Rick Suchow: Bass

"I recorded 'Chromatic Fantasy' last because I was scared to play it. But I got it in the first take. I played it on my blond fretted bass."

In the December 1981 issue of Down Beat magazine Jaco discussed the recording sessions for his debut Warner Bros release, 'Word Of Mouth'. Here are some excerpts from his interview with the late Conrad Silvert:

Jaco on "Crisis": "It's just the bass guitar. I recorded it originally on a cassette, and later fed the cassette into a 24-track machine, and as each musician came in I asked him to play on it listening only to the bass part. In New York, Jack DeJohnette, Mike Brecker, Herbie Hancock, Don Alias, and Bobby Thomas recorded. In Florida I had Peter Erskine overdub just a real fast hi-hat, a calypso beat similar to "Teen Town", and I added a shekere and a mouth organ from Thailand that sounds like a train or a brass section.

"I put the tape away for a few months, until I got to Los Angeles. Then Wayne Shorter overdubbed, again listening only to the bass. I did it in a way similar to Jamaican 'dub' music, except that, for instance, while Wayne was playing I'd sit at the control board and maybe slide a little of Herbie's piano into Wayne's headphones for a few bars, just so Wayne would react to it. Then I had Hubert Laws record piccolo. It was a pretty outside way of recording, but it worked really well, and I'll definitely try something like it again."

On "Three Views Of A Secret": "I took the title from a chart written 10 years ago by Charlie Brent, who was musical director of Wayne Cochran's band when I was the bassist. Charlie is one of my most important teachers."

On "Liberty City": "People have said I'm getting political, but I named this two days before the riots in the Liberty City district of Miami. I used to be the only white person they'd let into Liberty City at night, because I was a musician and everyone knew me. Originally I wrote this as a kind of calypso -- the working title was 'High Life' -- and I had a certain sound in my head. When Herbie takes his piano solo, that's the sound I heard when I was a kid and I'd walk into a club and hear just a piano, upright bass, and drums, swinging out. Herbie improvises through the entire tune, and I'm playing the bass guitar with Othello playing steel drums an octave higher to give an overtone to the bass.

"I recorded basically the whole tune with 19 guys in one take in New York, just doing the trumpet part over in L.A., plus Hubert and Wayne overdubbing. I really enjoy the interplay among Othello and Toots and Herbie. Also the percussion -- Don Alias on shakers, Bobby Thomas on hand drums, and Jack DeJohnette on the traps. The horns include Chuck and Bobby Findley, Snooky Young, David Bargeron, Jim Pugh; the tuba is Tommy Johnson, who played on 'Close Encounters'. Brecker is on tenor sax, Howard Johnson on baritone... not too shabby a band."

On "Chromatic Fantasy": "I recorded this last take of all because I was scared to play it. But I got it in the first take. I had worked on it off and on for nearly 10 years, maybe five minutes a month, but you have to keep at it. I even had to teach myself a new fingering for it. I played it on my blond fretted bass. As I was playing it in the studio, I knew I had it about three-quarters of the way through -- but that's when it gets hardest, because you start laughing and make a mistake. The second part of 'Chromatic Fantasy' segues into something I recorded in my living room. I overdubbed it all in three takes."

On "Blackbird": "I've always used a couple of motifs to get back into when I'm way out on a limb during my bass solo onstage with Weather Report. On the last tour I was doing 'Blackbird'. As it segues on the album, all the percussion from 'Chromatic Fantasy' continues: timpani, a gong, Chinese cymbals, three recorders, all the little instruments I've collected -- I've even got a horn you call cows with!

"In Florida, I sketched out all the changes, whatever McCartney played in the original, but I left out the actual melody. And I realized that Toots had to play the melody. Immediately I called up Air France and made a reservation to take the Concorde out of New York to Paris. I recorded Toots' solo part in a studio outside Brussels. I've got about 18 out-takes you wouldn't believe. Toots was playing his ass off."

On "Word Of Mouth": "I made a scale of A,B#, C#, D#, E, G#,A... and improvised with it, had some fun. I wanted to play both drums and bass on it, so that's what I did. Simple as that."

On "John And Mary": "The section in A Major is something I wrote more than 10 years ago, when Mary was born. The C# section, which some people say sounds like Elmer Bernstein-- Peter Erskine says it sounds like a Marlboro commercial-- I wrote when John was born. And the middle, string section, which starts on an F sustained chord, I wrote a year ago as a seperate composition entitled 'Ingrid'.

"I wanted John and Mary to talk on the album, but they were shy. You can hear Phoebe singing in the background, and then John whispering that his ears are sweating because he has the headphones on. Then I tickled both of them and they started to laugh. It was total magic."

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