Q&A with Chick Corea on his 70th Birthday Celebration

A DownBeat Hall of Famer, NEA Jazz Master and 16-time Grammy winner, living legend Chick Corea has flourished for over four decades as a celebrated jazz pianist and composer. The Massachusetts native first made a name for himself as a sideman in the 1960s with artists like Blue Mitchell, Stan Getz and Miles Davis, and in the 1970s he founded Return to Forever, one of the world’s premier fusion acts.

To celebrate his seven decades, New York’s legendary Blue Note Jazz Club is holding a month-long 70th Birthday Celebration residency from Nov. 1-27, which includes a lineup of 10 different groups and more than 30 musicians. Included on the guest list are Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin, the Five Peace Band with John McLaughlin, and a special unplugged appearance from Return to Forever.

In this exclusive interview, I spoke with Corea about the gigs, his thoughts about turning 70, the reason Return to Forever initially disbanded, and his first conversation with Miles Davis.

What are your thoughts about playing for a whole month at the Blue Note?

It’s just totally invigorating and exciting and great, and I mean that. My friends that were able to join me that are going to play with me are such great people and inspiring musicians. The whole thing is like being in heaven, you know? With all this creativity to get into, it’s the ultimate pleasure to have. It’ll be a lot of work, for sure, but it’ll be a lot of fun, mainly.

Which shows are you looking most forward to?

I’m looking forward to everything; I don’t even know where to start. I’m halfway through preparing right now. Unfortunately, I had a few weeks off before the gigs started, and I was able to put a setlist together and try to organize it a bit, but I’m looking forward to the whole thing. There’s some kind of new configurations that’ll be interesting. I worked with Paul Motian and Eddie Gomez for a couple of weeks earlier this year at the Blue Note—we made a recording there—but Paul ended up not being able to make it, and Eddie didn’t have the schedule to do it at that slot, so I found Gary Peacock, who I haven’t played since, wow, the ’70s, I guess.

But then leading to replace Paul because he wasn’t able to make it, I found that Brian Blade had a day open in his schedule before coming in with the Five Peace Band. So it’s going to be Brian and Gary Peacock. Now that’s going to be very interesting to me; that’s a whole new thing. I’ve also got Gary Burton and the Harlem String Quartet. We recorded one track with the Harlem String Quartet for our new duet recording, so for the whole three nights with the string quartet, we’re going to review some of the lyrics and music that we’ve made in the late ’70s and early ’80s, whenever that was, and a couple of new things that I wrote for the sextet.

So that’s new, and then my Spanish band [Chick Corea’s Flamenco Heart] is a new configuration, although I’ve played with Jorge Pardo and Carles Benavent before. The new members are Niño Josele, who is one of my current favorite flamenco guitarists. He’s just an amazing musician, who brings to this thing [vocalist] Concha Buika. So that said, I’m putting some new things together, [and] we’re going to have to find some rehearsal time. And also, the quintet with Jack DeJohnette is all new…all friends of mine, but we’ve never all worked together before. I’ve had a rhythm section with Jack and Eddie Gomez before, but now we’re going to have Wallace Roney play on trumpet and Gary Bartz on saxophone. It just happened unintentionally that it turns out that all of the guys in that quintet all have 10 years with Miles one way or the other.

How does turning 70 impact you? What does it mean to you?

It means a lot of people ask me how does it impact me (laughs) and I have to keep inventing answers. You know, talking about the body getting old, there’s a sadness to it in a way. But for me, I’ve never had my attention too much on that part of it. And fortunately, I’m doing pretty well—the body’s nice and healthy and I feel good touring and so forth. So I don’t know, you know? You get a zero at the end of your age number and you get some extra attention. That’s what I found out.

You’ve been busier than ever this year. I noticed on this current Return to Forever tour that you’re looking very trim these days. What’s your secret?

I’ve been trying to take the weight off for years, and I’ve always tended toward a vegetarian diet, but I had some wrong information going. Anyway, I found some data, some information, on nutrition, basically, that really helped me out. And I used it, you know, and it started to work really well for me; I started to feel real good. So I just kept doing it, and within a period of a year I lost 90 pounds.

That’s remarkable.

(Laughs.)

You’ve won so many Grammys. What do you think it is about your music that’s allowed you to achieve these honors consistently?

