My name is Monk Rowe and I'm off camera but
I am also in Bearsville, New York, and I'm very happy to be at the home of Warren Bernhardt. And thank you very much for letting us bring
our gear into your house. WB: My pleasure, my pleasure. MR: I had a two and a half hour drive to get
here and had a spirited debate with myself about where to start with you. Because you've done quite a bit, let's put
it that way. But I wanted to ask you about the most valuable
player awards you got from the recording association. WB: From NARAS? MR: Yes, from NARAS. WB: Yeah, that was in the days when I was
pretty high up, first or second call on piano, on acoustic piano and electric piano in New
York City, in the studios. MR: Right. And I looked at your discography, and it was
well over 200 listings on there, and it's fascinating to me that one month you could
be playing a Muppet movie and the next month playing with Jack DeJohnette or something
like that. WB: Well that was deliberate on my part. And the people who were regular dyed-in-the-wool
studio musicians - I was doing it because there weren't a lot of good paying jazz gigs
around, and I wanted to send my kids to school and stuff, and pay the mortgage here on this
place. And I'd do dates but I wasn't dedicated to
it. And I'd have to take a hiatus and go off and
play some real, what I call real music. Because most of the studio stuff wasn't what
I really loved. It was pretty much to make a living. Although every once in a while you'd run across
something great, doing a Michael Brecker album or something. But every couple of years I'd go off and do
something. And people would say, "You're crazy, Warren." Like, "You know how much money you missed?" And then every summer I'd go up to our place
in Northern Wisconsin for a month, the busiest month of course in the studio year is August,
and I'd take my kids up to this cottage that we have on the lake. So I wasn't totally into the studio scene. I wasn't dedicated to it. MR: If you take time off like that, are you
likely to sort of get off the list? WB: I didn't. I mean everybody said, "Oh they'll forget
about you the moment they call and you're not there," but I never had that problem. I don't know. I'm glad I did it the way I did it. MR: Right. And you had enough, you had what you wanted. WB: Well you should go to some other guys
discographies and they're as long as from here to the ceiling you know. They played on a lot more albums than I did. MR: But you might not know what was going
to be put in front of you when you showed up for one of those kind of dates, right? WB: Well it depended on who the arranger was,
if it was Claus Ogerman or something you'd know a month in advance and you'd need to
know a month in advance to look over the strange chords and the harmonies. If it were just a Frankie Valli and the Four
Seasons you wouldn't have any idea what - Charlie Calello was the arranger there and what he'd
bring in, it was usually sight unseen. And I was a very good reader. MR: Was it chord charts sometimes? And you just had to play what was appropriate
for the tune? WB: Yeah sometimes. I remember doing a film score once - I won't
name the writer because it might be embarrassing, but it was with a full orchestra, and I come
up to the piano and it says "A minor concerto." And he comes up and he says, "Well I was up
so late writing the orchestra parts I didn't get a chance to write the piano part. So can you come up with something? Listen to the orchestra a couple of times
and then play like what you can play on a concerto." And I said, "Okay, but I want a little more
money for that, if I've got to do the writing." So we worked it out on the spot. You run into things like that. Or you run into things like with Ennio Morricone,
I did a bunch of films with him. He's won a lot of Oscars and stuff, he's the
maestro. And every note was perfectly written out and
as though it was Ravel or something. So it runs the whole gamut. MR: Did you ever have it that you were overdubbing
a part, you know and you're doing a talkback to the producer and you'd do a take, and he'd
say, "That was perfect, Warren, now do it again?" WB: Ever? MR: Did that ever happen to you? WB: It always happens. "That was just great guys, let's do another
one." And then the other one was never as great
as the great one, because you'd already said the best you could do. And it's usually a group consciousness thing,
a group effort in that case. MR: I see. WB: I mean unless somebody, obviously, screwed
things up, which I often did too. I mean there's flaws. Anthony Jackson was famous because he'd say
"flaw" and he'd stop a take and yell out "flaw." Whereas he could have just overdubbed it later. But there was 93 guys in the studio, you know,
the producer's going - oh - but Anthony wanted it perfect. He'd change the strings every take. MR: Oh Lord. But he wasn't just talking about himself? WB: No he was talking about himself. MR: Oh he was. WB: When he heard something that he didn't
want to hear, he let everybody know, that wasn't what I can do. And I always loved that. Well he played on some of my albums and we
did it but it wasn't a big problem, because it was a flaw. But it was an unusual way to treat it. I usually kept quiet, and then went up to
the arranger or the producer and said maybe I can do something better, do you want to
overdub? MR: How long was a typical session? Were they four hours? WB: Recording dates were three hours, usually
with a possible overtime. But sometimes they went on and on, which was
good because I could pay the tuition. MR: Do you ever hear yourself on the radio
on some of those pop tunes? Or do you not listen to those kind of stations? WB: Memorable ones, yeah. I can hear myself. Like "American Pie" or something, I can hear
that. Paul Griffin and I both played on that so
I know which is which. MR: Were you playing the acoustic on that
tune? WB: Yeah, on some parts of it. I mean something like that, it's a big hit,
yeah you'd recognize. But I wasn't on a lot of - that wasn't my
thing you know - to get established as - it's actually something I've pretty much forgotten
all about. MR: Well you had a classical upbringing. WB: Very. MR: And then you were exposed to blues and
jazz in Chicago is that right? WB: Well yeah eventually. But the classical thing went very deep. I mean I played my first concert when I was
six - Mendelssohn and Beethoven and Josquin and Bach. And I concertized quite frequently. My father was a pianist and he knew all the
great pianists. He knew a lot of the great opera singers and
conductors. So I don't really want to go into detail because
it seems like terrible name dropping, but he knew all the greats and I played for them
all. And there were certain aspects that I had
weaknesses and strengths with, which I think I was destined to become a pianist. Because I tried everything else. I went to school and studied science and everything. I got completely away from music after my
father passed away when I was 13. I couldn't listen to music without getting
very torn up inside. But nobody ever had to teach me about pedaling
for instance. I came to this planet knowing how to phrase
and how to pedal a piano. I wouldn't sleep unless they put my cradle
underneath the piano. My dad or Joseph Levine or one of his friends
would play Chopin and then I'd go to sleep. My earliest memories were underneath the Steinway
with all the wood going around and that big brass thing. So it was destined. See and I studied privately with some really
great pianists. Among them the Levines, Madame Levine and
