Steps Ahead …
Any but the faithful might find the name pretentious and arrogant. Vibist and nominal leader Mike Mainieri apologises for it, but it’s one that the band are stuck with, due to copyright, until a certain bar-room group somewhere in the southern States disbands. Then Steps Ahead plan to reclaim their birthright and revert to simply Steps.
‘The critics don’t do their homework; they don’t know who’s swinging and who’s not. If they knew, they’d recognise people like Michael Brecker and Eddie Gomez, or even myself – I’ve been blowing bebop for years!’
Given this plan, it’s ironic that the current name is, in fact, appropriate. This band, with its distinguished line-up and exciting, original sound, is widely considered by educated musicians and listeners to be among the most sophisticated and progressive of modern jazz units — the band of the eighties. To date, its personnel has included Michael Brecker, Steve Gadd, Peter Erskine, Eddie Gomez, Don Grolnick and Mike Mainieri — all musicians with formidable experience and reputations, and most of them regarded as virtuosi. Yet, ‘official’ recognition has not been easily gained. Both critics and record companies have been slow to realise the importance of the group.
Steps Ahead played two magnificent sets at the Nice festival in July, and then Mainieri spoke to me about his own background before describing how Steps, as they then were, came together.
‘Before Steps, I was doing my own albums and working in New York, doing a lot of writing and arranging and studio dates, and I was a farmer for a while. I started playing in 1952, opposite Paul Whiteman. I had a jazz trio when I was 14 and we used to tour with him and do television and radio shows. I joined Buddy Rich in 1956 and we had a sextet where I wrote all the tunes and arranged all the music. I toured with him until about 1964 and then I got married, had a couple of children and based myself in New York.
‘By then I had been on the road for around 12 years and I was tired of it. I was getting pretty bored playing jazz anyway, so I investigated other forms of music. Rock ‘n’ roll was happening and I started playing with people like Richie Havens and Frank Zappa. There was a club in New York called the Café-A-Go-Go, and people like Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and Havens would come in and play. I was in a group that played there called Jeremy and the Sailors, with Jeremy Steig. Warren Bernhardt and Eddie Gomez also played in that band.
‘If you wanna hear bebop, then OK, but I think all the choruses on All The Things You Are have been played already, via Miles and Trane and back to Coleman Hawkins’
‘So, I got acquainted with other types of music besides straightahead bebop and that’s when I got interested in electronics, the idea of amplifying the vibes, because in a rock ‘n’ roll format, or an electric band, you couldn’t hear the vibes. I was always struggling to be heard, so I started putting microphones in each resonator and pickups on the bars and pretty much pioneered the electrification of the instrument. What you heard tonight, the synthivibe, is the normal acoustic vibe keyboard with a transducer pickup on each bar. That amplifies the instrument, and then through a preamp I can use effects pedals. I also have a computer that interfaces through the Oberheim synth.
‘Steps was formed in 1979 in New York City. The previous year I had done a tour in Japan with the Brecker Brothers, David Sanborn and Stevie Gadd — we were billed as the New York All Stars. Some Japanese promoters put together what they thought were the best guys in New York and organised a two-week gig there and it was great fun. We came back to New York and I decided to put together a kind of straightahead bebop band, ’cause I hadn’t been doing that for a long time. I called Stevie Gadd, Eddie Gomez, Don Grolnick and Brecker and I put together the Mike Mainieri Quintet. We played the Brecker Brothers club in New York (Seventh Avenue South) and we were just playing standards and a few tunes that we had used on the All Stars tour. I’ll be damned if the place wasn’t only packed, but there was a line around the corner. I mean, people just went nuts. It just clicked – the idea of hearing these guys playing straightahead. There were some Japanese critics there, who wrote about the band, took a bunch of pictures and, I guess, went back home and raved about it. They called me and said “Listen, we’d like you to come to Japan with this group.” I said “Well, it’s not a group, it’s more like a jam session.” They said “Give it a name and come and do a couple of albums.” So I came up with the name Steps and we went to Japan and did a live double album at this club called The Pit Inn, and then a studio album. And that was it! That was basically the end of the band. We came back to New York and everybody went their own way.
‘About three or four months later I called the guys and said “Hey, let’s do a couple more gigs at Seventh Avenue South. Again, these were very successful and we were invited back to Japan to do another album and tour. Gadd was into doing the album, which was to be recorded live at Seventh Avenue, but he couldn’t make the tour and I wanted somebody to do both. Peter Erskine had just left Weather Report, so I called him and he was up for it. We went – Grolnick, Brecker. myself, Erskine and Gomez – to Japan and mid-tour we said “This is fun. Let’s do this for real.” We had no agent, no manager, no road crew or anything, so just by phone we set up a string of dates to take us back to New York via Hawaii, the Coast and the Middle West. We organised the gigs ourselves, packing our own shit and driving the stuff. It was hard work, but it’s the kind of dues you have to pay to put a band together and be dedicated to it. When we got back to New York, we rehearsed some new music and did a couple of other tours, including Europe. Grolnick decided that he couldn’t handle the road anymore, so we replaced him with Eliane Elias, who is now Mrs Randy Brecker. She was with us a short while, then she got pregnant, and left the band. I asked Warren to make it and he added another dimension to the band, with synthesisers.
