♫ [jazz music] ♫ Wayne Shorter (WS): What does Jazz mean? It just can't only mean something that sounds like jazz. Jazz mean this! This is what jazz is, it's it's like this. You have a [sings], you have a quartet of quintet and you take a solo and... its like no, yah know what I mean? It's deeper than that you know? to me, I say jazz means "I dare you". It's just music, the word music has all that in it. music... "I dare you". Mathematics has "I dare you" written all over it. The word mathematic. I'm gonna be a mathematician, I dare to be a mathematician. I dare to be a musician. I dare to be ... I dare to be, I want to be, I want to play this and that's all I'm going to do. It's
like a dentist to me. [WS say's in impersonation] "I'm not an orthodontist, I don't do that, yeah I don't do windows" Dave Schroeder (DS): But you know
what it's I see it all the time in education with students come to school they want to play jazz you want to play music but they also say I'm going to do this but I have to do music education or another area of study to fall back. WS: mm-hmm DS: and it's like, I always say "well why don't you fall forward?" ... on music see what happens? WS: Yeah yeah what if they say they want to play music... Here's We were backspace one time at the
Village Vanguard and Miles was talking about when he went to high school and he said [WS impersonating Miles Davis voice] "There were three of us. I was good in math..." [WS laughs] another guy he was good in science. The real science you know. Another one was architecture or something like that, he said but the guy that's the scientific guy he wanted to be a physicist or something like that. Miles said
he was good in math but he said he liked music and everything but I guess... You can see
when Miles was working on something he's working mathematically on something that, he'd say [WS impersonating Mile Davis] "See how that goes, it goes right there" He's almost yah know... Ding, Ding! [in Miles Davis voice] "Yah see how far that is?" And I'd say "four steps away" [laughs] he went [in Miles Davis voice] "Five steps away and it aint got no feeling" [laughs] So, he said the guy, the astrophysical you know minded guy. He drew a blueprint of a spaceship and he said [WS impersonating Miles Davis] "See he drew this spaceship", "that's all good that's all good and well, but somebody gotta get in there" [laughs] So like the music to you says... "you want to play an instrument?" yeah. They say, a lot of people want to play this instrument or that because they think it's easy to get
started. They can get a tone, they can go to you and say, but it depends on how far you want to go. Get in there how far you want to go. And they think "how far you want to go with the instrument?" No. without the instrument. With or without it. And they say this instrument, if you go with a certain distance this instrument will take you around the world. it'll take. This is this money in that area
DS: yes. WS: a guy came here he's gone he's worked with the Peace Corps DS: water babies WS: he came here to talk to me for a minute he laid this book down, and he said "I know this is one of the first books you read. He said "I'm gonna go my work in Russia between Russia and somewhere else in the Peace Corps" He's 21, 22 just graduate
from Reed College, Reed whatever. So I thinking looking at him as if how far you want to go? He does music too but he majored in economics, he's into music too. But he was talking and this is all
the same area with me... "how far do you want to go?" I used to try to play the Chopin's impromptu, the beginning. The part when the saxophone on the piano score like [sings melody] but then you get to the register key you have to jump around [sings melody] you know, you can do it, you can do it. I'm saying, okay I can do that. If I really want to do it, I can spend all day working on that you know? but to me that's, that was a signal. How far you want to go? Not with the instrument but When you start to write your own music that comes from someplace else. From you, you, yourself. The challenge now is to write things
that have that spirit of in the moment and if you could write something that's again in the moment, but the tone has to be in the moment, the intention, the story, everything in the moment when I'm thinking that one moment is equal to Eternity. And if I think in the moment and that moment is mine and mine alone I'm expressing myself, in this moment! There's, that can be a very selfish you know, self-serving ego-driven. I said, I played music for my own enjoyment and so I'm thinking what else is playing music for, or making films for, or
