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Gordon Goodwin: When are you going to get serious about this thing, and start playing with some energy and passion?
Eric Marienthal:(Laughter) Well, I'm just trying to keep up with my good
buddy, Gordon Goodwin...
GG: Don't kiss up to the interviewer.
EM: It's worked up to now.
GG: From the first time I ever heard you play, I was impressed by your
conviction. Was that something you always had, or something you worked towards obtaining?
EM: Thanks, first of all, but I think people play the way they play. A person is going to sound pretty much the way they sound regardless of their instrument, or what mouthpiece they use. They way you are physically determines how you sound.
GG: Does that manifest itself in your personality and the way you interact with people, with that same kind of energy?
EM: Probably so, yeah. I think I'm pretty energetic in general and I think as players develop, especially from a soloist standpoint, their personalities
come out. And I think it's pretty rare to find someone who's incredibly inward away from music and then suddenly when they get behind their instrument they're hitting it hard. A person's personality is pretty much depicted in the way they play.
GG: I used to study with Warne Marsh, who unlocked many things for me as an improviser, but he was always on me to play less "emotionally." And I tried it on, and I think it helped balance what I was doing, learning to come from both a left and right brain place, but it was my first lesson where I realized, "you have to be who you are."
EM: Absolutely. I studied with Warne myself in the late 70's and there's a perfect example of a guy where you got to know him and his playing, this is the same guy. You could tell how he was going to play just by knowing him, and vice versa, you could tell what his personality was going to be like by listening to him play.
GG: Do you think that manner of playing is less communicative to the audience than a more accessible and emotional style?
EM: Not necessarily - the more obvious you are about the way you communicate, the easier it is for people to assimilate and pick up. But it's equally communicative for someone to express themselves in a more subtle sort of way. The difference between, say an actor who's very outward and aggressive, like John Candy, as opposed to Gregory Peck, someone who's far more subtle.
GG: Tell me about how you developed as an improviser and as a saxophonist -did you spend long hours in the woodshed?
EM: I didn't practice all that much in high school. I see young players today really practicing hard and I wish I had the same drive when I was 14-15 years old. Later in high school I started to get more really wasn't until college at Berklee when I started studying with Joe Viola that I started putting in the time that was necessary to reach my goal. So, every night I'd finish my homework and dinner by 8:00, and I'd sneak over to the New England Conservatory, where, unlike Berklee, where we had these very small cubicles to practice in, New England had their classrooms open. I somehow befriended the security guard and went into the practice rooms and practiced until they closed at 12:00. So, that went on every night, and the longer I was there, the more driven I was, and when I left school and came back to the L.A. area, I had a room in a boardinghouse, very inexpensive. And I had my little busboy job, which was all I had to do except practice, so I probably put in 5, 6 to 8 hours every day.
GG: What's your practice regimen nowadays?
EM: I practice at least 7 to 8 hours every day now.
GG: Yeah, right...
EM: Just kidding. First of all, I'd like to, but it depends. Like anything else, you can't expect to get good quality practice just by playing every day. There's very few days where I don't play at all, certainly, but with other responsibilities, family and so forth... and just the amount of hours it takes me to get to work, especially if I'm traveling, there just aren't enough hours in the day to get any real solid practicing done. I do, when I can get an hour or two here or there, but usually for me these days it's more of a matter of warming up. I feel very uncomfortable if I can't warm up for at least a half hour before I play.
GG: I find myself all the time telling kids to cherish the freedom they have in their early years because it doesn't stay that way forever, and you don't get that time back.
EM: No question about it. When you have that time to practice, you gotta hit it because those endless free hours will soon be gone.
GG: It's like physical exercise in that if I haven't been doing it, it doesn't take as much of it to tire my muscles and give me a good workout. But the better shape I'm in, the longer I have to run on the treadmill to get the same burn. Is there an equivalent for you in a musical sense?
EM: Absolutely, Playing is a very physical thing, so you can equate it easily to something like running where if you don't run a half hour every two weeks, and try to run a 5 or 10 k, you're going to be in rough shape. Playing an instrument, there's a lot of brain power involved, but it's a physical thing too, so the more hours you're able to practice and have your muscles toned to playing your instrument, it's that much easier to do all the subtle things required in playing your instrument well.
