Interview: Mike Stern

The arrival of rock guitarists on TV shows, at concerts and on the radio in the mid-1960s and the emergence of the artist-controlled rock album in the late ‘60s led to a seismic change in jazz. Many young budding jazz musicians found themselves admirers of pop-rock and rock—or at least the larger incomes those forms generated and the increased attention by young audiences and the media. The result of these dual allegiances—to jazz and rock—produced a hybrid that became known as jazz-rock. Early pioneers included Larry Coryell, Gary Burton, Miles Davis, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul and John McLaughlin.

The next wave that emerged in the early and mid-1970s included John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola, Jaco Pastorius, Billy Cobham, George Duke and many others. Among them was Mike Stern, a brilliant guitarist who had a wailing rock attack with a soul-blues feel. Mike plays with enormous imagination and emotion, and his music has a warmth and groove that wins over the ear. His latest solo album is Trip (Heads Up).

Mike rarely performs in New York, so what I’m about to tell you is especially significant. He will be playing one night only at 92NY (above) on July 28, as the closer for the cultural institution’s Jazz in July series that begins July 19. Mike will be joined by Chris Potter and Nicole Glover on saxophones, Bill Charlap on piano (and the series' musical director), Scott Colley on bass and Bill Stewart on drums. You can attend in person at 92NY's main theater on Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street. Or you can view the concert live via stream on your computer, iPad or phone and for 72 hours after. The in-person tickets are priced based on demand and where you want to sit. The streaming tickets for online access are $20.

Recently, I caught up with Mike by phone while he was in Atlanta for a gig:

JazzWax: What are you planning to play at New York’s 92NY on July 28?

Mike Stern: I think we're going to select some standards and stretch out on them. It's going to be a pleasure to play with those guys, especially pianist Bill Charlap. He’s a really beautiful, smokin’ musician. I've been a fan of his for years. And all the other cats. JW: Will we hear jazz-rock or will the jazz be straight-ahead?

MS: Probably straight-ahead. But even when I playing softer on such material, I like to bend notes. Saxophonists and trumpeters do that all the time, so that has always been something I go for on my guitar, a vocal sound. I like when notes sing a bit and sound more horn-like. When I played with Miles Davis in the early 1980s, I was always trying to cop whatever I could from him. It was such an amazing experience. He was a huge inspiration to me and tons of other people.

JW: Which trumpet players stand out for you?

MS: Beside Miles, Randy Brecker. I've been doing some gigs with him. He's an amazing player. He comes from bebop but he can do all kinds of things on his horn. I love that. As for historic jazz players, I'd have to say Clifford Brown and Dizzy Gillespie. But I identify more with saxophonists, particularly all the Sonnys—Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt and Sonny Fortune. Michael Brecker, too. I love the vocal quality they all get out of their instruments.

JW: Vocal quality?

MS: When I was younger, growing up in Washington, D.C., I was in a church choir. Not because my parents were religious. They were just good people. But I started singing and appreciating singing early. A vocal teacher in grade school urged my parents to take me to this really great choir master. The teacher said to my parents, “Your kid will learn a lot." And he was right. I was always into singing and sang a lot at home.

JW: Where did you grow up?

MS: I was 3 when my mother moved from Boston to Washington, D.C., after divorcing my father, Henry Sedgwick, in 1957. Then she married Philip Stern, a journalist and major art collector, who became my legal father. I guess there was an agreement among them that this was for the best.

JW: Was it?

MS: I was too young to have any say in it, but it was weird. But you live and you learn. I was close to my birth father, even at that young age, and being pulled away was hard. Not seeing him was especially difficult for me. I guess there was just a feeling then among adults and therapists then that it's not good for children of divorced parents to see their real dad if they have a solid stepfather.

JW: Was that problematic and confusing for you?

MS: Hell yeah. I think it just hurt my soul. For my brother and sister, too. But it wasn't anybody's fault. It was just kind of what the “experts” felt was right. That was what the thinking was in those days. And then it kind of changed, because the experts realized it wasn't healthy for young kids to be ripped away and that maybe everyone could share a bit.

JW: Was that too late in your situation?