writing books for other than making money, becoming famous, and entertainment. Entertaining masses of people. Entertainment, they say "Entertainment?" that's temporary. "Making money?" that can be temporary. "Fame?" temporary but if you thinking about all the way like in perpetuity not even using the word but every moment you don't have enough. If you don't have enough your actually in the same place. Even though you might be guarding much more money and fame everything like that you say "man you got three houses and everything" but the person is in the same place philosophically and spiritually. So I want to see what "in the moment" means in terms of eternity. And that that's tricky too. When they say "well that means you gonna have to write, you would write something that you can share with the rest of the world" so you got to be simple. Write something that people can... but that, simple kind of thing is actually what stays the same. You understand? How about the grasp further than your reach? Grasping for something further than reach. that's what I want to write about. I want to write about... I want to write about struggle onstage, we don't rehearse. We will demonstrate, not to say "we're gonna demonstrate" but we're gonna run into struggle and we want the audience to see that. We leave all our credentials in the hotel dressing room. Leave your credentials, not your ego, your credentials all of your, you know whatever you've garnered. Awards or something. Leave that let's go out there [laughs] in the frontline, the trenches and make war on war you know. DS: The avant-garde. WS: Yeah, so
and then its like "ok, knights of the round table go forth" I have someone of Christopher Reeve's, I always order them, the dog tags. DS: oh yeah? WS: and I give them away sometime cuz on the bottom it says "oh you're advertising superman" and say "read the bottom" it says go, go forward. And for stem-cell research and all of that. I have some downstairs and I can get some more. DS: Well you know when you were at NYU and you spoke, you had made a comment something like "music gives us a ticket to the universe". You remember saying something like that? WS: A ticket, yeah DS: because I mean you know for me, for you, I'm here with you today because I studied music and it brought me here. If I wouldn't have done that, I grew up in Iowa in a small farm community, I don't know if I would have left. If there wasn't something powerful about music and asking me to move forward. WS: mm-hmm. DS: you're the same way. Like what would have happened to you if you wouldn't have been inspired by music or art? WS: Well when I heard these words that "this is a clarinet" That's the first instrument I had "this it's clarinet. It'll take you around the world." Will take you, take you, you know. In places you've never been before. I kind of grasped that, and I think if I had done something else. I was an Art major. I think I would have had the same "let's go" the the "let's go" thing cuz I was reading books, the "lets go" thing, I was always getting the books: science fiction, fantasy, the so-called you know of reality kind of base books that had the velocity of you know moving forward, moving breaking through something. I'd say "wow there's a struggle. Are they gonna win? Are they gonna win? And that kind of stuff. And I think eventually I would have been involved with something in the way of transporting myself out of any stationary area. At the same time, not trying to be fooled by the grass seeming seeming greener. "It's better over there, and you're often here. It's better than..." you know? it's kind of easy to fall into that. Through this medium of film. I said "there's a mystical something to everything what else" I'm saying to myself "what else is the reason for film and anything. What is the, there's an ongoing reason" For film it's not an absolute reason but it's an ongoing revelation, revelation, revelation. Un-peeling which is to me when I'm playing music now, writing music I say "I can't write a tune I prefer not to write a tune anymore it has to be like "who are you?" and I say "Homo Sapien, my name is Wayne...this is what I do. I'm also, this I'm also that" and so the eternal, in the moment the Eternity of it is like, I believe that we are eternally existing and eternally revealing ourselves not more truer than our true identity. The identity for the moment is necessary for each moment, which makes up eternity. So, each moment used. Okay, when someone says "I have, we have eternity to do something" and they keep repeating the same thing. Repeating more and all that repeating the same kind of song writing anything like that. You can't do that forever. Yes this is true, we have eternity. They simply say "we have eternity to change things" I say, no you don't you have eternity to keep repeating but you don't have eternity to change that when you change, you have more than eternity. So that's what I want to write I want to write and play something that does that. DS: When you when you step out on the stage, are you like a blank slate? you're not thinking about where you're headed or? So because you're obviously comfortable with your musicians. WS: yeah well the thing is like to be not comfortable, it's like when we were kids you go out and play and we play all day and in fact on the weekend or summertime we had our house keys around our necks and all that. We play right next door to the house there's a vacant lot and then we come home after like 9:00 hours or 8 hours.. and "what you guys been doing
