Meanwhile, I am actually assigned the homework of reading Nietzsche. I get a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and dig on the übermensch parallels, but it is “What does not kill me, makes me stronger,” from Twilight of the Idols that will have the most relevance for me regarding this new situation I’m in. Can’t help but think, however, that I might have been better off spending that time listening to more Tony Williams.
6. Summer of ’61
photo of Louis Hayes & Peter by Fred Erskine
I first met Joe Zawinul when I was seven years old, at the same summer music camp where I met Stan Kenton. Two future bosses in Bloomington, Indiana. Joe was there as part of Cannonball Adderley’s Sextet, and drummer Louis Hayes taught some of the drum classes. Other students at this 1961 camp included Don Grolnick, Keith Jarrett, Lou Marini, Jr., Jim McNeeley, and David Sanborn. Gary Burton was at the 1960 camp while Randy Brecker was at the 1962 camp. And so on. A lot of musicians who went on to become musical heroes and/or colleagues of mine were at these camps because these camps provided jazz training that was not yet available in schools. “Jazz” was a dirty word back in those days. You couldn’t even call your school band a “jazz ensemble” or “jazz band.” There were euphemisms like “lab band” or “stage band” or “studio orchestra.” But now, universities offer degrees in jazz pedagogy and performance. “Is there a doctor in the house?” You bet, and that doctor probably earned his or her degree in a jazz studies program.
Jazz education may well turn out to be the most important and long-lasting legacy of Stan Kenton.
I acquired the jazz bug quite seriously at that 1961 camp. At the same time, one of the teachers and musical personalities at the camp, a composer and arranger named Johnny Richards (who was one of the staff writers for the Stan Kenton Orchestra; some of his most famous works include the suite that he wrote for Kenton called “Cuban Fire” as well as the West Side Story album), encouraged me on a most important point. I remember him kneeling down and grabbing both of my shoulders, looking me in the face and saying, “Peter, you be sure to listen to every kind of music.” And so my musical appetite thereafter was fed not only by jazz but by a lot of classical music, which I grew very fond of, as well as by what we now call world music: a lot of recordings from the Caribbean, including calypso, salsa, and Cuban, as well as African musics. I had diverse and interestingly rounded listening experiences as a young musician.
Johnny Richards gave me that sage advice when I was all of nine years old at the close of the Summer Jazz Camp in Storrs, Connecticut. But those first two camps I went to were located a third of the way across the country — a country that had not yet completed its interstate highway system — requiring a two- or three-day driving journey by my parents with older sister Lois in tow. These road trips cultivated my tolerance, if not taste, for long miles and hotel and motel living. I actually enjoyed the smell of the tiny bars of soap that were just placed in our recently cleaned room upon checking in, and a swimming pool in the parking lot seemed like a pretty good concept to me at the time. The road to this first camp was not all just highway or route numbers. It took a telegram from my mother to the jazz camp offices to make this happen.
My teacher, Johnny Civera, and I met at the local music store when my father took me there for my first drum lesson when I was five. I remember asking my dad, “Can I begin taking drum lessons now?” and that was that. Luck was very much on our side for Johnny to be in the store that evening; he was the most patient, loving, and instructive of teachers, and he’s my drumming buddy for life. I liked everything about him: the way he dressed, the way he spoke, and the way he played, of course. Johnny was a swinger (he had worked with Patti Page and Billy May, among others).
It was Johnny who mentioned the Kenton jazz camps to my mother, whereupon she fired off a telegram telling them about this incredible kid drummer — and she signed the telegram in Johnny’s name. Of course, she neglected to mention any of this to Johnny, but when he received a telephone call from the camp offices about me, he caught on quickly enough to recover and claim ownership of the contact, and I was invited to come to the camp. Only problem was that the minimum age for a student attending the camp was 14. This dot did not get connected, but by the time we had driven 700-plus miles and arrived, weary and expectant, the camp staff was divided as to how best to resolve the situation.
Enter Stan Kenton. A separate audition session is set up for that evening where I am to play for Stan personally, and he will decide whether or not it will be appropriate for me to stay. Meanwhile, he (or someone) has invited a photographer from the local newspaper to be there. My parents take me to the audition room where I meet Stan and play for him. I recall thinking that I did not play so well, but we were invited to stay at the camp for the duration — my parents would stay in the dorm room with me — and I could attend theory and drumming classes, rehearsals, and concerts.
