My name is Monk Rowe and we are at the 2020
Jazz Education Network conference in New Orleans. And I'm very privileged to have Peter Erskine
with me today. And I went to your gig Tuesday night and it
was really awesome. PE: Thank you. We had a good time. We were speaking earlier about the joys, perils
and some of the amusing incidents that occur during travel. And I'm sure everyone has a story either getting
into New Orleans or getting out. But I was reminded of a flight from Rome to
Tel Aviv quite a few years ago. And we were flying on the El Italia airline
and we went to a gig and everything seemed kind of normal, and then I realized this gate
was kind of set apart from any other departure gates. And an announcement was made that a security
check would take place so please have our boarding passes and passports. So this guy comes up to me and says, "May
I see your passport and boarding pass?" And he looks at it, and why are you traveling
to Tel Aviv. I'm a musician and I'm going to play a concert. He goes okay, thanks very much. So I think, well that was pretty easy. So I'm listening to some music, just standing
there, and out of nowhere this woman comes from kind of behind me on the side and she
motions she wants to say something. So I take off my headphones I say yes. She says, "Mr. Erskine, what kind of band
is it that has four musicians who live in New York City and one who lives in Los Angeles?" And I couldn't resist, you know I do a DeNiro
all of a sudden, I just look at her, I smile and I went, "That's good, that's very good." And I said, "The kind of band that likes the
way I play the drums I guess. I don't know what else to tell you. I guess she was looking for the tell. There was no tell to be had. MR: Yes. You have to be getting, I mean you're probably
used to people coming up to you and engaging in this kind of thing. And it's almost like now how am I going to
respond to this person. PE: Well at the JEN conference, you know,
it's students or colleagues, so with the colleagues it's all, "Hey man." And we do a quick assessment of each other,
hey we're still here, we're survivors. But mostly students and fans. And it's a nice thing. You know you might be busy trying to get somewhere
and people stop you but I think you would feel worse if no one stops you. MR: Good point. Well I want to talk about the concert even
though people watching this weren't there, I'd like to point out a few things that I
observed and that first of all the tunes you played were wonderful. I mean there was a Gospel thing that ran through
much of the gig. PE: Oh that was a song by the pianist Alan
Pasqua and he calls that "Gumbo Time." And it's a very soulful tune and he started
it off pretty slowly in terms of the tempo. And slow tempos are always fun. You know I like playing slower tempos more
than faster tempos. But it does take a little bit of concentration
and it also takes trust, not only trusting the other musicians but trusting yourself,
trusting the music. The point being I guess, you don't need to
oversell it. MR: Yeah. I noticed you - it might have been on that
tune but more than that, there were some really nice fills that you would play going into
the next section of music, and you left out something quite often, and that was like what
we might expect to be the last note of the fill on beat one of the new section. And I was anticipating [scats] and the bop
wasn't there often. I thought man, that's great. Because a rest is a note. PE: My world and welcome to it. I'm sorry. I overtalk. MR: When did you learn that that works? PE: Well what you are referring to, I can
remember I would, in the middle of the fill I would play the snare drum and the hi hat
and the hi hat is open and it's sustaining and ringing and the expectation is that, one,
two, three, [scats] you know, that one. And the one is being played somewhere else
and so the drums don't need to do it. And if anything I think it's just an extension
of the drumming devices pioneered by Kenny Clarke where you know some of the earlier
bebop recordings, instead of playing on the downbeat he would play the accent maybe like
on the fourth beat so you get to the head of the new section [scats]. And so it creates a nice overlap. And if you visualize or think of the music
in any kind of contextual terms then that makes a lot of sense. MR: And one of the tunes was yours, right? PE: Two of the tunes. MR: Two of the tunes. Is that second tune, I didn't get the title
of it, and it was dedicated to someone? PE: Yeah. Dedicated to the late Don Grolnick, and I
call it "Uncle Don," because I just remember that was a nickname that I think Will Lee
and I had for Don, we'd call him Uncle Don. And Don had written a tune that we used to
play in Steps, which later became known as Steps Ahead, a tune called Uncle Bob, which
was one of the songs we would always play during our set. So I just wanted to make a tribute to him
and I was thinking of him. MR: Beautiful. PE: Thanks. MR: Where do you write your tunes? Do you sit at the piano? PE: At the piano. When I was younger and the whole Midi thing
