5,000 words on RTF’s first concert — damn, hahaha, sorry. Not sorry for the length, but sorry my eloquence is no match for the music I heard that night. I saw a set list online from 5/29, and the first set was at odds with my memory of it (the order, not the tunes played). I’d advise you to trust the set list! I took notes, but I left them at my office, and the cleaning person threw them out. This isn’t the egregious violation of janitorial protocol you might imagine — if you saw my handwriting, you’d probably shriek and give it a blast with Raid©, hahaha, but anyway,I stayed with my memory, however faulty, because in another way, it’s true. – 7
Paramount Theater
Austin Texas
5/29/08
“In an era of boybands, this is a Man Band.”
- Lenny White
One of the great things about music is you can keep getting better at it. Not everyone does, of course (Keith Jarrett said somewhere, “Have you been playing for ten years or for one year ten times?”), but in the players I revere there’s clear and sustained growth. That might or might not mean chops; it most definitely means musicianship. Popular wisdom has it that in her last few years, Lady Day’s voice was shot, she’d lost her range, she was blown out, drugged up, no good. I disagree. In her last recordings, I hear a master. I hear her telling me things I could never find out on my own. Because what chops really means is: do you have anything to say, and how well can you say it?
Last night, I heard 4 musicians who were at the absolute top of the musical world 30 years ago. I have to admit I was a little worried: this band, which made its rep with jaw-dropping technique, wouldn’t be able to deliver their blistering repertoire with a whiskeyed insouciance and a devil-may-care attitude, haha. I’ve played some of their songs — that shit is hard. They were gonna have to be sharp.
I’ve followed their careers to some degree — in my own progression as a musician, I’ve become less interested in other people’s music generally — but I know Chick, especially, has continued to challenge himself. Stanley has maintained a band while building a career for himself as a film composer, Lenny has devoted himself mostly to being a record producer (at least that’s what I’ve heard) and Al has apparently built a fine international following for his acoustic, Spanish-tinged music. I had no doubt they could all play, don’t get me wrong, but Return to Forever music? That was some athletic shit! I mean, how would the ’80’s-era Lakers look on the court these days?
Well nowhere near as good as RTF did last night, hahaha!
Getting There I bought my ticket over a month ago. The nosebleed, ’bout-as-far-away-as-you-can-get price was $40. Here’s the painful truth — the day I bought that ticket? — I had like 48 bucks in the bank. The subtitle of this… …thing… I’m writing is “A new creature struggles to emerge” and one of the things I’m emerging out from under (as we might formulate it here in Texas) is poverty.
So you’re a musician. You have 48 bucks, and one of the bands that changed your life, inspired you to hurl yourself into the path of the great train of art, compelled you to leap into the slavering, rabid hyena pit of music is coming to town, and if you wanna go see them it’s gonna set you back 40 of your 48 bucks. Do you do it?
Fuckin A.
Hearing, seeing RTF could only make my life better. What else am I gonna do with 40 bucks? I had some ramen already, hahaha.
…and do you know, my life began to get better immediately. The anticipation, the feeling of reconnecting with something fundamental and intrinsically meaningful and valuable… or maybe just the return of bassplayerknowingness — I mean, here’s how I sound out fast septuplets:
stanleymotherfuckinclarke!
The Show
The Paramount Theatre is an old school theater, part of a family of small theaters that were built all over the country maybe a hundred years ago — I’ve played in these rooms from Ann Arbor to San Antonio. I don’t know the seating capacity, I’d guess around a thousand. It definitely appeared to be sold out. The mood in the lobby preshow was ebullient. I saw quite a few musicians I know, young and old. That’s as it should be. The civilians were similarly mixed, all ages, colors, and a lot more women than I expected. If I’d had 96 bucks I would’ve asked beautiful Nefertiti myself, but I would’ve been nervous about it — the geek factor for a RTF jazzrock fusion reunion really is high, hahaha — but Nefertiti is way hipper than I’ll ever be. That woman took me to see Stevie Wonder in Houston last December. I owe her big time.
I climbed, climbed, climbed, all the way to my seat, balcony Z, row 1 thousand. Closer would’ve been nice, but who cares — I could see, and more to the point, I could hear. Ramen eaters can’t be choosers.
