THE INDEPENDENT EAR
Insights, Reviews & Interviews
By Willard Jenkins

Vol. 1 No. 3

Chick Corea, piano/keyboards

WJ: What motivated you to form Return To Forever?

Chick Corea: That was just a process of mine... after I began to want to communicate more. I discovered Dyanetics in 1968 and one of the things Dyanetics by L. Ron Hubbard helped me with was my desire to communicate, which helps take away fears and doubts that I had about that. I started to want to not only create the music that I love to create but I started to become interested in how to put it across to people so that they could receive what I was feeling and receive what I was creating. That was kind of the spur into creating Return to Forever. "Return to Forever" was one of the first pieces I wrote for the band, it wasn't the band yet, it was the name of a song, then it became the name of the first record. I used forever as a poetic way to describe one's basic nature -- forever, outside of time, timeless. One's basic nature is to want to create and to communicate and to be in life with people and enjoy life together. So I went to kind of a form of music that was to me at that time lyrical and I wrote "La Fiesta," and then "Crystal Silence," and then pieced the band together in New York: Stanley Clarke, Airto, his wife Flora Purim, and then finally Joe Farrell. Hubert Laws played in that band as well for a little bit. But finally the band that came to make the records and do the tours was Stanley, Airto, Flora and Joe.

WJ: Why those musicians?

CC: I was writing this music around '70 or '71, after I left Miles and after I worked with Dave Holland in Circle for awhile, and as I was writing the music I was thinking about putting together the rhythm section. I remember asking Pete LaRoca to join me... he was one of the first drummers I thought of because he had a Latin thing going too and that was one of the flavors I wanted to have in my music. He had a band going at that time so he wasn't able to make it.

I did a gig with Joe Henderson in Philly and on that gig in Philly I met Stanley and he was playing upright bass and I loved working with Stanley immediately. Stanley was one of the first guys I started getting together with. We started doing some trio work, We had a rehearsal for this music and I actually asked Flora to come by because one of the ways I wanted to get my music across was with a female voice and I had just met Flora recently and I thought 'geez, she's got this wonderful Brazilian way of putting across the melody; she's got kind of a low voice, it seemed nice. So we were working out and she brought her husband Airto, who I knew from Miles' band but I hadn't thought of Airto, I didn't even know he played trap drums. So he came to the rehearsal and we were trying out this samba on "Sometime Ago." I said 'Airto, sit down at the drums and show us... how you play a samba.' Man we played together for 5 minutes and it was over... So that was it that became the quartet. Joe Farrell was one of the first musicians who kinda helped introduce me to New York as a teenager when I got here in 1960 or so, Joe was working with Maynard Ferguson's big band and he used to come to jam sessions and I knew he could play all kinds of different horns and flute was one of my interests already, orchestrationally... but also tenor. He just added a beautiful flavor to the music.

WJ: I first caught the original band at the old Smiling Dog Saloon in Cleveland. Take me through the evolution from the first band to the guitar quartets.

CC: There came a certain point where for various reasons Airto and Flora weren't available for a little while, we must be talking '73 or so... I went to the Felt Forum around that time with Stanley and heard John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, which was just getting started. The way John used the electric guitar really blew me away. I said 'wow, check that out, it sounds like Jimi Hendrix but listen to all that stuff he's playing. It was like a new sound to me and I immediately became interested in wanting to try to write for a guitarist like that. Stanley liked the idea too; he also wanted to do that. We went out [to San Francisco] and did a week at Todd Barkan's old place, the Keystone Korner, with Lenny White, Stanley and myself on Fender Rhodes. We were playing some of the music from the first two records -- "Return to Forever" and "Light as a Feather". We auditioned a bunch of guitarists and Billy Connors was the one that really made an impression on us. He had that lyrical sound. We auditioned guitarists and percussionists. So we came up with Billy and said 'yeah, let's try it, Billy sounds good.' He's got that sound, that whiny, lyrical sound, let's check that out. And then Mingo Lewis on the conga drums because I wanted some conga in it too.

We were about to put that band together but Lenny had a commitment to Azteca before he could come and work with us. So when we went back to New York I hired Steve Gadd, and that was a group that played together for several months: Stanley, Steve Gadd, Billy Connors and Mingo Lewis. That was actually the first band that I brought the "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy" music to; I remember rehearsing at a loft downtown in New York. "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy" was the first tune we rehearsed and the whole thing took fire immediately, the musicians grasped the music and [pow] it just blew me away. That band went in the studio and recorded most of the music on "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy" and that was going to be the record. But finally Lenny was able to come and join us and I thought well, we're going to be on the road with Lenny and Steve couldn't stay, he had some other gigs to do, so we re-recorded the record with Lenny. The record that is now "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy" was actually the second time in the studio, with Lenny, Stanley, Billy and I. That's how that quartet started.

WJ: How did the replacement of Bill Connors with Al DiMeola come about?

