Colin H on Gene Perla
Given the recent demand for more long-form pieces on the Afterword blog ¬– coupled with my cunning marketing genius (not) – here’s a short chapter from my book ‘Echoes From Then: Glimpses of John McLaughlin’, which will be self-published around October this year. I posted a heads-up couple of weeks back about the beginning of a Kickstarter campaign, and I know a number of Afterworders have already very generously supported it – thank you one and all! But never mind that: even if you’ve only a passing interest in John McLaughlin’s career, I hope you’ll find jazz bass legend Gene Perla’s tale as entertaining as I did…
[continued in the comments]
Gene Perla is perhaps best known as the bassist on a series of Blue Note albums by Elvin Jones spanning 1971-73 and for a further series of albums (1976-80) on his own PM label with his own band Stone Alliance, formed with saxophonist Steve Grossman and drummer Don Alias. A noted sideman, tutor and entrepreneur, Gene got in touch shortly after ‘Bathed In Lightning’ was published, having seen an extract on the first Mahavishnu Orchestra in US magazine ‘Jazz Times’. He had played his own small part in the tale, though no one seemed to know about it. Early in December 2016 I called Gene and talked the whole thing out. The following text is an only slightly edited transcript.
Knowing that Jan Hammer had worked with Sarah Vaughan’s road band prior to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, I had assumed that Gene’s own period of touring with Sarah, circa 1970, and his association with Jan must have had something to do with his own cameo part in the prelude to the MO as we know it today. It transpires that the opposite is true. There is an ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ world in which Gene Perla is a member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It is a world in which the band is still going, 45 years on, because nobody ever fell out…
C: So, Gene, am I right in thinking that you might have been in Sarah Vaughan’s band at the same time as Jan Hammer?
G: In fact, I got him the job!
C. Tell me more…
G: Well, that was in 1970 and it was the beginning of the year. I was on the road with Woody Herman playing in Las Vegas and I went to a jam session starting at six in the morning, and after I’d sat in for one tune this fellow came up to me and said, ‘Man, you play great – you want a gig with Sarah Vaughan?’ And I said to him, ‘She’s a singer, right?’ (laughs) It’s the truth! Because I was so… I went to New York [determined] to play with Miles [Davis] and Elvin [Jones] and I was so fortunate that I wound up having been able to do that. But, in any case, I got the job [with Sarah] and the piano player from Vegas and the drummer from Vegas, they weren’t cutting it. I had known Jan already and after what wasn’t too long a time I said to Sarah, ‘You know, this piano player’s not working out – I know a guy…’ So Sarah says, ‘Get him!’ So I got Jan on the gig and then the same thing happened with the drummer, and she let me find somebody. I got Jimmy Cobb – so it was a wonderful trio.
C: Fantastic – it sounds like people might have been coming for the music as much as the singing:
G: Well, I don’t know about that, but she was fantastic – we had a wonderful time together.
C: Jan’s playing, I believe, was very different to the style he developed in the Mahavishnu Orchestra:
G: Yes, that’s true. He had been listening to many different people and he was trying to play jazz and swing, you know – that’s what we were doing [with Sarah’s music]. I’ve just been speaking with another fellow who’s been writing about Jeremy Steig, the flutist, and I came last in that situation – Jan was playing with him and Don Alias [on drums], and they recommended me join them. So we had this quartet and we played a lot together and we were one of the early, early fusion bands in New York. [1]
C: So, to be clear, you were playing with Jeremy’s quartet between Sarah Vaughan and the beginnings of the MO?
G: Actually, I was playing before Sarah with Nina Simone, and it was during that time that I was able to get Don Alias on the Nina Simone job. So then they somehow hooked up with Jeremy Steig and they got me in with him, so this is all prior to Mahavishnu. After I played with Nina I went with Sarah; Jan came along and then I left and then Jan left, I guess, a little bit after that.
C: What motivated you to leave Sarah – did you want to focus on instrumental music?
G: Yeah, I wanted to get back to New York and see if I could play with Miles and Elvin!
C: I imagine there were probably a lot of people hoping to get those calls…
G: Yep – absolutely.
