Thanks to a fellow Sussudioer for this...
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For The Love Of Big Band

Phil Collins threw the pop world a changeup this summer. He put his singing
on the backburner and hit the road with his own big band.
Collins had performed once with a big band on an eight-show European tour
that included a performance at the 1996 Montreux Jazz Festival directed by
Quincy Jones. That project later aired as part of a PBS television
documentary. So it wasn't a completely unprece-dented move. But the majority
of listeners who know the 47-year-old Collins as
Genesis-drummer-turned-pop-sensation probably never heard it coming.
A longtime fan of Count Basie and Buddy Rich, Collins formed the 21-piece
brass-heavy outfit by bringing together members of his rock band and
professional jazz players. He called on ace arrangers like John Clayton and
Sammy Nestico to do the charts. And then he sweat-ed through learning the
drum parts: Not only does the British-born Collins not read music; he had
never really played swing before.
The group played with power and precision at this summer's Taste of Chicago,
one stop on their 29-date U.S-European tour. Instead of traditional big band
fare, the arrangements focused mainly on Genesis tunes and songs normally
associated with Collins - tunes like "Sussudio," "Invisible Touch," "I Don't
Care Anymore," "In The Air Tonight," "Hold On My Heart," "Dance On A
Volcano" and "That's All" - all reworked harmonically and swung in a fairly
straightforward manner. Although at one point in the show, r&b/gospel
vocalist Oleta Adams sang a mini-set of blues and standards, and later guest
soloist/alto saxist Geraid Albright lent a smooth and contemporary tone to
"Georgia On My Mind," for the most part it was pure Phil Collins, who only
emerged from behind the kit to sing an encore of "The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Do Nothin'Till You Hear From Me."
We caught up with Collins after the two-and-a-half-hour show back-stage at
the Petrillo Band Shell.


ED ENRIGHT: You had an especially appreciative audience here tonight. But
overall, how has the tour been received so far?
PHIL COLLINS: The pop audience can be unforgiving sometimes. They come not
knowing what to expect. They've been told I'm not going to sing, they've
been told it's an instrumental evening, big band, and they've seen it on
PBS. They've heard interviews where I've
specified this. I come on at the beginning of the show and I say, "I'm not
going to sing", and still it doesn't quite sink in. But I'm just having the
most fun, I think. Apart from drumming with Eric Clapton's band, I think I'm
having the most fun I've had for years and years.

EE: What do you find so rewarding about it? What is it about the big band
that appeals to you?
PC: I get so much pleasure from doing it every night. I think, in simple
terms, it's like [imitates a drum figure from Sinatra At The Sands that cues
the Count Basie band's entrance] brrrllllrrlllrrllllrrlr ... BWEHHH,
BA-NA-DAT!!! It's that whole thing of  "setting it up." It's like a good
joke with a great punch line. You know what's going to happen, and so does
the audience, the listener. If I'm listening to [Basie band drummer] Sonny
Payne - I just want to do that. I know that's not what [big band jazz] is
all about, but that's really what hooked me in. That and the Buddy Rich West
Side Story album.
In fact, toward the end of Buddy's life, we met at a Grammy salute to Jazz.
I was asked if I wanted to play the drums, to be the third drummer between
Tony Williams and Buddy, and I said yes, although I was way out of my depth.
I actually with-drew from it at rehearsal. I said, "You've got one drummer
too many, and that's me." Tony Williams later became a good friend of mine.
I was going to produce a record for him, but as fate would have it, he died
before I had the chance. There's something about the sound of a  big band.
It's a shit-hot band. The horn players [including Collins' own Vine Street
Horns plus trumpeter and retired educator Ron Modell  and several graduates
of his jazz program at Northern Illinois University], they're all great and
I'm really learning a lot.I've really worked  hard at it this time. Last
time I worked harder at it, but I hadn't done it. It was a bit heavy. The
PBS thing was taken from the word "go."  They just filmed it, fly on the
wall, from the beginning of the rehearsals through to the first gig. When I
listen back to it, it's a bit heavy.  I'd learned 30 percent of how to play
thebrushes. I had the other 70 percent to go! I want to go out on the stage
and be able to play full- stop and get it better every night.

EE: How do you practice getting that touch, that nuance of feel required for
big band drumming?
PC: I did two weeks on my own. I don't an awful lot. I play on my records,
and I play on anybody else's records when I'm asked, but I don't play much
on the road. I went to the sesion where they recorded the new charts we
got - Sammy Nestico and John Clayton did several new charts - and I met the
drummer who plays for me. He played and I listened, and I took it away and I
learned it. I sat in my basement and I played along to it and I wrote it out
phonetically. See my charts? As you know, I don't read., It's just stuff
with the hornline: Paaap! like that. [points to a sketch of what looks like
eighth-note rhythms] This wouldn't make any sense to you - only to me. So I
spent two weeks doing that.
I've got my Clayton Cameron brushes with me. He sent me a tape and a pair of
brushes two years ago when Tony Bennett came out on the road with us as
featured guest vocalist. I didn't get around to watching the video at the
time. This time I actually studied it. I just rehearsed and practiced. I
know it doesn't sound long, but it was two weeks doing nothing else. And
then the small band came over, just the basics, and we rehearsed a week like
that. Then the big band came over for 10 days, Then we were on the road.
Apart from the first night, which was the first time we'd played in front of
people, it's been great. And I will do this till I drop now. This is
something I'm really serious about. And of course, next time I come to
America, people will see it advertised and know what it is. Hopefully jazz
fans will come.

