Stuart Copeland Hates Jazz Musicians

[larry]

This guy has some interesting opinions...

http://www.jambase.com/headsup.asp?s...9947&pageNum=2

I read something where a writer said that you have some sort of aversion to jazz?


Stewart Copeland
It's a fun party trick, but I am allergic to jazz. I was raised to be a jazz musician, my father was a jazz musician and I was steeped in jazz from the moment my ears blinked open, which is why I am immune to jazz. And my main reason why I love dissing jazz is jazz musicians. The problem with jazz musicians is that they are all crap. It's sort of like jazz is the refuge of the talent-less. If you really want to be a musician and you are prepared to really work hard at it, but you don't have the gift and you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do; because all you need to do is just spend hours training your fingers to wiggle very quickly and you'll be a hero in the jazz world. Not so in blues. In blues you need talent, you need X factor, you need heart, you need to have lived a life, you have to have something to say, you need to be an actual musician to play the blues. Jazz, any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice.

And do you think that hold true for the elite, for folks like Jack DeJohneete?

I love Jack DeJohneete. Some of the others – Miles [Davis], mostly crap. Some of his early records where he had Tony Williams, great, I love those. But mostly it was crap. He was out of tune and he was a ****ing junky and it sounded like ****. It was utterly preposterous. The king just wasn't wearing any clothes. Coltrane, same thing. [In a condescending voice] "Love supreme, love supreme" it's a joke.

[Ed Fuqua]

Originally Posted by larry

This guy has some interesting opinions...

Really? Do you have any links to articles that might have the interesting ones?


Because basically Stewart Copeland knows as much about jazz as a lump of camel **** knows about the ocean....

[TroyK]

Do you think maybe his opinions are in any way tied to deep resentment for Sting?

Or is he just an idiot?

[Marcus Johnson]

I was present at his wedding quite a few years ago, he seemed to be a very nice guy. But when interviewed, he often seems to just run his mouth at length, verbal diarrhea, without really engaging his brain to any degree. Okay drummer, just not a real deep thinker. Follow Larry's link to the original interview (above) and read the two responses immediately following the section posted above.... it demonstrates this perfectly. His brother Miles is apt to do the same, as he demonstrated in the Sting documentary about the band with Branford et al. Not exactly the Algonquin Round Table.

Anyway, those of us who've spent our lives devoted to playing jazz know that his statements above are flat out wrong, and therefore carry no weight. Most likely, Stuart is just doing (yet again) what he loves to do when interviewed; push a few buttons with some incoherent blather, and then run away to stand alone behind the tree, giggling to himself.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Actually, I agree with him insofar as his characterizations of jazz would apply to many "jazz" musicians I can think of....but none of the ones he mentioned.

If you get past his iconoclastic cry-for-attention-drama-queen-ness in the statements quoted above and apply them to any number of the "chord-scale-paint-by-numbers" crowd of lick-insertionists we have in the jazz world, they make a certain amount of sense to me. When you apply them to the real jazz masters like he did in that interview, I agree completely with Ed.

Copeland can complain all he wants about selling out and whatever else, but all annoying diva qualities aside, Sting is a mother****** when it comes to songwriting and arranging. His vocals, while sort of an acquired taste, are certainly about a hundred levels above Stew's as well. Do I smell sour grapes emanating from that interview, or was that a bottle of vintage whine?

[Marcus Johnson]

Notice how he backpedalled pretty enthusiatically when mentioning his dear friend Stanley Clarke.

[larry]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

Really? Do you have any links to articles that might have the interesting ones?


Because basically Stewart Copeland knows as much about jazz as a lump of camel **** knows about the ocean....

I was just being polite. I have more respect for a pile of camel**** than I do for Copeland.

I certainly have no issue with folks who don't like jazz, but I can't believe the audacity of someone who says what he said.
Complete ignorance.

[Jason Sypher]

Pretty ridiculous comments. Could he actually believe that drivel. I didn't bother to read the article, the quotes are enough. Stuart chose his passion, rock and roll, and turned Stings music into something incredibly supple and creative from the bottom up. Hats off to him, he is a great, original musician (very rare). He's getting older now and you know what happens when musicians get older, they get more opinionated and narrow and spout off half-baked assertions that basically support thier choices in life. I could never play jazz that moved me personally, no matter how much I tried. I always felt like I was wearing someone elses clothing or something. The stance, the learining approach, the condescention and the narrow-minded high-music/low-music thing didn't fit my personality or view of where I fit in the world musically or socially. I can do it to the extent of playing the heads, the chart and taking a decent solo, I just chose not to. In a way I wish more players would do the same. Why? Because I don't believe a lot of cats who are out there playing it. This is slippery and controversial, I know. What do I mean by that? I mean that I feel a lot of the playing is either pure plagarization ,pure mathematical excercise or just a put-on. Few (striaght ahead)recordings stand out to me as something "new" or true personal statements (of course with some obvious exceptions...Hank Jones/Levano etc etc). There are a lot of players now who can play the **** out of the bass but I don't hear many that really "say something deeply personal and original". If that's what Stuart is getting at then I might sit down and talk with him about it. I'm not beyond being learned by someone who can show me the emptiness of my arguement so don't all get mad and think I'm just an idiot who can't play jazz so I diss the entire catalog of current musicians playing it. I've thought about this a lot and don't even like that I feel this way! I love the jazz that came before and believe it to be some of the most personal and moving music ever created. But I feel that we are in a different era which is by no means a "jazz age". Did I just derail the thread or lose TB friends? If I'm lost, don't get mad, help me find the jazz that I need to hear to make me feel differently.

