Santana really took the helm there [at the studio]. Fortunately the members of his band were all available and it was really me with Santana and his band plus Angelique Kidjo. He gave me a 1000%, he gave me everything from him. He took over… he helped the arrangement and helped the whole spirit of the session came from the generosity of Carlos’ spirit. Everybody was comfortable, everybody was happy, his playing was unbelievable. And he really helped direct the whole thing when we actually got to the studio. That spirit of real collaboration and giving was in that session too which I could relate to sessions I did with Miles that we all contributed something to putting the thing together.

What’s your response to jazz enthusiasts who criticize projects like this or Future 2 Future?
I didn’t make the record for critics. So they have their opinion. If I put the record out it’s because I think it’s worth putting out, and I don’t need their acknowledgment; I don’t need their opinion to tell me whether the record was worth putting out. I decide that myself. I wouldn’t put it out if I didn’t think it was worth putting out. My feeling is that I do things because I’m motivated to do them and because I feel strongly about doing what I do, and if they are not as open as I am, more close-minded or conservative in their musical taste, they can like it or not like, it’s up to them. It’s their right to like it or not like it, but I’m not going to alter my course because of a single person’s opinion, unless that opinion is one that is something I overlooked or something I just was not aware of, something of value I can use, something I can pay attention to, something I can heed to help shape the direction I go in.

Is part of your thought that by doing such projects and albums that you’ll reach a wider audience than a traditional jazz one and in turn get people looking back to the original stuff?
If that happens it’s an extra bonus. I wasn’t thinking so much about me in that same regard, but just jazz in general…that happened every time in the past when I’ve had something that reached the general public that had a degree of popularity like “Rocket” in the ‘70s, and Headhunters. So many of those people I’ve seen later and they’ve come up to me and said, “You know listening to Headhunters was my entry into jazz, it opened me up to jazz, I began to look for other things that you’ve done in the past, and then I looked for other people you’ve worked with, and it opened that avenue for me, and now I’m an avid jazz fan.” I mean that’s an added bonus. But I didn’t do it for the sole purpose of adding more fans to the jazz world, but I mean, there are multiple purposes. One of the main ones is that artists are pigeonholed into whatever is the first thing that made them popular, and they’re discouraged from veering away from that; they’re only encouraged to stay put in that pigeonhole and repeat whatever that direction is. And, I’ve been fortunate that you can’t really pigeonhole me anymore (laughs).
My feeling is that broadcasts turn out to be narrowcasts, and for me it’s a statement toward the media that the art has more to offer than what the public is aware of. And perhaps if they bring what they bring to the table and I bring what I bring to the table, they could come out with something that goes beyond pigeonhole, that goes into perhaps newer territory or expanding territory, or beyond the comfort zone. And, at the same time, I didn’t want to do anything to ignore the fanbase that these artists already have, so I was hoping to kind of walk that thin line so that they might be interested in what this record is about and that same perhaps open up interests in this record to a much broader demographic.
The other thing too is that I’m working with Starbucks on this record, they’re distributing this record as well as Warner Bros., so they’re going to be sold at Starbucks internationally. And Starbucks really services every demographic and they hand pick certain records that they promote, so I was also hoping that when you go to a record shop, and if your 18 to 25, 26, 27, something like that, within that age bracket, you feel very comfortable at a record store. But some people who don’t fit into that age bracket, they don’t feel so comfortable in a record store, it’s hard to find what they’re looking for, they’re tastes may be a little bit different than some of the younger artists. So, I was hoping that this record could be something that might be interesting to a broad demographic, because it does cover a lot of territory, also various generations of artists on this record too.
I wasn’t trying to do a jazz record per say, although the spirit of jazz is there. The notes of jazz may not necessarily be there—yes, of course I did improvisation on the record—but it’s not primarily about the jazz notes per say, but the underlying spirit I believe has the opus of the jazz spirit, and the straight up collaboration of teamwork is there. And the spirit of improvisation is there in that we, in many cases, put the sound of what’s on those tracks together on the spot. In many cases we wrote the pieces on the spot. But if you just say that it’s a pop record, well, yes in a way it is, but it’s primarily a music record, and you can’t just pigeonhole it into one category.

