, we’re not CBS, but we’ve got a pretty good catalogue now, and what we do is respectable. We are survivors. Our titles remain in print; we now have twenty of them to show for our efforts. And we’re Grammy nominees. Like Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home”!

  Speaking of the movies, one of Fuzzy’s latest CDs is Standards 2, Movie Music, which was recorded in the same acoustically rich and challenging hall in La Jolla, California with some state-of-the-art stereo microphones. The band this time around is Bob Mintzer on tenor, Darek Oles on bass, Alan Pasqua on piano, and myself on drums and producing. The album came out so good we’re already planning a follow-up, and maybe we can include “Over the Rainbow” on that.

  Our most ambitious project to date would have to be The Avatar Sessions — no relation to the movie but recorded in New York’s famed Avatar Studios, formerly known as Power Station, where I made my final recording with Weather Report and first recordings with Mike Mainieri, Steps Ahead, and others. This time around it was Tim Hagans writing for and leading the Norrbotten Big Band from the very far north of Sweden, all of those musicians flown over to Manhattan for the express purpose of making this album, joined by guests Randy Brecker, George Garzone, Vic Juris, Dave Liebman, Rufus Reid, and myself. It’s the best large ensemble playing I’ve ever done. Thanks to the support for the arts that European communities and states offer their artists. Without Europe, the state of American jazz might be in peril. Like Michael Jackson said: “We are the world.”

  The time and talents of several friends deserve mention: Our design team of Mark and Connie Beecher back east have been the brains and creative brawn behind most of our album covers, with West Coast-based designer Kio Griffith doing his share of cover designs, too. Mark is currently the President of the National Association of Rudimental Drummers. We are fortunate to have him on our team. Recording, mixing, and mastering engineer Rich Breen is the sonic epicenter of Fuzzy Music. We occasionally broaden out to include recording techniques or philosophies from such people as Dan Atkinson and Kent Fuqua who have pioneered the use of the KMF Stereo Microphone (more accurately, Fuzzy Music has been pioneering its use in two of our recordings). Weather Report engineer Brian Risner has recorded tracks in my home studio for the label; Rich Breen assisted on a Weather Report album done in Chicago’s Universal Recorders, same studio where I made two albums with Stan Kenton! Pianist and musical soulmate Alan Pasqua has appeared on most of our albums; Interlochen classmate Bob Mintzer is on Standards 2, Movie Music. Kenton bandmate Tim Hagans directs two of the big band titles, and so on. Our friends help. You can also find copies of my instructional books and DVDs at our website www.fuzzymusic.com. Here are two of our CD covers...

  46. Diary of Two Film Sessions

  As my wife exited her office and entered the kitchen of our home, she had that happy/excited-almost-mischievous look that I’ve come to know as meaning “some good news has come our way.” I asked, “What’s up?” and she answered with another question: “Guess who you’ll be working for next week?” “I give up,” was my enlightened reply. “For the first time, you’re finally going to be working with John Williams!”

  If you’ve seen the Star Wars or Indiana Jones films, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, Superman, Saving Private Ryan, or Catch Me If You Can, you’re familiar with this man’s music. His website biography starts: “One of the most popular and successful American orchestral composers of the modern age, John Williams is the winner of five Academy Awards, 17 Grammys, three Golden Globes, two Emmys, and five BAFTA Awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts… (he) has composed the music and served as music director for over eighty films…”

  Interestingly, I first became aware of his music back in the day when he was “Johnny Williams,” a jazz pianist (Juilliard-trained) and writer of music for television. He composed a piece for Stan Kenton’s Neophonic Orchestra in the mid-1960s titled “Prelude and Fugue”; I must have been all of eleven years old when I first heard it — a haunting, challenging, and swinging work that Stan later told me was “the best goddamned piece of music that’s ever been written for this band!” Of course, I have enjoyed his film music along with countless other movie fans over the years; call me an admirer of the man’s work. What would I be playing? Would this be an orchestral or small jazz group date? Which drumset should I have the cartage company bring? I had no idea, but I finally got this much information from the contractor: “The ensemble consists of you, two harpists, two percussionists, a celeste player, and a couple of Japanese musicians.” Since I knew that John Williams was working on Memoirs of a Geisha, I figured this must be the film. Would I be improvising or reading? This was a period film. Why call a jazz drummer for this particular film date?

