46 LISTENER MARCH 14 2020
Books & Culture
G
ET
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F
or more than 45 years, over as
many albums and 20 Grammy
awards, 65-year-old Pat
Metheny established himself
as the pre-eminent guitarist of
his generation. That he’s not a
household name isn’t just down
to his chosen idiom – he’s nominally a jazz
musician – but because he hasn’t made it
easy for audiences.
In his catalogue are sublime and com-
mercially successful albums – notably as
the Pat Metheny Group with keyboard
player/co-composer Lyle Mays – but
also the mid-80s Song X with saxophon-
ist Ornette Coleman, described by UK
critic Richard Williams as “practically
unlistenable”.
There’s the demanding Zero Tolerance for
Silence solo outing of guitar noise of 1994,
acclaimed by Thurston Moore of Sonic
Youth as “the most radical recording of
this decade ... searing, soothing twisted
shards of action guitar/thought process”.
It followed Metheny’s Grammy-win-
ning, orchestrated Secret Story.
There was the hit single This is Not
America with David Bowie, from the
soundtrack to The Falcon and the Snowman,
touring with Joni Mitchell, straight-ahead
jazz albums and the ambitious As Falls
Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, which
Rolling Stone considered “bridges the gap
between contemporary jazz and the new
music of composers such as Steve Reich”.
So Metheny – at the Auckland Arts Festival
this month with his current group – isn’t
easily defined, although he doesn’t see it
that way. “People tend to sectionalise. The
more challenging thing is to recognise
that it’s all the one thing. For me, the
connection between Secret Story and Zero
Tolerance for Silence is the idea of filling the
entire canvas. From my perspective, they
coexist.”
Although he says melody is a term
resistant to definition, from the start of his
career he spoke of it frequently, but even
here things get slippery. “It’s possible to
do something that is overtly melodious,
but when I hear a bunch of trash cans
knocked down stairs, that’s melody, too.
It’s in the ear of the be-hearer. When I
think about my favourite musicians – and
they range from Shostakovich and Herbie
Hancock to [avant-garde guitarist] Derek
Bailey – there’s some glue connecting ideas
together. That’s what melody is to me.”
If Missouri-born Metheny concedes
anything, it’s that his music is frequently
influenced by and often evokes the vast-
ness of the US Midwest. His friend and
collaborator, bassist Charlie Haden, spoke
approvingly of Metheny’s music as “con-
temporary impressionistic Americana”,
which the guitarist happily accepts.
“It can’t help but be that,” he says,
laughing. “I grew up in a small town and
have a map of it, as it existed in 1964,
imprinted in my consciousness, which I
draw from constantly.”
Those formative years in a family of
trumpet players also shaped the way he,
also a trumpeter, thought about the sound
of the guitar, until he saw the Beatles
on television. Trumpet playing is about
breathing and phrasing, so he thinks and
plays in long phrases, which shaped the
sonic landscapes of Pat Metheny Group
albums in the 70s and 80s such as Ameri-
can Garage, Offramp and Travels.
Metheny worked in Kansas City clubs
while still in high school, then taught at
the prestigious Berklee College of Music
in Boston and played with the acclaimed
Gary Burton Quartet. His first recording
was on 1974 album Jaco by bassist Jaco
Pastorius, also someone redefining the lan-
guage of his instrument. Then he signed
with the innovative ECM label, where
his group was a standard bearer until the
mid-80s. But he felt constrained by ECM’s
expectations of how they should sound, so
moved on.
At 23, he had said he didn’t want to be
only thought of as “a hot young guitar
player”, and he set about proving it, estab-
lishing a reputation for doing exactly what
he wanted, whether that was solo record-
ings, recording with his group or with
legendary jazz players such as Sonny Rol-
lins and Coleman, creating pure noise or
beautiful orchestrations. He also embraced
the technology of synthesisers.
“I often joke that my first musical act
was to plug in. Knobs and wires to me are
like mouthpieces and reeds are for others.”
Unchained melodies
Master guitarist Pat Metheny, who has worked with jazz greats such as
Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins as well as Joni Mitchell and David
Bowie, brings his hard-to-define music to Auckland. by GRAHAM REID
“I just try to stay open
to what’s happening.
There’s infinity out there,
and I always try to hang
with the infinity.”
THEATRE • BOOKS • POETRY • MUSIC • FILM
Pat Metheny: a bridge between contemporary
jazz and new composers such as Steve Reich.