Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftzett's podcast. My guest today is pianist Mike Garson. Mike, who were just involved with a video Heroes Ukraine, tell us about that.
Well. I got a call from the director Rupert Winwright and he had done this song of David Bowie's Heroes with a rewrite of some of the lyrics, and then he gathered these Ukrainian female talented women singers and guitarists and at the very end he thought it might be nice because I had the connection with David to maybe aired piano and he'd been working on months and as you know, it would have been nice if it came
out six or eight months ago. Climbing it is hard for it now, but in any case, it was heart felt by everyone who delivered it. And it's hard to even watch the video. You know, musically it sounds cool, but it's just suffering, you know, a lot of pain.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the music and the visuals.
You know, I like the way it's sounded, you know, these young women were great, you know, and their fears. It was loud and they found some motif for me on the piano and I was just banging away. It just kept going and it was a long video, but it was a fun shoot that came over to my studio, which my big piano is downstairs here. I just have like a mini piano, so that's here on this piano, and I could have you seen my fingers. Keep your interested if I play for you. But to glee, yeah,
this is a nice setup I have up here. It's nice to acquiet and I'm upstairs and I'm in Calabasta, so it's all working fine.
So is being associated with David Bowie all positive or is it a little bit of an albatross too?
It's a double edged sword, you know. And one way I owe my career to him because every rock star that's called called me in the last thirty years with fans of him and my playing on those early records like Diamond Dorg's Young Americans, especially Aladdin Sane. But so that's that's the plus. I've made a living instead of where I was prior as a starving jazz musician, which
I still do, and that was good. The downside of his everyone always wants to talk about Bowie and my standard line is I played good before I got the gig, and he just happened to like my playing. So I was the fucking whipped cream on the cake and let him do what he want with what I'm mean. I know nothing, Bob about rock and roll. I mean, you're an almanac, and I didn't know who Bowie.
Was what he called me, Bob. Okay, so what year were you born in?
I was born in nineteen forty five, and I waited just for the war to be done.
Okay, so you're born in nineteen forty five, Elvis Presley, you're aware when Elvis breaks, You're certainly aware when the beatles break. You don't care, or you don't pay attention.
I didn't pay attention. I was practicing the piano, and I was a little bit of a classical in jazz snob, which life humbled me out. And when I recognized that Joni Mitchell's and the Bob Dylan's and the Bowies of the world, it was a little late because it had to be fancy and virtuostic. And I grew up with Vladimir Harwitz and Rubinstein and Glenn Gould and Bach and Chopin and Liszt and Oscar in a Tatum and Bill Evans,
And where am I? I thought to myself, because I go to this audition and jeans and a T shirt on a Tuesday night at RCA in New York City and they're decked out like they're going on stage in Madison Square going. I was, where the fuck am I? You know?
Okay, you're born in forty five? Yeah, what do your parents do for a living? My dad was a liquor salesman and he turned me on to jazz because he sold liquor to the Half Note, which was on Spring and Hudston and Manhattan Great Jazz Club. He brought me down to see Lenny Tristano, who was a blind pianist who had played with Charlie Parker introduced me to him. I audition on a break when the band was on a break for Lenny. I played take five. I was just a budding jazz pianist, and he accepted me as
a student. Studied with him three years and then the rest is kind of history from that viewpoint, But it was my dad was the culprit.
My mom.
Oh, medical school. I was a pre med student at Brooklyn College. But I dissected the fucking pig and it just was a mess. I made chopped liver and spare ribs and I was done, and he'd given me an f on the test. And I said, come to the window here. I point to the music a building. I said, if you give me a d I'll get the fuck out of your face, you know, And that's what?
Okay? How many kids in the family. I have two daughters. No, no, no, no, no. On your level, you have brothers or sisters.
One sister she just passed a few months ago, and she was ten years older than me. So she passed and at eight eighty nine, I'll be out. I'll be eighty in a few months. And she was ten years older than me.
Were you close to her?
She got out of the house when I was seven years old. My mom screamed so much she had to get out. And she got married and I haven't seen her since.
And how did her life turn out?
She married a gentleman who also died four months ago. My brother in law who I knew for seventy years, and he was in real estate syndication. He was a lawyer, but he owned two Park Avenue which shown thirty third in Park. So they were fine. They were fine, and
then they moved out of New York. They got burnt out and they went to Sedona and they owned Enchantment, which was a nice hotel there, and they did that, and then he got dementia, so we moved him out there us here in Woodland Hills, and then my sister stayed with him for thirteen years of dementia. Then and then my sister got cancer a few months before he died, but she wouldn't leave till he died. He died, and a month later she was gone.
Wow, Okay, how many generations was your family in America? My dad was.
From the Bronx, myms from the Bronx, and all the grandparents were Russian somewhere probably Ukraine and some of those places over there.
I had the idental situation Russia and Ukraine. So you grow up exactly.
Where Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, between Prosper Park and Nathan's Coney Island Ocean Parkway. I still dream about those hot dogs fifteen cents. The French fries were ten cents.
You know what people don't remember about Coney Island was the steeplechase, which was really something else.
There you go, there, you go Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Connecticut, about fifty miles from New York City.
Got it, got it, got it. But you got the Coney Island though.
Absolutely got on the steeple chase. They wouldn't have the steeple chase today because there was no safety belt. But those people don't know. You got on this horse and it was on a rail, started inside, then went outside. It was kind of a race, and it was you know that in the roller coaster. You were like the two famous rides in Cody Island. You got it? Okay, So you grew up? Is there a piano in the house. There's a piano in the house. My mom played and
my sister played. Both played classical, and at seven I started with a wonderful teacher and I never looked back. So that's all I've ever done for I've been playing professionally since I'm fourteen. But I started learning the instrument at seven. Okay, so you were seven. What was the motivation to finally take lessons?
Peer pressure? Drew and Brooklyn With a piano in the house, What the fuck are you gonna do? You know?
So?
I but then I started to like it. But we had a little telephone in those days in a closet, and I was a little lazy at practicing. But I loved it. But I didn't want to practice that much. So anytime I didn't practice, my mom would run into the little closet to the telephone to call for faking it. So she's gonna call the piano teacher and canceled the lessons. So I run to the piano and start playing.
You know, Okay, you didn't like to practice, but were You know a lot of people begin by playing by ear and they leave out the reading and all the basics. You had a lot of training. How did it work for you?
I was had perfect pitch, so I could play by you. But I was playing classical. I didn't know what jazz was. I heard by the time I was nine, a little about Elvis and those kind of songs from those days. But I was playing Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and chopin I was. I was playing, you know, say, you know that kind of stuff in Beetho, and I was doing all that, and then at fourteen, I got the jazz bug. What could I say? And that's that's when I heard Dave and Errol Ganna, but I had now
pretty good chomps. And then I started doing gigs my first kid at fourteen, I made five bucks playing at sweet sixteen. I thought I was Elon musk By at five dollars there.
Okay, let's go back though. What kind of kid were you? Were you a good student, bad student? Were you a loaner? Did you have friends? It's a great question.
I was a loner. I had a few friends, but I was not understood. I hated school all through public school or high school and college, and I just couldn't wait to get out. And when I was in college, even I was playing gigs and I was the only one working and applying it, and they were talking like what year was Beethoven born?
Do I give a fuck? You know?
I want to know?
Do I like this piece?
So I was always about the music, and I stuff through learning. But all my great lessons were from great piano teachers and Julia teacher, Leonard Tristano, Herbie Hancock's Torkorea, Bill Evans.
I was blessed.
I was in New York in the sixties.
Okay, so you're playing the piano, your father takes you to the jazz Club, the Sweet sixteen gigs after that.
The Sweet Thing actually was first. It was more like a club debt. I played a lot of weddings in ball Misfits, so it wasn't really jazz. It was like the Shadowy a Smile or more, or some of the songs that were the hips way you know, or rumbas like best of mag Muco. It was all that and I had to learn a song today at that time. Within three years, I knew a thousand songs by heart.
Chris.
When you played these weddings at Ball Misterers, you weren't allowed to read the music.
So it was always solo. You were never a member of the group.
Oh those weddings and Babs was I would play at the beginning for the ceremonies. But we always had a band. I mean one was worse than the next, but it was a band.
But did you play in the band? Oh? Yeah, So you were always like the special star coming out of performing on your instrument. So how did you get all these gigs in New York?
Did you ever hear of the Roseland? Yeah?
Sure?
Every Wednesday at two o'clock it turned into the local eight or two musicians place where we all gathered, thousands of musicians will being there and somebody be at the microphone piano gig at the Concorde Hotel. I raised my hand, Groszegger's Hotel, Bob, it's first Saturday night at Lenon's and great the thirty bucks and we'd be all rushing for the gigs and we need someone in the castle for the summer fifteen bucks a week, my first game, you know.
And then they would still little Sheep music for fifteen cents and we'd learn the latest song. And it was great training. But at a certain point I wanted to kill myself because I didn't want to play music while people ate, you know, I wanted them to hear me. So I made a serious decision.
Like fuck that.
But I did a thousand gigs before I had the balls to do that.
Okay, little bit slower, you're playing the Sweet sixteen? Are you getting the gigs by going to roseland or is your now word of mouth? Little Mikey is the guy you want?
He instead of Mikey likes it. And it was just so simple, Oh he plays, you know, the girl in school likes you.
He plays.
Oh, my friend's having a sweet sixteen where you put the band together. So I put a band together. It was called the impromptu quartet, which is for telling, because my whole life is improvisation. I came from the same let's say, mindset as Keith Jarret is just the wider viewpoint of music. But I always liked improvising. So that was we had a nice quartet, and we did hundreds of gigs.
You know, hundreds, And what kind of money were you making?
The gigs would pay around sixty dollars seventy dollars for an individual bomments for a wedding. When I was working in the castles, it was a weekly pay. It started at fifteen dollars at fifteen a week, and then it went for forty dollars to eighty to ninety. The highest was ever one hundred and seventy dollars.
Well, if you're a teenager, that's kind of good money, right, Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And what did you spend the money on?
