Massaging The Details

Lara Lee conducted this interview with Teo Macero in September of 1997 at his home in NYC. 

 

LL: Do you think that the studios that you had been working in early on were in any way comparable to the studios today?

 

TM: I had a studio available to me for thirty years. And I had access to guys who could create a piece of equipment that I needed. In the '50's and '60's we didn't have anything like a digital delay. We had to manufacture a digital delay. Now when you want a digital delay, you turn your machine half a step or whatever it is. To me, that doesn't really make the difference. It was the crudeness of all the things that we did.

 

LL: You were talking about the crudeness being important.

 

TM: Yeah, it was a very inventive period in the '50's and '60's and the late '40's. When I was at Juilliard, for instance, I experimented quite a bit with electronic effects. I had access to the studio and I had access to recording, so I had time to maneuver. Then when I went to CBS in '56, '57 I had a whole engineering department and research department at my beck and call. If I wanted something particular for Miles, I would call them up and say, "I got this kind of crazy idea, can you invent or bring me back a piece of equipment that will do this?" So they did. And many times we used a lot of electronic effects on Miles which Miles really didn't have anything to do with except in the final analysis, whether he liked it or disliked it.

 

I think that the effects that we created in those days were much more real. Everything today, with electronics is synthetic. You turn a button here, you get it a half step higher, turn a button there you get it half a step lower, or you stretch it out. But they're not doing it correctly. I don't think they're doing it the right way- there are no highs and no lows. There's just a bunch of noises. We always had direction. When we were doing it, there was always a pivot point and then you moved on from that and then created these sounds. And that brought them back to simplicity again. Now everybody gets out there and they want to play that stuff, I do it myself, but after fifteen minutes your mind starts to wander and the players start to wander and there's no definition. I mean music has to have lines, has to have dynamics, has to have emotion, all the elements that make it in music. But today, with the synthetic stuff, you got a gimmick here and a gimmick there, that's still not going to make it.

 

In the old times, we would take two tapes, put them together on two different machines, record on the third one and try to sort of sync them up. But not sync them up exactly, it's just a fraction off, so that you wonder when you listen back to some of the Miles things, for instance, you wonder how this sound was created. Now, I did all that in the studio. I said to Miles, "Do you like it? If you like it we'll leave it in. If you don't like it I'll remix it again." And we used to do that with a lot of other artists. And then there was a way of mixing it too, because we mixed it differently. I don't know how they do it today." I mean for instance, I used a limiter with Miles for certain things, the early records in the late '60's, early '70's. I would take all that stuff, take it back to the studio and rework it. And then maybe use some of it and create a whole different texture. And then what I would do in terms of the mix, which is also an electronic device, I would take the two track masters, feed the 2-track masters into the board, take another two outputs and feed them into separate channels, left and right, and bring it up into the center. So you have in essence four parts, but really three. Then you can maneuver the bass, or you could maneuver the drums, and you could equalize the one that's in the middle, that's why his records, and a lot of the records that I mixed sound good.

 

I mean this remixing of today, it's like taking it back 50 years and to me, I don't think that's right. Because it was created with love and understanding of the artistry, because the artist wanted to progress, I wanted to progress. I mean I'm a composer myself, got a couple of Guggenheims, won all kinds of prizes. So I understood. I mean my first obligation was to create these massive sonorities. You can hear where we were back in 1951. What we does was write out a part, and then you'd play it back. Then you add another part and play those parts back. Then add another part and another part. That, to me is, electronic. The engineer, thought at the time that we were crazy. But working with Mingus was another matter. He liked those kinds of things, but he always came to the editing room. That's the downfall. I mean Miles never came to the editing room. In 25 or 30 years he was there maybe four or five times. So I had a carte blanche to maneuver, do things with his music that I couldn't do with other people's.

 

They would come and they would sit and, you know, give us time. We're creating. I mean, "You've done your work. Let me do mine." And then we'd get with a good engineer and if I needed something in a hurry, I'd get some loop machines which created a lot of illusions for Miles. They were made, one of them is in here. I got another one in the studio. But they were all sort of electronic pieces that were made that I finally bought from CBS because I thought they were so great. I mean you can't duplicate this today because they have movable heads on it. That was very crude. I mean today you turn a button and you might get the digital delay on one track and not on the other. But we had a lot of fun experimenting.

 

LL: Talk about cutting and splicing in In A Silent Way.