C: It was a period of change for jazz in America, wasn’t it?
G: Well, you know, what I point to is roughly the first half of the 60s. To me, there were three branches of jazz that went in three different directions and they were all so powerful it was amazing: Miles’ group, Coltrane’s group, and Ornette Coleman’s group. And the next thing that happened was jazz-fusion, which was piddling around a little bit here and there – I don’t mean to belittle it – but all of a sudden John McLaughlin comes on the scene and blew the doors off it.
C: Certainly, that first MO album is emphatically different from previous records in America from artists who were, perhaps, circling around the possibilities of jazz and rock meeting – people like Charles Lloyd or Gary Burton or Herbie Mann…
G: Yes, of course.
C: Was fusion seen to be the ‘next big idea’ in the US jazz community at that time or was it just another fringe idea?
G: Well, actually, what came before that was the development of the Ornette Coleman branch into the development of avant-garde music or free jazz…
C: In late 60s Britain there was a great deal of magazine coverage and fascination around the concept of free improvisation, with London-based musicians like John Stevens at the heart of the movement, and a lot going on in parts of Europe, together with controversial visits from the likes of US saxophonist Albert Ayler. It was very much in vogue as something to discuss in British music circles at the time. Was it popular in New York, as a music to go and listen to? Was there a hotbed of fans for free playing?
G: I would say that it was probably minimal because there was a tremendous amount of reaction from the establishment – let me call them that – from Dizzy Gillespie on down. Because they felt that a lot of these musicians – and I agree with them – [were no good]. I don’t even know if it’s appropriate to characterise them as musicians, because anybody can pick up a saxophone, not know how to play it, and start blowing into the mouthpiece, get squeaks and honks and maybe an occasional note – and they could sit in with a band like that.
C: The feeling in Britain was that there were clearly some very sincere people, who had been mainstream jazz players for some years, who had decided to pursue free playing as an exciting new direction – but there was always the suspicion that some people involved in that scene were probably charlatans, who couldn’t really play. But it was an interesting time. Miles Davis’ jazz club gigs had been getting thin on the ground by the late 60s and that seemed to feed into his repositioning for rock audiences, at the Fillmore and so on, during 1970. Was that happening generally to jazz musicians in America in the early 70s – that it became a college circuit kind of music rather than a jazz club music?
G: I don’t know about that because when I was with Elvin, from 1971 to 73, and even after that in 74 with Sonny Rollins, we did some festivals – more with Sonny, he was more popular than Elvin – but we played clubs with Sonny and we played clubs with Elvin, into the mid-70s. Beyond that, when I formed the Stone Alliance band with Steve Grossman and Don Alias, and then later with Bob Mintzer and Kenny Kirkland, we played clubs – and there are clubs all over the place now.
C: That’s interesting. Anything I’ve read about Miles suggests that his club dates could be poorly attended before his change of direction with ‘In A Silent Way’ and ‘Bitches Brew’, and the change in marketing him from Columbia, but of course everyone’s story is different. Getting back to your connection with the embryonic Mahavishnu Orchestra, talk me through what happened…
G: Well, I do have some date books, so maybe I could put some dates to it. I don’t know if I met John very much beforehand, though I’m convinced we may have played a session or two [2] – not any gigs – and out of the blue he said he was forming a band and would I come to a rehearsal. I said, ‘Sure’. But I had not too long before that joined Elvin, which was my dream. And I had also heard – because it was a much smaller scene back in those days and information would travel throughout this scene pretty rapidly, and out to the edges – that John was looking for a keyboard player, and my roommate was Jan Hammer. I didn’t say anything but I went along and made the rehearsal, and that first rehearsal was with John and Billy Cobham and myself. And at the end of the rehearsal John said, ‘It’s your gig if you want it’. And I said, ‘Well, you know, I’d like to make another rehearsal’. And it wasn’t that at all, but I said it that way and I followed it up right after that by saying, ‘I understand you’re looking for a keyboard player. My roommate, I think he might be a guy who might be perfect for this music’. John said, ‘Okay…’ So the second time we rehearsed at my loft Billy couldn’t make it so Don Alias filled in. We finished the rehearsal and John said, ‘Well, you gonna take the gig or not?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m going to stay with Elvin’. Jan went on with John, and that’s how it happened.
