>>What was it like back then? >>It was great because I was just a kid and
my mum... I kind of made it really hard on her to be around me because I didn't want
to be here, I wanted to be in Tijuana. I had a gig in there, playing guitar, and we would
play for an hour, and for the next hour the stippers would do their thing. They strip.
>>Oh so you were playing in strip clubs. >>Yeah in Tijuana
>>I didn't know they had strip clubs down there. You're kidding!
>>Oh yeah. And so to come back to America and to start all over again in junior high
school, that was like.. No. That's not an option. I don't wana go back over there.
>>You missed your friends. >>So it was fun, my education was... like
everything you know? I was watching drummers really support strippers, because the way
they walk is like "do do dodo" >>Oh yeah, their kicks and their moves right?
>>So the role of the drummer is very supportive especially when the ladies don't know how
to do it, and you've got to help them to look good, how they walk and you know. And I said
"oh man the drummers are like, you know.." I always noticed that the drummer's role is
really important. Its not just holding time, its not just that.
>>Hal Blaine I had the good chance to become friends with. He started... was it in Chicago Dom?
Was Hal in Chicago? And he worked in all the gangster strip clubs. And that was where
he... the same thing, he learned visually how to like... And he told me it
really helped him - when he'd be playing - interpret singers and the lyrics and what they were
trying to get across, and how he would play listening to xxxx and lots of really music
stuff. But he got that starting from the strippers, playing, and that was just what you said.
Just the accents and when they would do a kick or a move, each of them had their own
different things and he was very supportive and at the same time kind of inspired them.
>>Its a language. >>Exactly.
>>There's a language to be an accountant or a lawyer, everything is a language. The language
of the drum is grace for me. And the biggest mistake that a lot of drummers make is to
think that they're playing - supposed to hold your hand and hold time for you. I'm a grown
man, you don't have to hold time for me man. I need you to like...
>>I'm a grown man! >>You know, play... not time for me, you don't
have to hold my hand. >>I got it! I know! I can tap my foot.
>>I think that frees them and frees me too, to not be walking like we're handcuffed to
each other. >>Yeah we were talking earlier about how important
ears are, and listening, and that's a muscle. And certainly, any kind of music where you're
having a conversation with the musicians on stage and to be a listener and that's really
really important. Sometimes younger kids I see sometimes they don't... they're so caught
up in their technique and how fast and this that and the other, that they don't work on-
work on their listening. Actually it takes, you know... To be able to have a conversation
with somebody on stage, musically or in the studio, whenever you're making music, that
it is a conversation. Its not - what you play, I'm going to mimic what your playing. Sometimes
there's things in unison that are powerful and great. But actually, especially jazz musicians-
they're so good at that - the good ones that have that musical conversation and they're
supporting, but at the same time inspiring and leading, and sometimes you lead and sometimes
I lead, and that whole dynamic is really to me is what playing the human element of playing
music is so powerful to me. I really look forward to finding mighty musicians that play
like that. And it seems like the guys that you play and have had in your group are like
that and that's really important. Do you think through jazz, when you were getting into Miles...
When did you get into Miles and Coltrane and those guys?
>>It was Michael Shrieve who bought me a lot of records of just old school-
>>Ah the drummer! >>The drummer. I owe everything to the drummer.
God is a drummer ok? >>You think God is a drummer?
>>I know he's an incredible drummer, man. God to me is like one big number one circle
like this and its xxxx and Tony and Jack and Roy and like that and Buddy Rich. All of them
have one thing in common, man. They can uplift you out of your existence into a place where
you start believing that you can do the impossible as well. That's what drummers do. How else
can I put it that they actually uplift you out of your existence into... so that you
can remember that you also have that grace, energy, imagination to make people feel like
they need to. Because we all need to be needed, you know? Its one of the basic things of being
a human being. I love it when people say "I need for you to...xxxxx" Because they grew
up making love to those songs. In the back of a car or wherever they make love you know?
