A Quote by Charlie Watts
I didn't know what the hell Charlie Parker was playing... I just liked the way he played.
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[Charlie "Bird" Parker] would sit down and ask [Phil Wood], "What do you think about this whole secondary Viennese school with Schoenberg, Berg and Webern? Are you listening to that music and what do you feel about it?" These were the conversations that he was having. And he also said, what he learned from Charlie Parker was, not that he studied with him in the formal sense, is that the first thing that Charlie Parker would always ask was, "Did you eat today?".
He was Jimi Hendrix! He didn't sound like anybody else but himself. He was like Charlie Parker in his way of playing, he played well, he was a person that made waves. When you heard Jimi Hendrix you knew it was Jimi Hendrix, he introduced himself in his instrument... You know, many radio stations play records and a lot of the times they don't call out the names who you just listened to, but when they play Jimi Hendrix, you don't have to tell me, [you know] it's Jimi Hendrix.
I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said 'What the hell is this?!'
Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.
In all honesty, I think I just played what I felt was right for me. And I think I would have done the same thing, even if I'd been born later, when Charlie Parker was influencing everybody. The truth is, I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.
The way so many musicians slavishly imitated Coltrane, that's the way it was with Charlie Parker - only even more so, if that can be imagined. Everyone that I knew changed totally. But they took the worst things of his playing-that harsh sound; it just didn't come off the way they did it. The way he did it was great, Their way wasn't good at all. I just would listen to 'em, say: 'That's a Bird imitator', and that would be it; I would never care to listen to them again.
By the latter part of high school, by the middle of junior year in high school, Jay Rodriguez played me some Irakere records that that Paquito [D'Rivera] was on. And he also played me and our friend, Curtis Haywood, some Phil Woods records. And when I heard Phil, I just about lost my mind. I was playing the Charlie Parker Omnibook as part of my lessons. This was the '80s. There was no YouTube and all that. And we had three or four jazz records at that point.
Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I'm right below that. I did, in my own way, do something different on the instrument, and that's the way I'd like to be remembered.
I didn't know Charlie Parker well, but I spent some time with him, and he was articulate and well-spoken with a lot of curiosity about music and the world. But the only way he seems to be depicted is as a junkie. And that's not the full picture.
My cousin Joey played the drums. We used to go to his house, I liked beating on his drums. I beat the hell out of 'em, you know? Finally in 1961, I don't know, I guess I was about 15, I got serious about it. My parents bought me a little drum set and I was playing for about 6 months when I started doing gigs.
I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would never have written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker would have never played anything but swing music.
I wish I could've been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That's my period. I feel real close to the '40s - and actually, I was born in '37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the '40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.
I'm just playing basketball, the same way I have always played, from juniors and even back to middle school, I'm just doing it the same way. Nothing different. Just a team game, playing and having fun and trying to play the right way.
I think my first impression (of Bix Beiderbecke) was the lasting one. I remember very clearly thinking, 'Where, what planet, did this guy come from? Is he from outer space?' I'd never heard anything like the way he played-not in Chicago, no place. The tone-he had this wonderful, ringing cornet tone. He could have played in a symphony orchestra with that tone. But also the intervals he played, the figures-whatever the hell he did. There was a refinement about his playing. You know, in those days I played a little trumpet, and I could play all the solos from his records, by heart.
I want to be liked... No, I want to be more than just liked... I want people to say, "that Charlie Brown is a great guy!" And when people are at parties, I want them to look for me, and when I finally arrive, I want them to say, "here comes good ol' Charlie Brown... Now everything will be all right!" I want to be a special person... I want to be needed... It's kind of hard to explain... Do you understand? I mean, do you know what I'm talking about?" "Sure, I understand perfectly..." "Well?" "Forget it! Five cents, please!
They just expected it to you know... Paul, Steve and I could have hired our own publicist, if we wanted to, but I kind of liked the way it was more of a cult thing and those that liked it, liked it, you know what I mean?
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