all day? and I'd say "playing" and it's what someone asked some uncle ... "what are you guys playing" i'd say "playing". And what we were playing is what as adults we forgot. We were kids, we didn't feel it necessary to detail what we were doing because while we were doing it we were doing it. But now I can recall
what we were doing I can remember sometimes man we got up on top of a roof. Like the rooftop
and put like a pillowcase and captain lava it said ok jump from this root to that roof, and if you don't
fly I'll catch you [laugh] and so I'm thinking about all that ridiculous and the stuff that we were like
if our mother's new man... they warned us not to do this, not do that but you know and
we would watch the kids who really never took heed. One guy he just kept flying [laugh] he came out all right you know. Nobody caught him though so and then playing those games like the girls. They'd say "keep, keep, take the women and children to the parish" and we're gonna be the front line. We're gonna stop these aliens from coming you know. We didn't use the word "aliens" we like, "enemy" you know. We didn't have those big words but we said they one was like we have to stop this onslaught [laugh] or there would be like someone we did the doctor. Do an operation. Wanted to do doctor and all that. It was not playing house, we didn't play a house. It was like doctor and pilot it was an old milk wagon, in the old milk wagon I had to break to stop them, and the horse wouldn't go. We had this milk wagon and became, it was in the
vacant lot, that milk wagon became like the wagon train, a locomotive, and a space here too let's go [WS makes motor sounds] and we did all the sounds [laughs] we've gone from South Street across to Tishner Street. Tishner Street was Mars [laughs] we're going all up in here and we made all the sounds like motors and lions
and tigers. One guy could man at night if he came walking like out of you know. Like you see here on the corner of your eye. And he'd make a sound like a tiger or lion [WS makes tiger noise], its deep to it'd be [more sounds]. We'd say like "Hey Earl" his name is Earl Davis. "Earl, stop it. Stop it man" you know trying to show up for the girls. Then we had the street corner philosophers. They were the older guys at night you can stay out to maybe eight o'clock at home and go home by 8 o'clock. They stayed on 9, 10 standing under the street lamp and there are like this mosquitoes and everything flying around. There's a praying mantis over there they talk about the praying mantis and girls you know the girls a little older like "oh, they're wise" then "they know what they're talking about" and the younger kids, they say "you guys gotta go home so yeah you know you're not hip to this stuff. You're not hip to what we're talking about" [laughs] So that's when I wrote some arrangements for a band that we had. We played dances, and I wrote one song called "no minors allowed" thinkin' about what those guys say "you gotta, you go home. You're too young it's I really think oh no - allowed you're complex - kind of complex and the bandleader would say, "how are they
gonna dance to this?" I said what you wanted me in the band. They said, "write whatever you want to write". I was just learning
how to write, you know messing around Vagabond Shoes... that old song. That's
the first thing I wrote: Vagabond Shoes and there's another song called Taboo. It's like
a rainforest kind of thing. And Miguelito Valdes. I remember him, Miguelito