Joseph Levine. "Uncle Dorah" I couldn't say Joseph so I said
Dorah. But he was around a lot. He was a good friend of my dad's. He was one of the greatest Chopin players
of all time. MR: Do you recall if your father had an opinion
about the jazz world and the pop world? WB: Well he'd had a Vaudeville band in the
twenties and he was a church organist too. And he lived in a medium-sized town in Northern
Wisconsin, Wausau, where I was born. It's grown a lot. It's like Newburgh, New York, it's grown in
the last few years. But you could have, for X amount of dollars
you could have Larry Bernhardt's band without Larry Bernhardt, or for twice as much money
if Larry Bernhardt was there. So he'd figured that thing out and then he
taught and he started conservatories. He went to the New England Conservatory and
he was a great guy. And my childhood was simply amazing. I'll just say it was amazing. The greatest conductors, pianists, opera singers,
were all over at the house and I was playing for them and they were singing for me. So it was natural to become a musician. However, I stopped playing and in high school
I did a couple of things with the high schoolers and played Mozart concertos and Rachmaninoff's
first concerto and stuff, and generally did drama and sports and stuff and stayed away
from music. And then I went to the University of Chicago
and studied science and chemistry, and eventually nuclear physics. But the wild thing about - here's the destiny
part - the University of Chicago was smack in the middle of the African American ghetto
at that time, where there must have been between fifty and a hundred jazz clubs, all local
musicians, all willing to share all their knowledge with this young white guy who didn't
know anything. I was very impressed with how well that went. There was no racial thing at all, it was great. So in college I began going to McKie's Disk
Jockey Lounge, it was right around the corner, and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin
were there and then I'd go to the Sutherland and Miles was there and then I'd go up and
hear Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner and all these guys. It didn't take long. I mean a couple of nights of hearing Oscar,
sitting up close to him, and going to hear that great sextet with Trane and Cannonball
and those guys, that changed - I tell Jimmy Cobb when I see him I say you've got no idea
how you changed my life. And one night I dropped out of school and
started playing in clubs around Chicago. I didn't know anything and all the musicians
would help me. Ira Sullivan, Herbie Hancock was around and
he was just starting too, Jack DeJohnette was a piano player. We would play at the Student Union at Chicago
every Thursday and I just began picking it up more and more and more. I rebuilt an old piano in the fraternity house
I was staying in and started playing more and more nights, and eventually it took over,
even though I was living at home with my mom by then. I wasn't making enough playing in these little
clubs. But I definitely knew that it got me, that
music got me, being made up on the spot by these most ingenious people. True genius. I mean if you sit this far from Oscar, this
far from his right hand some night, you'd say wow, that's genius. Or Wynton Kelly. So that was the Chicago influence. MR: When did you - is that about the time
you would learn about chord structure and chord melody and playing without music? WB: Yeah. What's a four chord? You know? Why does a blues go to the four chord before
it goes to the five chord, and stuff like that, right? Very basic stuff, right? Bill Matthew, I don't know if you remember
his name, he was arranging for Duke Ellington at the time and he taught me a bunch of Gerry
Mulligan tunes like "Rockin' Shoes" and things like that, "Line for Lyons." And he eventually ended up living in San Francisco
and directing the Sufi Choir, a very famous choir. And he helped me a great deal. Ira Sullivan was an amazing talent in Chicago. But they were willing to take this kid who
didn't know anything and say, okay, listen to the drummer not to your foot. Okay, that's the first thing I want you to
do. I was one of these guys. Okay, let the drummer do that, okay? Just take that out of the equation. Stuff like that. Real basic, good stuff. And, "Well it would be better if you might
harmonize it a little differently. My real harmonic teacher came later and that
was Bill Evans, when we were living together and stuff. MR: So your jazz education was in the clubs,
with working musicians? WB: Just doing it. Yeah. I never took a lesson or anything. I mean after the age of eight or nine, I remember,
I never took a lesson with anyone. But later on Bill Evans would sit across on
the couch and he'd say, "Well try it working downwards, play the melody in the left hand
but play descending diatonic thirds in the right hand on each change as you get to it
and just see what that sounds like in eighth notes." Or ascending or something. He'd speak in musical terms. And it wasn't so much as being a teacher it
was more of a mentor friend. And then we'd just sit down - this was after
I'd moved to New York in '62 - he came and stayed in my place for, I don't know it seemed
like years because we'd play from nine in the morning until eleven at night, four hands. I'd play the top and he'd play the bottom
and then vice versa, and then we'd read all the Beethoven symphonies and all the Haydn
symphonies, any four hands literature we could find. He was a great reader. So he taught me how to be a great reader and
that helped later on. I was a kind of slow reader. Bill was very quick. MR: How did your mother feel - you must have
decided at that point well I'm going to be a musician. WB: Oh the family. Well my mother, who I was especially close
to, when I dropped out of school she was devastated. I was playing in the College of Complexes
but Kerouac was reading poetry every night and Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsberg and I'm
playing this piano with the legs burned off of it, and I'm right in the middle of this
scene that she knows nothing about, but it was the Beatnik scene you know, at the height
of it. And I've been blessed, let me tell you, all
my life, with music and being surrounded by creativity and stuff. The thing that changed everything, in '62
I was with Paul Winter, he had a sextet at that time, which was really a hard driving
modern jazz group which had nothing to do with the new age concept that he's into now. And we won the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival
I remember, in Washington, D.C. We did all these competitions. And so we got booked, we got signed by - John
Hammond signed us and he brought us to New York and I was one of the guys he brought
to New York, by Columbia Records, a famous guy. And at the same time, Kennedy was elected,
and he was already in office by the time that, I don't know how it happened but Kennedy asked
us to do a six month tour of South and Central America, and all the islands, with Paul's
sextet. And so my mother thought that was great, oh
you're going to go see the world - this was my first time out of the nest, an only child
and pampered as a kid, you know, a concert artist. So that was an eye opener for me just to begin
with, and then coming back, I've lost the train of thought here, what I'm trying to
explain to you. We got awarded, by Kennedy - this is about
my mother - and he called us up and said, "Would you come and play at the White House,
