THE BLUES MAGAZINE
11
john lee hooker ✪ john fahey ✪ mike bloomfield ✪ the strypes ✪ allen toussaint ✪ tedeschi trucks band
BLUES ISSUE 11
PRINTED IN THE UK
£7.99
January 2014 • Issue 11
features
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John Lee Hooker
Archive interviews with The Boogie Man on his 1989 comeback.
John Fahey
The American Primitive pioneer’s career reevaluated by Kris Needs.
Ones To Watch
The newcomers that are set to break big on the blues scene in 2014.
Tedeschi Trucks Band
A married couple with a long-distance relationship, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks quit their bands and formed one together – one of the greatest in modern blues, in fact.
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The Strypes
From playing on the back of a bread lorry in a field to recording a Top 5 album – the story of the teenaged R&B upstarts who’ve made the blues a chart phenomenon again.
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The Dirty Aces
Why harp ace Giles Robson and his band are shaping up as the real deal.
Matt Schofield
John lee hooker Charles Shaar Murray on the making of The Healer.
getty x3, baron wolman: atlas icons
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john fahey
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paul rodgers
The guitar hero who’s feted in the States but ignored in his home country discusses his perfectionism, his love of science, and how playing to 50 people keeps you humble.
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Paul Rodgers
The Free and BadCo front man talks about his album The Royal Sessions.
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mike bloomfield
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January 2014 • Issue 11
Regulars
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Testify
The latest blues news, including interviews with Leo Welch, Holly Golightly & The Broke Offs, a trip down Highway 61 – and why Jack White is the master of the Whammy pedal. Plus Stephen Dale Petit’s column and Arnie Goodman’s Letter From America.
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Robben ford
Call & Response
Veteran guitarist Robben Ford doesn’t mess about, taking only one day to cut nine tracks for his latest album A Day In Memphis. And that was with tendonitis. He’s also written a song called Ain’t Drinking Beer No More, and played with everyone from Jimmy Witherspoon to Kiss. The Blues raises its glass to him.
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Cuttin’ Heads
Classic versions of an iconic blues song fight it out for supremacy. This month, Otis Rush’s searing funk-blues rhumba All Your Love gets the savage, amp turned all the way up treatment from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton. A legend is born…
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First Time I Met The Blues
Country blues veteran and master slide guitarist Doug MacLeod has played with everyone from Big Joe Turner to Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson. He tells writer David West about his early days in St Louis, overcoming his past and finding his voice.
Reviews
kevin nixon, getty
All the CDs and DVDs you need to feed your blues obsession, reviewed by our team of aficionados.
albums
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reissues
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lives
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Released in 1989, The Healer transformed John Lee Hooker from fading star to Grammy-winning blues heavyweight, in the process revitalising the genre. But, as our story reveals, it was a record that The Boogie Man was altogether reluctant to cut… Words: Charles Shaar Murray nce upon a time, Carlos Santana wrote some incidental music for the Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba. One piece in particular didn’t make the soundtrack album, and he felt it deserved a second chance. So he played it to his friend and idol John Lee Hooker. “He invited me to his house, and I brought him one of my guitars, and I had this cassette and I said, ‘John, I have this song…’ It was called Carandero. I sneaked it in there when Ritchie Valens goes to Tijuana to see this healer. And I played it for [Hooker] and he started singing it right on the spot. He said, ‘Yeah, blues is the healer,’ and he started singing it as soon as I played the tape. “And I said, ‘Man, I think we should record this.’” The way John Lee Hooker used to tell it went something like this: “Me and Carlos got together. He’s a man who say, ‘You heal a lot of people.’ I say, ‘What d’you mean?’ He say, ‘Yeah man, you heal ’em with your voice, and your music, man, is so deep. Well, I got a bunch of music, and it’s got no fancy chords, but it’s so beautiful.’ I say, ‘Yeah?’ He say, ‘We gonna do this thing. What do you think about we name this The Healer?’ I say, ‘What?’ He say, ‘We name this thing The Healer.’ ‘That sound good,’ I said, ‘but why?’ He say, “Because you do heal a lot of people, all over the world. People sit there, they listen to you, you soothe they mind, you takes they trouble away from ’em. You says things in your lyrics that really heal their problems. We’ll name this The Healer, The blues have healed you, it’ll heal me.’ I say, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea.’ We worked on it, me and him and Roy Rogers, my producer … I said, ‘Carlos?’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Man, I feel a groove. Let’s do this.’ And the first take was it.”