That’s a question that’s better answered by others, you know? I don’t know; I don’t think about it—it would be a survey question. You’d have to ask that question of others and then they could tell you. What I notice from my point of view is that when I’m in the mode of creativity that I really enjoy—which I try to be in all the time, which is just creating something that I love—and something that’s fresh, something that I can get very high interest and get very excited about wanting to involve myself in, wanting to eventually present to the recordings and performances. When I’m in that mode, I’m delighted the most.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it. To me, that’s a real vote of confidence and a real plus that demonstrates a very important principle about living, because usually we’re in a mood of just barely trying to make it and just pushing through and trying to change things around to please others and all of that, and this demonstrates that people—not just me, but others, meaning audiences—really respond to being an individual, like having your own mind, creating, expressing yourself, having the freedom to choose how you want to express yourself. People respond to that. To me, that’s very, very encouraging. So that’s what I’ve noticed: people like that, When I do that well, it’s appreciated and I’m very happy with that.

I have a question about your 1973 tune “Captain Señor Mouse.” On future issues it was usually listed as just “Señor Mouse.” Is there any difference between that and the original?

No, only in the title. I guess what happened was, the “captain” part was part of the fun groove, the kind of playful touch of [Return to Forever’s album] Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy. We had a game going there where we were talking about a seventh galaxy, and there was a mothership in it, and there was a hymn to it. And so when I wrote this tune “Señor Mouse,” my cartoony image was a mouse in the captain’s chair of the spaceship. So, like, who’s the captain of this spaceship? This mouse, Señor Mouse, all dressed up and ready to go. So that’s all that was, and later on when I played “Señor Mouse” with Gary Burton and we took it outside the context of the hymn of the seventh galaxy, it just became (laughs) “Señor Mouse.”

Is there any connection between that song and Stanley Clarke’s Return to Forever tune “So Long Mickey Mouse”?

Not musically, I don’t think. In fact, they’re very different musically, aren’t they? I never thought about that, but I guess we both like Walt Disney, to some degree.

It’s such an intriguing title.

Yeah. Actually, you know, I never found out what the deeper meaning behind that was. That’s a wild name; I’m going to ask him next time I see him now.

The Musicmagic album followed what many consider to be Return to Foerver’s greatest success, Romantic Warrior. Why did you choose to replace Lenny White and Al Di Meola by then?

It wasn’t a replacement, and I never took on a role like that of being the one who hired and fired guys. By that time, the band was pretty much a partnership between Stanley and myself, and there was a direction change that was imminent and something that we wanted to try. Since the early Return to Forever days, Stanley became really excited about being a composer and composing music, and since then, as is proven by the amount of music that he’s written—not only for his own performance but for movies and such—it’s something that he really loves to do, and something that I love to do, as well. So that’s one of the things we thought: let’s put an orchestral setting together and do that. That was the reason for the change in personnel.

What are your thoughts on Musicmagic as the final studio album of Return to Forever?

I briefly scanned through listening to it, and I think it presents what the band was like, especially that live Musicmagic band playing a live concert—I forget what venue it was. It was pretty wild; all the tempos are real ultrafast and it has the spirit of the times in it. I think it’s cool.

Was it a conscious decision to fold the band immediately after that tour?

All of us were in a direction creating our own music, you know, our own bands and so forth. And added to that, which was when we put that tour together, there was very little control or thought of expenses and the economy of it, and we wouldn’t have been able to support a band that big, traveling around the world, past that one tour. In fact, I think Stanley and I went home—at least I know I went home—with less than an empty pocket on that particular tour. I don’t regret a minute of it.

I read this on the Internet, and I don’t know how true it is. It claims that the reason the band broke up is because of disagreements that you and Stanley had with each other over Scientology.

First of all, it’s not true…it just wasn’t that. The actual thing that was going on during the last parts, ’75, ’76, right in there, is that there was a quick—from the time that Stanley joined the band and then Lenny, and then Al, right during the Romantic Warrior period, I, and the management I had at that time—Neville Potter, who was the lyricist for the band, and Leslie Potter—I made an attempt to really help Stanley, Lenny, and Al make their very first solo albums, because the band was doing very well, and they were all really creative and burning to create.

And so, interesting thing during the Romantic Warrior tour, there was like, I think, five different record companies all involved in current projects. Columbia was our new record company that just did Romantic Warrior. And I still retained my Polydor contract, where I was in the process of making The Leprechaun, which was my first kind of solo album outside of Return to Forever. Whereas Lenny made his first solo album—I forget the record company—Stanley made his first album, I think for Polydor, called Children of Forever, which I helped him produce, and Al made his first record.