do the first jazz concert ever at the White House." As a reward, and, "We'll pay your way, you
know you don't get paid for it but we'll record it, and it's coming out on a record soon." It's 50 years exactly this year. And when my mother got the invitation to come
to the White House from Jackie Kennedy to hear me play, everything was fine after that. That was, "Oh you're playing jazz, that's
great." This was within two years of the time I'd
begun to play jazz, I'm playing at the White House. MR: Quite an arc to your career already. WB: Already, yeah. And I hadn't moved to New York yet to become
a professional, which was yet to come at the end of that year. And that's a whole other story. MR: Yike. WB: There's a lot of stories. I actually am hesitant to tell you all this
because I wrote down the story of my life in a book, with two hundred other people,
we wrote down the stories of our lives, and then we threw them in a big pot and we burned
them, just to teach us about what a story it was. So I'm hesitant to go into these details because
I like to be in the moment and focusing on now. MR: Well we're going to focus on now, but
I don't mind hearing the stories either. WB: Yeah. I mean there were some good ones. MR: Yeah. I mean did you find in the early sixties,
in New York City, did you have to do non-musical jobs to help pay the rent? WB: Well Columbia brought us here and my first
gig was at the Village Vanguard for a week. But actually that was after we'd been here
a couple of weeks. My first day in New York, in '62, it was in
September I think, Gene Lees, who was the editor at Down Beat and he was a good friend
and he was a songwriter and a singer and I'd accompanied him in Chicago and in the Midwest. He called up and he said, "Hey I'm having
breakfast with Bill Evans, you want to come?" It was my first day in New York. So we go to the Olympia Diner on 107th and
Broadway and there's Gene and Bill sitting there. And by that time Bill was my total hero because
I'd heard he had I think three albums out. "Portrait in Jazz" had just come out. I was totally in love. He replaced Wynton and Oscar and Errol and
all these other guys. MR: Can I ask why? WB: It's a heart thing. He just really got to my heart immediately
when I heard it. When I first heard him I started weeping,
I don't know why. It's heavy. So in getting a chance to meet him and he
said, "Hey I'm playing down at the Vanguard tonight, why don't you come down and check
out the trio?" Scott had already passed away so it was Chuck
Israels and Paul Motian. And I said, "Great." And Max knew me at the Vanguard, so I went
down, and the place was full. And I said, "Oh Max, where am I going to go? Bill asked me to come down." He said, "Oh don't worry about it." And he takes me and there's one empty seat
right next to the - here's the end of the keyboard, right here, and here's the seat. So I could have reached over and touched Bill. And there was like a spotlight coming down
on this seat. It was like a storybook kind of thing - talk
about being blessed, you know. And he said, "He saved you a seat." So then I became, I think every night Miles
played in New York or Bill did, I was there. I didn't have any work after - big star comes
to New York, works for a week, does a record and that was it. So I was playing gigs out in Far Rockaway
and bird acts, and you name it, little mafia joints and everything. And I was earning a living. But I wasn't an innovator or anything, no
big great shakes. You know I was a good player. I had to pay my dues at that point. But I tried to - I had the technique down
of going in and nursing a beer at the Five Spot from eight o'clock until two in the morning,
one beer, all the bartenders knew me at the Half Note and all the clubs. So I was really into, everything was music
for several years, and an occasional gig with Paul Winter, which was nice, and then Bill
came to live with me, which was really nice, that was - I don't know what I would have
done had I not had that experience. MR: Was he struggling financially too? I mean the fact that he had three or four
albums out maybe didn't necessarily translate to checks. WB: Well by the sixties he was doing okay. He still didn't have Helen Keane as a manager
yet, but he was doing okay. I mean he'd won all the awards already. The Down Beat Critics Poll and the Popular
Poll, which in those days was a big deal. It assured that you could get work everywhere. Work didn't pay much, I remember the Vanguard
paid eighty-six dollars a week for a sideman, and twice that much for the leader in those
days. But you could live on that. My rent was a hundred dollars a month for
a whole floor of a brownstone. I mean you managed to do it with my piano
here. That was with me for that whole time. MR: This piano behind you has followed you
around? WB: It was my grandfather's. It's the reason I'm here. Oh that's another story, that goes way back. My mother talked her father into buying a
piano so that Larry Bernhardt would come over and play the piano for them because my grandfather
was a music lover. His name was Warren too. And so that was her thing. And then she said, "Can I take music lessons
with Larry?" And I think they worked on one Chopin prelude,
that was it, and then they were married soon thereafter. So this piano is a present, and I inherited
it later. MR: You are blessed. WB: Yeah the piano is inextricably involved. That was a whole other thing, that gets into
the whole synthesizer trip which I tried. Now I pretty much am back to the piano. MR: Did you remain close with Bill until his
death? WB: Yes. Very close, but in a strange kind of way. Pool playing close. Bowling close. Golf driving range close. Going to movies together. You know, he'd be coming over for dinner. I remember my fortieth birthday was in this
house and he brings out the cake. So that was fun. So we were friends. And he was ten years older than I. And he considered himself to be a regular
guy from New Jersey. He said, "I know all this stuff" and blah-blah-blah
and everything, "but what I am is what I am. Do you want to go shoot some pool?" You know. So we'd go shoot pool and get Monk to come
along and stuff. I mean he was a nice guy to know. I mean he knew everybody. "Billy the Kid" everybody called him, like
Monk. "Hey, Billy the Kid, what's happening?" MR: I wish we'd have had a camera for some
of that. WB: Oh there are some funny stories, yeah. Bill had a great sense of humor. And I have a whole shelf of books that he
gave me, like all the Woody Allen books and Stephen Leacock and Thurber. Well I knew Thurber when I was a kid, I mean
that's a whole other story. But I used to hang out up at New Yorker because
my dad's best friend was an editor up there, so I knew E.B. White and all these guys, Truman Capote. And I'd go to the Algonquin for Roundtable. I was the only kid that ever went there. I had lunch with Alexander Wolcott and all
these guys. It was a pretty cool childhood. Plus my dad had free tickets to Carnegie Hall
every night. So three or four nights a week I'd either
fall asleep in Carnegie Hall or in the Russian Tea Room afterwards, with the artist. I had this most amazing childhood. It all added up. I mean reality set in - well you're going
to have to make a living you know. People know you can read really well. You can play in the studios. You can go out and play with bands. And then I started making my own records in
the seventies. So that was a whole other thing that was just
a total love for the music. It wasn't a money making proposition as much
as it was for love. MR: That's sort of ironic, you know, that
