Steve Lacy (1934-2004)
Leeds Jazz Archive * Steve Lacy * Photo © Denis Dalby
To honor Steve Lacy, the greatest soprano saxophone player of his age, I am reprinting the liner notes I wrote for the LP-version of FUTURITIES in 1985. Travel well, Steve! And many, many thanks for the pleasure and instruction of youR company over the years. Without your kindness, humor, knoweldge & music this Vale of Tears would be that much less viable a place.
STEVE'S
STANDARDS
Three
years ago I was in
Paris working on a radio
program about the American
poet Robert Creeley.
Rather than fall back
on the aseptic atmosphere
of a studio, the idea
was to find "live" situations
in which to record the poet reading his
work. Creeley's work seems to me to
be clearly and deeply
rooted in jazz: its rhythms, its tensions,
the way syllable answers syllable, the way
vowel rubs against consonant until the sparks fly,
the way the line-breaks play with or against the reader's
breath. I immediately flashed on the idea of getting him together
with Steve Lacy, a musician I knew to be an intelligent and passionate reader
of poetry. I called Steve, he liked the idea and a meeting was arranged. Early one afternoon Bob
and I arrived at Steve's flat; the two started talking about the old days in New York
and Boston, and although they had never met before it was as if they were picking up a conversation exactly where they left it off fifteen years ago in some late-night New York bar. A couple of drinks
and many recollections later, I suggested we get down to work.The sessions were short and sweet:
I kept the Nagra rolling, Bob read and Steve blew. An hour later we left. That was that, I thought.
I was wrong. A few months later, passing yet again through Paris, I dropped by Steve's place. After the
usual chat about the tough times us poets and musicians have making ends meet, I asked Steve
what he was working on. He sat down at the piano and played a couple of songs, freshly composed.
Irene was out, so he sung the lyrics.They were Creeley poems. FUTURITIES was in the making.
It was a slow process and two years went by before the work took on its final
shape. During that
time I had moved
to Paris, had seen
Steve
a number of times,
heard more of the
songs in their various
states
of completion
and
talked to the
composer about
the
work in progress,
taking notes and
even
taping some of
the
conversations.
I was intrigued
by Lacy's
love for songs,
a rather unfashionable
jazz form these
days, and asked
him about it: "I've
been setting lyrics
to music for almost
twenty years.
It
took a long time
to come to the
surface, that
stuff has got
to
age, to mellow
out. We
use all kinds
of
text, some that
I wrote myself,
but also telegrams,
letters, things
found on the
streets,
children's
exercises, slogans
pulled off billboards,
what
you may call
found
poetry, but
it all comes
down to poetry
or lyrics, to
word-setting.
Lyrics
were sort
of
petering
out in the
fifties and that's
where I came
in. I guess
it's
my job to
bring them
back. Now
the reason
why all of
this has
been possible
is that I had
a voice
to work with,
Irene's
voice, a
voice like
an instrument.
We started
from zero
together,
me and her
and the words
made
the music,
but without
the voice
to experiment
with it wouldn't
have happened.
She was a
gifted voice,
a voice you
can't
ignore or
leave
idle, it
was my
pleasure
to find
things
that would
fit it.
It's
been a
real
adventure
for some
18 years
now."
I
wondered what the process
of composition had been,
how Steve got from the
poems to the music: ìThe
thing about the Creeley
show is the line. After
our first meeting he
sent me his Collected
Poems and it really
grabbed me, it was
exactly the kind of
stuff we worked with,
it was so clear and
simple and deep, and
could be said over and
over again see,
the thing about setting
words to music, you
have to be able to
deliver them over and
over again without boredom,
without fatigues. You
have to place them in
musical pictures so
that they can be sung.
A poem is said again
and again and if it
is said enough times
it becomes a song. Thatís
the way I find the music,
by saying the words
over and over again
until it becomes sing-song
or song-sing, whatever,
until it begins to take
on musical appearances.
Well, the Creeley poems
were great to work with;
they were so chiseled,
so expertly done, it
was amazing. The thing
that struck me was the
subject matter. Love,
the nature of love and
the idea of sharing
a life with somebody,
falling in love, keeping
it alive, getting old
together, all these
various aspects. And
so I began to see a
thread, something began
to take shape, without
my being aware of it
at the time. I started
to work on them, quite
feverishly, without
knowing what I was doing.
I thought I was making
a bunch of songs. But
when I had a dozen of
them, I thought, oh,
something is going on
here, and then I had
eighteen done and I
started to go crazy
trying to find the order
they went in. I couldnít
find it and later realized
that the reason was
that there were two
kissing. They came to
me in a mysterious way
the next year. One of
them Creeley sent me
on a postcard. That
became the opening song,
the curtain raiser: ìIf
it isnít
fun, donít
do it.î I
still couldnít
get the rest of them
right. The one that
was missing I found
in another book of his
quite a few months later,
and that turned out
to be the key to the
whole work. Itís
the one that says ìTake
off your clothes, love,
/ and come with me.î Itís
the key, itís
like love itself, the
making of love. Then
everything fell into
place.î
Where
did the title, FUTURITIES,
come from? ìWell,
I was making these
songs and the way they
came out they seemed
so logical, so clear
to me that I thought,
well, someday maybe
these songs will become
standards. And the
title came to me: FUTURE
STANDARDS. And then
that became FUTURITIES,
which is a more malleable
word, easier to say,
more fun. Over the
next year I started
orchestrating them.