So when we went out on that last tour, there were five (laughs)—we had five albums all out. And I’m only saying that to point out that that was the tendency of the creativeness within that time. We all wanted to do our own thing and expand. I think that that’s really what was going on. But the media likes to use terms like “split up” and “break up” and all of that, and I don’t think that was what was happening.

Thank you for clearing that up.

Just let me say one more thing: I answered that in a very long form. If you maybe give some air for me (laughs) for that viewpoint, because you never hear that; you always hear the negative viewpoint. So if you give some air for that, that would be nice…I’ve never seen that explanation of the change-up in the band described that way. It’s my opinion; it’s what I think happened.

I’m happy to share that with everyone. So you still kept in touch with Stanley over the years, even when you weren’t performing together?

Yeah, we stayed in touch and we were doing our thing. And finally, after decades passed by like minutes, we decided, “Hey, let’s do something again before we’re too old.” [The classic lineup of Return to Forever reformed for a tour in 2008—Ed.]

Who are your favorite pop pianists and composers?

I like Stevie Wonder as my favorite non-pianist pianist. I mean, I shouldn’t call him a non-pianist, because he’s really a great pianist, but he doesn’t feature it that much—he uses his keyboards and his piano technique to support his great songs and so forth, but he can really blow. Stevie’s one of my faves.

I like Elton [John]’s piano playing very much; I like what he does on the piano behind the songs, to support his songs. I really like the piano playing that was done in the Beatles—is that Paul [McCartney] playing the piano?

On some tunes, yes.

Yeah. When I hear the piano played in a compositional way, like in a songwriter’s way in a compositional way, there’s a certain arc to that that I love. Who does that—Billy Joel plays great piano; I like Billy Joel’s piano playing.

Is there anyone else you’d like to collaborate with in the future?

It’s a long list, man. Every time I see a musician—it doesn’t matter what age—that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more. These four weeks will be a big learning experience for me.

Is there anywhere else you’d still like to play on this earth?

I haven’t traveled in Africa nearly as much as I’d like to. I’ve been there a few times, and I’d like to learn more about the various cultures in Africa. But that’s the basis point of where all of the music that I love is based upon, from Africa to Cuba to Puerto Rico to South America. And I’d like to travel in India; I’m thinking I’m going to try and get John McLaughlin to introduce me to some of the things that he knows there. He spends time there; he’s very steeped in Indian culture. And then China, you know; China’s been closed to us [musicians] for a whole lifetime, but there’s a lot of deep history there. Actually, the places that I haven’t been are the places that I’d like to go.

Have you seen Béla Fleck’s Throw Down Your Heart? It’s very nice; it’s a documentary of his trip to Africa. It inspired me. Actually, this trip to New York in November and more in the future is going to be my answer to Béla’s Throw Down Your Heart, which is going to be discovering New York (laughs). I want to go back to New York; there’s a lot happening there in that city musically.

This year is the 20th anniversary of Miles’ passing. Can you share with us a memory of working with him?

There’s so many memories with Miles. Miles looms larger than ever as the years go along; you hear his music all over the radio every day. I mean, you hear it in restaurants, you hear it everywhere. He really set the bar very high for musical creativity and so forth.

Miles used to always give me the advice I asked for in very short bursts of words. One of the memorable conversations, actually, was the first time I talked to him on the whole, when Tony Williams told me that Miles wanted me to join them in Baltimore at this club because Herbie couldn’t make it. So I got Miles’ number through Tony Williams and called Miles up and kind of nervously asked him when the rehearsal would be. I said, “Man, I’m so excited to play. When will the rehearsal be?” And let’s see, he said five words to me in his raspy voice: “Just play what you hear.”

In other words, there would be no rehearsal, and just play what you hear. I didn’t know some of the songs that were being played, but the renditions of them that were being played by that band—which was Tony, Wayne [Shorter], and Dave Holland was on bass by then—their renditions were already impressionistic version of the songs that we were doing. So all I needed to do was listen and respond to what I was hearing around me, and I never did learn the general score to those songs. But he said, “Play what you hear.”

Any other words for your fans and readers around the world?

No, man, I think we covered a lot. I appreciate your interest and thanks for the interview.

Chick Corea’s 70th Birthday Celebration runs Nov. 1-27 at the Blue Note Jazz Club, 131 West 3rd Street, in New York City. For more information, visit http://chickcorea.com/blue-note-nov-2011 and www.bluenote.net.

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