I sat there, trying to be still, even though I wanted to twitch like a 12 year-old, and peered at the stage. Typical of all the Chick shows I’ve seen, the band was setup for maximum interaction for the musicians. Al was stage right, at the front, and Lenny was to his left, a plexi drum condom dividing them (I myself loathe safe drums, but Al probably doesn’t have my shrieking tinnutis). Lenny’s drums were facing across the stage directly towards Chick, whose battery of keyboards was set up stage left. Stanley was right in the middle, surrounded by his boys, um, men. Finally, after an interminable wait (probably all of 10 minutes, hahaha), they gave the house lights a nudge and folks began taking their seats. Buzzing, excited, noisy, it felt all rock show — drunk and high.
And then — at concert volume — “In a Silent Way,” composed by tearfully departed Josef Zawinul, began playing. Miles. And Wayne. And John and Tony and Chickand Joe and Herbie and Dave. By the time Miles stated the beautiful melody, hollowtoned and without vibrato, the audience was in a completely different place, receptive, open, solemnized. And the house lights dimmed. And the stage lights went up. And Return to Forever walked out together to the front of the stage, and as one we stood up and gave them a standing ovation.
After about 5 minutes — it was a room full of love, man, a wonderful moment — Chick said, “Thank you for coming to our dress rehearsal,” and we sat down, and they took up their instruments and launched into
Set 1
Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy. If you don’t know the history of the band that well, or at all, there were at least 4 versions of Return to Forever, and “Hymn” is from the second, pre-Al diMeola lineup, which featured another fine guitarist, Bill Connors. They were a little raw, in a very cool way. Chick wasn’t gathering synths around him yet; there’s more ring modulating and effects use, and Stanley was playing Gibson (oh, ewww!) and Rickenbacker basses. Soon he was going to hook up with Alembic and find a distinct and very influential tone, as unique as his utterly singular upright sonority.
Anyway, “Hymn” is fast, rockin’, with a thorny unison line –
– and they fucked it up! I couldn’t believe it! What!?! Missed entrances, fluffed notes, Lenny ended it about 3 bars before anyone else, hahaha. It was still very cool, I mean mostly they hit it, but RTF schlumping? Say what?
Stanley, bless his wonderful heart, in the middle of it all, went around and high-fived everyone in the band amid tumultuous applause. The gesture reminded me of that slap that goes around in the NBA when you miss that important free throw, you know? –
— then Chick played a little intro, the audience subsided: what’s this? what’s next? And they kicked off
Sorceress – too fast!
Seven, you say, you’re nitpickin’. Tempos flow, they change, listen to the tempos Miles counts off on Four and More.
Okay, I get that, but “Sorceress” is a funk tune (Lenny wrote it) — scroll down this page, check it out, if you don’t know it. It wasn’t stupid fast, maybe 5, 7 BPM, but enough to make it feel… unsettled, skittish, not getting the deep velvety pocket that is at the heart of the song. Put another way: the main drum groove is driven by big splashy hihats — kapishhhhkapishhhkapishhh — then punctuated by a big floor tom hit THOMMMM — and you’ve gotta have all 3 of those ‘h’s and all four of those ‘M’s, hahaha.
– and I’m thinking, I know these guys rehearsed! I know they reviewed this stuff! I know they were hanging out in their rooms at the Driskill or wherever practicing this shit!
I’m not sure what happened next. On the record, Chick states the melody twice, once on Rhodes, then again, immediately, on synth. The way I remember it, before Chick could restate the head, Stanley jumped in with that crazy burbling groove that frames Al’s solo. I could be wrong, though, which just shows you I’m not some ramen head in the nosebleed talkin shit, hahaha. Something happened, though, the band was twisting in the oh shit wind — if you’re a player, no matter at what level, you know the breeze I’m talking about
– and I realized, oh! these guys are nervous!
I can’t tell you what a weird shock that was, haha — there I was, an old man, a professional musician all my adult life, thousands of gigs, but I’d regressed to a 17 year-old hearing RTF for the first time, thinking of these guys as gods! Of course they’re human! That’s what makes it so amazing! I mean, you know, Zeus and Apollo and Athena and Aphrodite playing perfect, hard-ass stuff, big deal, they’re gods, fergodssakes
Return to Forever is comprised of badass humans! What a revelation!