I was at Bonnaroo this year and heard your set with Widespread Panic. No foolin’ around there, everyone came out firing at full speed it seemed. I would imagine this was something a little new for you in certain ways?
Oh yeah, yeah. It was fun. I talked to the guys before, it was a photo shoot they were having a few hours before, and I got to meet them, and really nice guys, and when the opportunity came to performing with them they made me feel so comfortable, and I just listened to the sound of what they were doing and I just let the feeling take me. I tried to give my own personality, and reach beyond the comfort zone, and add some new elements to the music. The band members—I could see the smiles on their faces, they seemed very happy, and their audience seemed happy too.

What were some of your reflections of Bonnaroo being the first Artist in Residence?
Well, before I got there, I knew that there could be 30, 40, 80, 90 thousand could be listening to the performances. And that it’s primarily a rock-‘n-roll audience, so to speak, and so I was not nervous, but concerned about what the audience reaction might be: whether anybody knew who I was, or just how things would work out. But, at the same time I was excited about the ability to be able to sit in with different groups that were there. When the producers of the festival made me their first Artist in Residence, that was also really a surprise to me because I’m not known for being a rock-n’-roll player, I’m known for being a jazz player. Once I got there and saw how casual the atmosphere was, how giving the audience was—I mean they’re there to have a good time, and they’re not waiting to have a good time, they’re going to make a good time. So they’re already supportive before you play a note, and once I felt that atmosphere all of my trepidation went away, it just disappeared, and I felt really comfortable there. It really motivated me to play.

I can imagine playing to a crowd that doesn’t know your legacy or your catalog. Fresh ears.
Yeah, I knew the majority knew my name but they weren’t familiar with my work. But I was surprised by how many people did respond to hearing certain pieces, maybe they heard it from their parents (laughs), music around the house when they were babies. But anyway, it worked out really well, and the response was amazing.

Headhunters ‘05, is that a revolving lineup or will it remain in tact?
Probably revolve because most of the people in that band are bandleaders themselves. We to played four concerts. I put it together for the Bonnaroo festival and we played a couple concerts before that, like warmup concerts. And we played one after that, but now we’re going to go play the Tokyo Jazz Festival in August, so we’re looking forward to that. I don’t really know how much I’m going to go after that; John Mayer is not going to be able to go to Japan with us. There was some talk about Johnny Lang joining us there, I’m not sure yet what the final outcome is going to be. But most everybody else is going to do the Tokyo jazz festival. Kenny Garret the saxophone player won’t be doing it, and John Mayer won’t be doing it. But it looks like Wah Wah Watson will be playing guitar in the Tokyo jazz Festival.

Your work has been sampled in songs that went on to become major hits, most notably US3’s “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” and Deee-Lite’s smash “Groove is in the Heart.” What’s your response?
If I find out that a sample on record that’s out of my work and they haven’t made the proper arrangements, or gotten the proper releases, and we haven’t gotten the proper payments, then they get sued. So “Groove is in the Heart,” that was done properly so I got paid for that. I’m happy with people sampling my stuff because then I get paid.
It did happen that I had to threaten suits in a couple of places and we wound up settling. But people didn’t do that, and I came after them after that. Sometimes they can get away with that if no one recognized the sample, but in most cases it appears to me that people have really been honest and tell me about when they were going to bring out something that had one of my samples. In that particular case about “Groove is in the Heart,” I was so happy that they took the song that had disappeared, that barely had any notice on the scene at all. It was on the soundtrack from the film Blowup that I did. It wasn’t actually used for the film but it was written for the film and it was on the soundtrack album. And I guess Bootsy Collins found that because he was playing bass on “ Groove is in the Heart” and he submitted that to them. I liked the fact that they resurrected something that was dead and put it in a context that was viable for the audience at that time, they breathed new life into it, which I was very happy about. The same thing happened when US 3 did a song of mine that I wrote called “Cantaloupe Island” and they did “Cantaloop.” I was happy that they took the song and kind of beefed it up, added a rap to it, and kind of gave it what was then a today’s sound.

In his autobiography, released in 1989, Miles Davis commented that, “Herbie was the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.” That’s a massive statement.
Well, music is not a sport, especially jazz, definitely not a sport, so there’s no competition involved. Other pianists are friends of mine, they’re not adversaries. It’s not like what happens on the hip-hop scene with people shooting each other about music. I mean it’s not funny, but it’s just ridiculous. We help each other; yes of course there are other pianists I listen to and that I admire and that I learn from; people like Chic Corea and Keith Jarrett, and McCoy Tyner to name a few. There are others that came before me, but I consider those guys like my generation. Those are some of the key people that influenced me and whose work I really admire, still do. And there are great people that came after that too, Gonzalo Rubacalba knocked me out the first time I heard him play, a young pianist from Cuba. You know now, he’s not so young anymore, but he’s an amazing pianist. Jackie Terrasson is a relatively new pianist on the jazz scene and he’s extremely talented, I mean there are tons of them out there.