was just starting to come together I relied on that to do all my composing. And I got pretty good at utilizing sounds
and the sequencing capabilities of the computer using a Macintosh. As that got more and more sophisticated I
found myself kind of pulling away from it oddly. And it was partly, you know, my being unfamiliar
with, I mean these leaps and jumps in the technology, but also just becoming more aware
of the eraser on the pencil, and how much more fun it was to kind of manually work these
things out. You know both of the tunes we played - well
just look at "Uncle Don." It's a fairy simply song. A couple of the hip chords were not a function
of, oh I'll play an F flatted whatever. I'm just sitting at the piano and then finding
a voicing, and I went oh that sounds cool, and writing it down. Joe Zawinul gave me some really good advice
back in 1986. I played him some music that I had composed,
it was the first theatrical production I got to score. MR: Shakespeare? PE: Shakespeare. Richard II. Joe listened to it and I was so used to Joe
offering deprecating or denigrating comments I was quite pleased when he said, "Yeah, you
write in the Viennese tradition." And I was quite pleased. He said, "Let me give you one suggestion." He said, "I can hear some harmonic patterns
because you're comfortable in that key." He said, "Try writing in keys you're not comfortable
in. Sit down at the keyboard and start playing
in G flat." And he said, "If nothing else you're going
to get lucky because you're just going to play something that you didn't intend." And so that's what happens you know. I'm not that knowledgeable. I was spending time last night at Chuck Sher's
booth. He publishes many wonderful books, and I was
going to get another one just about basic harmony, because I'm not a proficient keyboard
player at all, but I do own a piano. MR: Well after that concert I was thinking
to myself if you keep applying yourself you might be able to make a career as a musician. PE: I'd hope so. I'd like to. Still learning. MR: I had to get that in there. PE: Well it's a point well made and taken. The reason I'm staying for the length of the
conference is 'cause I'm going to all these presentations. I learned a lot of great things. And you know I was taking out my iPhone and
I wasn't checking mail but I was making notes in my Notepad and I'll transcribe those later. I've always been a bit of a note taker. When I wrote that semi-autobiography and kind
of chronicled Weather Report, my book No Beethoven you know a lot of the source material I just
found, and I didn't keep diaries but I kept my datebooks. And if someone said something funny or interesting
I'd jot it down at the end of the day. MR: And then you knew when and where too,
if it was in your datebook. PE: For the most part. I mean memory does play tricks and I tried
to be as accurate as I could but there's always the possibility of -
MR: Well I wonder if you have a memory of this - this was a comment, this actually,
from one of those jazz on CD books which probably came out in the late 90s but the person was
talking about "Birthday in Britain 1973," a Kenton LP. And his comment was, "This 19-piece band is
mostly filled with forgotten youngsters except for Willie Maiden and Dick Scherer and the
then-unknown drummer Peter Erskine." So you've come a long way. PE: The Kenton band was a great school, it
was a great doorway into playing. I mean I haven't forgotten any of the other
youngsters that were in the band. MR: But you were 18 is that right? PE: I was 18, yeah. MR: What did you learn from guys like Willie
Maiden and the older musicians? PE: You know the fun thing is to, I think
we all do it, is boy if I could go back and if I knew then what I know now. A lot of the learning was you know, trial
and error. And when you're young you say dumb things,
you play dumb things but always well intentioned. You know you've got a job to do all of a sudden
and you're trying to do your best and being a drummer in a big band you have to satisfy
a certain number requirements. You know Stan wanted things a certain way. The trombone section wanted things a certain
way, the trumpet players wanted things a certain way, the legacy or tradition of the music
demanded things be a certain way, and it would be easy to violate any one of those at any
given point. Your ego has its own demands as well. So that's what growing older does. You just figure out what works and what doesn't. But I can listen to some of that, you know,
smile at it or cringe on occasion. But the writing for the band was great. I mean Stan commanded much love and respect
from his team of writers, Willie Maiden being among them. Willie was a funny guy. You know I was a fan of his from the work
he had done with Maynard Ferguson. And I loved his writing. He did something interesting. We were speaking about writing earlier. He wrote his arrangements on the bus while
we would be driving from one place to another, and these were often long bus rides. And I think most writers will treat the score