C: Was there anything musical that was stopping you going with John or was it simply that Elvin was one of your heroes and you couldn’t miss that opportunity?
G: You know, I gotta tell you, if I gave my right arm I couldn’t do shit (laughs) – but if I could only have been able to do both of them! There’s more to this story from my personal perspective because Jan and I were very, very close. He lived in my house, with my mom; I bought him his first car, because he didn’t have his [immigration] papers squared away – and we were tight for many years. I have a sense that he’s a straight-shooter – and I’m not saying McLaughlin’s not, I think he’s a straight-shooter too – but there was a difference of opinion [in the MO], and I’ve explained this to my students, how groups can run into problems when they’re experiencing great success, problems that can cause them to break up.
C: With the MO, I would suggest that there were three main factors behind problems that led to the breakdown of relations: the fact that John was on a ‘higher mission’ with the band, seeing it as an outworking of his spiritual path; the fact that John had come through many Miles Davis sessions, where there was a general understanding among players that Miles took the composer credit on things that may more accurately have been group efforts to varying degrees; and, finally, the fact that – perhaps unexpectedly – there turned out to be a great deal of money and success becoming apparent within a few months of the MO forming. Does that ring true?
G: From my perspective, I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. At the first rehearsal, with Billy Cobham, John and myself, John had some sketches of his melody lines, and he explained them to Billy and I. Both of us being capable, we picked them up very quickly and so I made up bass lines and Billy made up rhythms. Now, do we have part of that composition? Probably not. But I know from Jan and from Jerry Goodman, who I knew quite well at the time, because Jan and I built a recording studio together north of NYC – we were partners for 10 years, after the Mahavishnu period.[3] So I believe they had some hand in the compositional structures of the pieces they played [in the MO]. I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t there but I trust that Jan’s observation was not incorrect. Because John wouldn’t acquiesce to that, that was the main reason why it blew up, at least to my understanding.
C: I suspect questions around compositional contributions have crippled many bands whose members haven’t agreed in advance how they are going to deal with such matters. Do you give advice to your students on how to approach the issue?
G: Absolutely. The thing that I really use to drive the point home is [to focus on] when the thing becomes a reality for the public, when it gets recorded, that’s when the money starts flowing in. When I produce a group, as soon as someone says, ‘Yeah, take 4 is the take’, I say, ‘Okay, who owns what?’ I don’t care if it gets written on a napkin or whatever! I often point to Wynton Marsalis as a great example – not that I’m enamoured by his music – but in terms of what he’s done in informing musicians, especially young black men, that they should pay attention to the business, and that’s a good thing.
C: Most of your playing that I’ve heard, Gene, is on double bass, and at the melodic end of jazz. Looking back to that moment when you had a chance to join the MO, would you have been the right guy? Could have, as it were, turned it up to 11?
G: What? (laughs) Let me say this: I took up the electric bass not long after I took up the double bass and when I came to New York I landed the job with Nina Simone which was only electric bass, and then when I formed Stone Alliance it was also exclusively electric bass.
C: I stand corrected! But am I right in thinking that double bass is your preferred instrument?
G: Well, it is, because I like the way the way it fits between my legs! (laughs)
C: You were never tempted to get yourself a double-necked bass guitar like Miroslav Vitous?
G: No! Oh, by the way, I can’t confirm this but I heard around that time that John actually called Miroslav first – and Miroslav said, ‘No, I’m with Weather Report’. That’s my understanding. And then he called me.
C: And then he called Rick Laird, who was back in England recovering from a year with Buddy Rich…
G: Yes, Rick is a good friend of mine, a great guy.
C: Did you ever see the Mahavishnu Orchestra performing?
G: Twice.
C: What did you make of it?
G: Well, first of all it was too fucking loud. It was ear-piercing. In fact, the second time was at Avery Fisher Hall, New York. I got some tickets and invited Elvin and his wife to come along and they stayed for about a minute of the first song and then got up and left.
