Forever: Stanley Clarke Previews N•4EVER’s Performance at the 2024 Newport Jazz Festival (Part Two)

We continue our conversation with NEA Jazz Master Stanley Clarke. You can read part one here.

PostGenre: You were one of the first people to fully take the electric bass from the background rhythm section to being featured as a melodic instrument. Do you have a sense of why musicians did not do that previously?

Stanley Clarke: Part of my doing so was by accident. I always composed a lot of music. I heavily studied the acoustic bass, and my original plan was to join an orchestra. I wanted to be in the Philadelphia Orchestra. I had a lot of music, was in bands, and was composing music. But I noticed that there weren’t many written specifically for the electric bass. Very little. Nothing. 

I was very happy when Jaco Pastorius came on the scene after that because he also showed how we can do stuff as electric bass players. But, before that, I was writing stuff for the electric bass, mostly simple tunes. The electric bass is not an instrument that I studied much. It was more of a fun instrument for me. So I wrote some stuff, played it, recorded it, and people liked it.

PG: While you were having success with the electric bass, you also did not give up playing the acoustic. Christian McBride recently said about you, “I always tell people that if there were a Bible of the history of doubling with both the double bass and the electric bass, Stanley would be its Genesis. It all starts with him.” Any thoughts on that statement?

SC: [Laughing]. Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve played both instruments. And again, the electric bass was interesting. Because I had played the acoustic bass and studied that so hard. Some of the stuff from the acoustic bass rubbed off onto when I played the electric bass. I don’t play the electric bass the same way I do the acoustic, but I still get into all the notes, everything from the bottom to the top. The electric bass, to me, was and still is a bass guitar, so there is also a guitar factor there. But the electric bass has always been a fun instrument. I loved playing it in the early bands, like rock bands. It was a lot of fun to play at dances and things like that. I still have that spirit and that inspiration when I pick it up; that it’s all fun. 

PG: When you were twenty-five, you were headlining tours, selling out shows, and creating gold albums. That is pretty unheard of for an instrumentalist today. Do you feel that the unlikelihood of it happening today is a testament to the quality of the music you were making back then, or did something in the music industry change?

SC:  I think things have changed and, believe it or not, I think those changes have very little to do with the music. The one thing I will say is that because of technology, more people are making records today. Or, at least, more people can make records now. When I was younger, a record exec[utive] would be aware of maybe fifteen people who were making records, and out of those fifteen, maybe two would actually make it to release a recording. There’s much more opportunity for people to get out there now. 

But there’s also less opportunity to be truly distinctive because so many people are out there. And because of that, the business has changed. It also ties into how easy it is for a listener to access a record today. I know when I put our new record out there, within hours, a few people will find the tracks and put them on the Internet, YouTube, or whatever. So, as far as record sales are concerned, that went out the door. 

Of course, there is streaming. But, God, we’d have to do a whole separate interview on just that. I mean, we used to get money per play. Now, we get like a percentage of a penny. It’s pretty bad. The record has pretty much become a tool to get you on the stage. That’s why I tell young people not to think they will be able to make a record and use it to buy a Rolls Royce. A few [musicians] can do that, but they’re usually the artists that are, in my opinion, manufactured. [Record] companies will rally around some of those artists, and you can see it. You see them on stage with big screens, explosions, and all that kind of stuff. It seems like they just showed up yesterday, and that’s a great sign that person has help. 

PG: One thing that is interesting, particularly with regards to Return to Forever, is how much of a following the fusion music of the ‘70s had outside of the usual “jazz people.” College students who were not typically “jazz fans” were listening to Return to Forever in their dorm rooms, for instance. Do you think that broader appeal is something that is needed more now? 

SC: Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, and maybe two other bands were the ultimate grassroots, you know? Those bands became very popular by word of mouth. They were tremendous word-of-mouth bands, and you could see it. You could physically see it. You hear about grassroots movements and the word-of-mouth phenomenon in any business, but you can see it with us. I mean, we would play a city, come back to that city six months later, and our audience would be tripled. 

Many radio stations never played Return to Forever’s music. They didn’t know what to do with it. There were a lot of things that those [fusion] bands had. We were as loud, if not louder, than rock bands. But the [fusion] bands were also virtuosic. I mean, for someone to say that Billy Cobham is not a virtuosic drummer is crazy, you know? The rhythms we played were from the music that we grew up with. Because we all had a jazz element, we could improvise over chord changes. Those bands were also very committed back in those days. The guys in those bands deeply believed in their bands. Though I am a little biased, I think Return to Forever was the best out of all those bands because of our compositions. 

