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.
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.
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.
My “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Art of Creation” is voted one of the year’s top four jazz books in the just released JazzTimes Reader’s Poll. The winner of the poll is Dexter Gordon: Sophisticated Giant by Maxine Gordon. Other runners-up are Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century by Nate Chinen and Tony Bennett: Onstage and in the Studio by Tony Bennett with Dick Golden
We continue to bat 1,000 with reviews. This one from Jon Newey, editor-in-chief of Jazzwise, the UK’s biggest selling monthly jazz magazine and the leading English language jazz magazine in Europe. “An interesting concept… his questions are knowledgeable and penetrating… rather than dallying in the kind of film-flam that obfuscates the detail, memories and opinions that make a biography breathe… Fast paced with anecdotes pouring from every page, it wraps with Cobham describing his dream line-up to play with. Want to know who? Then go grab a copy.”
Good idea, Jon!
To order the book, or view other reviews, visit our book page on Amazon.
Click on the article below to read the rest (buy it online at jazzwisemagazine.com or on newsstands).
Here is my interview on London’s Jazz FM, the UK’s “home of jazz, soul and blues” on Nigel Williams’ Saturday show, August 25th, considered, I’m told, Jazz FM’s highest rated weekly program. Go to their website till this Saturday to hear it (I’ll get a copy to post after that) or read the interview below. https://www.jazzfm.com/player/od/items/1016/
NIGEL WILLIAMS: So lovely, Aretha Franklin, “It Only Happens.” Now for drumming fans, get ready for a conversation for a new book about Billy Cobham coming up in just a minute. First let’s take a classic moment from him in, “Red Baron.”
“Red Baron” by Billy Cobham at 23:40. Interview commences at 29:00.
NIGEL WILLIAMS: My first guest is the author of “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation.” His name is Brian Gruber, who is actually in Thailand at the moment. Brian, whereabouts are you?
GRUBER: I’m on a beach on the north part of Koh Phangan, Thailand and the sun is going to go down shortly and it’s a beautiful day and you should be here.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think we should be, yes, we are all very, very jealous now. Let’s come back to London Soho then, and focus on Ronnie Scott’s. Your book is called “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s.” The obvious question is, what’s it all about?
BRIAN GRUBER: I’ve known Bill Cobham for a while. The longer I knew him and thought I knew all of his stories, every time we would be driving somewhere or backstage at a show, he would have more and more new stories. What do you mean you were in a play with Muhammed Ali? And, what do you mean you jammed in a dance band with Jimi Hendrix at the New York Armory? And finally, I said, you’ve got to get these stories down. You owe it to yourself and to your fans. When he told me he was doing this six day gig with the UK’s fabulous Guy Barker arranging his best songs, with a really top-shelf 17-piece big band, I thought, what an interesting opportunity to go backstage, go to all the rehearsals, the load-in, the sound check, see the chatter between the musicians, how they set up their gear, and overlay six days backstage at this iconic club with six decades of a legend’s musical life. I think that technique worked and what came out of it is a book that a lot of people are enjoying.
WILLIAMS: I think that the mark of a good read is something that conjures up pictures and just in that description, you’re already putting yourself backstage and seeing these conversations happen.
GRUBER: Yeah, and to me, I don’t know whether it’s a fetish, I love being in a club hours before, during a sound check, seeing how these masters test how the acoustics are in different parts of the room, listening to them decide what’s on the playlist, to me, that’s, to use an American term, the “inside baseball.” What I tried to do, in addition to telling Bill’s best stories, was to give a sense of what that experience is like, especially at an extraordinary place like Ronnie Scott’s.
WILLIAMS: How does he, Billy Cobham himself, see this? Because quite often, with these really great artists, you speak to them and effectively, they are not thinking about it, they are just being themselves. Or, others, it really does go to their head. Which is he?
GRUBER: I was sitting with Michael Watt, one of the owners of Ronnie’s, and Bill was onstage, joking and being self-deprecating and Michael turned to me and said, “He shouldn’t do that. He’s a legend.” Bill has fierce pride about his music but is also very humble about it.
The deal we had is, it’s my book, I’ll have creative control but everything that I write you will be able to see before it’s published, and if there is anything too intimate or personal or wrong, then we’ll change that. And there were a lot of things about his family, about race, about his relationship with John McLaughlin, that were very personal. Finally, I persuaded him, that in order to tell your story, it’s your call, but we should keep these things in the book, and we did. So, I think for Bill, 74 years old now, he has never had a full-length book, a work like this, written about him, and I think there was a level of trust based on our relationship over the years. I had full access, I interviewed his wife and his brother, so many people, and ultimately I think he trusted me and I had a passion to tell his story.
WILLIAMS: It sounds like an absolutely fascinating read. Any fan is obviously going to enjoy this. Brian, we will be looking forward to seeing you when you come back to the UK, and do another one of these. Any other artists in mind that you would like to do a similar treatment to?
GRUBER: No, but I’ll tell you, it was so much fun for me. I had dinner with Bill and Kenny Barron and Ron Carter in Phoenix a few weeks ago. It’s a great privilege to hear and tell the story of a musical legend, or a political or business legend for that matter. Loved doing it and would love doing it again.
WILLIAMS: Brian, thanks very much indeed. Let’s play some Billy Cobham now, here with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, back from 1971, the legendary “You Know, You Know.”
Post-song:
WILLIAMS: Now how about that for some drumming then. With the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Billy Cobham there with “You Know, You Know,” much sampled that track, the album is, The Inner Mounting Flame from 1971. If you are interested in the book, it’s called, “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation.”
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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.