you can make more money playing with the rock & roll acts or whatever. But as the sixties went on, did you go out
and play current music, I don't know, like Lovin' Spoonful or that kind? WB: Well I recorded with them in '64. But what changed my life entirely was I playing
with Jeremy Steig a lot because he was out with Paul Winter, and he was a great flute
player. And Bill had graduated from college as a flute
major, so he knew Jeremy and then the three of us would play all the time. Bill would get out of playing the last set
at the Vanguard and Jeremy and I would go and sit in with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell
and play the last set at the Vanguard, a lot. And Jeremy got a call from Tim Harden, who
knew him, and Tim said, "I'm coming to New York to play a gig, can you get a band together." And Jeremy said, "Sure." And he got me on keyboards. And here Tim Harden's thing was not - it was
jazzy folk and great poetry, and the most amazing singer I've ever heard in my life,
all poured into one and a complete nutcase on the other side, but I spent, I had to unlearn
everything I'd learned to that point about music, to play with Tim. I had to learn how to play on just an A chord
for twenty minutes, and to make that sound great, and make people weep with it and stuff. That was really - I was into changes, you
know, like what are these things called changes - driving stuff and all that. And for me to have to totally unlearn that
to play with Tim, and I formed this great bond with Tim. It's funny, Bill was a junkie and so was Tim,
and I wasn't. So I ended up getting involved with these
people who had terrible drug problems, but I escaped all that. That's another blessing. So I worked off and on with Tim. We became very close. I moved up here as a result. I came up here to do an album and never left,
with Tim. And he knew Jimi Hendrix and all the guys
that lived up here - Janis Joplin and everything. So we'd go out and do gigs with Tim in San
Francisco or something at the Fillmore, and it'd be Richie Havens and then Cream and then
Tim and then Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis. Things like that. I played with opposite, or knew all the people
on that scene. At the Fillmore and the Fillmore East later,
Winterland and the Avalon and all the great San Francisco - I was right in the middle
of the Haight Ashbury thing, in the sixties. So that had changed everything. Bill and I lost touch. He was out, very busy, and so was I. I was
doing folk and then I started playing rock & roll with some of these people. And I loved that. That was a whole other facet, and then I played
folk music with some other acts and played country with some. My thing is not just jazz at all, it's so
many different facets. I'd say it's probably nine different facets
to my music that I focus on equally. And the classical is the one that's still
alive too. MR: Well that's what I was wondering, if starting
with classical music somehow opened your ears so that when these other things came along
you didn't shut down to them. WB: I don't know. That's another blessing I guess, how I kept
an open mind. Purists never appeal to me. I mean even very great purists. I remember having arguments with Bill about
it and him saying, "You should be playing jazz all over the world." I said, "But I'm playing rock & roll all over,
I'm going out with Simon & Garfunkel," you know, "I'm going to play for six hundred thousand
people in Rome." And he said, "Oh, how can I do that?" I said, "Well you've got to stop being a purist
is the first thing, and just takes what comes along and see if you want to do it." I studied Tai Chi for quite a few years, there's
a lot of this energy moving around. MR: Well how did you answer someone if they
said well you can never be a real jazz player if you're going to be associated with Art
Garfunkel? WB: I don't know, I just played it two weeks
ago at the Iridium and I was playing my ass off you know, whatever that's worth. That's what my other musicians told me, in
the band. I don't know. One of my first rules, I've got very few rules,
and one of them was not to be a purist, to be open to other things. Like if music's good, music's good. And if music sucks, music sucks. It doesn't matter if it's jazz or classical
or whatever it is. And I trust, I have faith in my own ear and
my heart especially, to learn that difference and only pay attention to the things that
are good whenever possible. Once in a while I'd paint myself into a corner
and play a McDonald's hamburger commercial and I said this is not good, but if it's going
to pay a lot of money maybe that's good. MR: There was that tuition thing to keep in
mind though. WB: Well yeah. I was a father by then and had three kids
and you had to think about things like that. And I wasn't a great innovator, maybe that
is another reason, but my other rule was always be the worst guy in whatever band you're in. I still use that rule. So consequently I've very rarely ever been
a band leader because I make a great sideman. I like to be around guys that teach me something,
and always be at a level below where they're at, which was the case with my present band,
L'Image, right, where I feel I'm the weakest player in the band. MR: I'm not sure I'd agree with that, but
I understand what you're saying, that if you have people that you're trying to play up
to it certainly is beneficial. WB: Well I mean it's hard to play with some
of these guys, it's hard to have - to know Jimi Hendrix and say I'm better than you are,
it's really hard. Jim Morrison or Tim or any of those guys in
that world, or Paul Simon. He's amazing. An amazing musician, amazing songwriter, amazing
performer. If I could make a million dollars a night
- my mother used to say to me, "If you're so damn smart how come you ain't rich?" I've got something to learn from all these
people. MR: It sounds to me like you have a really
healthy ego, like you know what you like and you feel good about your playing, but you're
also able to fit in with all these other musicians and artists. WB: Yeah. Well it's not that I didn't work on that because
I had a terrible problem with ego and conceitedness being an only child growing up in this atmosphere
in New York where I was a prodigy playing concerts. You know, Rudolf Serkin wanted me to come
and live with him and study and have tutors and a governess and stuff like that. And my father saying, "Do you want to do that?" I said, "No, I want to keep my friends, I
want to play sports, I want to go to school." I mean a lot of different probabilities could
have happened and maybe have happened, we're not sure. Millions of them. Millions. Every time you turn a corner you're not quite
sure where it's heading, and I kept that attitude open in music too. MR: Do you still feel that way? WB: Oh yeah. I'll tell you what I'm doing musically right
now, I'm trying to learn this very difficult set of variations by Rachmaninoff, to play
in concerts. And seven or eight Chopin etudes and some
nocturnes, plus the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini which is like setting the bar extremely
high. Something I've tried to do many times in my
life. I said I'm 73, this is my last chance, if
I can get over that bar it'll be a great thing. So throwing yourself challenges keep you really
vibrant and working. It has nothing to do with jazz, and yet in
a way it's intimately connected. If you can, I mean the way to play classical
music well is the way that Wynton Kelly would play a solo. I mean you never heard it before and you'll
