On piano and drums, on friendship in music, on projects with Polish jazzists, on his new born baby "Dirty and Beautiful vol. II" Gary Husband talks to Gra Studzinska-Cavour

GH: (about the previous interview with Etienne Mbappe in the same room) You’ve got Elvis’ lifestory now? (laughter)
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GSC: Mike and the Mechanics, Gary Husband’s “Drive”, you must be a car freak, aren’t you?

GH: (surprised) Yeah, I do like cars… yes!

GSC: What car was it on the cover of a “Drive” CD?

GH: It’s an E-type Jaguar from 1964 I think. It’s not mine, unfortunately!

GSC: Older than me… How far is it to drive from Jack Bruce, the Pet Shop Boys to NDR Big Band? Pop, funk, fusion, jazz… Is it any importance in a genre of music?

GH: It’s a considerable drive, or application, or switch you have to make if you’re going to play in different genres, but in an intrinsic way to me, you know, it’s all one in the end. My criterion is only that it is good music, and that it’s played with meaning and with heart and soul. It starts for me from being interested in different areas of music, enjoying different things and also being affected by different kinds of music. Then, if you’re going to be involved in different realms you have to know something of it, and things about the artists who are or have been instrumental in that field. You have to study many artists who’ve made the particular realm grow and develop and their disciplines. Then from there, it’s about your own sense of benevolence, and your desire and commitment to making that music work. That’s become a fairly natural existence for me over the years – not just through necessity and needing to work, but also out of a sincere desire to be involved in different things. It’s enriching to me as the artist I am – it broadens me, challenges me, keeps me fresh and contributes in many ways to what I do myself in music. And I believe that’s evident in what I do too. So it’s kind of like a win/win situation. On a practical level also, you know, a musician has to live and many of these what I call “session” activities have provided the means to be able to make records such as “Hotwired”, the piano albums, the “Dirty & Beautiful” project as – at least up until my relationship with Abstract Logix Records – there hasn’t exactly been anyone queuing up at my door with funding to make these endeavours of mine a reality in the past. So what I “reap” from being open and active in a number of different areas of music, is manifold. In a lot of ways.

GSC: I talked to Trilok Gurtu, to Joe Sample, to Vladyslav Sendecki all involved in NDR, what’s so special in the band?

GH: Well, it’s just a fantastic band! One of the great big bands in the world, not only in terms of how they play with each other but also from the point of view the band is full of extraordinary soloists. Every time I get the opportunity to go and work with them in Hamburg I feel blessed, and I’ve made a lot of new buddies and friends there. Wonderful Germany… with it’s public funded radio big bands. Through that, musicians like me get to perform for composers, conductors or artists such as Michael Gibbs, the late Steve Gray, Colin Towns, Maria Schneider, Al Jarreau and many others. Plus, what I really think is wonderful about the band is that it has no resident drummer. Myself - and many others like me - come in and keep everything fresh, from week to week, from project to project. It’s a wonderful, healthy, creative situation at NDR, HR and WDR, and long may it stay that way.

GSC: Who inspired you when you started playing both as a piano and drum player?

GH: I’ll probably give you different answers to that if you ask me that same question every hour! All I can say is that it’s been many multitudes of artists, stemming back to my earliest years… and yes, artists from any different areas of music. I’ll start with my father and mother, since I was born into a musical family. I started to play piano first, since I was apparently trying to play it even before I could reach it, you know, so I really wanted to play the thing before I even knew what it was. And the drums came along a little later. Bill Evans was a particularly major discovery in terms of piano - Jan Hammer, Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock too. I probably listened to guitar players more though, as I just never wanted to develop in just the “piano” way. I don’t want that to sound pretentious or disrespectful… it’s just the horns players – Miles, Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Dave Liebman, and the guitarists, through the “impact” of how they say what they say helped shape what I do on piano more. My slightly obsessive harmony quest harkens back to the influence from a lot of the classical music I was either involved in studying or listening to. That’s where Evans, Hammer and Zawinul come in as a result. As a drummer I saw John Von Ohlen in 1972 on TV with Stan Kenton. It was life changing. I discovered Cobham, who was an early hero, then Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, Tony Williams and Elvin Jones. I was lucky enough to have grown up in a period which was such a fantastic time for music. Such a really fantastic time. They all helped shape me.

