Footprints

[Jim Alfredson]

This is an endlessly fascinating thread. It's a shame to hear about the inadequencies of the book. I am wary of books on jazz figures ever since reading the horrendous Grant Green "biography".

If I ever write that bio on Jimmy Smith, I'll sumbit it here before publishing.

[pryan]

Pryan: "...This thread was a bit over the top. Sure you have the "credentials" to do so, but does that mean that you should?"

What a clear defense of mediocrity you make, Paul. You might just as well stick with your student newspaper, where nobody likely knows or cares about music analysis of any serious depth.

People have to start somewhere, dig? I can't just start writing for Downbeat or the New York Times right off the bat. That comment is bullshit, but will only inspire me to write with more conviction, depth, and clarity. I don't accept mediocricy either, if that's what you are assuming.

[SNWOLF]

I think the objection to the assertion that Wayne Shorter may be borderline mentally ill reflects a confusion about what mental illness actually is, and the assumption that "mental illness" is merely a kneejerk pejorative term applied to people or ideas that deviate from the norm, or that threaten us in some way.

Is Wayne Shorter "elliptical" or is he "borderline mentally ill"? Or are these merely misunderstandings and limited definitions based on nomenclature and cultural and perceptual valence?

One thing we know: Alan, Wayne's brother, had schizophrenia. And the associative, oblique and whimsical nature of Wayne's creativity does share many similarities with "thought disorders" of which schizophrenia is but one. When it hasn't crossed over the border, that "thought disorder" is a distinct "thought advantage".

Usually in the arts the mental illnesses most likely to strike are depression and manic depression. Schizophrenia and schizotypal disorders tend to be seen more in the sciences. Indeed, look into the family trees of a lot people prominent in the arts and sciences and you will often see high incidences of mental illness.

So why would something potentially so devastating stay in the gene pool? Simply b/c in it's milder stages both mood and thought disorders appear to aid creative and intellectual excellence. As for the more severe manifestations, well as far as nature and evolution is concerned they're mere fodder. Man may be a moral animal, but nature is fairly amoral and monomaniacal.

Were it not for psychiatric medication, many functioning artists and thinkers today would be dead, locked up, or lost in a hell of ceaseless anguish, delusion, or incoherence. Tom Harrell would not be making the contributions he is today without medication.

So it seems to me highly likely that Wayne Shorter is benefiting from the "fringe benefits" of a familial gene pool that has a predilection to schizophrenia. I think it's time people start using mental illness as a descriptive, rather than dismissive or perjorative term. It might not have the louche glamour of addiction, but consider the reality that more than a few of our favourite jazz junkies were self-medicating mental illnesses.

Many people, especially those educated in the humanities, and those who pride themselves on intellectual independence (whether coming from a hard-left or libertarian perspective) find biological explanations of mental illness fundamentally offensive; its seems to abnegate personal responsibility, intellectual responsibility; it appears to advocate victimhood; it appears essentialist and reductive. Yet people don't conceptualise this way with regard to disorders in other organs of the body. It is the brain that generates consciousness - and like any other organ in the body, it can malfunction.

I think a few hours with Wayne Shorter probably could become a bit taxing. However, like a lot of people who have achieved excellence in arts and letters, they have an obsessional monomania that delivers genius in their chosen field, but renders them oblivious, naive and ingenuous outside their personal preoccupations. I have encountered some artists who, once the music stops, are self-absorbed to the point of autism.

However you slice it, Wayne Shorter is a unique human being with an idiosyncratic mind. A brilliant, one-off creative force of nature and whether this current biogtraphy is good, bad, or indifferent it has done one priceless public service: it has stimulated discussion.

Further Reading:

Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity and Human Nature

by Daniel Nettle

[Jim Alfredson]

SNWOLF, that's a helluva first post! Very interesting, especially for me as I have a history of mental illness in my family.

[7/4]

SNWOLF

[Michael Fitzgerald]

As I mentioned before, the book DOES purport to be a musical biography. Here are the quotes again:

"Filled with musical analysis by Mercer...." from the dustjacket (on the promo sheet it reads "Composed of insightful musical analysis by Mercer....")