Valdez. Taboo... and then the mambo's and cha Cha's came and everything. I wrote a thing called Mambo X. DS: So mambo's were popular then right? WS: Yeah, you get a chance to do some voice placements with the trumpets and all that. [WS sings trumpet sounds]. Then I wrote a [WS sings Beethoven melody], Beethoven? I wrote a slow drag arrangement of that. DS: Was it? WS: The last song of the evening. [WS sings slower waltz arrangement of Beethoven]. WS: I had 28 Arrangements that I wrote before I graduated from NYU. But it's a dance band. It was called a dance band. But before that we played music by sort of like ear. I was still on clarinet and going clarinet lessons and reading and stuff, but we were playing music by ear. And we had a band called... at our high school we, had a band called "the group". And this other band that's the band I finally got into in which I did the 28 arrangements for. Nobody counted the arrangements except me. There was a battle of the bands one time between that band of Matt Phipp's band, and the band we had called "The Group" at the YMCA. DS: Is this in Newark? WS: Yeah. That band was up on the balcony. They had uniforms, band stands with lights and all that. Man, you know because powder blue pants, you know red colored jackets. Like collegiate looking and everything. And we were like bebop. We thought, my brother would come to the, with his saxophone in a shopping bag. WS: He left a case home. And he would play his horn with gloves on and then somebody would wear galoshes. It was somewhere around here. It wasn't raining, and he comes galoshes and we would wrinkle our clothes because you know you had to. And we were studying reading music and everything but then we would take a chair and turn it around and put a newspaper up there We saw playing Dizzy Gillespie's big band stuff [WS sings big band melody] you know all that's stuff that we heard in the streets. Like Herbie wrote Watermelon Man, he said he used to hear that you know in Chicago. DW: Yeah. WS: Guy selling in the summertime. We heard sounds like the junk man with a wagon he's coming down street. He would say something like indiscernible. Like he would say, and we all would like echo that, he would say [WS says indiscernible phrase and laughs] so we go to school, in the classroom getting bored in the classroom and teachers they said "invert the two over the five, the five over two, put the five on the bottom of the two" [laughs] There was a guy that everybody ran from. He's like maybe an old man but he didn't like kids. And we're going down the street and they say "cross the street go on the other", he might show up. First time I ever heard of this guy. I'm getting older now a little bit, but not that you know maybe 11, 12. They say "He's Stick Marty, his name is Stick Marty" [DS and WS laugh] and every time we go somewhere we say [in a shouting tone] "Stick Marty!" [laughs] Man, my friend now he's 80, Bobbie Thomas. He played in the band, he's living in New York now Bobbie Thomas. Not the Bobbie Thomas who played with Weather Report, it's Bobbie Thomas he played with Billy Taylor and the Jazz Mobile, he played there. A lot of places and everything. He took the five year course at Juilliard and he was the music coordinator of Chorus Line. His name was in lights along with Michael Bennett and all that stuff. They took him off the drums because he could settle the arguments between the orchestra and the stage. The dancer, singer. He say "Bobby we want you on the outside" so he's, on the phone recently I said "Hey Bobby, remember this? [WS in shouting voice] "Stick Marty!" [laughs] He said "yeah kind of" I say "watch out, Stick Marty gonna get you" stick my if you
don't" DS: I think there was always somebody growing up that an old man that would always yell
at you for stepping on his lawn. WS: yeah stepping on a lawn or the kids coming out and say "you don't come by my house, you go over there" and we had this one too [WS whistles] like late at night. Secret whistle [whistles again]. "Can you come out?" raise the window a little bit. "No its too late." [laughs] all that's to be recalled you know. And then the first guy, a lot of people think that King Pleasure was the first actually scat singer. Male scat singer, "there I go, there I go" [mumbles song title] King Pleasure, but Bab's Gonzales. He used to have a junk wagon in Newark selling junk on the junk wagon. And he used to wear a turbine, Babs Gonzalez. Then on the radio I heard Charlie Parker and JJ Johnson then I heard Babs Gonzalez singing like scatting [WS scat's] bebop you know, and then he sang a song called "Weird Lullaby" and he ended the song "Round Midnight" with words and how it goes, the ending of "Round Midnight" goes "midnight comes" [WS sings melody] "when midnight comes creeping round your door" [laughs] and so Babs wrote a book called "I Paid My Dues". Babs Gonzalez he was something. He went to see the Pope where he died and he had this shopping bag full of the books "I Paid My Dues" he gave one to the Pope, Pope John or whatever. They went over to the Pope and he did the blessing and all that stuff, and he knew he was sick and he had passed away. He got a club together in New York called the Insane Asylum. DS: really? WS: Yeah, and I played, DS: When was that? WS: Oh this was a insane asylum in the 60s I think. Then I played, McCoy Tyner and I played the Audubon Ballroom that's where Malcolm X got shot. We played there about two or three weeks before Malcolm X got shot. And I saw Malcolm X. I was in a restaurant 135th and Fifth Avenue. I lived up in Lenox Terrace and went to the restaurant and he was sitting in the corner, Malcolm X. And he walked toward, paid his bill to the cashiers. Going to pay his bill, he walked and he looked at me he did like this. Nobody else, and then. I see you know, but he was sitting with his
