SO, WHAT EXACTLY COMES TO YOUR MIND WHEN YOU HEAR “FUSION”? SHADES OF WEATHER REPORT? CHICK COREA? ELECTRIC GUITARS AND BIG MASSIVE KEYBOARDS?
WELL, YOU MAY BE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT THE FIRST TIME “FUSION” WAS USED IN A MUSICAL ENVIRONMENT WAS BACK IN 1963 WHEN GUITARIST WES MONTGOMERY “FUSED” HIS GUITAR WITH STRINGS. AS CASEY STENGEL WOULD SAY, “YOU CAN LOOK IT UP”.
HAVING CLEARED UP THAT ISSUE, IT NOW MAKES SENSE THAT KEYBOARDIST JEFF LORBER HAS MADE A CAREER OUT OF MUSICAL FUSION, EVEN PUTTING THE MONIKER NEXT TO HIS NAME. LORBER HAS MIXED AND MATCHED HIS TALENTS ON EVERY KIND OF MUSIC RANGING FROM JAMMING WITH CHICK COREA TO CREATING MUSIC FOR WEATHER STATIONS.
WHILE SOMETIMES UNFAIRLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE “SMOOTH JAZZ” (ANOTHER LABEL WELL GET INTO ANON), LORBER HAS SHOWN IN THESE PAST FEW YEARS A RESPECTFUL FLEXING OF THE MAINSTREAM MUSCLES, RELEASING SOME HARD HITTING ALBUMS WITH BASSIST JIMMY HASLIP, AND MOST RECENTLY TEAMING UP WITH GUITARIST MIKE STERN FOR AN AMAZINGLY IMPRESSIVE RELEASE, ELEVEN, TITLED AFTER THE SPINAL TAP JOKE.
WE HAD A CHANCE TO CATCH UP WITH MR. LORBER, WHO’S COMING TO LA WITH MIKE STERN AND DAVE WECKLE IN DECEMBER. WE FOUND HIM TO BE GRACIOUS AND EVEN WILLING TO TALK ABOUT HIS BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR BRINGING KENNY G INTO THE MUSICAL WORLD.
LET’S START WITH YOUR EARLY DAYS GROWING UP IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS WITH THE BRECKER BROTHERS
I knew the Brecker Brothers by their reputation in high school, and it was a big deal when Randy joined Blood, Sweat and Tears as that was my favorite band. Anyone from Cheltenham High School who went on to record got a lot of my attention!
I knew a guy in high school named Mark Cohen lived across the street from me. He was friends with the Randy and Michael, and when I was in junior high I was playing bass in the school orchestra and Mark was playing alto sax. I’d go over to his house to practice and he’d have all of these cool Blue Note records laying all over on the floor. This gave me a taste of the music of their world.
YOU LINKED UP WITH JOHN SCOFIELD IN COLLEGE AS WELL
Here’s another guy where he was a student among all of us, but obviously superior. He was very, very good, better than most anybody else. He lived in a little place on Hemingway Street with Chip Jackson, who later played bass with Chuck Mangione. We were all trying to learn about music.
At the time, John was really into Pat Martino, so thanks to him I got introduced to him. We played together. There was an R&B band called Reggie Taylor and the Soul-Country Blues Band (laughs). We played with them. We had to read charts, so being music students and we were in a pretty organized R&B band with charts and this guy Herschel Dwellingham (who played on Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album) was the arranger. We played awhile in that band.
By the way, John can sing! He’s got an Albert King kind of blues sound, and he’s good! I fell in love with his albums on Gramophone.
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“I just called the band “The Jeff Lorber Fusion” to let people know that it wasn’t country rock that night”
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I LOVE THE NAME OF THAT BAND! BUT BACK IN THOSE DAYS THERE WAS NO TERM LIKE “SMOOTH” OR “CLASSIC” JAZZ. WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO CALL YOUR BAND “FUSION”?
What happened was that I started a band in the Portland area, and at the time one of the most popular kinds of music that was being played in the clubs in town was blues/country rock. There wasn’t much jazz, except for pianist Tom Grant, who is still the number one guy there. He’s a great straight-ahead player.
I just called the band “The Jeff Lorber Fusion” to let people know that it wasn’t country rock that night. It was more ‘truth in advertising’ in terms of “If you’re wanting to hear “Season of the Witch”, don’t come down.” (laughs) I wasn’t trying to brand the group or create a trademark.