I don't know, I don't even remember. It wasn't that much money, you know, probably candy or something, you know.
I was I was a.
Little different as a musician in that, for one reason or another, I didn't drink or use drugs. So I never did my whole life. Maybe that's why I'm here telling the story and feeling younger, almost turning eighty than when I was twenty. I don't know that's the exact reason, because I'm not judgmental. I understand what the good and the band of drugs, but it just wasn't my cup of tea sushi, Yes, a little addicted.
What could I say? Okay, you're working in the cat Skills. I've been to the cat Skills. They made movies about it. Was that a good experience, you know, where you're running with the other people working there and you're having sexual adventures or was it like a drag just playing the piano.
So the first three four years I loved it. I loved it. You're a young kid fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and it just was wonderful. Plus I got a lot of experience. Every night you had a comedian, Jackie Mason, you had Heinz, Heinz and Dad. I played for mel to May over those five years. Every summer I played for almost eight hundred seniors before I met David Bowie. So I had a lot of experiences of company and I loved the company,
but then the quality wasn't high enough for me. The better I got, so I had to get out of there sooner then later.
Okay, let's go back to the lessons. So you start with the guy Lenny from the club. How long do you study with him?
Let me Trestano was three years and I lived in Brooklyn. He lived in Jamaica, Queens. It took me two hours each way to get there. I had to take a train to New York City, another train to Queens, and then a bus, and then I had to walk a half a mile for a ten minute lesson for eight dollars. He tore eighty students in two days and the rest of the week. He practic and he was blind, he was dark, he was bitter, and he was a fucking genius.
And he taught me three thousand left hand chord voicings or harmonies or however you want to call it, just in left hand over the first two years, three thousand. I think I used thirty of them. You know, well, you think of you think of imagine, it's four chords, you know, and he's teaching me these chords that sound like this, I mean, just just an instant. It probably worked for his head, and he had a whole mathematical way of laying out. So I had to memorize all
these chords in all twelve keys. It was torture. If I had to do it now, I'd call you up, asked you to shoot me.
The lessons were only ten minutes long. Do you believe that?
Sometimes nine minutes?
Well, tell me a little bit about the lesson. Could sit down and then.
What So it was four hours round trip in getting there, right, And I'd sit down and let's say these chords that I had to learn, Let's say I had learned at home two hundred that week. When I'd come in, he'd say, play it in one particular key, so that might be twenty to thirty chords, So that took two minutes. Then i'd have to do some scales stuff like this, then do that, and then different fingering to get all sorts of coordination and strength. So then I would do that.
Then he'd have me listen to Leslie Young or Billy Holiday or Bud Powell, and I have to sing and imitate their phrasing. And then he would let me improvise a little bit. And that was the lesson because ten minutes.
Goes right right, and what would be the assignment for the following week?
Now you did it in the key doing in the key of D flat next week. It's not like the guitar or the fucking capo.
Right right right right right right right right right. Okay.
So I love your questions. Nobody asked me this shit. You know what I mean, kids, but you do what I listen.
I stayed out to a Jewish family with a piano with the house. I started taking lessons at five. It's like I never I hated to practice. So when did it change?
It was piano was your first instrument. Oh yeah, then I really love you keeping going?
Okay? So at what point did you get the bug such that you wanted to practice.
You're not going to believe this, but it was during Vietnam and I was at Brooklyn College. I was still only doing an hour or two a day, and I was very good. But I wasn't great. But I was very good, and my marks were terrible because as you asked before, I was not a good student. They were not paralleling my mind.
I needed.
Freedom, I needed rebellion, I needed innovatives, not fucking machines and regurgitating Beethoven. There was a million people that could do that and better than me, although I was pretty good at it, but it's not me. I wanted express what was in there, and so my marks went to a d and if they dropped below C I got a call to be drafted because it was during Vietnam, and then the rubber or whatever when it hits the ground, I said, oh fuck, I'm not going to go shoot people.
So what happened was I found out if I put an extra year of DOS in three years instead of two and I passed the test, I could be in the band. So I auditioned, I got one hundred on the test, and I joined the band. So I knew I'd have to pay some serious dues for the first eight week school based of training. Then the next three years I'm playing the fucking Glockaspiel down Fifth Avenue and marching and you know, then we played for the Generals. But basically I was in the fort I was stationed
in Staten Island. I told everybody I was overseas from Brooklyn over the Arizona Bridge, and I would practice eight hours a day because there was nothing to do we do a parade on Fifth Avenue every three months, and we had a big band, so we practiced there and all the generals I would play for their parties, so I made extra money. They paid for two piano lesters.
I go into the city. After basic training. I was living home and eating a steak in the morning the sixth of the morning going to the fort and I was home by five o'clock. And I did all the shopping and the PX so everything was one third the price. And I did that for those three years, and that's when I got good.
I ended up.
There was a drummer in the band who ended up with Woody Herman and Man at Ferguson. There was a trumpet player ended up in Bloodswort and Tears. So we had a great band. And all I did is go every morning and practice. So it was like that pressure was needed because I didn't have that discipline. I'm kind of lazy and intuitive and I play from my heart. But there I had to do hard work and I did it.
Okay, the Army is after you. Brooklyn College right in the middle. After I finished, I went back and finished Brooklyn College. Okay, so you figure you'll join, So you won't be drafted in extent to Vietnam. I won that game. Okay, So what's it like being a Jewish guy in the army? Okay?
I was not going to share this story, but I think it's an important story. I was in basic training in Fort Dixon, New Jersey, and I was the only Jewish fella there, and I felt very isolated, and I had a German sergeant. I was not the most athletic person.
In the world. And when you learn how to take a.
Bayonet and you're supposed to stab it into the dummies, right, and you're supposed to do it like you're going to kill somebody. Everybody was stabbing it hard. And I took the knife and I was just like touching it because I was picturing I can't hurt another human being. And all of a sudden, this German sergeant said, in front of the whole barracks, if you're an example of a Jew, it's no wonder what Hitler did to those people. My body's still shivering saying it and thinking, shouldn't have I
done something about that? What could have I done that? I mean, do I report it? I mean I still play it in my head that was a pretty big chump symptism. It lasted me for a long time. You know, I got a free pass when I started playing music. Nobody cared if I was white, black, green, Italian. You know you're Jewish, Catholic. You know it was different, Okay.
You know, forgetting a pianist, a lot of people said, oh, I'm going to send my kid to the army for discipline. To set them straight. Was there any lesson that you learned in the army that was good.
I learned how to practice. I shine my shoes pretty good. I learned that appeal potatoes. But really what I did and I could run a mile, which now I barely could get up to the studio, you know, from the downstairs. But I mean basically, what I learned is to practice the piano and get good. Because eight hours a day for three years, even if I had no talent, at least you could mechanically play. Might not have gotten good gigs.
Yeah. Were you practicing eight hours because you were personally inspired at or had nothing better to do, or were the generals saying, hey, Mike, you know you gotta get better.
No. Within weeks, I fell in love with it, and I saw a progress.
Okay, let's go back. How does it end with Lenny? And who's your next teacher?
So simultaneously to Lenny Trestado, there was a gentleman named hal overton O ve Rtn how twar did Julia? But he also was a great jazz player, and he stard at the piano on twenty third Street and sixth Avenue. The cigarette would be hanging out of his mouth and he loved to bebop guys and Butt Powell. And he did the Felonious Monk big band arrangements for a jazz album at town Hall that came out around nineteen sixty three.
So he had a treasure chest of Monk song Selonious Monk, and none of them were available at that time, and he would teach me these. It was the most fantastic experience because he knew how to teach properly, and he prepared me for life for music for gigs up until but all with jazz. And one day I came in and I was mixing classical in jazz. So there's a chopin song that goes it's full of revolutionary town and it's a crazy left tandpo so I took the Gershwin song Summertime, and I went.
Something like that.
I remember the left hand point. So he says to me, that's the colectic. And the way he said it, Bob, it was like I had leprosy and I was just hearing all my influences and they started to come out. I might sit there and play a jazz thing for him, but then I might be going then and then that sounds mixed the classical in jazz, and then I might be starting like a classical thing. Didn't like it because he only liked one of the straight be box that sounded like this, and I was much more of a penis.
I wanted to do other things. I wanted to play two hands like he stole me like that, and I wanted to be to play like Arldonna that kind of a thing, and he wanted to keep me in a small box.
I mean, you've heard that story before.
And I had a Julia teacher, just dropping back to when I was thirteen, and he showed me some mozart, that beautiful sonata, and I came in the next week and I went.
And he said, you.
Have delusion as a grandeur. I should have said, I am possibly a budding composer and improviser. But I got intimidated and kind of stepped me back twenty or thirty years.
But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Okay, how did you last with that guy? How long?
That was about a year? And how Overton? That is the Julian teacher, how Overton jumping? A few years later, when studying with Lennyd Tristano, that was two years. Tony Williams Miles Davis, drummer, came for a lesson right after me. He was seventeen, you know, and so he was studying composition even though he was a great drummer. So I was in good company. And I got to play with Felonious Monk rhythm section at the New School in New York.
So it was great, great training. And then there were these miscellaneous teachers who would pop up, like Herbie Hancock came up to visit the drummer I was with in the Catskills, and he stat in and played old stand that Don't Blame Me, and it just said, oh my god, this guy couldn't really play. So I asked him for some piano lessons and he gave me three lessons but life changing. And then Bill Evans, who was pretty serious heroin addict. I went to see him at the Village
Vanguard about twenty times. One time I got the enough balls and I said to them Bill could have a lesson. He said, come up to my house and he spends six hours with me. Didn't charge me a penny.
Okay, to the degree you can speak it in terms of layman can understand what did Herbie and what did Bill Evans teach you?
Someone asked me that today in some interview, and I only remember the transmission and the energy from Bill Evans. Oh, it's like you're being with an idol, the way you know people love Bowie or a Dylan, you know, a Paul or John you know. I was that way to him. He showed me what's called some jazz voice ss, like maybe you played this way. You want to see the piano? Would that help you? No?
