An astounding and quite generous review from the esteemed UK Vibe. I had a nice chat with reviewer Glyn Phillips today, thanking him for the review. Here are some excerpts. Please do check out UK Vibe and the full review here.
The review of this book has given me problems like no other. Not from a dearth of things to say, but a very surfeit of them. I wanted to deliver a well-structured review with a natural flow and a coherent overview. However, just like it’s subject matter the style and structure of this book is like no other. But, after all, we are talking about the long musical life and successful career of the living legend that is Billy Cobham here – and if you think you know everything there is to know about him then think again, because this book will almost certainly make you reappraise it all.
… it is rich in anecdotes, colour and insight and is a real labour of love.
The first thing to say is that if you’re a fan of Billy Cobham, then you must read this book. If you’re a fan of jazz and/or jazz-rock, jazz-funk, fusion, Latin or any of the myriad popular forms that Billy Cobham has performed in over the last 60 odd years, then you’ll find masses of first-hand anecdotes and observations to pique your interest within this book. If you’re a drummer of whatever persuasion, you’ll get a lot out of it too – the sub-title might make it sound like a lecture, but it’s not, you will widen your mind by a process of osmotic narrative(!). And finally, if you’re a muso of almost whatever kind then you’re bound to instinctively recognise the descriptions of gigs (big and small), rehearsals, band dynamics, bandmates, agents, promoters, venues, recording studios, money issues and touring that this book so graphically brings to light…
You will feel like you are front row in the audience at Ronnie Scott’s as the hush descends and you’re about to be bathed in musical ecstasy…
This is a very accurate insight into the life of musicians that most fans never see, illustrating both the excitement of creating exhilarating art in the moment and the sometimes comic contrast with the utter banality of a musician’s day and concerns at other times…
To aid with further investigation there’s a Billy Cobham Discography at the back stretching from 1973 to 2016 and each chapter is linked to a Spotify list to illustrate it musically (Billy Cobham 1, Billy Cobham 2, etc)…
But, overall it is packed to the gunwales with anecdotes about all kinds of jazz legends that are almost household names and the editing always assures that another “Wow! Really?” moment is always around the corner.
Fascinating perspectives on the vital role of percussionists like Mister Cobham on The Gears Page forum. Here is an excerpt from comments by FlyingVBlues and a link to the full thread.
I recently read “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation” by Brian Gruber. It was a series of interviews with Billy, Jan Hammmer, Ron Carter, Randy Brecker and others. Billy said that when he was in Mahavishnu “he was just a drummer in the band” and “he was the guy that no one expected anything from”. This set of interviews made me greatly appreciate what a driving force a really dominant drummer could be, and how such a drummer could be the difference between a good band and a great band. As a guitarist I greatly admire and respect Eric Clapton and John McLaughlin, and I love the music of Miles Davis and Parliament/Funkadelic. But I don’t think any of those artists/bands would have been as powerful in either their records or in their live performances without an outstanding drummer.
… And in Mahavishnu when you think about the performances, and not the compositions that McLaughlin wrote, Cobham and sometimes Jan Hammer were way more important to the sound of that band then McLaughlin was. If you listen carefully to John McLaughlin he has a problem keeping time. He has a tendency to speed up the tempo, and Cobham deftly anchors his playing to keep the time where it should be. Billy can play in a groove that sets and maintains the rhythm and tempo of the piece, which is something that McLaughlin doesn’t so well. And listen to Cobham’s playing on the “Jack Johnson” album. Billy Cobham brought a funkier approach to Miles’ recordings, and the groove on “Right Off” and also “Corrado” on “Bitches Brew” are among the strongest Miles Davis ever recorded.
We keep batting 1,000 on Six Days book reviews. This one from Geoff Wills of the esteemed Penniless Press.
SIX DAYS AT RONNIE SCOTT’S: BILLY COBHAM ON JAZZ FUSION AND THE ACT OF CREATION
by Brian Gruber
Reviewed by Geoff Wills
Billy Cobham is one of the all-time great drummers. Although he emerged in the mid-1960s playing in a straight-ahead jazz context with artists like Billy Taylor and Horace Silver, he began to make his mark in the field of jazz-rock from the late 1960s onwards with the band Dreams, on recordings by Miles Davis, and, specifically between 1971 and 1973, with British guitarist John McLaughlin’s seminal jazz-rock group Mahavishnu Orchestra. Fellow musicians were flabbergasted by his phenomenal technique and a unique style that utilized military precision, ambidexterity, jazz subtlety, rock and roll excitement, rhythm and blues feel and an ability to play odd time signatures, all on a very large two-bass drum percussion setup. Although Cobham has been interviewed for magazines many times over the years, Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s is the first book specifically devoted to his life and work.
