Rhythm is Law - Steve Reid.

Writer + Photographer: Scott Wright

Steve Reid, the legendary drummer, has plans to extend his career. He’s going to do it by bridging the generation gap. “Right now, my generation, who bought this music up and along, is near retirement age. And so in order that we keep this thing going we need the young people. That's the bottom line.”

I met Steve before a performance at the Spitz club in East London. The Spitz is generally considered a venue for avant-garde, forward-thinking artists, and it's fitting that Steve, ever the pioneer, should be playing here. Prior to our meeting the only picture I'd seen of Steve was from the cover of his 1976 album, Nova. There he sits solemnly with a tight ‘fro, goatee and big dark sunglasses looking every bit the musical revolutionary. Twenty eight years later and the hair and beard have greyed while the seriousness has been replaced by a relaxed geniality. He's a tall, rangy man, whose wiry frame demonstrates the physical benefits of banging a drum kit every night for fifty years.

Aptly, he's wearing a Soul Jazz Records t-shirt. Apt, because thanks to Soul Jazz's decision to reissue a handful of his seminal albums, Steve's career is experiencing something of an Indian Summer. “Back in the '70s, I had a tiny little independent record label called Mustavic. We did quite a few good things and the people at Soul Jazz have put them back out. They re-released Nova and Rythmatism and they're going to do two more.”

From my research I knew Steve had worked with this person and that person but it wasn’t until we spoke that I appreciated quite how extraordinary his life has been. Anybody wanting to document the changing face of black music over the last 50 years should really just write his autobiography. “I've been very lucky”, is Steve's modest explanation. Lucky, perhaps, to have been born in the Bronx on 29 January 1944. It meant he would be a young man in New York during the 1960s. “I was very fortunate in that I lived about three blocks from John Coltrane. He lived on 11660 Mexico St in Queens. That was in '61/'62: at the height of the quartet! I barely got through high school because I would be over there at seven-thirty every morning.”

Steve had always been passionate about music but it was the rhythms that really got him. As far back as he can remember he had always wanted to be a drummer. And so it was in 1960 that he began to drum professionally, at the age of 16. A year later, he made his first trip to a recording studio. “My first record was with Martha & the Vandellas. That was for Motown.” It turned out to be the Holland-Dozier-Holland penned Heatwave. Later, he would play on the classic Dancing In The Street. Quite a way to start a career, but fitting when you consider what followed.

Later that year he took a job at New York's Apollo theatre, working alongside Lester Bowie as a pit musician. The orchestra was conducted, of course, by Quincy Jones. “There's a funny story about Quincy Jones, man. When he came to New York he came as a trumpet player. And then one week he heard Lee Morgan play. And then he heard Miles the next week. Week after that he heard Kenny Durham. And then he says ‘I’ll never be able to play like these guys. I think I'm a have to learn arranging’.” Steve says the word ‘arranging’ in a ridiculous mock-serious accent. “And then you see what happened after that. Maybe I should have followed him.” We laugh. Steve has a great laugh; high and cartoonish but so convulsive he all but falls off his chair.

After the Apollo, Steve went to college, the Aldelphi University in Garden City, New York. He supported himself by playing jazz six nights a week, and graduated with a BA in 1965. In 1966 he visited Africa, eventually staying for three years. “I played with Fela Kuti, Guy Warren, Leone Starrs and Papa Jazzman over there in Nigeria.” He travelled the continent, playing for the governments of Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Egypt. It had a profound effect on him both musically and otherwise. “It was a big, big influence. Africa is the root of the drum. But it was more than the music. Cos a lot of the guys wanted to go but never got there. Like 'Trane. He was supposed to go before he died...” Steve pauses then adds wistfully, “He was a beautiful man.”

Steve returned to New York in 1969, where his services were again called upon, this time by James Brown. “He had a tough way of running his band. But I could see that because the band was always on time, people didn't have to wait for the show to start. If you were late twice you were out.” He waits a beat. “That's how I got fired.” And again that laugh. Before they parted company Steve played on several James Brown recordings, most notably the seminal Popcorn.