CC: Wow, how'd that happen? It was a certain point where there was a hole left in the guitar chair. When I was working with the first version of the band we played in Detroit at Baker's Keyboard Lounge and I met this young kid who someone said 'you've gotta listen to this kid play' and he played acoustic guitar for me and I go 'wow, he can play...' So when the position became open I called Earl Klugh and said 'what do you think about coming to play with the band, but you've gotta play the electric guitar' because I wanted to see how that would sound, him putting his blues thing onto what we had going. He said 'yeah,' and he got an electric guitar, he'd never played one before. He plugged it in and was thrown into deep waters with the band. He didn't use a pick; he didn't have a picking technique, so he played the electric guitar with his fingers. So Earl played a bunch of gigs with us. But it wasn't right for Earl. I was asking for tapes by that time to try and find a guitarist and I found Al on a tape that he sent and I said 'wow, this guy sounds great, let's try him out,' and then Al became a part of the band.

WJ: What was it about first Bill then Al that their sound and approach was right for what you wanted to do?

CC: Different reasons: The thing I loved about Billy's sound was his lyricism. He had this way of singing his melodies out. There were a lot of our melodies that required that kind of lyricism. "After the Cosmic Rain," for instance, Stanley's song; Billy plays this beautiful high melody on it and a lot of sections in the music required that; that's what I liked about Billy's playing.

Al fit the music because not only did he have a beautiful lyrical sense but his rhythmic sense was incredible, and that was something that the band thrived on: rhythm and popping and all kinda different intricate rhythms and Al was able to command all of that.

WJ: At the same time this was happening, there was the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, etc. Did you feel any kind of competition with those bands? You all kinda came out of Miles Davis and then grew your own thing...

CC: I don't know man, for me I only remember a kind of camaraderie... that [Miles connection] being one of the reasons. Miles did kinda open some doors by breaking the acoustic trend. He really wanted to have a rock sound, Miles told me he didn't want to hear the piano no more, so he kinda opened the door and everyone came through that and branched out and tried some different things. I felt a camaraderie between those bands. I remember a show we did with Mahavishnu in New Jersey one time.

WJ: As RTF grew and everyone became a recording artist, everyone in the band began to grow their own followings. What were your feelings in retrospect when Stanley, Lenny and Al took off as forces on their own.

CC: It was a great feeling because in actual fact it was something that we all wanted to have happen. We actually would talk about it. You remember there's a song on "Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy" called "Theme to the Mothership." The mothership was a symbol for RTF at that time because the band was doing so well and people enjoyed the music, we were making records and we were touring and the band was being received so well that it was kinda like a mothership and really the thing to do... because Stanley, Lenny and Al in their own right were great composers, artists, producers and bandleaders and so forth -- and plus I didn't only have an interest in playing that kind of music, I had an interest in other things. So we made a plan that RTF would be the Mothership and we should each create some other spaceships. So there was a point where we put a contract together that was just RTF, and then at that time I went ahead and continued to do my thing as "The Leprechaun" and "Mad Hatter" and so forth... Stanley made some of his first solo albums... I actually helped Stanley produce his first solo record. I think I helped Al produce his first solo record too. It was a plan that we would all go out and expand and then come back to the band and I think it worked to a degree. It was like helping each other do better.

WJ: Did that have anything to do with the breakup of the band eventually?

CC: I don't think so. No, I think it was kind of a natural progression. At a certain point it was difficult to contain it all into one package, we were all growing as artists and everyone kinda needed their own space; that's the way I see it.

WJ: So there was no one particular point where you just said I've had it, let's break this thing up?

CC: We could get into a gossip column and I don't want to do that because my admiration and respect for Stanley, Lenny and Al are over the top. They gave an important part of their lives to my music. I started to want to include their creative efforts more and more. "Romantic Warrior," the last record we did, was a good balance of that; Stanley had a composition on that, Lenny had one, and I had another and it became more of a cooperative, creative unit at that point. That's actually the spiritually valuable part of RTF.

WJ: Stanley talked about how approaching a record date each member had to go away and write some music to contribute to the date.

CC: That was fun to do. We didn't even discuss too much what kind of pieces because I kinda thought the other guys would come back with something totally unique to their own way. And it did work out that way, without consulting one another the guys would just naturally fit together.

WJ: Have you had any thoughts about any kind of reunion activities?

CC: Yeah, I have... we've been going over that for years [chuckles].

WJ: What do you see as the major impediment?

CC: Oh, that's behind the scenes man, whatever it is we'll handle it.

WJ: What were you after with the post-quartet RTF?

CC: We used that name once to record "Music Magic," a big band record. Just another version, another way to make music, more orchestral... Even when we had the quartet we used to talk about adding a brass section or expanding it in some kinda way, so it was an attempt to do that.

WJ: How in retrospect has that RTF experience colored your subsequent career?

CC: The combined experience was like really reaching out into the public and experiencing how music can communicate to larger audiences; different ways of making music, different ways of putting styles together... People continue to talk about and ask about RTF so we must have done something nice.

WJ: How do you know when you're really communicating with an audience?

CC: Look at people's faces... they applaud or they don't; they feel good or they don't... Actually being a live performer you can see your result. Its harder to do as say a writer. but live performance is pretty in your face. Even when people aren't making noise, clapping, yelling or anything, you look in people's eyes you can see what the effect of your music is doing to them... it's that simple.

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