Teo Macero – Advice for Musicians

You know, people have often asked me, “Do you have advice for being a musician or whatever or a producer or…?”

I do.

And I think the first thing you do is you get a good education.  And listen to all the types of music: classical, jazz.  And learn to write.  Learn to conduct.  Learn something about the history of music.  Why you are at a certain spot in history.  And why you haven't moved.  I mean, these things I think are very important.

I mean, I was a rebel at school.  Maybe you should, as a student or as a composer or whatever should be a rebel.  I think all great things come from these idiots like not that I invented anything but I've done a lot of crazy things.  I split up the orchestra.  I remember writing a piece at Juilliard at one time.  And my instructor said “Well, what are you going to do about it?”  I said, “Well I frankly don't know.  I we got this concert tomorrow.”  I said “I really don't know, so…”  I have an idea.  I said, “I'm going home.” 

I went back and I cut it all up.  There were two pages of score.  I cut this up.  And I cut it up and I pasted it took out a lot of score.  And I pasted it all over again.  So these two, these two pages became maybe six pages or seven pages.  I said, “Okay, now I'm gonna split up the orchestra.  I'm gonna put the trumpets on stage; the percussion on stage. In the mezzanine and I'm gonna put ten saxophones, and in the far balcony I'm gonna have four trombones and two tubas and then, then, downstairs I'm gonna have a solo singer.”

“And were gonna have five conductors.”

The guy said, “You’re outta your chuckles…well yours, this will never work!”

I said, “I remember hearing a piece where they had the orchestra on stage and the solo trumpet was in the balcony.”  I said, “We just augmented it with four other conductors and I spread it out.”

The piece was reviewed.  I have a review of this from the Herald Tribune.  The woman came, Peggy Glanville Hicks, came to hear the concert.  After the concert, in the review, she said it was like thunder coming from the floor.  She couldn't believe it!  It was like something mushrooming out of a, like an atomic bomb.  And the way I had written it with cacophony you know cause it was very difficult to write saxophone parts to make it harmonically with someone, using different textures, different colors.  You know, you can put all the trumpets in one kind of color and the percussion on another.  And what happened was they were throwing spit balls at me. Laughs.  I'm trying to conduct the other four conductors.  “Pfoo”, spit balls coming at over the lights at Juilliard. 

So at the end of the concert, it got such a rave review that it won me a $1,500 prize with BMI.  And not only that but we did a concert earlier, and the president, we had great arrangers in the band and we had a great Big Jazz Band.  And the president, and I have this on a record too, I was up in the editing room, making a record for posterity for the school.  And he made this speech and he said, “I've listened to everybody this week.  All the people from across the country, around the world, here at Juilliard as the symposium.  And he says, “The real music, the real thing that happened was Wednesday at noon when this bunch of guys got up and gave a concert.” He says, “It was unreal the textures that came through in the arrangements and everything.  This was the best thing of the whole week.”  Now, if you don't believe me I can give you a copy of the record. 

Interviewer: You did that when you were a student?

I was a student, yeah.  And then I got a couple of scholarships while I was there, and then a couple of Guggenheims for writing music and I worked with Aaron Copeland up in Tanglewood one summer.  So it was a combination of everything, you know, being a rebel, trying to do something, trying to destroy the blues, trying to create something.  And we had a lot of wonderful things going at the time but nowadays musicians don't have the chance to work with other musicians.  They do in a school situation, but not in the not in the improvisational kind of situation where they come to a club and sit in or a loft.  You know we had a lot of lofts, you know, when I was growing up that you could go and you could sit in.