never hear it again. It's got to swing, it's got to have tone,
it's got to have pulse and shape and if you play it that way, following all the indications
that the composer - and especially we're lucky in the case of somebody like Rachmaninoff
because we can listen to him play that same piece. With Chopin we can't. We can listen to Cortot who studied with Chopin,
to see how it was done then. But if you can make it fresh without destroying
the intent, you know, then it's the same thing, no matter what it is, what kind of music you're
playing. MR: Does it help from playing jazz that you're,
I'm assuming, that when you play classical music you're more likely to be able to see
the harmonic movement in the chords in the piece, that some classical players never really
learn that part of it. WB: You're absolutely on the money there,
yes. That's exactly true. There's many classical players that I can't
stand to listen to because they don't know that and haven't discovered what it's like
to improvise. It doesn't have to be jazz as much as it has
to be really solid good improvisation. I mean most of your great composers in the
Eurocentric thing, oh we haven't even gotten to African music yet. That influence, you know, that's a whole other
thing. But the European, Eurocentric composing community,
they were all great improvisers. The greatest of them all, Beethoven, was a
superb improviser. That's my opinion. I think he's the granddaddy. Some people say Bach but I say Beethoven. And I've played enough of him that I think
I know, and I've listened to him enough. At least for me I'm satisfied that when I
approach a piece of his that this is going to be really a challenge, even the simplest
piece. This is going to be really something. This was written by a guy who was stone deaf. Start right there. I mean I just did Opus 111, the last 30 seconds,
the famous part that's jazz. It's written in 29/32nds or something -. And
if you play it that way it really makes sense. You see what he intended. I mean he was what, two hundred years before
Philly Jo Jones and he was doing the same shit. I mean he's something else. And all these guys. You don't get famous - there's no bogus stuff
going on there, you know, becoming immortal or being immortal. MR: If you were in the middle of a classical
piece and you stumbled, could you improvise your way out of it and back into it? WB: Yeah, yeah. It feels pretty bad. It's awkward. I did it - that same concert that - I recorded
the concerts a couple of years ago here in Woodstock and I stumbled in Debussy's "Fireworks"
- it's Feux d'artifice - and I improvised about a four bar section there that Debussy
never thought of, but I managed to get it and come back. And listening back to the tape it's like,
oh no, oh, oh, okay, you got it back. I mean I came from a different age, and all
these conservatories are turning out these technically perfect - stamping them out. It's almost like the Monty Python, the "Meaning
of Life" in the beginning of that where they stamp out another human being. That's the way they're stamping out jazz artists
and all kinds of supposedly creative people. But are they missing the boat and is there
something more to it than that, just being technically perfect. I grew up knowing Arthur Rubenstein for instance,
and he'd make a lot of mistakes, and occasionally a real messy thing, but it was glorious to
listen - to lie under the piano and listen to him play Chopin, I mean it was fucking
unbelievable. MR: You were under the piano when Rubenstein
was playing? WB: In my pajamas, you know. Yeah. A lot of guys, a lot of guys. But I mean it was that era where mistakes
were okay. There was about 150 years in there where the
critics didn't mind that as long as the heart and the correct feeling and the awesomeness
of it all came through. What's a mistake? Oh he forgot. I remember I got a good lesson, I was learning
a toccata by Paradisi in A major. It's a simple piece but it's not simple. It's a lot of answering response and answering
the different hands. And toccata means touch, you know, a lot of
heavy touching. And Dame Myra Hess was over at our house for
dinner and I played the toccata for her, and I was just learning it, and stumbling through
it. So and that was on a Friday night. And Sunday afternoon we went to hear her at
Town Hall and I was like in the fifth row or something, and she looks down at me after
the concert and said I'd like to play an encore for a really good young friend of mine, and
points to me. And she sits down and plays the toccata and
she spaces out and forgets where she is. I mean she really lost it. She couldn't get it back. Then she apologized to everybody. But sometimes you lose it and you really lose
it. I mean you can't find it and you can't get
back. And that's where I'm sure - it hasn't happened
to me in an awful thing like that but if it ever does I'm sure I'll be very thankful I
learned what I know, I'm going to "Green Dolphin Street" or something. What the hell? There's worse things. You're going to die. MR: There are worse things. WB: You know it feels awful if you forget. MR: You know I was going to talk, later, but
I have these interesting thoughts about jazz education these days as it goes on. It seems to me the hardest thing to teach
is what you're talking about, just to play with heart and soul. And I feel really left behind when I read
some of the articles about how to play X. WB: Well I did a bunch of tapes. Did you ever see any of my educational stuff? I tried to somehow skate around that. Sometimes I regret that I've done it because
I get letters from people, "I thought you were going to teach me to play like Red Garland." And I write them back and I say, "No, I'm
going to teach you to play like you." That's what I'm hoping for. That was my thing. Am I making too much noise? That's the intent. I don't read those articles. I deliberately stayed away. I went to one IAJE convention and that was
enough for me. Some great players played there, that was
nice. But I didn't dig the whole vibe. I stay away from them. I haven't done any more. I did one with Donald Fagan about songwriting
but I haven't done any of my own. I think I said what I had to say about that. They're still very popular and they help a
lot of people. I get thousands of letters and stuff. MR: Well part of that I think is the kind
of gigs that you used to play to make money, now people are doing it in jazz education
to make a living. WB: Well that's okay. You know, you've got to make a living. I don't think there's any boundaries in the
universe, just there aren't. If you really study. Self-discovery is what Bill used to call it. Self-realization. That's what jazz is. I mean there's all this universal mind out
there and you just pick your parts and distill it down, and what comes out is you, and you
discover what you are as a result of doing that. MR: Okay. You
had mentioned something about self-discovery. WB: Yeah. Really learning about jazz is self-discovery. But what Bill Evans used to tell me was, he
wouldn't show me anything, any of his voicings or anything. I was allowed to look over his shoulder if
I wanted to, but things are happening so fast. You can't pick anybody's brain that way. Some people can do that and then they can
write it down and you can read the transcriptions and see, "Oh, that's what he was doing." I wouldn't do that. He said, "I won't show you because I don't
rob you of the joy that you're going to experience when you discover it yourself. That's why I don't teach, I play." And it made a lot of sense, especially in