EE: How do you expect the more hard-core, serious jazz fans to respond?
PC: When we did this thing two years ago in Spain, I didn't see the reviews,
and if I had I wouldn't have been able to stand them, of course. Apparently
they had a go at us, less than flattering. It came home to me that there's a
lot of snobbery in jazz and I think it would be good if people took it the
other way around. I'm trying to bring jazz to a bigger audience. I'm not
trying to make money off it. It actually should be considered the opposite:
Isn't it nice that this rock star, who doesn't need to do this, is doing
this to bring this to a lot of people and people are going to buy Count
Basie and Duke Ellington records and CDs by the new big bands because he's
turning young kids on to it? I hope some people do think like that. But in
any form of the arts there's always that kind of snobbery. So far, I see
old, knowledgeable faces out there, and I get great pleasure from that. I
would like the pop audience to enjoy it, but I know somehow they won't in
the end. They'll like the feel of it, but it's the other stuff. ... I mean,
what do you laugh at when you see Monty Python's  Flying Circus? Is it the
funny stuff, or is it the silly walks? Whereas really, the other stuff is
the really funny stuff. If you can get people  to watch and listen and enjoy
it, that's the main thing. I'd like to think that eventually the jazz
audience will come around.

EE. You've indicated that you're not doing this project to make a profit.
What's it like to put this production together, to finance it, compared to a
rock & roll production?
PC: Well, we couldn't do it without a sponsor, that's for sure. Private
Issue [credit card] came to the rescue. I would've  had to lose a half a
million dollars to do it which I was thinking about doing. I mean, I've got
more money than I'll ever need to use, so I was thinking: Do I keep the half
million dollars and buy a hundred suits, or do I go out and do something I
want to do? So I was considering going out and
doing it, but fortunately we got a sponsor. Without them we couldn't have
done it in such a way. But the crew, they're my crew. They're rough guys and
they're loving it! They see these 20 musicians, all nice people, going out
and playing. It's a labor of love for all of my guys because they get a
great thrill, and so does my manager, looking out at the audience and seeing
people who are digging it.

EE: Why did you choose to focus on Genesis tunes and Phil Collins hits
instead of doing an entire program of big band standards?
PC: Originally, I wanted to play a lot of standards, but [trumpeter] Harry
Kim and my manager said, "Why don't you just hire a band and play in the
front room if that's what you want to do? Other bands play it better. Youll
never play 'Lil'  Darlin' better than them." Which is true, of course, but I
wanted to be in that chair doing it. Of course, he was dead right. He said
we should do something that nobody else has done, which is material that
nobody else has played.

EE: Let's talk about some of your jazz and big band drumming inflluences
besides Buddy Rich and Sonny Payne.
PC: The last four or five years I've really been studying these "Legends Of
Jazz Drumming" videos. People like Sid  Catlett, Jo Jones - I'm
seeing a lot of  guys for the first time on these videos which is great.
Elvin Jones ... I saw his spot at Ronnie Scott's [the London jazz  club]
one time.

EE: Have you spent much time at Ronnie Scott's?
PC: Well, Brand X played there, my fusion jazz group. We played there for
two weeks with [saxophonist] Charles  McPherson. We were
terrible and not subtle at all, but it was great playing there. Just the
vibe of playing there. I saw the Buddy Rich band there, too. I tried to see
Charlie Watts' band, but I couldn't get in!

EE: Speaking of Charlie, have you listened to any pop artists or rock
artists who've set a precedent for leading a big band? There was Charlie,
Brian Setzer...
PC: Brian, I haven't heard that band. The only band I've heard is Charlie's
band. Actually, for this PBS documentary, they interviewed Charlie, and he's
interspersed throughout it. It's funny, because I didn't know they'd done
it, so when I saw it, I suddenly hear Charlie Watts saying, 'Well, what he's
going to have to do is learn how to play brushes first." Then they cut to me
saying, "Brushes! It's not my language!"

