Herbie Hancock Memoir

[medjuck]

IIIRC I met Lundval when he was at Columbia and we were doing an Lp for a movie called Heavy Metal. I was surprised to learn that he was a jazz fan. Dealt with him again when he went to Blue Note and we could stick to talking about jazz. I'm sure he knew who Jeff Beck was. Speaking of Beck: when was he with the Yardbirds? I heard them in the summer of'64 at the Marquee Club. I thought they were going to be a jazz group.

[AllenLowe]

allright, I guesss, maybe he knew. I just found Lundval to be a big disappointment; more talk than real action in the jazz thing.

BTW, go online to that guy's vault, the one with all the Fillmore shows. FInd the '69 show with Beck at the FIllmore, and be prepared to hear some of the best blues guitar ever.

just a conjecture on my part.

Edited April 25, 2012 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Anybody ever heard Tony's aborted Barbarians project (quasi-semi-punk-rocky-ish, sorta, but definitely a Rock Band, with a vocalist and everything)? That's another one that Columbia put the kibosh on, although demos were made and have survived. Sounds like the thing with Beck never made it that far.

[danasgoodstuff]

IIIRC I met Lundval when he was at Columbia and we were doing an Lp for a movie called Heavy Metal. I was surprised to learn that he was a jazz fan. Dealt with him again when he went to Blue Note and we could stick to talking about jazz. I'm sure he knew who Jeff Beck was. Speaking of Beck: when was he with the Yardbirds? I heard them in the summer of'64 at the Marquee Club. I thought they were going to be a jazz group.

Summer of 64 would've been Eric 'Slowhand' Clapton with the Yardbirds, then Beck '65-66, then beck & Page v. breifly, then Page 67-8

[Pete C]

I just found Lundval to be a big disappointment; more talk than real action in the jazz thing.

Hey, maybe you and Albertson can combine your lists.

[ValerieB]

allright, I guesss, maybe he knew. I just found Lundval to be a big disappointment; more talk than real action in the jazz thing.

now that you're putting Lundval down, i really have to get the hell out of here. Bruce is someone who is loved and respected in the jazz world. figures that you wouldn't care for him!

[CJ Shearn]

Yes, I really don't agree with Allen so I stay out of it.

[AllenLowe]

jeez, let's talk about it. Lundval was just another of those guys who talked the talk but really, in the end, just did the same old things. Nice guy, definitely; but talk to Marty Khan about him. There was a whole period when things started to SEEM like they were changing in the jazz world - the Musician label, Jazz at Lincoln Center (Rob GIbson talked a good game and used a lot of people); the Leila Wallace Fund was giving cash - but nothing happened except that those who were already well fed just kept feeding themselves. Marty put together a revolutionary model for a national network of jazz presentation; the presenters (and Leila Wallace) all rejected it because it made THEM less central and elevated musicians. Leila Wallace spent thousands on devising a presenters network, and THEN surpressed an internal report that said, basically, their money was wasted (something which I, as an early panelist, said was happening throughout the whole process). Lincoln Center became Lincoln Center. Lundval failed to change the model of the jazz record label.

this stuff really happened. The jazz world continued to be trickle-down economics. I was there. Yes, Val, these are all nice people, but they continued to keep jazz as a feudal system. That's reality,

[robertoart]

Maybe Laswell was getting Jeff Beck mixed up with this guy.

[Pete C]

Well, Allen set us straight: Lundvall isn't Jesus. Who the hell gave him the right not to be Jesus?

[AllenLowe]

cmon Pete, read my post, I never set Lundval up for perfection - he was just another of a whole lotta record company people who tried to

create the illusion that they were alternatives to the established system - ask people like Joe Albany, who could not get return calls in those days from Bruce, or Al Haig, who was pretty much ignored, or even Barry Harris who, back then, could not get a record deal from the bigger "jazz" labels, and who was not afraid to complain publicly about this. Or jaki Byard, who was pretty blunt about jazz lovers like Lundval. And Art Pepper gave me an earful about a similar group of executives.

as for my generation of musicians, it was and continues to be trickle down economics - everything from Leila Wallace claiming it was going to change the way the jazz business was set up (they actually claimed this in the early meetings) to the New England Foundation for the Arts bouncing musicians off of panels (they said it was a conflict of interest, as these musicians were looking for work - yet the panels continued to be occupied by presenters who were receiving DIRECT FUNDING from Leila Wallace - and who, when they got the money, proceeded to do the same things they had done before the whole program existed - and as I said, there was an internal report which said exactly this, but the Leila Wallace Foundation never let it see the light of day).

ask Bill Dixon (too late now) who was on those panels and whom I could tell thought the whole thing was a smoke screen.

