| Part 1 | Part 2 |

How did you first get into music?

I always loved music as a child, but when I was about 12 years old my parents and I moved to a new city. One day they told me, “You should take up an instrument…anything except the drums.” But that was the only instrument I really loved, so drums were it!

In sixth grade I joined the school band and that’s where I learned how to read music and play the snare drum - I had a really fine teacher named Vern Pahde, who was actually a saxophone player. Then, one day I sat down at a friend’s drum set and I found out that I was instantly able to play his kit. We were both like “Whoa!”

I originally dreamed about being a chemist, but when I got into high school, luckily I had another wonderful band director there named Donald Ehrensperger. He pretty much let me “do my thing”, which was great for me, and so I started gravitating towards playing music more and more.

Also, when you’re young, you kind of think, “You know, if I play music, I’ll meet a lot of girls and I won’t have to get up early in the morning,” things you find out later that aren’t necessarily true…at least the later part.

Eventually, one thing kind of led to another and then I got a music scholarship at a university and before I knew it, music was my life.

Who were some of the musicians that inspired you early on?

I used to buy so many LPs – I’d buy anything. That was back in the days when you could go into a local chain food store and even they’d have Atlantic or ATCO records. So you’d pick up a record like Cream and you’d read the back and it would say “Ginger Baker – undoubtedly one of Europe’s greatest drummers” and you’d think “Oh, I’m going to buy that!”

The same thing went for jazz records. I’d go to a department store and they’d be blowing out mono Atlantic records and it just happened to be John Coltrane or Charles Lloyd or Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis on Columbia, so I just bought whatever looked interesting. Back then, I would listen to rock, jazz and ethnic music…I loved it all.

And so I would listen to all these different bands and styles and if I really “felt” something from it, it would become part of me. It was very much a kind of osmosis. And the fact that I didn’t differentiate between rock and jazz and ethnic music really helped too because I wasn’t a snob. I wasn’t a jazz snob or a rock snob – I just loved any good music. I also learned tons of songs that way too. I was always very song-oriented, so I got to know thousands of standards and rock tunes – that’s a critical advantage for any musician.

I’m basically self-taught on the drum set. I taught myself how to play the kit by playing what came naturally to me and by listening to what other drummers did – not necessarily by transcribing what they did note for note, but by more or less listening to what they played and then observing how their playing affected the music. I’d then try to come up with my own individual way of doing a similar thing. So it was nothing for me to put on a Who record and listen to Keith Moon, and then put on an Ornette Coleman record and listen to Ed Blackwell and then put on an Olatunji record and then try to combine what I just heard.

After high school, you attended Western Illinois University, but not long.

During my second quarter, Cannonball Adderley’s band came in and did a rhythm section clinic with George Duke, Walter Booker, and Roy McCurdy.

Everybody sat in, but for some reason I didn’t feel like playing. Finally, my friends said, “Oh, go play!” So during their last song I took the sticks out of Roy McCurdy’s hands mid-tune and played. Everybody went nuts.

I talked to Roy McCurdy afterwards and said, “I’m dying here because I just want to play music – I don’t want to be in school. I feel like quitting.”

He said, “I think you should.”

The next day I quit school and moved back to the Chicagoland area and started playing around town.

Were you influenced by the avant-garde scene in Chicago?

Yeah, a lot. I heard a lot of the AACM guys play around town like Steve McCall, Don Moye and Thurman Barker. I was also really into New York drummers like Milford Graves and Andrew Cyrille and some of the European drummers like Han Bennink.

Actually before I got Pat’s gig, a lot of people sort of considered me more of an avant-garde drummer because I had this band called Earwax Control that was a very performance-art-oriented band.

I always loved all that freedom. I’m still like that – I want to keep all my options open. The avant-garde thing always appealed to me because it really seemed like people were playing from a gut level as opposed to a completely intellectual, technical level.

Of course, some of those guys were amazing technicians as well. You have to have enough technique in order to pull off your ideas, especially if they’re unusual or exceptional ideas – you have to have amazing technique to complete amazing ideas. But the idea should come first, rather than the technique.

And your big break came when you joined the Pat Metheny Group.

That really took me from being a local Chicago drummer to becoming involved in the international scene. I hadn’t been to Europe before I joined Pat and that opened up so many doors too.

Did you know his music before you joined the group?

