The following excerpts are taken from an interview with John Scofield.
“Because of education there are a lot more good musicians than there are individualists and stylists and artists. That’s what jazz education has done – it’s made all these great technicians that don’t necessarily have anything to say. What do you think?
Now, the people that come after us, no matter how good they are, the audience is “oh, I’ve seen guitar. I know about guitar but I’m into…basketball”. I think it’s a little harder. That’s not to say that it’s impossible because these guys like Kurt Rosenwinkel and the people that I mentioned, have bands, have audiences, have record deals and are doing it. It’s harder; there are not as many gigs. There’s not as many gigs in music period as there used to be. There used to be all these shitty gigs in 1970 that you could do with rock bands that are not available anymore because people have DJs and they’re not hiring stupid bands. But that’s no excuse kids. You’ve got to buckle down and just work on it.
I think it is the same. Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett were at the zenith of Jazz piano and after that it’s been harder. If you’re good you get recognition. Cream rises, but the scene is not what it used to be. There’s not as much of an audience or an interest in the world in the music as there was because there really was this golden age. There were a lot of golden ages all the time and there’ll be a new one. The reason I have a nice gig today at this festival is because more people know who I am because of what went on in the 80′s for me and music then. The people that are in their 20′s, I hope in ten years they’ll be able to play Eilat at the Jazz festival. And they will but it’s very competitive. They have to come up with some new shit. There was a time for me when just playing Jazz lines with a fuzzy tone in a fusion area made people say “that’s some different stuff”. I didn’t really try to do anything different. I just did what seemed like putting A and B together. It was obvious to me to do that. I’m not a genius. I was at the right place at the right time to put A and B together. It’s not even new but people thought I had a different concept. I don’t feel that. I feel it was because I was playing guitar and I was in the right place and I’m smart and I’m talented and I’m good. I’m not putting myself down. I took what was available to me. A lot of those connections have been made already.
In order to get the other good stuff you got to accept the mistakes because I can never play anything without making a mistake it turns out. Unless I get incredibly lucky. If there’s something without mistakes it might not be any good anyway. When you’re improvising it’s a matter of time to get to the good stuff. You’ll play this idea – “not so good”, that idea – “not so good” but eventually, hopefully you get to something good. In order to have the good stuff in that performance you got to take the bad stuff too. You could just edit out all the bad stuff and just have the good stuff and that would be great and maybe more listenable but at this point I really believe in the process of Jazz. I’ve listened to a lot of Jazz solos too and you always hear that shape. It’s a subtle thing because a lot of people listening to the greats of Jazz every note kills them. But after you get to know somebody’s playing you hear them going through their routine before getting to some inspired stuff.”