Lundval, once again, failed to change the model for the way the business was done. He wasn't obligated to do so - BUT HE TALKED AS THOUGH THIS WAS HIS GOAL.

so all of this does, indeed, give me a jaundiced view of a lot of people, including Herbie, who talk a good game about community but continue to act primarily for self interest. It's not the only way to do things. It's easy to glibly criticize his cynicism, but one of the reasons Chris Albertson did not retire a rich man was because he continually did the right thing for musicians and didn't cut himself in on their deals. I spent years advocating for musicians like not only Barry Harris but Bob Neloms and Schildkraut and Bill Triglia and Dickey Meyers and Duke Jordan and Tommy Potter and Percy France, getting some of them bookings and publicity, spending my own time and money and never accepting a cent in return. And I'm not the only one, though everybody works in different ways - look what Chuck Nessa has done, or William Russell, Larry Gushee, or the years of essential critical work Larry Kart has done - without any real compensation, while guys like Lundval give lip service to what we do (and the New England Foundation used to love using me as a poster child for the independent musician, but never gave me a penny of support) but never really take risks themselves.

I'm sure these guys are all fun at parties, Val, but for some of us this is daily life.

this is reality, and this is jazz. Love it or leave it.

Edited April 26, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Mark Stryker]

If Tony came back from England and said "it didn't work," then I would take him at his word. In that light, Lundvall asking for a demo seems prescient -- one of the reasons he got to where he did was he didn't throw money at just anything, which is not to say he didn't take risks. But the prima facie evidence in this case suggests he knew what he was doing.

On a broader note, leaving aside the discussion of the Lila Wallace issue (I basically agree with Allen on that one), I don't think it's fair to claim Lundvall as some sort of self-defined record company revolutionary and then complain when he didn't change the system. NOBODY could change the system. That's the issue with the SYSTEM. Lundvall was highly effective working within the system. I don't agree with all the artists he signed but he did do good work at Columbia (Dexter, Woody Shaw, Blythe too, yes?) and there are many Blue Note successes too, and he kept up the good fight far longer than anyone else might have in dealing with the bean counters that he had do deal with, creating revenue streams via, say, a Norah Jones to continue to fund jazz projects. I don't know him personally and can't speak to how he treats musicians, wives, children or puppies. And, again, if I were in charge, I would have made different choices along the way. I wouldn't deify him -- and think people who do risk overstating the case -- but on balance, he's clearly been a force for good not evil. That's not nothing in the record industry.

What is the evidence that he talked as though it was his goal to literally change the model for the way business was done? And what would that changed model look like anyway. If it's only "sign more cats like Barry Harris," I would count that as a great and glorious thing and rejoice unto the heavens, but I wouldn't necessarily say that's changing the model in any fundamental way.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

Corporations always talk about changing themselves. What they mean is that they want to find trendier, sexier, ways of essentially staying the same.

That's a fair (enough) game to play, but that's all the game it is.

[AllenLowe]

Mark's points are good - but I didn't say Lundvall portrayed himself as a revolutionary, but rather as an alternative to the way things were happening. Which he did, in interview after interview at the time.

I myself, representing both Haig and Albany, talked to Lundvall a few times. It came to nothing, which is not necessarily indicative of larger issues, but I just got a sense that the whole idea of a deeper love of the music as reflected in his business practices was pretty much a shallow idea. In other words, it was more talk than anything else.

as for a new economic model, I am over my head here, but Marty Khan (who makes me seem like a moderate) could fill you in with more detail on why guys like Lundval tend to get nowhere until they go back to the same old/same old - which is fine for what it is, but which really (for jazz musicians) means back to square one, over and over again.

as for the rest, Leila Wallace is still a gaping sore, in my book. It was a real chance to do something, and those of us who warned it wasn't happening were ejected - and then the internal report came out and was, basically, shredded.

All of this, as I said, happened at a very optimistic time, when things SEEMED to be changing. I got a call one day from Rob Gibson at Lincoln Center, had lunch with him where he dangled the possibility of a job in front of me; I basically gave him every jazz contact I had in NYC - and then, of course, could never again get him on the phone.

no big surprise, but in a way, the promise of change without change is worse than never having the oppportunity.