"My musical analysis is based on study of Wayne's original scores whenever possible." p. 273

Such analysis is not to be found.

I will NEVER agree that the author "made every effort to get the facts straight" - that's a joke as far as I am concerned. As I said, sources like my chronology were NOT checked for everything, so there are minor flaws that could have and should have been avoided. And I wouldn't place the blame on a proofreader. The buck stops with the author - that's whose name is on the cover. I also never used the word "confidence" in describing how other writers could use this book. I have great skepticism about it considering the errors and omissions. It's *not* a reliable source.

Regarding the importance of the Blue Note records, these records are what have Shorter's name on them. These are filled with his compositions. We have quotes from people like Hubbard saying "I did some of his best records, Speak No Evil and The All Seeing Eye" but almost nothing to elaborate on this.

The dustjacket and promo sheet tell us that "Shorter's compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz" - so where's the supporting evidence for this?

P. 105 has a quote from Rudy Van Gelder stating that Blue Note's frequent recording of WS "allowed Wayne's music to develop". OK - develop how?

P. 107 states: "The chance to make an extramusical statement as a leader was as important to Wayne as the music itself." Sounds to me like the Blue Note records offered something that he did not get as a sideman in the Miles Davis band.

And even if Shorter doesn't consider them his best work, these are incredibly important contributions to jazz. OTHERS consider them high points in the music - and not just today, it's been this way for decades. They demand discussion. This is gross negligence.

If I cared more, I would go through the post-Blue Note stuff and point out the problems with the Weather Report discussion. I haven't listened to a lot of that music in quite some time and it's not my favorite period, but the WR coverage is nothing all that spectacular. It's glossed over like most everything in the book.

Mike

[Simon Weil]

The problem with doing psychological analysis is just the same as doing musical analysis or anything else - getting it right. All the guys who have been misdiagnosed should warn us of that - sometimes on purpose, like in the USSR's take (you're a dissident = you're nuts) - look at someone like Janet Frame.

You start playing around with this stuff and you'd better damn well know what you're doing. Sure it's interesting, but interesting is a pretty close step to salacious when it comes to public discussions of an artist's psychology.

Also the juxtaposition of natural selection and genetic passage of psychological traits rings muffled alarm bells.

Or is it just mice? Quick, where's my pocket Freud?

Simon Weil

[7/4]

I read this yesterday. It's an interesting look at his personal life, but the book is too fluffy. Not enough protein.

[AllenLowe]

Nice first post! Beginner's luck - just kidding, really, and I agree completely - it's interesting to see that autism is mentioned - there is a relatively newly defined disorder called Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD), which encompasses symptoms seen in everything from classic autism and aspergers to ADHD. It's a complicated suject, and I have a foortnote on this in my jazz book, That Devilin Tune. Suffice to say that many many many creative people are symtomatic in this way, including some of out favorite misfits like Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Lester Young. A very common trait is a kind of social retardation, inability to read social cues or work in socially conventional ways (think Benny Goodman) -

[SNWOLF]

I agree with Simon Weil that psychiatric and psychological labelling can be misused. It has been in the past, and in the hands of incompetent and/or rigidly conformist or venal clinicians it still is, unfortunately.

Psychiatry is an area that lends itself to endless Foucault-inspired, postmodern and relativist analysis. It's all just about power, social control, etc. Well, correct: it often is. People betray their simian past in all sorts of revolting tribalistic, hierarchical, stigmatising ways. And in my experience the most outspokenly egalitarian, non-hierarchical members of our academies and coffee bars are usually the most autocratic, hypocritical and self-deluded of the lot.

The extraordinary abuses that took place in psychiatry's past are certainly real, and should never be overlooked. They were the basis of the anti-psychiatry movement. While I disagree with many of the premises of the anti-psychiatry movement, the original "inspirations" appall me just as intensely as any diehard devotee of Thomas Szasz. People who deviated from the norm - rebellious debutantes, jazz-lovin' hep-cats, original thinkers, individualists - so many people earlier last century were shipped off, stripped of all civil rights, and abused and demoralised in the most degrading circumstances imaginable. That happened. That is real.

Unfortunately mental illness is real. All sorts of alternative treatments have failed: the "moral treatment", various non-medication therapeutic communities, religiosity etc.