 

TM: That was one of the rare times that Miles came to the studio. I called Miles up and I said, "Look, I mixed two stacks of tapes, about 15 or 20 reels each, I can make the cuts, I can do the edit..." [As Miles] "I'll come down. I'll be there." So he came down and we cut each side down to 8 1/2 minutes and I think the other side was 9 1/2 and he said he was leaving in four-letter words, he's going to get out of there, and that would be his album. I said, "Look you really can't do that. I mean CBS will fire you, suspend you, fire me. But give me a couple of days, I'll think about it." And then a couple of days later I sent him up a tape and that was it. What I did, I copied a lot of it. You wouldn't know where the splices are. And Joe Zawinul should give us half of his money for fixing it all up. Because, at the end, I didn't know, I thought it was all Miles' music. But apparently Joe Zawinul claimed it was his. So we paid him all the royalties.

 

But there again, when you cut and you edit you can do it in such a way that no one will ever know. And those days we still were doing it with a razor blade. I mean it's not like digital recording now where you got the 24 tracks and all kinds of equipment. You can put it on the computer. You can do all the things you want to do. If you want to move that thing over, I mean not one beat but maybe a beat and a half or beat and a 1/6. So you create a wash. There's a lot of things that you can do today that we didn't have the techniques to do in the late '50's and early '60's. But I think In A Silent Way is really a remarkable record for what it is. I mean for a little bit of music it's turned into a classic. And we did that with a lot of other records of his where we would use bits and pieces of cassettes that he would send me and say, "Put this in that new album we're working on." I would really shudder. I'd say, "Look, where the hell is it going to go? I don't know". He says, "Oh, you know".

 

So he sends me the tape, I listen to it, and I say, "Oh yeah, maybe we can stick that in here." And there were a lot of times in my career with Miles that I would do that. Put the cassette right from the stage into the Master tape. And we did a lot of electronic effects when we did Sketches of Spain. I mean if you listen to it very carefully you'll hear that in one spot on the record the band comes up center and splits, goes around and comes up again. We had all kinds of boxes and one engineer would be monitoring one box and I'll be monitoring the other to make this effect. I mean not many people really have heard that record the way it should be. But they've put it back out again. CBS and the Miles Davis collection. And it's not the same. I mean there was a wealth of love to make this music boil. I mean Miles' music, that's the way it is anyway. But to highlight it, to give it a 21st Century feel to it, is what I always wanted to do in my own music, and I still do. And I wanted to do it with my artists because it made for a better record, for an unusual one. That's why we got a gold and platinum record. There are so many records Miles has that have gone gold and platinum.

 

LL: When you were splicing, did you realize you were doing something revolutionary, not just getting the work done?

 

TM: Well, what I would do is take it for what it's worth and I didn't think anything about it myself. I just tried to use my imagination. "How can I make this better? It's good, but electronically can we do something to give it more impact?". And we did. We had another machine invented when we were doing a record called Get Up With It by Miles. We were dedicating a number to Duke Ellington ("He Loved Him Madly"). And I put this track through this piece of equipment. I called Miles up and I says, "Look, something unusual happened here. I can't figure it out. I don't know what it is, but I hear the Duke Ellington band. Not your band, the Duke Ellington band, coming through the speakers." Holy Christ, mean it was traumatic and exciting at the same time. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

 

The instruments, whatever they were, it sounded like the rhythm section. I mean the soloists and the brass and saxophones came right straight through. The next day we tried to duplicate it, but couldn't do it. We didn't touch the machines. It's like somebody had pushed a button, and out came Duke. Because, it was a tribute to Duke Ellington. I mean that sounds kind of scary to me but that's what happened. I've used it since and it hasn't created the same kind of illusion. But I think Duke was there in that room that day.

 

LL: Talk about the influence when you started in the '40's, and nowadays, with electronic music.

 

TM: I started at Juilliard, studying and working in the engineering department for 50 cents an hour to try to pay my way through. But then I got interested in it because of Edgar Varese. He was like my second father. There are some pictures here of the two of us and some scores I had. I mean, I was there when he was doing the "Poème Electronique" in Paris. He would show me all the pieces, all of the elements. But he was creating sounds from other sources other than electronica sounds. He was making his own, which to me is very creative. Much more so than just putting it through a filter. He created all kinds of things for that "Poème Electronique" and I was fascinated by it. We used to see each other for lunch. We'd talk on Saturdays and Sundays on the phone and he'd come to all the concerts that I gave. He was like a second father, with a tremendous amount of knowledge. He was a sweet man but very creative. I mean they haven't realized how great he was. It took I think 25 years before the Philharmonic played one of his pieces. He had to be 75 yrs old. I think that's disgusting and discouraging for contemporary composers to try to write music and have to wait 25 years to hear it done right.