Any long career inevitably has its rough patches. In late 1969 Steve experienced the worst of his. “I didn't go to Vietnam and the government sentenced me to four years in jail. I didn't do it as a pacifist, I just didn't want to fight in that. I didn't want to deal with that shit.” Steve served two years at the federal penitentiary in Louisburg, Pennsylvania. Even in prison, Steve retained his knack for meeting people. “I was in there with Jimmy Hoffa. And I was also in there with another musician.” Steve takes a moment but decides to divulge, “I guess I can name him now: Jimmy Heath.” I say they must have had some prison band. “Oh yeah! But there have been some other great prison bands! Like the one they had in Lexington, Kentucky: Lee Morgan, Ray Charles, Elvin Jones...the whole crew. But they were all there because of some different politics. It was a whole 'nother vibe. Elvis Presley could use drugs but Billie Holiday couldn't, you know?”

Steve was paroled in 1971 and back in New York. He worked prodigiously, playing in productions both on- and off-Broadway and supporting a vast array of artists: Dexter Gordon, Gary Bartz, Peggy Lee, Lonnie Smith, Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard and Dionne Warwick to name but a handful. I ask how he came to work with so many great people. “Back then there was more of a jazz community, and the musicians weren't as separated as they are now. So a lot of things were just put together. I was lucky, I was a popular drummer in New York so they would use me a lot because I wasn't doing a lot of recording. Billy Higgins was making 400 records while I was out doing the good stuff.” The good stuff included working with Sun Ra's Arkestra. “That was a beautiful experience, man. Working with Sun Ra and Jack DeJohnette. Back in the sixties and seventies you had a chance to get experience, you could work with big bands and stuff. It was a great scene, man. We had Coltrane, Hendrix, everybody around on the same night. So it was a great vibe, a very strong musical vibe. All that's gone now. There's no way really for a younger musician to get experience. There are no more sessions. Most musicians, their first gig is on television or something.”

During the seventies he travelled extensively through Europe and Japan. It was then, with the arrival of the ‘the new music’, free jazz, that Steve was at his most prolific. It was around this time he owned and ran Mustavic Records. “It was all self-distributed and self-financed. It was exciting but it was something we had to do to live. I had children to raise. It was more of a practical necessity than anything else.” Jazz was enjoying mainstream success but the sound created by Steve and his contemporaries was too edgy, too avant-garde. “At that time we had Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters, Return To Forever, Weather Report. So it was very hard to push anything else through. The record companies didn't want to hear it.” But that didn't stop them. “We knew we had to make our move regardless of the system. And the system has never been pro-jazz anyway. It's always been the tail wagging the dog.” Record companies, indeed the whole music industry, get short shrift with Steve. “All this industry shit is just the middle man between the musicians and the people. And that's what's wrong right now. The middle man tried to make music of his own. You know how that's working out.”

The jazz scene of the seventies had not only energised Steve, it had politicised him too. “I was a black man doing the whole thing, you know. It was the black renaissance, black revolution. It wasn't just civil rights. It was music and everything. Finally the whole world got a chance to hear the black music.” When Steve speaks about politics it's clear that those radical days have a continuing influence over him. “It was the same then as it is now, politically. You can't trust the politics, you can’t trust the money, you can't trust religion. What you can trust is some of the good art and pure music. You can trust what comes out of your heart.”

Indeed, Steve feels that similarities between the political climate of today and that of the seventies account for the resurgence of interest in his music. “I see the cycle repeating itself. This is Vietnam again, this is the whole shit all over again. It's really just a game. People say: it's the right and the left. But it doesn't mean anything. The centre controls the thing. They use the right and the left to get their program over. Once the people realise this maybe we'll be able to get some leaders that represent the people. Instead of, you know, the business community. But this is your music! This is the people's music! This is what jazz is. It's the music of freedom. And peace. And right now with all the fear and shit being put out on the planet, that's why we see a renaissance in the music.”

If the young, energetic crowd at the Spitz are anything to go by, Steve may well be right. He starts his show with Drum Story. “It's drums and vocals. It's not a drum solo, it's a commentary on the history of the drums, the origin and what they represent now in today's music.” It's a thrilling, frenetic performance. Steve crashes through four hundred years of rhythms while barking, hollering and testifying to the power of the drum (“Rhythm is law!”). It’s raw and muscular – like the Last Poets or Gil Scott Heron – and the crowd are with him all the way. The room buzzes. It's just Steve Reid and the people. No middle men here.