No, no, So.
So Lendy Bernstein tune and instead of playing a simple triad like CEG maybe it's like a stem major seven so, but just voice it, or you spread out the notes like BCE and then you play it. So I learned that from him. From Herbie Hancock he taught me what's called a diminished scale. Because I knew major scales, I knew minor scales, he taught me a diminish scale, which sounds like this. It's a different scale. Instead of seven notes, is eight notes. And it's a half step whole step,
half step, whole step. It's symmetrical. So if you're playing jazz and I'm playing a song and I'm playing a ste steven chord in the left hand, I could play a seed a diminished scale over it. So you build up a vocabulary. It's like learning English or Chinese or whatever.
Okay, you're in the army that you finish your term, what's the vision? How do you decide to go back to Brooklyn College.
I only had a few months left, and I got a call to audition for Buddy Rich. So I figured I'll drop out of college if I could work with Buddies. So I went to see his band and they played
a song. They sounded fantastic. He sounded fantastic on drums, and then he stood up after the song and screamed at the saxophone player, just like bullying, an invalidation beyond, and I thought, oh oh, So then I stopped there, and then I heard another song, and then he stood up and screamed at the trumpet player, at which point I went to my car and said, fuck him. I'm going home finishing college, because if I'm that abuse, I may as well go home to my house.
Okay, but let's go back before that. You finished with the Army. Did you always plan to go back to college. Yeah, and I just got the bachelor degree. I didn't want to go for my masters. I put in three and a half years, so I may as well knock it off. And I knocked it off. I graduated maybe a little early in January, and then I was right into the music world. Okay, your music education at Brooklyn College? Was that worth something?
You know? At the time, I thought not. When I look back there, I'm sort of a sponge and if there's something valuable, I have pretty distant discernment and differentiation. I learned a few things, but could have I spent better time. Yes, but you're in a Jewish middle class family. You finishing up? Oh yeah, you know that. Boy, you have to have a backup plan. Well, I got the degree.
My mind who was in education? I swear to you, I never went into the school system except as masterclasses and that kind of thing, because I didn't want to be trapped in that world. It was bad enough playing weddings and bomsters. I knew as early as very young that I had my own voice, my style. I knew I wanted to say something. But I wasn't a singer and I wasn't a performer. But I could play the shit out of the piano.
You know. So that's the story. Okay, so you graduate, what's the next step.
I graduated. I got married Susan Uh and I met in the Catskills. She was fourteen. I was sixteen, and I was playing Rhapsody in Blue. You know that one. I was playing raps in Blue. She comes from a little bungalow colony. Some girls in a bungalow colony went to my hospital. Let's go see the band over there at Cherry Hullo Hotel. I'm making forty dollars a week in the dumb There's fucking bats flying around in this room.
It wasn't like a gorgeous room. It was horrible. And a lot of folks would go up there like dirty dancing, that kind of a thing, like the movie and she comes with these friends and I'm playing Rhapsody in Blue and a little old lady taps her on the shoulder and says, you're gonna marry him. Six years later, we got married. Last week we celebrated fifty seven years. Go figure it, because fifty seven days is long in la and you know that.
Okay, what happens for the time she hears you play Rhapsody in Blue to the time you get married. Was it a continuous connection or she go back to high school and you ran into her again? How did this relationship play out? We were together the whole six years before we got married.
When I was in the army, I only saw her right the times that I get some time off, and she come to see me at four Dicks, and when I was a basic training she actually walked right by me because they shaved my head when at that time I had a lot of here and she couldn't believe what she saw. She actually passed by me, says this is your future husband, you know. So anyway, that's that's what happened. Then, Okay, you're a musician. Hey, she's young,
you're a musician. What did her parents say about this?
Wedding.
They loved me because they thought I was gonna be a doctor. Yes, yes, yes, okay, so Dad, you got you gotta hear this. Bob her dad owned a trucking company in Manhattan. The mafia was on him every day with guns, payoffs. He was a tough guy. Grew up with no money with three brothers in Manhattan eating bread stiffs is all they got, sharing a room that was thirty feet you know. And he made it. All brothers, they all made it. He owned the trucking company.
He made it.
He worked six days a week and the seventh day he was in the garage. All he wanted to do was give me the trucking company and come to work with him. I would have been dead, like fifty years ago. I said, Dad, I can't do that. He said, make the music a hobby. I said, I'm serious about that. I had a jazz trio. We already sounded good playing local gigs in New York. So we go to a wedding one day, some family member and as an eight piece band, but kind of horrible, like a bomb. It's
for band, wedding band. And he said, hey, Michael, now that's the band. Because it was eight pieces and I had a trio. He didn't couldn't differentiate quality from quantity, and so he finally stopped bothering about the trucking business. When I turned forty. He said, Okay, Mike, I know what we're gonna do. I'm going to put you through medical school and by fifty you'll be a doctor. So he never gave it up, but so so he look it was his daughter. He stare.
It was an up and down life.
I was getting five dollars a night on jazz gigs and all this before Bowie and then after David. There were times I wasn't working with David and then he'd come to the house and I wasn't working it, and then Susan would say, well he's practicing. What is he practicing for he's in the house. Well, he's writing a piece, and I don't understand, you know. So he's looking around and trying to snoop around and see my royalty checks. So Susan was hiding them. So I said, you got
to put these checks out to shut them up. So she didn't put out the two stend ones and the thirty sen ones from being She put out a few that were five thousand tenth outs and then he was quiet after that. But by that time I was like fifty five years old.
Okay, you graduate from college, you get married, what are the next steps in your musical career. I worked.
A lot of miscellaneous gigs, backing up different people like Martha Reeves from Author and their Van dellaz I did music director at Madison Square Garden with them. There was a very famous jazz big band called mel Lewis Thad Jones Big Band. They played every Monday night at the Village Vanguard. I did a few gigs with them. I worked with the jazz student Nancy Wilson with them. She was fantastic and I was getting calls. While I was doing that, I was also teaching, because I love teaching.
I started teaching nineteen sixty three and I've had only private one on ones now it's a lot of it is zoom all around the world, but about ten thousand students since over the last sixty two years. So I made extra money teaching and then I pick up miscellaneous gigs. And then one fine day, someone named David Bowie called to I didn't know who he was, and the rest of his history.
Okay, So when do you graduate from college? How old are you after the all main graduated was probably about twenty okay, so we're in the late sixties. First, let's talk about jazz. The heyday of jazz was the thirties and forties. Okay, So are you aware that somehow your passion is a little lot of time or do you think jazz is forever? What was going through your head?
I had known business mind. I only knew the music, and somehow I got by because I was teaching. If I didn't do some teaching, I couldn't have survived because a five dollar jazz gig going to it. In fact, the way I got the bowie gig, I was practicing, as I told you, eight hours a day. And then I get on this jazz gig with Dave Leebman, who I went to high school, was a sax player, with Miles Davis and other great musicians were in a club. I waited my whole life to get to this jazz gig.
Five people in the club five bucks. So I said to myself, this is not going to work. The rent was one hundred and fifty dollars. I'd have to do thirty of those gigs a month and then I still don't pay for the phone and gas. So I said, you gotta watch what you wish for, and I said, I think I better go out with a rock band. Two days later David Cole, Okay, before we get to David. Yeah, there's things like take five that anybody can understand. There are a lot of people say jazz I don't get it.
Explain it to those people. They're partially right because it's heady and it's its own little cult, you know, and we're better than them because they're playing just three chords and look what we're doing, you know, well no one and they don't get it, you know, they just want a little groove.
They just want to feel.
I could do both, but I naturally was a songwriter at fourteen, but it was so simple for me that I made a silly mistake and I said, I think I don't understand the code of jazz ceode. I think I'm going to figure it out. And I went on this Cecuitish trip for a lot of years and it ultimately helped me, but it certainly didn't financially or commercially, because, like you said, nobody understood the music. I mean, Miles Davis is great culture and is great, you know, or
Tata Muscapediston, but they are few and far between. Stan gets out a hit for the Boston over you know erl Gone, who was a bit of a showman. You know, you had people like Victor Borgier who used comedy and classical. I didn't think like my father in law thought, you need to work and have a gig and make some money.
I got by.
I was somewhat blessed in a way, and I had talent, and I was willing to do a wedding involvement. So I would do five on the weekend Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, and then I wouldn't work all week, and I teach on Tuesday, but not like ten minutes like Lennard Tristana, an hour or less than I would give. And I teach eight ten students and then have enough money to just get by and survive.
And that was it. Okay. Nineteen seventy Miles goes electric in a silent way and bitches brew Joe Zonal's in the band, then informs weather report. Is this something you like or is it too far from tradition.
I liked it, but I was a little more earlier miles. But I did end up working with Stanley Clark and played fusion, but that was in seventy eight, and I did that kind of music. So the thing with me is, I don't see divisions in music. I think I have the same mindset as Duke Ellington. He said, this is he the good music or bad music. So if it's a great rock song, I will gravitate to it, and
if it's a great jazz song, I'll gravitate. It's not that all jazz, good old rock, or all poper or all fusion, so you know, and art is and opinion. So I went to things that resonated with me. But I never was one of these people. I only liked rock, or I only like Popper, I only liked Beboper, only liked fusion. I liked what I liked and just because it's music, and it's certainly better than war, certainly better than politics. It's like maybe the only same thing left
on the planet. So I'm happy that I'm doing it. Mind you, if I was a pre med student, you know, you can help people that way. But it wasn't my calling, and when I was twelve, I wanted to be a rabbi, but I didn't like the separation. I just wanted to be a person of the world, and music was the closest I could get to it.
Not that it was.
I hate the music business, don't get me wrong, but I love the music.
So what's the status of jazz today.
There are some great talent out there, that's all I know. I know nothing about the specifics in the business. There's some great piadists like Brad maldu who's really really good, and he does some rock things and interpretations of a lot of Beatles, and he did a boie soul, So there's some big talent out there.
I don't know.