back to the wall which I heard later on that he said he was, he had gotten his family
out of town. And I didn't know that he was gonna gonna, couple of weeks. We played at this place. Myself, McCoy Tyner and Babs Gonzales was there and so when were were playing there McCoy would look at me, we just kind of playing you know he's taking a solo, and he look at me and say "hey man, it's weird in here. Something it's some evil. I have an evil feeling in here". I said, "me to. Let's play
and get paid and get out of here" you know let's get this money and... So we were trying to play, move the time by playing faster [laughs] we were playing faster. No I couldn't understand "fast five" those movies. I used to order "fast five". [laughs]. I'm gonna get it next week. Cuz I like when the guy said they went to get him, Vin Diesel, they went CIA whatever, went to get him and they surround him and I said "you're under arrest, you're coming with us" and he said "no I don't think so", and the guy "what makes you think so?". He said, "because we are in Brazil". [laughs] So we did this kind of, the way I'm talking now? When we're kids! DS: yeah. WS: and now I see there's a place for all there in the music. But the meaning of it, it's fun a kind of this and that, but it has when kids we were punctuating and we're doing with dramatizing life. Everything we're doing is not wasted. I said, where did the words go? Where did the gesture go? and I think they go they're waiting to be used in a higher form
or more in depth of a pronounced manner. It's a lump of clay to be used
but most people throw it away. "There is nothing I can do about that. I can't be 12 years old anymore I know". DS: But is that the same way, it's like somebody practices and practice like John Coltrane practiced all the time and in the hopes I guess that it would eventually
seep into his playing unconsciously? The same way that you're talking about things in
your childhood. You forgot about them but you remember them in a different way when you compose? WS: I think so, I think so because you noticed when when John, before he passed he was playing more and more things like like which seemed to have a simple. Not simple but settling context. Like his last [WS sing melody] love something [sings again] and as opposed to the sheets of sound [WS sings fast descending pitches] and to me the sheets of sound to me I realized, thats just not a lot of notes. That was a sentence, that's a sentence. He was like doing like this "come on, come on" and his father was a preacher too. so and he always had that preacher. No matter how technical he got, wasn't really technical what was happening. It was that preacher, his foot was still in that spiritual something and his tone definitely gave that away. Because
when I was at the John's house he invited me to his home after I left in the army. I left
the army and he was saying "if you have a tone if you have a tone. That tone can take you some places...take you places. Miles gotta tone it take you some places." and I said nothing like "JJ has a tone, the tone" and also the tones that you have in classical music. The tones, the tones, the tones... Renee Fleming the great singer to past away, the man you know the, DS: Pavarotti? WS: Pavarotti, the tones and you know I even go back to whatever. Those tones there that they take... you know the tones are no longer about musical excellence it's about... in
Buddhism we recite part of a Sutra it's called the Lotus Sutra. And there's a part which says to bang on the drums and and make noise, music, make music and dance and bang on the drums and have these heavenly sounds and a Mandrake flower comes down like rain all over you. It says [WS chants Buddhist saying] something like, that's a sand script. I don't profess to know sand script, but this sutra we recite in the morning and evening it's a combination of Sand script, Chinese and Japanese. So that it's just it's a phonetically accessible to everybody
in 196 countries in the world. Everybody reads the same Sutra. Which is... I'm not going to go into that, but it was the first document historical document, that declared the equality of all beings. Of men, men and women, children, everything like that. Even before I think Cyrus. Cyrus released a lot of people. A god names I respect so... what I'm. But, when Trane was