And I don't think it is imposing prurient interest on Wayne Shorter and his family to talk about these issues. I respect the man and I love his music. As I explained in my previous post, mental illness, like addiction, is an omnipresent feature of the jazz community, as it is in the artistic community generally. Usually people want to sweep it under the carpet, as if jazz is such a self-serious monolithic force of artistic dignity such discussion is beneath it and trivilialises the most salient feature: the music. The other tendency, of course, is the Man with the Golden Arm syndrome: sensationalise it, give it the Hollywood demimonde treatment, decadence, hypos and all.

Both approaches, and their corrollaries: demonisation, patronisation, and romanticisation, I find ignorant and immature in the extreme, yet these are the main approaches used in jazz literature and journalism; and here I was thinking jazzbos were such a sophisticated bunch.

As for Janet Frame. Yes, a fellow New Zealander; died not long ago. A brilliant mind and an allusive poetic talent, best employed in literature. Oddly, her poetry was dreadful. She was committed during a time when psychiatry was at its most brutal and benighted, especially in a small country like New Zealand, which in the '50s was aggressively, oppressively conformist. Yet many of the examples Simon Weil uses - and others with prejudices founded upon abstract ideology and political theory - apply to techniques and conditions that are years - decades - out of date.

Medication is not "psychiatric oppression", as some ideology-driven finger-waggers would have it. Tom Harrell would not be able to function without his medication - look at the beautiful contribution to the music he has made. Before the advent of mood-stabilisers and anti-psychotics, many manic-depressives literaterally exhausted themselves to death while in manic states.

Before these medications became available, for some biochemically unbalanced individuals, smack, alcohol and benzos were a messy attempt to self-medicate towards some sort of normalcy. I heard an interview with Laurie Pepper - Art Pepper's widow - and she seemed to think that his years of heroin addiction, methodone maintenance and other sundry chemical refreshments were an attempt to self-medicate a mood disorder.

To make an intelligent analysis of mental illness and medication, you need the appropriate lens. And I find that much postmodernist and relativist political theorising just isn't up to the task. The techniques I've garnered from anthropology, sociology, psychology, neurology, philosophy, political theory, etc, are all very interesting; but they need an appropriate OBJECT, and an appropriate CONTEXT.

What I find is that when someone's intellectual background is grounded in a specific turf - i.e. anthropology, or politics - they apply the techniques they learnt there innapropriately to another domain. This happens frequently with psychiatry, where most writers and thinkers in the jazz world have no or little medical, or neurological knowledge or experience. It's also a turf war between the Humanities and the Sciences.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

I guess the main problem is, as bassist Art Davis (or rather, Dr. Art Davis, clinical psychologist) warned me - it is not appropriate to diagnose people from afar.

Mike

[wolff]

Is there much psychobabble in the book?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

I wouldn't say so - my Art Davis caveat was referring to comments in this thread.

Mike

[wolff]

I wouldn't say so - my Art Davis caveat was referring to comments in this thread.

Mike

I know, but was curious about the book.

[AllenLowe]

Mike - you're crazy -

.........(LOL)

[SNWOLF]

I guess the main problem is, as bassist Art Davis (or rather, Dr. Art Davis, clinical psychologist) warned me - it is not appropriate to diagnose people from afar.

Mike

I think Art Davis is correct. Much spurious historical diagnosis has gone on in terms of ascribing mental illness to an addict or substance abuser. The problem with this is that seriously mind-altering substances can unbalance brain chemistry so profoundly that the individual concerned starts to mimic the behaviour and psychology of a pathological clinical state. For example, psychosis in speed/methedrine/benzedrine abuse. Grandiosity and narcissism in regular opiate abuse, semi-autistic withdrawal is chronic stoners.

It's only when an underlying pathology is persistent and plain as day that a clinician can have any confidence in making a diagnosis - but even then, the individual concerned would need to be fairly clean to get an idea of what is really going on.

