22. StAR (Miroslav Vitous, Jan Garbarek, Peter Erskine, 1991) — I flew to Oslo from Los Angeles on January 15, 1991, the same day that was designated as the deadline for Iraqi troops to pull out of Kuwait. I arrive on the 16th, and after washing up in the hotel, go to Rainbow Studio ostensibly to set up the house Sonor kit (my ECM recording ritual, which means replacing the heads with a fresh set of Evans heads and tuning the drums to my liking; this was a gorgeous rosewood kit that belonged to Jack DeJohnette). I lose track of the date and time and am concentrating on the drums. Meanwhile, Miroslav and Jan start running down some of the tunes, and Manfred decides to record what we’re doing. We wind up recording about half of the album that way/that day. I’m exhausted by the end of the long day and head straight back to my hotel room. I wake up with a start at around 2 a.m. Oslo time and get a sinking feeling right away as I wonder, “Hey, whatever happened to that deadline in Kuwait?” I turn on the TV just in time to hear CNN intone, “Bombs are falling on Baghdad…,” and I said, “Oh, shit …” out loud to my empty room.
I brought the tune “Anthem” in as a peace anthem that next morning, and otherwise existed in a relative news vacuum for the duration of the album. That changed when I flew to Cologne a few days later for my first project with the WDR Big Band (with Kenny Wheeler). Shades of anti-American sentiment everywhere you looked, not seen since the Vietnam War. How different Cologne would be on 9/11/2001, and how much the same again a short while later.
Anyways: Garbarek and Vitous are both master musicians. Manfred did a terrific job on this album, as well and as usual.
23. Benny Rides Again (Gary Burton, Eddie Daniels, 1992) — I wish that I had studied or been more hip to the drumming of Gene Krupa before this session. I had the chance recently to listen to some Gene, and then play some of the Fletcher Henderson charts from the Benny Goodman book (with Ken Peplowski on clarinet); great stuff! The older I get, the more I dig the older stuff. Meanwhile, Eddie and Gary are both real virtuosos on their instruments.
24. Fantasia (Eliane Elias, 1992) — Another first take, the Milton Nascimento medley arrangement by Eliane is a fantastic piece of music, played so well by her and Marc Johnson, with Café on percussion and Randy and Eliane’s daughter Amanda singing the hauntingly beautiful melody of “Ponta de Areia.” This happens to be one of my favorite pieces of drumming I’ve ever done. Obrigado, Eliane.
25. Jazzpaña (Vince Mendoza, et al, 1992) — At the point of recording Jazzpaña, I’m two-and-a-half years into my relationship with the WDR Big Band, and Vince Mendoza is now in the fold. Music legend Arif Mardin has penned one of the compositions for the album, and Vince has put together an ambitious suite of original music plus arrangements of authentic tango meets jazz — an oxymoron of sorts. This hybrid is the calling card of the new breed of Spanish jazzers who are brought to Köln for the project by producers Wolfgang Hirschmann and Sigge Loch. As usual, the drums are the bridge between the various musical worlds being explored. One day that exploration takes the form of the percussionists, who up to this point have been playing palmas (hand clapping), all being given shakers to shake because one of them complained that they didn’t have enough to do, and so… This development is unbeknownst to me when we start a take of one of the tunes, and all I can hear in my headphones is a whole lotta shakin’ going on. I tear off my phones and march rather suddenly into the main room of the studio and yell up to the control room, “Hey! It feels like I’m playing in a bag full of fucking rattlesnakes! Somebody tell me what’s going on!” “Rattlesnakes” became the code word for “funny” over the next couple of years whenever I would work at the WDR. A great album, by the way.
26. Alive in America (Steely Dan, 1993) — The tracks from the 1993 touring band are added almost as an afterthought to the album, but I’m glad that the band with Drew Zingg and myself is represented on this album. “Third World Man” is a standout. “Green Earrings” is me trying to sound like Bernard Purdie, and Walter Becker’s “Book of Liars” is me trying to sound like me, I guess. My kids got a huge kick out of my doing the Steely Dan tour. I was conflicted for much of the trip, due to missing my jazz trio work, but it was fun to get the gig.