 

But with Varese at the helm, everybody else seemed to follow suit. But they had done it superficially. I think of people creating it from buzz saws - like two individuals from up at Columbia University, Otto Luenning and Ussachevsky. They were doing a lot of electronic effects and I was fascinated with what they were doing. And I used to listen to all of that stuff and talk to them about it because they were friends of mine. I mean they were much older than I was at the time. But they encouraged me to do a lot of different things. So, when I have the opportunity I just do it. I have a device called "the switcher", and it takes this program and moves it. We have one record out there with that. I put it on the drums, it sounds like the drummer has got 8 hands and 8 feet. It goes (imitates sound) and it all was done on one track. So I said, you know, the drums come out the center and Miles out the left and something out the right, to me it wasn't the way to do it.

 

So the way I did it, I got Miles in the center. I put this drum track on this fancy switcher so it created the stereo versions. And then I had the bass and the sax. It's an interesting concept. In fact, we used it just recently on a couple of albums and it works beautifully. I mean those were the kind of electronic things sort of hand-made. They're not very fancy but they do what you cannot do with the synthesizers and electronics at the moment. I don't know of another machine doing that. Sure, they have a digital delay, it goes (sound). This doesn't do that. It goes (sound). You can slow it down, you can speed it up, you can move it. It's terrific. I mean if you want electronic effects, that's what you have to rely on. In fact, a lot of guys, when I make records, I say "Do you like this sound?". They go nuts. They go ape. There was a new record just came out in England called Contemporary Music and it's filled with a lot of jazz people. I thought I'd have a copy of it, I don't. And it's got a lot of electronic effects all the way through it. And there's one piece of mine that is in there that's part of the ballet. And they used one movement. You have to listen to that one because it's interesting in terms of electronics. It was done on a 3-track.

 

LL: Contemporary digital equipment doesn't create funky music anymore?

 

TM: Contemporary music, electronically... no. Because what happens is it's too beat-oriented, it's locked in, there's no emotion. We never did that. We always played very loose, but we had a direction to go to. We had some simple things, I have a piece, I don't have it here, that Varese wrote and gave it to me back in the '60's. And it's all lines and graphs. And if you want to call that electronic music, yes, you can do that. But it creates a different image. So all these things that we were using, you really need a studio. You need 2-tracks or 4-tracks, 3-tracks, 8-tracks, so you can take these tapes and manipulate them. Now what I try to do in some of the things, go back and remix, if I'm allowed to, go back and remix a particular track. Like Miles' Jack Johnson. I want to go back and remix it and bring it up to the 21st century. They said, "NO, you can't do that." I said, "Well, the original record is out there. This is just another version of that, we'll add something to it." Because I was going to put the various tracks through speakers, put them on a loop or something , and then take the program and put in another 2 tracks and come up with a Master. You could equalize the bass you could take the bass, you could take the drums, you can do so many things. But the higher-ups (at the record company) have a very narrow span, they can't think long term they can only think of the bottom line and short term and they have no idea what the hell is going on. I mean they should just leave it up to the creative people to do all the experimental things, because this is how music is developed. It happened with Bebop. It happened with the good music, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, etc.. But if they were left alone to their own ideas they could have created a hell of a lot more. But you get locked in with record companies and they'd like to chop your head off.

 

You know, it's a funny thing, but after all these years, after 40 years, what is CBS and Sony putting out? They're reissuing every record I ever made! And in some cases trying to remix it. Those things would be impossible to do. And I've really been fighting them tooth and nail about it because I said, "This is not really right those records were gold. It would sound very contemporary, if I were to do it. If they were to do it, it would sound like an old record. And you can go get the Miles set, the new set with Gil Evans, and you'll hear it. If you had the original record you could hear the differences. The original had a life to it, had a quality to it. The new ones, when they mix it, they lose some of the elements. I mean I didn't lose any of the elements that I had because, I wanted to make sure this came out, that came out, try this on that, try this equalization, try this digital delay on it, try this echo, a delayed echo. So I wanted to do my own editing in the studio. I've got a lot of electronic equipment around. I'd make loops. And I say, "Look, I'm pleasing myself first. And if the record company wants to do something about it, then I'll change".

 

But I'm proud of the things that we made. I made about 98% of them at Columbia for 20 or 30 years. They didn't put out anything new. I mean what did they put out? They put out these two box sets and reissues of some of the early records of Miles. Big deal! I mean the whole thing is to have that input and have the artist make what he wants to make along with the producer to create the image. I mean they're using these things that were made 35 or 40 years ago, and reaping the benefits. At the time we were doing it, I wanted to do that with Duke Ellington. Wanted to do it with Monk, with Dave Brubeck and with Miles. And I was turned down. They said, "Oh we don't want another album". I said, "This has nothing to do with that. Even though the material might possibly be the same, if we do it correctly and let them play live, in concerts, whatever, I can take those tapes back and put them together". "Oh, we can't do that. We can't do that". I said, "Who do you think okayed it for 35 years?". I said Miles will listen to it, but he never rejected anything in all that time, from '56, '57 right straight through till he left CBS, I think it was in '83. I was contracted to be involved in a Miles Davis reissue without any real input or editing or mixing control. The record company wouldn't listen to me so I told them where to go.

