Pat Metheny
a.k.a.
Patrick Bruce Metheny, Patrick Bruce Metheny, Pat Metheny Group
PAT METHENY's MAP OF THE WORLD Have Guitar: Will Do It All
Pat Metheny is taking out the 20th century in a big way. In 1999 alone, the acclaimed guitarist/composer/bandleader scored and performed the music for the film A MAP OF THE WORLD; recorded a brilliant duet album with jazz guitar extraordinare Jim Hall, JIM HALL AND PAT METHENEY, and made invaluable contributions to Michael Brecker's TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE and Kenny Garrett's SIMPLY SAID. The past few years also found Metheny on such popular albums as BEYOND THE MISSOURI SKY(SHORT STORIES), a duet with bassist Charlie Haden, and LIKE MINDS, an all-star project led by Metheny's first major employer, Gary Burton, as well as IMAGINARY DAY, a bestselling recording by Metheny's own group. The peripatetic polymath recently spoke with bn.com's Ted Panken about some of his myriad projects.
barnesandnoble.com: Let's talk about the logistics of how A MAP OF THE WORLD came to be.
Pat Metheny: A MAP OF THE WORLD was a completely pleasurable and rewarding experience on every level. The director, Scott Elliott, wanted me to do the score; they weren't considering anyone else. The movie takes place in a small town in Wisconsin, and has a very strong Midwestern theme, dealing with the darker side of Americana. I grew up in a small Midwestern town, and know that a lot of sort of closed-minded, ignorant stuff gets shoved under the rug of all those major chords! The film also deals with the current American obsession -- when something goes wrong, to find a place to put blame, to identify somebody who messed up. Now, the music doesn't really get down and dirty with all that stuff. I try to keep the tone neutral -- not happy, not sad, it's just kind of the way it is. That's a zone I often address anyway, especially on a melodic level, almost making a commentary on the thematic element. If you had to say the movie is about one thing, it's forgiveness, and I wanted to keep the music in that specific shade. The feeling of the mise-en-scene is big, spacious, and it needed something to represent that.
bn.com: Sounds like a good place to segue to BEYOND THE MISSOURI SKY (SHORT STORIES), your duo with Charlie Haden, who's been a significant figure for you since you got out into the great wide world as a working musician.
PM: We've known each other for a long time. When I started playing with Gary Burton's band around 1974, we often played opposite Keith Jarrett, and that's when Charlie and I became friends. We didn't start a strong musical relationship, though, until '80/'81, when he toured with me. From that point on, we've played together on project after project. We anticipate each other so that it almost becomes like one instrument, which is rare and great to participate in.To me it all boils down to listening. All of the musicians I love playing with have one thing in common; they're able to absorb what's happening and respond to it on a microsecond-by-microsecond basis, and come up with cool answers to whatever question the music is asking at a moment's notice.
bn.com: In an interview in the early '80s you talked about the dangers of basing compositions only on sound because it was too easy to get new sounds, and therefore the pieces might tend to wane in value over time.
PM: One of the fun and exciting things about being a musician at this particular moment is that we have all these options and possibilities to explore and try out. Within that range of possibilities is included acoustic guitar, duets with Charlie, playing the way that I played with Derek Bailey, playing with synthesized stuff and combining it with acoustic instruments as we do with the group, using an orchestra for a film score, playing solo guitar, or improvising in a quartet. All of those are very viable, real, everyday musical situations that I feel very lucky to get the chance to address. And all of them are primarily about sound. All of them are kind of within a palette or a range of sonic color that's very familiar to me. Yet at the same time, the sound is just the envelope, and what you put inside that has to do with kind of everything that's happening to you outside your life as a musician.
bn.com: So it's not about style for you.
PM: It was never about style for me. To me, style is the easiest to talk about and the least resonant aspect of what music is. In fact, I'd say 90 percent of -- for lack of a better word -- criticism talks about style and idiom, which just isn't an issue now. I think it hasn't completely sunk into the culture yet, how deeply those ideas have been obliterated. We live in a world where everything is completely smashed together. I mean, for those of us who are making records and trying to work as musicians or as artists or whatever, it can be extremely confusing. But I welcome that confusion, too. That's part of it. And to try to avoid that confusion by retreating into a world of nostalgia or some, like, mythical purist way of thinking of style or idiom or whatever, is a real cop-out for me. It's much more valuable to say, "Okay, be confused."
bn.com: How were your generation different from today's jazz musicians?
PM: The early '80s may have been the last time when jazz was not separated from pop music. Since then, there's been a strong movement for jazz to be something more like classical music, like a defined little branch separate from the mainstream that was people's music. We used to play in the same places as rock bands. I think we were the last generation of jazz musicians who really were of our generation. The generation immediately after us took what to me is the easier route of playing for much older people rather than for their own generation, and kind of dressing and acting like people much older than them. Two or three generations of kids never heard people their own age playing it, and the scene sort of lost momentum.
bn.com: Did you have any inkling in your mind's ear of the concept you started moving toward during your early tenure with Gary Burton?
PM: I think there was a certain kind of harmony I always liked, and a certain rhythmic thing that always felt good. In retrospect, those two areas defined a lot of what I do even now. I never had any fear of triads! A lot of jazz guys, if there's not at least four notes happening, they're going to stick one in there. For me, triads were always a viable option. A lot of the Midwestern aesthetic is just simplicity. As much as I like playing things that are very dense and complicated, underneath all that I love playing real simple things where even if you don't know anything about the chords, you could still kind of sing it. That's hard to do.
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