MS: Kind of. From a kid’s perspective, there was a separation and a new father who was around more. Since nothing was discussed, it became confusing to see my real father. After age 6, I didn't see him for about 20 years. Maybe part of this approach was the bad feelings between him and my mom. She didn't exactly encourage us getting together. When I started to see him again in my 20s, he was a great guy, a really sweet man. He always felt bad about what had happened.

JW: As a kid without information, did it feel like you had been abandoned by your father?

MS: Yeah. Logic doesn't enter into it. The heart is not the smartest organ of the body, know what I mean? So it hurt and I didn’t know why. Then when I saw him, we made it better.

JW: Was music encouraged as you grew up with your mom and stepfather?

MS: Definitely. They knew I wanted to do something with music. So, my mom got me piano lessons starting at age 9. But I didn’t love it. One day, I said that the piano was her thing, not mine. She loved playing piano. I wanted to play guitar. So my parents bought me one when I was 12. As soon as I started playing it, I couldn't put the damn thing down.

JW: What model was it?

MS: A Fender Mustang (above). I heard the electric guitar first on records and said, “Let me try to get this down." I took a couple lessons but learned more by playing along with the albums of blues guitarists such as B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King—all the Kings and all the great electric blues players. Then came Cream with Eric Clapton followed by Jimi Hendrix and all that hard rock stuff. I was into that. I took rock records to my room, put them on my turntable and played along. I liked being by myself. I was a really shy kid. I still have that side.

JW: How did you come to jazz?

MS: My mom played jazz records at home. Then I wanted to learn how to play jazz on my guitar. So I took some of her records to my room. She had a Herbie Hancock record and a couple Miles Davis albums and a bunch of others. I got lost in myself right away playing with the records.

JW: Soul was a big deal for you, too?

MS: For sure. I listened to a lot of soul on the radio. But I was into everything. What’s special about the guitar is that it turns up in so many different kinds of music. Many guitarists tend to be more eclectic than other instrumentalists. I mean, you can hear the guitar in classical, jazz, rock, pop, country and soul and other forms. This forces you to be more open-minded about letting in influences.

JW: After high school, you attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. What changed for you there?

MS: That’s where I started to learn to read music and all that stuff. I was drawn to jazz thanks to my mother. She used to play a little jazz piano. I loved the feel of it. When jazz is great, you know it immediately because the music has a feel. But that’s true of all great music, including rock. If must is good, it has that same kind of locked-in feeling, whatever that feeling is. It's not deliberately swing, but a swing feel. That's what got me into jazz. And then I wanted to learn to play the music, no matter what. It took me forever.

JW: Why Berklee?

MS: I heard great things about it. I also had taken classes there over a summer and it kind of worked out. I said to myself, “I can learn what I need to learn here." It's a pain in the ass to learn all that stuff, of course. But it's like anything else. You're never going to get any good unless you do the hard work. I was so motivated at that point. I just said, “Whatever it takes, I want to do this." I studied with guitarist Pat Metheny. He was a fantastic teacher. We just used to play together. One day, he said: “It seems you've got a very natural touch for the guitar."

JW: Could you read music by then?

MS: Yeah, at that point. Pat sometimes would play his latest tunes when I'd go in for a lesson. As we played together, he said, “Your time is really strong. You just need to play more." As you pointed out earlier when we were talking, I was really too shy to get gigs. But eventually, I adjusted and pulled down a couple of jazz dates. Pat introduced me to Bobby Colomby, who was with Blood, Sweat, & Tears at that point in 1975. The band was looking for a guitarist. I said, “Well, let me go do the audition, but I'm sure I'm not going to get the gig." I went and got the gig.

JW: You were in the band from 1975 to '78, I think.  

MS: Exactly. It was really a cool band in those days. That was some fresh stuff. There weren’t many jazz-pop horn bands. I kind of thought Chicago was hip, too. I actually liked Chicago better in some ways.

JW: But Blood, Sweat and Tears had already peaked with their early hits, yes?

