Posts
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| RTF IV onstage |
[Editor's Note: Lenny White and his fellow jazz/rockers have
already returned home to the States, and picked up an opening act, and his crack outfit, Zappa Plays Zappa. After touring the East
Coast and Midwest, they have been lighting up the Left Coast. Today's installment was filed as RTF IV were
wrapping up in Europe. There's big news here of a DVD-in-progress,
plus White's interesting take on the current state of the music industry. Stay tuned for the next editions, covering
their recent travels on the West Coast as they revisited the band's original
'70s home territory and stomping grounds--and after that, the much-anticipated
return to the enthusiastic fans of Japan.]
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| Lenny White and Esperanza Spalding backstage at Montreux |
"While we were in Montreux we did some filming for a
DVD we're making. Part of the problem that I have with recording a live
performance, at a festival like Montreux, is that their cameras and lights are
set up and everybody looks the same. All
the videos and DVDs from there look the same.
That isn't necessarily what we would like to do, and if you want a video
with your own personal textures to it, you really can't do that. When we recorded the performance and did the
video, there were parts of it we didn't like, so we told the audience after the
performance, "We're going to come back and redo parts of it. If you want to stay, you can stay," and
almost everybody stayed. It was like
being at a movie shoot where we'd have a take, and then the director would say
'Cut! Cut! That's good, but this time let's try it a little different,' and we
would do it that way. That's what we did
with the audience, and that, for me, was more special than the actual
concert. During the breaks between
shots, while the band was having conversations about what they were doing, I'd
have a conversation with the audience.
It was really cool. Montreux was
good. Patti Austin was
there. Esperanza Spalding
opened up for us."
"After that we went to Sete,
France, an absolutely
beautiful setting with a full moon rising over the Mediterranean. The festival was packed with people who were
so enthused, so emotionally moved that people were crying, including a lady who
was with the festival--she had been there, had heard bands for seven weeks, and
she started to cry. She said the music
that we played touched people so deeply.
It was a beautiful setting, a great concert.
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| RTF IV onstage at Aosta, Italy. From left: Chick Corea, Jean-Luc Ponty, Stanley Clarke, Frank Gambale and Lenny White |
"We played in Aosta, Italy, and then we did Pescara, both outdoor festivals, and the
audiences were great. What's very
interesting is that Return To Forever is not a fusion band. It's a jazz-rock band. Part of the reason I say that is that we have
two distinctly different but authentic musical styles that we play on any given
night. Every night we play jazz, and we
play rock. It's very obvious when I see
it from the stage. In certain parts of
the concert people will be sitting with their arms crossed, their legs crossed,
enjoying the acoustic bass, the piano, the acoustic guitar, the violin, almost
maybe like they'd listen to classical improvising... and then we come back for
an encore and play "School Daze," and everybody is on their feet,
jumping up, clapping their hands, like at a rock concert. For the same band! It's really remarkable to see, and it's a
testament to the musicians who are playing.
I see it happen every night. At
the classical music festival that we played in Germany, there were people in
jackets and ties, and dresses, standing up and rocking. It's really deep! Stanley Clarke says, 'There's a
rocker in everyone,' and it's been proven every night."
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| The Aosta fortress |
"On this tour we're doing music from all the electric
Return To Forever periods. Right now
we're in discussions about doing a film.
Not just a documentary, because I wouldn't want it to be done the same
way every other documentary film is done.
I think we're going to approach it from a different perspective, with
someone who has a real vision, as opposed to just doing a concert film--that's
not really what we want to do. The angle
is that the industry really has suppressed music like this. When you see the effect it has on people,
there's no reason why this direction in music, and bands like what we
represent, haven't gotten the exposure they deserve. If you look at the number of people this
music reaches, the per capita concentration of fans we make happy during a live
performance, we do as well and reach as many people, in effect, as Lady
Gaga. Without meat dresses, without
dancing and pyrotechnics. If you think
about it, Lady Gaga plays arenas that hold 20,000 people, and we play concert
halls with 2,000 people. I can't compete
with Lady Gaga, who plays in front of 10,000,000 people on her tour. Return To Forever can play in front of
600,000 on a tour. But per capita, I can
say that we reach fans the same way she does.
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| Lenny White at work |
"There's good justification for the music that we play
to be exposed the same way, but that's not the case. From a money standpoint, record labels or
commercially oriented companies want to hire artists with commercial appeal
because they reach more fans. It's
easier for those companies to use them as corporate branding because they reach
a larger audience."
"We touch the soul.
Pop music touches souls because it has lyrics--most of the time it's the
lyrics that touch the soul, not necessarily the performance. You have to be there to
experience a performance for it to touch your soul. You hear the song that has lyrics and you
hear it sung--depending upon how great the artist is who is rendering the
story--you get it and you say, 'Wow, that song really touched me,' because
these words relate to your consciousness, or whatever. Return To Forever has been able to do that
from a musical standpoint.
That's why we have such dedicated fans, because we've been able to
accomplish that without lyrics."
Photo Credits
All Photos: Andrew Elliott