Stan was never “Mr. Kenton” to me, only “Stan.” And I grew to love him and the members of his band as well as the other instructors to the point where each summer camp’s end would result in tears on my face. I didn’t want the music to end.
And even though the summer camps had to run their course, I remained enthralled by the musical experience, listening to as much jazz as I could — before school, after school, even during breakfast and dinner, much to the annoyance but abiding acceptance of my two sisters and brother — and occasionally sitting-in with the Kenton band when it would play at the Steel Pier in its ballroom located a half mile out to sea.
There is an audio recording of my playing with Stan’s band, circa 1963, and my drumming style is in many respects much the same now as it was then. The acorn does indeed grow to become the oak tree, and we are who we are. But I have always depended on the kindness of strangers and friends, musical and otherwise, to get to where I was going. And the music world, particularly the brother-and-sisterhood of drummers, is friendlier than most when it comes to encouragement and the sharing of wisdom, knowledge, even trade secrets. In any event, musicians love what they do, and this is reflected by the love we have for one another as human beings. And the teachers at those camps were all very generous people with their time, talent, and wisdom.
Peter w/ Paul Guerrero, NTSU One O’Clock band drummer, 1961
7. Joe
Fukuoka, Japan, in the middle of a Weather Report tour during the summer of 1980. Joe is taking me shopping so I can pick out a briefcase that the band is going to buy me for my birthday. We get to the department store just before opening time. As soon as the doors open, we begin riding the escalators up to the floor where office goods and bags are being sold. Each store employee we pass bows in reverence as they say “Irrashaimase,” which simply means “Welcome.” Floor after floor and person after person bowing and saying this, I’m pleasantly impressed and proud to share this moment with Joe, who is actually moved to tears by the display of hospitality. I ask “Hey, Joe, are you okay?” and he replies: “The humanity of this…the humanity…. It’s unbelievable, man.” He shows a side that he doesn’t share often. Just as quickly, he amends: “Well, you know, they’re probably all saying ‘fuck you’ under their breaths.”
Lest anyone reading this think that Joe Zawinul’s rough, gruff exterior was all that there was to the man, then I would be guilty of painting a one-dimensional portrait. He was gruff and he could be rough as well as scatological and hyperbolic in the extreme. But he was also a sweet and very funny man. Easily the most intense musician I’ve ever known. Joe was possessed and obsessed by the musical vision that carried him all of the way from war-torn Vienna to New York, on the road with Dinah Washington, through his travels with Cannonball Adderley and then Weather Report — not to mention the baptismal fire of Bitches Brew, etc. As Miles Davis said in his liner notes to Joe’s 1970 Atlantic Records album, Zawinul:
Zawinul is extending the thoughts we've all had for years. And probably the thoughts that most so-called musicians have not yet been able to express.
P.S. Dig the two drummers and Herbie with the Echoplex — and the clear funky black soprano sound — and the setting that Woody has to play in. All these musicians are set up. Joe sets up the musicians so they have to play like they do, in order to fit the music like they do. In order to fit this music you have to be “Cliche-Free.” In order to write this type of music, you have to be free inside of yourself and be Josef Zawinul with two beige kids, a black wife, two pianos, from Vienna, a Cancer, and “Cliche-Free.”
Some of the method I observed to Joe’s cliché-free madness:
Number one: “Always compose when you play.”
Number two: “You were playing a beat tonight, and it didn’t sound right. And I turn around and look at you, man. It didn’t look right, neither.”
Number three: Joe would often ask for “more.” What did that mean? When people ask for that, I think they want more focus, more specificity, or more energy — not volume necessarily, but more velocity or forward motion. In drumming we have to move the music along, and even if it’s a ballad it still needs to have some sense of motion. As drummers we have to provide that motion while remaining completely relaxed.
Number four: Joe asked me to play a beat for him, and when I did he noticed that my left leg was bouncing up and down in rhythm even though it was not being used to play the (hi-hat) pedal. “What’s going on with your leg?” he asked. “What do you mean? I’m just moving it in time…” “No,” he interrupted, “Put that energy into what you are playing.”