‘To bring it up to date, Eddie Gomez left the band because he felt that musically he couldn’t contribute as much as we needed. That was his point of view, not ours. On the latest album, Modern Times (Elektra 960 351-1, reviewed JJ, October 1984), we began working with synthesisers a little more and the music was heading in a newer direction. I got into the computer and sequencers and stuff like that and I wanted to use that technology on the album, so Michael and I started working on some material. It’s a problem recording the acoustic bass – as soon as you put it on record, it takes away a certain dynamic range. We decided not to use electric bass, because we thought that would really turn Eddie off, so we used synthesised bass and Eddie where we could.
‘It might seem surprising that Steps should be recorded first by the Japanese, but they’re very vibrant people and they like to discover new fads or new trends or new groups. The American record companies didn’t think we were serious because there’s been dozens of albums thrown together by studio musicians, where the bands would never go out and tour to back up the album. The American companies said to us “You guys are not gonna tour, you make too much money” (so they think). We got an American deal finally, but it took us three years. It was amazing – nobody took us seriously as a band. Even that first album on Elektra (Elektra 96-0168-1, reviewed JJ, Dec. 1983), was only a rumour. It only sold 20,000 copies worldwide. It was still difficult even when that was released to get bookings and find agents.
‘Mike Brecker hardly ever gets reviewed. If he was black and playing the same thing, he’d be the new genius. A lot of those cats, like David Murray, play good, but at the moment there aren’t that many black innovators on the saxophone that I’ve heard’
‘So that was one problem, and then the critics pretty much ignore this band and these musicians. We’ve had no review or recognition in The Village Voice or The New York Times. We were in Downbeat, but the press generally take an offhanded kind of attitude, because we’re just problems. Mike Brecker is an example – he hardly ever gets reviewed. If he was black and playing the same thing, he’d be the new genius. A lot of those cats, like David Murray, play good, but at the moment there aren’t that many black innovators on the saxophone that I’ve heard. There’s millions of articles on Branford Marsalis all over the place, saying “music recommended”, but they’d never recommend this band, whether we were playing straightahead or not. Eddie Gomez has been playing straightahead for years but they never write about him, they write about Ron Carter.
‘The critics don’t do their homework; they don’t know who’s swinging and who’s not. If they knew, they’d recognise people like Michael Brecker and Eddie Gomez, or even myself – I’ve been blowing bebop for years! The only cats who are playing any new shit on the vibes that I’ve heard have been Bobby Hutcherson, Gary Burton and myself. The rest of the guys, like David Samuels and Dave Friedman, are pretty much Burton clones. Then somebody like Jay Hoggard comes around, who’s like the joke of the vibes players, and he gets amazing press. But he can’t really play, he doesn’t know chord changes, he can’t play through the changes. I know Jay – he’s come over and I’ve showed him stuff. He’s almost embarrassed by the press that he’s got. but he’s the right colour. It’s unfortunate for everybody, this prejudice. White musicians and black musicians, we all get hurt by it. It’s injurious, not only personally but to the art, for critics to separate.
‘Some guy reviewed us in Downbeat and said “Hey, it’d be great if they could just play a blues . . .” Jesus Christ, we’ve been playing blues for 20 years. Who wants to play another blues? That’s fine if it’s all you can do, but everybody in this band is striving to play something new and different, whether it pleases the audience or not.
‘If you wanna hear bebop, then OK, but I think all the choruses on All The Things You Are have been played already, via Miles and Trane and back to Coleman Hawkins – it’s been done, millions and millions of choruses. Nostalgia is great and to be able to play through the changes is very important. I think you have to have that structure and background to be a really good improviser, but we’re trying to come up with some new music. We may not succeed, but we’re desperately trying.
‘I love playing standards, it’s a very pleasurable experience, like being with an old friend, but there’s also something new – new relationships, new people, new music. If we were just a standards band, then knowing Peter and Michael and I we’d have broken up. We wouldn’t be going to Europe to do it. Touring is hard and people don’t know it, but we’re gonna be touring until November, when we start the new album. Then it’s Europe again next spring and then Japan. We’re busy, we’re doing this and we’re gonna make it work.’