Joe Zawinul

Joe Zawinul
a.k.a. Zawinul, Joe

JOE ZAWINUL

The Fusion Founder Finds the Weather Report Is Just Fine
Jazz registered a seismic shock when Joe Zawinul, along with co-mastermind saxophonist Wayne Shorter, brought Weather Report into being in 1971. Here was a new sound that freely took what it wanted from rock, R&B, and world music, mated it with open-ended improvisation and hitched it all to the newest developments in music technology. Over the next fifteen years, this most emblematic of fusion ensembles would morph in many directions. What remained constant was Zawinul's compositional and instrumental brilliance; his visionary writing and synthesizer innovations were key to the band's identity. With the re-release of three of the band's finest recordings -- {|Mysterious Traveller|}, Black Market, and Tale Spinnin', as well as a Best of collection, Weather Report's achievements are on display once again. Ted Panken spoke to Zawinul about his legacy with the historic unit.

Barnes & Noble.com: Your history is one of looking forward to the next project, never looking back. But you seem very involved with these three Weather Report album reissues and the double CD of live, unreleased material that will be released in the fall. Why?

Joe Zawinul: It's a couple of generations since we played, and a lot of the young people never heard of us. The music sounds so fresh and new, to me newer than what I've been hearing these days. It can be almost a second career for a band like we were.

B&N.com: During the life of Weather Report you became a master of using the studio to construct an album. Can you address the contrast between live Weather Report and studio Weather Report?

JZ: One thing was very important, and Wayne and I were in total agreement with this: We did not want to go on the road and have the records beat our concerts. We always were concerned that we make music in the studio which was playable on stage, without any help other than what we had. I think we were very successful doing this. People were often shocked that the live performance not only sounded better in terms of the instrumentation but had also this added fire which you very often don't really get in the studio.

B&N.com: Can you discuss the impact of the increasing sophistication of technology in the '70s and '80s on your composition and performance?

JZ: Well, I am an improviser, and I improvise off sounds. My normal procedure is to find a sound I enjoy playing with, and I will have some music. There are thousands and thousands of different instruments and thousands of sounds. It depends on what your taste is. I use instruments as tools and nothing else. For me it is like a hammer and a nail; an instrument is meaningless until somebody plays it.

B&N.com: But that being said, one reason why Weather Report had the impact it did was the newness of the sounds.

JZ: Those were the sounds I chose. I used hardly any factory-programmed sounds, because I couldn't do much with these. I tried to modify everything there was for my taste. As a matter of fact, for my own satisfaction, I could not let myself have always the same sounds. I just knew very well how to dial stuff up and get a nice timbre I could feel good with.I was very fortunate. I had a great company for many years -- Korg -- which supported me. Here again, I hardly ever used factory sounds; they always had something missing for my taste. That doesn't mean that they might not be good for other people. But I learned how to modify things, so it would come to that point where I say, "Hey, this is me."

B&N.com: Within the various iterations of Weather Report, how much of what you were writing was tailored to the personalities of the band?

JZ: Pretty much everything. Because I had Wayne's tone in mind. In the beginning, I used the tone and facility of Miroslav Vitous, who was an excellent contrabass player. Later on, we had even more personalities, like Jaco Pastorius, who had such a tremendous individual sound. It was very easy to write for people like that.

B&N.com: The three album reissues -- Mysterious Traveller, Tale Spinnin', and Black Market -- represent the period when you switch from Miroslav Vitous to Alphonso Johnson, and thus switch from acoustic to electric bass.

JZ: Miroslav also played electric bass well. But when we heard Alphonso, we thought that he would be the right guy for this band. I told Wayne that the direction we were going was fine, but now we want to do something else. I wrote songs like "Boogie Woogie Waltz" and "125th Street Congress," where we played for the first time a beat that a lot of hip-hop artists use. I have about 50 recordings on which that beat is sampled.

B&N.com: What percentage of Weather Report music was composed and pre-thought-out, and what percentage of it was improvised?

JZ: In the beginning, everybody brought a few lines in, and we improvised over that. We were either magic or we were not happening, and that bothered me. I thought we should have both, where we have that magic but can always fall back on a solid structure of music. Wayne and I, of course, agreed. I must tell you that in the 15 years of working together, we never had an argument about either money or business decisions or the music. It was a great relationship. Anyway, we started to bring more structure into the music with Mysterious Traveller -- and for this, you need different people. Slowly, we developed into a serious band. But one thing I must add is that all my music is totally improvised. All the compositions are improvisations. One talent I have is that I am a form improviser. I can improvise for long stretches, and there is a form to it.

B&N.com: You said that you thought the Weather Report music sounds new, almost newer than what people are doing now.

JZ: There is no question. For some reason, with the return to bebop, the music has not developed in any way. Record companies put this return of bebop in front of the people so much, that it almost was bad if you played anything electronic. And it wasn't being played on the radio. I think a lot of people have no idea what this music was all about. I think, in all sincerity, that the last serious movement in jazz was Weather Report. The last one really where you can say, hey, this was something different and has lasting power and longevity.

B&N.com: What did the movement represent?

JZ: It represented what we were doing. We played jazz. That was misinterpreted. We actually come from jazz and we continued to play jazz, with different tones, with different timbres and a different form. We definitely went away from the AABA form, from the general American song form, and we went all the way from bebop. I think to imitate a music, regardless how great you're doing it, it's never going to be as good as an original.

B&N.com: It's 30 years since Weather Report was formed, and the world has become much smaller. People from all over the world are playing jazz, and a wonderful hybrid is being created.

JZ: Well, the great black jazz masters have done it. They started it, coming from Africa. And I'll tell you something. Africa is happening. I always love to play in Africa. The people have so much energy. They're very sophisticated. That will make the music again what it used to be. I don't mean in terms of the actual music. I'm talking about the power. Because this music that the great jazz masters created, that was the true world music. There is no music anywhere in the world that you don't hear something of them.Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis. All of these great masters, what they put in there in the earlier part of the 20th century. It was the greatest art form of the 20th century, and slowly, it became such a global thing. It's going to be very interesting, the future.

B&N.com: Where do you see yourself in the jazz continuum?

JZ: I am me, man. I am an individual. I have a wonderful future, because I am doing what I am doing. And actually, nobody is doing what I am doing. Which is okay. There are many people playing synthesizer, but nobody plays the way I play. I'm not saying greater. But nobody plays like I play.

B&N.com: I don't think anybody brings together all the elements you bring together in the way you do it.

JZ: Because it's still mine. I'm not copying anybody. I'm not playing African music. It's my music. But I have a global sense. I've been traveling all of my life, I know so many great people all over the planet. And I am not a music listener, but I am an observer. I'm inspired, man. That's all.

-- May, 2002