Bill Evans - The Ralph J. Gleason Interview

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Pianist Bill Evans [1929-1980], who went on to become a world- renown Jazz musician, gave very few lengthy interviews early in his career. He was by nature, shy and retiring and just finding his way in the music when he talked at length with San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason in 1960.

Given it’s rarity for the time, it is a shame that, outside of the newspaper readership, it went largely unrecognized until 2016 when it appeared as part of Toby Gleason’s efforts to get his father’s interviews published collectively in book form.

You can find the interview with Bill in Conversations in Jazz: The Ralph J. Gleason Interviews which is available directly from Yale University Press. Order information is available here.

Bill Evans

FEBRUARY 5, 1960

“Just 11 months before his conversation with Ralph Gleason, Bill Evans had made music history as part of the famous Miles Davis band that recorded Kind of Blue — often lauded as the greatest album in the history of jazz. Evans played a key role in shaping the aesthetic vision behind this seminal album, and one could hardly imagine Davis achieving its distinctive sound without this pianist's presence in the band. Yet even before the Kind of Blue session, Evans had left the Davis combo to strike out on his own.

At this stage in his career, Evans had gained recognition among jazz insiders as one of the most provocative pianists on the scene, but his name recognition among the general public was almost nil. Yet he was about to embark upon a period of extraordinary creativity. His trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian redefined the role of the rhythm section in jazz. LaFaro's death in a car accident on July 6, 1961, put an end to this remarkable band, but the albums the trio made before his passing rank among Evans's finest works. His subsequent 1960s albums include Undercurrent, a collaboration with guitarist Jim Hall, Conversations with Myself, a Grammy-winning project that was one of the first jazz albums to experiment with overdubbing, and Alone, a solo piano project that would earn another Grammy for Evans.

In the liner notes for the latter project, Evans remarked on the irony that he made his living as a public performer, but his most cherished moments of music making came when he was simply playing without an audience. 

Gleason shows in this interview his skill in penetrating through Evans's shy demeanor and getting the artist to open up about his music and aspirations.

Ralph J. Gleason RJG:  Have you ever explored the reasons why you're in jazz?

Bill Evans BE: I don't know. I never thought about it that much. In fact, like I said to someone the other night, Lord knows why we're doing this because there's so many rough spots on the road. It was not like an ambition where you sit down and say, "Well, I'm going to be a jazz musician and then I'll buy a book of hot licks." I can remember when I was in college, my theory teacher said, "Why in the world are you going into jazz? I can't understand it." I said, "I don't know," but I just knew I was going to and I could have gone the other way.

RJG: What attracted you first?

BE: Well, there was a stock [arrangement] of "The Lambeth Walk" that I picked up when I was about nine. And "The Big Apple." And then, some records started knocking me out when I was 12 or 13, typical things like "Well Git It." I didn't hear too much jazz then, but fortunately there were a couple of very hip people, young guys in my hometown (one very tragically met an early death) and they turned me on to a lot of things like Fatha Hines and stuff like that. Also, what Bird and Diz were doing then, that was kind of a revelation when I finally got with that. It was a funny thing, but the first couple of things I heard, I don't know whether it affected you the same way, but I didn't really know what was happening, it was really a flash.

RJG: After Hines, did any other piano player strike you with any particular force?

BE: I just listened to more or less what you might call the jazz mind wherever I could hear it, in any horns or in arrangements of music . . . musical thinking, let's say. After that I liked Nat Cole very much, and when I finally heard Bud Powell on Dexter Gordon's sides he knocked me out because he had much more of a feeling of form in his soul. He would really bring it to a conclusion and go into the next thing and he had a feeling ... I don't know, but I really liked him more than anybody, I guess. Then just everybody I heard I would listen to. A whole mess of musicians, local musicians, just anybody, wherever you go, because by that time I was going to all the clubs and sessions in different cities. I was near New Orleans when I went to college so I spent a lot of time around the French Quarter and there was a real mixture of all kinds of odd influences there. There's modern musicians and then going all the way back.

RJG: When you were still in school, was there any indication that you might not go into jazz?