GG: I always thought our culture tended to overemphasis God-given talent over hard work. If you look at Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, there's no denying they have God-given talent, but what you don't see is the 2000 jump shots Kobe shot last summer or the hours and hours of practice they use to enhance that talent.
EM: Exactly. I think we all have our gifts but it's up to us to bring them out. Nobody, not even Mozart, was born a concert pianist, or a master composer. We take what we're given and it's our job to work as hard as we can to bring those talents as far forward as possible and become as good as we can possibly be.
GG: As a jazz player, who particularly impressed and influenced you?
EM: Different features of guys at different times influenced me. For instance, in high school, there was the usual suspects, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, Art Pepper, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock. Then later on I started listening to players like Bob Berg, Michael Brecker and David Sanborn. Then other players like Robben Ford, a great blues guitar, and then beyond that, more R&B players like Hank Crawford, Junior Walker, and players that aren't necessarily coming from a jazz background at all, but from a more bluesy, emotionally oriented way of expressing themselves.
GG: Do you hear things now as a mature adult and mature musician that still surprise you?
EM: As far as what?
GG: It seems like when you're younger, there are surprises around every corner, and as you learn more and more about your discipline, it seems like those surprises tend to diminish. Are you able to find new discoveries?
EM: Certainly. Like anything else, when you're first introducing yourself to something new, everything is fresh and surprising and as you study more, year after year, you're familiar with more things so there are fewer things out here to be surprised about. Having said that though, there are a lot of styles of music that aren't moving forward very quickly. A lot of pop music has a particular formula that works and is popular and a lot of bands go for that formula. No two bands sound exactly alike, and they have their own way of approaching that style, but nevertheless there can be a lot of similarity to that kind of music. But I think certainly there are a lot of surprises in improvisational music such as jazz. Listen to Chick Corea's records for instance. Every single record he's ever made - always very fresh, always very different than the last, and the next. Herbie Hancock's records are that way, and Robben Ford's records are always super fresh and different. And then there's your record -the Big Phat Band record was just incredibly fresh. You took a big band format that could have easily fallen into a very predictible category and created
something incredibly new and exciting to listen to.
GG: Well, thank you. Tell me about playing with Chick. How long were you with him?
EM: I was with Chick's band for 8 years, and during that time we recorded 6 different records, one live record, and I always say I wish every musician could experience something along the lines equal to having played with a musician the caliber of Chick Corea. Because just as every single record was different from the last and fresh, that held through for his night to night performances. Every night, even thought we would go on these 2-3 month long tours where we'd play every single night - one tour we played 90 different cities in three months! And one tour we pretty much played the same exact songs each night, yet, he would play completely fresh different ideas every single night. Now, you get used to a particular player, you're gonna notice certain things you've heard before, but Chick, by far had so much to say musically and was so creative every night, that it was inspiring to all of us
to see someone that creative and different night after night.
GG: It's like turning on a faucet with that guy.
EM: It was incredible. You listen to him and say "That guy can play whatever he wants. And whatever comes to mind, there it is, on the keyboard, being played." It was just absolutely remarkable.
GG: That's how you get better, playing with players that are better than you.
EM: No question. I always felt with that band, with Dave Wekel on drums, Frank Gambale on guitar, and John Patittuci on bass, that, you know, I was hanging on for dear life!
GG: (Laughter)
EM: It was a harrowing experience at times, and it really inspired me to work hard - complacency was never something we had to worry about in that band. Everybody was practicing, every day. The music itself, the songs, were a real challenge and those were being practiced every day, not as a band, but individually. Every aspect about that band was a challenge musically, you know, but a great one.
GG: Was that gig well compensating?
EM: Well paying?
GG: Yeah.
EM: For a jazz gig, it sure was. This is going back a few years, the started in 1986 - I joined in '87 and we went through 1995 or so, and it compares with a lot of bands I play with now, like The Rippingtons, Lee Ritenhour and Jeff Lorber and such. Plus we always flew first class internationally, and business class domestically and always first class hotels The band had it's own bus the crew had their separate bus, and in a lot of ways it was like a big rock 'n roll tour. We had our own lights, our own sound, there were 20 people on the crew, a big semi carrying all the gear, it was a pretty big show!
