I fell in love with the playing of Andres Segovia, Glen Campbell, John Lennon, George Harrison, Sabícas, Charlie Byrd, Johnny Cash — and several others, all around the time I was 9 years old. I wanted to play it all. And I hope to die still trying.
Rock
From The Monkees and The Beatles to Led Zep, The Who, then Yes, Genesis Jethro Tull and… Steely Dan?
Here’s something I wrote a bit before the turn of the century. There were already rumours that some guy was going to make a movie of the entire Lord of the rings trilogy, which I’d read at least three times by then.
Vocals arranged and recorded by Mitch Seekins.
Classical
First lessons
My parents moved to Toronto as I was finishing college in Quebec, age 18, and I moved in with a friend west of Montreal in the small, Francophone majority town of Vaudreuil-Dorion, much closer to school. I’d had trombone lessons and a love of orchestral music since grade 4 and I could read bass clef, but I picked up the guitar on my own. I could do chords over the lyrics if I knew the tune, but not the notes. One day I saw an ad for guitar lessons, “Jazz, Classical, Pop, Rock”, to be given at the church not 5 minutes up the street. I wanted to study jazz. I did in fact own a nylon string guitar, but I didn’t consider showing it to a guitar teacher — I was probably stressed already about showing up to learn Joe Pass with an Aria Les Paul copy.
But when I got there the young man, whom I learned was a graduate student at McGill, said “I don’t know who wrote the ad… I’m the only teacher and I only teach classical. Try it! You might like it!” I was already working on Steve Howe’s Mood For a Day at home, so I really had no doubt about that. I replied, “Well, I never learned to read or write so well, but I wanna play the guitar just like Larry Coryell!” Well actually I didn’t say that, but it was 100% true, and definitely would have been an awesome thing to say if I’d thought of it at the time! Right?
So anyway…
…he then offered to play me something. He implied classical left-hand technique would leave jazz in the dust at any rate, and added, “…but wait until you see what your right hand will do.” He played Villa-Lobos, Estudio Uno. I replied, “where do I sign?”
I took technique seriously, read all the right sources, and my self-taught Steve Howe was actually not too shabby. If you know Montreal in the ’70s, you know it was the progrock capital of North America—everybody’d heard Roundabout, even at the conservatory. He launched me straight into Segovia scales and Carcassi. I learned to read guitar clef and within the first year I was doing Fernando Sor studies, the Villa-Lobos study and Prelude 1 …and still dreaming of playing jazz-rock fusion through a Marshall stack!
Fusion
“Hey Larry”
The first time I saw Larry Coryell was at the Montreal Forum when I was just 17, with my Hanon-crushing, jazz fusion aspiring, piano playing best friend. As we passed the back of the building on our way to a train home we noticed a small group of long-hairs like us encircling two sweaty Black dudes we recognized with just a touch of shock and disbelief. Adrian, with his British accent, says, “That’s bloody Alphonse Mouzon! And … uh … the bass player.” I remembered it. “John Lee!” Of all the things we said and heard over the next 15-20 minutes, beyond self- identifying as aspiring jazz musicians, the only words I’ve never forgotten: “Larry’ll be out in a couple minutes. Talk to him, he’s cool! Ask him for a lesson if you want.”
And that’s what I did. He joined John and Alphonse and started walking, with a smile and nod in our direction. And I blurted right out, “Hey Larry!” He laughed out loud and turned around and said, “Hey what!? Come and walk with us, we have to get back to the hotel…”
And I remember his engaging tone, his every word, and the emphasis he put on one of them: “What specifically is it you want to ask me, or learn from me?” I gulped. Since I don’t remember that exact answer I think it’s safe to assume I’ve repressed it subconsciously. I remember he said he couldn’t this time, because he was watching a meteor shower on the roof of the hotel and flying out the next morning. “But maybe next time!” It was two more years and three more asks, and on the other side of the continent that I finally got one, but that’s for another post.
Theory
“Adz” and I were students at John Abbott College (CEGEP) where it was our immense good fortune to be students of Trevor Payne. He taught us the same vocabulary and Roman numeral analysis they taught him at McGill to describe Beethoven and Brahms, using 12, 16 and 32 bar Blues and rock forms from Muddy Waters to Jimi Hendrix (whom he compared with Paganini). I still could not sight read, and I was decades from discovering ADHD’s contribution to that, but after a year with Trevor I was reading and writing guitar music, and losing forever the trombone lip I’d managed to pull along through high school. It got me accepted at Berklee.
Jazz
Berklee College of Music: It Was the Summer of ’78
It was my dad’s selling the house in Hudson Heights, PQ and my parents’ move to Toronto that landed me in Vaudreuil-Dorion in the first place, and I’m talking circles around myself, but here we are again. It was the early days of enjoying “a beer with the Old Man,” as my friends might have put it, but I never call him that, even now he’s 90. “Dear Ol’ Dad” yes, that’s personal and endearing. It was The Willow Inn, on the lakeshore, where I was a highly respected dishwasher by that time, and he was back in Quebec for the closing. We’d both had more than one pint when I asked if he’d give me $10,000 to go to Berklee for their 12-week, full credit summer program. He said yes! “I’ll pay for your first semester. But if you want to keep going you’ll have to pay the rest.”
Berklee was a terrible experience for Melissa Etheridge, but it was right for my penultimate summer as a teenager. I learned my musical strengths and weaknesses. I completed two semesters of ear training, learned the importance of inversions, wrote chord solos I still find hard to play, arranged and performed a Larry Coryell tune for my arranging class final… and came away with a belief in my future in music. I came away determined to get some gigs to pay my own way back. And I got gigs. I paid my rent and made my way up from the Aria to a Steinberger. What I didn’t have for the next 20 years, and more, were savings. But I’m getting ahead of myself.