I don't think jazz has ever been close to mainstream. When I grew up, it was always rock was the mainstream. Rock is small now it's hip hop. So you know, who knows I'm the wrong person to ask that. You probably know better than me. It doesn't look that good to me. From the friends I have that are starting that I could only base it on. Oh, I better give this guy fifty bucks. He's fucked.
Okay, let's go back to this transitional moment. How long after you graduate from college do you audition for Buwie? About seven years and before you have that break in your mind you say I'm gonna be an itinerant musician and all work out in the end, or in the back of your mind you say, you know I'm gonna have a big break. People are gonna know who I am.
I never thought of break or fame or anything. You know, Fame is probably the most unstatem drug there is. It never impressed me. I just wanted to play the piano. Okay, So how do you get the call from Bowie? Do you ever hear of Anette Peacock?
Sure? Yeah.
I had played on one of her albums, a very avant gard and there was a song she could call on the one and the piano solo was a little similar to Aladin say.
It was out there and she was.
An avant garde singer. She would sing through the move through the microphone, the mini move back in the not even the mini one, the big one. And I played on her album. Bowie comes to do the first American Ziggy Startles tour. He doesn't bring a piano player. Rick Weightman, who'd done Hunky during those things great pianists he was doing sessions or I don't know if yes was formed or I don't know the sequence, but he steadily couldn't come.
So he comes with just Mick Ronson and Woody and Trevors the Spiders from All but he needs a piano. He's doing life. How do you do it without a piano?
Or changes?
You need a piano, you know. So he being very tuned into avant garde musicians, he knew a net and he was a fan of her music. And so is Mick Ronson to lead guitarist in the band. And he goes to visit her and he said, would you like to be in my band? She said, Now, I have my own career. But Mike Garson, he just played on
my album. He said, you're in. So I got hired for eight weeks only and I then ended up I think the longest standing musician and probably did four hundred shows with him in twenty albums and things are still coming out.
Okay, do you audition? My audition for.
Seven seconds and you're gonna hear it right now. Nick Ronson said, you got the game. I said, Mick, I didn't start the play. Yet as he was sitting at the piano, he said, I know, I played piano two. It's the gig. You got it, And David was in the control room about thirty feet away. That was it, okay. I saw that tour in Boston at the Music Hall. I did not know who you were at that point in time, but that album was gigantic in England and it was just the beginning of the success of Bowie
in the US. What was it like being on the road for those eight weeks. It was a shock, you know, at the jazz clubs and having to go on a back entrance. I was treated like the way black musicians were treated in the forties.
You know.
It was a and all of a sudden with the Plaza Hotel and we're at the Beverly Hills Hotel here, not even in the hotel, in the bungalows and Elton John's on the left and Perry Como's on the right, and we're eating eighty dollars meals and they're paying for everything. And I think we're the ones responsible for everybody having to leave their credit card now because then incidentals were
all covered by RCA. I remember the band the tech guys bringing in like ten cases of champagne and just putting on the bill, and the band buying cameras and for a coach. So you know, it was those days and it was shocking. But again the music was fascinating because they were doing about twenty two storms on the Ziggi tour, and some storms don't need piano at all,
like hang on to yourself and this and that. So I would sneak out into the audience and watch David, and I thought to myself, this guy's a fucking genius.
I like this guy.
I want to stay longer than eight weeks. He's the Miles Davis, a rock, and he's changing. He's a chameleon. He paralleled my mind because that's what I did. I changed one hundred times. It's just that it didn't matter because I was doing the jazz of classical. Who gives
a fuck? But he was doing it brilliantly in the commercial of the pop world, and to his credit, he was able to still stick with his integrity except for the eighties, when he told me he felt that he lost it to record companies and the pressure got to him.
Well, since we're there, you're talking about when he does the dance records and that type of stuff. Yes, he feels felt like he sold out. I mean he.
Felt like doing Let's dance and that felt good. But then they like that, let's milk that shit. And that's exactly when the integrity gets fucked. And as I like to say, you compromise your integrity, your improvised drops.
Okay, so you're in the band. You know there are people who play in a band and essentially never talk to the leader of the band. So to what degree did you interact with the other three and Bowie and did they treat you as a member of the band or oh, this guy just plays piano on some of the songs.
Initially the Spiders were a little reluctant, except for Mick Ronson because he loved me. And then I ended up playing on his two solo albums, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and played Home or but I became friends with all of them. But to take a few weeks because what does that sound? One of those jam squads just supposed to be playing and then they're hearing Bowie's eating it up because we lost the beat. It was just enhancing the harmonic vocabulary. Which has to do with chords, you know,
and David loved it. They accepted me, and I made a decision after the eight weeks, I want to stay for two years, and we finished Young Americans. That's when I was the musical director because Nick Ronson he fired the whole band in that last show when they did the Ziggy movie, which is pretty well known, and David had told me, you're the only one I'm keeping, but everyone is being fired. And in that first two years most people don't know that he fired five different bands.
We were friends, but that's not why he took me. I was able to change styles with him, so I could do Young.
Americans or play a gospel face.
I could do that, or I could play you know, I could do all of that. Well the song he never sang once live and I love that record. Ah me too? Yeah, good says.
Okay, let's just focus for a second on Mick Ronson. Oh supposedly, you know, he was, you know, not equal to Bowie, but he was a main part of those shows and he worked with other people. He did the two solo records and died of alcoholism. So who was the real Mick Ronson? Who was alcohol really is demon.
Mick was an unstung hero. He was very close from He also smoked a lot, so between the alcohol and smoke. He died of liver cancer and started Bowie. So they both smoked and drank, so they both died from that. But Mick was a sweetheart. He made it safe for me to be in the band. I was uncomfortable. I didn't know about popularity and fame and autographs.
Where am I?
You know when we did the very first show, I think it was in Cleveland in seventy two. After the encore, I see these skies, the spiders and Bowie running to a back entrance, zooming down to the basement to get in a limo, and I'm folding my music on stuff it was, and all of a sudden, thousand the people are coming at me because I'm the next best target. And I learned very fast, be careful, get out of there.
Okay. That show started with a classical piece from Clockwork Orange, which was hot at that particular moment. Do you know why that was chosen?
I don't know why, but it makes sense that someone like David would choose this Beethoven thing that was twisted. You know, I don't know anything other than my relationship with him, but I'm sure in the books that's available. But I actually only had this musical. He only went liked to see me as of his pianist. He didn't want to know me as anything else.
Okay, so how do you feel what he fires the band? Terrible?
Because they were my friends and now I'm having to be on a stage with them for two nights and I know they're going and they went into shock, And there might have been reasons for it on a let's say, a mundane bullshit level. The real truth is this guy couldn't stop. He was hearing the next thing, and he's hearing Diamond Dogs, and he's hearing young Americans, and he's hearing pin Ups, which were all English covers, and he just couldn't help himself. And I think that's the real reason.
But there were probably financial things and stupid shit that musicians do. You know, So that's okay.
You're on the road for eight weeks. Was this the first time you were on the road that long and away from your new wife?
Interestingly enough, in nineteen seventy I was out for a year or two on and off with a band called Brethren, Rick Murata, the drummer he played in the band, and a guy named Tommy Cosgrove, and we had a manager named Sid Bernstein who brought the shea Stadium and he thought we were next Beatles.
I didn't. He did.
We sounded like Stevie Windward band, and I thought, how can we be the next Binals if we're doing even though they were originals, It distinger sounded too much like Stevie Woodenwock. I was original. I took over doctor John's job. He did the first album with Brethren, and I did the second album, and I toured with him and in one fine day we didn't make it. And we played a lot of shows. We opened up all those Joe Cocker shows with the mad Doorgs and it. I used
to watch Lee and Russell ferociously. And two Drummers was fantastic playing at the Capitol.
Theater in news. I saw that show too, said hello right at the Capitol. Okay, so you say, you know he fires the spiders from Mars and he's gonna do it. Ladd Insane. Tell me about trying out all these new musicians at all these bands that don't work.
He had fantastic drummers, Ainsley Dunbar, Andy Newmore, Dennis Davis, Tony Newman Wood. He would mint See Sterling, Campbell, z Acholford. They were all fantastic drummers. Some just didn't fit for a project he was doing. He never put the friendship above the integrity of their music. It would sing when there was an album he didn't use me, but I understood it wasn't personally. He heard something else, maybe as
synthesize it, maybe Brian Eno. So there's plenty of albums I'm not on and I got it, you know, And you got to love somebody who has integrity, and I learned that from him. I had it in me because I was disciplined and I only played what I loved. But I learned even more about holding the A position because I went most of the time when I wasn't with him, and you know, most rock artists they take
months and months of sometimes years. So I was composing classical music and doing all sorts of other things.
So tell me about the recording of the Laddin scene.
You couldn't play a wrong note well, because we were a Trident studio where they did Hey, Jude and queen and all these things. The piano was this Bechstein. It was like sent from God to tried. The studio he had Ken Scott, who had worked with the Beatles, an amazing engineer, producer, and David I think was tired of the guitars from the Ziggy album, you know, and we did it. I mean that tour could have gone on for five years and he could have short after eighteen months.
So now he I'm the flavor of the month, so it's going to be piano centric and I show up on these sessions and it was like forensically he went into my brain. Let's get that romantic part of Mike where it was like this, let's get that, and let's get the nineteen twenty jazz. But twisted, I'm getting the chance to practice when I got two gigs coming in next week, so thanks for adultery me.
So that was time.
And then Aladdin's say, which was my avante garde's side. So he was able to get the best out of whatever had practiced the prior years, almost like a prophet who could no Every musician he ever had was the perfect one at the perfect time, whether it was Carlos Alamar or the guitarist, great blues player who died in the Plain accident.
I forgot his name.
Great guitars, and of course Nick Ronson and then the later albums were Donnie mcclasten on Sacks. He always found the perfect musicians for what he wanted and he the best thing about him is he never micromanaged. I've been on projects with directors and singers. Do this, play this chord?
Here?
Do and I go from the potential of giving all of myself, which is one hundred and ten percent, to probably minus twenty because they take the life out of me and the music. I see it as flowing through me. So if someone's fucking yaking at me, do this.