I remember sitting with Ornette Coleman one night.  That was an experience that, you know, will live on in my memory forever.  I mean I, it was snowy night I was always carried my instrument with me.  It was during a date at 30th street.  I said “I think I'll go down and see him at the Five Spot.”  I go down to the Five Spot and I ask if I can sit in and he said “yeah, yeah, man, yeah.”  So I get up there and I get ready to play and so I said to the guy “what do you want me to do?”  The guy said “w-oh, w-oh, what do you want to play?”  I said “Let’s play There’ll Never Be Enough.”  He said “Man, we don’t play those kind of tunes.”  I said “ok.” Laughter.  Being adventurous I said “Holy Jesus what am I getting into here?”  I mean I heard them playing, they were going (imitates instrument sounds at a fast pace).  So I said “well let’s do another number.”  The guy said “Man, we don’t play those kind of tunes!”  So Ornette said “we’re going to play…” well hell I don’t remember what the song was.  And he stomps it out (claps out a fast rhythm).  I said “Holy Jesus I’m holding on for dear life.”  I said, “What can I do?”  So I said to the trumpet player, “What do I do what do I do?”  He said, “Man, just get up there and wail.”  I said “oh, ok” and I go, “Boop Boooooop Wooo (imitates a screaming trumpet).”  And I fitted in quite well with the group.  It was an experience.  I never forgot it.  You know with Ornette, it was really a challenge.  So you know there again you got to have a couple of ears.  If you don’t listen you could, you could be out there in left field and not know where the hell you are.  You know I was trying to figure out you know in my own mind.  I’m listening and I’m trying to anticipate but then I had complete abandonment.  And I said “this is it.”

And later on in my earlier records the first one I made in 1953 was like that.  But we had five improvisational tracks on one record but with Rudy Van Gelder.  And he thought he was a nut case.  I said, “Look it, you’ve got to run tape here” cause I tried to sound in the studio up at Juilliard.  And, and but we only had a turntable and as we tried we had two turn tables and as we were I was adding a part it was getting slower and slower and slower.  Once we got the tape...  Then my first record which was… you’ve got to take your money and invest it where you think you should.  I had five hundred dollars in the bank.  That’s all I had.  So I said I’m going to invest it and make a record.  I made it with Debut Records with Charlie Mingus’ company.  And so I would, when I went to Rudy Van Gelder’s.  So I said “put the tape on.”  And I’m up there “do-an do-an do (imitates trumpet sound)”  I mean I’ll give you a copy of all these things cause there all there.  And then I said, “Look it, Rudy, take that out now.  Put that on another machine and put another tape on and record the two tracks, the one I just did and this new one.”  I did it five times.  And I wrote out the score so it had some continuity. I just didn’t want it to be helter-skelter without some dynamic range to it.  But I did that and it worked out very well.  And when we first put it out people panned the bejesus out of it.  They said, “What does he think he is?  This is not jazz.  This is not this.”  You know and we were panned.

I had to live it down for years.  I said “look I was just trying to, you know my humble way I was so naive at that time. I was just trying to do something a little different that might make sense.  And some of the pieces on there are really great. 

We had overdubs.  I mean in those days they never did that.  I mean they might have done them somewhere but I remember doing an overdub with one of the tracks.  And I was unhappy with what I finally ended up with.  I was an employee at that time at CBS but I was making this record for them too.  You could go up to the studio and get an engineer and just go up and do it.  I mean nowadays you’d say, you’d need an act of Congress… and went up to them and I had I said, “Put the tape on and put another machine on.  I’m just gonna play.  I’m just gonna do it once.”  And I did.  I mean one pass and that was it.  And it’s called Sounds of May.  It became a very important piece of music for a lot of documentary films.  I still play it every once in a while.  It still sounds pretty good.  It was done over fifty years ago.

For young people, get a good education, find a career that you could, if you have to, change, that you can change to.  I mean I wasn’t that lucky cause I was welded to being a musician.  But I think, you know, learn to copy music.  Learn how to write music.  Learn how to do all those things that a producer should do.  And try to get as much experience as you possibly can.  Cause without that you’re a dead duck.  I mean if you think you’re going to do it from living in a closet, you can’t do that.  I mean, I’ve helped a lot of people.  I said, “Look it, you’re a good musician, but there might be tough times coming.  Learn how to copy music.”  I mean I still copy my own parts.  Not all of them, but I still copy parts.  I mean, I think it is important to be able to grab a pen and say “Ok, you know, and write it all out and look at it and say geez.”

