So I’m stubborn, am I? And crabby on Saturday mornings, especially when it’s hot? Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. Very true! Embarrassing, but there you go…
Misato? She’s a superb musician. I remember giving her, quite a few years ago, the piccolo trumpet part from Penny Lane. It’s fast, the timing is tricky, and it doesn’t really lend itself to keyboard playing – too many repetitions of the same note in quick succession requiring very speedy and awkward finger changes. Next rehearsal, Misato rattled the thing off as if it were a mere walk in the park. More recently, I gave her the (guitar) band score of a piece we’re playing in our upcoming gig. (It’s a secret!) Again, it doesn’t naturally lend itself to keyboard playing, and the timing is (to me) ferociously difficult. Blow me if she didn’t sight-read it almost perfectly there and then! Boy!
What about Shuhei? He’s really my kind of guy. Unconventional, creative, yet with a generosity of spirit and kindness of heart that are truly touching. He’s considerate to the nth degree and you feel that, if you ever had a problem, he’d bend over backwards to help you and never let you down. He’s also a bit of a Renaissance man on the quiet. He’s a hell of a clothes designer, a smart businessman, and a natural musician. I’m told that he’s also a nifty footballer, although, unfortunately for me, I’ve never had the chance to see him in action. Oh, and I recently discovered (totally unexpectedly) that he’s a qualified Japanese chef. This, I have to admit, was a bit of an embarrassment, as I’ve cooked for him (and the rest of the band) a couple of times, and I can only be described as one of those “throw things in and see what happends” kinds of cook.
Mina sings from the heart. She really has a natural ear for the possibilities of the human voice. (Warning! She’s a pretty incisive mimic. No wonder she’s had a lifelong love-affair with birds!) During the interval of one of our gigs, a member of the audience once asked me something like: ‘How often does Mina have lessons?’ I didn’t quite get what he meant, so I said: ‘Do you mean “How many English lessons does she teach every week?”‘ ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I mean: “How often does she have singing lessons?”‘. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘But how many lessons has she had in the past?’ he pursued. ‘None, as far as I know,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure she’s self-taught.” (Later, I checked. She is.) He couldn’t believe it. Nor can I, come to think of it. Having said that, she practises like mad…
In one respect at least, I consider myself to be a very lucky person. In my (increasingly long!) lifetime, I have been privileged to play with two truly phenomenal guitarists. When I was a teenager, I formed a band with a schoolfriend. He was a great pianist (he’s now a professional musician). I was a bad pianist. Naturally, I therefore stepped down in the keyboard-playing department and billed myself as ‘lead guitarist’. I even bought myself a guitar to prove the point. But we needed a ‘second’ guitarist, so I recruited another non-guitarist to fill the gap. I knew he was a pretty good ‘cellist, so I figured we were the next prog rock sensation. Subsequently, we put on a concert. We were terrible. But I mean, terrible. The (now professionally successful) keyboard player built a monophonic synthesizer out of an old piano keyboard and a box of wires. All very well, but it was sensitive to amplifiers. Use this amplifier and – fine – it was in tune. Use that one and – well, it wasn’t. Unfortunately, when it came to the concert, we used that one. Luckily (luckily?!) the ‘synthesizer’ was only needed for our first piece – written, I regret so say, by myself. It sounded like a demented, tone-deaf cockerel heralding the end of time. At the end of it, we sat looking at each other in a kind of dazed disbelief. ‘Was it really as bad as it seemed?… No! It was worse!’ Anyway, somehow we moved on and stumbled our way to the end of the concert. And then, even more astonishingly, played another one – not quite as bad, but still pretty dire – in some kind of private night club which I’ve more or less forgotten. After that, thankfully, the long school summer holiday intervened. And what an extraordinary holiday it must have been for that ‘cellist of ours, because he emerged at the end of it – this is no exaggeration – as a fully-fledged ‘eat-your-heart-out’ virtuoso guitarist. I don’t exactly remember how things went from there. I think the old band must have played together again once or twice. I may be wrong. What I do remember, however, is realising that our ‘cello-playing Hendrix was wasting his time. I told him he should find a real band. Which he did. And did and did. He’s now a professional jazz-guitarist par excellence…
And then, so many years later, I had the supreme good fortune to meet Hiroshi. Hiroshi is another of those vistuoso, eat-your-heart-out guitarists – only more so. The trouble is, he’s also profoundly modest. Which means, no doubt, he’ll hate me for saying this, but I’m going to say it anyway. Hiroshi is the sort of musician that limited mortals such as myself could only dream of playing with. Of course his technique is second to none, but what really gets me is his ear! That’s the real test of a true musician and I fail it every time. I once played him a blast of one of my favourite guitarists. The piece involved a rather complex and unusual scale and some highly intricate and non-standard finguring. Hiroshi, guitar in hand, sat on a stool and just listened. Once. And then played what he’d heard note-for-note. And I mean perfectly. Flawlessly. Note-for-note. I was lost for words. But you’d never believe it, to talk to him. As I’ve already said, he’s deeply modest. He’s also the calmest, kindest guy you could hope to meet. I would like to emulate him, but I know I could never succeed. He’s the man!