I began to see the
proper form for presenting
them. If you have twenty
songs you just donít
get up and sing them,
you have to have a
proper setting. Well,
then a whole lot of
decisions just unfolded,
they seemed like already
made, I just had to
find them. Like the
decision to use the
harp. Because the
song HEAVEN suggests
a harp ó I
mean, if you are in
heaven you need a
harp, right? ó and
the fact that I had
already been working
with an excellent
harpist, Gyde Knebusch,
allowed this to happen.
The harp suggested
a balance with a guitar,
to make it resonate
with the piano, and
then the trombone became
necessary to give a
certain other color
to the whole thing.
So these decisions
are all around my normal
group, which is a
sextet without harp,
guitar or trombone.
I mean the work goes
toward itself, the
further you go, the
more it become itself
until it is fully realized.
The
work grew obviously
more and more complex.
When I heard that it
was going to be premiered
at the Lille festival,
my first thought was
that Steve had finally
written an opera. Why
then a dance performance,
rather than a stage
play with the singer
up on the boards? Well,
it could have been
no, I don't
think so it would have
distracted from the
information. These
words, why sing them?
Why deliver them? Because
they are food for thought.
If you give a whole
evening
over to information
about love, it starts
to look like a service
of sorts. And then
the idea came to me
that this was sort of
a marriage. And I began
to think about the
idea of marriage in
jazz, and the idea of
the altar came to me.
So I asked Kenneth
Noland
to make an altar because
he is a good friend
whose work I love and
I thought it would
be great on stage ó it
is so beautiful that
you can look at it
for hours. And sure
enough he made this
beautiful object that
changes colors as the
lights hit it. I had
given him the words ó in
fact I gave the lyrics
to everyone involved
in the work. Thatís
the focus. I didnít
want to lose the
words.î Indeed,
the very first
question
Stave asked me
after
the Lille premiere
was: ìCould
you understand
the words?î This
is a rare care,
for
musicians have
all to often
the tendency to
use lyrics mainly
as support for
thei
music. Lacy kept
the focus on
the poems, so
that even the
dancersí initial
inspiration had
to come from
the words. He
first gave them
the lyrics and
then a schema: ìI
thought very
carefully
about the action
suggested in
each
lyric. In fact
the thing about
these lyrics
is that they
are already
dancing,
they are all
about
dance, about
movement,
rhythms: coming
together, going
apart, being
born, dying,
the movement
is suggested
in them. I boiled
down each lyric
to a phrase
and
gave that to
the
dancers, like, ëmake
love,í ëfool
around,í ëkeep
it alive,í ëwho
gets into
trouble?í ëIt
must mean
something!,
grow
old together.
The
dancers
swallowed
that and
then threw
it away.
It was
kind
of a snapshot
and I hope
it helped
them. But
then
they did
whatever
they wanted
to do.
For someone like myself, relatively uneducated in musical matters, witnessing this three-year process has been an awesome and humbling experience ó and much pleasure. From the first tentative piano compositions through to the fully realized songs, and then to Lille and the whole show with its dancers, its dÈcor, its lights, and now back to the music on this record: a major journey! Thank you, Mr. Lacy! I feel honored to have witnessed what I believe to be a major creation and, possibly, the birth of a whole now form. As a poet, my concerns have a lot to do with fixed and open forms. Along those liens FUTURITIES has taught me a lot. For example, how to keep a form open while at the same time giving it a fixed center: Ezra Poundís ìUnwobbling pivotî that must not be allowed to become a straightjacket strangling freedom. As Stave put it: ì What I was after, what I am always after is a kind of consistency and a free form. Something thatís fixed and open. The way this works in FUTURITIES is that there is room for improvisation, around the fixed part which is the song, the lyric. Each piece has an introduction, then comes the piece itself, then thereís a tag, a last phrase also repeated a couple of times. And then we return to the introduction ó and thatís where the improvisation takes place, either group or solo improvisations. Itís a series of vamps, really, grooves to dance off ó they take different forms among the twenty songs here ó tango, waltzes, ballads. You take off from there, you can dance or play, whatever.î The poet Charles Olson, someone who was very close to Robert Creeley, once put the problem ó or the desire ó of the poet in succinct terms: ìHow to dance / sitting down.î I have now seen that happen, and I hope that the songs that make up FUTURITIES will indeed become standards. Lacyís compositions are as clear and simple and beautiful as the poems. Iím looking forward to the day when Iíll walk into a bar, late one night, and through the noise and the talk some piano notes float toward me and a voice that sings ìIf it isnít fun, donít do it.î
Pierre Joris
Paris, Rue du Temple, Mardi Gras 1985