 

LL: Talk about the process- he would jam, and you would edit?

 

TM: His stuff was mostly written down. I mean it was worked on in the studio. But I would record from the time he got there, which was usually on time, until he left. I'd record everything. And then when I'd go back to the editing room, I would edit everything. I listened to everything back. Miles would say, "You remember that thing in the second take?" I said "yeah." And I would maybe make a loop and create it. That's why those records were so good. Maybe people will say it didn't sound authentic. It is authentic because you're acting like a writer for a book, like an editor. I mean you can't pan the book if the material is great. I'm just there to make sure that everything is in order. Sometimes those first 2 or 3 takes that Miles makes, or the first one in some cases, is dynamite. And you just don't touch that. So I made these three pieces. And they're three suites. And they're just gorgeous. And they would have been three more big pieces, instead of throwing it out the window like they did with this set. And I tried to talk them into it and at that point, I just gave up. I said, "Maybe you know more than I do. But I'm not interested."

 

I did a thing called "Sweet Sue" for Leonard Bernstein. I wrote the introduction for it and Miles was at the session so he played it, and he said, "Well, I'll take this introduction". There was enough takes in the recording session to put it together as a suite. He plays the mute, and all of a sudden, a little passage goes by, and he plays an open horn. Then I pick it up somewhere along the line, maybe with the mute again, and then followed by an open horn. And it's really terrific. I mean when you listen to it you think, "Gee, that's a piece of music". Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Arrangers? I mean we have to arrange something. I did that for all my artists, the ones that wanted it. Some of them were more difficult than others. I mean if I wanted to make a cut with Monk's record, I cut it. If I wanted to make an edit with somebody else... Brubeck, you couldn't. Brubeck was so fussy about one note. I said, "Dave, that's not going to make the difference." I think they've remixed all of his things too. But I don't think they're as good as the original mixes.

 

LL: Talk about the idea of the studio as a musical instrument?

 

TM: Absolutely. I find that isolation is now on the way out. When they come into the studio they want to put the band together so the musicians would feel better. That's the way we recorded Miles, Monk, Brubeck. See, there's air around it. I mean with the new so-called "plug in here, plug in there, go directly to the board", it doesn't have that air around it. Even though you add the echo, you need that sort of sheen. When you listen to some of the records we made over the years you'll hear that sheen. I mean it's there. I consider the studio a musical instrument. I tour with them all the time. I mean there were things I keep asking them to do: "No, we can't do this. We can' do that.". I said "I don't want to hear 'we can't do that', let's go do it." They say "this is limiting and this is peaking." I said, "I don't want to hear that, I don't know anything about that." I'm stupid when it comes to that. But I said, "I hear it in my head and I think I can feel that it should be something else." And you strive for that.

 

I have my own work that I'm working on now. I haven't quite finished with it yet. But it's something like that. We're going to take them back into the studio. I was in the studio last week where I did a lot of, I wouldn't say "overdubs." I did some overdubs but I'm going to make a lot of edits, because sometimes when you listen to a record, I know the record is good the way it is, but I'd like it to be better than the way it is because I know how people are. Critics, they get something and if it's boring to them the first minute and a half, they start to criticize it. Although if you played it through, time and time again you'll hear the logic of it. So I'm just going to go direct, right to the main theme or whatever it is, and create a different kind of thing. So you've got to be able to take that stuff out. I mean if something doesn't please me I take it out and I do it myself. And with Mingus, I did the same thing. If it didn't please him, didn't please me, out it went. There were many times in Miles' records that something didn't please Miles. So we cut them out. That's why those records are so tight. They're all Miles. And you get your money's worth. I said we're not selling somebody else. There are a lot of times in a record, as you're editing it, cutting it in the studio that it just sort of falls dead. Especially when a bass plays by itself. Or the drummer plays by itself. And you say, "What is that?". I mean the rhythm, the bass, the drummer are our rhythm instruments so therefore they should be just pumping away. We don't need 94 bars for solos and the drummer to take 2 1/2 minutes to do his schtick, because he's doing it all along anyway. I mean you have to be creative. You let them play, that's what I do, I let them play. And if I like the take I say, "That's a good take", but when I get it back I can just take out the few things that I want out to tighten it all up that's what we did with Miles.

 

LL: Kraftwerk would also work the same way, they felt like scientists of the studio. Do you know some direct influence in contemporary music of your work? Things that you started.