  I found out on a Saturday morning as I entered the cavernous recording soundstage at the old MGM studios (now SONY) in Culver City. My drums were being set up in the drum isolation booth at the rear of the soundstage; I joined my cartage guy, and after exchanging morning pleasantries he pointed out that I might be playing “only the tom-toms today; there’s four mics just for the toms.” “Okay,” I thought. “Toms will sound good.” I then walked to the control booth to say hello to the engineer, Shawn Murphy. Shawn speculated that I might “not be playing any drumset at all today.” When he saw my puzzled look, he continued: “I think you’ll be out in the big room, playing some of those Japanese taiko drums.” Wow. Cool! I sat in once with a taiko drumming group. Very large sticks and a different attitude were required to play those drums. How “Japanese” was I feeling this morning? My two percussionist colleagues for the day were the always excellent Alan Estes and Mike Fisher. The taiko drums all belonged to Mike.

  Soon the composer entered the room, and we were introduced. “Maestro!” I beamed as I shook his hand. John was very cordial, insisted that I call him “John,” and then suggested that we look at the music we were going to play. Spread out on four pages was a fairly non-stop litany of eighth notes, laid out in 6/8 time with a few rests as well as sixteenth-note flourishes here and there. John, in his soft voice, suggested that I might want to approach this as a sort of “Japanese Buddy Rich,” and I instantly knew why I had been called — not that I’m a Japanese Buddy Rich, but because I had a drumset player’s sensibility while being known as a good reader. My only question, after we had chosen which of the many taiko drums would be best suited for the three-drum part, was if he wanted me to “exceed the speed limit of the eighth-note pulse” during the cue; not having played it (or viewed the scene to which the music would be added), I was fishing for some info so as to guide any improvisational forays. He thought about the question for a few seconds and suggested I not overdo it too much. It turns out that the part he wrote was almost perfect “as is,” but I could add a normal sense of musical shading and phrasing to it — using dynamics as well as a bit of added velocity now and then — to make it both my own as well as the film’s. It was challenging to read and play but great fun.

  The music was consummate John Williams stuff: sparkling and ingenious, wonderful just to listen to but even better to hear while watching the cinematic scene play out on the large screen. The
director, Rob Marshall, liked it; John liked it; Shawn the engineer liked it; but John wanted to get it even better. I was loving every second of all this: THIS is why I studied and practiced in school; THIS is why I learned how to read and how to play in legit as well as jazz ensembles; THIS was the big leagues; THESE guys were the New York Yankees of film music.

  A couple of favorite moments: Maestro Williams had the harpists change their parts for one scene, and when they played this new arrangement for him, he smiled and said, “Yes, that’s going to look real good.” The other came from my being able to recount the Stan Kenton anecdote to John during a mid-session break, letting him know that Stan regarded his piece as the “best goddamned piece of music ever written for (my) band!” John came up to me at the end of the day to thank me for that. I guess we all like to know that our work is appreciated.

  Several years later I was fortunate to be called to play again for John, this time for the Spielberg film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The ensemble was larger, the drumming much more quiet — on a 1940s period kit with calfskin heads, playing brushes — and the requirement of the music called for zero interpretation; the “swing would result from the absolute mechanical perfection of the performance.” I never played anything like this before in my life, but the results were magical once the band clinched the piece.

