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Interviewing Bassists Stories Pt. 3
- Thread starter Arthritic_Tom
- Start date
+1 I think you acquitted yourself admirably Tom. My only concern was that the incessant trolling would drive you away. Would hate to have that happen.
Thanks very much. I'm a work in progress.
Nietzsche said, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
Ernst Jünger--soldier and novelist with a really morbid sense of humor--said, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and what kills you makes you strongest of all!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ernst_Juenger_inSG.jpg
No danger of that happening. We're going to see this thing through together. The readers convinced me to write the book, so I owe it to you to keep you informed on how it turns out.
Tom, I'm glad to see you have grown and are now the better man. Like many others I've been a fan of your writing since day one, here on TB and many years ago with BP. I for one look forward to the book and reading it. Half of me wants to make you so mad at me, that I could get you to offer me a free copy and sign it with a nice innuendo!( I'm just kidding!!) I look forward to purchasing your book.
I'd like to thank you for sharing your stories with the community and myself. Please don't ever stop. It would be a great loss to lose a person like you on this forum over a Jealous DH that brings nothing.
One last thing....
Well played Tom.
Regards,
TWD.
I'd like to thank you for sharing your stories with the community and myself. Please don't ever stop. It would be a great loss to lose a person like you on this forum over a Jealous DH that brings nothing.
One last thing....
Well played Tom.
Regards,
TWD.
That crunching sound of the throat collapsing always gets to me.
I won't post a link to it, but go on YouTube and type in "South Park apologize."
Prepare to hurl...
User on ignore list - check
New thread subscribed - check
Pre-order placed - check
I think I'm all set.
I lurked through both previous threads and then read In Cold Sweat. I may have to get the military books just for the sake of completeness.
Tom - as you've heard so often by now - I've gotten so much from these posts. Please keep on doing what you're doing.
New thread subscribed - check
Pre-order placed - check
I think I'm all set.
I lurked through both previous threads and then read In Cold Sweat. I may have to get the military books just for the sake of completeness.
Tom - as you've heard so often by now - I've gotten so much from these posts. Please keep on doing what you're doing.
Thanks very much.
Talkbass helped me rediscover the joy of writing and the joy of music. I literally didn't listen to music for ten years. Sure, I heard it on TV and in movies, but I didn't put on a CD or watch videos on YouTube. It was simply too painful.
The "recent unpleasantness" on the closed thread has shown me that I need to develop a more effective approach to dealing with the inevitable brickbats, as they're called.
One of my heroes is Andrew Vachss.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Vachss
He's very controversial in certain circles because as a child advocate, he believes in revenge. In fact, he says revenge is his religion. He relishes putting child molesters in prison forever. He believes that even if they could be rehabilitated, they don't deserve it.
Defense attorneys hate his guts, as do most "civil rights" organizations. Whenever he's a guest on a radio talk show, he gets tons of harassment. He has an incredible way of shutting it down. There's something so intimidating about this short, skinny little guy that even the most deranged foam-spewers shut up.
Years ago I sent him a copy of Night of the Hunter, which has been called the most empathetic movie ever made about the plight of children.
It's the only film directed by another of my heroes, the actor Charles Laughton. The movie was a horrendous commercial and critical flop, and sending Laughton into a spiral of depression. Years after his death it was recognized as a masterpiece of surreality and impressionism.
Vachss wrote me back, thanking me for the movie, which he hadn't seen, and we corresponded for a short time. If I could interview only one more person, it would be Vachss, and I'd ask him how the hell he dissuades the loonies so effortlessly. It's all about not engaging them on their level. I know that much. But it's still a secret I'd love to know.
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Thank you!
I'll post here as long as they let me.
And just for you, the best photo of Audrey Hepburn ever taken. This image is almost enough to drive me out of my mind.
1. Dancer, check.
2. Dark-haired, check
3. Cowboy hat, check.
4. Shirt tied instead of buttoned, check.
God help me.
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On another note (and I'm just now joining this thread, Tom), I became a huge fan of Scott Thunes (and FZ's whole band: Ike, Ray, Bobby, Alan, Chad) after watching the Does Humor Belong In Music concert on video around 1985 -- incidentally, I have worn through a VHS copy and have the remixed DVD (the audio is not as good), and have probably watched the concert 5 or 6 hundred times. It is my single most important musical influence.