I could be wrong about this, but for the Miles record Live-Evil, it was you, Keith Jarrett and Chic Corea, all on keys for at least three tunes I think, all very short. I guess I’m curious about how the sessions were, how did you stay off each other’s toes while recording or playing live.
Miles wanted that kind of mixture of elements. He wanted some things that were contrasting, and so even though there were three keyboard players there they weren’t all trying to occupy the same place at the same time doing the same thing. We might occupy the same similar spaces, but what the combination would create was a sound in itself. For those records it covered a lot of territory from very tonal stuff to very atonal and mysterious and avant-garde and far out elements. Just so much of it was purely spontaneous and non-chordal; we didn’t have a clear, rich foundation to work off of. It might just be a bass line, a bass line with a drum pattern that had a mood, and then we would throw in different clusters of different kind of elements like in a painting and create this universal sound. I thought it made for an interesting juxtaposition of elements and based off of the individuality of the musicians that participated in this project.

Did it ever steer off course, crashing and burning instead of reaching new heights?
No, well, I’ll tell you the truth. When we were recording those things I never knew whether they were working or not, I couldn’t tell. I’ll give you a little story: I remembered the first time John McLaughlin came to record with Miles, I guess we were doing In a Silent Way, and he came into the studio, and we recorded some stuff, and then when we finished we were packing up to leave, we actually got outside the studio door, we were in the hallway, and John walked up to me and says, “Herbie, I got a question to ask. This is the first time I’ve ever recorded with Miles, and I couldn’t tell—was this stuff any good?” And I said, “John, welcome to a Miles Davis recording session.” You have no idea, but somehow when you put it together it sounded really cool. We can’t tell right there. But that’s what they would do, this was in the analogue days, now it’s a slam dunk to apply some of things they used to do with digital recordings, but they would edit what we were recording in the studio by cutting the tape, repeating certain things, pulling certain things out, doing things with the mix, and by the time the recording would come out, it would come out really cool. But we couldn’t tell what were recording, what it was going to be, it was just elements to us. There would always be some essence there, some spirit of something that you could hold on to.

Those processes to compile and layer those things were pretty complicated. Was it your sense that Miles really had a specific vision in his head that when the album was completed that’s what he really wanted, or was he just flying by the seat of his pants too?
All of the above. Yes, he was flying by the seat of his pants, but at the same time he had a vision each time for what he wanted. One of the main things he wanted was the individual input from the musicians, just for them to be themselves and be who they are. And he believed in, as I do, the purity of spontaneity, and the synergy that can happen by opening yourself up to whatever the possibilities might be. Again, the word possibilities, which is the name of my record, stems from much of what I got out of those kinds of sessions with Miles.
Miles was also not judgmental about those things as long as somebody was purposefully trying to work on something. If they had and idea and they were just doing it, he was happy about that. If somebody was just schlepping off, they wouldn’t be at the session very long. When you walk in there, I mean you’re playing with Miles, you’d be serious about it. You’d want to get a sense of the spirit of what was going on and contribute to that spirit, that’s all that Miles wanted. He wasn’t about telling everybody what to play, he never did that, he’d let you figure it out, and he could direct things without a lot of words; he could direct things with just his playing. We would just set up these different environments almost like a palette, and Miles kind of paint these pictures on top of that pallet. Those were amazing, amazing days.
But part of the creative process was the post-production process. So, it wasn’t just what we did in the studio, it was what they did with the editing after we left the studio. We would put developments together, and then they would shape them in the post-production process which became as a result a very important of the creative process of putting those records together.

Which then went on to influence electronic music and much of what you did after that.
Much of what we see, that’s kind of a norm for recording today, was really started doing those sessions for Miles. The thing that’s different—I mean those recording sessions when we did those things, everybody was together in the studio, we did it live—a lot of records that are done today are all in a sense post-production in that they stuff with one element and they add another and they add another, and things are done with overdubs.