MS: When I was in the band, they already had their biggest hits, yes. They weren’t as famous when I arrived as they were at the start of the 1970s. But still, for me, there I suddenly was playing with them. Before joining, I was scared to get a jazz gig for three musicians. All of a sudden, I'm playing in front of 3,000 people. I was still getting high, which isn’t a secret. I got off the road for a bit and tried to cool out. But I was still on the stuff.

JW: Why do you think drugs held onto you so tightly, from the time you were a teen? Did they make you feel less anxious on stage?

MS: All that, all that. Exactly. I’m sure I had enormous anxiety about my father, too. That's why people get into the stuff. It's the anxiety and whatever baggage you might have inherited. Some gifted artists get hooked thinking they can do anything and stop whenever they want, which isn’t the case, of course. You hear about it all the time. Others may feel things a little bit too deeply or whatever. And that's no excuse, by any means, but it's an explanation. Today, there are tons of ways to deal with the problem and stuff behind it.

JW: People forget there was no medication back then to ease anxiety. If you did happen to have a doctor who prescribed meds back then, they likely slowed you down or knocked you out, making it difficult to perform proficiently, yes?

MS: Yes, whatever was available then took you in the wrong direction. I mean, no one was talking about AA then, which is now protocol for abusers and addicts. Most shrinks today send you there. But in those days, you just talked yourself into the nearest bar. They didn’t understand then that one recovering person talking to another recording person was a powerful way to stay straight.

JW: In 1979, you joined Billy Cobham’s Glassmenagerie, a fantastic jazz-rock group. Was that a big turning point for you?

MS: Yeah. I dug playing with him. Billy is amazing. I want to do some more gigs with him at some point. I hope we can because he's a phenomenal drummer. And he swings his ass off. I mean, he can rock and funk and all that stuff, but also play straight-ahead and swing. My playing was growing stronger at that point.

JW: What made that band so special for you?

MS: I was at a point where I could understand some of the stuff or, I guess, some of the stuff that I'd been studying was getting more organic in my playing at that time, independent of who I was playing with. But then to play with Billy Cobham was spectacular.

JW: The band must have been a big confidence-booster, enabling you to take more creative risks, yes?

MS: Oh absolutely. That helped a lot, big time. In March 1981, we recorded Stratus in London while on tour. It was inspiring to play with all those guys— Gil Goldstein on keyboards, I was on guitar, Michal Urbaniak was on electric violin, Tim Landers on bass and Billy on drums. Gil is an incredible musician and arranger. We had a ball.

JW: How did you wind up with Miles Davis around this time? 

MS: In ’79, I was playing with saxophonist Bill Evans up in Boston at a place called Michael’s. It was owned by Ed Aronson and was on Gainsborough Street. The club wound up closing not too much later, in 1981. Bill told me Miles was looking for a new guitarist. Barry Finnerty, his guitarist, was fantastic but Miles and Barry didn’t get along, personally. The following year, I was playing with Billy Cobham at New York’s Bottom Line when Miles came down front and called Billy off the bandstand while we were playing.

JW: What happened?

MS: Miles said to him, in that raspy voice, “Tell your guitarist to be at Studio B at Columbia Records tomorrow, six o'clock." I went there and Miles wanted me to overdub my guitar under music that had already been recorded. But to me, the music sounded great as is. I said to Miles, “I don't hear it. I don't want to play on this. This is done." The following week, we did this groove that he eventually called Fat Time. My sound was really fat at that time and he liked my time feel. So Fat Time became my nickname. Then he named this tune after my nickname because I had a long guitar solo on it, so I was showcased. And he really dug it. I was amazed that I was playing and recording with my main hero. It appeared on Miles’s The Man With the Horn produced by Teo Macero and released by Columbia in ’81.

JW: Did you get along with Miles?

MS: We got along good. I’m not sure why. We had some not so good things in common then. When he had to get sober, we didn't get along so well. He was pissed at me because I was still showing up high. So I got sober and he hired me back. I stayed with him for about three years. I got sober and stayed sober. This was in 1984. I’ve been sober ever since.

JW: Staying sober must have been hard after your accident, when you needed pain meds, yes?