BE: I don't think so. I started to realize that I was going strong in that direction I think maybe when I was about 15. J started to get interested in learning about how it's built, the theory of music and so on, so that I could begin to make my own lines. I don't think there was any doubt in my mind when I graduated from college. I was 20 then and I really knew that I wanted to go out there. But that doesn't mean that I didn't have a real strong interest, participating interest, in some other kinds of music like classical music, or whatever you want to call it, 'cause I have and I've spent a lot of time with it since then. In fact, I learnt an awful lot from that kind of music.

RJG; You used a very interesting expression a moment ago, Bill, the jazz mind. How would you describe the jazz mind?

BE; I don't know, lemme think a minute. There's a particular attitude, I think, sort of an instantaneous response or something like that. It's just sort of a direct thing, and this immediately imposes, I think, a closed area within which you have to work, an area in which you develop the facility, you know. It's just like if you pick up a ball and you know how to throw, you don't have to think about throwing it. In jazz it would all have a certain similarity because it has to be within a certain area of facility and knowledge, and that's the difference because your feeling sends out sort of a motivation and that has to be answered without so much figuring and tearing apart. There has to be a real facility to answer that motivation.

RJG: Would this indicate, then, that the more you were to apply deliberate thinking to writing something in jazz, deliberate planned thinking and rewriting and so forth, the more you would dilute the thing that you were producing?

BE: I wouldn't say dilute, because that would be a qualitative thing. I don't think it affects the quality, but it affects the character, and when you write, I think the character of the work is different. It can't be the same. So the jazz mind, to me, would be the player, it would have to be the player, it could never be the writer. The writer could write jazz by learning from the players and then composing. Then the form and the texture and so on would have a different character and would be maybe much more perfect in its structure because the guy would have time to ... I think George Russell does wonderful work like that because he really absorbs, I think, the feeling of what everybody is doing and yet he's strictly a composer and he composes things that sound as if they could be improvised almost. It always has to depend on the jazz player, though, because I think if the jazz player vanished and then the composer started to go off on his own, he would end up again with a cerebral kind of thing. The only thing that gives the thing roots is the essential thing that he hears in the jazz players.

RJG: What about the things, for instance, that Gunther [Schuller] and John [Lewis] and Andre Hodeir have been doing?

BE: I don't know anything about Andre Hodeir. I've heard some of the things that John Lewis did and I've played some of the things that Gunther's done. I hardly know what to say about that. I just performed a piece of Gunther's that he wrote for the Modern Jazz Quartet. I performed it with the Baltimore Symphony not long ago and I really didn't get a great deal of musical satisfaction out of playing the thing. I didn't really feel that I was playing something that I believed in that much and yet there's maybe nobody I respect more than Gunther Schuller as a musician. But as a participant it wasn't that satisfying to me. I could listen to it and know there's so much there I don't know about and I know that Gunther hears everything he writes because it all sounds musical to me, but I don't know how it relates to jazz playing that much. I think I might if I studied his pieces more. I really haven't studied them. As far as contributing to the language or something like that, he may have a way of developing ideas which could be of use in jazz or something like that, I don't know.

RJG: Has it ever struck you that there's a possibility of exclusion or a possibility of a barrier between the sort of thing that John and Gunther are working towards, and the sort of music that Miles [Davis] represents?

BE: Yeah, there's some kind of a big difference there. Miles seems to be always moving towards more simplicity. Now I don't know whether that will be the way he goes, 'cause he's always changing and he may just start changing and go the other way. But it seems the opposite so far with Gunther, at least. I mean he's dealing with real complex, compositional techniques and instrumentation and sounds and form and everything. There's quite a difference there because no jazz group could simulate a composition of Gunther Schuller's in any way.

I think Charles Edward Smith hates to bring this into any jazz discussion, but there are sociological implications, I think, in jazz playing and the philosophy that's behind it. I think any group effort takes on a different significance from an individual effort because there's a lot of different factors involved and that might be one big difference. I mean there's nothing more degrading to me than to think of 70 or 80 musicians who have become almost machines serving this one thing. It's a respectful thing, it's a wonderful testimony to people that they'll go this far to serve somebody's mind, but somehow it bothers me. I think if they're going to do that they should also be making music on their own. Like myself. Maybe that's why I went into jazz, because I love both and I love to play both, but somehow you have got to have your own identity as well, in an expressive way, even if it's on a much lower level, or inferior level. It's you. That may be the big difference and maybe that's the change that's happening,

RJG: Is it a problem to perform in both of those frameworks, one after another?