And, I’d like to add, I’m a moron. But you’ve already noticed that, hahaha.
Well, anyway, whatever happened in “Sorceress,” there they were, in that well- known breeze, looking at each other, trying to figure out how to untwist, and Chick threw his arms out, not frustrated exactly, but a gesture that seemed to say (I keep going to the NBA, I know), I’m the point guard, relax, run the plays, Stanley, post the fuck up, Lenny, set the screen, Al, watch for me to kick it out to you –
– and just like that, Return to Forever returned.
Primer inter ares
I think all the guys in RTF would agree with me when I describe Chick as first among equals — each of these men has enjoyed a great career as a leader, and Return to Forever certainly presented itself as a democratic unit, with everyone free to contribute compositions, offer suggestions, or simply step up to the mic at shows (as they all did Thursday) and represent for the band.
I’ve been listening to the quartet’s 3 records a good bit lately, and it feels like Al probably gets the most minutes soloing. Since Chick is inarguably (go ahead, argue, I dare ya) one of the great accompanists of all time, and Stanley and Lenny were a rhythm section of rare flexibility, it makes sense:for all their intricate ensemble passages and anthemic (okay, I’ll admit it, occasionally bombastic) rock pronouncements, at the core RTF was a jazz band, and Stanley, Lenny and Chick could create an amazing, propulsive, energized context for a soloist. I read somewhere recently someone saying that Al hasn’t kept up the fiery standard of his playing in those days — I haven’t kept up, so I don’t know if that’s true or not — but I will say, oh, duh! To work the poor NBA simile further into the dirt, it’s a lot different when you get traded and lose Magic Johnson, Kareem, and James Worthy as teammates, hahaha.
The use of the guitar voice — often with Chick’s synth as a sort of twin lead foil — was a major reason for the band’s serious popularity, and of course Stanley is simply one of the most well-known and beloved (and ridiculously badass) bassists on earth, so this democratic feeling was in no way a put on — but for all the heavyweight leader-types in RTF, it was (and is, again) definitely Chick’s band. And Thursday night, when the band was floundering, I think he gave them a moment to right themselves, slow their heart rates and get in the moment — and when they didn’t, he simply took over. You could see it, you could hear it: he was conducting, he was bodylanguaging, and he was playing so strong, man, it was like, jump on, or get run over.
His piano solo on “Sorceress” was the turning point in the concert — in it, Chick made clear reference to the famous recorded version with its rhythmic signatures and soaring post bop lines, but musically he also said: I have been playing my ass off doing everything from Mozart to Bluegrass to Bud Powell for the last 25 years, and I am one of the baddest motherfuckers in the world.
And his sidemen said, yeah, you truly are the man, show us the way.
Next up:
Vulcan Worlds was the first Return to Forever song I learned how to play. Stanley wrote it, it’s from “Where Have I Known You Before.” As their songs go, it’s relatively easy to play, which is to say hard as hell, hahaha. This high school band I was in my senior year learned it, and I mean we labored mightily over it, undoubtedly with poor results. All these years later it’s the form of the piece that stands out to me. There’s this little 16th-ey line that Stanley uses to break up Al and Chick’s solos that I’d completely forgotten, but my hands were playing it, which tells you how hard I must’ve worked on it.
Return to Forever is so orchestral! Four guys, and all that sound! This song has it all: complex yet organic form, a soaring (almost cinematic) melody, gritty grooves, stellar solos, and a great half-time recap of the theme complete with countermelody and Lenny White elevating the whole thing to a beautiful climax. At the Paramount “dress rehearsal” this was the first song of the night where the full power of this amazing band became evident, and I gotta say it was on Lenny’s shoulders and man oh man did he come through! In a band like this, the drummer ain’t the timekeeper, fuck that, these cats know the tempo, where they’re at in the barline… Lenny’s job is far more complex, managing the energy and dynamics and flow of the compositions, glueing the sections together, lighting fires under the soloists, and killing all of us with crushing grooves. Big job. Needs a great drummer. Someone, like, say, Lenny White, hahaha.
Legend has it back in the day the drum chair belonged to Steve Gadd, who backed out because he didn’t want to do all that touring (and miss out on playing on 3,467 of his lifetime 18,945 recording sessions, hahaha, who can blame him?), and so the gig went to Lenny. And while Steve would’ve been oh, so incredible, of course, Lenny, in my (extremely) humble opinion had a controlled looseness, funkiness, and swing that this band really needed — it was everyone’s great good fortune he landed in the chair, to say the least.