The kind of jazz that we were playing was that we were responding to the first generation of jazz fusion with Miles Davis, Return to Forever and Weather Report. Cannonball Adderley hired a long haired white guy to play fuzz toned guitar (Mike Deasy) with his band. Being the next generation, we integrated those elements a bit more smoothly to create a sound that was a bit more melodic.
I look at my group, Spyro Gyra , Pat Metheny’s group along with The Yellowjackets and we were all popular in the 80s as a new kind of melodic jazz that included bebop in the vocabulary along with interesting sounds and studio techniques. We were the second generation of that style.
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“Smooth Jazz” is a radio format, not a musical format. It started as some radio people saying “we’re going to play some jazzy music, but it’s not that stuff you hate.”
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PEOPLE THAT ASSOCIATE YOU WITH SMOOTH JAZZ WOULD BE SURPRISED TO KNOW THAT YOUR EARLY ALBUMS INCLUDED APPEARANCES BY CHICK COREA, FREDDIE HUBBARD AND JOE FARRELL.
Those were the people who were my idols. That’s who I wanted to be like. Of course I was also listening to James Brown, Tower of Power and Earth, Wind and Fire which had an influence on me.
There was no such thing as “smooth jazz” when we started. “Smooth Jazz” is a radio format, not a musical format. It started as some radio people saying “we’re going to play some jazzy music, but it’s not that stuff you hate.” No Albert Ayler or really outside stuff. It won’t be “iron Man” by Eric Dolphy, but Grover Washington.”
YOU GET THIS ARGUMENT WITHIN THE JAZZ COMMUNITY AS TO WHAT IS “REAL” JAZZ
There’s always good music and bad music. I think musicians just want to try their best to make good music; they’re not worried about giving it a name.
The “Smooth Jazz” name was started by guys who started the radio format in the 1980s. The great thing about that format was that it gave instrumental music a platform to be heard by a lot of people, and it worked beautifully for a lot of years. Unfortunately, they remained at the helm but never reinvented it or tried to keep it fresh.
I don’t think it was particularly about money from advertising per se. I think it was more that it didn’t fit into their portfolio of a demographic format that they would present to advertisers. The corporations couldn’t see how it could look sexy for advertisers.
DID YOU EVER PICK THE BRAINS OF COREA OR FARRELL?
I had a very good recording session with them. I was such a big fan of Chicks; I initially wrote him some letters and he was nice enough to respond. We had a little bit of a relationship, and that’s how I met his manager Ron Moss (who later became my manager for awhile).
When we were making our second album, we had an $8000 budget which at the time seemed like “what am I going to do with all of this money?” So there were some songs we were working on that I didn’t think our current sax player was the right guy for, so I thought I’d call Moss see if I could get Joe Farrell to play and he said, “Why don’t you get Chick Corea to play on your parts?” I said “Yeah!”
When I came to LA to record with Joe on “Katherine” (which became my first national hit), he came into the studio to play his alto sax on it, and stuck his horn back in the case.
I said, “Wait a minute! I want a couple of more takes” while he had that Old School thing of kind of coming in, nail it, and that’s it.” Luckily he allowed me to record him a couple more times.
Chick came into the studio, and he was to play on “The Samba” which was a Latin number in some time changes in F# minor. It was funny because I was to do a mini-moog solo, and Chick listening to the song and he said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to play” so I showed him what I was playing on it, and he said, “Oh, you’re just playing the blues.” I thought I was playing something more than that, but that’s what it was to him. (laughs)
He played on it, and his solo was unbelievable, and it’s anything but the blues.
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“One time Stanley Clarke and I were on the road together, and he told me, ‘All you would have had to do was not hire (Kenny G), and everything would have been totally different.'”
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LET’S GET TO THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION-ARE YOU WILLING TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRINGING KENNY G INTO THE MUSICAL WORLD?
One time Stanley Clarke and I were on the road together, and he told me, “All you would have had to do was not hire him, and everything would have been totally different.” (laughs)
At the time I was having a hard time finding a sax player for my band; I even tried out some guitar players. A friend in Seattle recommended Kenny, who was coming down to Portland that weekend.