Of course. Before playing with Pat, I was playing with a guitar player named Ross Trout who was a roommate of Pat’s at the University of Miami. In the late ‘70s, Pat actually called me up to play some gigs with him and I turned him down because I had a prior important gig commitment with a legendary Chicago sax player named Joe Daley who had taken me under his wing after I left college. I think Pat really noticed and appreciated that kind of loyalty.

I was also into heavier music like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report, but since I loved great melodies, I always liked Pat’s music. Then in the early ‘80s, I was playing in a band called the Simon & Bard Group and we were touring around, sleeping on people’s floors – not making a lot of money, but playing the type of music I enjoyed.

And you even went as far as turning down higher-paying gigs to focus on the music you loved?

Absolutely. Back then, I could have been doing recording sessions and weddings and staying at home, but my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) always said to me, “No – go play. Do what you want to do.” That’s what I still do and that’s also why we’ve been happily together for over 30 years!

So, as a result, I was out there touring around the country playing creative music. Then in 1982, Pat heard me again playing a gig with Simon & Bard in a club in Portland, Oregon after playing his concert that same night and that’s how I got the gig.

As a musician, what was it like playing with the Pat Metheny Group?

It was great on so many levels. There was an amazing depth of conception and Pat and Lyle Mays really could write some heavy compositions. They weren’t just nice little easy tunes that anybody could blow over.

Every time you thought you had cracked their musical code, there’d be ten other things you’d have to crack, and you’d see what deep composers those guys were.

As far as freedom, it was the antithesis of what I was used to. I was the kind of guy who would show up with any kind of drum set and do anything I wanted to do. I remember playing an Earwax Control gig one time where I walked out of the club with a field drum in the middle of the night and walked down the block, still playing all the way, and never came back. I was kind of legendary for doing crazy stuff like that.

However, with Pat’s gig, we were playing major concerts, so there was a certain amount of consistency that had to be there every night. You had to be consistently performing at a certain level because the audience was different every night. It was good discipline and it was different from what I was used to, which is always good. You have to put yourself in different situations so that you can learn and grow.

The Pat Metheny Group’s compositions were highly structured pieces that combined written music with improvisation – almost like a small version of Duke Ellington’s or Mingus’s groups.

Lyle Mays said it was more of a modern big band in many ways. It wasn’t necessarily a jazz group, if you think of jazz as people just playing heads and blowing. It was jazz musicians playing very organized music with a lot of detail.

It was sort of a mixture of jazz and the classical music aesthetic (I’d often lay down my sticks totally quietly in between tunes). And then there was the challenge to make music that was tightly structured still sound fresh every night.

How did you deal with the challenge?

One of the secrets I tell my students is that when you play music, you try to make the things that you know – like the head of the tune - sound like you’re creating them on the spot. And then you try to make the improvisation sound like you’ve played it a million times. That’s the secret. You make the loose stuff sound like you really know it, and you make the tight stuff sound like you’re making it up.

With the improvisation in the PMG, it was as much the microcosm that mattered as the macrocosm. There were a lot of sequencers used in the music, so we would always know, “On this tune there are going to be exactly three guitar choruses,” no matter what was happening that night on stage. The challenge was to always make it sound fresh.

But all the members of the Pat Metheny Group could just as easily have played straight-ahead jazz as well (if not better) than anybody else.

Oh, definitely. Actually, Pat and I especially would go out after our concerts a lot of times and sit in and play bebop or whatever at a local club. It was a nice change from our normal set.

We were doing anywhere from seven to eleven one-nighters in a row, and then your day off would be a travel day. You’d do this for three months at a shot, come home for a couple weeks, and go back out and do it again.

We used to jokingly call ourselves “The Jazz Marines.” But it was a wonderful experience in so many ways and I learned a lot. And I came out of it a lot stronger because of concentrating on things like consistency and attention to detail.

We never really had that many bad nights. A bad night for us would be a good night by normal standards. But a good night was never good enough for us. It had to be a great night.

When the band was learning a new tune, would whoever had composed the tune come in with the whole thing written out, or would it be developed in rehearsal or in the studio?

We had music charts, but I don’t remember ever seeing a specific drum chart. Usually, I just played along with what the melody was or what the arrangement was and then if they liked it, great. And if they had a different idea, they might suggest something that they had in mind as an arranger or composer.