practicing over and practicing, practicing I think he was actually also realizing that
he had to do this to do, its like the gathering of the, the gathering of the storm
that he wanted to... what is it? To get a storm and you you put rains on the storm so that when you
release the storm it becomes not a hurricane, but a bath. And then he was. Only he knew how well he was in his organic functions. The liver and everything like that. He may have had had information that we don't even know about. And notice he wasn't slowing down but he was... The song "Ascension"
his recording of something called "Ascension" and then "The Love Supreme" and then even before "The Love Supreme" there was, they would say "he's getting... Trane is getting," they say "quieter, is getting more," they say "getting very pensive" "he's getting..." you know this is, "he's saying something, telling us something", and before Charlie Parker,. Charlie Parker went to a great composer, he's what 90 something or 80 something like that? I don't know his name is French or something. He lived in New York and he spent some time and in this composers house, and they're... all I
know is that the composer wrote everything down that they did. They were doing things together, great composer, DS: was it Varese? Ws: Renee came to Renee was here when I wrote the thing for her. I wrote something for Renee Fleming that we performed with the Saint, with the St. Louis Orchestra and she played something from this French composer then we went to Herbie's house and we played the same thing again. We were talkin' bout Herbie DS: was it Varese? The composer? WS: I think so Varese. DS: because he lived in the village I think. WS: Yeah and then Charlie Parker went to his house and spent the night or the evening and what they did is in the possession of some musicians, some great musicians. And I think it's not possessions of a jazz, you know oriented, you know. But it's gonna be...it may be worked on for an orchestra or something like that. Whatever they were doing to get the
essence out of it or whatever, but uh Charlie Parker slowed down. Okay he was forced to
slow down. Before JJ Johnson passed away he asked me to play with him on a record and I did. I saw Lester Young before he passed away. I took a vacation from the army because I had three more months to go in the army. More months [laughs] the Fontaine Theater [laughs] and that, and I went to Canada, Toronto. He was playing at a place called the Town Tavern and I saw him there. And during the intermission he came down. [WS asks DS] I ever tell you this before? Ds: I read this in your book. WS: he came down and tapped on my shoulder and said "you look like you from New York" and it was shortly after
that, it was shortly after that then he passed. you know and I think Curtis Fuller was with him.
Curtis was going to get something to eat Said, "you got to eat, you have to eat something". On the way back, the ambulance was there. That's an apartment somewhere in New York. But I'm thinking
of people I was with, I spent the last three not the whole three weeks, but the last three or
four weeks of Joe Zawinul life I was with him in Budapest. We went on, I sneaked up on
the stage while he was playing and we did a little bit of an introduction to "In a Silent Way" but
I didn't know when he finished playing he was in a wheelchair. Had a blanket and
they finished the whole, and he into the blanket the wheelchair. And we all went back, it was in a castle and went and talked and everything and Danilo was there, and the Armani Winds the three
or four girls and one guy. They were there you know, and I remember when I met Joe Zawinul he
said, this is all part music now. He said when he first came to America he was looking, he wanted someone like Lena Horne. To marry someone like Lena Horne you know. He saw her pictures and he did marry someone you know, but then his wife had passed away by that time. But in the castle I said, I told Danilo that "Joe said he wanted to marry someone like Lena Horne, meet someone like Lena Horne" then the Armani Winds came, I said "come here, ladies come here". I said "Joe, here's four Lena Horne's" [laughs] he was laughing and laughing you know, this was and I saw him laughing then that's when I left. While he was laughing, he would say, saying goodbye and all that, but. We look at death as temporary or, all tragedy, no matter how hard it is, is temporary and it's in the terms of eternity. There's the desire to pursue the constant instead of the temporary. So... "is
it constant?" Very mystical my friend. [laughs] ♫ [jazz music] ♫