At that young age, Kenny was one of those guys that when a band came through town, he would put bands together to play at things like The Ice Capades. One time Barry White came into town, so he likes to put on his resume’ that he played with Barry White (laughs) but he was just part of the orchestra.
He was coming in town to play in the orchestra for Liberace. What I really liked about Kenny was that that he was very enthusiastic; he could tell what I was trying to do as far as building a career and touring and he was really into that.
Portland has a reputation of being a laid back/stoner kind of town, and he was the first guy I met who had a go-getter attitude, so I was happy to be working with him. We had a lot of fun as friends and music collaborators during that time together.
Who knows how different things would have been?
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“My group, Spyro Gyra , Pat Metheny’s group along with The Yellowjackets… were all popular in the 80s as a new kind of melodic jazz that included bebop in the vocabulary along with interesting sounds and studio techniques. We were the second generation of that style”
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PEOPLE NOW DON’T WANT TO ADMIT IT, BUT THOSE ALBUMS WITH HIM REALLY SWUNG!
Both of our heroes were the great jazz mainstream guys, and that’s what we were trying to live up to.
PEOPLE COMPLAIN TODAY THAT JAZZ ISN’T “PURE”, BUT IT’S HISTORY SHOWS THAT IT HAS ALWAYS ABSORBED SURROUNDING SOUNDS TO ADD TO ITS VOCABULARY
There’s a book called The Lexicon Of Musical Invective, by Nicolas Slonimsky. It’s simply a collection of bad reviews of musicians from Beethoven’s 3rd to Stravinsky. Anytime someone tries to do something new, the Old Guard doesn’t like it.
The natural default position of jazz musicians is to want to explore and grow, to make music that is new, exciting and fun. So, you’re going to run up against people who don’t like different things, they want classic swing rhythms rather than the funky rhythms, but that’s not as exciting.
AND AS THE BIBLE SAYS, YOU’RE KNOWN BY YOUR FRIENDS. YOUR ALBUMS INCLUDE DRUMMERS LIKE DAVE WECKL, VINNIE COLAUTII, AS WELL AS BASSIST NATHAN EAST, WHO ACTUALLY DID PLAY IN BARRY WHITE’S BAND
(laughs) Exactly. Nathan and I are pretty good buddies. He was on my first album that didn’t have my home grown “Fusion” band. He was still going to school in San Diego, and I heard him on a Ronnie Laws record and we put together a little group called Spur of the Moment. I’m a big fan of his. 2125
IS THERE ANYONE ON THE CURRENT MUSIC SCENE THAT GETS YOUR ATTENTION?
I think that it’s really cool that we have the ability with our computers and phones to listen to the entire history of modern music. I still listen to a lot of my favorite bebop records and classic rock stuff. I love R&B from the 80s, groups like Chic and Change.
As far as now, I think Pharrell does come cool stuff. I try to listen to new music. They have a thing on Spotify called “New Music Friday” and I try to listen to the whole thing, to see if there’s anything there, but it’s hard. Occasionally I hear something I can get excited about, and try to understand it and learn something from it to see if I can incorporate some of it into my own music.
REGARDING YOUR RECENT ALBUM WITH MIKE STERN. WAS THERE ANY CONCERN YOU HAD WITH SUCH A SEEMINGLY DISPARATE MUSICAL STYLE?
I’m real tight with (bassist) Jimmy Haslip; we’ve been working together for many years, and he was a big part of this project. He’s the co-producer of this album and he put us together.
For a couple of years Jimmy has been suggesting that I should do this, as he recorded with Stern when he was still with the Yellowjackets and he felt that collaboration was very successful. Sometimes these special projects get more attention than just “another Jeff Lorber album.”
When Mike was with Miles I saw him when we toured with Jeff Lorber Fusion at festivals when Miles’ band was also on the bill. Whenever I was in New York, I’d go to the 55 Bar where he would often play. Another connection was drummer Lionel Cordew who’s played with both Mike and myself a bit, and he encouraged me to do something. Mike’s sax player Bob Franceschini has also played with me, so we’re all part of the same musical community, kind of like the Kevin Bacon couple degrees of separation.
Mike and I played a gig about a year ago with Brian Bromberg, and we hung out; I liked him personally from the start. He was a fun and funny guy, and I’m glad that he was up for it.
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“The natural default position of jazz musicians is to want to explore and grow, to make music that is new, exciting and fun”
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HOW DID YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT TO PLAY?
