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Chick Corea Returns To Forever
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
One of the most influential jazz musicians of the past forty years teams up with another legend. By Brian Wise
An interview with Chick Corea:
We’re certainly looking forward to you coming to Australia with this incredible band. Tell us about how the whole project got together in the first place.
John and I have been friends for many, many years - since we met in Miles Davis’s band in, I guess, it was 1969. During the seventies we were both of us were focused on our individual bands. I was pointing everywhere with Return To Forever and John had Mahavishnu going full force and so forth.
But John and I remained friends as the decades went along although we never did a musical project together since then and I had always wanted to because I admired John and wanted to play with him some more.
So, I guess it came to a point where I thought let me bring this idea to John. He suggested bringing Christian and Kenny Garrett and Vinnie Colauita. It was good timing for John and we juggled our schedules around a little bit until we found a period that worked and then we started putting the set together.
I was talking to John and I was saying to him this was possibly one of the best jazz groups to ever tour Australia. It’s an amazing line up.
Well, you know, the proof is in the performance. I hope the audience enjoys it and the band is on fire. We’ll be having fun that’s for sure.
I believe that Herbie even sat in with you recently on your tour at one stage.
Yeah, that’s right. We’re old friends. It was especially exciting because of Herbie and my and John’s connection from Miles’ band in the late Sixties. In fact, that’s the tune that we jammed on which John probably mentioned which is the song we recorded together with Miles – ‘In A Silent Way.’
Do you perform that each night in concert or an excerpt from In A Silent Way?
Well, we started off our tour with opening the shows with just a duet with John and I playing ‘In A Silent Way’ and then we started playing some other tunes to open the show. But, after Herbie started playing with us we started using ‘Silent Way’ as an encore. We may do that again when we come to Australia
When I was talking to John I was trying not to talk about Miles Davis because I’m not sure often how artists feel about their previous work. But he mentioned the fact that it was with Miles that he met you and it was a really important time in his life. I guess it must have been an important time in your life as well.
Yes. We were all on the verge of doing our own projects. I think both for John and for me working with Miles’s group was the last sort of side band project we had until we put our own bands together. So it was kind of a launch and Miles encouraged that. He wanted us to put our own bands together and he was very good that way actually as a leader - encouraging the musicians who worked with him to take further steps. So, yes, it was an exciting time.
How do you feel about the re-releases of that material? There are box sets of In A Silent Way, Jack Johnson and Bitches Brew. I know Billy Cobham’s got a few misgivings about some of it. He wasn’t sure how he feels about the re-release. How do you feel about all that material coming out now?
I’m so happy that it got remixed and that it got presented in its uncut version. I like it so much more than the original record and I actually got interested in listening. The original recordings of those jam sessions were so utterly cut up that I kind of lost interest in them back in the day. Listening now with the Bob Belden touch in restoring them, he also restored the mix; he made sure that all of the accompanying instruments were able to be heard clearly. Now you can hear in the new mix what a glorious rapport all the musicians had with Miles’ original ideas. I love the new releases.
I suppose when you first heard them originally released you probably didn’t even recognise some of the things and found it hard to relate to it because it had been cut up so much.
Well, those were days of moving on into the next step. I remember being in the studio several times with Miles gathering various combinations of musicians and to me it all seemed like one big rehearsal. It seemed like we were preparing for something and none of it seemed like this is a final thing. So I never really took much attention of the releases when they came out back in the day.
It’s interesting that they’re so influential. You’re part of some recordings that actually changed music history, changed jazz history, which I suppose you couldn’t possibly appreciate at the time but in retrospect it must seem amazing that you are on those albums.
I guess it’s eventually whatever music just sticks in the publics mind and they keep playing it and asking for it. I guess marketing is involved but not completely - word of mouth is really what keeps culture like that alive. That’s what I think.
It’s also interesting, Chick, that so many of the players that were under Miles mentorship have gone onto great things. It must have been an incredible experience as a musician that affected you - probably still to this day in some ways.
It was a growing thing, like I said. It was just exciting times and we were all very involved in our own bands. I didn’t see much of Joe [Zawinul] and Wayne [Shorter] although we’d play occasionally together. I also didn’t see much of John after I got Return To Forever going because we’d all be burning up the road one way or the other and not very often coming across one another. It’s not till later that it begins to dawn on you there was a lot of ground breaking happening during that period.
Well, you’ve had an illustrious career since then. I was looking on your website. I think is it 55 Grammy nominations so far!
I’ve lost count, something like that.
That’s an incredible number of Grammy nominations. It’d have to be almost a record, wouldn’t it?
I hope it’s not fixed - you know what I mean. No, I take it as a good acknowledgement from my peers as encouraging.
Now, just talking about this group of musicians that are coming to Australia with you. How much of the show is improvised how much do you get to move within the musical framework of what’s going on?
Well, we’re working mostly off structures that John and I bought to the repertoire and it’s definitely not what you would call group-composed music. So, really the musicality of the night and the guts of the music is improvised all time. It keeps it fun and challenging. It’s what we all wanted to do anyway. Most of the show is completely just improvising
I was telling John that I saw Christian McBride at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He put in a fantastic performance but he made a remark that the jazz police wouldn’t be pleased with one of the tunes that he played. I think it was a Jaco Pastorious number. I wouldn’t have thought at this stage that the jazz police would still have that sort of influence or people would be worried about that sort of thing.
I don’t think there’s much worry about it, it’s more of a joke rather than anything else.
I mean the ‘jazz police’ is one of the one of the current versions of any kind of purist group that claim that their way is the only way or their kind of music is the only music. It never lasts too long and it’s real easy to see through.
It’s easy to see that the basic rule that applies there is everyone’s free to have their own taste in music - and whatever else in life and so forth. That’s what we base our freedom on as musicians - the freedom to express ourselves, play different combinations of music try different things experiment that’s the ground for us.
Well at the same time as working with this band - or actually previous to this - and was a Return To Forever world tour as well. Can you tell us a little bit about how the tour came about and tell us how the response was and how you enjoyed it?
Well, that was a completely different experience in that that band hadn’t played together for so many years. I didn’t know what to expect really from the audience but I did know that this time around it was an agreement amongst the band that we wanted to present the music from the ‘70s because that’s what people wanted to hear. They remember the Return To Forever music from the ‘70s, so we put that set together; although, again, it was just structures that we improvised with and the music sounded all new. It was very, very exciting. I was very surprised to see how many people remembered the band and how many younger people came along that were excited about the band that new about the group.
Well both you and John were in two of the most influential bands of the Seventies and I guess people have great memories of that.
Yes, it continues on. I think it’s a wonderful thing. John and I had originally had discussed possibly playing some Return To Forever and Mahavishnu music with this new band but when it came right down to it, our interest really went directly to new ideas and a fresh approach and that’s what we’re doing.
Chick Corea is touring with John McLaughlin and the Five Peace Band in February.
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