Jackie McLean made the remark that Bud Powell was in a "state of grace". Here we have an example of nebulous, romantic thinking. I love Jackie's playing, and his straight-up attitude, but the temperament and sensibility that makes for a great jazz musician isn't necessarily what makes for good critical analysis. God knows what drivel would crawl out of Pharoah Sander's mouth. Charlie Parker's various irrational and excessive behaviours - the result of intoxication and/or clinical mania - was interpreted in all sorts of political and mystical ways. As was Charle's Mingus's when he got really out there. Religious and political romantics are very much inclined to impose some of obscure gnosis on fucked-up behaviour.

I think that those of us who practice and/or enjoy the arts, and have a love of passion, exuberance and creative individuality, can sometimes end up making the same mistake the "squares" do: not differentiating between healthy and pathological deviance. Except, unlike most ordinary and conformist people, who appear terrified of anything remotely different, or "weird", we're more inclined to embrace the bizarre, the idiosyncratic, the peculiar, the taboo. Unfortunately this means that some people, who are not just expressing their individuality, but are in fact seriously ill, get cheered on from the sidelines by vampires who get their vicarious kicks from watching other people do what they don't have the balls to do - and worse; nothing like watching a psychological car-wreck.

Wayne Shorter's bandmate, Jaco Pastorious, was one of these people who was egged on towards his own self-destruction. He had manic-depression; so does his daughter - also a musician.

I don't know if there is any "psychobabble" in Footprints or not. I intend to read it, once it gets here. I imagine the schizophrenia of Wayne's brother Alan, and how that impelled Alan's premature demise, will be glossed over; I may be wrong. The defensive term "psychobabble" itself is anxiously dismissive. It is important, I think, to differentiate Oprah-style psychological vapidities, or self-indulgent theory-speak and metaphysics, from tough-minded psychological and psychiatric analysis.

This is all quite relevant to Wayne Shorter, and especially his late brother Alan [flugelhornist, did some work work with Gato Babieri when Gato was more "free"] and to the jazz community as a whole. Nervous, flippant evasions to me constitute an intellectually-lazy cop-out; this is a relevant and topical issue that Tom Harrell did not speak about publicly for years hecause of the crushing stigma involved, and that he now only has mentioned because his musical credibility, and career generally, is established enough to weather any possible fallout.

[AllenLowe]

and, seriously, I think we do have a lot of info about Monk, Powell, and Young, enough to get some accurate impressions from afar.

[JSngry]

With regards to Wayne -

Is it still "illness" if one remains functional? If you're ill, don't you need to get better? And if you're doing fine as you are, why would you want to "get better"? Better than what?

Seems like there could be a more accurate word.

[Dan Gould]

With regards to Wayne -

Is it still "illness" if one remains functional? If you're ill, don't you need to get better? And if you're doing fine as you are, why would you want to "get better"? Better than what?

Seems like there could be a more accurate word.

Just guessing, but I think in the psychiatric biz, one has an illness or a "condition" and it is either highly debilitating or moderately debilitating or barely debilitating. But the condition-the illness-the deviation from the norm, the well-adjusted-is always there.

[JSngry]

How convinient for them!

[bertrand]

I'm getting more and more curious - if Wayne really dismisses his BN output so much (and this is not the first time I have seen negative comments from him regarding the label), then I would like to see someone try to expand on that, contrasting his opinion (or stated opinion, or perceived opinion - I'll have to read the passage carefully) on these recordings with the opinion of Hubbard (and thousands of others) concerning their influence.

I skimmed through this passage yesterday, and I'm wondering if the real problem may stem from Wayne's disappointment that he did not have the wherewithal to have a regular touring band to explore this material (which he does now, of course). The Miles quintet was that band, but he was not the leader, which may have suited him just fine.

Food for thought - this book, warts and all, may turn out to be the springboard for some interesting discussions. I do not agree, however, with an earlier post suggesting that Mercer glossed over the BN period because of Wayne's dismissal. This is not his autobiography - she was the author. Wayne was a crucial contributor, of course, but in the end, I think all editorial choices were hers. I could be wrong.

Bertrand.

Edited May 30, 2005 by bertrand

[brownie]

Looks like some tenor players have problems with their trumpet-playing brothers!

Wayne and Alan Shorter. Albert and Don Ayler.