Number five: One time in concert the beat got turned around, and I did something to try and bring it back in—you know, “Okay everybody, here’s one.” Afterwards, Joe was really bugged, furious. “Why did you do that? It was great before you did that.” “Well,” I said, “I was trying to get beat one straight.” And he said, “One? Fuck one, man! I don’t give a shit about one. One’s not important.” Big lesson in that.
Number six: I was big fan of Billy Cobham. Mel Lewis, Elvin Jones, and Billy were my three favorite drummers around the time I joined Weather Report. But Weather Report — Joe — was really trying to get me to find my own voice.
Joe was a constant teacher and observer.
I had taken piano lessons as a child, and while never mastering the instrument, I managed to learn a few pieces, including the first of the Two-Part Inventions by Bach. Minding my own business before a Weather Report concert, I was playing this piece on a piano backstage when Jaco chanced upon me and summoned Joe and Wayne to check it out. My band cred shot up several points instantly, and I was unofficially appointed to be Weather Report’s classical music authority of sorts. (I was familiar with a lot of classical music repertoire and could name that tune or excerpt more readily than they could most of the time.) Of course, Jaco had intimate musical knowledge of Stravinsky, Hindemith, Copland, Hovanhess, et al, while Wayne had already composed a symphony, and Zawinul was well steeped in the classics. I guess they dug the fact that the drummer could actually play a bit of Bach. No Beethoven, however. Next life, I suppose.
photo: Peter Erskine
8. Educating Peter
It’s interesting to look back and recognize the many future colleagues plus two future bosses who were at the camps. Teachers at the camps included Paul Guerrero, Don Jacobi, Clem DeRosa, Charlie Perry, Alan Dawson, Ron Carter, Jimmy Garrison, Ray Santisi, John LaPorta, Dee Barton, Oliver Nelson, and Ed Soph. Oliver was a gentle man and a musical dynamo. Somehow I was able to play in his band for two years running (by way of audition). I was a pretty good kid drummer; I’d been listening enough to music to know or hear what I wanted to play, I was a fast and open learner, and I was fearless — all without being too pushy. Lucky again in this regard as my parents pushed the doors open for me by way of their involvement, stage-door mom-and-dad energies, plus some M.D. advice, I suspect, dispensed freely by my father to any jazz musician in need of some discrete psychotherapy. Even now, as I listen to the end-of-camp concert recordings preserved on vinyl L.P., I’m impressed by the drumming and general quality of all of the young players. These were tomorrow’s jazz musicians. In any event, I was getting used to placing in the first/“top” band following the start-of-camp audition process.
But then I hit the awkward years. As adolescence began to sneak into and ooze out of me, coupled with a new interest in classical percussion, I became, in a word, a “square.” The summer of 1966 was going to be the big summer camp/family-trip extravaganza for the Erskines. My father borrowed his brother Bill’s Lincoln Continental — aptly named — and the six of us piled into the car for a trip that would take us from New Jersey to Bloomington, Indiana, this time for a classical music camp, and then from Indiana clear across the country to California where I would attend the Kenton Camps at Redlands University, followed by a family trip to Disneyland. After which we drove to Texas and visited my Mom’s sister Marge and family, and then onto Morehead, Kentucky, where I would attend another classical music camp.
Six people are a lot in a car, Lincoln Continental or otherwise. I was 12 years old, my sister Nancy was 16 going on 17, brother Fred was 19, and Lois was 20 going on 21. Nancy and I got stuck in the middle of the seats where the car’s drive shaft bumped up the floor (and always ran hot). I can’t imagine how we did it but we did (although my sisters would bail out in Texas and take a Greyhound bus back to New Jersey, a trip that was not without its own adventures).
Oblivious to the discomfort of my siblings and focused only on the music and the eventuality of being able to visit Disneyland, I was having a ball as we drove cross-country. The first camp was a tremendous immersion into the world of orchestral percussion. So much so that, by the time we left Bloomington and drove the storied miles of Route 66 and arrived in California, I had effectively forgotten what a jazz drummer was supposed to do. Or so it seemed during my disastrous audition.