paper vertically. They write something and they'll voice it
out. Willie would start with the first also part
and write it all the way from the beginning to the end. And then he would add the tenor, then the
second alto, and the fourth tenor and the baritone sax. He'd flush out the chart. And, you know, he said, "I have it all up
here. It's already written I'm just getting it down
on paper." MR: Like Mozart. PE: Yeah. Yeah he was pretty remarkable. MR: The band came to the school I was at,
SUNY Fredonia, but it was, I think it was just shortly before you joined. I think John Von Ohlen might have -
PE: Because we did a residency in Fredonia. MR: Yeah. It probably was after I went there. PE: I think that was in like late '72 or - I
thought it was right before we'd gone to Europe. MR: Yeah. But Willie was on the band and he was a character. PE: Yeah. Basically, I mean I didn't learn - I mean
how do you learn from something, if someone says, "If it's good for you it's bad for you." That was one of the things he used to say. He loved the color orange. He hated the color green. He wouldn't eat green vegetables. He hated McDonald's. At one point it was in the fall of '72 and
Stan was in the hospital recovering from an aneurysm. And that was a tough time for the band, it
was difficult. One of the gigs was a private birthday party
for Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's. And this was a gig in Chicago I think at the
Hilton Hotel or one of the older hotels. And they had asked for the band to play an
arrangement of "Happy Birthday." And so Willie was tasked with writing an arrangement
of "Happy Birthday." So he writes it. It was an amazing chart. I mean we were like floored. We ran it down before the gig. Played it. Willie hated McDonald's. So the gig was over, people were leaving the
ballroom. Willie went around the bandstand just as we
were beginning to pack up and he collected each part that he had handwritten. And he set them in the middle of the band
set-up and set it on fire and he burned the charts. And he said, "I hate McDonald's. No one's ever going to hear this again." MR: That's serious. Wow. Great story. Was it hard to leave? You went from Kenton to Maynard Ferguson,
right? PE: With a one year interruption. I left the road and decided to go back to
school because I had dropped out of college to join the Kenton band. And it was an essential year of study and
reflection, just trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was in the odd position of being the one
student in our percussion department, George Gaber was the instructor. This was at Indiana University. And I was the one student who had left a gig
to come back to school more or less. And everyone else was just, couldn't wait
to get out of school to get the gig. And Gaber was quite understanding of this. And he was very patient with me and very helpful. And the thing that we worked on the most,
and it took time, as in years later for me to finally kind of connect all the dots, but
it all had to do with touch and tone. And the Kenton band was a loud band and I
had become a heavy hitter. And this concerned Professor Gaber. And I remember one lesson - he stopped what
we were doing, I was sight reading or doing something I think on the snare drum. And he handed me a triangle beater and he
pointed to a triangle. And he said, "All right, mezzopiano. You get one chance." So I went over and played it. He took a puff on his cigar and went, "That
was too loud, now get out." And that was my lesson. So I started practicing whole notes just to
see how softly and how consistently can I play. But it took a long time develop that sense
of touch that he was alerting me to. MR: Wow. Well I was watching a video of the Kenton
band and I can imagine that it would be difficult to not play loud. PE: Yeah. Maynard's band was loud. And I had turned it down three times I think
when he called, because I wanted to finish school. And fans will forgive me for saying this but
I used to view Maynard's band as a bit of a three ring circus you know, and his being
generous and highlighting the sidemen, it just seemed like more of a show. I somehow had this idea that it should be
more purely presented. That being said, Maynard was the best boss
I ever had. Wonderful guy. And I really enjoyed the band and it did prepare
me for the Weather Report gig, in fact I got the gig because Jaco heard me playing with
Maynard. But that was also a loud band. I mean my original Weather Report inspiration
was hearing the way Alphonse Mouzon and Eric Gravatt played, small little four-piece kits
and it was intense but they weren't hitting really hard. By the time I joined Weather Report I mean
the volume on the stage was loud and they wanted that kind of power. And because I'd done these big band gigs I
could deliver on that. I was in good shape and could function at
that dynamic level. Again, that took some time to unlearn or to
get around to learning how to play soft. And I mean it was fun. We were fast and fearless. MR: Did you get to the point - when did you