[Marcus Johnson]

Originally Posted by Jason Sypher

Did I just derail the thread or lose TB friends?

Nahh... you said it a lot more eloquently than Stuart did! And I agree with you on some points.

I went back and checked the date of his original interview, hoping to justify some of it as youthful exuberance. But it turns out, it's from '06. It doesn't sound as though he's matured much in the last few decades.

[larry]

Originally Posted by Jason Sypher

I mean that I feel a lot of the playing is either pure plagarization ,pure mathematical excercise or just a put-on. Few (striaght ahead)recordings stand out to me as something "new" or true personal statements (of course with some obvious exceptions...Hank Jones/Levano etc etc). There are a lot of players now who can play the **** out of the bass but I don't hear many that really "say something deeply personal and original".

I think it's important to consider that most of us are on a journey, we're not at the final destination.

I'm probably one of the people Copeland would hate. I can "play" jazz. I get paid to do it on a regular basis. I know some tunes, keep a decent groove, play some ok solos, etc. Am I Ray Brown? God no. But I want to be, and I'll play until I am too feeble to pick up the bass. Every year I get a little better, and that's what matters to me.

The amount of people who are actually famous and/or rich for playing mediocre jazz (and content to be so) is a lot smaller than the amount of people who just want to play really well.

As such, I think it's better to be supportive than negative. Copeland could have said "there's only a few players I like" rather than saying everyone is crap.

[Aaron Saunders]

Larry, there's a world of difference between people who are "on the journey" (us) who genuinely look for guidance, and a lot of guys who are just waiting for someone to listen to their announcement that they have arrived. These are the people I think Jason is referring to and I totally agree with his statement.

A lot of it comes down to attitude, and there are a lot of players out there that are playing the same stuff we've been hearing for 40 years and for some reason think they're hot ****. Unfortunately, you see this even more with older, more experienced, professional musicians.

IMO, Chase Sanborn -- one of the most widely acclaimed Canadian trumpeters -- is a perfect example. The guy is infamous in music education circles for being a first class d-bag, who treats students auditioning to the jazz program at the University of Toronto like they're bugs unless they show prodigious talent...and for all of his attitude, credentials, and posturing, the guy's music is some of the most boring crap I've ever heard. He just plays the same straight ahead bop that people have been listening to for decades. When I was in my private lessons this year with Mike McClennan, I had to learn a bunch of tunes early on including "Line for Lyons," originally from a Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker record I guess. Unable to find that one, I found the tune on a Sanborn record, and let me tell ya -- there's no need to try and find a straighter version, 'cause this one's about as plain, vanilla, and straight-off-the-chart as you can get.

That said, I wouldn't mind telling Copeland where to shove it. However, if I stopped listening to a musician because of his personality, I'm pretty sure I would've ended up missing a lot of great music (Keith Jarrett comes to mind.)

[musicman5string]

Guys, Stewart talk like that in every interview he does just to get a rise out of people.
Not the way I'd approach, but he's alittle like Miles in that way.
At any rate, he's a great rock drummer and the Police are a great band. Plenty of musicians talk sh!t in interviews.
I've also heard he is actually quite a good jazz drummer.

[TroyK]

Why are people still interviewing Stewart Copeland? How low on the journalistic food chain do you have to be to get that assignment?

And why is my Avatar so LARGE all of the sudden? It's kind of creaping me out.

-tk

[anon_6j591b0]

Originally Posted by TroyK

Why are people still interviewing Stewart Copeland? How low on the journalistic food chain do you have to be to get that assignment?

The Poliz touring is prob'ly why. They just did their tour preproduction and first shows here and they're going U2/Stones type big with it...meaning mucho media hype. Why any right thinking person gives a flyin' f*** what a pompous second fiddle rock star caricature of himself thinks about jazz (or anything else) though is beyond me. Ignore them and maybe they'll go away.

[Jason Sypher]

Of course someone out there right now playing as original as one could hope for on the bass AND playing jazz. It's a big world, I just haven't heard them yet. I remember starting off at Berkeley playing straight jazz and thinking "how am I ever going to get as good as this" (listening to Paul Chambers)? And, "how will I ever find the experiences that made this guy learn to play this way"? It all seemed just impossible in this day and age. So rather than clone someone (which proved futile for me) I decided to just go out and play as much music, no matter what kind and with as much niave curiousity as I could, and hope that eventually those experiences added up to my own sound. Lennon said something about "Life happens when you're busy making plans" and that's what happened to me, my path to play more interesting jazz just led me to love other musics. I guess I'm just trying to say that I don't mean to be a jerk making such grand statements about the state of jazz, I mean, who the hell am I? I just wanted to say that I can relate to the obvious disappointment that Stewart showed (not so eloquently) in current jazz and jazz musicians. Ok, I'm going to shut up now!

[jamontap]

i can agree on some points, only because i know quite a few talent-less musicians who hide behind jazz. but i can't believe he said it like that. i don't even think he beleives that himself. i personally love jazz, and love playing it.

[Mike Goodbar]

Originally Posted by Marcus Johnson

Not exactly the Algonquin Round Table.

Hee hee. Love that. May I use it?

[Marcus Johnson]

Sure, go ahead, I swiped it myself. I swipe everything, because I'm a dreaded....

JAZZ MUSICIAN!!!!..... DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN.......

[Jake deVilliers]

Hey fellas what's the big fuss?

The guy's a f***ing rock 'n' roll DRUMMER!!

Sorry. Carry on.

[Jason Sypher]

sigh