MS: But I did. In 2016, I seriously damaged my right hand in an accident. There was construction material left on 23rd Street when they were changing it from two lanes to four or something. If you weren't looking right at this yellow pole with a white thing that looked like a bowling pin on top, it was easy to get caught up in it. They were there to keep traffic in line while they changed the lane pattern.

JW: What happened?

MS: I was walking across the street. There wasn’t much traffic, but I was looking left to right to make sure I wasn’t going to get clipped by a turning car or a bike. I went right into the pole and fell really hard in the street. Both of my arms were broken. I was helped up and my wife, Leni, and I took a cab to the hospital. I had nerve damage in my right hand. They sent me to the wrong doctor at first, and he kind of screw up stuff and made it worse. Then we found this other doctor who was really good.

JW: How did you manage to play?

MS: When I recuperated, I still had nerve damage, so I began applying my wig glue to my thumb and affixing a guitar pick to it. Wig glue is used by actors, It’s really sticky and safe for your skin. I bitch and moan about it all the time. I had five surgeries on my hand.

JW: Your album Trip in 2017 was a about that nightmare—a play on what happened in terms of you losing your footing and the ordeal, yes?

MS: Yeah. I'd written that music before the accident and titled it after. I was nervous to start recording again. It was a hellish time. I thought I might have lost my arm completely. It was that bad.

JW: Given your history with addiction, were you terrified to take the pain medication you must have been prescribed?

MS: I was and I still have to take it sometimes. It sucks, but I’m really careful with it.

JW: Talk to me about jazz rock and fusion. Why are they so misunderstood by rock and jazz critics and fans?

MS: There’s so much beauty in the music. I actually think the music’s criticism has eased especially by more straight-ahead jazz musicians. But I understand why they were pushing against it. Now they're not saying anything about it, one way or the other. That’s because many more jazz musicians now play electric instruments. [Photo above of Michael Brecker and Mike Stern in 1988 courtesy of eBay]

JW: There’s so much great jazz rock that’s still largely ignored or passed over. Rock fans don’t bother listening to it and many jazz fans stick to legacy artists and acoustic albums. The form was viewed as a sellout. What do you think?

MS: Well, yeah, but less so now. Today, it’s perfectly common and normal for Wynton Marsalis to have guys in his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to dig Weather Report or myself or whatever. In truth, it's not called fusion anymore. For me it was jazz-rock. But I didn't even think about it. I was playing jazz influenced by my roots—soul and rock guitarists. That’s what Miles was doing.  

JW: What's coming? Are you going to record again?

MS: Yes, I hope so. I’ve got a bunch of new tunes. For the last bunch of records, I used Jim Beard to help me out as producer. He plays with Steely Dan and is an amazing musician and keyboard player. He's an incredible producer and an amazing player. [Photo above of Mike Stern and Bob Berg in 1991 courtesy of eBay]

JW: When is that coming?

MS: We were supposed to do a record a couple months ago. Now he's on the road with Steely Dan. When he gets back, we’re going to finish up making demos. Then I want to record. I’m still sorting out with whom.  

JW: You think of music in terms of colors on a palette don't you?

MS: Yeah, totally. I think that's a very good analogy.

JW: Do you got to the museum often?

MS: Not much. I'm just kind of a stick in the mud. My wife wants to go to the museum all the time. She wants to run around all the time. And she does. And she speaks five languages. I'm still working on English. My mom was a painter and knew some of those guys in Washington’s Color School responded to the abstract expressionists in New York. They exhibited in 1965 at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art. She was tight with guys like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. [Photo above of Mike Stern courtesy of eBay]

JW: If there's somebody reading this who doesn't quite know who you are, what five albums would be a great entry point for them?

MS: Upside Downside, my first album for Atlantic, is a good start. Jaco Pastorius is on that record and Bob Berg. And then Give and Take is another, with Jack DeJohnette and John Patitucci. And then, maybe Between the Lines, like you said. Maybe that one. And then, let me see, what else? Oh, Standards, with John Coltrane’s Moment's Notice and Chick Corea’s Windows. I miss Chick, wow. My record, Trip, was supposed to be with Chick, Dave Weckl and John Patitucci. But that never happened, Because of my accident. That's in the past now.