It's over.
Because I'm not a true studio musician. I'm a I'm an artist. I'll do some studio work, but only if I want to do it. Okay, Latin saying comes out at this point. He's a known quantity in America. From the outside, it does not look it's as if it's commercially successful, as the hate to use the word hype, as the expectations. What was it like on the other side of the curtain.
It wasn't easy.
It wasn't easy, and the part of him that wants to reach and be famous and all that and was hurt, you know, because he was torn between his artistic integrity and he has to do this because he traveled. I was with him in the limos when he's listening to a wreath of Franklin and absorbing getting ready for young Americans before we did a lot insane and America every town was affecting him. So he had to do it. But success wise, I don't think it was anywhere near the ziggy thing.
Okay, and what was your experience of pit ups?
A lot of fun. We were at that chateau where Elton did one of his albums in France, and it was so much fun. Lulu came and she sang man whole Soul of the World for fun. That became a number one single when he recorded it was not on the charts, so that was fun. Ainsley Dunball played drums and I thought, because I know nothing about rock, I
thought they were all Bowie songs. He didn't care. I had Hammond organ that I had connected to the piano on Sorrow, one of those great songs, very short, and I was getting this down you could hear it on the record what the piano sounds a little different, so we were experimenting. Then it was an easy album, was fun. I think it was good for his head because he was separating from the spiders. And more about Mick ronson. When they sang together, it was magical, Bob the blend.
Sometimes I couldn't tell who was who, and the way they performed on stage together, it was unreal. Now, when Mick went off on his solo album and then his solo tour which I played on, they were not successful at all, and while it was a great band, some nice tunes, it didn't have the Bowie magic. So some people are meant to be that person right under.
Okay, just a couple of things. Many people are keyboardists and they'll play the piano, they'll play the sin, they'll play the organ. In your particular case, you view yourself just as a piano player.
Yes, but I can play all those and I'm very good at them, but I'm not known for it. And my default is the piano because I love it, and that's people know my sounds on any album and when I play synths or electric piano or organ, I sound good. But it could be any great player, because that's not where I live. I just do it as a convenience as somebody wants. Oh give me a little electric piano, but I love the piano.
You went on the road Ziggy started. Did they take a piano or was there a piano in every market?
They would have a nine foot grand on every show. I'll tell you remember the story with the M and ms, with the rock guys and the Green and the Blue. I was in Madison Square, Go in the seventy three and I had a black nine foot Steinway. I was like a pig and shit, the happiest guy in the world, real piano. And I made a joke after the concert, and the piano technician was there. I said that being nice to have a white Steinway. And the next night
there's this fifteen hundred pounds nine foot white Steinway. I mean, I'm lucky if I get a stupid keyboard cassio with a kid. You know these days, so that those were those times with unbelievable money being spent.
And was the deal that they had to deliver the piano and they had to be tuned that day exactly, And did somebody ever fuck up. No, okay, So now it comes to Diamond Dogs. Diamond Dogs has Rebel Rebel. It's an arena tour. Some people say, wait, this is a commercial compromise. What was it like from your side, from your viewpoint, you.
Know, I was only I was one of the only musicians on that album because there was no more Spiders, and there was Tony Bisconti was involved in production, an engineer, and there was a bass player named Herbie Flowers who passed this this year. He's the one who played on the lou Reed Walk on the wild Side Great. I toured with him with Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour. But that album, David was into William Burrows and the cutups and he would take newspapers and cut it up
and form lyrics from it. It was a style of writing. They ended up in some of those lyrics. But like a song like sweet Thing Candidate is, I think it's a genius song. Rebel is what everybody knows, Rebel Rebel. But there's some good music on there. But it's a hard album to digest. But I think it has for me to test the time. But not everybody feels that way, you know. So it's a music his opinion.
So could you tell that David was satisfied that he had this level of success in America?
Then I could tell it was breaking. I could feel it. I could feel it. They created a little bit of a vacuum around him to cause that kind of kernel stuff that they did with Elvis and all that, and.
You know, okay, so that's seventy four, there's a huge success. He disappears for about a year, comes packed with something completely different, young Americans to what did we? Were you up front in all the Philadelphia you know Elements and Luther Van Rose and you say, Carlos Alomar shows up, what was your viewpoint? What was your participation?
So actually in that album, I was the understarted hero because it was me who set the stage for a loadst look for the young Americans by going.
And it starts with.
It laid the vaud But Luther was the new star coming up and I knew it, and I was the music director. I had no problem. You tell the singers what to do, you do this, you do that, and that music. It was American music. So it was actually closer to my heart than the English music because I didn't know the English music. I just played on it,
but I didn't know it. But I knew the sounds he was looking for, and I knew the ojs, and I knew all that those kind of music and arefa now Luther vandros By the way, he's a great documentary on him on CNN that.
I saw last month.
It's tested and you see me in it with hair. That's what nobody knows. But anyway, he's sitting right behind David Bowie and I'm playing the Young Americans and he starts singing some harmony stuff. He's not in the band, and David doesn't know him. Carlos brought him there. He was just hanging and David said, oh, come up to the mic and the rest of his history. So that was a big help to Luther's career, you know, because what people don't know is during that tour we were
the opening act for David. It was called the Garson Band, but the manager was a prick, and he wouldn't put my name on the you know, until he and when he saw I was successful, but then it was too late. And then he's one of those guys. He was taking fifty percent of the royalties fifty percent of gross of David, and that's what he wanted, what he wanted to manage
me and goodbye. But we opened the show for David, and there were towns we got a better review than David, But there were towns they were also throwing raw eggs coming on the stage because they didn't want to black lives singing soul music when they're waiting for David Bowie. So I experienced the good and bad and the ugly of that. But I knew Luther was a big talent.
Okay, Stylistically it was a big change from certainly Diamond Dogs. Yeah, how did you find out that Bowie was going in that direction? He told me.
You could hear it a little bit on nineteen eighty four on one of the early albums. You could feel America influenced them for better or worse, you know.
Okay, favorite songs on that album, or somebody's up there likes me in Fascination, you got good taste, so yes, so tell me about certainly the clavinet on Fascination and instead do I play keyboards? That's me.
And I just you know, I heard a little Stevie Wonder. I said that sounds like fun, maybe I'll try it. We have all these jams, maybe these tapes will someday come out there hitting tapes. We're just jamming. David be just smiling listening to us playing, because we have an amazing band. We had Willie Weeks on bass, Oh my god, you know, maybe the best electric bass player I played with for that kind of music. We had Andy Nwmalk,
who's fantastic trauma. He's in London. He's crazy, is anything, but he's he's great, and he played drums and columns, you know, and earl Slick was starting to emerge, you know, and because there was no Mick ronson but David was fascinated with Stigma sound and Philly and that sound. But he did it his way, you know. They kind of called it a plastics or whatever they named it, but it was authentic for him. Whatever he did, he always
sounded like David Bowie. I didn't rehearsals. He'd fucked with us and sound like Elder saw Johnny Cash for fun because he had that kind of ear and he could imitate, but he really had his own voice, didn't he.
So then he starts working with Eno, going to Germany and you're not called well, how did you find out? And how'd you feel? Terrible?
I still feel terrible because I know just what I would have played on every album.
I wasn't on.
I just know. But you know, you have to respect a guy. Here's another direction, and God bless him. And it's not like I wasn't working. I started working with fusion music, like at Stanley Clark, I played with Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones. I mean it was on and on. I was doing great, but I started to miss him and he started to miss me, and we reconvened, believe it or not, in eighteen years after the Young Americans for Black Tie, White Noise, and then I did everything through
two thousand and five or something like that. So I was very appreciative to be creating again. And I'll never forget. We're sitting in the studio, you know, the outside album by any chance. So so yeah, it's pretty out there. And here's what he said to me. He said, Mike, I really I suffered with the record companies. I feel
I compromised my integrity. I'm doing now is gathering all my favorite musicians, Carlos said, Brian Eno and me and we're gonna go to montrou and we're just gonna improvise with two Sony tape records forty eight connected and we're gonna just improvise two three four hours a day for two weeks, and you're gonna go home and me and Brian turn him into songs.
Well, this is.
Right up my alley. Right, That's all I did is improvised. They didn't even tell us keys. Sometimes they played us Marvin Gay in the headphones and they told us to play against it, and then they took off Marvin Gay and you had some crazy collagio sound and then it turns out to be a song called I'm Deranged or this and that. So it was a fantastic musical experience. But he said, I need to go in with you guys to get back to myself. So this is gonna be a very avant god album. People are not gonna
like it. Then when we toured his manager A bil Zie, he runs to State. He came to me said, can you talk to him about doing the hits? I said, Bill, you talk to him. You're the manager. This is I'm happy here. You're rich, he's rich. Let him do what he has to do I promise you will end up doing hits again whenever that comes. It happened a year or two later, so he had to do it for Saul and I haven't delight the album, but it's not commercial.
You work with Eno for the first time. What does he add? Picture this.
I'm on this nine foot steinway and right behind me there's a DX seven Yamaha keyboard. And every day there was a little music store right next to montro where they had the jazz festival, and right next to the studio where Queen recorded, there's a little music store. He would buy this little box, did crazy sounds like the
tall players buy boxes. And he connect us to the DX seven keyboard and I'm playing all this, I'm all over the piano and I'm hearing in my head of peep peep, peep, peep peep like and that turned out to be on Space Boy or something. But he had a lot of taste. He told me his instrument was the studio. So he took me Alpha dinner, and he wanted to know about Bill Evans and jazz, and he respected my playing, and he in his book he calls
it the garsthonic style. So there was a deep respect and of course he's kind of a whack o genius, you know, in a whole different way, which just shows you how deep art can be if you're not sucked into the you know, the bullshit, you know. And it was fun working with him, and he had a nice vision, and he played jokes on David every day and crazy stuff we go on in the studio, you know, Okay.
Ultimately you go on the road. That's David's a little bit of an underplay. I saw it at the will Turn and that's his last tour.
You saw that one.