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The renaissance of John Lee Hooker’s career was essentially launched with a single song. The Healer, Hooker’s epochal collaboration with Carlos Santana, begins quietly, almost tentatively. Santana’s rhythm guitar sketches in eight bars’ worth of a couple of minor chords topped with a decidedly Hookeresque bass-string run. Then the rest of the band enter, like a cool breeze on a hot night, with a rhapsodic rhumba beguilingly blending organic and synthetic instrumentation: the distinction not so much collapsed as artfully blurred. The effect is not unlike viewing a tropical sunset under the influence of psychedelics, or scanning a panoramic snapshot thereof which has been subtly colour-enhanced in Photoshop. It is a well-nigh perfect fusion of the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’. Apart from Hooker and Santana themselves, the musicians who showed up on April 25, 1988 for that date at The Record Plant in Sausalito – the studio walls no doubt still juddering from the psychic aftershock of the sessions for Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – included some of Santana’s most treasured associates. Armando Peraza, a veteran of Latin music not significantly younger than Hooker himself, manned the congas. Ndugu Chancler was behind the drum kit, keeping things anchored but simmering. Chepito Areas played the galvanic, metallic timbales fills which – rakka-takka-takka-takka-tang! – slash through the song every time the ambient temperature needs raising a notch, providing The Healer with what is, in effect – after Hooker’s vocal and Carlos Santana’s lead guitar – the song’s third voice. And the date’s secret hero was keyboard guy Chester Thompson: not only responsible for the shimmering, limpid pools of virtual Fender-Rhodes electric piano which define the song’s tonal areas but, through the wonders of MIDI synth technology, also supplying the ‘bass’ and the ‘flute’.
getty
john lee hooker
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john fahey
getty
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john fahey
John Fahey was one of the great pioneers of American blues, rediscovering the works of Charley Patton and Blind Willie Johnson, and setting up his own Takoma record label. Here The Blues looks back on his life. Words: Kris Needs or decades, John Fahey seemed to be among the most influential but least widely known of the white blues guitarists who emerged in the last century. Revolutionising steel string acoustic guitar in the early 60s while starting the American Primitive movement, he released the first purely instrumental blues album, tracked down long-forgotten giants, told the world about Charley Patton, instigated Canned Heat and recorded one of the most labyrinthine but influential bodies of work the world will ever see. Apart from his epoch-making musical achievements, Fahey was one of 20th century music’s great characters, an academic punk who started building his own mythology when he released his earliest 78s under the guise of old bluesman Blind Thomas in 1958 and first album as another fantasy persona called Blind Joe Death, cloaking his music with surreal song titles and fanciful liner notes. His personal life uncannily mirrored the trials and hardships of his original heroes, dogged by woman trouble, illness, alcoholism, poverty and homelessness while, beneath the otherworldly beauty of his guitar classicrockmagazine.com 45
Whiskey man: Fahey in 1972, around the time of the album Of Rivers And Religion.
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extended into the alternative and experimental fields he felt most at home in during his final years.