jazz. I have no idea - I've never -I've always wanted
to go to Senegal and sit in with those guys, with Youssou N'Dour's guys or something, and
learn - Jack DeJohnette, he went over there and said it was just amazing the drumming
going on. That's my latest craze that hit America that
hit me at the same time, and I see it coming out in my writing now, there are more and
more influences from that continent. MR: There is something about that music, even
the way, sometimes I've heard something - it sounds like they even tune their guitars a
little bit differently. WB: Oh yes, it's magical. Some great stuff. Yeah the guitar playing is something else. The best show I ever saw in my life was here
at the Bearsville Theater with Youssou N'Dour. I don't know if you know anybody that has
ever heard that band. And then the second best show is Youssou N'Dour
in Kingston at UPAC a couple of years ago. He had guitar players at Bearsville on each
side of the stage, like in stereo, each playing something totally different and totally right. There was just nothing out of place. Great dancing. Great talking drum. And the next time I saw him he had on like
a shirt and slacks and didn't dance. And it was still some of the greatest music
I've ever heard. So there's something on. And I got to play with Vincent Nguini and
Bakithi Kumalo with Paul Simon, you know, the "Graceland" guys and stuff, and Tony Cedras. They've got something to say and they're really
great musicians. MR: Let me zoom through - it's a little hard
to pick things - but when you got that Steps Ahead group going. WB: Mike Mainieri. MR: Yeah. WB: First it was Steps, and Don Grolnick was
the pianist. Steve Gadd, Eddie Gomez, Michael Brecker. And then Eliane Elias joined and Peter Erskine
joined, because Steve was busy with something else. And then When Eliane left I was asked to join
the band. That was another co-op band. This is my second co-op band. But it takes a unanimous decision to take
the tiniest step. It's really painful. Nobody can say what we're doing next. That was more Mike's baby, you know, like
he'd kind of guide the way. That's a long association in my life, in my
career too, because I've been playing with him for 46 years now. He's an amazing player. MR: Well you made me leapfrog to L'Image. And there's a little clip of you guys too
on YouTube of course. WB: In the old days? MR: In the dressing room. WB: Oh in Japan or somewhere? MR: No - well it might be in Japan - but I
was curious - WB: Tony did that. MR: If there's arguments, who wins and who
settles it? WB: I guess the band splits up or something. I don't know. We split up in the seventies. We were a barn band. You've heard of garage bands? Well Mike had a barn and we were a barn band. And then Spinozza joined us on guitar. It was Tony Levin on the bass and Steve Gadd
on drums and Mike Mainieri on vibes, and I played Rhodes and clavinet in the original
band, we didn't have a piano, and Moog, a mini Moog. And that was in my synthesizer days. I still love the Fender Rhodes, I think it's
a fabulous instrument. And I've been playing fake ones now - the
Nord that has all the keyboard sounds on it. I love those. It's not heavy, you can have a promoter supply
one and plug in the computer and get all your own sounds. It's great. But it's not the real thing like a real Fender
Rhodes. You'd have to be a billionaire to carry one
of those around. You'd have to be in that upper echelon. You have to be playing arenas to carry a Rhodes
around, or big concert halls. But clubs, forget it, or small concerts. MR: Well it seems you've been involved in
some of the really better fusion things, at least in my opinion. WB: Well the original fusion band, I think
I was in the original fusion band of all time it might have been, with Jeremy Steig and
Randy Brecker and myself and Joe Beck. I'm trying to remember who else was in it. But we were doing that stuff before anybody
else, before the Brecker brothers. And then after Tim Harden, one of his flake-out
experiences before Jeremy and the Satyrs, which was Eddie Gomez and Adrian Gillary singing
and playing blues harp, and Donald McDonald on drums and myself. And that was a real fusion band, because we
played rock & roll and blues and jazz and everything that we loved, whatever we loved
we played. I remember a memorable gig was at the Village
Gate, at the top of the gate, I don't know if you remember, but they had the bottom room
which was the big room, and then the top of the gate was kind of, well a lot of good guys
played there. Bill Evans played there at the top of the
gate, Larry Coryell, a lot of guys. And we went in there with Jeremy and the Satyrs
and we got halfway through the first tune and the manager came up and says, "Cut it
guys, cut it, cut it." Really. I'm not kidding. We had a two week engagement. He said, "Cut it, we'll pay you for the two
weeks, you made the bartenders ill." He said, "It's too much for them, it's too
much for all of us, sorry." And they paid us for the two weeks, and we
waited around and jammed and stuff. That was a pretty wild fusion band. That was one of the first. And then of course the Brecker brothers came
around and I think that was the big one, of all the fusion bands that I know. But then even Blood Sweat & Tears was heading
that way with all the horn sections. That was years before that, '64, '65. MR: How have your ears held up over the years
with - some of that stuff was pretty darn loud. WB: Oh I remember doing two weeks up in Rochester
with Steve Gadd's bass drum this far from my left ear when he was really hitting it. I mean he wasn't taking it easy by any means. And he's got the greatest bass drum beat I've
ever heard. Greatest on the planet. And if I didn't go deaf from that, nothing
will. I had my ears tested a couple of years ago,
they said, "Well you have the hearing of a forty year old man who's never been around
anything loud." Blessed? I don't know. I played such loud gigs with Marc Black, a
local singer/songwriter friend of mine. We have a band that gets together on like
solstices and equinoxes and weird times, and that gets really loud at times, or used to
get loud, so loud that you'll come home and you'll be awake until six or seven in the
morning just from the ringing in your ears. But it's never done any damage to me. MR: Glad to hear that. And working with Steely Dan and Paul Simon? WB: Different. MR: How so? WB: Two different worlds. The music. Steely Dan. Changes, great changes. That was the best gig I ever had I think,
of all the gigs. If I had to name one that I loved more than
any of the others it was going out with that band that hadn't gone out in nineteen years,
and I'd never been on one of their records. It's one of the things I'd always wanted to
- "I'm going to the Steely Dan date." "Oh I wish they'd call me." And then when they finally went out live they
called me. And I said all right. This is fun. And the first year it was Peter Erskine on
drums, the second year it was Dennis Chambers, great drummers and great rhythm sections,
great horn sections. I mean Chris Potter was in both editions of
that band. Yeah, it's not one of those long-lasting gigs. I mean they only go out for six weeks or something. You do a month of rehearsal then you do a
six month tour, and then you do that the next year. You might go to Japan or something or go to
Europe. But then I remember I was up at my summer
place in Wisconsin and Art Garfunkel had called me to do a European tour. And he'd sent me all this music, and it all