get to the point where the money offered to you was an issue. Because usually a young musician will say,
"Yeah, I'll come on the band," and doesn't have the nerve to say, "125 a week? No man, I can't." PE: Well the Kenton band. I'd been with Stan for about four days or
so into the tour and found myself sharing the elevator with him. The club was in the basement of the hotel
so we were going up to our respective floors. Now I had first met Stan when I was seven
years old at one of the national stage band camps so I felt like I knew him. Anyway, he goes, "Peter," he goes, "we haven't
discussed money yet." So I said, "Okay, how much do you want?" And I think that was good for an extra 25
or 50 dollars a week. No the pay wasn't great and it wasn't great
on Maynard's band, but I managed to save up quite a bit of money because you know when
you're 18 what do you spend your money on? Nothing. MR: Not that good stuff that's bad for you? PE: No. You know I mean, and things were fairly inexpensive
back then. And we even had to pay for part of the hotel
bills. But I was sending all my money home to my
dad and by the time I got off the road I had saved up, you know, enough money to buy a
car and to go back to school. MR: Your parents must have been cool with
your choice of career. You started hitting the drums at 4. PE: They were more than cool. They were completely encouraging. My father was a psychiatrist but before that
he had been a jazz bass player. And I was the one out of four children who
seemed to take to music, you know, instantly. So I received a disproportionate amount of,
I think, his attention and interest and support because, you know, he got to live a lot of
that again through me I think. And you know my siblings were also very encouraging
about my playing. So I was very fortunate. The timing of growing up, you know, beginning
to play the drums in the late 1950s, early 1960s and music was just exploding with change. And we had these national stage band camps,
you notice they weren't called jazz camps, because jazz was still a dirty word in those
days. You had lab bands, you had stage bands, you
had studio orchestras. That was the name of the jazz big band at
the Interlochen Arts Academy where I went to high school. Schools didn't use the word jazz. It took a few years for that to become acceptable. It's kind of hard to believe now. MR: It is. Don Menza talked about that - at SUNY Fredonia,
that no jazz in the practice rooms. PE: I'll tell you something wild. One of the servicemen told me that on the
rare occasions now when the White House requests a jazz group they have written, I don't know
if you call them instructions or orders, no improvising. These people just want to hear a kind of cocktail
music. They don't want to hear any improv. We just want to hear the song. MR: This is the current administration? PE: Yep. And as small a detail as that may seem to
be in the grand scheme of things, I think it's probably one of the more telling aspects
of what a deficit - of all the things that make us human: empathy,
intellectual curiosity, freedom of expression, compassion, you know, and I'm not trying to
get political but you know it's beyond Alice in Wonderland at this point. We have a person in charge of the country
with a glaringly obvious mental deficit. So I believe it was Cicero - who profits? Who gains? So you try to look at it, all right, why is
this charade, this horribly destructive charade being allowed to continue? Money and power are always the first elements
you would look at but it's beyond my comprehension. And I was hoping to start off the year hopeful. And my good friend Jack Fletcher, who is the
director that invited me to write for one of his plays years ago, he said, "That's not
hope." He said, "You're exhausted." He said, "You're setting down a baton. You're in a relay and you don't even want
to carry it forward." He said, "Just get some rest." And yeah, I think he has a point. MR: The people in the circles that musicians
travel in I think would agree with what you're saying, but maybe that's a wrong assumption
on my part. PE: You'd be surprised at some of the right
wingers who improvise. It blows my mind when I run into these fellas,
and one who is very close to me. So we just don't discuss politics. MR: Yeah. Leave them at the door. PE: Or if we do he just gets very quiet now. Yeah. But let's not go there. MR: All right. We may come back to that though. I think it's important to know, beyond the
music what people like yourself think actually. PE: Well I mean your beautiful videotaped
interview with Dave and Iola, you know when Dave talks about, "The whole room came together." And the Soviet Union and where he points out
that okay what's the first thing that they try to suppress? Jazz. The story I just told about the White House? Boom. Bingo. MR: Okay. PE: There are a number of educators, because
we're here at the Jazz Education Network. One I'll give a shout out to is Ed Soph who
continues to be a loud and poking the stick in the eye of the bear voice about what's
right and what's not right. And you know with social media, I've been