  Film music can be some of the most thrilling stuff to record, especially when you’re in the presence of Hollywood legends.

  photo: Peter Erskine

  47. Back to the Classics

  A cold blust’ry wind blows upon the crags ’bove Edinburgh. Settled comfortably inside my hotel room, I reflect upon the last few days’ adventure I shared with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and soloists, rehearsing and performing Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 80-minute opus “Blood on the Floor.” Even though I have played this piece numerous times over the ten years since its premiere, I still find myself challenged each time in new ways by its volatile complexity.

  First, a little something about the composer (the BBC website says it well): “Turnage is one of Britain's most successful living composers whose communicative music reflects a range of interests and concerns, including jazz, the arts, politics, and everyday life. He has worked closely with various orchestras, music groups, and jazz musicians, with whom he has made significant recordings of his works.” I can add that Mark was born in 1960, is a keen football fan (Arsenal being his favorite team), and has been responsible for my being able to enjoy working as an improviser in the symphonic setting. He is, in my opinion, one of the great musical geniuses of our time. He is also a fun guy.

  A brief history of the work: Mark began “Blood on the Floor” as a single-movement work, inspired by the Francis Bacon painting of the same name. He later expanded it to become a nine-movement suite for orchestra and jazz soloists, which was premiered at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on May 30, 1996, by the Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern, conducted by Peter Rundell and featuring solo performances by guitarist John Scofield, British saxophonist Martin Robertson, and myself on drums. It is described as “a masterpiece of contemporary sensibility” and has been performed since its premiere by orchestras in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, London, Birmingham, Amsterdam, Helsinki, New York, Los Angeles, Glasgow, and Oslo. As I have played nearly every one of these performances, the piece should present no problems, yet a testament to the vitality of its inner construction is that it still manages to bedevil me. If you are at all familiar with the rhythmic construction of contemporary written (or “classical”) music, you’ll know that most modern composers avoid the use of a simple 4/4 meter but will instead write the music in combinations of 3/8, 5/8, 7/16, and so on. The challenging bar of 7/16 aside, much of this music could be written in 4/4 more often than it is. In fact, when I was a young student and aspiring orchestral percussionist, I used to listen to many works by Bartók, Stravinsky, Bernstein, and Varése that seemed to me to be in 4/4 for the most part. I heard most of the metric complexities as a sort of jazz-over-the-barline expression. That made the most sense to me when I was a kid, and, to be honest, it still makes a lot of sense to me today. However sophisticated they might seem on occasion, jazz and pop music are an expression of tradition and experimentation. While both types of music have flirted with metric complexity, they usually confine themselves to simple 4/4 or three-quarter metric schemes. Dave Brubeck and Don Ellis pioneered the use of compound meters in jazz, and the influence of Indian music soon made itself known across a wide cultural spectrum in the 1960s. Meanwhile, classical composers were trying to get the gist of syncopation as heard in ragtime and early swing music. Instead of relying on syncopated accents within the 4/4 context and counting on the non-jazz musicians to feel those syncopations “correctly,” they resorted to displacing the barline in order to create a new sort of rhythmic tension. (Of course, this was true for non-jazz-inflected music as well; witness Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” etc. If the use of odd-times in musical circles, circa 1913, is news to fans of Rush or Dream Theater, then I encourage them to check out some early 20th-century classical music!)

  The confounding issue of barline placement and interpretation exists in Mark’s music; hence, these thoughts: Does a barline exist on paper only, or is it meant to be perceived and heard by the listener? For starters, I think that the barline is first and foremost a tool that enables composers to construct their music; it also allows them to inform the musicians (and conductor) how to navigate through the music. In simple metric settings, the barline functions as a handy sort of punctuation mark like a comma or a period. When the metric construction becomes more specific and complicated, then the barline seems to function not only as a signpost indicating where each new succession of “one” is, but it also seems to serve as a sort of “devil’s advocate.” What does this mean? Since players will often phrase rhythms and phrasings dependent on the written “one,” an artificial or contrived sense of accent is engendered by the use of shifting meters. It’s almost impossible to not breathe anew and phrase as the barline commands. This can lead to some exciting if quirky rhythmic complexity. However, my job as a drummer requires me to create a musical arc or horizon that best serves the music. Imagine if, after every accent in a piece, the drummer consciously (or subconsciously) shifted gears; this might work for some parts of a piece, but not for the entire work. The drummer as well as the listeners will all tire from this formula. (I once pointed out to Mark that a complex sequence of meter changes all added up to several measures of simple 4/4 time if redrawn, and he replied, “Oh…yeah.”) Of course, the genius to much of this music IS the metric complexity! What’s a drummer to do?