[SNWOLF]

No I don't believe Wayne Shorter has a disorder that is either clinically diagnosable, or indeed "pathological". As I stated earlier, I believe he has reaped the "fringe benefit" of the mental illness existant in his family. If you study genetics, you eventually encounter terms like "variable gene expressivity", that is, different intensities of gene expression. In mild, or even moderate degrees, that expression is advantageous, or "adaptive", to use the professional jargon. In more severe expressions, it is debilitating.

Nature is in a perpetual game of amoral self-experimentation in the service of evolution. To human beings this idea is utterly heartless, but we see it time and time again in the wild. The lion who breaks his leg and is just left to die by the pack. People don't do this (as much), we have a higher degree of compassion - both innately (although much debate on this), and institionalised via religion, politics, philosophy, ethics and culture. So those with EXTREME manifestations of potentially advantageous gene variations in mood and cognition domains actually get a chance at a reasonably decent life, whereas once they were simply locked up and forgotten. Further back in time, they were often sometimes killed, in mercy-killing fashion.

Anyway, to change the subject: I find it interesting that Wayne is ambivalent about his Blue Note material. The first Wayne Shorter I heard was Juju, and I was absolutely stunned. I thought I had encountered the most transcendent tenor tone possible with Coltrane, and then I hear this album, Juju, and I'd never heard anything so uncompromisingly abrasive and declamatory, yet very tender and beautiful.

I bought his other Blue Note albums and I have to say that I was initially not so impressed: his playing was a lot more cerebral and circumspect, and I wasn't at the age where I could fully appreciate the arcane tapestries he was weaving, just a bit too dry. Over time I have come to love this stuff.

Frankly I think the Blue Note era was when he was at his peak. I've listened to his comeback acoustic albums, and listened to a number of bootleg albums with his travelling unit of Blade, Holland and Hancock. Impishly inventive, subtle, sly, uplifting, drolly impassioned. But sorry, it doesn't cut it next to the Blue Note material. I wonder if the Blue Note material is so associated with a period in his life when Wayne didn't feel he was properly on his Buddhist spiritual path to have the value he might ascribe to is more reflective, spiritually-focused adult existence.

One thing I can say - he took the soprano sax to a level of poignant lyricism I haven't ever heard before or since. Conceptually his albums in the 70s and 80s may have been lacking, but his soprano playing just got better and better. He really turned that recalcitrant instrument into a haunting, transparent voice, much like Miles did with the trumpet.

[Guest youmustbe]

I've always wanted to put Keith and Wayne together. (I also wanted to put Wayne with Ahmad Jamal, and also with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, but he chickened out of that, and Keith heard Wayne in '88 or so, in London, and said he ain't happening').

Anyway, I've always understood both Keith and Wayne wanting to go beyond just Jazz. Keith went into Classical music, basically failed, had a nervous breakdown, and lo and behold, found that he could get the same thing, at even more money, $125,000 a concert now, recycling standards in a Jazz context to non Jazz fans, which makes up only slightly, for the envy he feels toward Wynton, which ruins his every waking hour.

It took Wayne a little while longer to realize that he could become 'respectable' thru Jazz. His dreams of being a 'serious' composer were always hindered by the fact that he works, oh so slow, no one has time for that. And he doesn't have very much talent for that genre. But by outliving Miles, he's finally set. (His wife dying in the TWA crash and his collecting all the insurance money, helped, especially with the hot new chick).

So, give him his props! If he doesn't want to talk about BN period, you guys do it on this board. He's happy with some air-headed broad that's in LOVE with him, writing a book about him, at his age, and taking him around in limos to interviews. When you're 70 or so, that goes a long way, and you don't need Viagra to get off.

[SNWOLF]

It's interesting how Wayne Shorter's tenor and soprano tones have changed, respectively, over the years. His soprano has sounded increasingly full, deep, and lyrically vocal, while his tenor, after the colouristic smears he employed with Weather Report, has become more abstract, husky, feinted and brittle.

I loved Stan Getz's versions of The Peacocks, both with Bill Evans and Jimmy Rowles, but Wayne Shorter, on soprano, distilled that music's melodic essence to an almost disturbing beauty, a wonderful stand-out achievement on a soundtrack album (Round Midnight) that was a motley assemblage at best.