As a drummer, that’s my job – to make the composer, arranger or artist happy. And I was more than glad to do whatever they wanted me to do because it made me grow. Although it was often different from what I was used to, I had a lot of freedom within the concept of that band – it was fun.

One of the things we’ve always admired about the Pat Metheny Group is the fact that the music that you played was very sophisticated, yet people who are not jazz fanatics can still listen to it and enjoy it.

That was the strength of their concept. We’d be playing in 22/8 - playing in all kinds of odd meters – yet you could whistle the tune in the shower. And it was their gift of melody that made it happen.

If you have a good melody and then you come up with brilliant harmonies, then you’ve really got a great song. Some people write things that try to be clever and complicated, but that’s when they miss the mark.

Pat used to write something and it just happened to be in seven. It wasn’t like he’s say, “Ok, now I’m going to do something in 7.” It’s just that they were really sophisticated musicians who wrote what they heard and felt.

And there was a sort of mid-western thing. It wasn’t a blues-based band. It almost had country roots in some ways and a real mid-western sound. So it had this blue-collar, everyman kind of commonality to the music, but it just happened to be in 22/8. And not many people can make that work.

Like the tune “5-5-7” from the album Letter From Home. It’s got a wonderful, singable melody, but good luck trying to count it out.

Isn’t that funny? But, it’s even the same thing with drumming. If a drummer’s really got something to say, whether it’s a great idea, a great feel or a deep sense of emotion, it doesn’t matter how complex or “crazy” he or she plays. You can pretty much play anything and the audience will go along with it because they can feel that something is real.

But if somebody else only has tons of chops, and they’re trying to impress the audience with their “greatness”, it’s more or less imposing on the audience.

The whole idea is to draw in the audience, not play down to them or trick them. You try to lift them up, but you respect them. You don’t play down to them or try to show how clever you are and how stupid you think they are. A lot of musicians make that mistake.

For all of its complexity, the Pat Metheny Group was never afraid to be melodic or sentimental.

That’s part of humanity. You can either think of love as being sappy or you can think of it as a deep emotion. You give up yourself to somebody that you love. And that’s the way the music has to be.

You have to give up yourself for the sake of the music. You can’t just stand there and say, “Look at me, how great I am.” You have to lay it on the line, and if you do that, I think that something real is going to come across. You’re exposing yourself completely.

Do have any favorite tracks or albums from your Pat Metheny Group years?

First Circle was great. I really liked that song. That summed up a lot of the concept of what we were doing. It breathed. It had a really singable melody even though it was a complex time signature.

I really like Still Life (Talking). I think that was a great CD. I thought Imaginary Day was really good. There was a lot of good stuff that we did. And some of the stuff that wasn’t as good was still ok. We set pretty high standards for ourselves.

You were with the Pat Metheny Group for eighteen years. That’s a pretty remarkable tenure in the jazz world. What kept you with them that long?

It was a great gig.

What made you decide it was time to move on?

One thing is that I didn’t want to be away from my family that much anymore. After we had our daughter, I wanted to be a great dad as well as a musician and the PMG’s touring schedule made that difficult. Also, I just got too comfortable. I was always afraid to leave because I didn’t know where else I would go, so when I finally did leave, it was like, “Oh my god, what did I do?”

But it also forced me into a position of really growing again, because sometimes when you stay with a band a long time you do get comfortable. And as an artist, it’s OK to be comfortable with yourself and know who you are. But it’s not a good thing that you get so comfortable and think “Oh, I don’t have to do this and I don’t have to do that anymore.”

After I left, I said to myself, “Man, now what are you going to do?” So I started practicing more and listening to lots of music again. I got hungry again, like I was a teenager starting out fresh.

I mean, after all, change is good. Change can be scary, but I’m sure it was good for them and it was great for me. It’s beneficial because you have to deal with something that’s unknown, and as an artist you always want to explore the unknown.

That’s how I live now. Every week I’m playing something totally different in all kinds of great musical situations. I’ve gotten really good at that now, and I love that because it’s always a challenge. At the same time, I’m comfortable enough in my own skin that I know what I do and I know what I don’t do, or won’t do.

Continue to Part Two: "If jazz is to remain a living, breathing art form, it has to grow."

To learn more about Paul Wertico, visit www.paulwertico.com.