Play Piano With Paul Mccartney Pdf
Harold Yengo
And what a start it was: novels, plays, poems. McCartney devoured as many words as he could to the point where he could play with them, toss them in the air and see what magic happens (McCartney, 2021).
Paul McCartney was a guitar player first and foremost. Although his first instrument was actually the family piano, it was only after he traded in a birthday gift of a trumpet as a young teenager for a guitar that McCartney started taking music seriously. This period coincided with a few notable events, most importantly the incoming popularity of rock and roll music and his friendship with a young schoolmate named George Harrison.
During their Hamburg days, McCartney occasionally played guitar but often had difficulty finding a suitable instrument or a spare amplifier to plug into. Instead, McCartney often sat at pianos that were littered across the bars and speakeasies at which The Beatles frequently played. There were even periods when McCartney played drums with the band when Best was ill or out of commission.
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We play a lot of music by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau on our show in the breaks and at the end of the show. Well, today, we have a real treat. Brad Mehldau went to the WNYC studios in New York to sit down at their piano for an interview and some music. He spoke with FRESH AIR producer Sam Briger. Here's Sam.
SAM BRIGER, BYLINE: Brad Mehldau is one of the most influential and acclaimed jazz pianists living today. A recent talk of the town item in The New Yorker said that he is, quote, "arguably the greatest working jazz pianist; top five, for sure," unquote. His many recordings feature a wide range of jazz and American popular song standards, but he's also known to interpret music that lies outside the typical jazz catalogue, playing songs by Radiohead, Nirvana, Nick Drake and Pink Floyd. In particular, he's had a long relationship with the music of the Beatles. Looking back at his dozens of albums, Beatles songs are peppered throughout, like "Blackbird," "Martha My Dear," "She's Leaving Home" and others.
But now, for the first time, Mehldau has a record of all Beatles songs - well, except for maybe a David Bowie tune snuck in at the end. The album is called "Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles." It was recorded live in Paris in 2020. Mehldau's most common musical platform has been his trio, but he's recorded many solo albums and collaborated with musicians such as Josh Redman, Pat Metheny and Chris Thile, just to name a few. On his 2018 album called "After Bach," he plays pieces from Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier," as well as his own compositions inspired by them. He's very busy touring, so we were lucky to get some time with him while he was in New York doing a week of gigs at the Village Vanguard, the historic jazz club. Mehldau also has a memoir coming out this March called "Formation: Building A Personal Canon, Part One," which recounts a difficult childhood and his development as an artist.
MEHLDAU: I was a little apprehensive at first, but I had a lot of time on my hands because it was just kind of right in the middle of the lockdown. So I thought, well, this would be something exciting to jump into. It was also interesting. They - what they did was they programmed a series of concerts with various artists, and they played the whole Beatles repertoire. So everybody played - everybody picked different tunes. So somebody covered "Revolution 9" somehow. I was always curious how that went.
MEHLDAU: Well, it's not on the record, but it always comes to mind, you know, maybe because everybody knows it, but just what he does with "Blackbird," which I've played a lot over the years. One thing he likes to do is what you call in classical music - maybe you'd call it a pedal point. That's something you find in Bach and Brahms a lot where there's one note that goes through different chords, and it's the same note. And in this case, he's getting that from an open G-string on the guitar. So you have this beautiful harmony that's moving around but always with that G in the middle of it (playing piano). And that's always there (playing piano).
MEHLDAU: Yeah. Yeah. And it's very - and it's grounding in the way it relates to everything. It sort of ties - it's also something in another - that Thelonius Monk loved to do on something like "Think Of One," where the F is in everything (playing piano). This is (playing piano) and he has that a lot, you know, on different tunes of his.
MEHLDAU: Yeah. Yeah, I did think about that a lot. And in the case of that one, I hewed quite closely to the arrangement as they had it. And one fun thing about this record was it was sort of an orchestrational (ph) challenge. There's so much complexity to their music in all these different instruments and things happening. And then trying to bring that all onto the piano was a fun challenge. And then some improvising in there - kind of short but they're great chords, you know (playing piano). And then this very strange interlude (playing piano). And then it's just over, and it's so many elements there all at once in a couple minutes.
