Paul Motian interview, discusses his drumming

[gdogus]

Paul is being aware of it and admitts it, maybe this is the thing that makes him great.

He might have been hamming it up a bit for the interview as well.

Guy

Sure. It's pretty clear to me that Motian was being ironic in the interview.

And what's with all the "right" and "wrong" stuff, JPF? Motian plays the way he wants to play, and as Guy points out, folks like Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and Joe Lovano have liked playing with him. Right and wrong don't have much to do with it.

[Guy Berger]

I dug around a little and found two others parts of the interview:

part 1

Part 2

Some interesting things in there which bear on earlier discussion in the thread:

Paul:  I don't think so, because what attracted me to the drums were the first drum lessons and then hearing Gene Krupa and then Max Roach, and all of that. That's what got me playing the drums.

Chuck:  What strikes me about your playing in the 1950s is that you were a solid hard bop drummer, but not nearly as original and innovative as you later became. You have your own feel and your own sound, but, for example, the content of your solos reminds me of Max Roach. I don't know if it strikes you that way.

Paul:  Sure it does, because I was very much influenced by him, man. I listened to him a lot, as many other drummers did too, I'm sure. And (laughs) I tried my best to do what he was doin'.

Chuck:  What was it about Max Roach in particular that attracted you to his playing?

Paul:  He was more into the Bebop. I was going to say jazz, but you can't say jazz because you'd have to put Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa in that too, you know? And of course I liked them too, but Max was the one that stood out to me. And also, I was never really a Buddy Rich fan, I must say.

...

Chuck:  What would you say is the central concept of how you approach the drums, that would distinguish you from everyone else?

Paul:  Playing the drums like it's not really drums, it's just an instrument that's an extension of you. The playing that's coming out of me is coming from the music that I'm hearing, the people that I'm playing with, the music that I'm playing on the drums.

...

Paul:  I'm sure you've heard the recording of Baby Dodds. That ten-inch record where he's playing and demonstrating different beats and stuff? Check it out man. He's playing a solo, and leaves out the bass drum, and then he brings it in. When he brings it in, that shit takes off like a motherfucker. Then he takes it out. That's important, that shit. That really influenced me.

Chuck:  Something else that reminded me of you on that recording was that his march beat is very similar to your march beat.

Paul:  Well, I listen to him, man, I still listen to him. He was great. I wish I knew about him back when he was around. He was still around in the fifties, man. But I wasn't aware of him that much.

Look at Art Blakey, sometimes he's playing along, and all of a sudden, maybe at the bridge or in the top of the tune he hits a cymbal WHAM!, really hard, and then he chokes it. That's beautiful, man. Art Blakey was a motherfucker, man, I appreciate him more now than I did back then. I heard him at Birdland when he had his first band with Horace Silver, and Lou Donaldson, Hark Mobley, Clifford Brown, and Kenny Dorham, man, that shit, he was smokin' boy! How old was Art Blakey then, thirty maybe. He plays so fuckin' great. That's some great music. I ain't heard no drummers today like that. Well, I can't say that, I'm not out there, I don't hear the cats, maybe there's some people out there.

...

Chuck:  How did playing in the Keith Jarrett Quartet with Keith Jarrett, Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden alter your concept of drumming? It's strange to me that that band never got more recognition. What's your own assessment of that band and that music?

Paul:  It is strange in a way, what you say, because I go to Europe often now. And every time I go, no doubt someone will always mention Bill Evans to me, or the time when I played with Bill. Happens all the time. It just happened recently now in Italy. Hardly anyone ever says anything about Keith, or that band. And I don't really know what the reason is. I guess the people hooked on to Bill more than with Keith somehow. And it seems like everywhere I go people associate me more with Bill and that trio than with Keith, whereas the time I spent with Bill and the time I spent with Keith is almost equal. Actually there was more records made with Keith.

Chuck:  But how about in importance to you to your development, how would you assess both periods. Equal also?

Paul:  No. Well, I think with Keith there seemed to be more room for development. There was more time and more space left open to develop further than with Bill, because the music we were playing was more experimental. Bill wouldn't experiment at all. In fact, I remember one time when I was playing with Bill with Gary Peacock, Gary and I tried to get Bill to play more experimentally and more free, and to play some more open kinds of pieces. He wouldn't do it, he didn't want to do it. He has no thoughts along those lines (laughs). As a matter of fact, one time when we were playing at the Vanguard I said to him "why don't you start the set with that little Bach piece you played for me at your house." No way, he wouldn't do that. Bill didn't want to take chances too much. He kind of had his way of doing things, and that's what he wanted to do. Whereas Keith was more open and would take more chances, was willing to experiment more and try different things more.

It seemed to me with Keith it was more fun in a way. It was so open and so free that you could almost do whatever you wanted. It was almost like you didn't even care whether the audience was there or not, or whether they liked it or whether they didn't. It was quite different with Bill.

...

Chuck:  When you were with Keith Jarrett, you rarely played any swing music with walking bass and ride rhythms. Why was that?

Paul:  We weren't into it! (laughs) We wanted to get away from that traditional stuff.

Chuck:  But when I saw you reunited, playing with Keith again a few months ago, during the break I overheard him saying something to the effect of "Man, Paul's playing his ass off, he's swinging his ass off." And he said, "We never used to play that way when we played together, we never tried to just swing, we were always trying to do something different," as if he didn't know you could do it. And he seemed so happy about the new approach of that particular night.