 

TM: No, I mean I hear some of it from time to time and I hear these records, but it's not the same as when we were doing it, which is a shame, because I think that given one's ability, it would be nice if I had a studio to go to everyday and work at it and create and have some tapes to work from. I mean I do it for myself. I did a concert a couple of years ago where I made the tape myself, and it was quite extraordinary. I played over the tape, I did my part live and the tape was on tape. It worked out very well. But I like to try and work with contemporary composers because these guys have a lot of musical ideas and they can hear sounds and this is what you need. You need to be... like Varese, he could hear everything. A number of other composers can also do that and it's a shame that they don't have the opportunity to get into an environment where they can work at it, not electronics so to speak, but work in real music. I mean in terms of live performers and taking that and seeing what you can do with it.

 

Now, Miles, I come back to him all the time because I recorded him a lot differently than most people would think. I can't remember how far back, but I recorded him from three different sources. When the microphones first came out attached to the instruments Miles was one of the first to use that. So I take it from the source, from the microphone on the instrument, I'd take it from the real sound into the microphone. Then I would feed another channel into the amplifier and pick it up from the amplifier. So I had three different sources to work from. So you could take those three sources, keep the main source, and then manipulate the other two sources and come up with Bitches Brew. But you need that communication with the other person, engineer and research department. This is where it's coming from. I mean all these electronics are great but if you don't know what the hell to do with them and you're not a good composer you might as well send it back.

 

LL: Miles said that what makes bad music is bad musicians. At that time people were freaking out blaming synthesizers for bad music.

 

TM: The funny thing is the wa-wa pedal is now becoming more important in terms of the market place. I don't know whether I gave him the pedal, but I got him a pedal, I got him everything he needed for the wa-wa. But he couldn't' manipulate it. He was just learning it. So what I did, I told him "Don't worry about it. We'll fix it." So when I got the tapes out of the studio into the editing room I got a wa-wa pedal. And I wa-wa'ed those things to death so that you... (imitates the sound). I don't think anyone could duplicate those records today. I think he made two records like that.

 

But I think that's another electronic, the wa-wa pedal and all the sort of electronic effects that you have with the guitars is really marvelous. I have a piece in one of the sessions with the guitar player Reggie Lucas and he played and gave me two different versions. I put those things together, and they're dynamite. I wanted to put that in as part of the new Miles Davis, because it was done at the end of one of his sessions. But they don't want that. I guess they don't want to make any money. Because these thing I know Miles would have done. He was very careful, he would like to try new things. I played with the London Philharmonic on one of my own tapes and it's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Now this is something I wanted them to do for many years. Now, I had the studio a couple of months ago and I had this trumpet solo that I wrote and that he did for a TV show and I put that with the London Philharmonic. And they refused to put it out. I own all the tapes, and it's gorgeous. We made it all with the London Philharmonic.

 

LL: He considered nothing wrong, everything was allowed?

 

TM: I found it very fascinating. We had our battles. There were times when he wouldn't speak to me and times I wouldn't speak to him. It's like a husband and wife. There are times when you just like to be left alone. He used to call me at 2 or 3 in the morning and play a tape for half an hour, forty five minutes. And Miles would get on the phone and say, "How do you like that?" I said, "Well, generally the ideas are great. Let's go in and do them." And the next day we would do them some time in the afternoon or the evening.

 

LL: What about Stockhausen, influential?

 

TM: Stockhausen, to me, didn't include all these sort of electronic effects. I haven't heard much of his music except the early pieces that he did, which was sort of like music concrete. I don't know how you would analyze it but it was good, I mean there's no question about it. But so far as electronics, they used to create electronic effects without electronics. Now you say, "How did you do that?" Probably the same way that he did it, it's by putting certain tonalities together. I did a movie called AT THE END OF THE ROAD and the critics said that this was a great electronic score. This happened to be back in '65. There weren't any electronics at all, except we did have an organ or something like that. But it's the way you put these instruments together to create overtones that creates a sound. Can you imagine if you put all that stuff into different echoes, different delays? It's very fascinating. I mean I used to try everything. When CBS came out with the first 200 LP's, the engineer and I mixed all of them. Producers weren't allowed, I wasn't a producer then, I was a music editor, but we put out 200 of the first stereo LP's, I mean we used limiters, we used sort of like digital delays a little bit. Having one machine go at a 7 1/2 speed of another thing. We did the records and got fantastic reviews. So you see the people really don't care as long as they hear the music. And we, as musicians, we'd know what was important and how it should sound. So we were just adding another little color. With Stockhausen, there was a lot of great music but he hasn't done much in the last ten years that I know of. Has he? Sort of like given up.

 

LL: So your work was more a process, not predetermined?