I remember when I was at Juilliard, I had some bamboo, not bamboo, but strips of wood in my apartment.  And I used to pin up everything.  I’d write it and I’d pin it all up.  And then I’d look at it and study it. And I’d say “well this was even before I even had the chance to get a Guggenheim or anything like that or a prize for being alive.  It was just one thing after another.  But I think you really have… if you’re dedicated, you might make it.  But don’t let anybody deter you from what you...  If you believe in something then and work with somebody that is really trying to help you, if you’ve got the courage to do that and the discipline to do that, I think you’ll be alright.  I mean the music business today is tough.  There’s very little outlet so I always…

I would like to become a lawyer.  I’d like to sue everybody I’ve worked with over the years like these record companies.  I mean I think they’re a bunch or crooks.  And we’re finding out more and more that the record companies are crooks.  I mean they don’t pay the royalties.  There’s EMI and this guy Spitzer is just now suing and just got done I don’t know how many millions, a couple hundred millions in back royalties.  I mean they don’t like to pay royalties.  They don’t want to pay you for anything.  They think you could, you know this is the way to do it, that you like to play, but you gotta eat.  If you don’t eat, you can’t work.  If you can’t work, you might as well die.

I mean I work everyday alright, music everyday.  And you gotta be determined to do it and you do it religiously everyday. It’s like reading a paper or doing whatever you have to do. After a while it becomes second nature to you.  And you just sit there and it just comes out one after another.  I mean you can, and it doesn’t have to be a simple piece.  It can be very complex.  And I’ve written a lot of very complex pieces lately.  I just had two concerts and in Baltimore for twelve clarinets.  You say, “Why would you write for twelve clarinets?”  Because the guy gave me a performance!  And not only once but twice!  He got alto clarinets, b-flat clarinets, bass clarinets, contrabass clarinets and the pieces are quite successful.

And I think I want to record them now.  I was supposed to record them a few weeks ago but I was too sick. I couldn’t even get on the plane. I mean, with the gout, and everything else that I had.  It was just too much.  So I had to postpone the recording.  I said “Look it,” I told the guy “You wanna do it, be my guest.  I’ll pay for it, just go do it.”  The guy said “I’d like you there.”  I said “Well look it, if you‘re gonna wait for me, then this is what you’ve gotta tell your players.  I want them to listen to the music.  There’s a lot of improvisation here.  Now, if they listen to the music, they’ll get their improvisation from the music: the tonalities, the dissonances, the rhythmic aspect.”  And sure enough the last concert, they sent me the tape, they did it.  The first tape they sent me, it was like they were doing Benny Goodman links and all kinds of funny little licks.  I said, “That’s not the music what you’ve done; you’ve jumped over the over the boundary line and landed in some other place.  You’ve gotta make sure that the music, it relates to the music.”  I said, “Now if you’ll listen to the music you’ll get your cue.”  And I said “Don’t come out and go play for ten bars constantly. Leave some holes.”  So you go (instrument sounds) and sure enough they did that and it worked out beautifully.  I’ve got a copy of the record, in fact I have it with me.  But I want them to send me a CD copy cause there was one little glitch in it, in the cassette tape.

But this is what they gotta do.  You know, you gotta be determined.  You’ve gotta follow through.  And you gotta try to reach out everyday.  And you gotta if you’re sitting home and you don’t know what to do, you start writing music.  I mean if you need some help…  I mean I help people all the time.  People come to me and say, “Well, what about this?”  And I said well “You should do this.”  And I’ve done this quite a few times.  I did this in Europe and I made a record with an English band and I had all the composers sitting around me over there.  I went over there I spent about a week with them.  And I went through the scores and I went to each guy separately and I said “Look it, you may not like what I’m going to say, but, you do whatever you want to do.  If you want to leave it the way it is, that’s perfectly alright by me.”  And we would sit there, we would analyze the music.  And sure enough, the record, and I’ve got the record of this, final record.  And it’s terrific.  These guys went back, changed a little bit and came back with a different attitude and made it.