27. Michel Plays Legrand (Michel Legrand, 1993) — Flying back to L.A. from Cleveland following the final show of the Steely Dan 1993 tour, Bob Sheppard and I catch a ride on Walter Becker’s private jet. We stop for refueling somewhere in Colorado and get home before dawn. That afternoon I’m in Entourage Studio in North Hollywood to play on a Michel Legrand album with acoustic bass, acoustic guitar, acoustic piano, the drums, and flutes all in the same room. From stadium slammin’ rock to un petit Francais au jazz, sticks please, but not too loud. This confirmed my realization that some of the best drumming moments in music are those that the audience is never aware of.
My favorite Michel Legrand recording is his magnificent 20 Songs of the Century. If you can find it, reward yourself with a listen; it’s stunningly good. Grady Tate on drums, and you can easily hear how great he plays on this recording.
28. Simple Things (Chuck Loeb, 1994) — Nice album. Most memorable aspect for me was my being able to get out of New York just ahead of a second approaching ice storm thanks to Chuck rearranging the recording schedule to accommodate my request, thus arriving home just scant hours before the Northridge Earthquake hit. Thank you, Chuck! I am so glad that I could be home with my family for this terrible event. The house got damaged, but there were no serious injuries, and Daddy was there. Some Band-Aids came in handy: during Chuck’s session, I noticed that Will Lee had some bandages on his hand, and when I asked him what had happened, he merely replied, “Hey, these glow in the dark; give some to your kids!” and he handed me a bunch of glow-in-the-dark Band-Aids. After the earthquake’s first big seismic event subsided, and Mutsy and I had the kids gathered in one safe spot, I remembered having these Band-Aids and thought they might help in the now-completely-darkened house with no electricity in the dead of night. I reached into my carry-on bag, pulled out the Band-Aids, charged each one for a few seconds with my flashlight, and adhered them to Taichi and Maya’s foreheads. This proved to have a terrific calming effect. Thank you, Will! When the shaking finally settled down, we got the kids back to sleep and Mutsy and I made some coffee on the gas range, which was still working, made some toast in a frying pan, and began cleaning up the ungodly mess.
It’s funny what a musician remembers from an album, while most people just think of the music and remember where they were when they first heard a particular song.
29. American Diary (Mike Mainieri, 1994) — A marvelously complex yet folky album, this was the gist musically of the touring band that Mike would take on the road with George Garzone and Mike Formanek (who played on the second album; this particular CD was done with Joe Lovano and Eddie Gomez). Mainieri did a great job with the arrangements, the “Vivace” movement from Aaron Copland’s “Piano Sonata” being noteworthy (literally). I use a 10-inch drum on this recording, a mounted tom that I liked to tune up a bit more tightly than the way most drummers would use that drum. (Steve Gadd popularized the use of the low-tuned 10-inch tom as part of his kit’s setup.) Engineer James Farber and I referred to this drum as “the Beaner.” I don’t know why we called it that, but the name stuck. “The Beaner” sounds mighty good on this album, and so do the other instruments as played by the other musicians!
30. The History of the DRUM (Peter Erskine, 1995) — I got a telephone call in my hotel room in Birmingham, England while I was on tour, advising me that I was to meet with an arts council rep in 45 minutes’ time to pitch my writing a dance piece for an African ballet corps that was based in the U.K. This was all news to me at that moment. Wash my face. Grab a tea. What to pitch? A “history of the drum” is something that no arts council can resist or refuse. Bingo. From a review by Hal Howland in Modern Drummer: “Africans dance in New Orleans, balaphons find their way to Jamaica, claves color the streets of Calcutta, and the sampled voices of Papa Jo Jones and Louis Arm
strong mingle with drum machines, synthesizers, and acoustic polyrhythms, all unified by Peter's familiar and accessible triadic themes and harmonies.” He forgot to mention the key of C. I actually still like parts of this album, as improvised as it all turned out to be. Two of the pieces have successfully found their way into the world of percussion ensemble literature: “Calypso” and “Exit Up Right,” published by drop6 Media, Inc.