The book’s author, Brian Gruber, is a prominent media marketing innovator and longstanding jazz and popular music aficionado, now based in Thailand. He first met Billy Cobham in 2010, and, as he explains, his book is not a biography but ‘an oral history exploring six decades of music.’
The background to the book is a six-day residency in June 2017 at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London, which Billy Cobham undertook with a 17-piece big band led by trumpeter and arranger Guy Barker, playing orchestrations of Cobham compositions. Gruber was at the club during the entire residency, interviewing not only Cobham but also band musicians, club officials, friends and family members. The book thus provides a kaleidoscopic view, a tapestry of interview material, covering Cobham’s life and work, and also the progress of an extended engagement by a world-class musician and orchestra in an internationally-renowned club as described by club owners, road managers, music critics and fans.
Cobham who was born in Panama in 1944, came to New York with his family three years later, growing up in Brooklyn in a community that included Barbadians, Trinidadians and Panamanians. His father, a statistician, was also a talented pianist and was an early influence. The house was full of music from AM radio, relaying the sounds of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Harry James, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. As a result of these influences Cobham began to play percussion while still a toddler, accompanied his father aged eight, and at sixteen got his first complete drum set when he went to the High School of Music and Art. After a spell in the army, playing in a military band, his professional career began.
Gruber is able to draw from Cobham insights into the darker side of the music business. For instance, Cobham describes how, in the mid-1970s, in a band he co-led with keyboard player George Duke, ‘I knew that I was working with a bunch of thugs.’ He is referring to Duke’s manager, ‘dominant, management by intimidation. [Frank] Zappa band manager Herb Cohen … you had a goon as management, some kind of gangster.’
In another anecdote, Cobham relates how, after being with Mahavishnu Orchestra for a few years, he noticed that another drummer, Narada Michael Walden, started to sit behind him at concerts. Soon after, he was told by management that he was no longer in the band. He believes that this was because he was not prepared to follow John McLaughlin’s religious direction. Thus, Cobham’s views of McLaughlin are not totally positive. ‘The only complimentary thing that John McLaughlin gave me was a picture of John Coltrane for Christmas … McLaughlin had no sense of time, always getting faster. Reach God as quickly as possible.’ The final straw with McLaughlin was in 1984 when, after having recorded an album with him, Cobham learned from an outside source that another drummer was in the band for the tour to promote the album.
Overall, though, Cobham’s career has been hugely successful. After leading his own groups he moved to Switzerland in the early 1980s and freelanced in Europe. As described by Gruber, the residency at Ronnie Scott’s epitomizes this success, made clear in interviews with band members like Steve Hamilton, Carl Orr, Mike Mondesir and Guy Barker. Phone interviews with eminent musicians and collaborators Randy Brecker, Jan Hammer and Ron Carter add further clarification.
Gruber adds tangential interest to his book by providing a history of Ronnie Scott’s club which includes an illuminating interview with club co-owner Michael Watt. Other fascinating sidebars pop up throughout the book.
Billy Cobham emerges from these pages as an exemplary creative personality, and as a dedicated, tireless and likeable professional. The book is highly recommended to anyone who has a serious interest in jazz-rock, the life of the musician, and popular music culture of the last fifty years.
“Six Days” book review on the UK’s number three-rated jazz blog, bebop spoken here:
This is one of those books that you can’t put down although, initially I thought I’d struggle to get beyond the first page, not being a big fan of fusion and it’s practitioners.
That was then! Now, after devouring every word like someone coming off a hunger strike, I find myself listening to Bitches Brew and, if I had any any Mahavishnu albums I’d be listening to them too! Whilst I’d hardly describe myself as a convert, such is the impact of the writing, both by Gruber and Cobham, that you are drawn into the music without even hearing it!
Set over six nights at Ronnie Scott’s it describes not only Cobham’s playing behind Guy Barker’s hand picked British big band (Paul Booth is in the line-up) but also includes the before and after (fly on the wall) conversations with a lot of memories along the way.
