Stanley Clarke is in a reflective mood.
He has to be, after all, since he’s hard at work on a big career retrospective box set that he hopes to have in stores by the summer.
“It started out as a four-record set, then it turned into three,” Clarke says during a recent phone interview. “I am trying to figure out how I can get it to two records. But it’s probably going to be three.”
With one foot already in the past, Clarke — one of the greatest jazz bassists of all time – has little trouble zooming back in time to discuss his fabled fusion group Return to Forever.
Clarke will celebrate the wildly influential outfit when he performs with the new band 4EVER during two shows at the SFJAZZ Center. The concerts will also serve as tributes to the late, great Chick Corea, who co-founded Return to Forever with Clarke and others in the early ‘70s.
The shows are also part of SFJAZZ’s 10th anniversary celebration Jan. 12-15, which includes a tribute to the late pianist McCoy Tyner (who, like Clarke, played on the SFJAZZ Center’s opening night) and performances by artists — ranging from Laurie Anderson and Bill Frisell to Mary Stallings and Chris Potter — who have served as a SFJAZZ artistic directors over the years.
Stanley Clarke N 4EVER — featuring guitarist Colin Cook, keyboardist Jahari Stampley and drummer Jeremiah Collier — performs at 7 and 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 13 at the San Francisco venue. Tickets are $30-$95; sfjazz.org.
Here’s my interview with the five-time Grammy winner, whose many accomplishments include being a 2022 recipient of a NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.
Q: Take me back to the days leading up to Return to Forever. You were in your early 20s when you first met Chick Corea, right?
A: I actually met Chick a little before that. When we started playing, I think was like 18 or 19. Whatever age I was playing with Stan Getz — the first time I played with him — you’ve got to back it up like two years.
When I first started playing with Chick he was in his 20s, late 20s, because Chick was exactly 10 years older than me — 10 years and a couple days. I am 71 now, so he would have been 81 now.
We had a little trio. It was myself, Chick and a drummer named Horace Arnold. Then we expanded the band to include (flutist) Hubert Laws.
Q: And eventually this sort of morphed into Return to Forever.
A: We weren’t calling ourselves Return to Forever (yet). Chick was the most popular guy out of the bunch, so, it was like the Chick Corea Group — which was pretty much how jazz groups were promoted at that time. You know, like the Chick Corea Trio or the Joe Blow Quartet.
Eventually, Chick got the idea, “Let’s try to put together something a little more serious.” So, that’s when it was myself, Chick, Joe Farrell, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim and we made the (1972) “Return to Forever” album and then we did (1973’s) “Light as a Feather.”
And “Light as a Feather” had all those classic songs — “500 Miles High,” “Light as a Feather,” “Spain” — and that’s when it started to kick off for us. And it just went from that point on. We just kept going.
Q: Return to Forever has had a lot of different players over the years. Yet, the classic lineup, many feel, is the one with you, Chick, drummer Lenny White and guitarist Al Di Meola, which originally ran from like 1974 to 1977. How did White and Di Meola get involved with the band?
A: Chick and Lenny go back to the (1970) “Bitches Brew” album with Miles Davis. It worked out really great. Then, finally, Bill Connors, the guitar player (in Return to Forever), left the band.
I think it was my wife at the time found a cassette tape of some guy who was 18 years old in Jersey. It was Al Di Meola.
Q: Oh, wow. Nice find!
A: I think by the time he played with us he might have been 19 — I’m not sure he was 20 — and I do remember his first gig was at Carnegie Hall. The music was very complicated, so he stood there with a music stand — at Carnegie Hall — playing this music. I thought, “Here’s a guy with some (nerve) — to play at Carnegie Hall, with a music stand, playing some music that very few people could play.” And he did it. So, I grew to like him right away.
Q: It sounds like you will be focusing largely on 1976’s “Romantic Warrior” — Return to Forever’s best-selling album — during the shows at SFJAZZ Center. Why do you think that record struck such a chord with listeners?
