One Train Later: A Memoir by Andy Summers Read Free Book Online
Authors: Andy Summers
nervous. Stepping down into the shop-which has the dank atmosphere of an old wine cellar I get a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. This cave is filled from floor to ceiling with racks of American records: Blue Note, Riverside, Columbia, Contemporary Jazz Masters. There is no one in the shop except a small darkhaired man with olive skin who stands behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and exuding power. I look over at him and he appears enormous. He looks up, grunts, and then looks back down at an album he is holding.
This dingy hole is filled with everything I aspire to. Feeling like a thief, I start thumbing through the racks quietly, taking in the names, the faces, the song titles. Another man comes into the shop and goes over to the counter. I overhear their conversation as they smoke and talk with small world-weary laughs and references that I don't get. But I get the owner's name-Lennyand begin returning to the shop every weekend. I don't have the money to buy anything, but I read the sleeves and try to take in the ambience. He sells only jazz albums, and it's as if he is giving up something from his personal collection when with an attitude of "are you worthy?" he lets someone walk out with an LP.
He seems remote, cynical, and I think he doesn't like me; I buy nothing and I know nothing. I feel anxious about Lenny, hoping that maybe he will become friendly, tell me something, share a joke with me. I finger my way through the racks of Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis albums and furtively stare across the shop to where he stands like a priest at the altar, engaged in a sardonic conversation with one of his friends, who all seem to supplicate in front of him. As an expert on the subject of my desire, he wields an emotional power over me even though we have never exchanged a word. But one afternoon I approach the cash register and he leans across the counter, takes a long drag on his cigarette, blows a smoke ring toward the first rack, looks out through the window and says, "So, you like jazz."
I start talking with Lenny and nervously tell him what I know-not muchbut that I really love it, and how can I learn? I explain that I am a guitarist, or would like to he one anyway. He nods and pulls a few records from the racks. Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Raney, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow. Then he holds up a Blue Note LP and taps it, saying, "This one is great-just got it." It's Kenny Burrell's On View at the Five Spot Cafe, with Art Blakey on drums.
I leave that afternoon, my heart pounding with a strange mixture of relief and commitment, as if I've just been allowed into the priesthood. I can't wait to play the album, and when I get home and finally get it onto the turntable, it puts me in a trance and I play it over and over. I love Burrell's dark wine-stained sound and the atmosphere of this album, with its sound of low murmuring voices, clinking glasses, and laughter somehow conveying the impression of the jazz life, the living reality. I feel as if it is me right there on the stage, guitar in hand, moodily playing to the darkness of a small club in lower Manhattan. No doubt I romanticize it heavily, but the ambience of the club and the liquid voice of the guitar represent some kind of nirvana to me.
I decide to learn Kenny's solo on "Lover Man"-one of the best jazz guitar solos ever recorded--but he plays it in g minor, which takes me a while to understand. But eventually-as I work from a tattered piece of red-colored sheet music with a picture of Billie Holiday on the cover-I am able to transpose it from d minor and note by note learn to play it like a song on its own.
BRIDGEHAMPTON, AUGUST 18, 1983
I play a few more chords. My left hand drifts into a c# minor chord that I play with open E and B strings. I have been playing this configuration constantly over the past few weeks, making a new composition out of it as I hear a top line of a pretty descending chromatic melody. This c# mirror area
This dingy hole is filled with everything I aspire to. Feeling like a thief, I start thumbing through the racks quietly, taking in the names, the faces, the song titles. Another man comes into the shop and goes over to the counter. I overhear their conversation as they smoke and talk with small world-weary laughs and references that I don't get. But I get the owner's name-Lennyand begin returning to the shop every weekend. I don't have the money to buy anything, but I read the sleeves and try to take in the ambience. He sells only jazz albums, and it's as if he is giving up something from his personal collection when with an attitude of "are you worthy?" he lets someone walk out with an LP.
He seems remote, cynical, and I think he doesn't like me; I buy nothing and I know nothing. I feel anxious about Lenny, hoping that maybe he will become friendly, tell me something, share a joke with me. I finger my way through the racks of Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis albums and furtively stare across the shop to where he stands like a priest at the altar, engaged in a sardonic conversation with one of his friends, who all seem to supplicate in front of him. As an expert on the subject of my desire, he wields an emotional power over me even though we have never exchanged a word. But one afternoon I approach the cash register and he leans across the counter, takes a long drag on his cigarette, blows a smoke ring toward the first rack, looks out through the window and says, "So, you like jazz."
I start talking with Lenny and nervously tell him what I know-not muchbut that I really love it, and how can I learn? I explain that I am a guitarist, or would like to he one anyway. He nods and pulls a few records from the racks. Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Raney, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow. Then he holds up a Blue Note LP and taps it, saying, "This one is great-just got it." It's Kenny Burrell's On View at the Five Spot Cafe, with Art Blakey on drums.
I leave that afternoon, my heart pounding with a strange mixture of relief and commitment, as if I've just been allowed into the priesthood. I can't wait to play the album, and when I get home and finally get it onto the turntable, it puts me in a trance and I play it over and over. I love Burrell's dark wine-stained sound and the atmosphere of this album, with its sound of low murmuring voices, clinking glasses, and laughter somehow conveying the impression of the jazz life, the living reality. I feel as if it is me right there on the stage, guitar in hand, moodily playing to the darkness of a small club in lower Manhattan. No doubt I romanticize it heavily, but the ambience of the club and the liquid voice of the guitar represent some kind of nirvana to me.
I decide to learn Kenny's solo on "Lover Man"-one of the best jazz guitar solos ever recorded--but he plays it in g minor, which takes me a while to understand. But eventually-as I work from a tattered piece of red-colored sheet music with a picture of Billie Holiday on the cover-I am able to transpose it from d minor and note by note learn to play it like a song on its own.
BRIDGEHAMPTON, AUGUST 18, 1983
I play a few more chords. My left hand drifts into a c# minor chord that I play with open E and B strings. I have been playing this configuration constantly over the past few weeks, making a new composition out of it as I hear a top line of a pretty descending chromatic melody. This c# mirror area