Shaving with Michael Brecker AKA The Caney Name-Check Files Vol. 387

“So – what are you going to do with your life?”

I was about 18 months out of school and had run out of clever answers. Street thug. Shepherd. Chicken sexer. The answers long ceased to be funny to any of the interrogators. And I was starting to fail to see the humor. I was journalist for a trade journal called the Chemical Marketing Reporter. I had worked my way up from covering the “Oils, Fats & Waxes” beat. And I was covering “Aliphatic Chemicals” – a fancy term for petrochemicals.

“I want to be a rock critic.”

Give this answer to anyone over the age of 40 and be prepared to have them look at you as if you said, “Gee whiz, I want to be a baseball player and bat cleanup for Yankees.”

Indeed, even my career counsellor at New York University said, “If you go into an interview at a newspaper and tell them you want to be a rock critic, they’ll tell you, ‘Uh huh, that’s nice. And if you leave now you can probably catch the next flight home to Newark.’”

So it was without much optimism that I answered an ad for a magazine called Windplayer, a trade publication devoted to wind instruments and people who play them. “I have jazz writers up the wazoo,” the editor told me over the phone. “What I need is someone who could write intelligently about rock music.”

So using frequently flyer miles earned by my girlfriend’s father, I flew to Memphis to interview the Memphis Horns, the men who played on all the old Stax/Volt records from Otis Redding to Sam & Dave to Wilson Pickett. I stayed in a fleabag motel by the airport and spent pretty much the entire $300 fee on all my expenses for the extended weekend. And I got my first cover story.

So I was their rock writer for about a year until I decided that wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I wanted to show them I could write about anything.
“Ever hear of the Brecker Brothers,” my editor asked.

Randy and Michael Brecker were two of the most in-demand horn men in the city for rock records. Michael, in particular, played with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell to Qunicy Jones.

Turns out they were fusion pioneers, playing in the early 70s prog-ish Dreams. Michael would go on to play with Steps Ahead and form his own fusion band with Randy called, conveniently enough, the Brecker Brothers. And they were releasing a reunion album in 1992. I got the assignment.

I should probably say at this point I don’t know dick about jazz. My jazz collection at the time consisted of Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue and … Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue.

Randy and I met in a sushi restaurant and we talked for three hours. One of those meetings that is every journalist’s dream, in which it’s less of an interview than a conversation. The biggest challenge is picking the best bits and shaping into a story that everyone would want to read.

At the tail end I asked if Michael would be as chatty as he was. He just smiled and said, “You’ll do fine.”

Before my scheduled meeting with Michael, my editor called to check and see how things were going. I told her how great the meeting went with Randy and how the piece would “write itself,” every journalist’s kiss of death. She laughed and said, “Good, because Michael’s supposed to be an asshole.”

So I called his house to arrange a time to meet with him. His wife Susan answered the phone and gave me a list of times that would be good for me to come out to his house in Yonkers. I thanked her and asked if I could introduce myself to him.

“He’s on the other line. He asked me just to give you directions.” For some reason that’s now unclear, I insisted on talking to him.

So she put him on, and he says, “Yeah?” I tell him who am I and who I work for. And he says, “Yeah?” And I’m looking forward to meeting him.

Silence on the other end.

“And I guess I need directions,” I bleated.

“My wife was going to give you directions. That was the point. So I wouldn’t have to get on the phone with you.”

Uh oh.

It should be mentioned at this point that not only did I know dick about jazz, I also knew dick about Westchester County. So when Susan gave me Exit 23, I didn’t know that meant an exit off the Saw Mill Parkway. I assumed it was the Cross Bronx Expressway.

I was halfway to Connecticut when I realized that something was dreadfully wrong. I was already an hour late, so I had no choice but to call the Breckers’ home for directions. Michael picked it up.

“What are you doing on the Cross Bronx? Don’t you know where Yonkers is?”

I arrive on his doorstep three hours late. He’s standing in the doorway shaking his head. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

I can’t remember a thing about the interview except that he viewed the whole experience with the enthusiasm of a hernia operation. Every question was a dead end. Nothing yielded a story. Nothing illuminating about who he was or what he did.

But he was kind enough to walk me through his home studio, which is when things started to warm up. He sat down at the keyboard and starting noodling. “Isn’t that the riff from ‘You Can Call Me Al,’” I asked in all innocence. He glared at me said, “If you say so.”

But mostly what he did was play. He reminded me of nothing so much as a child in a room full of toys. And he would explain what each one did and why it was important in his process.

His prized toy was an ewi, an electronic wind instrument. It was a long plastic instrument that looked a little bit like a clarinet, only it was white. And with the help of computer programming this thing could make the sound of virtually any instrument. Only it had Michael’s unique phrasing behind every sound.

It was fascinating because it showed me that style is defined by the individual and how he thinks about music, not by the instrument he plays. It was finally something that I connected to. And it generated the first real moment of warmth from my subject.

Finally, I turned the tape recorder off. My mouth felt like it was filled with sand. He offered me a glass of water and while I was waiting for him to return, I started picking at a scab where I’d cut myself shaving that morning.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. “I’ll get you a tissue. You don’t use an electric shaver?”

“No, I find I don’t get a close enough shave.”

“Yeah, me too. But I’m always cutting myself. So I switched to an electric. I’m thinking of switching back.”

And with the tape recorder safely tucked into my bag, he starts talking about the tutorials he gave in South Africa when he was touring with Paul Simon. And he’s talking about Simon’s late keyboardist Richard Tee. And he talks about how inspiring it was to play with Hugh Makasela. But mostly he just talked like a music fan for about an hour or so more.

“Well, you better get going,” he said. “You know your way home?”

The last time I saw him was at a record release party for The Return Of The Brecker Brothers at the Bottom Line in 1992. He was looking uncomfortable around a group of well wishers when I walked in. He walked over to me with an uneasy smile and said, “Can I get you a drink?”

I smiled back and said, “This doesn’t come easy for you, does it?”

He laughed and said, “Look, man, I’m trying.”

And so tonight I raise a coke with no ice to one of the busiest sessionmen in New York, dead at 57, of leukaemia. I would play one of his albums, except I don’t own any. But if I got ot my collection and pull out a CD with a horn section on it, there's a better than even chance that Michael Brecker will be on it.

In pace, Michael.