kind of going back and forth again as part of that exhaustion, it's just that I don't
know if I want to be too much a part of this platform that spreads so much disinformation. And yet, you know, we can look, there's that
Bernstein quote about, you know, our job is not to solve the problems but we have to provide
the art to inspire maybe ourselves but certainly other people who can, directly maybe, influence
or solve these problems. But we might be coming to a point in this
country where it's just every individual has to get involved, has to stand up. Certainly the vote is part of it, unless that's
been rigged beyond measure. That's hard to say. I hope not. MR: Okay. I'm going to start drinking momentarily here. PE: I had a milk and bourbon punch at the
Bourbon House, a friend recommended it. It's kind of like a milkshake with bourbon. MR: Maybe we'll go there next. I'm going to jump back into -
PE: I'm still a little fuzzy. MR: You mentioned, I think you were talking
about Kenton and you - trying to please the trombones and Kenton himself and your own
ego. When you got into Weather Report, where did
your ego fit in between Joe and Jaco? PE: Wow. There wasn't a whole lot of air for it. I instinctively just kind of stood back a
little and observed. Playing-wise I was pretty fearless, and Joe
liked that. Okay a couple of things, I'll just go back. The main fault or lack of understanding that
I had I think when I was playing in the Kenton big band was I didn't realize how tough of
a job those brass players had. And you know it's a physically demanding and
exhausting book to play. And you know they're standing there and they're
counting and they have to prepare to come in, take a breath, get the embouchure all
set, and then the drummer pulls the rug out from under them. It's, I mean I remember one time I turned
around and the trumpet player was motioning he was going to throw his Harmon mute at my
head. But Stan used to come up to me and say, "Peter,"
- pardon the language - he said, "I want you to fuck them up. They're getting lazy back there so play some
shit." So he would encourage me. And you know I wanted to think that Stan hired
me, well not for my good looks but maybe for my drumming. But I was also a poster child for what he
was doing. He was taking jazz to schools. Here's this 18-year-old kid with long hair. So I kind of plugged in perfectly to his agenda
so much so that when I cut my hair, because I wanted to be more like the older guys, he
got upset and I grew it back. MR: That's an inside story, right? PE: There you go. Now Joe and Wayne were intrigued by the idea
that I had played with Kenton. Now they had both played with Maynard's band
way back in the start of both of their careers. And you know they both had good things to
say, or good feelings about Maynard. But it was the Kenton band that had intrigued
them. Now had they heard me with the Kenton band
I think they never would have even let me in the front door. But they were thinking of like the Kenton
band in the 50s and how experimental it was. And "Wow, here's a drummer that can actually,"
Jaco says, "He can play the R&B stuff and he knows how to guide a large ensemble." So a jazz writer in Japan had either the insight
or the temerity to ask, my first question at the press conference, I hadn't played a
note in concert yet with the band, we had just rehearsed briefly. You know, I'm just sitting there and they're
talking. So the journalist says, "I have a question
for Peter Erskine. You've played in the big bands of Stan Kenton
and Maynard Ferguson, how does this qualify you to play for Weather Report?" And I was a bit taken aback. And I start to give this sort of, "Well good
music is good music and." At that point Zawinul interrupts me and he
goes, he just kind of motions for me to shut up, and he speaks into his microphone, he
goes, "Weather Report is a big band and we're a small group too." Or "Weather Report is a small group and we're
a big band too. Next question." And interestingly enough I mean Joe, we even
played "Rockin' in Rhythm," the Ellington tune that became part of the band's repertoire. So yeah, Joe was kind of going back to his
roots and I at least had not only that jazz connection but I found this new level of esteem
with Jaco chanced upon me, and I think he may have gotten Joe and Wayne and I was backstage
and I wasn't aware, and I was playing a little bit of Bach on the piano. And that impressed them. MR: Nice. PE: But otherwise to try to compete with Joe
or Jaco was tough. I mean I have a microphone on my chest so
I dare not thump it but they were real chest thumpers and literally they would, hey man,
thump their chest. I'm sure anthropologists or somebody with
that kind of understanding would have a field day with these guys. MR: I'm surprised then that it held together
as long as it did, with that four - PE: Well Wayne was always kind of the yin
to Joe's yang I think. Adam Nussbaum said something yesterday, he
