Spotlight Archive 8

LARRY CARLTON: STILL REELIN’ IN THE YEARS

By Tinnie P. Esguerra

Three notes, and you know it’s him.

With his distinctive style and touch, it’s hard not to recognize the playing of guitar legend and studio heavyweight Larry Carlton. Ranked as one of the most recorded pop and jazz guitarists in history, he has released more than 20 solo albums, done more than 3,000 studio sessions and picked up a few Grammies within the course of an illustrious career that spans four decades.

The angular bends, haunting volume swells, lyrical phrasing and superimposed triadic approach are stamped all over his works which range from his early stints with the Jazz Crusaders, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Michael Franks, Mike Post (of ‘Hill Street Blues’ fame) to collaborations with fellow axe-slingers Lee Ritenour and Steve Lukather (of the rock supergroup, Toto).

In retrospect, it’s amazing how Carlton managed to steer clear of the short-lived fads and gimmickry that most of his contemporaries refer to as the “fusion era excesses”. He didn’t pick up on the whammy bar craze when Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and the other rock gods made it part of their staple sound during the early 80s.

Neither did he resort to the flashy two-handed tapping techniques popularized by Allan Holdsworth or Stanley Jordan; or the frenzied sweep-picking razzmatazz of Australian fusion god Frank Gambale.

But that’s not saying that Carlton’s playing is nothing short of wimpy. Even during his early studio gigs with Steely Dan during the 70s, he could easily out-rock his peers with nothing more but his trusty 1968 Gibson ES-335 and Boogie amps.

As a sidelight, it was his legendary guitar solos in the Steely Dan’s “Royal Scam” and “Aja” albums that got him his biggest share of guitar fans – making him also one of the most-imitated players even to this day.

Rolling Stone magazine even called his “Kid Charlemagne” solo (from Steely Dan’s Royal Scam album) “one of the three greatest rock guitar solos ever”.

And if the adulation of his fans wasn’t enough, a more fitting icing on his cake then was getting the nod of the ever-critical, nitpicking tandem of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. In an interview with author Brian Sweet for his 1994 book, ‘Reelin’ In The Years, author Brian Sweet quoted Becker as saying, “With Larry, every pass through a tune he made was something good. If we had something in mind that was even remotely appropriate for Larry, he could do it well. It was never like pulling teeth with Larry, as it could be with other people.”

Becker continues, “If Royal Scam is the definitive Steely Dan guitar album, then Larry Carlton is the reason why. There would be a lot of volatile musical styles in the room, and in a lot of cases, it seemed to me that Larry, more than anyone else, was holding things together rhythmically and in other ways.”

But the fabled Steely Dan sessions are only the tip of Carlton’s musical iceberg. Since studio work required a thorough working knowledge of most guitar styles, Carlton kept up with most any challenge hurled his way – even if it meant playing saccharine melodies for Barbra Streisand and Partride Family dates, or a more raunchy approach for Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall, or Billy Joel’s Piano Man albums.

Carlton attributes his well-rounded guitar style to early lessons with guitar teacher Slim Edwards – a chain-smoking, guitar shop regular who started off his lessons with a furious jamming session and then settled into a more systematic lesson for the day.

It was Larry’s mom, Maebell Carlton, who was also largely responsible for encouraging her son to take guitar lessons at an early age – even if it meant spending the family’s only disposable income of $5 dollars each week for Larry’s lessons.

Of his more famous solos, Larry reminisces, “For the Kid Charlemagne solo, we were just in the studio that night and we played around with it for a couple of hours. The first part of the solo – more than half of it – came out in one take. They started again and I finished it up in the next pass. So, basically it was two takes.”

“As for the Don’t Take Me Alive solo,” he continues, “that was Donald’s idea to open with the big guitar chord. They didn’t have an intro. So, I remember standing in the middle of the studio by myself, in front of my little tweed amp, just playing that one chord until we got one they liked.”

Although Carlton has chalked up more than close to two dozen solo albums, perhaps his best work can be culled from his late 70s to early 80s efforts, from his self-titled record to the more aggressive Strikes Twice and Sleepwalk.

Not surprisingly, one of his more popular songs “Room 335”, sounds uncannily close to Steely Dan’s “Peg”. Of this quirk, he confesses, “The chord progression is partially borrowed from Steely Dan. I loved the sound of the particular chord changes. At the time, that was a very fresh sound.”

To this day, even in the wake of frustrated guitarists scratching their heads as they try to top Carlton’s tone and technique, his playing stands out as a testament to real guitar artistry – a fitting reminder that tone, after all, doesn’t come from a guitar or amp but from the fingers and the heart.