Looking back, I think Al and Lenny were the most nervous. Al had charts out on most of the songs (oh, I’d hate to be reading that shit!), and I don’t think Lenny had been playing at anything like that level for a long time. But it’s still there, ooooeeeee, I mean to tell you, all those chops, all that cool groove, all that power and grace.
Third song in, and it’s like that part in Forest Gump, you know the part I’m talking about, Forest is running with those ridiculous leg braces — “Run, Forest, run!” — and they begin to break and fall off his legs and suddenly he’s just gone — the braces were crumbing and RTF was hitting its full, awe-inspiring stride.
good thing, too, because
Captain Señor Mouse was up, another song I’ve attempted to play over the years — the melody is very tricky, and the groove sounds simple and accessible, but — well, the whole composition is squiggly and elusive, just like its namesake. I first heard it (as simply “Señor Mouse”) on Chick and Gary Burton’s duet album, Crystal Silence. If you don’t know this record, if you haven’t heard it, get it.
…
got it?
No, I’m serious, go get it now, I’ll wait.
See? It’s an incredible album.
Chick definitely doesn’t need me to defend him, hahaha, but because of the diversity of his career and his religious affiliation I think he may be a little marginalized, but the fact is he is a deep, deep musician, clearly one of the greats, and I’d offer his decades-long affiliation with Gary Burton is one of my many proofs. Gary is in every way Chick’s equal, and their almost spooky telepathy has made for some Extremely Significant Music.
Where was I… Oh yeah! Captain Señor Mouse!
Everybody had their hands full on this one — Al’s job, harmonizing the melody at the 6th, meant his phrasing had to be perfect. Stanley and Lenny had to keep the energy up through the rather severe mood changes the composition offers — there’s an ostinato figure for the solos:
totodododeeDAHdeeDAH, totodododeeDAHdeeDAH
that sounds simple enough to play, and really, it is, but as is so often the case in music, in simplicity lies great peril. Al, Chick, and Stanley turn in stellar solos. Lenny sounds like 3 really good percussionists. And a really kick ass drummer.
The boys are back in town. Chick played a long, lovely intro, synth over a string sound, that morphed into
Song to the Pharaoh Kings (which I think of as Children’s Song #6 — I’m revealing my true identity here as a pretty serious Chick Corea fan, ain’t I) is one of my favorite pieces in the whole extended RTF book. Over a minimal bassline that goes I-V-bVI-V, this undulating melody unfolds, twists, and turns, and stops dead at one point with a Thelonius sort of cluster. Fantastic writing, great playing. Part of the great joy of this concert for me was seeing what they’d actually play, and in a way each song was a revelation of who these guys were and where they’ve been since. Of course, RTF is a very “notey” band, but there was always a great clarity to their work together, and the notey-ness was a true expression of how they played. I expected a bunch of clangclang alphamales, after 30 years of being bandleaders, to maybe just be way too busy, trying to match their youthful energy by playing “clouds of gnat notes,” as Zappa put it, but instead, I heard real wisdom, real restraint. There were places where Stanley (a bassist myself, I know his parts on the records inside and out) left out whole figures and let a whole note do the talking where 32 had served before, hahaha. Especially notable was a great solo from Lenny, who was just blossoming before our eyes…
…and, per theater rules, the band hadda take a
break
I hate breaks. As you might learn elsewhere in these writings, I lived in Trinidad for 3 years as a child. Basically half the population there is of African descent, the other half from India. I didn’t start playing there, but i believe my musician’s soul was formed in the crucible of those intensely musical cultures. In both traditions (I’m speaking very broadly, I know), music is part of the fabric of life, and musicians play all day and all night. Why break the energy? You’re warmed up, why cool off? You’re playing — why do you need a break from playing?
Well, an the Paramount Theater they get a lot of dough from beer and wine sales, and there’s a fine imposed if you DON’T take a break, so boys, let’s take a break! I saw the Electric Band there in its original trio configuration (Chick, John Patitucchi, and Dave Weckl), and Chick got on the mic and said, “We’re having a great time, we’re just gonna play straight through.” About 5 minutes later someone from the crew said something in his ear, and, visibly pissed, at the end of the song Chick went BACK to the mic and said, “Okay, we’re gonna take a break.”