Intriguing is the meticulous attention Cobham pays to his kit. Three missing floor tom-tom legs almost became a world (jazz) crisis. Every drummer in the universe should study Cobham’s tuning of his drums. He pitches them as carefully as any horn or string player so that he is in accord with what is going on around him.
But, apart from the description of the gig which sold-out 6 nights running, there are also his memories of the many previous highlights in his illustrious career. There was his time in the army where, by a fortuitous posting, he was able to spend time at home and do some moonlighting jazz club gigs in the evening. His big time breakthrough with Horace Silver which brought him fame if not fortune leading to the ensuing super stardom with Miles, the Breckers, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and his present status where he has annually pulled full houses at Ronnie’s for 11 consecutive years.
Needless to say, author Gruber extracts opinions from him on the various musicians he has worked with. He speaks frankly and honestly. His opinions, although never malicious, come across as genuine and observant.
To sum up, it’s one helluva book. I didn’t need to be at Ronnie’s for those 6 nights – I’ve just been there! Every unheard note and drum beat is ingrained inside me.
Lance Liddle
Thanks Lance! And for an extra treat, an extraordinary 1974 Norway concert with Bill fresh off his Crosswinds release, featuring John Abercrombie on guitar and the Brecker Brothers, Michael on tenor sax and Randy on trumpet. Also along for the ride, Glenn Ferris on trombone, Alex Blake on bass, Milchu Leviev on keyboards.
GRUBER: It fascinates me that Bill at 73 is not only touring a lot but almost every year producing new music. What is it for men like you and Bill that motivates you to continue to create and innovate when you can simply play other people’s music or rely on things you might have done years ago?
BRECKER: It’s a good question and I don’t know if I can put myself on a level of Billy’s output, which is really just incredible, but I think it has to do with, after you do something, it gets old pretty quickly. So, we are always trying, we just want to play something new, we can’t rest on our laurels too long. Plus, this is what we do. We don’t have many outside interests. You find that with a lot of great artists. I’m very close for instance with Paul Simon, and a tour manager that works with Paul and Bob Dylan. I asked him the same question, how come most guys are still killing themselves on tour? Not everybody has to do it. He said, “Look man, they don’t know what else to do with themselves.” Other than play, write music and tour, I don’t have a lot of outside interests. Of course my famIly, I want to be home sometime, but that’s what motivates us I think. We love to play. And for my money, I think Bill is, I swear to God, playing better than ever. I heard him in Brazil, maybe two, three years ago with Jeff Berlin and Scott Henderson, it was a trio and man, he just played better than ever. Everything is just settled now. It’s incredible.
GRUBER: When you watch him in YouTube videos from the ’70’s and ’80’s, to now, he really does have quite a physical presence.
BRECKER: And let me say one other thing. In the ensuing years, I wouldn’t play with him regularly, more like a special guest thing. But every time I did, I noticed he always brought something new to the table. Not only new music, the way he played, it always fascinated me. Some kind of new drum that he invented or something I never heard before. That alone, throughout the years, is quite an accomplishment.
GRUBER: Do you have some favorite memories on or off-stage?
BRECKER: There are a lot of them. How do I narrow it down? I was just always completely knocked out playing with him. (Laughs.) I probably shouldn’t say this. I remember he was so confident of his playing – as he should have been because I think he was the greatest drummer and still is – but when drum machines first came out, he tried to overdub the drum machine over his track. That didn’t work too well. I remember the look on his face.
GRUBER: Where do you think he fits in the history of percussion? How would you sum up his cumulative contribution to the music world?
BRECKER: He always would mention Tony Williams and Jack. After that period it was just Billy as far as I am concerned. The guy who originated the whole thing was Bill. The fact that he has been playing so long and is still this great, places him at the forefront of jazz drumming, of composition. He has had the same kind of influence on drummers that Jaco had on bass players.
I will be on the road for most of October, leaving on the 2nd, returning on the 24th, and look forward to seeing friends and family throughout the visit. Here’s a look at the itinerary.