I remember reading the Scott Thunes interview in BP when it came out, and I was shocked! Scott was nothing like I had imagined he would be. I wish that you had gone into greater detail about that incarnation of the band and Scott's problems. I took from the interview that he and Frank had a great relationship, but that he had major problems with some of the band members. Can you elaborate on this now, or is it in the book? btw, your last couple of threads are the most fascinating things I've ever read on an internet forum!
I remember reading the Scott Thunes interview in BP when it came out, and I was shocked! Scott was nothing like I had imagined he would be. I wish that you had gone into greater detail about that incarnation of the band and Scott's problems. I took from the interview that he and Frank had a great relationship, but that he had major problems with some of the band members. Can you elaborate on this now, or is it in the book? btw, your last couple of threads are the most fascinating things I've ever read on an internet forum!
This interview touches on those subjects a bit. He doesn't go into a lot of details but it's interesting I think.
The new book has six long passages of Thunes talking about Zappa and all sorts of other issues. The six interludes are titled Zappa, Music, Rock, Bass, Communication, and Happiness.
If you want to get into really exacting detail, I'd recommend my book In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians. Half of it is Scott. He talks about all his problems with the band.
I wasn't there and I don't know any of the other band members except for Mike Keneally. But I know Scott pretty well. By his own admission he was not the easiest person to get along with. He and I had a terrible experience in 1997 that resulted in me fleeing his house at 11:30 at night and driving back to L.A. It's very easy to see how Scott could rub many if not most people the wrong way.
But that's only part of the story. I've been in bands in which I wasn't best buddies with all the other musicians. It didn't matter. I wasn't there to be best buddies. John Paul Jones always flew by himself and stayed in different hotels than the rest of Led Zeppelin. While they were doing things with red snapper, Jones was visiting museums. And he's the only one who's still intact.
Scott is a unique talent on the bass, and his style isn't for everyone. Many musicians believe that a bassist should simply hold down the bottom. Scott's approach is completely different. He's an improvisational accompanist whose greatest fulfillment comes from creating masterpieces that exist only for a second and are then gone forever. He lives for communication. Both as a person and an artist, he's astonishingly intense. I can easily see how his personality and style combined could become impossible for plenty of musicians to deal with.
On the other hand, once you understand him and his musicianship, it's really not that big a deal. Zappa chose him, so it would seem to me that as the band leader paying the salaries, that would be the end of the story. People can be stubborn, though, and refuse to accept reality. You're reading a post by someone like that. I can accept reality now, but ten, fifteen years ago? Not so much.
I can understand how a situation could be intolerable to musicians who are asked to accept both a radically different style on the bass and leadership from a perfectionist with an extremely idiosyncratic, often caustic sense of humor.
Scott's two main strikes are that he likely has one of the highest I.Q.s on record--which makes it difficult for him to relate to people not as intellectually gifted as he is--and he views music as a form of communication rather than just art. The other Zappa musicians were great, but their view of music was different from Scott's. They're great performers, while Scott is a great performer and communicator.
It's not possible to overstate his need for communication. It's gotten him into trouble, because others simply have a different view of how to play music. I sympathize with Scott, because I have exactly the same problem in that I demanded a level of communication from everyone that they simply weren't capable of providing me. My book explains why I had that need, but it's an explanation that applies only to me. Different people have similar needs for entirely different reasons.
So, in summary: Scott and his band mates didn't get along for a variety of personal and artistic reasons, as well as clashes of temperament, miscommunication, egos, and irreconcilable differences in approach to creating music. They were simply a bad fit.
When there's a bad fit, one side or the other must give in; or both sides must compromise; or the relationship must be terminated. The bad fit between Scott and his band mates was inevitable and years in the making.
It likely wouldn't have happened if all parties involved knew back then what they know today, but I can say the same thing for myself. If I could go back and do everything all over again knowing what I know now, I could make my relationship with "Carmen" and my job at Bass Player work, because now I can accept what people are capable of offering. I now accept everyone on their terms instead of mine. It's very easy now: Either I can accept things or I can't. If I can't, I move on.