BE: Not if you're trained for it, it's just like anything else. If you have the ability or facility to do it, you can do it. It's just the difference between talking to one person and then turning your head and talking to another person. It's the same thing; you just change your attitude or your feeling. Maybe not too many people have the time or the opportunity to develop a fair degree of ability in both.

RJG:  How did it come about that you worked with Miles?

BE: It was just another one of those things that all fits together, you know. He said he heard me a few times in the last couple of years before I worked with him. I guess Red [Garland] had wanted to leave or something; anyhow, I was around, worked a weekend in Philadelphia with him and then he asked me to stay.

RJG: Had you any inkling that something like that might be in the wind or did it come as a surprise to you?

BE: It came as a complete surprise. In fact, things were going very slow up till then. I'd been in New York about five years and different little things would happen, but actually not too much. I'd wanted to get a trio going for about three years and I just couldn't. I didn't try too hard because I don't believe in pushing too much, but I talked to a few people and presented it to a couple of booking offices and everything and nothing happened at all. Then I went with Miles and I think that's helped tremendously to get this thing going.

RJG: When you work a weekend with a. group and then the leader says stay with the group, what is it like? Do you rehearse? How do you fit in?

BE: Well, in this case I was a fan of Miles' band so I was familiar with a lot of the things that they did and as it turned out we never did have a rehearsal, ever. But I knew most of the things they were doing. I learned the rest on the job and Miles would show me little things that I didn't know, and so on. Actually, I was pretty frightened, you know. This was the band that I idolized and I had them way up out here someplace.

RJG:  How long were you with the group altogether? 

BE:    About eight months.

RJG: Does Miles, as a leader or as a fellow player, structure the thought of the people that are with him? Does he discuss the music at all?

BE: No, we very seldom talked ... in fact, I don't think we ever talked in this way about music. We got together on some tunes a couple of times just before a date, or on a date or something, but not, ... he was never in any way analytical or philosophical and anything. I never thought about things this way 'til I was about 21.

RJG: Is it more emotionally rewarding when you're in a club with people close to you or on a stage at a concert?

BE: I think it was most rewarding to me when we recorded, maybe, because the piano was that much better. We had some terrifically bad pianos in clubs. It was, I think, one of the reasons I left, even. We had some ridiculous pianos. The thing about working in a club is you're playing so much that it takes that nervous edge off. You just can't be on edge that much so pretty soon you forget about that and you just do your work and it begins to have a more solid kind of performance feeling. It might not always be at such a high level, but at least it has a sort of solid thing and then the highs come every once in a while.

RJG:  What are they like?

BE: It just happens, I think. You're playing and then all of a sudden you know that something special is happening. You never know. I remember one night Miles was playing the blues and he sounded like he was a little distant or something and it played all the way through. I thought to myself while he was playing, "I hope you don't stop playing with this feeling," and he finished up with about four bars of the most beautiful, just about the most beautiful idea I think I've ever heard. That was it. You know, the whole solo was nothing, and I was afraid he was going to go out with it, but he didn't, he capped it with this one thing, and that was it.

Coltrane is just impossible, he's always got a million things going, you never know what he's going to do.

RJG: It's curious how he alternately excites an audience to a great pitch or leaves them absolutely cold. There seems to be no middle ground for him.

BE: I don't know what his personal playing problems are in that respect, but I'm sure that when it's happening for the audience, it's probably happening for him, too. It's really hard to get up there and do it all the time, it's a killing schedule. No concert artist in history would even . . . they'd have a nightmare about a schedule like jazz players have. It's something.

RJG: Does the audience reaction to your performance, either emotional or vocal, have any effect on what you do?