GSC: “Diversity is a big spice of my musical life” it’s your quotation. To what extend do you feel a drummer and a piano player? What sounds more inside your soul?

GH: The both mediums are equally and totally of my soul. I know it’s rare, but it’s my way. Both instruments make the “whole” for me, and I don’t really separate them. Y’know, Chick Corea recently attended a show we did with John McLaughlin’s 4th Dimension, and I got to meet him for the first time. You may know, he also plays drums, but not many have heard him do it, and it’s not a part of the famous Chick Corea we know. But he said to me; “You’re doing what I always dreamed of doing – mixing both and being equal on both like that.” And he really sees it… as indeed, in John’s band I’m hopping between the two onstage. It’s a case a lot of musicians have one main instrument, and maybe they play also some piano, or maybe pianist will play some drums or some bass, whatever but this dual voice of playing the two for me is not divided. The two make a whole. Like me. Gemini.

GSC: Oh! You’re Gemini! I’m Aquarius. Both the air signs (laughter).

GH: There you go! My partner, she is Aquarius.

GSC: Jack Bruce, Robin Trower or Level 42 gigs are usually big, open air (like Wimbledon for example) but the atmosphere in jazz settings is different…

GH: I enjoy both. I really like the intimacy of smaller venues and concert venues, but with groups like the ones you mentioned I’ve done the arenas, yes… when you play to big crowds it’s thrilling, but sometimes if they are SO big, the audience is so far away that you can’t feel them or hardly even see them. It’s like you can’t really experience it because it’s just too huge, and you know, almost you can feel a little isolated in that situation. It’s weird! But in a sense when you have a smaller, intimate situation you can feel people so much more. I like to feel people, and to get a strong connection with the audience when I’m playing. I enjoy both, but I favour the more intimate, smaller venues.

GSC: You are a drum clinician sometimes. Please tell me about it.

GH: Oh, not really. A little bit. Lots of drummers do clinics. But I’m very interested in education because I see a shortage of information and lack of attention to elements I feel to be fundamentally important. Maybe I’ll get to do my own DVD one day. I mean, just in the area of drums I see more than ever a lot of intense, super-fast, super-complex elements covered. Not many are talking too much about what you can do through drums that can have the power to break someone’s heart or touch someone profoundly from the drums as well. I mean, I’ve been involved in the super-intense and the high drama – still am to a certain degree – but I’m not interested in being in someone’s face in music the whole way through. I never, ever was. It’s not a competition for me, or a sport or an adrenalin fix. The drums are supposed to be a musical instrument, and they are a very powerful musical instrument! In many ways! I’m also missing characters in music – individuals who play with a lot of their own life being at the source of their creativity, and ones who become recognizable in their styles and grow in that way. Not just something you get out of a book you know? If you’re going to be a player, I feel you have to have something to really say inside music - something that comes from your heart, soul and your life experience. When I listen to somebody I’d like to hear who they are as a person. I kind of miss that. If I get an opportunity to do the drum clinics in front of drummers it’s purely just my way – by example - and everybody has their own way really. I think clinics can be very good for people because you can share ideas and voice things and you can make young musicians think about using their imagination and just inspire them in whatever ways they can accept or be interested in. Through these events we can try and motivate young artists in all sorts of ways… but not just impress, impress, impress, through speed, volume and “flash” you know? That’s boring, and to me, very, very tedious. I’m completely none interested in all of that.

GSC: What about writing music for films? What films?

GH: I’m not writing film music yet, but I’d like to. In a way I always have done… but none of the film-makers know about me yet. Because I have a high propensity (this is a nice word) for atmosphere and mood, these are elements that have been always present with me, and I think that I could do something in the film area very naturally.

GSC: “Dirty and Beautiful” – released or still in progress?

