The Rick Marotta Interview Set II

Sometimes you hear people speaking a different language like Spanish. You don't really understand the language but you know what they're saying. Other times you hear people speaking in Chinese and you don't have any grasp of what it is. When I listen to Monk play improvisation with a trio or quartet that's a whole different story. I really understand that this guy is thoughtful and he's not racing anybody Oddly enough when I listened to Monk, before I understood how his mind worked (mental illness). When I listen to his music I really understood where he was coming from. I may not have understood exactly what he was playing but I understood where it was coming from. That made a huge, huge impression on me, even playing the drums. If you look at Monk play you see what he's thinking and you can see what he's feeling and you hear it. It translates from his brain to his heart to his hands to you. That's the kind of improvisation for me. In the early days I played so much with Dave Spinozza because we grew up together and we were in bands together. If I wasn't playing in "Brethren" or Johnny Winter or Edgar Winters band than we were doing gigs at Mickell's. We played a ton of really groove and improv stuff. Somebody would write a song like Tropea (John) or Leon Pendarvis. We would play the head a couple of times and than Pendarvis would blow or Spinozza would blow or Will Lee would start going off. I liked it cause it didn't last too long. I'm thinking you say everything you need to say in a minute or two. Give them each a minute and let's move on to the next song and see what they have to say there. I didn't like it when songs lasted 15 minutes. I've heard guys say everything they need to say in 15 seconds and be very very good at it and move on. There was a guy I worked with out here in LA and I did some gigs with him. He was doing some gigs and he was calling me to play live with him. I've seen him play and I know he's great cause we did some sessions together. I said, "I'll do it but let's not do these solos that last 15-20 minutes." We rehearsed a little bit and so talked with him about it, he said, "yea man that sounds great." We got on stage and I swear to god I was yelling "stop, move on" in the middle of tunes and he never paid attention. I told him after, "this isn't fun for me, this isn't what I want to do. I don't want to go see a guy slamming cymbals, throwing sticks at the kit for 20 minutes on one song. That's what I felt I was doing. We were repeating phrases, we were going back and playing the same thing over again.