He instigated the 60s blues revival but despised the elite folkies and loathed hippies. relentless record collector who’d tracked down some of the world’s rarest blues 78s on his field forays with like-minded devotees. Few knew about Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Skip James or Bukka White before Fahey and friends doggedly excavated their old records. Meanwhile, Fahey’s highlighting of old railroad lines, cement factories and rivers laid the foundations for old, weird American attitudes to rear up and steer the movement which became called Americana away from dusty road caricature. Fahey made the harsh world of the blues more real and true to its original raw spirit, constructing new ones which
ohn Fahey was born on February 28, 1939, at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he spent his early years. His father, Aloysius, then working for the public health department, and mother Jane both played piano so he appreciated classical music from childhood, also playing clarinet in his school band aged ten at Takoma Park Junior High. He became gripped by the hillbilly and country music he heard on the radio and on family trips to the New River Ranch in Rising Sun, Maryland, witnessing the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe. Fahey recalled a 1952 fishing trip when he met the Delaware-born, fingerpicking Piedmont blues-style guitarist Frank Hovington, which motivated him to save $17 from his paper round to buy a Silvertone guitar from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue (although he noticed girls flocking around guitar-toting guys in the park). He taught himself from Pete Seeger’s guitar instructional book, getting into bluegrass after being poleaxed by hearing Bill Monroe’s 1941 version of Jimmie Rodgers’ Blue Yodel # 7 on the radio. His quest to find the record led to befriending Washington DC record collector Dick Spottswood, the pair going on record-collecting trips, canvassing door-to-door in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Usually, Fahey snarfed the bluegrass and Spottswood had the blues but, after one of their jaunts turned up a 1929 Columbia 78 of Blind Willie Johnson’s Praise God I’m Satisfied, he asked to hear it. Fahey was initially unimpressed, before the song
getty x2, photofeatures
excursions bubbled inner turmoil and anger stretching back to childhood. That oblique humour was often present, his mood sailing with the female besotting him, whether Linda Getchell or Melody McBad. Fahey saw the guitar as an extension of the soul, his mission to turn it into a one-man orchestra. Fahey’s fearsome legend and ongoing influence has predictably mushroomed since his death in 2001, Ace reissuing much of his sprawling catalogue [this writer’s career-spanning boxset in the works], while recent months have seen a marvellous film called In Search Of Blind Joe Death and Claudio Guerrieri’s The John Fahey Handbook; the most exhaustive book ever presented on one single artist. A force of nature by his last decade on the planet, Fahey now sits with one-off maverick titans who played a major part in shaping modern music, such as Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart and Jim Morrison. Although he came from the blues, Fahey created musical genres only he seemed to understand, unintentionally setting trends then casting disparagement on the disciples that followed. Although he helped to instigate the 60s blues revival, he despised the elite folkies with punk-like venom and loathed hippies drawn to his mysterious annotations. When hailed a new age pioneer, Fahey lurched into ear-bleeding racket. The only label he embraced was his own, American Primitive, but he still couldn’t abide many of the earnest strummers who adopted that tag. Fifty years ago, Fahey started Takoma Records as one of the United States’ first alternative independent labels, revamping his first album from the limited pressing he‘d put out in 1959; a logical move for the
john fahey arcane elemental power hit him like a religious epiphany. He became obsessed with country blues, learning to pick off crackly old 78s by Barbecue Bob, Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Blake. Fahey eschewed any romanticising to become a selfdescribed “hard-headed scientist investigating the nuts and bolts of the society which spawned such wracked music in the first place”. Fahey’s canvassing continued in the Deep South, accompanied by other local record collectors, including Henry Vestine and Joe Bussard, gathering key early influences such as pre-war finger-picker Sam McGee, while Kentucky country blues pioneer Sylvester Weaver inspired him to tackle slide. He was also influenced by childhood exposure to classical music and Episcopalian hymns he sang at church, sparking the cross-cultural mating blossoming by the first recording session. Music also helped Fahey escape trauma at home and, as he told The Wire’s Edwin Pouncey in 1998, childhood sexual abuse from his father: “Mainly it’s a parental situation. I was writing these things as an escape, as a possible way to make money. I was creating for myself an imaginary, beautiful world and pretending that I lived there, but I didn’t feel that beautiful. I was mad but I wasn’t aware of it. I was also very sad, afraid and lonely.” After his parents separated in the mid-50s, Fahey lived with his mother in an apartment on New Hampshire Avenue. He eventually enrolled at the University of Maryland to study philosophy, befriending future Takoma partner Eugene ‘ED’ Denson and guitar prodigy Robbie Basho, before switching to D.C.’s American University to study philosophy and religion. Fahey and friends such as flautist Nancy McLean and organist Anthony ‘Flea’ Lee jammed at the local St Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church. Pat Sullivan became the first of his lifelong string of all-consuming girlfriend/muses, the pair playing guitars together for hours. “She was the only person who understood what I was doing,” he stated in 1992. “I would never have become a good guitarist or anything if it hadn’t been for her.” Folk giant Mike Seeger introduced Fahey to singerguitarist Elizabeth ‘Libba’ Cotten, then working as his family’s domestic. Libba was in her 60s when her hugely influential Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar album was released in 1958. The pair went to Never trust a hippy: Fahey in the 70s.
