SIX
DAYS AT RONNIE SCOTT’S: BILLY COBHAM ON JAZZ FUSION AND
Brian Gruber
Creative Multimedia Concepts, Inc.
ISBN-10: 1717493009 £11.95
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.
|