  The solution is to step back and try to get a bigger picture of what’s going on musically. I’ll admit to having redrawn some of the barlines in this piece so that I could better play it as a drummer, giving the work the type of contemporary jazz feel the composer is wanting from the rhythm section while still serving the needs of the ensemble. This is otherwise known as “cheating.” It’s probably best for listeners to not be aware of the barlines as they’re hearing the music. Unless you’re playing for a dance crowd (or an uncertain band), you can probably enjoy getting away with obscuring some barlines in written music. Bottom line: if it feels good, do it; just don’t get lost!

  QUESTION: How do you prepare mentally for a big performance? ANSWER: I will spend a lot of time aurally “imaging” the music that I’m going to play, especially if it involves written notation, as in when I am playing with an orchestra. (I get called to play a number of contemporary pieces that call for drumset soloist with orchestra.) I do my homework. So, there’s not a whole lot to get nervous about. Kind of like a downhill racer on a ski course. There’s plenty of improvisation along the way, but you know the way because you’re prepared. Following a conductor is just a different type of ship to steer, and there is no better training for it than experience. If you and the conductor are on the same wavelength in terms of tempos and dynamics, it ca
n be a lot of fun. You just have to pay attention and watch the baton.

  Classical conductors are different from most jazz and pop conductors. With jazz and pop conductors, when the baton reaches the lowest point of the motion, that’s where the beat is, but with classical conductors it’s all on the “up” stroke. One of the secrets of conducting, according to Stefan Ansbury and Vince Mendoza, is that the smaller the conductor keeps his motions, the better the band will play in time. I’ve seen Michel LeGrand do this to magical effect. When the motions get too big, everything starts to slow down. I’ve seen that with some big names in the biz who don’t really know what they’re doing. What good conductors can do with a piece of music, night after night, in terms of the subtle changes they make, is extraordinary.

  Every summer in London’s Royal Albert Hall, a series of concerts takes place that are formally known as The Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, or more simply known as “The Proms.” A famous premiere took place there in 1995 during the final night of The Proms, an evening normally reserved for crowd favorites and patriotic tunes. Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s composition “Panic” was played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with soloists Jon Harle on saxophone and Paul Clarvis on drumset, and they all found themselves on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers the following morning. “Panic,” as the name implies, is a piece with some rough edges; Birtwistle is dedicated to very contemporary music, and the Union Jack flag-wavers didn’t like that one bit (imagine you’re expecting Kenny G but get Ornette Coleman instead). It took a few years for the excitement to calm down. The BBC decided it wanted to revisit the music, albeit with different soloists. I was pleased but surprised to receive the invitation to come to London for this (drummer/percussionist Paul Clarvis is an excellent musician and friend, one I had written to earlier that year in order to compliment him on some of the fine film music work I’d heard him do). In any event, I got the call and took the gig. Birtwistle’s music takes some getting used to, a bit like the man himself. Born 1934 in Lancashire, his character is gruff and outspoken. When I was introduced to him at the first and only rehearsal, I schmoozed him with a complimentary but sincere, “The piece is brilliant,” to which re responded, “IS it?” Nice guy. Martin Robertson played the alto saxophone, and we were accompanied by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. When one of the BBC musicians complained that the music was too loud, he bellowed, “TOO LOUD? If you were worried about the music being too loud, you should have learned to play the fucking recorder!”