For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pat Metheny, he is a legendary jazz guitarist who has won 20 Grammys. He is a bridge to the past, but is a very contemporary composer and player. I saw this interview - which is absolutely packed with wisdom. Not knowledge - musical wisdom.
This is worth your time, but it is a longer piece (about 90 minutes). I listened to it in three sittings, a half hour at a time. Enjoy:
For decades, Rush was one of the hardest working bands in the business. Their early years were a near constant cycle of recording albums, then touring, then recording, then touring, then recording. Unbelievably, the group had only one lineup change in 1974 (Neil Peart replacing the band’s original drummer, John Rutsey), and the rest is history.
Fortunately for the hardcore Rush fans out there, the band was keeping track of all of these gigs in tremendous detail. That detail is beautifully captured, along with some great historical photography, along with newspaper and magazine clippings of show advertisements from years gone by.
Perhaps one of the most prolific creators of today is Amir K. Thompson, who is better known as Questlove to the millions of people who see him lead The Roots every weeknight on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. For most performers, The Tonight Show gig would be the capstone achievement in a career. Not so here. The Tonight Show gig is really only one of a handful of Questlove’s simultaneous creative pursuits that seemingly defy human capacity. How does he do all those projects, and do them all at such a high level?
The mind reels when you consider that in addition to co-leading The Roots with Tariq Trotter, Questlove: 1) teaches at New York University; 2) has published multiple books, and several of those of those books (including Creative Quest) have landed on the New York Times Best Seller List, which I’d argue is still the gold standard of legitimacy (or at least commercial viability - more on that later); 3) gigs extensively as a DJ and 4) runs The Roots Picnic, an annual summer music festival in Philadelphia that is hugely popular. This list is non-exhaustive, and omits the radio show, the podcast and quite a few other things, but you get the picture.