BE: Sure, you can't help it, really. It's a two-way thing. I would hate to think that if there was no response that I wouldn't feel like playing or something like that, because that's not true. But response is a great thing, the audience can definitely inspire you. Some concerts I've played have been surprising that way because sometimes you think nothing is happening and then you get this tremendous response. It's as if the people are giving a lot more than you, it makes you feel ashamed sometimes, you know, but that's the way it is. Sure, an audience has a lot to do with it, at least the consciousness of an audience, because you're communicating with somebody. When I'm playing I like to feel that I'm enjoying what I'm doing, and the trouble with me lately is that I'm not enjoying it too much. I still have to be the foremost authority about my own playing, but I hope that if I relate to people, then my music, what I'm doing, will relate to people and they'll respond, or like it or be moved in some way. There's another thing, too; there are certain kinds of music which do not move people to express themselves out loud. There are certain kinds of, say, religious music, where people are moved inside and they may never express it outwardly, so you can't always depend on just noise as meaning a response.

RJG: A number of fans and some musicians that I know seem to have a definite spiritual feeling about jazz music.

BE: I think it's there, without a doubt, just because it represents a person, and that's part of a person.

RJG: Would you say that there are certain types of jazz music that are in a sense religious?

BE: I think so, sure, definitely. Maybe the difference is that jazz doesn't single out any particular part of our character that much, or make so much of any particular part, but just sort of speaks in everyday language and represents the whole person. Naturally there's going to be a spiritual side and practical side and maybe some humor.

RJG: Do you think it's possible for a musician to play jazz part-time or does it require a total commitment artistically?

BE: Well, no, I don't think so. It just depends. I mean, if you get satisfaction from something, why shouldn't you do it even if you only do it a little bit? The only thing is, if you are really going to try to make your living at it, or you want to be in some way meaningful in the profession, it just requires a great amount of time because there is no shortcut to the tremendous amount of experience necessary in just learning your instrument and learning music. Because it's a skill, it's not an intellectual thing at all. It's intellectual only in the sense that you use your mind to learn the skill, but it's not intellectual in conception. That's why it takes practice. You can think about a golf swing, but eventually you have to swing that club without thinking about it. That's just the way it is. But I'd say, no, everybody ought to enjoy it as much as they can. If they want to be part-time, why not? I think a lot of people could have that fun.

RJG: Yet in order to really make a contribution, it requires at least the investment of the time.

BE: It requires an awful lot of things and it ends up the most important thing is the intangible, which is your whole person, and that's the hard part. I don't know, maybe I do everything for music. I live my life for music, in a way. It's almost as if it's made me want to be a good person just for the sake of music.

RJG: Has it been a source of satisfaction to play jazz on your own, with your own group and your own scene?

BE: I think it will be, more and more. It has been, except that I'm so dissatisfied so far with what I've been doing. But it takes time, I'm sure it's what I want to do. I'd much rather be in this situation. I figure if I weren't playing with my own group or something like that, I would certainly have rather stayed with Miles, because that was a great experience.

RJG:  Is the piano your main instrument? Do you play other instruments?

BE: I play the flute, but I haven't played it much lately. I played it pretty good by the time I got out of the army. And I tried violin when I was a kid, but I couldn't make it, I couldn't stand the sound I got. I tried it for about five years, just couldn't stand it. But I wouldn't say I play anything besides piano.

RJG:  Do you practice much?

BE: Well, I guess. . . let's say till I was 28 I did an awful lot of practicing — I call it practicing, somebody else wouldn't. At least I spent a lot of time at the keyboard and thought about different things and played a lot of music, read through a lot of literature and so on. But this last year or so I haven't done nearly as much, I don't know why, maybe I'm getting old. I haven't done as much . . .

RJG: Who would you say has been the most important musician in your life?

BE: Oh, probably Bach. I don't know, because he was kind of a late comer in my life, but I suppose . . .

RJG:  What about the most important influence in your playing?

BE: I suppose Bud Powell, but, like I say, there's really so many. It's more a process of developing, a thinking process that you feel strongly, and being able to do it. But I think probably Bud Powell.

RJG:  What pianists today interest you?