A bit of background: At the classical camp, I read a snare drum excerpt poorly at an audition there, and so I tried to improve my reading accuracy during that camp. I also concentrated on the xylophone, etc., so my head was not on the interpretive-jazz side of things in California.
I enter the audition room and sit down at the drums, where a piece of big band music awaits me on the music stand. A tempo is counted off and I’m expected to start swinging as if the big band is playing right along with me — a drum chart meant to be a guide at best, but an invitation at the very least to play a beat. Instead, I play the notes literally, just like a well-behaved percussionist and completely drumset-inexperienced novice. “Beat – beat – beat – beat,” etc. No swing at all, not even a beat. I look up instinctively because I know this is not sounding right and that things are not going so well, confirmed by seeing drummer Dee Barton put his head in his hands in a “Good Lord, what’s happened to HIM? Jesus Christ, he’s lost it!” gesture. Which isn’t exactly encouraging to see.
But it was still an ice-cold-water-to-the-face shock to discover early the next morning that my name was nowhere to be found in any of the top- or medium-level bands, but was instead assigned to the LOWEST band assembled at the camp. The BOTTOM. The WORST band. The band of completely inexperienced players. The “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” band at the camp. Losers.
And the Kenton band? Seemed like that was now off-limits to my sitting in. What happened?
And this is where my relationship with Stan Kenton grows deep and why I will always be grateful to him and to those instructors at the camp. They allowed a couple of days to go by, and I adapted pretty quickly to the situation, feeling wronged by fate but accepting my circumstance, as I knew as well as anyone how badly I had played. It was a Wednesday afternoon rhythm-section class for all of the drummers at the camp, and we were expecting Ed Soph and/or Dee Barton to work with us. Instead, there was Stan who, along with Ed, would sit me down at the kit and work solely with me for the entire two hours of the class, essentially taking me apart and putting me back together again. Their expert and, frankly, lovi
ng instruction put me on the correct path towards learning how to swing and encouraged me to stay in the drumming game. Even though my love for classical percussion would continue to grow, that afternoon replanted the crucial seed of my jazz kernel. I was getting some of my mojo back. And I was then allowed to sit-in with the Kenton band before the camp wrapped up.
And six years later, I would be working for Stan as the drummer in his big band.
But first I had to finish this summer marathon. Disneyland was like a dream come true, especially having grown up on the East Coast watching Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on Sunday night after Sunday night, a television show that promoted the park along with Disney-produced films and TV programs. Between the TV glimpses of Disneyland and the promise of California living as shown on My Three Sons, etc., I was in 12-year-old heaven. The family piled into the Lincoln for the long drive to Texas, my sisters bailed out from there because there were no more jazz camps to go to — I think they enjoyed meeting the jazz musicians at those camps — and I then found myself in Kentucky for a once-in-a-lifetime concert band camp experience, playing under the baton of composer Václav Nelhybel and having my first real lesson with Professor George Gaber.
9. Guardian Angels
photo: Nancy Erskine
A person is lucky to have a guardian angel watching over him at some point in life. I believe that I have enjoyed a surfeit of such advantage and good fortune that only a multiple of interested overseers could provide. My parents, Lois and Fred, would certainly count as the first and most important two people in my life. Nothing unusual about that, but they did indulge my every musical whim as best they could. Since my father had been a musician all during his high school, college, and medical school studies — a swinging bass player and bandleader, “Fred Erskine and his Music for Moderns” being one of his more notably named ensembles — I was the one child out of four who caught his fathering fancy to its best advantage, to the slighting of my siblings, I’m afraid. Even though we all lacked for nothing growing up, I did receive a disproportionate amount of his attention and interest. He kept an eye and ear out for my practice sessions, took me to lessons and gigs, found me drums and drum teachers all over the world. Mom grabbed the reins of finding opportunity for me as well, her telegram bringing me to the attention of the National Stage Band Camp folks, etc. In addition to my parents, my sisters and brother were always loving and supportive. Imagine them growing up in a house where the practicing of drums took place before breakfast or during dinner! If I was treated like the star athlete in the house, they were the best sports.
No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report Page 3