Edited April 26, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

I got to see the Doris Duke Foundation people do their thing at a big conference in Chicago several years ago about how to help the jazz scene there (there were hundreds of us invited), and the amounts of pernicious b.s. that were served up was beyond anything I could have imagined. Further, the "conclusions" that we all supposedly reached (e.g. to build a big brick-and-mortar downtown jazz venue cum museum) were the conclusions they had reached beforehand and were ooched into place by some blatant engineering that would have done credit to the Politburo under Stalin. Fortunately, nothing concrete seems to have come from this nonsense so far, no doubt thanks to the recession. In any case, it seemed clear to me that what they had in mind would have served only themselves (all those executives need to be paid, and board members must get their perks) and/or some property interests, a la Jazz @ Lincoln Center. Finally, someone in the know told me how much dough had been spent to mount this conference, some $300,000. He said, Imagine if that money had been given to existing and arguably already flourishing local jazz instiutions to mount concerts, commission works, bring in musicians from other cities and countries, etc. And so it goes.

[AllenLowe]

thanks Larry, I now remember that you posted about that a while back - unfortunately that's the way of the foundation world (and even someone I know who is involved in social services reports that this happens on that level as well - wasted time and money on useless studies, in which the money spent would be better put to direct use, as in actually helping people).

I participated in a bunch of these kinds of activities in the late '80s and early '90s before I finally realized that it was the same people talking about the same things that they never actually did. As I mentioned, at one regular conference, the N.E. Foundation for the Arts used to always cite me as the model for how an independent musician could work and create on his own - but the nonprofits they spoke to never returned my calls or hired me or responded to anything I (or a number of musicians) sent. And NEFA itself never gve me an ounce of real support.

I once got quoted in a New Haven newspaper as criticizing arts organizations who "got grants in order to allow themselves to get more grants." People in that world were furious at me - but I was completely justified in saying it.

The upshot of all this is that you would hope that someone who goes through the ranks - like a Hancock - and achieves a certain amount of wealth and power might actually use it do help people outside of their own sphere - but it rarely happens because it calls for challenging the status quo, which they, for all their claims, are not comfortable doing.

Edited April 26, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

Allen -- When you actually see people who are doing things right/changing things for the better, as has been the case on much of the Chicago scene for more than a decade, the difference can be breathtaking. OTOH, it does call for there to be a good many musicians around who can really play and want to do things in one of the right ways, but it's also fairly circular -- gpod new people arrive and get into the swim because they know about/have heard about what's happening, and the sensible-communal aura is hard to resist once you get a good taste of it.

[AllenLowe]

ah, you're killing me. Would die for a halfway decent scene. Even New Haven had some nice days like that, maybe the 1980s. But the real failure, here as elsewhere, is that of what I call the arts infrastructure - the organizations that get what little money there is and either pay it all to "stars," or who haven't a clue as to how to do audience development, how to try and foster support for those things on the cutting edge.

Last year I helped organize (it was all at my instigation) a series of meetings here to put together a Portland performing arts fest - the meetings never went anywhere, but apparently someone who attended took the idea (and the name), incorporated it, and they're trying to do it this year - though of course they've turned me down as a performer unless I want to work for nothing. I love this place -

[medjuck]

IIIRC I met Lundval when he was at Columbia and we were doing an Lp for a movie called Heavy Metal. I was surprised to learn that he was a jazz fan. Dealt with him again when he went to Blue Note and we could stick to talking about jazz. I'm sure he knew who Jeff Beck was. Speaking of Beck: when was he with the Yardbirds? I heard them in the summer of'64 at the Marquee Club. I thought they were going to be a jazz group.

Summer of 64 would've been Eric 'Slowhand' Clapton with the Yardbirds, then Beck '65-66, then beck & Page v. breifly, then Page 67-8

Thanks. So I guess I heard Clapton even before I went to the first ever Derek and the Dominos concert and kept asking "who's Derek? Where's Eric Clapton?' The 2nd guitarist at that show was Dave Mason, not Duane. I think it was before they recorded.

And I guess I didn't hear Beck until the '80s when he was in a movie I was working on. I realized he was important when grips kept coming up and thanking me for letting them spend a day listening to Jeff Beck.

Edited April 26, 2012 by medjuck

[JSngry]

It helps to have a good premise to begin with. So many resources are squandered (although careers and other jobs are created in the process) on working with different ways to accomplish the ends of premises that ultimately require two-headed fish to become six-legged dogs who read small-town newspapers, or something roughly the equivalent of that. In other words, they're built upon the preposition that the surest way yo reach a goal is to set a goal that depends on basic natures just...changing into something other than what they are.