EE: How does it feel now that you've been doing it a while?
PC: I speak "pidgin brushes." You know how people speak Pidgin French? I
speak pidgin brushes. I'm learning. It's fantastic when you see guys playing
and you think, how do they speak like that? It's all making sense gradually.
I guess somebody like me jumps in at the deep end. I don't want to jump in
at the deep end, but unfortunately I'm wellknown, so I can't really creep in
the back door at this. Therefore, all my mistakes are being made very
publicly. So I just have to grin and bear that. A jazz reviewer in L.A.
said, "Learning every beat of Samniy Nestico's charts isn't the whole
picture. It's playing it in seamless precision." That is, like good film
music. And I know that! I'm trying my best, man! I knew he was a jazz man
because he mentioned Sammy Nestico in glowing terms. But  he did say at the
end that "if Mr. Collins is serious about this and he matures in this style,
he will be a very good spokesman for the big band." I took that to be a
compliment. Not good enough yet, but almost!
I read a preview the other day that said they'd heard through the grapevine
that instead of swing jazz, this was more smooth jazz. Quincy said in L.A.
when he came to see it, "It's quite an aggressive band." I think it sounds
fine, but it feels very aggressive to me.

EE: Tell me more about the role Quincy played in helping you get this
together.
PC: It's been a little bit magnified. I did a charity show in L.A., Carousel
of Hope, for diabetes. In our set we did "The Way You Look Tonight." After
the show, Quincy, who I've known for 10 years, came up and said, "I didn't
know you could sing that shit." I said, "Thank you very much. It's a
beautiful song." There's lots of things I can do that people don't know
about, I guess, like play the drums. So he called me a few weeks later and
said, "Would you like to sing on my album?" That was Q's Jook Joint [1995].
He gave me a choice of songs, and I chose "Do Nothin'." I sang it in
Switzerland and he was in L.A., but we were talking quite regularly about
how we would do it. Then it went from that conversation to maybe doing an
album together: Wouldn't it be great, him producing an album of jazz
standards with me singing? It's still something we'd like to do. And I said
I've always wanted to take a big band out. And he said, "However I can help
you, I'll help you."
Now, running parallel with that, I did an M7V Unplugged program in '94, and
in that show my rock band did a couple jazz-influenced tunes that I'd
written, with me playing the drums. And the audience went bananas, because I
was playing the drums, but also because
they had never beard anything like this. It is weird, but people do respond
when they hear something that's kind of excit-ing and they're not exposed to
regularly. And I thought, "People do want to hear this, and I do want to do
it."
Then, in 1996, Claude Nobs at Montreux - whom I've known for years because
he's my record company boss in Switzerland - he said, "You have a whole
night to yourself. We've got Quincy coming for his 50th anniversary of
music. He's having his own night. What do you want to do?" I said, "Well, I
haven't got a band, any kind of band. It would be fun to do a big band, but
it's a bit too much of a thing to put together right now." He said, "Oh,
it's no problem. Quincy will help you." He recom-mended some guys to play,
and sudden-ly, it was happening. Quincy at that point agreed to conduct. I
sang three or four songs on his night. He was giving up his rehearsal time
to be with us, which I thought was great. We rehearsed in Montreux, then we
went to London, did the Queen and Mandela concert, then two shows at the
Monaco sporting club, which paid for the whole tour. Then he went off and we
flew without a pilot, but he caught up and he did the last two Montreux
shows. So he did four out of the eight shows. But he's always been very
supportive. In L.A., just on this tour, he made a big speech about the whole
thing with the sponsors and what I was doing, and then he came at the end to
conduct two tunes, "Do Nothing" and "Sussudio." He lectured the audience
about how great it was that they stayed there and listened. Some people left
because I wasn't singing.

EE: Do you have plans to record this group?
PC: We've recorded six of the eight shows from the last tour, and we've
videoed two. We're also recording seven or eight nights of the European tour
and videoing two shows in Montreux. So there will be a live video and also
definitely a live album. There could have  been one before, although I'm
glad there wasn't because I've learned so much since that tour. I'd much
rather this tour be represented than that. It got to a point where we were
closer to this tour than we were to that tour, so we thought we'd wait and
put one out before the end of the year or the begin-ning of next year.
Plans are afoot to go through the material at the end of the tour, then get
someone to mix it. To me, I want this record to sound like a Count Basie
record! Sinatra At The Sands, that's what I want it to sound like. I want it
to have that magic. DB


Equipment:
When performing with the big band, Phil Collins plays a white pearl Gretsch
drum kit with 20x16 bass drum, 18x18 floor tom, 16x16 floor tom, 14x12 rack
tom, 12x10 rack tom, 10x8 rack tom and Ludwig Radio King snare drum. His
cymbals are Sabians, including 16-inch, 18-inch and 20-inch HH crashes,
22-inch dry ride, 21-inch ride sizzle and 15-inch AA hi-hats. His top
drumheads are Remo coated Ambassadors, and the bottoms are Remo clear
Ambassadors. He uses Pro-Mark Phil Collins signature sticks and Regal Tip
brushes.

) Copyright "Down Beat" magazine, October 1998