BE: Well, there are some guys that I really love to listen to. I might not approach them as a student, but just as a listener, you know. For instance, I like to listen to Sonny Clark, I like to listen to Tommy Flanagan or Red Garland, and I don't know how many others I could mention. Probably anybody that can play I enjoy listening to. There may not be that much in what they're doing that I could learn from. I might learn from Lennie Tristano, who I wouldn't enjoy listening to that much, so there's a difference there. I love to listen to John Lewis play. He's one of my very favorite pianists.

RJG: How about Ahmad Jamal?

BE: Yeah, I enjoy listening to him very much. I've heard some criticism of Ahmad Jamal, that he's a cocktail pianist and everything. The environment that has given Ahmad his background is a real world and his music is just as real as anybody's as far as I'm concerned, much more real than some who feel that they're really arty because I think they're just pretending and he's not. It's a real thing he's doing.

RJG: The only pianist you mentioned you might learn from was Lennie. Are there any others?

BE: I'm sure I could learn from Monk, but his personality is so strong that it seems to me he is the only person that can do what he does. I wouldn't want to imitate his idiosyncrasies because I couldn't, he's lived his unique life. Still, I think there's quite a few musical things I could learn from him. I've played quite a few of his songs or tunes or whatever you want to call them, and I have an idea of the way his mind runs. What he does with them is so much him that it's even getting to the point where there are some songs I don't want to play anything but the melody on because I feel that it's, you know, that's it... some ballads I hardly want to mess with. I might put a couple of things in, but basically I just like to play the melody.

RJG: Do you find it interesting or surprising or curious that you yourself are now an influence on other pianists?

BE: If that's true I'd be surprised and I guess I'd be flattered, but I don't know how true it is. Just a couple of times some people have mentioned to me that they've heard some people trying to do some things that I might have done, but I don't know if that's true. I never really felt that original, to tell you the truth. At least if there's any originality, it's only maybe in the fact that I've worked with the materials in my own way, but I don't think the materials are that different.

RJG: Do kids come up to you and talk to you about taking up jazz music?

BE:   Yeah, sure, every once in a while. 

RJG:  What do you tell them?

BE: Well, I usually just tell 'em that I don't teach, but I would be happy to get together with them if they want to talk sometime. So we usually get together once and I tell 'em the way I believe, which is that if you're going to do it, you're going to do it. And maybe if they want to, if they really lack some theoretical knowledge, I'll suggest that they go to a conservatory because it's very well organized there. I think you get a much broader and better and thorough musical training in a conservatory than you would get from any so-called jazz teacher. I'm talking about a good school. Then how you apply musical principles to jazz, depending on your experience and how much you participate, is up to you and how your life goes and everything. There's no way to teach, so that's the way it usually ends up.

That was the question up at Lenox last year. I finally tried to teach. I've been avoiding teaching all my life. There's a lot of participation. The students play nine hours a week in small ensembles and, I think, almost nine hours a week in large ensembles, and there's all kinds of discussions constantly, sessions, everybody's talking about jazz. They get private lessons, but it's more sort of just being with somebody who's a professional and you can work out some things. It's more like that. It's a very intensive jazz experience, and I think they will feel the fruits of it for years. I will, too, because it was very stimulating for rne, too. I don't know whether I'm going to teach again because I felt if I teach a specific thing, then I'm teaching style and if I don't teach a specific thing, all I can say is, you got it, and then what am I there for?

So I tried somehow to get in the crack there. I really don't know how well I did. What's left is to teach musical principles. Either I would teach the mechanics of the piano, which I tried to give a little to everybody because most people lack that, or I'd teach musical principles, which takes a much longer time and then I would say, go to the conservatory. Or else I'd teach specifics, which are style, and I don't want to teach that, and then most people resisted that up there. But you can't circumvent everything, which is what some people want to do. There was really a great amount of talent. It was almost scary. There was so much talk about originality — too much, you know, it was fear almost, it was a fear of doing anything that was the same as anything else. I never really strive for that kind of originality - avoiding anything anybody's done — because that's the only way I've learned, in a way.

RJG: This striving for originality at all costs, which goes all through jazz, particularly at the moment for the younger guys, do you think this leads to a certain unnaturalness?