Oh, I was there absolutely, Yeah.
Yeah, that was a fun gig actually, and well he was very loose.
And without all the airs, and that's why we made it cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was a breath of fresh air, you know, right. That was that was the last to
sadly we had. Look, we had been on the road thirteen months ball and we did one hundred and thirteen shows and he gets a heart attack in Hamburg, Germany, and I'm playing for him on the stage and I see him holding his heart and I could feel my fingers tightened up because we have this spiritual, telepathic connection from so many years of playing together and I said something was wrong, and he managed to get through the show and they zoomed him over in hospital. He had
thence put in and never after that. I did one or two shows with him and me alone with Alicia Keys, like some Benefits, and that was the last shows he ever done. He did two more albums later. He wanted me to move to New York that I had my whole family settled here. Had I have a regret because had I moved, which I couldn't was impractical when my kids were in school and all that. But had I moved, I would have been on those last two albums because he used everyone from New York and he told me so.
But whatever, I'm happy that where I contributed is where I contributed.
You know, Okay, when did you know he was sick?
I heard it only through rumors and he never told anyone except one or two people. And there was a biography being done by me at the time, by some English guy.
I think it was called Bowie's Piano Man or something like that.
And the author said to me, can you listen to these sixty songs or eighty songs that you played with through David's career? And critique to all of them, and now I had never done that. I had to step for hours and go through every single song. I was overwhelmed because it was good him and me and it was magical. And so I wrote David and I said, I'm in shock here. This ship was better than I thought. And within three seconds I got an email Mike. We
did a great body of work. And I got off the phone and I said, Susan, I said, that's the last time I'm going to hear from him. He said something very final. We did a great body of work and three months later he was dead.
So he's such a big part of your life. Is it like a death of a member of a family. Yes. Yes, Just to go back to put a rap on it, you say that he treated you as his piano player. It was a musical connection. To what degree did you have experiences or a relationship like two people might be a member of a band but might talk about, you know, what they had for dinner or some movie. Was he that kind of guy or did he keep you at arm's length?
No, he was very sociable and he considered his band close friends. Now we were in a bus together right for years and so we talked philosophy. He was going to be a Buddhist. He told me the Buddhist guy said you better go sting, You'll have a bigger effect, and he was smart. We'd be going from one city to another, and by the time we got the next city had read three books I mean kind of like
You and that were just like absorbing, absorbing. And sometimes we wouldn't see him, but many times after a show we'd be sitting in He used to like to watch The Office, the original one, the English version would really rissed, and we would watch that after while we're in the bus going to another country a city.
And he was.
Very warm person. He had a lot of feeling. When my dad died in the mid nineties, I had to be at the funeral, and my dad made sure. He asked me when I'm going to Finland and when the tour was over, and he worked out his death right in between those two things. It was unbelievable. My dad said, I want you to play these three songs, and I'm
getting a Steinway. It was all planned, and then you go back on tour and I go to the funeral and I go to rehearsal right after, and David gave me the biggest hug and sincere condolences.
It was.
That was David Bowie, that was David Jones, or that was the real person, that was not a persona. And I think that's where his love and the music was underneath whatever crap they might have been on the crust on the top. You know, it's just a horrible business.
Okay. Your father and mother, your father in law, were they proud of your success or with your father in law was always you know, it's like Bruce Springsteen mother saying go back to college when he's talk about the trucking company. Or were they thrilled about Could they even understand your success?
The only one who understood was my dad. He was put on the planet to support me, and no matter what I played. He was on his dying in bed one time and I said, Dad, I'm playing in Arizona discosta with Dox Everson and a symphony orchestra. He had just told me two hours earlier you couldn't go down to the delicatest and he loved his pastrowomy sandwiches. And he got on the plane and he was at the gig handing out Champagne to do Stevenson and the Band,
totally alert and happy in his mid eighties. The show was over. Back in the wheelchair, flumped over, looked like he was gonna die.
So he was. He was the one who got it.
My mom medical doctor, my mother law medical doctor, my bad in law, trucking business.
It was unfortunately, I can understand this.
What makes you say that?
That's my own story going back to Okay, So those seventeen years when Bowie is doing his thing without you, what are you doing?
I played a lot of jazz, did a lot of teaching, and I became part of a group called Free Flight. It was a flute player who played in the La Philharmonic that loved jazz and classical. Was Ralph Humphrey on drums who played with Zappa and Algio, and a great studio musician and a bass player named Jim Lacefield and myself and we mixed classical and jazz. We had a lovely career. Played on Johnny Carson three times. We played at the Hollywood Bowl. We played at Lincoln Center for
a jazz jazz classical group. We did pretty good. We had an agent and we played those performing art centers of whole two thousand people. So they have built in, they still out and we had a good ten to fifteen year room. I was totally happy. And then David Cole I got a sub for those other gigs after and so I was good at Stanley Clark was a great bass player. I played on piano and a lot of his movies Boys in the Hood. That's me playing piano and a.
Woaho a little bit slower. Hey, let's go back to Bowie for a second. Do you have a royalty interest from Bowie at all?
You know the number zero?
Yes? Okay, next, that's what I thought it was. But just making sure, okay.
So in London in nineteen seventy three, the union scale for three hours was eighteen pounds, which was thirty three dollars. So I'm pretty fast in the studio. So on Aladdin's Staine, I made one hundred and fifty dollars.
How long are we there? Well, I did you know?
Maybe three sessions over a few days, three three.
Hour sessions, six hour sessions. Okay, let's let's see it. I don't I don't want to.
I don't want to upset you too much because you've heard it a few times, and you know, David's viewpoint is use my name. And he probably didn't know what I was even getting paid, because he himself was being ripped off by the manager at fifty percent, as I told you, and he was bankrupt in the eighties, so I don't know that he knew. All I knew was in the later years when we said, can't we get a million dollars for this tour? We're giving our life
away from He said, just use my name. You'll be busy and you'll be working the rest of your life.
Some truth to that.
But the English guys Nick and David Sheep passed legendarily. What's the word just then?
Is it legendarily? Okay? You talk about working with Stanley Clark, working on movie scores, et cetera. Are you just sitting at home and the phone range or today it's an email or are you working it networking? How does all this should happen?
I never did anything. The phone would bring christ you know, I tended to deliver, and I love music and I love communicating, co creating with people, so I didn't really do anything. And sometimes there would periods no work would come in, but all of a sudden, The movie Stigmata comes out twenty five years ago, and actually the same director who did the Ukrainian thing. But that movie comes out and I do the score with Billy Corgan and then Billy Corgan says, you want to go out with
the Smashing Pumpkins. Things would always come in, but there would be those very rough times where I'd have to just refinance my house just to.
Buy Tell me a little bit more about that.
I should bring my wife in on that one. She's the one who suffers because she's paying the bills every Monday. And it was not easy, you know. And several times, over many years, we had to refinance our house and never get us going for six months for a year, and then you're paying more mortgage. Sometimes, grace of God, I would get another gig, and sometimes I didn't, and sometimes we're gonna have to sell the house. And then all of a sudden, Bowie calls, you know. I mean,
it's a rollercoaster. Would I recommend that kind of a career. You just have to love the music so much that you don't care what the fuck happened to you.
Did you ever get so frustrated that you contemplated giving up, not for a second.
B I would just go play the piano for ten hours, and I got better. When I had no work, I'd.
Compose, Okay, to what degree? You know? It's one thing if Stanley Clark is calling, Billy Corgan whatever, But to what degree could you work on your own when no one was calling.
I always had solo gigs and trio gigs. I'd go to Israel, I'd go to Japan, go to the Blue Notes. I always worked. There was small clubs called two dollars Bills that was on Franklin and Bronson. I worked there for years, maybe forty six to eighty dollars, and did a Friday and a Saturday. I played in San Diego and another jazz club for six years. I played there six nights a week, sometimes over six months. So I
was always working. And I love anything I played because it was jazz or it was a great rock band. And then, like I said, I was smart enough to add the income through my piano lessons that I taught, and that was steady because students came, you know every week.
Okay, how did you build that business? Word of mouth? Word of mouth? Okay, there are a lot of people who are great players and shitty teachers. So what's the key to being a good teacher.
I might be a better teacher than player. If I'm going to be really honest, If I've done five thousand concerts, I'd say two thousand were great and three thousand okay, phoned it in or whatever I've thought. Ten thousand students nine nine hundred and ninety were great, a few didn't go right, And it's it's getting out of your own way wanting to answer the question. The problem with classical teachers and chanced you must do this, you mustn't do that.
My viewpoint is what do you want to learn? Why am I going to put you on an excursion of class? But if you want to be a singer songwriter? I taught Vonda Shephard. She did the Ali McBeal show. All I certainly, oh good, Yeah, she was my student at fourteen.
Wow. So how skilled does someone have to be for you to teach them?
In the seventies, I was like a tyrant in New York, and they had to be willing to do eight hours a day and be very advanced. But now, so many years later, all I require is desire, they don't have to play. I teach doctors and lawyers on Zoom all around the world and they just love it. And that's all I need. And I did all the virtual also class and stuff I taught the jazz people. I taught people who worked with Miles Davis. I won that game
a long time ago. I actually like teaching simple songwriting and simple cause I'm playing simpler now that I ever did. And I was always had to be jazz for was now simple pop cause, but getting the magic out of them, whether it's solo. I played a cancer benefit. That's when I met your nephew right two weeks ago. And you know, I do a lot of that stuff and I love it.
You know. So when you're playing two dollars bills, is it depressing at all?
No, it's always filmed. I get two dollars each person.
I'll leave it at that. Okay, how do you meet Billy Corgan? And ended up working with Billy Corgan.
So we're in France and one of these television shows and there's several bands in a circle and Bowie was one of them. And I'm in the dressing room and bolways have a new discussion with Billy Corgan about God, and he says tells his bodyguard called Mike, he'll want to discuss this, and he said, what do you think about God?
I don't know.
It's not a guy sitting up there waving a hand striking people. There may be all that is. I don't know, infinite intelligence something. I know it's bigger than just the body, but I didn't know much more to stay other than that.