C: They did a fiendish amount of touring. Would that have been something you could have coped with had you taken the gig?
G: Oh, yeah – nothing to it. It was what I was doing anyway.
C: Had you been in the band it’s just possible you might have been a calming influence:
G: Let me tell you something, I even wrote John a letter some years ago. I bumped into him in Bremen or Hamburg, Germany. He was onstage just warming up, playing the guitar and, for me, he’s maybe the most fascinating guitarist of all time, how he can handle that instrument like it’s nothing – he’s a one-off. Anyway, we had lunch together and spent some time before his show, and after that I wrote him a letter and I said, ‘You know, I think back to that day and I wished I could have been with the band, and maybe I could have been a stabilising force in there…’ That third year [which would have been 1974], they had the whole year booked. I spoke to Jan about that and he said they made very little money the first year, it wasn’t so bad the second year, but they were scheduled to make a lot of money that third one.[4] Anyway, I wrote to John, but he never wrote back to me.
C: Do you have any regrets about not joining?
G: Well, it’s not very common knowledge – it was only those two rehearsals – but when I think back about it, as I said already, I just wish there was some way that I could have done them both.
C: Do you recall much about the material that was being used in the rehearsals?
G: Well, they were compositional ideas [rather than just riffs] and they were odd time signatures. The first rehearsal was at a rehearsal studio owned by Whitey Davis, who also supplied a lot of equipment for bands in the New York area – he was quite a character. So we rehearsed there, I think in the basement of his building down in SoHo. For the second one I said, ‘Why don’t you save money – come over to my loft’.
C: Are you from New York?
G: New Jersey, about 20 miles away from Manhattan.
C: John would often say in 1970s interviews that Manhattan ate people for breakfast. Were you more familiar with how to survive there?
G: No, I wouldn’t say that. Listen, I was born in 1940 and the main road going past our house was dirt! It was a farm community, so I was insulated, I didn’t know anything; I didn’t start to wake up until I went to college. I went to the University of Toledo for four years and just goofed off and then finally I realised it was about music, and went to Berklee.[5]
C: Was Manhattan tough for you as well?
G: Well, there’s a phrase in the States: ‘stepping in shit’. I think it comes from farmers – if they’re out in the field and happen to step in cow-shit, they say it’s good luck. I don’t know why! And I have to say a great part of my life, the things that have happened, have been just that. So on the very first day that I went to New York after I moved down from Boston I went to the Musicians’ Union – it was a Wednesday and I’d heard they had a gathering when agents and musicians, all genres, would meet. The jazz musicians would stand here, the club date musicians would stand here, the Latinos would stand here – and I didn’t know anything. I just saw these people standing there like sardines and one guy, who was talking to somebody else with his back to me, finished with his conversation and turned around to me – he was a little short, so he looked up at me – and said, ‘I’m looking for a bass player’. I said, ‘You’re looking at one’. From day one I got an eight-month, four nights a week job. Somehow New York has never intimidated me. A lot of guys I’ve seen come into town, they get into drugs or they can’t stand it and have to leave. For me, it’s a life-blood. I live in Pennsylvania now but it only takes me an hour to get in – I teach at a jazz school in New York. I feel the energy there and I never want to be away from that.
C: Speaking of energy, did you ever see the Tony Williams Lifetime?
G: I saw the very first time they played at Count Basie’s Club in Harlem, with John and Larry Young.
C: That must have been loud as well…
G: It was like, ‘Wooooh! What the hell is this?’ (laughs)
C: You’ve mentioned getting to play with Elvin; I believe you also got to fulfil your other ambition and play with Miles…
G: Well, this was another step in shit! (laughs) Don Alias, my closest friend for over 40 years, he said, ‘I’m recording with Miles – you want to come along?’ ‘Shit, yeah!’ I had a gig later so I brought my electric bass with me and I’m sitting in the control room and Michael Henderson, Miles’ bass player, is not showing up – half an hour, one hour, an hour and a half… And now I hear Alias saying to Miles, ‘You know, there’s a bass player sitting in the control room…’ And I could hear Miles saying, ‘Tell him to get his ass in here’. I went in, I started shaking, I was so nervous, but Miles was so sweet to me, man. The tune we were playing was part of the ‘Jack Johnson’ stuff. It never got released on the original album but it’s on the box set, called ‘Ali’. The tune was the bassline. Miles sang it to me, I picked it and started playing it and as he was walking away he said, ‘Don’t make it swing’. And if you listen to it, let me tell you: that bass is not swinging!