So the house lights went back up, the spell was broken, and everybody got up and started wandering around. I just stayed in my chair; I didn’t go there to drink 3rd string white wine, hahaha. The guy that was sitting next to me (who’d been asking me the name of the songs and which album they were on, clearly I knew the tunes, try as I might, I couldn’t help but make little gestures, helping the guys remember the tunes) told me he’d seen Lenny White at the Armadillo on a solo tour years and years ago, on one of those Austin sheets of ice nights when you basically have to be insane to go out (with a perverse pride I’ll tell you I believe Austinites to be the crappiest drivers in North America). I told him I was proud of him for braving the elements (and Austinites) and making the show, I wish I’d gone. He told me he was amazed, there were a lot of folks at the show. I was reminded of a Tony Williams show I’d seen at the Armadillo, in perfect spring weather benevolence, when maybe 10 people showed up. It was one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen, top 5 easy.
After another interminable wait (all of 15, 20 minutes), down went the lights, out came the band, Al and Stanley took up their acoustic instruments and Al launched into a beautiful extended acoustic guitar solo, all Spanish and cool, blistering runs, great chords, maybe 8 minutes of transfixing whup-ass guitar playing. A couple of dramatic stops, pulling the audience in, in, in, then they launched into
No Mystery!
…and here’s where I turn sharply, veer offroad, and bounce crazily towards the ghost town of Tangent.
Again.
I just lovingly described Al’s long solo intro to “No Mystery,” and I could just as lovingly describe Stanley’s long solo inserted in the middle of the next song,
Romantic Warrior!
Amazing songs, great, fantastic playing, and I would’ve been thrilled if they’d played just one of these incredible acoustic showcases, but it was a real gift to get both of these songs. I wasn’t alone in this sentiment — I’d say well more than half the audience seemed very well acquainted with the RTF songbook, and we all made some joyful noise when we realized we were gonna get BOTH!
Here’s the offroad part, though: these solos from Al and Stanley had very little to do with the songs — they were “I’m a star and this is my fuckin shit” solos, and gentlemen, with more reverence and respect than you can imagine I say, FUCK THAT. Chick’s intro to Romantic Warrior was right in the tonality and character and thematic content of the piece, and guess what, it makes for a more profound musical experience. Please — all your great chops and the incredible depth of your playing should be in service to the music.
…
Okay, as I bounce back onto the main road, I should note that I am the ONLY person on earth that feels that way, and your crowd-pleasing stupid guitar and bass tricks left me gasping, too. I just think they oughtta be in the same key as the song, or something, hahaha.
BACK on Return to Forever Highway — No Mystery and Romantic Warrior? Back to back? Welcome to heaven, here’s the house band! Oh, I love those songs, and RTF just played them so beautifully. I had always wanted to see the band play “No Mystery” — when I was a young player still in high school, it frankly seemed impossible humans could actually play like that. Within a few years I’d seen the Julliard String Quartet doing Bartók, Frank Zappa playing, well, Zappa, and Stanley with his band play his one-might-guess-unplayable-live composition The Magician (I’d hoped against hope RTF’d play it — maybe later in the tour) and just absolutely nail it, and learned all SORTS of seemingly impossible things are possible — you just have to practice reeeeeeaaal hard. And be reeeeeeaaal good.
There’s a place in “No Mystery” – do you know it? — right at the end, where they’ve been trading like little 2 bar solos between melody sequences, and Stanley starts this ascending riff, and Al picks it up seamlessly, like a relay runner in the Olympics, and takes it higher up the register — it’s so cool, so musical, and so well played. It’s tricky, too: for it to work, you can’t just be thinking, ok, I’ll start my run on the ‘and’ of 3, or whatever, you have to feel the other player’s notes like you’re playing them…
Well, I was alert for that particular passage, since it completely blew my teenage mind back when, and oh, boy, they played it better than they do on the record! Which is saying a lot!
What a great song. And when they (after a stirring and deeply emotional intro from Chick at the piano) went in to Romantic Warrior, you might guess I was one satisfied customer, pleased I’d gotten my $40.00 worth of aesthetic enlightenment.
