Interview with Jazz UK.
VIEW FROM THE EDGE
Leeds-born Gary Husband didn�t come from the regular jazz mould.
He was trained in classical piano by a celebrity teacher, but played drums for the Syd Lawrence Orchestra at 16 and for big-time funk band Level 42 in his 20s. Now he�s a composer/leader, touring with his own international jazz ensemble including trumpeter Randy Brecker and former Mahavishnu Orchestra violinist Jerry Goodman.
JOHN FORDHAM tries to plumb the depths of a gifted restless spirit.
GARY HUSBAND has a framed colour photograph of Miles Davis propped against the soundsystem in his living room in west London. It�s on the floor, an unexpected place for a special picture that somehow makes it more conspicuous. Husband looks at it often.
�When I heard him,� he muses, �I heard something that was beyond licks � I heard a story. It was as if the notes, or the form of the notes, was transparent � what was important was what was being said. It all made sense on an emotional level. I had no interest in what particular note it was against a particular chord that made it so compelling. I didn�t want to know the notes involved or the science of it. I just knew I wanted to achieve that feeling.�
Husband is a stockily compact, humorous and ostensibly relaxed individual � but as if he were a piano himself, the exterior polish encloses a hidden soundboard under vibrating tension. The language of feelings colours any discussion Husband has about music. Technical debates interest him little.
Husband plays both piano and drums with ferocity, drama, freshness and formidable technical skill. He was what he calls a �jobbing drummer� for much of his musical life,
with the most high-profile and lucrative job being for bassist/singer Mark King�s big-time rock band Level 42 � and Husband protected the piano, his first love, from the hard economics of the music business until drum star Billy Cobham called his keyboard playing �one of the best-kept secrets in music.� That encouragement brought Husband to
a crossroads in his musical life in the late 1990s.
He took to prowling his Maida Vale flat in a dressing-gown, nourished by little but cigarettes and dreams, struggling to organise half-formed thoughts for a music of his own. Two solo piano discs emerged, then the Gary Husband New Trio, with Husband on piano and electric keys, Mick Hutton on bass and Gene Calderazzo on drums.
The group gelled at once, and though its profile never matched its talents and originality, it represented a very distinctive new jazz force on the British scene in the late 1990s. But the trio was an episode in this restless musician�s development, and now he tours for the Contemporary Music Network with a hand-picked septet called Force Majeure. Husband has been writing furiously for it, and the first halves of these performances will feature a suite of pieces dedicated to a variety of mavericks including John McLaughlin (a Husband admirer) and Icelandic singer Bjork, the second halves a new commission for BBC Radio 3.
�To try to sum it up,� Husband says, when asked about the sea-change is his musical life, �I think I was facing a combination of dissatisfactions with things I was being asked to do, and things I was hearing. That Whitney Balliett line about jazz being �the sound of surprise� always seemed like an inspirational statement to me. I just felt though there were great players everywhere, a lot of the jazz around me wasn�t very surprising.�
From the time he picked up the sticks at the age of 12, through to his occupancy of the Syd Lawrence Orchestra�s drum chair at 16 and beyond, Husband studied jazz drummers with a typical intensity � �everyone from Baby Dodds on�. But his five years with Mark King and Level 42 (from 1987-92) saw him typecast as a rock musician, a player conditioned to be too loud and over the top for the jazz groups he still loved.
Though he had enjoyed fruitful jazz relationships with Allan Holdsworth, Jim Mullen, Ronnie Scott and Barbara Thompson, Husband was generally out of the loop of the British contemporary jazz scene and didn�t know how to get back in � or even if he really wanted to.
�Sometimes I suppose I felt I was being accused of abandoning jazz, and I really resented it because I could never do that,� Husband reflects. �I�d found it to be an enriching process to be part of all these other musics. But when I stopped playing with Level 42 in 1992,� (Husband has resumed working with King in a Level 42 revisit since 2001) �people told me that with my background I could get dates as a fusion drummer but not as a jazz drummer.�
If the work was not coming to Husband, he would go to the work. Out of the blue he called up Jim Mullen, a guitarist he had long admired, and the two got together for a jam that eventually turned into a working Mullen band.