Finger picking good: Fahey in 1976.
parties and jammed together, Elizabeth teaching Fahey slide techniques and the open chords which had previously baffled him. Her single string picking, adapted from south-eastern country ragtime, is a noticeable influence. Charley Patton was probably the single most inspirational figure in Fahey’s life. An abrasive storyteller with hard, ricocheting guitar tone often achieved through knife or bottleneck, Patton started playing in public around 1897, a favourite at the juke joints of the huge Dockery and Jim Yeager’s plantations for 30 years, busting moves like playing his guitar behind his head. Beset by drunkenness and woman trouble, Patton recorded 52 sides for Paramount between 1929 and his last New York session in January, 1934, three months before he died from a congenital heart condition. Credited with teaching guitar to Son House, John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf, Patton sang about events and characters on his home turf, including police harassment, jail and the terrible 1927 floods on High Water Everywhere. That song introduced Fahey to Patton’s music around 1958 after a 78 turned up on a trip to North Carolina, beginning the lifelong obsession which would fuel his UCLA Master’s thesis; a remarkable piece of research into blues and music theory published in 1970 by Studio Vista Books. Back then these records were unknown, except to scholars like Fahey and friends, who performed as much of a service in establishing an American folkblues legacy as Harry Smith‘s celebrated Anthology of American Folk Music. Joe Bussard, of Frederick, Maryland, began record hunting in the late 40s when he too couldn’t find any Jimmie Rodgers records, building up the largest collection of 1920s and 30s blues, folk and gospel 78s in the world, more than 30,000 crammed into the basement where he also recorded visiting pilgrims such as the 19-year-old Fahey, whose guitar-playing was already beyond his years. Between 1956 and 1970, his Fonotone Records was the last record label releasing 78s as he recorded then cut 10-inch records on his lathe, typing labels and sticking them to the disc. Fahey started releasing Fonotone records in early 1958, continuing sporadically for the next seven years. The October 15, 1958 session marked the birth of Fahey’s first musical persona, created after Bussard prodded him to “sing like an old black guy and sing rough
fahey’s labels How Takoma and Revenant introduced a host of artists Initially created to release his Blind Joe Death debut album in 1959, Fahey’s Takoma Records presaged then defined the self-controlled, specialist independent record label. The label became a going concern in 1963 after Fahey and fellow record hunter Eugene ‘ED’ Denson rediscovered country bluesman Bukka White, who recorded an album for it. Setting up in Berkeley, the pair then revamped Fahey’s first album, Blind Joe Death. Followed by the newly recorded Death Chants, Breakdowns And Military Waltzes, going on to release his albums into the 80s. The roster which built around these is a fascinating mix of acoustic guitar, country blues, esoteric experiments and avant garde. Fahey signed artists he liked, including guitarists Robbie Basho, Max Ochs, Jack Rose, Rick Ruskin, Peter Lang and Harry Taussig. Takoma’s biggest success was Leo Kottke, 1969’s Six And 12 String Guitar selling more than Fahey. In 1972, Fahey gave avant-blues pianist George Winston his Takoma break, producing his Ballads Of The Blues. The same year he produced his favourite guitarist Bola Sete’s Oceans (released on Takoma in 1975). Takoma also played host to a string of disparate oddities and diversions, including avant saxist Charlie Nothing, blues guitar giant Mike Bloomfield, Possum Hunters, Robert Pete Williams, Joseph Byrd, Mad River’s Lawrence Hammond and Rose Maddox. After Fahey sold the label to Chrysalis, it released albums by Canned Heat, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bernie Krause, Charles Bukowski, Swamp Dogg and Gene Clark, among others. Despite his gruff demeanour, Fahey loved hymns and festive ditties. Released in 1968, The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli, sold over 100,000 copies; more than any of his other albums. This was followed in 1975 with Christmas With John Fahey Vol 2. While Tom Weller provided the label’s striking artwork, Fahey avoided the business side, seeing the label growing away from his vision, selling it to Chrysalis in 1978. The label was taken over by Fantasy after going bankrupt in 1985. After inheriting money in 1996, Fahey started his dream label with manager Dean Blackwood. He called it Revenant, after ‘a spirit who returns after a long absence’, releasing hard-to-find raw music by uncompromising artists. The first American Primitive collection emerged in 1997, subtitled Raw Pre-War Gospel (1926-36) and featuring early gospel-blues and sacred street singing, followed by Volume 2’s superlative Pre-War Revenants (1897-1939). Revenant’s major coup came in 2000 with the Grammy-winning, long-lost fourth volume of Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music. There was also the nine-CD Holy Ghost by Albert Ayler, five-CD Captain Beefheart retrospective Grow Fins Rarities (1965-1982) and Screamin’ And Hollerin’ The Blues: The Worlds Of Charley Patton retrospective boxset. The label ceased regular trading after releasing Red Cross in 2003. classicrockmagazine.com 47
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The blues scene is bursting at the seams with fresh and exciting talent, and to see in the New Year, we’re bringing you our pick of the new kids on the blues block who look set to break big in 2014. From ear-bleeding guitar rock to soulful solo sounds, check out our guide to the best new blues around.