I will join Billy Cobham, Randy Brecker, and the Crosswinds tour band for their performances, notably,
Jazz Alley, Seattle, October 3-6
Kuumbwa, Santa Cruz, October 10
Blue Note, Napa, October 11-12
I will be signing copies of “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation” after each show. I especially look forward to meeting Randy Brecker, one of the world’s great jazz trumpeters, and a featured interview in the book. It will be a particular pleasure to have my daughter Andrea join me at one of the Napa shows, her first time meeting Bill and Faina. Then on to Auburn, for a visit with the now one-year-old Silas.
Also scheduled are coaching sessions with U.S. clients and continued work on the Surmountable protest book project. I will be proud to be attending the launch of my coaching client Wendy May’s book, “Regenerative Purpose” at San Francisco’s Dolores Park, noon on the 12th. Wendy credits the workshop I facilitated at Koh Phangan’s Mermaid Villa with inspiring her to write the book, and our coaching sessions for completing it. It is a terrific work, on sale soon. I am privileged to have written the book’s foreword.
On an occasional basis, monthly during high season, spoken word artists from around the island come together to perform under the mango tree at Green Gallery on Koh Phangan. There are always surprises, some choreographed in advance, some spontaneous sharing from the audience. Phangan Poetry Jam is an ongoing project of Writers of Koh Phangan, a group I founded 20 months ago. We recently added our 400th member, quite a group on a small Thai island with 2,000 expats.
I perform the Master of Ceremonies role so I often choose not topresent. This time, I presented two pieces. One, the opening page of my last book “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation,” and an except of my interview with Adbusters publisher and Occupy Wall Street provocateur Kalle Lasn.
Michal Dohan, the impressive proprietor of Green Gallery, set up, once again, a living style set, with a couch and both a handheld and standup mic. The night was lovely, with a near full moon and a calm about the place. Perfect weather.
Here is the Cobham book piece that I read, imagining how Bill’s love for percussion originated in his Bedford-Stuyvesant walkup brownstone.
Chapter ONE: In the Beginning
Brooklyn, New York, Spring 1947
A three-year-old boy alone in his room on a Saturday morning is master of the universe.
The rest of the week is regulated by Ivy and William Senior. What to eat, what to wear, what to hear. Bath time, shopping time, promenade time. And this just months into the cacophony of Bedford-Stuyvesant life. The Cristobaltransports the family from Panamanian shantytown Colon to Manhattan’s west side, then they’re on to Harlem, then Brooklyn. Bed-Stuy, Chauncey Street, across from Fulton Park, a brownstone clustered with other Caribbean households.
Saturday morning at the park is time for driving percussive beats, untamed power. The boy notices the Puertorriqueño, Cubano, Colombiano, Panameno congueros in the neighborhood, coming off the ‘A’ train on Utica Avenue all week long. Exhausted bus drivers, filthy construction laborers, put-upon janitors, exasperated store owners, all beholden, controlled by someone or something. The twenty-something Nicaraguan accosted by his girlfriend with furious accusations, the older fellow burdened by some damn thing. A week of complaining, protesting, bemoaning. Then…Saturday comes.
It’s 1947, so Saturday morning cartoons on black-and-white televisions are a decade away. He’ll have to wait till he’s eight to make his weekly trek with kids on the block to the local movie theatre for six hours of movies, shorts, cartoons, and trailers. These men, some just back from World War II service in Europe or the Pacific, some feeling sucked dry from a week of bosses, cops, families, life, exude power and joy, their laughs are fierce, fat, and ecstatic. He is captivated, the beats filling his room. Here’s an early lesson: joy, power, freedom, human connection flow from the hands of men who can drive a beat forward.
For more information, reviews and ordering, visit the Amazon page.
I then read this short excerpt from an extended interview with Lasn in Vancouver, about the effects of the “mental environment” of western culture and the value of travel in transforming and clarifying one’s view of the world. The full interview will be in the upcoming book fro the Surmountable project on the art and alchemy of effective protest.
Gruber: How does a young person who has grown up in the mental environment you’ve described engage in the world effectively?
Lasn: For most people, I just feel like saying to them, you’re all fucked up, go back and start from zero. That’s really my advice. If we can identify the memes and meta-memes and come up with books with big ideas, a new set of first principles, this is something I still believe in. Trying to talk some guy in San Francisco into living a more benign life, I don’t have time for that.
Gruber: In the Culture Jam book, you made some provocative statements; one of them is, a free, authentic life is no longer possible in America today.