BE: It could, yeah, I think so, I don't know. The thing that I look for as the most essential ingredient in my music, to quote a composition teacher I once had, is "melodic impulse." This melodic impulse I think is the most essential ingredient, and that comes from a mass experience, an experience of — there is where it gets social again — all music, all players, everybody, all of your experiences and all of your relationships with people and things. Now if you're striving for originality by cutting yourself off from all these things, I don't see how it can have a real strength or have a real quality of communication or meaning for other people. Take someone like Coltrane, as opposed to Cecil Taylor. Coltrane has set his mind to the task of progressing with allegiance to the tradition, and whatever he does will fit over what is heard by the greatest amount of good musicians. I don't know whether this is true, but it seems as if Cecil Taylor would ignore that allegiance, you know, and just go off. Well, there's a difference in philosophies there, but one is, in a way, a much more socially responsible philosophy, to me. To relate to other people as much as possible. I guess that's my attitude about it. To sort of find this melodic impulse by working in tradition or working within a language that I've learned, to hear through experience or something like that.

RJG:  Has it been rewarding to you, then, to go back to men from the 1930s?

BE: I haven't really done that consciously. I don't seem to have a real impulse to do that because I really played with a lot of those musicians. I've been working professionally with good musicians since I was 14. I was lucky when I started. I played with musicians much better than myself. Good musicians in my hometown have been an influence, men very capable of having made the so-called big time, or maybe developed into much greater musicians than they are. Anyhow, they helped me a lot.

RJG: How about guys who are still playing today successfully, like Ben Webster and Harry Edison?

BE: Well, I've worked with Ben Webster and worked with Harry Edison and they're great, I love 'em, but they were more of an influence on me about 15 years ago ... 10 to 15 years ago. Ten years ago I worked with Harry Edison. I worked with Buck Johnson and a whole mess of good musicians like that around New Orleans, a lot of good musicians. I've really had personal contact with influences like that. I feel like if I wanted to be a Dixieland pianist I could be one. I've had a little experience there. I know that I'm far from being a good Dixieland pianist because there are such subtleties in every style that you don't realize until you get into it. I'm not that interested in developing those subtleties.

RJG:  Have you ever gone back and played old records?

BE: Not too much. I've played a lot of older styles because we had to play a lot of Dixieland around New Orleans and I played a lot of Dixieland in New Jersey on jobs, for that matter. In a way I guess I've played almost everything that you could play as a professional musician. I've played with polka bands and the whole works, bar mitzvahs, society bands in New York, I've played with some of the best society jobs in New York and worked with some of the best men and learned all that repertoire, played all the mambos, cha-chas, peabodies . . . but that music isn't too much of a challenge. It's a challenge for a certain type of feeling, but there's not too much of a musical challenge there.

RJG: You were at Lenox the summer Ornette [Coleman] was there. What is your reaction to him?

BE: I enjoy him. I tried to play with Ornette one day at Lenox and it wasn't really successful for a number of reasons. I enjoy listening to it, but I don't know how much I could fit in or anything like that. I don't hear anything wrong in his conception, I think he's very natural. I don't think he's trying to be far-out. I think maybe Don Cherry might be reaching farther away from himself than Ornette is, but it's alright because he's got a steadying influence there in Ornette. The rest of the group now is perfect. Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden, I don't think any one of those guys could be replaced or changed without really hurting the group. But I don't hear anything unnatural in Ornette's playing.

RJG: The tendency to always be looking for something new in jazz is one of the criticisms that Ornette has inadvertently acquired.

BE : I don't understand that business. There are so many motivations, there's jealousy, and there's fear. I know there's a lot of musicians that are probably just afraid. They are saying, well, if this is it, I know I'm far from it, so they may be afraid. Anyhow, no one person is that much of an influence. I mean Dizzy and Bird and so on played a composite of people. It wasn't just like one person came along and then everybody copied them or something, not at all. Ornette plays some old-time licks, you listen to him. In fact, I was sitting with Percy Heath the other night down there listening to him. He played something that sounded like about 1910, but maybe in a different place and with a different key. He's definitely right out of everything, only he's moved to put these things in different places. Somebody was telling me Ornette was playing with somebody and every time this guy would hit a change Ornette would play something and it would scare this guy so he said to Ornette, "What are you playing that for? Can't you hear what I'm playing?" And Ornette said, "I was surprised because it was what he was playing that was making me hear what I was hearing." But he hears that way. He probably has terrifically sensitive ears and hears all these separate things and it just fits in there.

