So I'm focused on minutiae here, but if he loves listening to Paul McCartney in 1971, he’s talking about McCartney’s 1st self titled album or Wild Life – damn, that is pretty thin beer. 😬
McCartney’s RAM came out in May ’71, but I think the interview with Joachim is from Melody Maker Jan 1971 ? But even Ram is… err…… not mind-blowing, were it even out by then.
Not trying to say ‘he has bad taste’ or anything – because I myself love plenty of odd recordings, including very commercial ones, that would cause people to scratch their heads and perhaps throw up their hands.
But it’s quite interesting that in 1971, he’d abandoned listening to free jazz records, and was grooving only to the soupy churn of the Miles/Grossman/Corea/Jarrett/DeJohnette band – and Paul McCartney’s fairly vapid early 70’s offerings.
On the other hand, maybe he just meant The Beatles.
Yes, the Val Wilmer profile was published in the January 16, 1971 issue of Melody Maker (so she was referring to the December 1970 Baden-Baden meeting, it's now corrected, thanks). No idea about the McCartney reference, but during the research for this post I came across a few additional Beatles mentions:
* ca. late 1968, Kühn said that Pharoah Sanders was the most important jazz musician currently, but that he also loved the Beatles, Stones, Fifth Dimensions and Hendrix and listened to them as much as to Coltrane and Sanders.
* in a 1974 Jazz Forum interview, Kühn already spoke of free music as a "stage" and said "I like the Beatles and Stevie Wonder--he's fantastic too. This music is just as good as Mozart or Miles Davis or Baden Powell, for example."
* in the 1990 Jazz Magazine interview, Kühn also says that he got into Hendrix before he got into the Beatles and that they started to be really interesting with Sgt. Pepper's.
Interesting.
So I'm focused on minutiae here, but if he loves listening to Paul McCartney in 1971, he’s talking about McCartney’s 1st self titled album or Wild Life – damn, that is pretty thin beer. 😬
McCartney’s RAM came out in May ’71, but I think the interview with Joachim is from Melody Maker Jan 1971 ? But even Ram is… err…… not mind-blowing, were it even out by then.
Not trying to say ‘he has bad taste’ or anything – because I myself love plenty of odd recordings, including very commercial ones, that would cause people to scratch their heads and perhaps throw up their hands.
But it’s quite interesting that in 1971, he’d abandoned listening to free jazz records, and was grooving only to the soupy churn of the Miles/Grossman/Corea/Jarrett/DeJohnette band – and Paul McCartney’s fairly vapid early 70’s offerings.
On the other hand, maybe he just meant The Beatles.
Yes, the Val Wilmer profile was published in the January 16, 1971 issue of Melody Maker (so she was referring to the December 1970 Baden-Baden meeting, it's now corrected, thanks). No idea about the McCartney reference, but during the research for this post I came across a few additional Beatles mentions:
* ca. late 1968, Kühn said that Pharoah Sanders was the most important jazz musician currently, but that he also loved the Beatles, Stones, Fifth Dimensions and Hendrix and listened to them as much as to Coltrane and Sanders.
* in a 1974 Jazz Forum interview, Kühn already spoke of free music as a "stage" and said "I like the Beatles and Stevie Wonder--he's fantastic too. This music is just as good as Mozart or Miles Davis or Baden Powell, for example."
* in the 1990 Jazz Magazine interview, Kühn also says that he got into Hendrix before he got into the Beatles and that they started to be really interesting with Sgt. Pepper's.
'Catholic taste', as they say