 

TM: When you go into the studio you go in and make the product better and you try different things. We'd go in there and we'd listen to the material and say "how can we enhance this? How can we make this better?". Sometimes an engineer would have an idea, I'd have an idea, we'd try it. If it didn't work we'd throw it out and try something else. But, until I got the right kind of sound for some of those records it took quite a while. I mean lots of very painstaking time in trying to get them to really speak for themselves. I mean if you are to go back and listen to some of the early records made without the editing, you'd say, "Is this possible? Is this the way it was?" I mean even my own things, I shudder to think, because I think that we take these things and raise them to another level. And a lot of records today are being made and they're not doing anything with them. I mean they're letting bad songs on them and this and that. Who needs that?

 

I can't stand mistakes on records. The president of CBS used to say, "it's like putting a couple of words on a Broadway show album." Or the joke: you hear it once you don't want to hear it again. So, the best thing to do is put out pure music. So this is what we try to do. Even with the Broadway shows, which I used to work on. I did 19 or 20 of those and we could create a lot of different sonorities. Sometimes he would like it, sometimes he wanted it purer. But there again, it depends upon one's taste. I was always experimenting, because I thought that this was the way to go. I did overdubs back in the '50's and late '40's. I overdubbed myself. I have one of my records, it's called "Sounds of May" and it won a lot of prizes. It's unlike the music today where you've got 30 minutes of one kind of vamp. It just moves like a composition and that's something that's lacking today.

 

I mean if electronics is going to help them do anything, maybe it will help them a little bit in organizing their music because it gets pretty boring after ten minutes. I mean, when you hear the bass (imitates sound) and the drums and everything else and nowhere to go. Just a straight, you know, reading in the red, it doesn't make for good music. You have to have some dimension. You have to have some air around it. The rock and roll people all like it very tight, in your face. I tried to tell that to Robert Palmer and I said, "Robert, it would be nice to have a little air around it, I don't need the space, but air." And he finally would add a little echo. I said, "Okay, if that's as far as you're going to go, that's fine." And with him we were doing a lot of electronics, but everything is not a computer. He put it all in the computer first, then called me up and sent a tape over. I listened to it, and with comments, sent it back. Then a couple of weeks later he'd send another one and another one and another. And then I'd go over there to Italy and work with him in the studio. But I said, "It's too late now. The electronic things are so set, there's not much I can do." I mean if I wanted to take it all apart, that's one thing, but he didn't want that. So I said, "Okay you're not going to have an intro and you're not going to have a middle section." Because sometimes they would just start and then you'd need an intro, so where do you pick up the intro? From the inside of the piece or something like that, in order to give it some semblance of order, rather than just this straight computer piece that didn't have a beginning, middle or an end. It was just one piece. It didn't have those sections.

 

So we had to make an ending. But you're limited as to what you can do. Like, for instance, the Japanese, on this thing called 16-30, which is a big machine. You make your masters onto it and you can edit onto it and it's fine. But they're doing it backwards because I had said to them for 12 to 15 years, "You've got to add something to this equipment. You cannot make a splice like this and echo one side. You have to echo the second side. It just will not carry over." Now that should be a simple thing for the Japanese to figure out, how to make that echo go over. So, what you have to do, is take it out of the digital before that, put it into the analog, and put it back into the digital, if you want to do it correctly. That takes a lot of time and it should be a simple thing. Not that I'm an electronic wizard, I'm not.

 

LL: What about Herbie Hancock, he was a gadget fanatic?

 

TM: I didn't know too much about his electronics. I imagine he is, he's probably got every piece of equipment ever invented. I don't know if he uses it like he should. But once you have all that stuff, unless you had somebody there to prod you, you'd have a tendency not to use it. Or, you use it and you're not thinking about something else. Now, we did this movie with Chick Corea in his studio out in California. It was a movie called VIRUS, and there were a few things that we wanted him to record. He did it all with a synthesizer. And it's a great track. I was there, he was there, and he improvised. He took the basic melody and it was really quite beautiful. But the other three tracks that we didn't use for the movie are dynamite. I've been trying to get those out since 1972, or something like that. But Chick had a great sense of how to plug things in. But then you get the critics who say, "Oh, he's back to electronic music again. This guy is doing this and it's not like the acoustic instruments like piano." It's a different touch. Anybody could be the performer on electronic instruments because it's all the same. Even though you push keys, you might have a different way of pushing them. But with acoustic music there is a difference. But with electronic, to me there's no difference. I couldn't tell one from another. Who the player was... I've done so many of them, bass and other instruments. But anyway, I just like to play.

 

LL: You said Miles didn't use a synthesizer but in his biography he talks about using electronic instruments to go further?