But now that I accept everyone on their terms instead of mine, I've found I don't have to move on. Funny, that.
Here's a perfect example of everything I said about Scott. This is part of his answer to a question:
"I had recently written my only composition, a duo for violin and cello that pretty much rocked. I'd brought copies of it for possible classical-musician-performance and I was quite excited. There was a cute blond violinist who was excited to look at it/perform it, as she'd just started a duo and needed material. I gave her the score. Later that night, the actual first violinist (a distinguished African-American gentleman who I regret to not remember the name of) asked me if I'd let him have a copy of the score as well and I demurred, saying that I was giving 'first performance' rights to the person who’d asked first. F***ng b***h never got back in touch with me and therefore I dropped the chance to have at least one more person look at my music before I lost part of the original score and can't recreate it because it was in an ancient Macintosh program format and nobody uses it anymore and I can't make more copies and that piece is lost to history because of my short-sightedness."
This is both real and performance at the same time. This is theatricality and genuineness existing simultaneously in the same space. You have to accept Scott on his terms, 100 percent. This is how he talks, at 8000 miles per hour, saying things that many people would find offensive, and while his intent is to offend, it's a camp version of offending. It isn't meant to be taken seriously. It's meant to be respected but not taken seriously.
Don't ask me how I intuited all this. Practice? My own artistic instincts? Being a fanatical lover of film? I don't know.
Both Scott and Gene Simmons tested me more than anybody else did, but when they were satisfied that I didn't have an agenda and was looking to create great performance art with them that would make them shine, they went for it in a totally uninhibited way. This was all unspoken. It has to be spontaneous or else it'll stink. If you choreograph it, it'll be contrived and phony.
Scott is a great improviser, so it was easy for him, but I was actually shocked at how into it Gene Simmons got. He telegraphed that I could ask him anything I wanted, and we ended up in a screaming match that was hilarious and scary and like nothing I expected. Neither of us took offense, because it was part of the performance. It was real, but it was art. That level of emotion was necessary to elevate the interview into art.
My interview subjects always let me know the best way to handle them. It only blew up in my face once in ten years, when the bassist lost track of the performance and got angry at my question.
Tom, thank you for the thoughtful reply. I will indeed grab a copy of your book you recommended. For now, did Scott have the same internal band problems with the 1984 lineup as he did with the 88? I just reread your March 97 Bass Player article with Scott, and the focus seems to be on the 88 version of the band -- Scott describes how he was making a lot of mistakes on stage because of the tension and daggers from the other musicians (88 tour). In contract with the 84 "Humor" concert (and I'd like to think the whole 84 tour), the band seems to have tremendous chemistry, and are as tight as any FZ band -- or any other band for that matter; Scott also seems to be having a great time on stage, and his black P bass kills! You wouldn't happen to know the history of that bass, btw? Sorry for the esoteric questions, but talking with you about this is really a (probably) once in a lifetime opportunity. Thanks again!
In '88 Scott was made Klonemeister or rehearsal director. Here's the '84 band:
Frank Zappa
Chad Wackerman
Robert Martin
Scott Thunes
Ray White
Ike Willis
Allan Zavod
Napoleon Murphy Brock
Here's the '88 band:
Frank Zappa
Chad Wackerman
Paul Carman
Bruce Fowler
Walt Fowler
Mike Keneally
Ed Mann
Robert Martin
Kurt McGettrick
Scott Thunes
Ike Willis
Albert Wing
In '84 it was Scott versus Zavod and Wackerman, while in '88 it was Scott versus Wackerman, Carman, Fowler X 2, McGettrick, and Wing. So in '88 Scott had authority over people--and more of them, too--who didn't like both his musical style and his personality. A recipe for friction if there ever was one.
The P-bass is a '63, I believe. He still uses it and says it's his voice. The growl is what attracted him to it. I'll ask him for the provenance.
Scott just sent me a hilarious screen shot. Look who's listed as authors(!) of my book. I wish I were still in contact with Gene. He'd love this.