said, "You know you can't have the fire without the air." Or maybe that was Matt Wilson. I forget. Matt Wilson gave a great class yesterday. But yeah, it's all about balance. And Wayne provided that balance and even when
people were beginning to complain that Wayne wasn't being heard enough I think that was
his instinctive or conscious attempt at balance somehow. MR: When did "Birdland" move from like straight
eighth notes into this nasty shuffle? PE: Well when I first joined the band I was
playing it similar to the way Alex did. And just for the record when I heard that
for the first time it was such a magical sounding recording and I told Jaco, I said, "This is
the version of Weather Report I've been waiting for." And I was fine, like just let it be Alex,
Manolo, Joe, Wayne, and Jaco for the rest of time. I would have been happy. But things change. And so I got invited into the band. And then Joe at one point just said, "Stop
playing that bossa nova beat. I don't want to hear that. Can you do something else?" I went, "Why not that?" And for some reason I found that instead of
just playing a four on the floor like a jazz shuffle, you know, [scats] I did the [scats]. But quite a big faster [scats]. It was a bit of a workout. But it kind of worked. MR: It's a workout. PE: Well yeah, that whole band was a workout,
that whole experience. So we are touring, I talk about this in my
book. After "Birdland" there would be two or three
more tunes - you know there were built-in encores and stuff. And we get to the last tune. It was a medley of two compositions of Joe's,
"Badia" and "Boogie Woogie Waltz." And it goes into this very fast double time
[scats]. And, because I was 24, 25, Jaco was 26 or
27. I mean we were basically about half the age
of Joe and Wayne. And so we're playing this fast and rather
furious thing and then Jaco would kind of walk over the we'd both look at Joe and we'd
start going [sluggish demeanor], you know, just another tune. But on this one tour of Europe, the lighting
rig was designed, it was just lower than it had been. And when they would turn on all these lights
it got really hot on stage, and we were playing outdoors and it was hot and these lights,
and I'm running out of steam. And so I asked Joe or suggested to Joe, "Hey,
as we're playing this, can I kind of give you the look, or the high sign so we can play
the last cycle, I can go on after burners, and end it at maximum strength, you know,
for the sake of the tune as well as my own -
MR: Survival. PE: Survival. And Joe just looks at me like, "Oh yeah?" So I should have been prepared. That night we play it, and I give him the
look and he just looks at me and he turns and digs in and all of a sudden his keyboards
get substantially louder, and he keeps playing. So now we have to do another whole long cycle. So I'm betrayed and I'm really annoyed. And so now I'm cursing - son of a - I just
can't believe it. I'm like flipped. And so he's had his fun. He looks around rather triumphantly. Okay. Now we finish. I'm the band leader. And you know, you can't try to lead the band
if you've got a band leader. And I should have remembered that because
Maynard had taught me that. There can only be one band leader. Anyway, we end the tune, the lights go black,
we're supposed to clear the stage. It was just the way the show went. And I was so angry I just started pounding
the snare drum, at first kind of incoherently. And I'm just like, "You son of a" - but pretty
quickly I'm realizing it just sounds like you're Gravatt all of a sudden. What's going on? I mean, you know, I was a big band drummer. I played by the rules pretty much. And so I'm banging away playing this thing. And I sense a presence from, and I have no
idea how I'm going to end this thing. There I am on stage by myself. And I look up and open my eyes and somehow
Joe has climbed up and he's balanced somewhat precariously on the edge of this drum riser,
and he's right in front of me. And my first thought is he's going to punch
me in the nose. But instead he has this look of ecstasy. And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah." And he jumps off and pumps his fist up in
the air, he jumps off the riser. So I finish it. And he comes up and thanks me. He just said, "Thank you, man." And I'm like for what (to myself). I didn't understand. So the next day the manager comes up to me,
I was kind of half expecting this. He says, "Joe would like to speak with you." Uh oh, here we go. I have to admit I get a little emotional when
I tell this. But the manager said, "Joe wants to see you." So I go to the dressing room and there's the
whole crew and band, and I'm handed a plastic cup, you know, for the dressing room drinks. And I'm handed a cup of cognac. And everyone is there and Joe just announces,
he says, "Everyone, last night Peter graduated." MR: Wow. Thank you for telling us that. That's like the best way to have won over
the band I guess. MR: The technique of terrific drummers, that's
one thing, but the imagination that it takes to do something original or the perfect thing
at the right moment, or something innovative. Imagination. Can you teach imagination to your students