31. Justin Morell (1996) — I came home one day and my wife (reminder: she’s Japanese) told me that I had “a phone call from Judd Sommelier.” Hmmm. Interesting name, but I do know another Judd (Miller), so I dial the number, and when the phone is answered I say, “Hi, this is Peter Erskine, and I’m returning the call of a Judd so-mah-lee-ay” and the voice on the other end answers “Uh…this is Justin Morell.” Badda-bing! Love those R’s and L’s. It is always memorable to work in the studio with Jimmy Johnson on bass. I toured with his brother, Gordon, on Maynard’s band for nearly two years.
32. Lava Jazz (The Lounge Art Ensemble, 1997) — The conceit of this band became the habit of taking existing song structures and adding new melodies on top of the established harmonies, but the title also had to be clever for the song to be eligible to be considered. Thus, Dave Carpenter reworked “I Hear a Rhapsody” into “I Hear a Rap CD,” Bob Sheppard took “It Had To Be You” and changed it to “Did It Have To Be You?” and so on. We made two albums on Fuzzy Music; this was the first. I played the entire album on a stand-up cocktail kit. Why? Just for the challenge, and I liked the sound. Our second album, Music For Moderns, features some great writing and playing by Bob Sheppard and Dave Carpenter. Carp was one of the very few people who could swing on the electric bass, and he knew how to sing on it, too. That pretty much put him and Jaco in the same club as far as I’m concerned.
33. Sinatraland (Patrick Williams, 1997) — I’ve been a fan of Pat Williams’ writing since high school; his Verve albums from the late ’60s and early ’70s sparkled with wit and sonic sophistication (thanks to Phil Ramone’s engineering and the rhythm section work of Chuck Rainey and Bill LaVorgna, et al. Great New York brass sections, too). I was thrilled to get the call to work with Pat on the film score for Used Cars when I was first living in L.A., and the one disappointment I felt leaving L.A. for New York was the thought that I wouldn’t be able to work for Pat again. He and contractor Joe Soldo righted that situation by calling me for Sinatraland some nine years or so after I moved back to town. The album was an all-instrumental opus to Sinatra featuring different soloists on various hit tunes that Sinatra had recorded. This was my first opportunity to work with bass player Chuck Berghofer, but thankfully not the last. The charts are models of big band writing perfection. Among the great soloists, Phil Woods came in and nailed the first of his two tunes in one take. During playback when Pat asked Phil, “Phil, it sounds great; do you want to do it again?” Phil simply replied, “No!” Like Babe Ruth, Phil Woods hits it out of the park when he wants.
Pat’s newest album, Aurora, is a look-back tribute to his own Threshold LP from the ’70s as well as a look-forward to big band writing. L.A.’s finest were on the date, and I was honored to be part of the team.
34. Stormy Weather (Sheryl Crow, et al, presented by Don Henley, 1988) — This project might have been the genesis for the Joni Mitchell Both Sides Now orchestral album, as Larry Kline was involved with the production, and Joni was one of several songstresses to sing on the charity concert — and I know she loved the setting. Some of the vocalists had scant enough experience singing with an orchestra, let alone navigating through Vince Mendoza’s uncompromising charts. In addition to Joni, another vocalist who did not exhibit the deer-in-the-headlights syndrome of panic detectable in many of the singers was Sheryl Crow, who was equally at ease singing with the band or looking at the score. When she was being introduced to the band at the first orchestra rehearsal, she interrupted with, “PETER ERSKINE! My parents took me to see you play with Weather Report when I was thirteen years old,” to which I could only reply, “Oh, hey Sheryl! Yeah! That must have been…uh, when I was, like…FIFTEEN years old.” This album is hard to find.
35. Yes I Know My Way (Pino Daniele, 1988) — Playing drums on Pino’s hit tune “Amore Senza Fine” on this album has gotten me excellent service in Italian restaurants, better seats on Italian airplanes, and if nothing else has been a good ice-breaker whenever I meet an Italian who doesn’t know what I do. This became the new signing of the word “drums” after my name in Italy [smile]. The session: I received a forwarded fax message in Vienna just hours before me, Mutsy, and the kids were going to go to the train station to ride the overnight train down to Roma, where we were going to visit my sister Lois for the Christmas holidays, and this fax was asking me if I might want to come to Italy to record with Pino. I telephoned the number on the fax and told them, “Yes, in fact I’ll be in Rome tomorrow!” So a session was hurriedly put together for the day after Christmas. Terrific song, and Pino is a terrific guy. Wound up doing several albums with him, including one entire CD with the trio of Alan Pasqua and Dave Carpenter (Passi D’Autore, 2004). A lot of first takes on that one. Do I like these first takes because I am lazy? No. I like them because I believe the listener will discover the tune at the same time and in the same way that we do. Needless to say, the band needs to be good to be able to do this. And needless to say, that band with Alan and Dave was really good.