MEHLDAU: So if you have the original, it's - you know, it's very diatonic. (Playing piano). And then, so I might - (playing piano) and then, maybe come back to it, you know, sort of grounded again of here's five going back to one.
MEHLDAU: Oh, that's a great point. Absolutely. It works really well with a - you know, a diatonic, which means, you know, all within one scale. (Playing piano). In this case, it's in G major. So, you know, everything is within that scale, I think. I hope I'm not going to be wrong. (Playing piano). So that's all, you know, just in one scale. So even though they have different chords, it has a simplicity there to work from.
MEHLDAU: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a lot going on in that song, and there's these sections, you know? But the ending is really cool because it's - again, it's diatonic, and it's almost willfully naive what they do. They just start on A's in unison, and then, they just go the other direction. You can do it on the white keys of the piano. So what they're doing is just going in other directions - down on the bottom and up on the top. So it's (playing piano) - keeps on going (playing piano). And that's a very, very condensed, 20 times as fast, you know...
MEHLDAU: Yeah. I guess I'm kind of thinking of my version because the - it's literally the - it's in A minor at that point. And of course the A is the lowest (playing piano) note on the piano, which I love to play if I...
MEHLDAU: Certainly, Bach. I really went headlong into "The Well-Tempered Clavier." And I think it was for whatever reason, I always - Brahms was a composer who was just really close to my heart when I played Brahms' music for the first time when I was a kid. And then when I got to New York, I don't know why that was, but I really started discovering more of his music and sort of went on a mission - his chamber music, his choral music, his four symphonies, everything, his leader. And then just from all of that, there's - you know, in that piano literature, there's always a call to do stuff with your left hand.
You know, people think of Bach a lot, certainly, but, you know, in Brahms, in Beethoven, you know, in all these composers, there's things that the left hand that, you know, that don't come as much in - and I wouldn't want to say that, you know, jazz, you don't have to use your left hand as much, but there's a certain kind of jazz that's a lot of - a time period that's my grits and gravy, which is kind of beginning with bebop and going through, you know, modern stuff, you know, right up through the middle '60s, let's say, where the piano is in a rhythm section, and the left hand is playing a role that's a chord. It doesn't play melodies as much, so it doesn't need to be used in that way.
BRIGER: I want to play something. This is from earlier in your career. This is with your trio. It's from "The Art Of The Trio Volume Two: Live At The Village Vanguard." And you're playing the Thelonious Monk song, "Monk's Dream." And this, to me, it sounds like you're really doing independent things with your right hand and your left hand. It's a really intense part of your solo where there's just these waves of sound, but you still hear the melody, like, woven through. But first, just before we listen to that, could you just play the - like, the simple melody for "Monk's Dream," so we can hear it?
BRIGER: So when you were in high school, there were all these cliques. And you didn't really feel like you fit into a lot of them. There was a jazz clique. But there was a lot of - you were dealing with a lot of bullying. But you fell into a group of older musicians, jazz musicians, who would hire you on to go to weddings and play at parties. And then you actually even had, like, I think, a regular gig at a club in Hartford called the 880.
MEHLDAU: Well, there was a - I mean, really the one as a pianist, you know, or just any jazz musician, was Bradley's, which was on University, I think, and 12th or 13th. And that was really the piano room, and so - you know, always somebody on a top level and always of that generation. I don't think they really - when Bradley was around, he wouldn't book younger. You know, so that was Cedar Walton. That was Tommy Flanagan. That was Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Hank Jones - yeah, players on that level. So they were players that - they were pianists I had been listening to on records for the last four years. And then, now I was getting to - I'd go into Bradley's, and I'd sit at the bar. If I was lucky, I'd get this seat, you know, close to the action and just - and, you know - incredible, just sublime to be witnessing that.
MEHLDAU: Yeah, I was just too - I was always kind of shy. You know, McCoy Tyner was another titan for me. And to me, he had - you know, with the work he did in the classic Coltrane Quartet, there's a spiritual authority. Those guys were like - they were like priests, you know? And the music, they - and I remember I'd go to Sweet Basil's to see him play with his trio. And I'd be there sitting at the bar. And he'd come up, and he'd have his tonic water, and he'd be sitting next to me at the bar. And I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't - I just - I couldn't, you know? That would have been the moment, you know?
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