�Though it was bebop and standards,� Husband recalls, �it was such a pleasure to play with him, he�s really one of the greats � worldclass, the real thing. But in general, I didn�t want to be in bands playing �Stella By Starlight� in the usual way, all the horn solos, then the piano solo which you could never hear, then a bass solo, then fours with the drummer. So in 1998 I started the trio to find a bit of a new area for myself, and to explore my other instrument, the piano. But once again, it was battling the elements. People who�d said �you�re a fusion drummer, not a jazz drummer� now said �you�re a drummer, not a pianist�. All credit to Pete King at Ronnie�s, he gave us some great slots there, and you wouldn�t have thought it was the obvious place for a trio like that to get work. It told me something about him, that commitment, and I really appreciated it.�
The trio could be a mesmerising presence in a club. �Just The Way You Look Tonight� or �Take Five� might surface as bursts of straightahead swing puntuated by sudden tempo changes, or phrase-swapping between the leader�s right hand on the piano and a Joe Zawinul-like left on the synthesiser. A drummer�s rhythmic alertness seemed to shape his phrasing, but though there were plenty of post-Coltrane barrages, Husband could disappear into a delicious Bill Evans-like reverie on a ballad like �If I Should Lose You�. New friends were made, not just among younger listeners drawn by
his rock credentials and use of samples and electronics, but older fans who seemed as ready for a change in familiar jazz piano-trio formulae as he was.
Gary Husband describes himself as a �harmony junkie� and he loves playing with the ranges and capabilities of the unusual instrumentation of Force Majeure, the new project. �I love trumpet, I love the exhilaration of it,� Husband says of Randy Brecker�s presence, �and my English trombonist Elliott Mason, who also plays bass trumpet, can be like a trombone Kenny Wheeler in his tenderness and
intelligence, but he can also be a kind of trombone Michael Brecker too, really blistering. The violinist Jerry Goodman�s out there on his own of course, he has a bit of gypsy in him, a bit of classical, a rock �n� roll element.� The band is completed by Philadelphia pianist and sometime Pat Metheny and Wayne Shorter sideman Jim Beard, Armenian percussionist Arto Tuncboyaciyan and former Gary Burton and Joe Zawinul electric bassist Matthew Garrison, son of Coltrane Quartet bassist Jimmy Garrison. Like Husband, all the musicians cross stylistic boundaries with ease.
All this is a long way from Gary Husband�s life as a young piano pupil, being told he had to choose between �serious� music and fly-by-night fripperies like jazz or rock. His father Peter was a highly-regarded flautist with the Northern Dance Orchestra and a fan of all musics from Satie to Jobim, and his mother was a dancer. But the boy was taught piano privately by the illustrious Fanny Waterman, founder of the famous Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. The legacy shows in his storming technique today, even if he never shared Dr Waterman�s enthusiasm for the competitive environment as a way of revealing talent.
�I was drawn to the piano, even before I could reach it,� Husband says. �I was obsessed by music, and in my household, if I needed inspiration I didn�t have to look far for it. My father loved all kinds of music, but he thought a classical technique was important to a pianist whatever music they played � and he was right, it sets you up for life � so eventually I was studying classical piano at the same time as loving Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles � and Stan Kenton.�
Gary Husband�s original drum inspiration was the littleknown Stan Kenton drummer of the early �70s, John Von Ohlen. An elemental wild man of a player, Von Ohlen had a baleful passion and wilful indifference to the rudiments that hooked a 12 year-old Gary Husband � on the verge of rebelling against classical music and needing a loud outlet for his frustration � when he saw the band on BBC TV. By 16 Husband had become by a long way the youngest member of the Syd Lawrence dance orchestra. �That was a strange time,� Husband reflects, a little ruefully. �Great, but confusing � they were mostly middle-aged men and half the time they were saying �grow up and be a man, you�re Syd Lawrence�s drummer� and the other half �shut up kid, know your place.�
�I think I�ve been thought of as a bit of a jagged edge,� Husband continues. �That�s probably been some people�s response to me as a jazz drummer � is he going to be a bit over the top? But I don't like the safe option. I�m restless by nature. Even when I was playing dinnerdances or something, I�d try to get something happening in that Carpenters medley, you know.�
He looks back at the photo of Miles Davis against the hi-fi. �He was the one who made me hear the essence of the music. Since I didn�t want to steal his notes, I had to look for my own. But it�s a delightful process. I'll never stop looking.�
Gary Husband and Force Majeure tour for the Contemporary Music Network from March 3 to March 7 � see listings. The album Aspire is out on JazzIzIt, JITCD 0433.