Lasn: No, I don’t think so. It was motivated by the reality of what a constant barrage of two or three thousand marketing messages actually does to your brain. I mean, once your brain has been pickled with emotionally coercive advertising like that, from the moment that you’re a little kid, you’re running around the living room, you’re looking at the TV set, then you’re a cooked goose.
Gruber: It’s not just the advertising, it’s in the television shows you watch, the movies, the way the culture is formed and structured, the cars people buy and the reason that they buy them, what you see as you walk down the street. Living on a Thai island, coming back to visit, it’s an interesting difference in the physical and mental living experience.
Lasn: I can understand that. I also understood that when I traveled around the world for three years, when I was young, I found people who were still authentic, still alive, still real. And then you arrive back in LA, and you realize that these people running around America, they’ve lost it, they just can’t live an authentic life anymore. They’re finished.
Gruber: You mentioned the travel experience. I think for many people the experience of travel is a kind of revolutionary personal act.
Lasn: I’m still running on that juice. I have never forgotten many of the lessons and epiphanies I had during those three years. And actually, there is an answer to that young guy in San Francisco, the answer is, go travelling. Go travelling, go and find yourself. Find your true self. Go travelling, go to Thailand, go to magic mushroom village in Mexico, look at the people in the streets of Calcutta dropping off like flies, and then come back and then figure out what has to happen.
Next Phangan Poetry Jam is slated for late November, details to be announced at the Writers of Koh Phangan Facebook group page.
Billy Cobham comes to the west coast with his Crosswinds Project in October. I will be singing books with him after shows at the following venues:
October 3-6, Jazz Alley, Seattle
October 10, Kuumbwa, Santa Cruz
October 11-12, Blue Note, Napa
Bill is widely acknowledged as the greatest living jazz fusion drummer and he is joined on the tour by the man acclaimed as the greatest living jazz fusion trumpeter, Randy Brecker. They will be playing a nationwide tour that kicks off at the Blue Note in New York in September. I interviewed Randy for Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation. Here’s a favorite excerpt.
GRUBER: You had been around for some years before that release, playing with the likes of Larry Coryell. Did you believe that there were artists and forms of experimentation prior that deserved equal recognition?
BRECKER: It’s funny you asked that. We were a little bit ahead of that. I’ll tell you a funny story. It goes to show you where maybe Miles was influenced himself. Dreams became kind of the house band at the Village Gate, a large club on Bleeker Street, now closed for many years. That was one of the hippest if not the hippest place to play in New York. Miles would play there, in fact I saw him in a double bill with Charles Lloyd with his great band with Jack DeJohnette and Keith Jarrett. That was an amazing double bill. Miles would come down and never come and talk to us, but you always knew when he was there, everyone saying, “Miles is here,” which spread around the audience like wildfire. You could see him sitting in the back. In the meantime, I had electrified my trumpet. We had John Abercrombie in the band who always played with a wah-wah pedal. One day he couldn’t make rehearsal and his pedal was just sitting there and we had these devices called ‘condors’ which made bubbly sounds on the horn and I plugged the wah-wah into my trumpet and it sounded just great. I got a wah-wah myself and started using it, using guitar effects and Miles would always come down. Eventually he hired Billy for Bitches Brew. When I joined Billy’s band, there was a guy named Jim Rose, who was Miles’ road manager, would come by the gig and say I was trying to sound like Miles with the wah-wah, and I explained to him the way things had developed. It became a running joke between me and Jim. He liked Billy so he would come to hear us a lot.
Years later when we were all at (Brecker brothers-owned jazz club) Seventh Avenue South, I found myself standing next to Miles. The club was really crowded. I never really met him so I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Randy Brecker, I’m a big fan, I own the club and it’s great to meet you,” and his response was…nothing. He had his dark glasses on so it was just silence, he just kind of looked through me. I slunked away, went downstairs to the bar and started having a couple of martinis. About an hour later, I hear a little wisp of air in my left ear, “I love my wah-wah, you love your wah-wah.” And he split. It was the only thing he said to me (laughter). He was still a big influence, especially when it started, it was a little later that Bitches Brewgot recorded but then his influence was undeniable when he put together that great electric band. I know it influenced Billy. It influenced all of us.
Brian Gruber is an author, writing coach, and marketing consultant living on the Thai island of Koh Phangan. He has spent 40 years studying, leading, and founding new media companies and projects.