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blues pills
Blues Pills: providing an easy-to-swallow bluesy-soul mix.
Multinational four-piece providing a perfect dose of blues-rock thrills. Blues Pills, a four-piece – vocalist Elin Larsson, drummer Cory Berry, guitarist Dorian Sorriaux and bassist Zack Anderson – make an exciting noise on EP Devil Man. An unholy amalgam of blues, soul and rock’n’roll, it’s the perfect calling card for the band based in Örebro, Sweden. “If we have a manifesto,” says Elin, “it’s to make music focusing on emotion and feeling. We are driven to make music just by the joy of making it. It’s fun!” Hailing from different corners of the world – Elin from Östersund, Zack and Cory from Iowa, Dorian from Brittany – the band actually hooked up in California in 2011. “I met Zack and Cory during a trip there, where they were living at the time. We shared a love for blues and soul rock so we decided to start making music together. The first songs we recorded were put down on an old four-track in Zack’s dad’s garage. We uploaded the tracks on YouTube.” This resulted in the band being offered a Spanish tour and an EP on Crusher Records in Sweden. “This blew our minds – we didn’t even have a full band. It got us motivated: we thought, ‘We really need to find an amazing guitarist.’” Which they did in 18-year-old Dorian Sorriaux, who they discovered playing in a Hendrix-style three-piece blues band. “Dorian started playing guitar around the age of nine,” says Elin. “He got inspired by Billy Gibbons.” For Elin, it was Aretha Franklin who struck a chord. “I was inspired as a girl by female black singers with big voices. I’d try to imitate them. I used to annoy my parents and they’d ask me to go out in the woods and sing.” In fact, Elin ended up back singing in the woods on Devil Man. “We kept getting kicked out of studios for being too loud so it was mostly done in a cabin in the woods. We borrowed drums, cymbals, stands, amps, even guitars. It’s amazing it turned out as good as it did.” alice clark
The Devil Man EP is out now via Nuclear Blast. See www.bluespills.com.
long john laundry From tour manager to blues maestro, Long John’s set to clean up in 2014. After years of toiling behind the scenes, 2014 could finally be the year that Long John makes it on his own steam. “I’m a tour manager by trade so I do my day job working with people like Simple Minds and Madness,” the Long John Laundry frontman explains. “I had to drop in to record our last album when I wasn’t on tour doing that.” Now it’s time for Long John to bring his own musical ambitions to the forefront. “This year I’m focused on promoting the new album. It’s time to put it first. I’m getting a lot of interest in the music, which is incredible.” It’s not just a bustling work schedule that has been holding Long John back – it’s taken him a while to find his way back to the blues. He tells us: “I moved from playing the guitar in metal bands to playing the harmonica. I formed Long John Laundry, initially just so I could make a blues album. Blues and rock just came out of us and we found our own sound.” The sound Long John speaks of is a rootsy concoction of slide-led blues and gruff-toned rock. “A lot of the American blues-rock stuff has influenced me and can be heard in my music quite heavily. I heard Howlin’ Wolf and it was almost a spiritual enlightenment.” Long John will be hoping he can help many more see the light as he begins a jam-packed year, and it seems that despite only having dropped a brand new album at the back end of 2013, there’s more material on the way. Turning to the months ahead, he says: “We’ve got loads of gigs coming up and we’ve got a new EP which we’re about to record in the next few weeks with five or six songs that we’ve written since putting the album out.” Rich Chamberlain
New album Coco’s Corner is out now. For details, visit www.longjohnlaundry.com. 52 classicrockmagazine.com
Long John: bringing his brand of blues to the world in 2014.
v e n r o w o N
Mr and Mrs: Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi cut some rug.