Pat
Metheny GUITARSPEAK
WITH PAT METHENY

By Tinnie P. Esguerra

It’s ironic how one of the most innovative jazz guitar titans of the past few decades has evolved a soloing philosophy and technique that’s anything but guitar-like.

From duo settings with mentor and jazz legend Jim Hall to full-blown band settings with Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, Steve Reich and of course, the Pat Metheny Group, Metheny’s horn-like and unpredictably complex melodic lines weave in and out of the most challenging chord progressions.

And although most of his album catalog showcases his eclectic influences and brilliant compositional skills (including the gold record-winning “(Still Life) Talking”, “Letter from Home and Secret Story”), it’s his trio albums where he gets the chance to burn and showcase his fret board virtuosity. To date, some of his best trio works include “Bright Size Life”, “Rejoicing”, “Question and Answer” and “Trio ’99”.

It’s not surprising how his debut album (which also featured bass wizard Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses) was actually comprised of guitar exercises he wrote for his students, during his tenure at the Berklee College of Music. In 1973, when he was 19, he became the school’s youngest teacher. Metheny felt that his teaching stint gave his theoretical grounding a more pragmatic, real-world footing.

Pat Metheny “At that time,” Metheny recalls, “I was very dogmatic, as 19- and 20-year-olds tend to be. I had very, very strong opinions about a bunch of stuff that I’ve since modified drastically. But on the other hand, it probably didn’t hurt anybody too much to hear me rant about how you HAD to be able to play “Falling Grace” using only chord tones. Now, I could hear somebody play the same song and do some really hip free stuff over it, and I’d probably say, “Yeah, that’s an interesting way to do it.” Back then, it would have been, “No! You’ve GOT to do it this way!”

Of his debut album, he says, Bright Size Life itself was an exercise showing how to use interval leaps in playing diatonic chord scales. “Unity Village” was the same kind of thing, using a larger major-seventh interval leap and inversions of it. When it came to make my record, it was like, “Well, okay, I’ve got these,” he muses. “I mean, they were called ‘Exercise No. 3’ and ‘Exercise No. 6’. Bob (Moses) used to make fun of the titles.”

In retrospect, Metheny’s horn-like phrasing was an offshoot of his trumpet-playing days, which he started at age 8. It was during that time when he soaked up the works of Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. As he narrates, “It took exactly one listen to a Miles Davis record (‘Four and More’) to start me on that long and fascinating road that it seems all improvisational musicians must journey.”

And although he can run through a flurry of long-winded sixteenth-note phrases, Metheny usually stays within the confines of simpler, sing-able melodies.

“That’s the area where most horn players have a hard time with guitar players,” Metheny explains. “Their phrasing just doesn’t feel that good to them. So many guitar players, if they were trumpet players, they’d be tonguing every note. It would be like, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. You can’t sell a line with that kind of phrasing.”

“With somebody like Paul Chambers, Clifford Brown or Joe Henderson, there’s so many details in the way that they phrase, and so many guitar players don’t even think about that,” he adds.

In more ways than one, Metheny’s sense of phrasing sounds remarkably similar to Ornette Coleman’s, in that both have the knack for squeezing out the most of a simple melodic idea: repeating it with various accents, making a related counterphrase, and twisting and turning it around harmonically and rhythmically for all it’s worth.

“That’s always something to strive for,” reaffirms the Kansas City native. “That is development in a linear or narrative way of playing. When I think of the best improvisers around, Ornette would be right at the top, but there’s also Gary Burton, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Paul Bley and Charlie Haden. All of those guys have something in common, which is, every idea that they have, they let it be itself, to its natural conclusion. So many improvisers that I hear, especially younger guys, it’s almost like soundbytes: They play this, then it’s over, then they play that, then that. The best solos that I’ve played, it’s really one idea. You take that one idea and you find a way of going with it to the end. That’s something I always encourage musicians to think more about, because that’s something that non-musicians can respond to – a style that expands on single ideas so that anyone, musician or not, can follow the line.”

Like Miles Davis, Metheny often employs a more economical style with lots of space, at times repeatedly playing the same note two or three notes with different accents. “Most musicians tend to think that motivic development means expansion, or playing more notes. But that’s not always the case. Sonny Rollins is a great example of that; he’ll just keep reducing things down to an essential point. It’s also useful to find common notes, common tones that can connect things throughout a piece.”

Even after winning countless music polls and garnering various ‘Best Jazz Guitarist’ awards, Pat Metheny’s distinctly-singular ‘phrase dance’ continues to echo in his songs as he continues to lead a hectic touring schedule while at the same time lending his support to emerging artists and established veterans alike.