 

TM: Well, of course. And if you notice in his performances, this came up last year at a clinic out in Minnesota: the critic got up and said, "I've discovered something, that Miles is doing the same thing in concert as he does in the record. I can hear the similarity". But the guy, the critic, I didn't want to embarrass him. I said, "Look, all those sounds that you hear on the record and that are dove-tailing are done in the editing room. And what Miles did, if you hear his concerts, he goes from one tune to the other". Maybe with a little vamp. And that's exactly what we were doing in the days when I was working on Miles' records. So therefore there's editing all over again. And these people today, I just don't know, they can't get the concept because we're taking these records as gospel truth, but at the same token, it's these guys over here who put it all together. It's like a great painter, great artist or whatever. You're able to see and say, "Look, I don't like it because...", maybe because Miles didn't have any endings, might have been some cases like that, I'm sure there were. So you take the end out not even a bar and a half and you hear (sound). And that's exciting. And this is what he did in concerts for the last ten years, maybe fifteen, I don't know.

 

LL: What about the purists?

 

TM: There are too many of them around. The purists don't have a place on this earth. I mean if you want to be a purist, you buy yourself a computer and just let it happen and do nothing else. I think the purists, they're all right for some things. For archival kind of things. But I think that when you're a purist, you want all the mistakes. I can't stand them, I mean I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like listening to a record with mistakes in it. I mean I had a couple of records the other day, I listened to them and it's nothing. I can't even go back to play it again. I mean the purists have a way. They don't want the echo. And then with Miles, getting back to that big question, there's no echo, there's no limiting, there's outtakes and everything else. I think it's unfair for the artists. The purists have got a place, but not where the artists should be. I mean, they can't inhibit the artist, can't stifle them. You got to let them go. You've got to let them be creative.

 

LL: With the electronic revolution, purists thought it was the death of music, instead of its rebirth.

 

TM: I think so. I mean there's a lot of things to be said about the revolution. But there again, you got to go back to basics too, you got to go back to music. And a lot of the young players don't have that giant stature, like a Duke Ellington, like a Miles, like a Basey. They have no concept.

 

LL: How much do you know about the youth culture's techno music. Miles said it came from funk?

 

TM: I'm not so sure what he meant by that. Funk came out of that? I don't think so. I'd probably disagree with Miles on that because funk has been around a long time. Look at Lionel Hampton. That band and Duke's band used to play that back 20 or 30 years ago. You'd call that funky. I have some records of Duke's that are fantastic. They got that funk. If you mean playing one chord for twenty minutes, that's funk, and then they have the 2 and 4. The only trouble with a lot of that music is it doesn't swing. And this is what I objected to with Miles' later records. Because they're sort of blocked in. He goes 2 and 4 done with a computer. And you cannot make music that way and put it on a clip track. And this is how they made a couple of those records and I think that that's wrong. I mean you can't really make funky records. I think funky records have to be done as a whole, live. I mean you need that fluid, that movement. Funky music has been around for a long time. I consider Dixieland pretty funky. I love Dixieland. Love banjos too, got a lot of banjo music. And you hear the difference. I mean you put the record on and compare it to records today, sure there's a difference, but it's uplifting, where the beat is not click track. But when you get the click track and the rock and roll things and those kinds of things, to me it's debilitating. You listen to ten records one after another and you'll see what I mean. You get worn out.

 

Now, you take the big bands, Woodie Herman, Duke and Basie, Fletcher Henderson, and you listen to that and boy, you want to get up and dance, you want to get up, you want to move. It makes you feel good, because it's human. I don't know. I sometimes think I'm talking to the wind when I talk to these executives at record companies. They don't understand what I'm talking about. Of course they don't know what it is to be in the studio to hear Basey and Ellington together for the first time. Do you know that record? Oh, that became a giant record. I don't know if it went gold. Basie wanted to put the bands together, intermixable. I said no, you can't do that Imagine, the producer telling Basey. I said, "Bill, I'm going to put Duke on the left and you on the right and whoever's song that we're playing will be in the center. Your rhythm section will play your songs and Duke's rhythm section will play their songs." So in the middle of one of the numbers there's a drum solo by Basey and I had all these boxes and things, because we had so many microphones. Then the drummer from Duke's band jumped up on his set of drums and we opened up all the pods (from the mixing board) very quickly and boy, the battle between the two drummers... It's just one of those spontaneous things that happened once in a lifetime. You know, the studio is a place to experiment. The studio is a place to perform. The studio is a place to create new kinds of images and solos and unusual events. I mean I've done a lot of dates where we start off with one thing and end up with 20 better. So I'm saying you've got to be there and you got to encourage the guys. You got to work at it every minute. I mean I do. I don't know about everybody else.