You seem to be an extremely calm, cool collected guy… a smooth operator. Was there any particular moment in your career where you nervous or a little shaky, whether it be onstage or in the studio?
The more experience I got in performing, whether it was live or in a recording studio, the less nervous I got. But in certain situations I describe the feeling as being concerned rather than being nervous. I’m more concerned than others. Whenever I play, the energy that comes up beforehand, the energy of concern like when we played Bonnaroo because I didn’t know that audience, I didn’t know what to expect, it wasn’t the “typical” jazz audience, and so I had no pre-conception about what the response might be. But, I wasn’t nervous. I knew the band was hot and I was eager to go on the stage with those guys and present our music to the audience. But, there was concern on what the reaction might be, and I’m glad it actually worked out very well, and the audience seemed to really enjoy what were doing.
When I was a lot younger I felt a lot more intimidated. For example, when I first joined Miles’ band I felt really intimated working with Miles, who wouldn’t? The other guys in the band did too I’m sure. But as time passed that feeling of intimidation relaxed, and it turned into an eagerness to contribute to whatever was going to happen that night on the stage or in the studio.

I assume adrenaline comes along with the concerned feeling?
Oh yeah, certainly. You know it’s funny, when we do a sound check before a concert, and generally what happens is that once we start playing a tune there’s a certain amount of energy that happens, but there’s no audience there. When the audience is there, there’s a difference in the energy level that comes off the stage because the audience is there, and they’re really a big influence on the whole process of performing. I don’t get nervous any more. I’ve had a lot of support in helping me build a sense of self-confidence when I perform, but I can really concentrate on the music. In concentrating it doesn’t mean that I want to think a lot, but I want to be so trusting on one hand that I feel comfortable in not thinking, and letting the spontaneity bring about this synergy that can happen when you really step out of the way of a process and let it become what it can become, and that’s really the best thing that can happen.

You’ve won ten Grammys, an Academy Award and countless other honors, played with just about everyone who’s anyone in jazz and popular music and are still living and healthy. Has anything eluded you though?
One that eluded me: in the ‘60s when rock n’ roll was really hot and was really the beginning of the core of rock n’ roll, I didn’t pay much attention to it for several years. I had kind of tunnel vision about jazz and classical music, and just ignored rock and rhythm and blues for a while, until I noticed that Miles was not like that, Miles was very open, he was into everything. I saw album covers of Jimi Hendrix, and Cream, and Manitas de Plata who was a flamenco player, and various records that Miles was listening to, and I say “oh, miles is listening to everything.” And I thought it was cool to kind of be close-minded, and then I noticed that Miles was open-minded, and Miles who I believed was the epitome of coolness. I said, “Miles is open, it must be cool to be open.” I completely changed my perspective as a result of that, and I began to listen more to rhythm and blues which I resonated with more than rock-n’-roll, and I opened myself up more to that. I didn’t get to enjoy Jimi Hendrix when he was really around, it happened later on. I didn’t get to enjoy Joni Mitchell when she was emerging as an artist, it happened later on. The same thing with the Stones, and a lot of artist of the rock n’ roll era. I really missed the ‘60s from the rock n’ roll standpoint, and so I got into it a little later, things happen as they happen, you go for it. I suppose if I were to remake my own history I would have chosen to be more open-minded a little earlier than what actually happened, and would have gotten to appreciate those artists at an earlier part of my life since I was alive then.
As far as what directions I might take in the future; there will always be things for me to do. There will always be challenges and new ways to create music, to create a project. Much of it just depends on my own ability to recognize the possibilities that are there. To name a few things, over the past couple of years I’ve been doing some concerts with symphony orchestras, and there’s a lot to explore there. I want to expand the repertoire that we have. I’ve been doing a lot of pieces based off of—I did a record called Gershwin’s World—and there were some orchestrations already there and we took some pieces from the record that were not orchestrated on the record, and we orchestrated them. The record producer Rob Eaton is the guy who did the orchestrations for this new stuff too. We want to add more things to the repertoire, and I want to do more things that use an eclectic combination of elements, that are both international culturally, and cover a wider area of choices as far as the history of music is concerned. In other words combining things that perhaps come from some older blues styles or elements with some ambient elements that you might find in electronica music, but of course I’ll do it my own way. And vocal sounds, and combine those electronic elements with the acoustic elements of the acoustic piano and the symphony orchestra to make music that covers a really wide area. That to me is not only interesting but it’s the wave of the future. We live in a world today where, in a sense, the world is getting smaller, but it’s sad to say that it’s getting more frightening too, with the terrorists threats and war, all those things I thought we were moving away from. The world needs to get together and appreciate what we all bring to the table, and I’m just hoping music can exemplify the kind of world that we want to build for the future of ourselves, and our children.