GG: I'm sure that makes it easier to go onstage and do your gig if you don't have to endure the hardships of the road like some people do.
EM: Definitely. It would have been pretty hard to maintain that intense of a tour and not have it be comfortable.
GG: How much traveling are you doing nowadays?
EM: I probably travel about 1/3 of the year. Between my own band, the Rippingtons, Lee Ritenhour, Jeff Lorber - and I do a fair amount of clinics and master classes, performances with school bands around the country - so I hop around a fair amount.
GG: When does the new record come out?
EM: It came out July 10, it's called "Turn Up The Heat", it's on Peak Records, Russ Freeman from the Rippingtons produced it, and Robben Ford, Jeff Lorber, Rick Braun,Chris Botti is on the record. Jerry Hey, Gary Grant and Bill Richenbach play on the record, Jerry did some arranging for me. Denice Williams sang, and a cast of thousands!
GG: Are you going to do any touring to support the record?
EM: Yeah, I have a tour with the Rippingtons where I'm a special guest, which takes us up to mid August and then in the fall my band plays in Europe and about 10 days in Asia.
GG: What size band do you take on the road?
EM: Usually a quartet or quintet. The guitar is on sometimes, off sometimes, it depends. If the tour's a bit longer we trim it down a bit. For the bigger shows we have 5 guys, and sometimes even add a percussionist to make it 6.
GG: Coming from a place in my own career in the last decade working in TV/film music and "work for hire" stuff, it's admirable for me to see a guy make a living playing his own music and finding a way to make that what you're about. I think it's a brave thing, to say: "OK, I'm an artist, this is my stuff, this is how I play, this is how I write - let's go."
EM: Well, two things come to mind when you say that. I think you discover your strengths early on, and a very respected musician friend of ours Dan Higgins, once told me "you get a 'A' in a subject that you want to get 'A's in." I always admired Dan for being such an amazingly well-rounded musician. He's a composer, an arranger, one of the greatest doublers in town, a great improviser -he does it all. Here's a guy that decided to get straight 'A's on his report card. In my case, it was always about being a soloist, and although I enjoy doing studio work, and although I haven't put in the same kind of hours on the flute and clarinet, I got to the point where I could get through a lot of things. But being a soloist was always: I want to get out there, I want to play on stage, and I want to make my own records. That's what I wanted to do. I think the same thing we teach our children, and what my father taught me: if you have a desire for something, just go for it and don't look back. If you're worried about money, or whatever your concerns are, if you put 100% into what you love, then everything else will take care of itself.
GG: I agree with that. I've never really given a thought to how I was going to make money. The money is almost like a side-effect to doing what you love.
EM: Well, quite frankly, you're one of those guys who could have chosen a lot of different tasks. You're a great saxophone player, a great piano player, you could have decided to go the way I decided to go and become a soloist. And you're obviously an incredible composer and that's how you're spending a lot of your time, which is great -but it just depends. Some people are just laden with some much talent that they can choose various directions. And that's probably why you did decide to form the band because you had something screaming in the back of your mind -to have your own band and be a soloist as well. So I commend you for putting so much energy into so many different aspects because none of them come naturally, everything requires work and you have obviously put so much work into so many areas that it's inspiring for everybody in your band.
GG: Woah - thanks... is this my interview or yours?
EM: (Laughter)
GG: I think you need to narrow your choices down as you get older, because there are other things that start grabbing for your time, not the least of which is your family.
EM: Absolutely. You gotta take care of home first. I do travel a fair amount, but I'm never gone more than a few days at a time for the most part.
GG: How do you see yourself in say, 5 years?
EM: It's hard to say. I really enjoy what I'm doing now, certainly a goal from a musician in my position is trying to sell records. I work very hard at making good quality records and promoting them when they come out. I've had the pleasure of being with great companies that have supported me and my records financially and in terms of helping with that promotion, and the more people that buy your records, the better attended your live gigs are, and the better paying they are. I really wouldn't want to change a thing, other than continue to be more and more worth the price of admission.
GG: Just as long as I can get on the guest list once in a while.
EM: You always were a cheapskate!
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