 

LL: You think that the combination of human-machine is to have the machine work with you?

 

TM: But you got to be human, I mean you can be difficult. I'm not easy, in the studio, because I can't afford to be. I mean, if I wanted to be pussy footsy... Like Brubeck wanted to do one time, he wanted to have his sons play in the band with all the great musicians. And I said,"This is not a training program. We're trying to make a hit single." Oh, but these guys, "my kids will play..." . I say, "Dave, they can't possibly play up to the level of these other guys. They're going to drag them down." He insisted, so I walked out and told him to go to hell.

 

LL: What are the interesting cross pollination's of technology and music?

 

TM: There's a lot of that going on. A lot of cross pollination going on. But there again, it gets back to music. You can have all of this stuff and if you're not equipped to handle it musically, it just sounds like a dull piece for five or ten minutes. But everybody now is on the kick of acoustics. They want it just to be an acoustical record, nothing edited. I'm saying, that's a terrible way to go. But they want to go that way, they do it. Whatever, I've always believed in taking things from classical. I'm a classical composer and jazz composer and arranger. I take things from the classics and I manipulate them into the jazz format, and vice versa. Because I don't do anything that I don't like to do. And I do a lot of things that maybe another composer wouldn't have anything to do with. Like with doing Big Band arrangements, I'll do that. But a small band, banjo music, music boxes are different. I got records, four or five music boxes and 11 banjo records out there.

 

So I mean, I've delved in all kinds of things. And I can take an element from -- I just did this piece from Shastokovich. He's one of my favorite composers because he could orchestrate, he could develop a thematic idea. I took the harmonic structure of his section and I wrote another piece and I call it "Shasty". And it's rather unusual, rather interesting. I mean, and you hear the juxtaposition like he would have done, but only done in a jazz, swing format. So there is that cross pollination going on all the time. I mean we borrowed from them, they borrowed from us. But there's not enough things that really are happening. To me it seems like everything is standing still at the moment. Spinning our wheels because the record companies don't want to hear it. They want something that's going to make them a lot of money, and you a lot of money. But I think experimentation is the greatest way of making money. It's like investing in the stock market. You got to be experimental. You got to be holding to something, holding to the basics. And I think this is what's wrong with a lot of music today. It just sort of gets up there and just sort of stops. I don't like that.

 

I mean I have a piece with the London Philharmonic and the Lounge Lizards. They said, "Why did you put the Lounge Lizard with them?" I did it originally with Bernstein and then the group, who are all great jazz musicians. But I didn't want to write them a part but he insisted on me writing the music for them for this particular piece. And I wanted the orchestra but, he put the small group in the balcony. So I said "Okay." He said, "You're going to have to conduct the small group..." because if you look at the score, there are no bar lines. This was in 1951, then I put this jazz group on top of it. And I'm on my knees for three days, conducting the performances at Kennedy Hall -- I've got pictures of all of this -- conducting the band on my knees. And then later on, like five years ago I decided to go to England to record the London Philharmonic and do this piece then I had the Lounge Lizards play a section of it. We did it up in Quebec with the Quebec Symphony. We tore the house down. They said "This is electronic?"

 

Because everything overlaps, nothing is together. I mean, the bar lines you get a little dot, dot, dot and maybe the woodwinds start here. It's a helluva job to conduct this way. What I did right in the middle of this piece in Quebec, because we had John Lurie playing the sax, I grabbed my sax and the band is still going and I'm playing right with them. We had 8000 people a night for two nights in a row. And we played all the music. They wouldn't let us off. I don't understand that, because hearing the record, you couldn't get two people to go hear a contemporary concert. But we played all new things. Everything was new. Like world premieres of about ten pieces. It was a lot of fun. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm working on a piece now that's going to be done in California, this year. And it's got four elements. It's got a tape, the original symphony tape that I had. It's got a new Big Band section, it's got a marching band, a small little band like a civil war band, and then it's got another tape that goes over the others and features a soloist. So they asked me if I would bring that piece when I come out there to lecture to the kids for a couple of days. So I don't sit still. I'm trying to think of other ways of creating music and it's fascinating to me.

 

LL: The kids now are all bedroom musicians...

 

TM: Oh the samplers, it's just terrible. The samplers... I mean it's good for some things. But really for creative music you've got to really be doing it live. I have an arranger that I would swear that when he gives me my tape it's done with live instruments because he is so good, so fantastic. There's a guy who could make a lot of money. And he doesn't' live here in New York, but I wish he would get up here because he's terrific. I mean he'd put all these other people to shame because he has a way of creating it so that it's more real. And then what we do, we put maybe a live instrument on top of it. You'll have to hear some of this music.

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