beyond technique? PE: As long as there is intellectual curiosity
I think you can teach most anything. It's teaching an awareness of the choices
that are available. It's teaching them if they haven't done so
already, to think and be aware much more about melody and the function of harmony and the
way that other instrumentalists phrase or the way the vocalists sing. You know a lot of what we do, and my job number
one is to provide rhythmic information to the band. And then you try to do it as elegantly as
possible. To serve the music you know. So eventually you learn to strip away the
things that would call attention to yourself. It's not surrendering the element of control
that all drummers like to have, in fact it makes you a much more effective puppeteer
as it were, I can really pull the strings of the music by playing less. And I'll answer and regrettably close this
interview because I have another one scheduled. There's a film called "Shadows and Light." It's a documentary about cinema. Particularly about DPs, the directors of photography,
who often have much to do with the lighting as well as the positioning and the movement
of it. And they interviewed the cinematographer who
worked on "Rosemary's Baby." The director was Roman Polanski, and he's
describing a scene where we look down the hallway and there's an opening to a bedroom
and the character that Mia Farrow is portraying is sitting on the phone speaking to someone. And so with the stand-in, the woman is there
holding the phone. They set up the shot, they frame it a certain
way, and they bring Polanski over to look. And he looks and he goes, "No, no, no. I want it so that we only see the phone receiver
on her ear and the back of her head and nothing forward. We only see that much of her." So the DP says, "I disagree, but he's the
director." So he set it up that way and we shot it. And then he continued, he said, "The most
incredible thing happened at the premier. It was in New York. When that scene comes up on the screen," he
said, "the entire audience tried to look around the door, instinctively." So what was left unseen, or in our case, unplayed,
invites a tremendous leveraging of involvement or input by the audience. So a more prosaic example maybe would be James
Brown "Mother Popcorn" [scats]. So they don't emphasize the downbeat as listeners
or dancers - I mean you've got to move your bootie to fill it. So we're sort of circling back to how you
started our conversation about my not playing the downbeat. Because if that allows you the listener to
supply that then you're involved with this whole building block thing. And that's why the listening experience becomes,
I think, evocative. It's because you're inviting the audience
in. If, you know, you're just playing a bunch
of stuff then it's just like watching a film that has one colossal action scene after another. After a while you're just like, yeah. But, you know, what did Hitchcock do? MR: Well said. I'm going to read a quote from you to wrap
up. PE: Okay. MR: Right along this line. "The whole thing about a big band is ultimately
the power. The trick to releasing it is the discretion
of when to do so, how much patience you want to have before you unleash that kinetic power. If it's full tilt all the time nobody wins." PE: I said that? MR: You said that. PE: Not bad. MR: It's a good one. PE: Matt Wilson, I think it was on either
Twitter or FaceBook, it might have been Twitter, an observation about Mel Lewis that he didn't
propel the band, he provided a cushion for it. Mel was also one of the masters - I mean everything
he played seemed perfect. But he was a master of playing the holes and
playing where the band didn't play. Now I'm going to go out on a limb here just
because we're honoring Dave Brubeck, who's one of the genuinely nicest and compassionate
people I've ever had the chance to meet. I didn't get to know him that well but as,
you know, as his children were going to Interlochen he came and we got to play with him, got to
play one tune. But "Take Five." The best part of that solo that Joe Morello
played in the studio that day was the space. I saw later films when the tune had become
a hit and I sensed, you know, like as a drummer you just sense okay, Joe kind of feels kind
of compelled now to deliver on the drum goods. And you know it's technically brilliant. It's great but completely not interesting. But that solo with the space and how that,
you know, I think it reverently kind of displays his affection for Max Roach and the influence
that Max Roach had. But how that influenced so many of us. I could play a recording, I was nine years
old, with the Kenton band, at one of these stage band camps. And Stan surprised me and he said, "Peter,
play a solo." And it's right out of the Morello solo. When I hear it, still to this day I'm like
wow, I guess the acorn does grow into the tree. And you know it's thanks to that original
impulse that Morello had. MR: Wonderful. Thanks for your time today. PE: Thank you. Appreciate it. MR: I appreciate it very much.