PG: Do you feel there is anyone making “jazz” music today that has that broader appeal groups like Return to Forever did? 

SC: It’s funny because nowadays you don’t, or at least I haven’t, see a lot of bands like that. There is a band called Snarky Puppy that is kind of like that. They’re good, but the thing I greatly like about them is that they were a band and a movement. I think today you have a lot of people, young players, who want to make their own records as a leader. I don’t dissuade anyone from doing that, but I will say that sometimes it’s better to just play in a band. Sometimes, you can take five guys who have all made strong records by themselves, and if you put them together, a real synergetic effect can happen. That’s what happened with Return to Forever. Chick was very smart with that. And it also definitely happened with Joe Zawinul and Wayne [Shorter] with Weather Report. And John McLaughlin with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And so on and so on. 

What I am waiting for is something revolutionary to come along. Some young musicians who will come and play while standing on their heads, or something. [Laughing]. I don’t know. I don’t know. But somebody may come along and do something revolutionary. To some extent, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and all those groups did that. It was very different. 

We had a lot of rock bands that wanted us to open for them so badly. Carlos Santana for one. Even Fleetwood Mac. We had a lot of shows with Fleetwood Mac. What they were doing and what we did were two completely different kinds of music. I remember the first time, Mick Fleet was on the side of the stage watching us play, probably thinking, “Where the hell did these guys come from, and when?” And when School Days (Nemperor/Epic, 1976) came out, I used to open for bands like Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath, and Uriah Heep. I played with so many of those bands, and it seemed like often they were at the side of the stage waiting for me to play “School Days” because it was something new. 

PG: Jumping to the 1980s, you formed a band with George Duke, The Clarke/Duke Project. What did you enjoy most about that group?

SC: Well, George was like a big brother to me. He was so much fun. I met George in 1971 or 1972 when he was playing with Cannonball Adderley. We were somewhere in Europe and bumped into each other in a hotel. We both had gigantic afros, and it was really funny we were both in this very tiny hotel. He said to me, “Are you Stanley?” And I said, “Yeah, you are George Duke.” And from there, we got together a lot. In between everything else, we would get together. I’d play on his records and he played on mine. And we stayed friends.

Right around 1980, one of the executives at Epic [Records] had a great idea for us to make a record together. His exact words were “You guys should go buy suits, find some guy with a camera to take a picture, and go make a record.” And that’s what we did. [The Clarke/Duke Project (Epic, 1981)] was a very successful record. And from then on, we would just play together in between our other projects. It was a lot of fun, and George was a good guy. 

PG: Circling back to N•4EVER, you mentioned how this new band goes back to Return to Forever in terms of inspiration. Why do you feel, five decades later,  that music still has such an influence on people?

SC: I think when you look at the elements, the ingredients, of that music, they are things that people still appreciate. People admire the virtuosic nature of the music. I’ve seen that admiration even by guys who are into completely different types of music. They look at something like Return to Forever and can see accomplishment. Return to Forever has a compositional element to it, but also a jam band quality, and I think people react to that. 

I feel that N•4EVER also has those elements. It’s a very good band with fiery, tremendous individual efforts in it. We have a great violinist named Evan Garr. Jean-Luc Ponty told me about him when Evan was 12 years old. He’s a tremendous violinist that not enough people know about. When you hear him, it’s really something. We also have a young piano player from the country of Georgia named Beka Gochiashvili. He’s one of the best young piano players out there. Actually, I can’t think of too many guys of any age that are better than him.

I see people that come to our shows, particularly at festivals that have a wide array of different types of groups. When we hit the stage, you can tell who your existing fans are. They’re up there jumping around and at my age, all those guys are older. But you also see so many younger people out there sitting and watching. And by the end of the set, they too are going crazy because they see something. I think that something is seeing virtuosic musicians who have no problem projecting it out to people. That will always be something that human beings respond to.  

Catch N•4EVER at the Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 3, 2024. More information on the Festival can be found here. We will be providing live coverage of the event. You can read more about Stanley Clarke  on his website. 

Photo credit: Matt Lorentzen