Chicago seems to be working because the premise is a sound & simple one - we got good music being made and we got people who want to hear it. Let's do our collective best to see that they do, or at least not fuck it up to where they can't. No doubt there's games aplenty to be played, but...there's always games to be played. Life are toys.

OTOH, there's endless variations of this other premise, the "we've got some people playing a type of music that is of a type considered Great but hardly anybody wants to hear it, so let's create an aura of Culture, and then put our people in the reflection of that aura (hell, some of them might actually be Good!) and wait for the masses to be attracted by the bright shininess of it all." Well, ok, but a hustle attracts hustlers, and a monied hustle attracts monied hustlers, which in turn attract money-seeking hustlers in search of, etc. Besides, "the masses" don't want the aura of "culture". They want money, pussy, and livin' large. And truth be told, ain't nothin' wrong with that if you got your head on straight about it. But heads come loose pretty easily these days, don't they...Too much attention to wants, not enough to needs, but you can't force that on anybody, not for long, anyway. They gotta want what they need.

Anyway...

When art ends up as commerce (and in some form or fashion, it usually does), it's the patrons who inevitably end up calling the shots. The true patrons of live jazz used to be people who liked going to clubs and the occasional road show. Now it's people who like to own things and display them because, gee, how else would anybody know how great you are? And inevitably, the product will be pitched to the patron in such a way that will appeal to the patron's desires. Gotta close that deal!

Two premises. One says let's find each other, then something will happen, the other says lets make something happen, then we can find each other (even if we're not there!).

Make mine the one with two known quantities seeking synergy, not the one with a vision of a wish seeking some magic formula. Let the games be ones where objectives and outcomes exist on the same plane.

[JETman]

IIIRC I met Lundval when he was at Columbia and we were doing an Lp for a movie called Heavy Metal. I was surprised to learn that he was a jazz fan. Dealt with him again when he went to Blue Note and we could stick to talking about jazz. I'm sure he knew who Jeff Beck was. Speaking of Beck: when was he with the Yardbirds? I heard them in the summer of'64 at the Marquee Club. I thought they were going to be a jazz group.

Summer of 64 would've been Eric 'Slowhand' Clapton with the Yardbirds, then Beck '65-66, then beck & Page v. breifly, then Page 67-8

Thanks. So I guess I heard Clapton even before I went to the first ever Derek and the Dominos concert and kept asking "who's Derek? Where's Eric Clapton?' The 2nd guitarist at that show was Dave Mason, not Duane. I think it was before they recorded.

And I guess I didn't hear Beck until the '80s when he was in a movie I was working on. I realized he was important when grips kept coming up and thanking me for letting them spend a day listening to Jeff Beck.

I find it hilarious that nobody's mentioned that when Beck left the Yardbirds, he left Page holding the bag on some substantial touring commitments for the band. Page hurriedly put together a rag-tag group of 2nd rate musicians, and played the dates as the New Yardbirds. When this band became more successful than little Jeffy could ever hope to be in his wildest dreams, he had the audacity to accuse little Jimmy of stealing material and thunder from him. The rest as they say is history.

Despite his talents, Beck's a big-time prick in my book. I was never able to get into any of his stuff, save his holy trinity recorded in the mid-70s. His flash leaves me colder than Holdsworth's playing, which is really saying something.

[AllenLowe]

well, then, check this out (some of the best rock guitar ever, IMHO):

http://www.wolfgangs...ly-24-1968.html

especially The Sun is Shining. Incredible. If Jeff Beck had died and only recorded that one tune, he would belong in the Pantheon. Page can't come near this no matter how many fish he inserts into how many vaginas.

Edited April 26, 2012 by AllenLowe

[JETman]

well, then, check this out (some of the best rock guitar ever, IMHO):

http://www.wolfgangs...ly-24-1968.html

especially The Sun is Shining. Incredible. If Jeff Beck had died and only recorded that one tune, he would belong in the Pantheon. Page can't come near this no matter how many fish he inserts into how many vaginas.

Typical ig'nant comment, Allen. Looks like the backwoods of Maine have robbed you of more than just your chutzpah!

[AllenLowe]

just listen to the clip. I gotta go have sex with my mule.

[JSngry]

I gotta go have sex with my mule.

No - get somebody else to have sex with your mule. You provide the live musical accompaniment and the witty contextual commentary. That's how you build an audience.