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No 'One-Trick Pony': Steve Gadd excels at jazz, pop and the movies
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Steve Gadd and Friends perform next weekend at Yoshi's in San Francisco.
When Steve Gadd comes to Northern California next weekend, it will be in the company of some impressive friends. Indeed, the act performing Nov. 13-15 at Yoshi’s in San Francisco is billed as Steve Gadd and Friends and, in addition to drummer Gadd, features Joey DeFrancesco (organ), Ronnie Cuber (saxophone) and Paul Bollenback (guitar).
Of course, anyone familiar with Gadd’s career knows he’s never lacked for significant friends, in either jazz or pop. The big jazz names to be found in his discography include Groove Holmes, Chuck Mangione, Weather Report, Michel Petrucciani, the Brecker Brothers, Chick Corea, Bob James, Al DiMeola, Tom Scott, Grover Washington Jr., David Sanborn and the group Stuff. His pop connections are just as storied: Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Van McCoy (that’s him drumming on “The Hustle”) and, most notably, Paul Simon. The Gadd-Simon association goes back decades now and includes such hits as “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover”; in fact, Simon credits Gadd for the single reaching No. 1.
The big discovery was Steve Gadd’s drum part. It’s probably what made it a hit. When Steve used to be in the studio, he used to practice these little marching-band patterns. It was like a little exercise for him. So I guess that’s what it was. It’s tricky; I’ve watched a lot of drummers try to play that. They never quite get it.
Simon also put Gadd on the silver screen, a rare achievement for any jazz man, let alone a drummer.
The vehicle is Simon’s 1980 movie “One-Trick Pony.” Simon – an ever-striving artist who, after the massive acclaim of the ‘60s and ‘70s, was looking for new challenges – wrote the script and stars as Jonah Levin, a singer-songwriter who is managing to eke out a career based on a single hit, the anti-war anthem “Soft Parachutes.” The film represents something of an inverse fantasy for Simon, a meditation on what might have become of him if “Sounds of Silence” had turned out to be a fluke rather than the launching pad for one of pop’s finest songwriters.
”One-Trick Pony” follows Levin through an eventful few months, as he suffers a divorce from wife Marion (Blair Brown), attempts a professional comeback with help from his married lover Lonnie (Joan Hackett) and tries to keep his band satisfied. Not surprisingly, the actors filling those roles were Simon’s musicians at the time – Eric Gale, Tony Levin, Richard Tee and Gadd.
Like Simon’s other dramatic foray, his “Capeman” musical of a few years back, “One Trick Pony” was not warmly received. Some reviews were positive – Roger Ebert’s, for example – and the look behind the music industry remains fascinating. But there are real issues with the film.
(I should note here that I’m not recalling all this from memory. There can’t be more than a couple of hundred people who have “One Trick Pony” on VHS and I happen to be one of them.)
What drags the film down is the level of acting, particularly Simon in the lead. It’s not that he’s horrendous; it’s just that his earnest, amateur quality shows through. That’s particularly the case when you put Simon in the same room with the likes of Rip Torn, who plays his would-be music-industry savior.
But if you go into the movie not expecting Olivier, then its dour look and mood grows on you. The music is fantastic, of course, and the players each get their chance to shine as actors. Gadd and the rest have morbid fun playing a game of naming all the great rock ‘n’ roll deaths and Gadd takes a solo turn in a scene where he reads aloud a newspaper review of the group’s performance from the night before. (The reviewer, in a sardonic touch, admits in his notice that he didn’t catch the drummer’s name).
The clip below gives you a sense of “One-Trick Pony.” Yes, that’s Lou Reed as the record producer and you’ll recognize Torn. About three minutes in, you can catch Gadd in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
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A scene from Paul Simon's "One-Trick Pony."
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