happened very quickly, like FedEx and phone calls, and so within two days I accepted this
thing. The third day Steely Dan calls to do a tour. I said this is another one of my rules, never
cancel on anybody. So I said Jeez I'm sorry I can't do it. And that was the end of my Steely Dan - being
an alumnus of Steely Dan. I go back occasionally and sit in, and I love
Donald. I don't get to see Walter that much, but Donald
lives up here so I sometimes see him. MR: Do those guys expect recreation of what's
on the albums? WB: I remember George Wadenius came in and
tried to play Larry Carlton's solo on "Deacon Blues" and they didn't like that at all. They said, "Play your own solo." So I think they wanted to recreate certain
aspects, like tempo, the vibe of the song and the pulse. But all of a sudden he'll come in with a completely
new arrangement of a standard Steely Dan tune, I'm trying to remember the name of it, he
wrote an entirely new thing for it, totally different. And you couldn't even play it, it was so different. It's very exacting in a certain kind of way,
especially tempo-wise. Anything that I'd start I'd have Roger Nichols
who was - unfortunately the late Roger Nichols - was the monitor engineer of all things. And I had on these stage in-ear monitors,
and he'd feed me a click track that was what Donald and Walter wanted on this tune. Or he'd give it to the drummer, or whoever
started the tune. MR: Oh I see. WB: And then he'd turn it off as soon as you
get two bars into it then the click was gone, but once you establish that tempo, they were
real sticklers on that. But it was a three and a half hour show. I had to change my clothes at intermission,
I was just completely drenched. I'd lose ten pounds in a show. And it's a lot of effort and a lot of music,
and there wasn't a bad song in it. Opening tune: "Aja." I mean that's like Simon & Garfunkel starting
a set with "Bridge Over Troubled Water" you just didn't do that. But they had the guts to do anything they
wanted to. And now they've been playing a different album
every night. And people yelling out what album they want
to hear and they'll do "Haitian Divorce" or something, "Pretzel Logic." I don't know how they do it. They're amazing. Now Paul's a whole different thing. He's also a stickler for tempos, but we'll
rehearse every day. There wasn't a sound check. For Steely Dan I was the musical director
or rehearsal director or whatever you called it. If Donald or Walter didn't want to show up
in the afternoon when we were setting up, I'd conduct it, and we'd go through some tunes
and get the sounds right. But with Paul it's like an art. We rehearsed that day. You might change the whole show. It was constant, like wait, what did we learn
today, like uh oh, that chord's out, now I've got to do something different here in this
section, and then oh that's right we decided to skip that. And then there's a lot of tinkering with it. And it's very orchestral. Paul has an orchestral kind of ear, which
is like if you're an oboist you don't play all the way through Beethoven's Sixth Symphony,
you play when Beethoven says to play. And it's the same thing being a pianist with
him or something. I think probably the only reason I'm there
is "Bridge Over Troubled Water" to begin with. It's a lot of guitar. Many guitars and very little piano. Okay, you play here and then stop. You know. And then you play here and then stop. And that can change from night to night. So you always have to be on your toes. But the material is always great. I mean it's like playing with the Beatles
or something. I mean the audience reaction. And you see a grandfather and a father and
a son all standing by the stage all in tears during "The Boxer" or something, near the
end of the show. It's really moving. I mean I used to cry at those shows. I hope they go on again. I'd love to do it some more. MR: Okay I want to try something. WB: The blindfold test? MR: Well excuse my voice okay. Let's see if I can pull this off. See if you can name this tune. WB: Yeah. Well it was originally, you know the original
title was Folk Song, and then Mike changed it to Sarah's Touch. And my "Manhattan Update" album was the first
time that tune ever appeared on record there, for Arista. I did the first version of it. Then Mike recorded it and then I re-recorded
it and then Steps did it this way and that way. It's been recorded a lot. Great song. MR: Great song. It's got that something, as soon as I heard
it, it's got this interesting combination of joy but also melancholy at the same time. I wondered how that happens. WB: Well it happens a lot in music. I mean certain music I can almost barely listen
to, like Celtic music or something, so melancholy and even though it could be a happy song there's
something there that's just so powerful, ripping your heartstrings out. And I find it difficult to listen to it, it
may be too powerful. That's what hit me the first time I heard
Bill Evans was that he was playing - I don't know what tune he was playing, I think it
was "Young and Foolish" or something. And it was just beautiful jazz playing and
improvisation, and yet there was something else there that was very deep and heartfelt
and melancholy. Just like I used to read the Castaneda books
about Don Juan, he said the universe is a very sad place. And I think it reminds you of that. MR: Okay. WB: As great poems can do. There are several ways to get to it and music
I find to be the best way to get to it. MR: Let's suppose I represented a patron of
the arts, like the old days, and I offered you a commission to write a piano concerto. WB: I'm not a composer. MR: Well. WB: Well yet. MR: Yet. WB: I mean I write some tunes. But I never studied composition and I never
studied counterpoint. I went to music school but it was trying to
get out of the Korean War, and I lasted a week in music school and I dropped out. But I didn't want to go over to Korea. And it was just ending right about that time. And I'm not a violent person. I don't think I've ever hurt anybody intentionally. I'm only trying to bring joy to people. MR: How are we doing time-wise? BC: You have 14 minutes. MR: Okay. With L'Image, am I pronouncing that right? WB: L'Image, yeah. MR: You actually have three chordal instruments. WB: Isn't that something. And no saxophones. MR: And with the stick you could even have
four I suppose. WB: Yeah. MR: What does that do for your musical choices? WB: It's hard as hell to write for. And you don't want everybody comping at once. I mean you know we definitely have to have
a lot of eye contact and just feeling each other out. You know, I mean it just takes a slight head
movement from Mike Mainieri to me to know who's comping on this next thing. There's a lot of - since there's no leader
either - it's difficult. It's a hard band to get lost in what you're
doing because you have to be on your toes so much. Where is it going now? We're entering new territory, or we've never
been there before. Yeah. And how are we going to do it? And sometimes I want guys to play more actually,
to really hear solos stretch out, you know, rather than sometimes David doesn't feel like
playing more than a chorus or two. I don't know. Some people don't have to. Look at "Lester Leaps In." He plays everything that you could possibly
do in eight bars in the bridge. Or Philly Joe told me, he said - my favorite
drummer of all time by the way- he said "I never heard Charlie Parker play more than
four choruses. Ever." MR: Even in a jam session type thing? WB: Yeah. He said he said it all in a very short amount