C: Wouldn’t it be funny if some of your students heard it and thought, ‘Hey, that’s Mr Perla, but it doesn’t sound like he can swing!’ Still, it must be great to have that on your CV. Nobody’s going to question your credentials…
G: I guess so. I wouldn’t!
C: I have a final thought to put to you. But before I do, how familiar are you with the Beatles?
G: Well, I was at their very first concert in the United States, at Fenway Stadium in Boston.
C: You’re kidding! You’ve certainly been stepping in a lot of that shit!
(laughs)
C: They had a drummer named Pete Best, prior to Ringo joining. Pete managed to get to the point where the recording deal with EMI beckoned before being sacked and missing out on the great adventure. His name has become a byword for anyone in an ensemble who doesn’t quite make it through the gates of opportunity. So now that I’ve said all that, the question is this: are you the Pete Best of the Mahavishnu Orchestra?
G: (laughs loudly) That’s good, that’s good! But there’s one big difference: he got fired, I quit!
Footnotes:
[1] Gene can be heard, to great effect, on the 1970 Jeremy Steig LP ‘Energy’ (Capitol). The tracks have subsequently appeared on a compilation 2LP/CD called ‘Fusion’.
[2] Gene certainly played with John on a Miles Davis session, for the track ‘Ali’, during the ‘A Tribute To Jack Johnson’ sessions, on 19 May 1970.
[3] Jan appears as a guest player on a posthumous live release from Gene’s band Stone Alliance, ‘Live In Berlin’, recorded in 1980, released on Gene’s PM label in 2010.
[4] Strictly, the MO Mk1 spanned June 1971 to December 1973, but I assume that Jan was talking about full years (1972, 73, 74) or possible the completion of 12-month periods (1971-72, 72-73, 73-74), in which case the first six months of 1974 is the booked-up period in question. The recollection chimes with MO Mk2 roadie Greg DiGiovine recalling Columbia representatives talking about the disbandment of MO Mk1 equating to a million dollars being flushed down the toilet.
[5] Gene started at Berklee the year after Michael Gibbs, the future orchestrator of the MO Mk2’s ‘Apocalypse’, left.
This post wasn’t sponsored by Bargey, I’m guessing?
He inspired it…
Here’s the one track that Gene and John McL did both play on back in the day: the then-unreleased ‘Ali’, recorded at a Miles Davis session in 1970. It also features Billy Cobham, who became, of course, the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s drummer. So here we have, several months before Gene’s rehearsals for the MO job, the very trio that rehearsed…
Drums – Billy Cobham
Electric bass – Gene Perla
Electric piano – Keith Jarrett
Guitar – John McLaughlin
Soprano Saxophone – Steve Grossman
Trumpet – Miles Davis
That”s more like it!
Thanks, Lodey! Here’s Gene doing his thing with the Elvin Jones quartet in France, 1973:
Well there’s a coincidence. Just last week I picked up a vinyl copy of the Jeremy Steig album Energy, having never seen it before. Perla and Eddie Gomez share the bass duties. Jan Hammer is prominently featured on the whole thing. It’s great.
Also, just yesterday I picked up the Jerry Goodman/Jan Hammer album Like Children, from 1974 also on vinyl. I was aware of this one but have not owned it before.
Great stories as ever Colin. Thanks
Thanks Nick – I have a soft spot for ‘Like Children’, but I don’t own a copy of ‘Energy’ yet – just heard bits online. i must seek out the vinyl (from memory, of trying to seek out a copy after speaking with Gene, I think it’s tricky to find on CD, under its own title or bundled with other tracks).
Great reads, Colin, as ever. I have the “Jeremy & The Satyrs” album, but not “Energy.”
Thanks, HP!