once, someone asked me what inspired me to take up the piano.
first of all, its more like a possession. I can’t live without it for long. but I don’t know. maybe its a family tradition.
I never took lesssons, but I began banging around in high school. I switched to guitar in college. my roommate Chris’s little sister got a new guitar, and handed down her old one to me to play around with. she taught me my first song, too. you’ve got to admit, guitar is practical. its light. its portable, you can tune it yourself. and its not hard to plunk out a few tunes that don’t suck too bad.
but on reflection, I think it was hoagy carmichael who first got me banging the bones. go back and listen to an early cut of stardust, from back there in the 20’s, and then get back to me. there was a scene in a movie, I think maybe “to have and have not”, or one of those with bogey and lauren bacall and there was this dude with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, always with a drink nearby, and a goofy grin, just banging away, and it looked like he was really having a good time. looking back, I guess I wanted to travel through time, and hit on a young thing like laren bacall was back then, as well as learn to play.
hoagy was a pretty accomplished songsmith, and I still love that big easy whorehouse sound, but ultimately his repetroire just won’t sustain you for long.
I’ve had different inspirations over the years. at first, I thought donald fagen’s jazz rock fender rhodes deep chorus over/under style was the tops
(can you hear me doctor?). then I might have said it was keith jarrett who I most admired. he’s something else, like an alternate logic ((if the) misfits (wear it)). turns out I have a lot of trouble with my memory, and something about his pure improvisation appealed to me.
then years later I banged on a blues organ in a band for a while, and that’s a whole other thing.
but lately, I’ve had a kind of breakthrough in my thinking, and I’m kind of triangulating between vastly simplified polyphonic ideas inspired by bach’s cantata chorales and fugues, the few ones I can even think of approaching, bill evans’ brilliant “conversations with myself”, and joe zawinul’s ballads, like “a remark you made” or “from vienna with love” (see city on the hill, or for monica, or any of that other noise).
anyway, that’s where I’m going, or I think I’m trying to go with my music these days.