of time. But there are certain times when something
is really clicking and it's shifting gears, you know, that's got that great unnamable
shift - it happens where you want it to go in another gear, and Mike Mainieri is great
at that. He'll start off a solo and he'll go through
five or six different gears on that solo. And you want him to stretch out. And then maybe when he gets to third gear
and the guitar starts coming in, and I might talk with David about it. I might say then let me take over and then
Mike would say, "Yeah, I want Warren to take over when I stop playing with four mallets,
then I can go to two," and different things like that, we'll talk about it. So some of it's thought out but we try not
to do too much of that. But with three chordal instruments, and as
you say, almost a fourth, you have to be very careful of your performance. MR: Is it hard to book a group where everybody's
got other things going on? WB: It's impossible. Like that gig at the Iridium, we hadn't played
for a year, just because of that. I mean Steve's one of the busiest musicians
on the planet. I'm one of the second busiest. Mike's in four different bands. He's got Steps Ahead, he's got Northern Lights,
he's got solo and duet projects and we do a thing with Kazumi Watanabe, a trio in Japan. And then David and I are kind of sitting around. I'm playing Rachmaninoff. I don't know what David's doing. It's not a busy time of a lot of gigs for
us, so it varies and it makes it extremely difficult. To get a commitment is the hardest thing. Once you get a commitment then we've got a
manager and a booking agent and we can book things. But it's not easy being green. MR: Or getting green. WB: No in this day and age, the airline gets
green. We did a tour of Europe and they made most
of the money. Lufthansa made most of the money. MR: Okay so it's 2012. This isn't really a musical question, but
how are you feeling about the state of the country and the world? WB: How do I feel? MR: Yeah. WB: I feel like every breath is a very precious
gift, and the sky is never the same two moments in a row. And there's always something there but it's
something you've never seen before that's brand new and precious about being alive. It's that simple. MR: You know you got out of - not totally
out of music - but you did the Pilates thing for a while? WB: In '06 I decided to take a sabbatical
more or less, and went back to school to study Pilates, to become a teacher. Because I loved doing it. And the gal that ran the studio - it's right
down the road here - she said, "Well we've got a school going, and rather than taking
three or four classes a week, why don't you sign up for this two year teaching program
and become a teacher and you can do it nine times a week for less money, and really see
if you like it." And it turned out to be I loved it, and there
wasn't a lot happening musically at the time and so I really did an about face and focused
on that. And it was a pleasure, and people tell me
I was a really good teacher. I taught for about a year and then the phone
started ringing and I started getting back into music and I came back to music completely
refreshed. And I was a little sick of it. You know after a while you can do too much
of one thing. I think Pilates was great. Now, my new thing is I want to get into yoga. I think that would be good at my age. And there's a lot of opportunity because there's
a lot of good yoga teachers. And then play as much as I can. Like I say I'm working pretty much full time
on this Rachmaninoff Rhapsody. It takes that kind of concentration. I've got it pretty well memorized now, but
now the execution of it is very high level. So it's just going to take a lot of work. MR: Do you put recordings of it on and listen
to it a lot or do you find it's not that helpful? WB: If I see a note that I think is wrong
I'll listen. I'll only listen to the Rachmaninoff version,
with him playing. Because the intent and the - the whole, what's
the shape of this thing? What's the point of it? And I'm still trying to find the point in
that piece. Like what's the point that you're reaching
in that 24 minute piece that makes - what's the point of doing it? There's one moment in there, for you, only
for you to find it. And you either make the point or you miss
the point. MR: It sounds like high pressure. Of course why should it be easy? WB: God is prescient isn't it? Haven't I heard it somewhere? MR: Do you have anything you'd like to -
BC: Yeah, I've got one, yeah I do actually. You mentioned something, I know you had a
heart attack. You may have answered it. WB: I had a mild one, I was lucky. BC: Okay. You may have answered that question about
appreciating every moment with the changing of the lake, but how did that effect your
consciousness, your life? WB: Well it was scary. My father died of a heart attack in his fifties,
and I'm 73 now. It made me go to, well I've got a couple of
good cardiologists. I had a stent put in, and they checked all
the major vessels and put my mind at ease. They said they're all fine. So don't eat anything with cholesterol in
it. I mean there's certain kinds of fats you don't
want to eat. And watch your calories. And you're going to take these certain blood
thinners and stuff. So I've done all that and I've gone to cardiac
rehabilitation which is basically treadmills and an elliptical machine and arm machines
and weights, with nurses' supervision. I go three times a week. And I don't recall feeling better than this
at any point in my life. I mean I'm in better shape than I've ever
been, as a result of that aerobic exercise. Pilates isn't aerobic, neither is playing
the piano. It's an extremely sedentary thing. Oh for any students watching this, don't practice
more than ten minutes. Get up and walk around. Do something else and come back and practice
ten minutes. And then, something I have to do, when you're
memorizing something, move the instrument. Because you're starting to memorize the room
you're in, and you go on the concert stage and you can't remember a God damn thing. I just thought of this as being helpful. If you just move a centimeter it changes everything. MR: That's a really interesting piece of advice. WB: Memory works in weird ways. You want it work when you come into a hall
on a strange instrument. BC: One more question, we've got four minutes
by the way. So people, hopefully this archive is going
to last a long time and for history, for generations to come, is there anything you want to say
to people that are way beyond, haven't even come to the planet yet, that may be watching this. WB: Well maybe they'll be aware by then that
time works both ways and I'd like to thank them for their contributions to what we're
learning here now. It's coming not only from what we've experienced
in the past. Time is kind of an illusion, a dimension maybe. I would say I like the phrase "all at once"
to describe everything. Therefore we're all here now and there never
will be anything but now for anything. So great to see you all. I've respected the future. I don't think Atlantis has happened yet. MR: Well on that note, lovely. Thank you very much and it's been a real pleasure
talking to you. And I have to say I've admired your career
from Steely Dan and all your own work. WB: Yeah, I'm proud of my recordings in a
funny kind of way. It's almost like they're my children. I don't do a lot of them, but they're genuine. I've enjoyed this too. I didn't think I was going to enjoy it and
it turned out that I have so thank you. MR: Thanks a lot.
