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After considering the question, he says he never had to earn
money making music he did not want to make. Sometimes music forced him
to be with people he did not want to be with, but he won't hesitate to
tell you he's fortunate. Without sounding pompous, he would even say
he's blessed. Tony Williams of Pacifica, California, is not the
starving artist type.
It's a two-way blessing. He wants
people to feel that drums are the most beautiful instrument in the
world, as romantic as violins, heroic as trumpets. It's not a matter
of style, of who plays what how. The role is more important than the
actor. Drummers with "style" can produce noises that make
people hate the drums.
When he started to play seriously in
Boston at the age of 12, he tried to sound like Max Roach, Art Blakey
and his other heros. Exactly like them. When he joined Miles
Davis at the age of 17 (sic!), he was still trying to sound like them.
He was still doing it at the age of 50.
He would not be who
he is without those he learned from. It's a matter of universality. As
he learned technique, he also learned that the drums are more
important than he is. He compares the learning process to a dusty
living room. You're comfortable there, it's home, but one day you see
something in a corner that attracts your eye. You never saw it before.
To get to it, you have to move everything and clean the dust. Williams
cleaned and cleaned and found his beautiful vase. Improvising is about
being able to clean your dust, to find the vase and recognize that it
is beautiful in itself.
Williams was in Paris to record a
string quartet by and with Michel Petrucciani (with Dave Holland on
bass). If you take what he says at face value, and there is no reason
not to, Williams should be the perfect choice to play your jazz string
quartet. He knows what you want, no matter how unusual, and how to get
it maybe better than you do without imposition and still sound like
the one-and-only. A short man, he somehow manages to tower over you
anyway. Confidence can be measured. Music exists in time, which should
not be killed. Killing time is like spare time, a waste of time.
Williams relates to time as value.
The first time he played a
real drum kit was as a pre-teen with his father Tillman, a
saxophonist, in a Boston club. This was a child who played an
instrument in public the first time he ever touched one. He firmly
believes that whatever you want, you can make it happen. The
first time he ever heard Miles Davis live, he asked him: "Mr
Davis, can I sit in with your band?" Miles suggested the child
just sit and listen first.
Jackie McLean had asked Tony's
mother for permission to bring him to New York. He was 16. One year
later there was this dreamed-of call, I don't believe there was ever a
jazz musician before 1991 who did not fantasize it: "Miles is
calling. He wants to talk to you." Williams, who was back in
Boston, took the call, and....zap! He played on "Seven Steps to
Heaven," "In a Silent Way" and many others advancing
the vocabulary of the rhythm function by leaps and bounds along with
Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter.
In 1965, he had a great idea. "Miles,"
he said. "Why don't we open for the Beatles?" Miles said
something like "What??!!" Williams had a Beatles poster on
his wall.
In 1969, he formed Lifetime, one of the first fusion groups,
bringing John McLaughlin from England for the purpose. With Larry
Young on organ, the band was so far ahead of its time it got left
behind. Forming an organ trio might at first seem like a step backward
but Young was no ordinary organist, and Williams could not see forming
another Miles Davis band because it could not be any better. People
did not understand.
A bitter undertone surfaces when he talks
about Lifetime. He'd have "done it differently" today, kept
more authority, been less democratic: "It was my vision, and I
let other guys take control. And I learned something else - people are
not necessarily affected by excellence."
But in general
he does not believe that a sound psyche is necessary for excellence.
He has known people who were "as crazy as loons, who thought that
the locusts were coming," make excellent music: "Music can
transcend such things. It's magic." However that's not the case
with him. If he's not happy and "comfy," he just sits and
stares at walls. At times like this, he won't even listen to music.
Music he hasn't made irritates him.
It's not a matter of
style here either. There's room for all styles; he's a U2 fan.
Unfortunately - and here he becomes grim and caustic - there are "musical
fascists who deal in fear, who tell people that this or that music is
dangerous."
He could name names but he won't: "There's
a clique in New York who are trying to rewrite history because,
although they are famous, it's a marketing gambit and they don't
really play all that well. They just know how to look and talk a
certain way. They go around rewriting history by preaching and telling
people what to listen to and not listen to. They have no talent of
their own so the easiest way for them to attract attention is to say
outrageous things. 'Did you hear what he said?'"
An
optimist by nature, Williams does not believe in the good old days. He
will not hold on to the past, he can envision the day when he will no
longer play the drums. The drummer never stops playing back there -
there are aching feet, ankles, thighs, hips and elbows. He cannot
imagine himself doing that forever. Plus, he loves being in his home
south of San Francisco, even when he's staring at the walls.
He's
mounting a campaign to build a career as a film-music composer,
something that has fascinated him ever since he saw "Gunfight At
The OK Corral" at the age of 12 (he saw it seven times). How do
film composers make music that remains cohesive through love scenes,
chase scenes and murder scenes so that it still sounds like the same
piece of music? How is it possible to enhance images with music? He
started composing when he was with Miles Davis, who encouraged sidemen
to contribute to his repertoire. He has written the music for the six
Blue Note albums he has made under his own name.
When it
finally hit him that Miles was gone, something changed. It was going
to be tough for him to live in a world without Miles Davis: "When
I was like 13, he was already teaching kids like me about self-esteem,
to fight for our rights. That was his real genius, as much as the
music. He was really the first one. He was doing it before that woman
on the bus, before Martin Luther King. When some cops beat him up in
front of Birdland - when was it, 1959? - he took them to court and won
the case. Self-esteem. That's what he represented to kids like me. He
carried himself like he was king of the world.
"Miles
was the point man. You know, in the army, when the scouts go out,
there's always one guy 20 or 30 yards up ahead who makes sure the
coast is clear. Then he waves the other guys to move up, he tells them
it's safe. Miles was the point man who took all the heat. Before I
even knew what the term meant, he was my role model."
P.S.
All hats off to Tony Williams. RIP. |
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JazzNet: Special Series - Sons of Miles