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Before this band, we were going in separate directions for a long time.
tedeschi Trucks band
Ten years into their marriage, two of the finest talents in blues joined forces together as the Tedeschi Trucks Band and found a new kind of harmony...
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Words: Moray Stuart
efore forming the Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2010, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks – one of the most formidable musical husband-andwife teams of recent years – had successful individual careers. Grammy-nominated Susan had scored a gold album with Just Won’t Burn in 2000, while Derek, a slide guitar phenomenon since he was 11, is a member of the Allman Brothers Band, has toured with Eric Clapton, and led his own Derek Trucks Band for 13 years. There’s a line in the title track from their latest album Made Up Mind – ‘Licking my finger, turning the page’ – that sums up the ethos that has brought them to this point. Derek says: “When we finished writing that tune with Oliver Wood, we realised immediately the title and the sentiment was pretty appropriate for the band. As a musician you’re just trying to keep the flame alight, doing whatever it takes to stop what you’re doing from ever getting stale. Every once in a while you realise that in doing that you’re making big moves and big decisions.” “It’s always time to be moving on, growing, learning new things,” agrees Susan. “As a musician you don’t want to be doing the same set for forty years! We’re all trying to better ourselves as musicians and as humans. At least that’s the goal; I don’t know whether we get there or not...” “I think ‘all’ is maybe optimistic!” laughs Derek. “I wish everybody was.” The couple first met when Susan opened for the Allmans in 1999. Other musical commitments – along with the business of raising their two young children – kept them apart professionally until 2009 when, having led the Derek Trucks Band for 13 years, Derek decided that he was “ready for a shift. We both felt like it was a ‘now or never’ decision.” The group currently number 11 members; putting such a large band together was, Derek says, “a pretty insane undertaking on a lot of levels.” But the couple were still young enough to tackle such a major new project, while having accrued the experience to make it work. “We thought if we’re ever going to do something like this, then the window was open and it probably wouldn’t come again. If we’d waited any longer, we wouldn’t have jumped in with both feet like we did.”
Having been a couple for ten years, they believed they would work well together. “I mean, there are personalities,” Susan says. “We are both very strong people, we’ve both been our own bosses for a long time, so it is a big commitment. When he brought the idea to me, I thought, ‘Heck yeah, I want to be in a band with Derek’. I know he’s my husband, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that I get to play music with him!” Parting company with long-term band members wasn’t easy. “That was difficult,” Derek nods. “But it wasn’t sprung on anybody: everybody had been with me since I was 14 years old, so they knew that at some point I might want to put together a band as an adult! Going into the conversations with them, I was much more stressed than I needed to be – everybody was really great about it. It’s worked out: everybody in my band has found gigs that they love to do, so it was probably a good change for everyone in the end.” Certain elements of their fanbases have taken it less well, which Derek finds bemusing, if predictable. “Playing Allmans covers in Florida bars at the age of 11, the minute I started playing any other material there was a section of the crowd going, ‘How dare you NOT play One Way Out!’ I was, like, ‘Who are these people?’ It’s been that way the whole time, and early on you wonder ‘What’s going on? Am I supposed to appease these people?’ Now I have kids, I see it’s like when you take their toys away – people freak out and you just think, ‘Wait, that’s irrational!’ I don’t worry about it. If anything I’ve noticed with my favourite artists through the years, if they did something that didn’t really piss some people off, then it probably wasn’t all that good a decision! When Coltrane was first in Miles’ band, people then were asking ‘Who IS this guy? You’re insane, this is terrible!” “Or when Dylan went electric with The Band...” interjects Susan. “It’s real easy to paint yourself into a corner and get stuck doing what people expect,” adds Derek. “I’ve seen a lot of people do that, and it never ends well. It’s important to move on. That’s what separates people that have ‘a thing that they do’ from people who have life-long careers. Being in a band with these guys pushes you to hear things differently, to re-evaluate what you’re doing.”
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