RJG:  Do you have an active interest in other arts?

BE: I've never really been able to appreciate visual art very much. I probably would like a calendar picture as well as a Rembrandt. Especially, in modern art, I really don't know what's happening. I sort of see something but, I don't know, I don't respond too much. I don't really get a strong feeling. There's nothing that even begins to approach music as far as my own responses are concerned. I used to do a lot of reading, just fun reading, when I was younger and then when I went through certain growing-up problems. I read a lot of philosophy, psychology, and religion because I was going through those problems. I was looking for an answer which was not there and when I realized it wasn't there I sort of lost interest.

RJG:  You mean the answer is in music, not in books of philosophies?

BE: Well, it is for me. But even before I did it, I responded to music much more than anything else. I don't know what it is.

RJG:  Do you think some people are just made that way?

BE: Well, I would say it's more my own limitation. I'm limited to music. I think almost everybody responds to music very strongly at some level, which you can see easily enough, but maybe I just closed my mind to other things or something. I think lately it's opening up a little more because I actually begin to appreciate painting a little more. I just sort of walked with my eyes in one direction for quite a while.

RJG: I'm sure you've had the experience of people liking something that you did that you weren't satisfied with or that their response was out of proportion to your own.

BE: Yeah, it makes you wonder a little bit, but like I said before, you have to be your own authority. I don't think the people are wrong either. As a professional musician and as a practitioner in the art, you're going to produce even when you're not satisfied with what you're producing, but you're still producing at a certain level. There might be this much difference to the listener and to you it's a tremendous amount of difference because you're always hoping to take another step. I used to sometimes feel like I should put people down or something because I'd say I know it's no good, but I don't think that's true anymore.

RJG: How about the reverse of it, when you do something with which you are almost thoroughly satisfied. Does that always get through?

BE: It doesn't seem to happen all the time, but I think one of the reasons is that sometimes the feeling that I enjoy most is a quiet feeling and it might just evoke a quiet response, like I was talking about before. But I think when things are really happening, it will communicate.

RJG: Dizzy said one time that there were only four or five times in his entire life that he had been thoroughly satisfied with what he played.

BE: I don't think that's unusual, though, among musicians because I know Coltrane said he hardly likes anything he's ever recorded. I think he might like one thing. I know I have a hard time mentioning maybe three. I guess that's what you have to be satisfied with. I've heard artists, musicians, people in general talk about this a lot. I was tremendously unhappy with my first record. I don't know if I can explain how unhappy I was, but after about a year I began to tolerate it and now I think it was pretty good. It was as good as I could do at that time, in fact, maybe better. The same way with my second one. I was pretty unhappy with that at first, but I grew out of that quicker than the first and now I've just made another one which I'm almost happy with, and I think this is a bad sign.

RJG:  You think you're weakening? 

BE:    Yeah, I really do, getting much more tolerant about myself.

RJG: What do you want to do with your music now? Do you have a definite concept of what you want to accomplish?

BE: No, I don't. That bothers me a little bit sometimes and then sometimes I'm glad because I feel, well, then I can go in any direction. Lately I've been more satisfied I think, and more sure that what I'm doing is exactly what I want to do. I don't know where the heck I want to go and sometimes I feel I almost could be a disappointment to people.

RJG:   Do you feel a responsibility to them, then?

BE: I do, yeah. I feel a responsibility. I don't know how. Somehow to be ... to do good work, I suppose that's it. It's pretty hard because I'm really a lazy person. If I hadn't been interested in music I couldn't have forced myself to do it all, I just couldn't. I've never been able to force myself to do things. It's hard for me to teach because I can't tell a person to be interested, or you have to go out and play jobs for 10 years and live fully for music. How are you going to do that? Because I wanted to do it, that's the only reason I ever did it.