Well, sort of.
Return to Forever returned the favor simply by reuniting and coming to my town, and I owed them more dough at the first note they played, but satisfied? I wanted them to play all their songs, then play them again. After completely baddass solos from everyone else (Stanley’s step outside of context notwithstanding, it was completely bad, hahaha, and Lenny’s solo was just tremendous, musical, and, I gotta say, very much in the composition), Chick’s solo very forms the climax of the song, and he took it to great depths far beyond the recorded version. About where the recorded solo ends, lengthwise, on the record, they kicked it into this walking groove that was as hard-swinging and intense as any I’ve ever heard. I swear Lenny was deliberately channeling Tony Williams at one point — I don’t mean that in any way as saying Lenny doesn’t have his own swing thing, ‘cuz he does, oh, lord, he surely does — but for about 32 bars of Chick’s solo it was like they were remembering this giant together. Whether that was the intent or not, lemme tell you, their eyes was drawed up like beads, like my dad used to say — and stanley was holding it together with this magnificent walking (running) bassline.
Ahhhh.
After all that, I just wanted more, more, more. The Man Band responded and played
The Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant, Pt 1 and 2, the epic suite that closes out the album “Romantic Warrior” is a pure romp, a Straussian tone poem, and a great example of a composer (Chick wrote “Duel” writing to the very specific strengths of his players, just as Ellington and Mingus did. Al played the most heartrate-elevating solo, just a model of formal construction and paint-peeling string strangling, then, when it seemed like the energy couldn’t go any higher, Chick played this huge Rhodes-to-synth solo that lifted the entire room. We were all swamis, hahaha, 3 feet off our seats.
Okay! That was Part One! Part Two always seemed to me to be the actual “duel” of the title — this piece is in every way a tone poem — it goes into this hard funkrock groove where Stanley is just abusing these low notes on his alembic, hahaha — his hands are so strong, I mean he bends the crap out of these, like, I dunno, low F#s on his ‘E’ string (I’ll check), then he and Al just start trading 8s, just ratcheting up the energy to really absurd, no-one-else-in-the-world-can-achieve (not Mahavishnu, not Weather Report, not the Sex Pistols) — (pant, pant) surely, at last, the intervening years would tell, and these gentlemen, now of longer tooth, would surely quail before the strenuous standard their far more youthful selves had imposed on posterity!
Au contraire, mon frère, hahaha, they just absolutely thrashed the section, which is answered by Chick, mainly, with (what I think is) the ‘Jester’ part. Then Al and Stanley come roaring back (with Lenny and Chick of course buttressing them as the go nuclear), then the jester again –
– then there’s this wonderful bit of counterpoint, 3-part, very baroque, very good part-writing, too, then it works itself up to a huge Romantic (in the 19th century symphonic sense of the word) conclusion, a huge orchestral whumph, as it were, hard to believe 4 men can make so much sound) –
And they were saying goodnight.
What! No! Play on, don’t stop! There’s all these other songs!
But they were gone, and we stood up and clapped and whistled and stomped for 5 minutes, till they came out again, obviously drained from their “dress rehearsal,” thanked us all, and launched into
Beyond the Seventh Galaxy, which is basically “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy (Slight return) — I think they chose it from their pool of encore choices basically so they could practice that tough unison line again, hahaha, and, warmed up, nervousness long past, they pulled it off with aplomb.
Four minutes of intense, jazzrock fusion ripitup, and they were done.
It’s no exaggeration to say I staggered out of the Paramount, pretty well drained myself. I have been wanting to see that band play for more than 30 years, but I gave up on the idea of it ever happening long ago. I tried to temper my expectations, my anticipation, my complete geekout omigodi’mgonnaseeRTF, but I didn’t even come close to feeling cool or casual about the show — Return to Forever changed my life, opened a whole universe to me, and despite my best efforts, I went to that show with sky-high expectations.
And the Man Band exceeded them.
I’d like to see — make that, I’d LOVE to see them in about 2 months — check out their schedule, those guys are working HARD this summer. I’m so grateful I got to see them at the beginning of their tour, though! You know what I did when I got home from their show?
Same thing I did the very first time I heard them, on Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, in 1975 –
I practiced my ass off, hahaha.
Thank you, gentlemen.
