John Abercrombie
John Abercrombie
John Laird Abercrombie is an American jazz guitarist, composer and bandleader. His work often explores jazz fusion, post bop, free jazz and avant-garde jazz. Abercrombie studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. He recorded his debut album, Timeless with Manfred Eicher's ECM label, and has recorded principally with this label since. Abercrombie has played with Billy Cobham, Ralph Towner, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker, to name a few. He is known for his spare, understated, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth16 December 1944
CountryUnited States of America
On record dates like that I never felt too nervous because everything was really overdubbed. When we did that album, we were in the studio for probably a week, so you had a lot of opportunity to fix things.
They're young, and I'm getting older every game.
You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.
Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces.
I don't remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. I had been on the road with Johnny and working gigs and playing a lot of the organ clubs.
As Eric Dolphy said 'Once you play the music, it's in the air. It's gone'. And that's true. But when you record it, it comes back to haunt you sometimes.
To be creative and spontaneous, you have to live with imperfection.
If you listen to a lot of music, it gradually seeps into your consciousness or your unconsciousness and comes out in your music.