A: I think there are a lot of things. It was a very innovative sound. It was done at the perfect time. There were a lot of jazz-rock fans. In those days, it was (called) jazz-rock — the fusion thing actually was later.
A lot of the fans were people who grew up listening to Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer — or some of the bands that came out of England, like Renaissance. They were progressive rock bands. They were slightly better musicians than, say, the Rolling Stones or some of the kind of straight rock bands. The best time for rock ‘n’ roll and fusion — what they call it now — was at that time period. A lot of the guys were our friends. A lot of the influences going backwards and forward.
When Ken Burns did that “Jazz” (documentary), he kind of cut it off at 1965. He kept it as jazz as a museum piece, in my opinion. He never really showed it went into other forms — like Steely Dan.
Q: You certainly aren’t alone in making that charge against Burns’ miniseries.
A: Me, Lenny and Chick were actually jazz musicians. Chick played with Blue Mitchell, Art Blakey. I played with Art Blakey, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon. Lenny White played with Freddie Hubbard and many people.
But we were influenced by other things. And we influenced other people as well. So, it was an interesting mix. It was kind of like a soup or something.
Somebody could put on a Yes album and then put on “Romantic Warrior” and the sound was not that much different — matter of fact, hardly at all.
Q: I love the fusion work that the band did on albums like “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy” and “Romantic Warrior.”
A: When you listen to those songs, they have a lot of different influences. It’s not just jazz. It’s not just rock ‘n’ roll. It has a lot of classical influences there. It’s actually ensemble music. The harmonics are not just based in Charlie Parker or Duke Ellington — they are based in other composers and our own stuff. It was a really exciting time. We knew we had something different and new.
We had our own thing. In my opinion, we were just a little more compositional oriented. We wrote our music out. The charts were done. We wrote scores. It was kind of like a classical composer.
It was a very smart and very creative thing that we did and our fans really enjoyed it.
Q: What were the fans like at the Return to Forever shows in the ‘70s?
A: When they came to our shows, the fans were really great. They had to really keep their eye on us. The most attentive audiences I think I ever played for were those early Return to Forever crowds.
When there was a great guitar solo, or good bass or keyboard or drum solo, they would jump up and scream like they were at a rock concert. We were not use to that.
At the same time, we would get to the ensemble sections and they were really into it.
I have a theory about that — that a lot of those fans were musicians.
Q: That makes a lot of sense, especially given all that was going on musically with those Return to Forever songs.
A: The focus was on all the parts of music. It wasn’t just playing a couple of Monk tunes, then you write something that’s like Monk. It was really about expanding and being honest.
I remember, back in those days, there was a lot of controversy, particularly when Wynton Marsalis came on the scene. There were a lot of people trying to create static like, “Well, you guys are selling out. You’re not really being honest and true musicians.”
My argument was that we were being the most honest.
I listened to John Coltrane as much as I listened to Jimi Hendrix. I listened to Miles Davis as much as I listened to Aretha Franklin.
Chick was like that, too. Lenny White was really like that. And Al Di Meola was like a Carlos Santana fan.
Q: And all that translated to the music.
A: I actually believe, and I probably would be shot down by a lot of jazz writers, that the most honest musicians were the guys who played that (fusion) music — because if you were going to be honest then you could only play that music.
Now, I get that you could put a suit on and wear a tie and basically state that all you ever listen to is Charlie Parker. And that was a very fashionable thing to do.
But I can’t say that all those guys were being honest.
I know a lot of those guys. I know what they listen to. You don’t grow up and not hear an Aretha Franklin record. You don’t grew up, in America, and never hear (Hendrix’s) “Foxy Lady.” That stuff goes in your ear and you get affected. You can choose not to do it. But I don’t think it’s fair to choose to belittle it because you play something that you think is greater.
Q: And it all goes back to the fact that jazz is rarely static — it continues to evolve.
A: It did not end in 1965 – because it will never end. It doesn’t end — this kind of creativity. Whether it is music or art or literature, fundamental creativity just doesn’t go away. It stays there and moves into other forms.
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