“I've heard some great musicians in my time but you hear some of them 20 years later and they've lost something. They've lost that fire. Because they let their lifestyle creep into their playing. I never did that, mainly because I could never afford to. Hard times, you know.” Steve puts his longevity down to having avoided some the music industries more notorious pitfalls. “A lot of musicians get fucked-up on drugs and stuff because being a musician can be very depressing. Because you’re playing something and the business side doesn't want it. And the people might like it but you have to get it to them. It can cause all types of depression, you know. But then you've got to have a little mental illness to play this shit!”

He continued to record throughout the eighties, including a session with Miles Davis. “Yeah I'm on the record, Tutu. That record was made multi-track. We were never all in the studio at the same time. I don't favour that type of thing.” Nowadays Steve divides his time between New York and Switzerland, but he sees himself more as a citizen of the world. “New York is no longer the jazz capital of the world. There is no capital. It's all over. So that's how the music has to move now. You can't stay in one place. You gotta move with it because now it is international.”

He's optimistic about his future and about the future of jazz music in general. Hip hop, he feels, has helped the scene tremendously, “The jazz had a baby. The baby was called hip hop. And that made people look at the parents again.” For Steve, this is more than just a metaphor. “My son, Jamal Reid, is the drummer for 50 Cent. So you see how this thing works.” I ask Steve how he feels about the Detroit Experiment and Build An Ark: projects that have seen jazz masters like Marcus Belgrave and Phil Ralelin working with a new generation of techno-literate musicians, “I'm really into that shit. This is not generational music. It's a multigenerational music. That's what gives jazz its flavour.” Young producers take note: “You know what I'd like? Someone to remix Drum Story. That'd be great.”

More than that, Steve feels he has his part to play. “Today's music is driven by the rhythms. That's the key. There are going to be no more Coltranes or Hendrixes: all this shit on the top has been played already! Now it's about mixing the whole thing up with the rhythms. It's not an intellectual thing anymore. It's a feeling.” Drumming is a craft that Steve feels is being neglected, “Now everything has a very clinical, digital drum sound. You don't hear overtones or anything like that. It needs to be opened up. There's not too many guys left: Blakey, Elvin… everybody with a raw sound has gone now.” And then, remembering himself: “Almost.”

It's funny how things turn out. That night at The Spitz, Steve met Keiran Hebden, the mercurial electronics whiz behind Four Tet. Now they're working together, and premiered their new project at Paris' Cartier Foundation on 28 March. Keiran – who’s currently finishing the next Four Tet album – explained to me how they came together: “Basically, a year or so ago I had an idea. I'm really into free jazz duos, the stuff Rashied Ali did with Coltrane, and the English stuff, people like John Stephens, Evan Parker. It's always saxophone and drums and I really like those records. Basically I wanted to do something like that with me doing electronics accompanied by a jazz drummer. So I started looking into it and this guy I know in Paris suggested Steve Reid. I'm a huge fan of his work so I went to meet him at The Spitz. He said he really liked the idea and it's all just come together from there. I've never done anything quite like this before, so it's kind of an experiment for me. I'm really, really excited.“ To complete the circle Steve and Keiran brought their project to the Spitz on 2 April.

“I’m an optimistic guy, you know. I wish everybody good and everybody well. I think that’s how we should live.” Says Steve at the end of our interview. “Because this music is connected to the spiritual peace in life. Jazz is your music. It’s the people’s music. And I’m glad that y’all have stepped up and reclaimed it.” And so it goes. It may be because of luck, hard work, or just an incredible amount of talent, but one thing is clear: the Steve Reid story does not end here.

RELATED LINKS:
Steve Reid - official website



Buy Steve Reid's Nova album at Amazon UK (CD) / US (CD)





Buy Steve Reid's Rhythmatism album at Amazon UK (CD | Vinyl) / US (CD)

PUBLISHED: 10 April 2005

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