36. The Hudson Project (Mintzer, Abercrombie, Patitucci, Erskine, 1999) — Another good band; of course, look at the lineup! Created for the D’Addario Company as a touring band of endorsing musicians. D’Addario is the world’s most successful string-making company; Abercrombie and Patitucci use their strings, and D’Addario distributes Rico Reeds (Minter) and manufactures Evans drumheads (me). We introduced the band at a NAMM convention gig and then took the show on the road, presenting product as well as educational clinic/workshops while playing in concert, most of the time in a music store-turned-jazz club for the event. The New York City setting sounded great (Manhattan Place ballroom), even though the audience seemed far away, especially in comparison to the cramped quarters we had been touring and playing to for the two weeks leading up to this DVD and CD recording. Sometimes what looks good on paper sounds good in real life, too. Yay! You can check it out on YouTube.com, but the album is actually worth getting.
37. Short Cuts – The Jazzpar Combo (John Scofield, Hans Ulrik, 1999) — Another band-on-paper that sounded as good as it looked. Hans Ulrik is a leading jazz musician on the Copenhagen scene, and Swedish bassist Lars Danielsson joined Americans Scofield and me as we celebrated the 1999 Jazzpar prizewinners — Europe’s Pulitzer (or Nobel) for jazz. We were the international entertainment (not prize recipients), but man, did we have fun. Did my second-line tune “The Music of my People,” and Sco’s funk playing is beyond belief for me. He’s a genius.
38. Green Chimneys (Andy Summers, 2000) — This looked like a fun project. Bassist Dave Carpenter brought me on board, and we rehearsed all of the Monk tunes (almost thirty of them, as I recall) in Andy’s Venice rehearsal space. I brought a nice 5-piece kit with an 18-inch jazz bass drum to the rehearsal, Andy seemed to dig it, and so everything seemed all set. I get to the recording studio and set up the same kit, and Andy comes into the room with the engineer all worried-looking and finally asks me, “Is that it?” I reply, “Is that it, what?” and they both point to the drumset as if there’s something obviously wrong with it. I say, “What?” and they finally blurt out, “It’s so small!” I’m not sure what they were expecting, but I thought Andy wanted to make an album of Monk tunes, so I stuck to my guns and we tracked a boatload of Monk. I heard later that Andy was prepared to jettison most of what I had done, but Sting came to the rescue, going on and on about how great the drumming was on “Round Midnight,” and so Andy got embarrassed, I think, into keeping the tracks with my drumming. That didn't prevent the engineer from doing all sorts of digital cutting and pasting of my playing. Some people have an odd idea of what
jazz is.
39. Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell, 2000) — This album gets it right in every department, every aspect, every nuance, and every moment. One of the finest recordings ever made, in my opinion. Vince Mendoza outdid himself on this one, and so did Joni, whose performances on the CD are, for the most part, from her first takes in the studio WITH THE ORCHESTRA. Herbie played live, Wayne was overdubbed, everything else is pretty much “what you see is what you get.” A security guard came up to me at one point during the recording at George Martin’s AIR Studios in London and said, “I don't know what you folks are doing in there, but I’ve never seen musicians act like this during a session — all serious and respectful like, and concentrating and all.” I knew what he meant. Playbacks in the large room result in tears streaming down players’ faces. All of us are looking around knowing that this is something really important and really great. My friend the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage is sitting with me in the drum booth as we begin to run down Vince’s arrangement of “Answer Me, My Love” with its incredible six French horn intro, and as I’m counting the open measures and listening to this for the first time along with Mark, he grabs at my shirt sleeve and I turn, still trying to keep track of where I am in the music so I won’t miss my entrance, and he says “D’ya hear that? It’s like Brahms, only BET-TAH!” I can only smile and agree.
No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report Page 27