Music Bios
A few months ago I finished the Scar Tissue book by Anthony Kiedis. I haven’t read a musicians biography in a long time and it was great. I always struggled with music in the consideration of applying 100% of my time to it. I hadn’t done this, so it is fun to read others who did and see where it got them. Oddly there are some spiritual lessons to gain if one reads that book, one wouldn’t think so, if they are stereotyping the rock industry and the drugs and other forms of abuse that go with it.
Now I am going back and forth reading Sting’s Broken Music and Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing book. I was out in Silverlake a year and a half a go. That is where Elliott took his life. What a great place it was. I saw a few shows there just walking around and no cover charge. Very different than phoenix/tempe. I could say it is the people, or the surroundings, or the vibe, probably all of that but none of that on its own.
The Sting book is well written; I didn’t know much about him other than his real name, that he was in The Police, and I have some of his solo works. Sting is educated with a powerful command of the English language. I am still only 100 pages in but he had mentioned in the middle of a story about how he and Miles Davis met. Sting was asked to shout at Miles Davis the Miranda Rights in French for a Miles song. I don’t know anything about it; wonder if I have heard this before? A good friend of mine’s brother listen to a lot of Miles, in fact played most of his works on the trumpet. That was my introduction to Miles’ music back then in the mid 80’s. I had no clue about jazz until then; especially one summer on the lake in Michigan. My ears were also opened to Cannonball Adderley, Monk, Charlie Parker, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie… I bought a Real Book in the summer of 5th grade for $50 which my father bought for me. I learned about different clefs, and how to transpose trumpet to piano. My first real book was an older generation and it was free, it was written for Bb instruments. I was classically being trained at the time, and I thought I was robbed because all I saw were sketched out phrases and that was it. I didn’t know that what the Real Book meant or why it was all done this way. I knew enough theory to understand the piece but I was so use to having it all written out for me. This was going to be hard I thought. So I would listen to Marcus Roberts play Blue Monk on the piano and thought how the hell is he doing this, especially being blind? I never got into it further; I would play a few tunes here and there but lacked the essence and commitment to go further into these pieces that were radically different from the classical pieces I was learning.
It wasn’t until years later after I had moved from Michigan to Arizona that a good spiritual friend of mine introduced me to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. I was at a party of intellectuals, world musicians, world travelers, and such. The vibe was moving with a lot of great talk and music being performed around fires in the lush large back yard over looking the Scottsdale Country Club. I had spent many evenings here playing the autoharp with percussionists playing complex beats. I heard the Köln Concert one of those nights and I was moved. I could sense Keith Jarrett was different, this guy’s soul was laid out on a piano and you could hear it in his deliverance of each phrase, down to the note, down to the thumping of the sustain pedal… This guy used the piano as a mantra. I learned later that Keith played for Miles Davis much after some time of being asked. I never heard of someone turning down Miles until I read that.
So back to the Sting book. Sting grew up in England, I don’t know a lot about England other than I do have a cousin that lives there. I would say though most books I have read on artists features England: Touching From a Distance (Joy Division), Hammer of Gods (Zeppelin), Saucerfull of Secrets (Pink Floyd), Hard Day’s Night (Beetles). There are more than 2000 books written about the Beatles since the ’60s. I wonder if Elvis has as many about him, and that is just one guy and not a band.
It always seems I have so many books to finish, but Sting is on top of my list right now. We’ll find out if the Elliott Smith book is as good, I do not think it is as well written so far; but for song words I trust Elliott’s words for now…