It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.
It really comes down to Mick. He's the one who was constantly trying to get these five people in one room together. This is his love, his baby. It's his band, and there's nothing more he loves to do than get up on stage and play with us.
We used to play the Savoy Ballroom, and we always had a boogie tune in the set. Bands like Tommy Dorsey used to do a little boogie woogie. The big bands.
I love to play in the different keys like B or F sharp, or keys that most people don't play in, because they have a better resonance or something. I'm really not fond of F and C. I just stay away from those if I can.
That's something Mary Lou Williams used to tell me: If you're not feeling right about what you're doing and you play a minor tune it all comes back, falls into place. I don't know if that's true, but I do it.
At the risk of sounding hopelessly romantic, love is the key element. I really love to play with different musicians who come from different cultural backgrounds.
Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.