And then we became friends. And then he's auditioning. I'm in a jazz gig in Wisconsin or something, and I see he's auditioning paddle players because there was a mess with Smashing Pumpkins and the drummer and the terrible and they needed a keyboard play and it was auditioning people. So I called him. He said, well, I never thought you would want to work with me. I said, you're interesting, and I'd like to. And that's how I got that gig.
You know, we have about one hundred and eighty hours of DVDs and never released with Kenny Aronoff and oh my god, it wasn't a Pumpkins band. It was a Billy Corgan tour. I did a Pumpkins tour that one of their final ones. These bands always have final gigs and then they do ten more final gigs.
Okay, Billy Corgan has a reputation as being somewhat mercurial and difficult. Is that a misperception or what is the insight into that? It's not a misperception. But for better or worse, he knows what he wants and he doesn't stop till he gets it. He maybe could get out some soft sandpaper and refinement a little. Maybe he has now because he's married and got some kids. I think he's changed because I sat him with him at the Hollywood Bowl about a year or two ago and it
was different. I also, he got married last year. I played his wedding, So he's cool. But I saw him pretty rough on the guitar players and bass players in the band, you know, James and Darcy. It was painful. He respected me so much. We never had an issue with him. But one time he came into the bus after a constant in Japan and he went around to each person in the band and must have a photograph of memory, but told each one what they did wrong, and it really hurt me. So I went to him
and I said, Billy couldn't you wait till tomorrow? Everyone's coming off the stage. The audience was happy. We played good, he said, these people are coming to see me, Mike, and my job is to give the best I could give. And when I hear something wrong, I wanted fixed.
So how could I fault that?
I might say? Can you do it with a soft touch? That's all? Okay, you're a jazz guy. Smashing Pumpkins certainly had an arrow where they make it commercially successful. But is that music to the lady enough interesting enough for you?
My challenge when I play with any of these rock bands, even Bowie, what can I find that contributes and ads? Sometimes it's minimal and sometimes it's a long and Billy is a funny guy. We'd be doing and he'd stop the band playing for twenty thousand people and asked me to play Summertime by myself.
Okay, how did you hook up with Trent Reznor?
He uh opened with us for Bowie in ninety five.
I remember being at the Forum. Were you at that show? By anyhow? That show I was not at? Okay.
So we were on tour together, not in Europe but in America, and they would play the first half of the show, and then there would be some dovetailing where David would sing a trend song and TRP would singer David Saw and he would be always listening to me in rehearsal.
I couldn't understand why I didn't even know him, and we'd walk in the hall to the dressing rooms and we sort of not never was introduced, and one time in Keyboard magazine or Downby, somebody asked him in the nineties, who would you like the next recovers and he said me, and I was felt flattered, And then that didn't occur for another two years. Then I did the Fragile album, which was a great double album, and and then a few years later he invited me. I think it might
have been at the Wilton again nine in Shales. They were it was their last. Do you remember seeing me at that one? Because there's so many last shows, No, I Jim Garrino was the manager. I certainly remember that last show, all the things about the ticketing. Unfortunately I do not remember you being there. I'm not sure it would have have been maybe in two thousand and six. Yeah, yeah, anyway, I played two Stars at matt As, not but he said something that was hard for me to grasp or
or absorb. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I like to bring up friend of mine and he's been my biggest inspiration. And then he announced me, and I'm thinking, I hardly know you, and we come from different universes. And then I remembered when we were in the studio. I played on fifteen tracks on the Fragile album, but he only put me on three. I said, Trent, what happened? And he said, your influence was so strong and so connected with Bowie, I was losing my voice, so I picked
the three that I felt with work. I said, this is exactly what I said to him. I said, I.
Really respect that, but I also said fuck you, and I said, please put them out instrumental someday because it was amazing and he was a great producer. He had sixty keyboards in the studio in New Orleans is the place that burned down, and then he had three pianos for me. Pick your choice. I mean, so what is his magic?
What does he bring?
What I could tell you is in nineteen ninety five, David Bowie said to me, watch out for this guy. He's going to be the one, and you ended up.
Working with him on the Social Network soundtrack, which was his first big success.
I think gone girl, I think I remember. And there was Watchmen, which was an eight part series on HBO. He would always call me for anything he couldn't play because he plays the piano, right, but anything that he wanted, something a little fancier. But I don't know if I did Social Networks to say I did that on Wikipedia, I don't know.
Twenty ten, Okay, how do you get hooked up with the Dillinger escape player? I have seen that act.
Those guys were on the same trend show and they were wilder than nine ers now. They were hanging from the speakers. Well maybe that's where I saw them. Okay, okay, I was on that show and that's where they heard me. And they thought, oh, this motherfucker is as crazy as us in a different way. So they called me to play on that. It was so much fun, and the Stinger was actually directing me. It was a hard song. It was in hard meters and I had a lot
of fun. It was just one of these little magic moments. You meet somebody in the elevator and you connect, but you never see him again, you know, And then what about pretty reckless? When I was doing all these COVID things through streaming, I had every singer who loved David Stingwood made from Adam Lambert to Boy George and Duran Durant to Joe Elliot, and she was one of them. She said, let's do a quickstand, so we met on that. I mean, I'm pretty lucky because over those years there
must have been one hundred Stoners. The only ones who came anywhere close to David when they worked with me were.
Steel and Sting. When did you work with Sting.
At the Wilton? One of those shows, he did Lazarus in Blackstar, which two of the songs from that last album, and it was breathtaking what he did. And they weren't friends or connected, but the love was still there.
Okay, if one does a little research about you online, they find for a while you were remember of scientology. Tell me about that.
Chick Korea turned me on to scientology in nineteen seventy and something didn't feel kosher, but I respected him, so I thought maybe he said there's some good communication skills and bloody blah blah blah. So I did it from seventy to eighty two. But I couldn't take the structure and the hierarchy. It just wasn't who I was.
So I left.
But Stanley, at the time, my wife was managing chick Corea and she fired him and he disconnected from me, and I never saw him again to the day he died. But yet he had been the godfather of my kids and who were best friends, and we played shows together, him on synthesized me on piano and this kind of stuff, and we went to Israel together in Japan. But that's
what occult mentality can do to people. And I guess I had a vulnerability and I had the ability to find what's right in things, but there were things that just didn't feel right. So I had to leave, and I left. And so when I left, I had no friends because everyone in the Church of Scientology canceled by me, and I was like a heretic. And then everyone wasn't a scientologist still thought I was in scientology. So I had a lonely, lonely ten years. But that's when I
found a lot of my own classical music. I had a movement of music that I put together in the nineties.
And I still do it.
It's called now music, and I used the concept of improv that we do in jazz, but I did it in classical, so I could sit at the piano and improvise a sonata and it sounds written. But I developed it over thousands of pieces. I actually have over five thousand pieces of music i'd written. Had I written that out by hand, it would take three hundred years, but it would just come. I would sit there and all of a sudden, I mean, I could do this ten
thousand years and not stuff moments. There's a bathroom nearby and some food, so that's still. I developed a lot of music that way, and I have a copyist who not tates it all. I don't play them. I do them once and give them to classical piatus who can't improvise. So just like there was Baroque music, Renaissance music, classical
romantic minimalists, this is called now music. But I've been doing it for thirty years and nobody knows about it, because they'll take another one hundred and fifty years before my music was discovered. Because people are happy that I did a lot understanding God bless them, you know, I'm not gonna reject that and say it's below makers. I write symphonies and this bullshit. You know, I love people, I love music, and I love creating. With people, magic happens.
It's that old saying when tool more gathered in my name and something magic happens. When you're by yourself, it's fine, you get with somebody. It's something with Brandy Carlin last month song and I played the simplest piano possibly play, and I loved it, you know. So you know, I get the strangest calls. Just when everything is falling apart, I get a call, okay, just to go back to scientology.
Was there anything positive about that experience. I liked some of the communication skills where you learn to listen, where you learn to ask the right questions. They had a drug program, not as good as AA, but I helped a few people get off drugs who were heroin addicts that worked. There was some processing where you could remove some traumatic incidents. But for the most part, I'm not a person that works well within structure or hierarchy, and
I'm not just kind of a free spirit. So I knew even in nineteen seventy the day would come, I'd have to leave. But it took me a little longer than it should have. But Chick stayed to the day died, died a travolter and Tom Cruise, So there's something that's there, but it didn't I needed my freedom. I was finding I was giving my power away to l Ron Hudbrid instead of to myself.
That's not good. And when you went to leave, to what degree was that process difficult in terms of them forget the emotional decision to leave. You know, from the outside, they don't seem to like people leaving.
Oh, forget about it, you know. And because I was a celebrity and I had played many scientology organizations around the world, this was a shock. So they for ten years, I got a call every week trying to get me back in and I never did.
Okay, But other than the calls, did they haunt you me some stories they say they come to the house, etc. Did you have those experiences?
I had one or two of those. They didn't want to mess with me because I have a big mouth and I go to the press. But so and also the people who were in certain positions who would be nasty to others like you would describe me. They liked me, and they they just thought I was ignorant and misinformed, or somebody was in my ear. They didn't know that I smelled bullshit. You know, I have a bullshit to
Tepta somewhere in my brain. Did you say your wife was managing Chick COREA, Yeah, and she really put she put return to forever back when they couldn't whoa wait, wait.
Wait you marry this girl? She's from the bungalow colony? How did she become a manager?
Chick came up to me in nineteen seventy nineties, said, my something about Susan that she knows to know the business, but I think she could be a good manager for me.
Can you will you allow that? And I said yeah? And she was great, but she knew nothing. But she's bright, she's smart, she's lovely, she's warm, and she knows how to talk to people. But she told me just the other day, she go all these meetings with my Worston and all these cool people and and she just wouldn't say a word. So they thought she was like this silent genius. But she was just trying to learn the business. She took a few classes at UCLA, and she did
great things for your because returned to forever. They were fighting at that time, and they were offered like a million dollars a guide to go on this tour for a few months. She got them together, so she used some of her skills and all was good until I left the church. Chick wanted her to divorce me. Go think about that. Of course she was loyal. And just to be clear, you joined the church. Did she join her church?