I wrote a bunch of stuff and he brought some songs, some of which he’d recorded before and was excited about doing new versions of. We got together at my studio and recorded all of the “live” tracks which were mostly his songs, and then he stayed and played on the tracks that I had prepared and had written with Jimmy.
WHAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT PLAYING WITH HIM?
OMIT(What I shouldn’t have done was also do the engineering while I was playing, so I was overloaded with just trying to get it all on tape.)
I heard him last time he was in town at Catalina’s, and I just love the fact that he’s got such a great **bebop vocabulary, he’s a great jazz player as well as a great blues player; he’s even a great rock **player. He’s got it all going, and he gets up there and he sings “Red House”; he’s very fluid. He’s a top notch virtuoso who can play whatever he hears, and he’s got tremendous chops.
That’s what’s been so fun about the two of us playing. I knew it would be a challenge for me to get into his world and do my thing in his. He tried to do the same for me, and he did it very well. I love how he played on the melody and the different rhythms and chords that we came up with.
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“I knew it would be a challenge for me to get into his world and do my thing in his”
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IN CONCERTS ARE YOU GETTING MORE STERN OR LORBER FANS?
We’re just starting out. I’m anticipating that it might be more Stern fans only because he’s such a guitar hero that there are more people out there who love to hear guitar virtuosos support their guitarists more than there are keyboard fans.
WHO’S THE DRUMMER?
For the largest number of gigs that we’re doing will be with Dennis Chambers in Europe and Dave Weckl will join us on the West Coast.
BETWEEN CHAMBERS, CALIAUTA AND WECKL, HOW DO THESE DIFFERENT DRUMMERS AFFECT YOUR PLAYING?
All of those guys are just so great; Dave’s playing on this album is superb. No one has better time than him.
With all of them, it’s always inspiring and fun; these are the best drummers on the planet, so I’m just along for the ride with a big smile on my face.
ON A PERSONAL LEVEL, WHAT GIVES YOU INSPIRATION?
I do a lot of writing and producing for other artists, but just practicing and trying to stay at the top of your game as a piano player is a great challenge.
I love to write, so I’m always trying to write new stuff. I couldn’t be happier with a career doing what I love doing.
YOU’VE WON TWO GRAMMY’S, HAVE MUSIC ON THE WEATHER CHANNEL, AND YOU’VE PLAYED WITH ARTISTS LIKE CHICK COREA. DID YOU EVER SAY TO YOURSELF “I’VE ARRIVED”?
(laughs) No, it just all gives you a bit more confidence when the phone’s not ringing that day that it ring tomorrow.
The best thing for me is if I can just keep paying my bills by doing what I really enjoy doing.
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“From Beethoven’s 3rd to Stravinsky-anytime someone tries to do something new, the Old Guard doesn’t like it.
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ANY LIFE PHILOSOPHY THAT MOTIVATES YOU?
I was going to school as a pre-med student for awhile, so I got to study physics and chemistry. I’m a big fan of science, and try to keep up with it; I get a lot of inspiration from science and get excited about what’s going on in the solar system, the galaxy and universe and what we know about it, as well as sub atomic particles, which I’m really interested in.
It puts everything in the right perspective, so I don’t get so wrapped up in what’s going on in the world today.
Of course, as you get older, being healthy gets more important and I do my best to stay in shape. I exercise and eat well.
WHAT DO YOU WANT THEM TO SAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
(laughs) I hope I’ll be recognized as someone who made some good music and was a nice guy to his friends and family.
If Stanley Clarke shows up, don’t have him mention about my bringing Kenny G into the music world (laughs)
LIKE ALL GREAT JAZZ ARTISTS, JEFF LORBER IS ALWAYS EXPLORING NEW MUSICAL TERRITORIES, TAKING HIM ON JOURNEYS THAT GO FROM EASY RIDES TO TORRID G FORCES (NO PUN INTENDED). HIS LA GIG IN DECEMBER WITH STERN AND WECKL IS GUARANTEED TO BE A NIGHT THAT PUTS THE ‘FUSE’ BACK INTO FUSION. LOOK FOR THE GIGS COMING YOUR WAY, AND EXPECT TO BE IMPRESSED BY THE CONCERT AS WELL AS THE ALBUM