And I was just reading about how important it still is for all musicians to remember to
be present in this moment and take it the highest way that you can take it and then celebrate
it. I think all of us, the inner child in you and the inner child in me, the innocence
man, we love 4th July because you know at the very end there's going to be a big crescendo
you know? The life and the sound... >>Big fireworks
>>Its no different to the drum solo or the guitar solo. Build it to a mounting orgasm,
crescendo of emotions, grace and colours and that's what people remember when they go home.
It becomes... But how many musicians practice this in their psyche? Making music that is
moments outside of time. So it will be memorable. So to make a moment outside of time, you can't
think. You think, you screw up. >>You're not in the moment anymore.
>>You're not in the moment, because thinking and time, they're tied together. People say
in America a lot, "time is money, you're wasting my time" and I go, "then keep both" you know?
I want the other stuff, man. I want the stuff that like ahhh!
>>And people remember that when they say "...when
I saw you, but there was something that you did, man, it took me...". This is the best
compliment people can give you: "You've touched me in a place I've never been touched before".
>>As long as you're not an old man with a young small child. No no, I totally agree
with you. Because I think it can be unexpected? Maybe people are hoping and there's hope but
not always does it happen, but when you play something that you're in the moment, and playing
music, and you're playing a concert and you've played these songs a few times - there's certain
songs that people want to hear when they come to see our group or your group. There's a
few songs that people really connect with and want to hear and we play those songs for
those people. They are like "I hope they do bla bla bla song" and you do it, and they've
heard it in their car or they've made love to it, or... the great thing about music is-
one of the great things - is that it takes you back to that place in time. I have it
with so many records which is the great thing about music. And when you're in the room with
them and you're playing that music, they're experiencing it, you're doing it to the best
of your ability, and not always do you have that crescendo or that 'everything's working
together'. We were talking earlier about the hairs on your arms standing up. It doesn't
always happen, but when it does its really beautiful and magical. That will connect with
those people and especially the people that really have a vested memory or interest in
that song. It really means a lot to them. And when you play it live and they connect
with that in the moment its a beautiful thing, man. And like you said, when they go "that
really touched me in a place that I've never..." >>been touched before.
>>been touched before. That's fantastic. >>They're affirming that all of us need to
dwell a lot on what Wayne Shorter calls 'completely new, totally familiar'. Even non-musicians
have a forgotten song inside them, then we inspire them to hear it. Even non-musicians,
a plumber, a brain surgeon, but everybody has a forgotten song inside them. It takes
the musician, sound, resonance, vibration, to activate that personal song, and then they
say "Wow. It took a musician to help me remember what my calling is - what my purpose is."
You never hear a plumber whoop me up to my calling. Ok? I'm just saying. It always takes
a musician, man, because a musician is gifted with the sound, resonance, vibration of the
holy ghost. Even an atheist needs inspiration and vision.
>>Atheists love music just as much as everybody loves music. Some kind of music.
>>Yeah, and its ok. You don't have to call on God, you don't have to call on anything. But you're
still going to say his name when you make love. Oh my... You can't say 'oh me' or 'oh whatever'.
>>Oh God! >>You know? So there it is. Utilising the
tools, man. The drums, the melody, the rhythms. It helps us penetrate the heart of the listener
into such a place where they... I see Miles Davis at the xxxx east and west made people
that were totally high, straight. People who were totally straight, high. People who had
a bunch of joints and they hear a xxx and they're like "damn". And then they're like
totally straight all of a sudden. And I've seen people who were totally straight
be like "woah". Its incredible that music can activate, ignite and infuse something
in humans, and I call it an molecular label. We rearrange molecular structure by sound.
And that's why we call it getting chills or crying or laughing. We literally retransfigurate
molecular structure on people when we play. When you see people doing air drums or air
guitar, some ladies play the whole band, because they can't help themselves. They can't just
go like this anymore or like that. >>They look like they're having seizures but
they're just rocking out. >>And to me that's like the parameter, like
band, you see her, we're doing good band. She is an affirmation that all the accumulation
of what you know and what you feel and what you have. She is that flag that's telling
you which way the wind is blowing and what's happening you know? If I don't see a woman
dancing then I look to my band, "ok you all need to be really really be present." I need
two things: spirituality and sensuality. I've got to have that in every song. Because those
are the two things that makes a human free.