GH: Volume one is released, yes, and volume two is being released right now. It’s been finished and will be available in February. This project is about celebrating the joy of the many great friends and colleagues I have in music, and simply about marking it in music. And it’s a very fusion, “jazz/rock” realm – one very natural to me, and since I passed 50 years old recently I could feel it was the time to do it. Many of my closest friends are involved… and it’s really quite unique too – where else might you find people as diverse as John McLaughlin, Steve Hackett, Robin Trower and Allan Holdsworth cropping up together on the same album? Nowhere that I know of! And Volume 2 continues the party. Coming up on the next one will be Alex Machacek, Wayne Krantze, maybe Mike Stern, John McLaughlin again, Mark King again (John and Mark play together on a track), Jan Hammer is there again, as is Allan Holdsworth… some of my favourite bassists in the world… and many more surprises. It’s really, really a work of love. Following that I am involved in a prog project with singer and songwriter Steven Wilson, and then I start work on another special project – the music of Bill Evans arranged for classical piano trio – piano, violin and cello. Maestros violinist extraordinaire Viktoria Mullova and cellist Matthew Barley I can say will be involved, and maestro John McLaughlin has very kindly agreed to be a part of the project too. This is really very exciting also!

GSC: Alexander Shulgin. What moved you in the Russian music?

GH: I have love for a considerable amount of Russian composers anyway but really this was a different kind of job assignment. Alexander’s a popular songwriter in Russia, and he had an interest in me arranging some of his catalogue in a different kind of way entirely. I’ve kind of done this before, interpreting John McLaughlin’s music, Allan Holdsworth music for piano in a very new way… so I took these very, very simple song forms and put them into a different context and made them work in totally another way. It’s just a work of imagination that I really like. I like doing that.

GSC: Together with the audience of the II Palm Jazz Festival in Gliwice I heard you play with Etienne Mbappe from McLaughlin 4th Dimension and Anthimos Apostolis in a different project…

GH: I showed you drummer with a bad back! But through my two great friends Apple (Apostolis) and ATN (Etienne) of course I didn’t have any problems apart from physical pain which is still here right now. But what we had there was, as Etienne was saying (E. Mbappe talked to me before), a very nice, simple, playing situation. It was not too much like… “it’s got to be like this” or “it’s got to be like that”. It was really left very open. The compositions of Apostolis are nice - they have a lot of space for us to just play, which of course leads the way for spontaneity between us, and each concert that we do, they’re all been really different. It’s the way it should be of course.

GSC: I know you played previously with the Polish bass-player…

GH: Are you talking about Janek (spelled with “j” as in “jazz”)? Janek Gwizdała? He’s Polish… Yeah, of course, he is Polish! I think of him as more English musician or American, but of course I realize and remember that he is Polish…

GSC: Any other Polish players you worked with…

GH: Not too many, no, but I’m hoping to change that and we have already planned something with ATN and two famous Polish jazzists but I can’t say much more right now. I mean, it’s always one of the great things about a musicians’ life - we can travel if we’re lucky, and we can get to work in different countries like this. And travelling is such an enriching thing. Of course we speak the language of music together - it doesn’t matter that I can’t speak Polish, doesn’t matter if they can’t speak English – and to me one of the rewards is to find new people to play with that you’ve never met, in places you’ve never been, to combine in this one, common, simple joy of making music together. And we are just blessed to be able to do this on a consistent basis.

GSC: Just for a happy ending: freedom in music. Is diversity your freedom or you understand it differently?

GH: I think you’ve got to learn what to do with freedom. And I think this is a big lesson. It’s like people who win a lot of money on the lottery. They don’t know what to do with it. You see a lot of very messed up people who’ve become millionaires overnight, you know. Messed up because they don’t know what to do with the money. They just can’t envision that – haven’t thought it through very well… and some don’t appear to have any aspirations or dreams anyway. Maybe they’re not the most benevolent as people either, and they don’t want to help people too much, so… you can see it all the time… they turn to drink or they take masses amount of drugs or something terrible like this, when the fact is they’ve just been granted an unbelievable gift, and an unbelievable freedom of course… which is a very big gift. If we’re free and we don’t know how to use it, there may be danger ahead! So I think we need a particular self-discipline, with which to be able to truly realize that gift, and in order to actually successfully achieve the freedom – a freedom which can be very meaningful. A freedom in music for me is exactly the same. We can achieve it fairly easily, but I think not too successfully without discipline.

GSC: Thank you very, very much for your time and the wonderful conversation.

GH: Thank you!

Grażyna Studzińska-Cavour