She didn't want to, but she thought she would lose her marriage if she didn't join with me.
She never liked it. So how long did she manage Chick? For maybe three years? And she had any other music business adventures.
She did Billy Chiles, who was a great pianist and composer, and then she did film composers for a few years. And for the most part, she prefers being a grandma, and she keeps an eye on my ship. But she doesn't want to. She hates the business, but she will give me advice when I do some stupid shit, you know which, Yeah, I'll take that gig and I'll be away three months and make forty dollars. Well think about that,
But about your two year old grandkids. You know that kind of shit, you know, normal women thing.
Okay, when we were talking about setting this up, you were in Europe. How much do you work now outside the home and you know, paid gigs? How much am I out of the country versus no, no, no, How much are you playing gigs?
Maybe fifty a year? Fifty shows solo piano?
Yeah, what kind of shows? And who gets you these gigs?
Solo piano gigs are pretty easy promoters because there's no fuss nor must and I show up and I love playing solo piano. I've done it in Israel. It tour through Israel in different places. Sometimes my jazz trio. That's easy. Sometimes a stinger and pianist. I work with Jane Oliver. What a long time ago. She was a neighbor in Brooklyn. Her name was Janie Cohne. She's the one who signing
something enchanted evening. Barber streis In and her were both on Colombia and she told Colombia either she goes or I go. So that fucked her career up. They let go of Jane, who work with her studio work would pop in again. The students were consistent. Just I was playing with symphony orchestra. I actually did an orchestra arrangement of Aladdin saying which I wanted to bring something fresh, and I had a sixty piece of orchestra and I
played and there was some Bowie alumni. Then I went to London played with another rock band, and I went to New York work with Judith Hill, who used to work with Prince and Michael Jackson, very good singer, and we would someone producer was doing reimaginations of Pink Floyd and interesting projects. I get these things out of nowhere. I'll come home and the phone rings or an email.
Okay, those are the projects. If someone is booking you or your jazz trio. Do you have an agent who's getting these gigs.
I used to back in the day. No, Now they just call on I deal with it. Bowie told me something funny, he said, London told me this. He said, don't have a manager, but have the best pr god, best lawyer, best account and blah blah blah. I don't know that that's totally true, because he had managers. And you know as well as I know that the accent made it needed great.
So I never made it.
I'm just underground. You know, I'm the secret source when someone needs some help, you know, whether it's Saint Vincent on her album. I played on some of these people's first albums and then they launched, and well, fuck Mike, you know he got.
It's going okay. Someone calls said, Mike, yeah, I want you to do something, but you're doing something else. You're committed. Who do you tell him to call? They can't get you.
Every time I've done that, it's backfire, really terribly. Not because who I sent wasn't proficient, But that's the difference. And you know better than me, or as well as I do, that are and technical expertise in virtuosity two different things. I'm blessed to have both because I practiced one hundred and fifty thousand hours and still practicing. And any time in this compensation that I could move my fingers, I was happy. You know, that's my happy place.
So you know, So why exactly did these circumstances backfire? Which ones? Do you mean? Will you recommend somebody when you're unavailable? Ah?
I did it. I did it with a great clarinetis Eddie Daniels. And I wrote a piece of music and I sent this pianist. I got a call to work with the Smashing Pumpkins ninety miles down the road, and this is some esoteric classical piece I wrote for the three best clarinet plays in the world, one with the net, one with the Chicago Symphony, and one with la and they asked me to write a piece for three clarinets
and pianum. So I gave the music to this. The pianists retorted he was great, but he didn't have my feel, and they it ruined him because they made fun of him, and it ruined me my reputation.
They never called me again, So I don't do that.
If someone wants something that I know somebody could do, like you know, a piano teacher. But even there people end up disappointed because my thing is thought very specific, and if somebody does play like me, and there are many imitators, it doesn't have the same you know vibe, you know, because it's this karaoke.
Okay, if we use a different instrument. We talk about guitarists. People debate the best guitarists I have, but I think it's Jeff Beck that's not relevant. But there's Jeff Beg, Jimmy Hendrakes, Eric Clapped and Jimmy Peach. Then there are people who were stylists who would never go on record that they're the best guitarist, Keith Richards, Pete Towns In etc. Where do you put yourself?
I'm look I played with Jeff Beck with Stanley Clark in nineteen seventy nine, so I was at his house in Tunbridge Wells and if he wasn't fixing his cars, the guitar was always in his hand. So we shared that love and Simon Phillips was the drummer and we had like three or four gigs. You know, that's the funny world, the jazz world. And he wanted to be with jazz players. He wasn't at my level jazz wise,
but he was Jeff Beck, and he imagined. He sat in with us on one of the last Bowie shows with the Spiders, and him and Mick Ronson they played together.
It was unbelievable.
So I'm with you on Jeff. And you know, Paco di la Cheer is one of my favorites. He died at sixty ten years ago. Amazing flamenco player, but he moved in some jazz circles and with John McLoughlin, Al Demiola and different people. But how about piano players you in the hierarchy?
I have no idea.
I can tell you my favorites. I love Nicky Hopkins, who actually gave some Kano lessons too, because he wanted to pick my brain about more advanced harmony.
But I loved his Well, well, you gave piano lessons to Nicky Hopkins. I'll give you one if you want. Hey, okay, how did you know Nicky Hopkins? The Blue and you know he died at a young age. What can you tell us about him?
Sweetheart? Nice documentary on him. Now, yeah, I've seen I would have preferred his playing, but that's that bullshit world, you know, with the rights. But look at his credits. They're ridiculous. So Angie and this he I asked him in the lesson that I was being paid for to teach him jazz and this and that. How do you put those songs?
Together? So simple?
I have a very funny story with Nicky Hopkins. I got called by a famous producer and I'll remember his name maybe, but anyway, I'm in the studio he's producing this pop singer and he calls me he said, well, I want you to play like that Bowie stuff on these songs, and that's a pop song and I'm trying to do that and it's wrong and it's wrong. So he micro manages me through every bar and the piece is done in two hours.
I hated it.
I love where I played, but I hated the process. And I said, you know, that sounds like a friend of mine. That sounds like Nicki Hopkins, And he said, oh, that's who I meant to hire. Oh god, because I'm with Bowie, he's with the rolling song, He's we beatles. I'm not el So you know, I don't know how that works. But it was hilarious and pathetic, you know. But Nicki was special Leon, Oh my god, Leon Russell,
and I watched them every night. Oh yeah, I mean when I got cool to play in my first rock band, I listened to him and Doctor John for one full day straight and I was straight for the rest of my life. So those guys. I love Billy Joel, I love Elton. None of them are pianist the way I am, but they don't have to be. I love guys. I like the way Bowie plays piano, and Billy Corgan and Trent. Some of the things they play are much deeper than
what I play. But I have finance, I have touch, I have some people just like some of the fancy shit. But these days, as I said, I'm playing simpler than ever.
Okay, So in the runway you have left, which could be one minute or twenty years, any specific goals or you just feeling you know it's going like it's going away for the phone to ring. I'll practice, I'll write some jazz stuff. You know.
This might sound insane, but I considered his first seventy years my apprenticeship. So I'm just beginning my career because all I did is support all these other motherfucker's my whole life.
It's my turn, and.
Funny things are happening now, you know. I mean to get called to Dublin to play with a symphony orchestra and make good money, and then a rock band, and I'm getting paid thousands and thousands because they think I'm gonna die, and they might be right.
I never forget.
I was playing the Blue Notes with Stanley Clark in the nineties and he said, Mike, just wait till our seventies would go into legacy. Mode said, what are you talking about? He said, they'll bust your chops now, but as soon as they know you're gonna die, they treat you much differently. You know, poor guy, you have a cane, you're walking in a wheelchair. You'ren't gonna get a hard at time because look, let's face that, all all friends they're going. My dad's biggest loss was every day call
me and said another friend died. That's what he suffered with in his last few years of his life. And I'm seeing that now, aside from all musicians I lost who committed suicidal overdose, which are hundreds just the old age now. And thank god, I'm in good shape.
But who knows.
You know, nobody knows how old was your father when he died eighty nine. But he didn't have to die. He had an ulcer and they could have fixed it. He said, No, he knew I was struggling. He wanted me to have whatever money he had left, so he died. He bled to death in the middle of the night in the hospital. He wouldn't sign the paper. He would have been he could, he would have lift to one hundred. He had great genes. Well, hopefully you have those genes too.
Somebody told me.
I don't know, but somebody said to me, as long as you have a purpose in doing what you love to be okay, when that's over, you'll probably split. And I'm accepting that. I mean, I know the limitations of a body, but I also know I feel good when I'm playing, and I don't feel so good when i'm not.
Okay, you're not on the road, you're at home. You play every day, and how long you play for.
In the old days it was eight hours, four hours, two hours. Now, I just compose, improvise, arrange, and I do sessions right where I am for hundreds of artists known and unknown, because people can't afford to find me here and there. Some do, but they send me a track and I just put piano on it, and they'll send me a couple of grand and it takes me an hour. So it's good. I'm fine. I feel bad for other people, I don't feel bad for me. I'm
one of the lucky ones that snuck through. And I don't know how.
I never did a day game other than the piano. I wouldn't know how to do anything. Well. We're lucky to have heard your story, Mike, I want to thank you so much for taking this time with my audience. I love your audience, I love your letter, I love this interview. Been waiting for it for five years because I know you asked cool questions and it's been a pleasure being with you. You got me smiling.
That's all that matters. If you want to watch something really stupid, some crazy director from London who used to make sci fi and movies travel following me around for a few years, and there's this documentary called Mike Carson and his eighty eight Friends, because there's eighty eight and he did a documentary and you can see it on Amazon and it's it's interesting. It's not a great documentary and it captures thirty percent of me, but another part that we didn't discuss, so that might be fun.
Food for thought for next time. Until next time, This is Bob Left SAIDs