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Apart, it's like four different doctors looking for a cure for cancer and everybody has a different approach. But, the four doctors come together and suddenly say, 'We have an elixir! We have a cure!' We're coming together again and comparing notes, like we're in front of the World Congress of Doctors, and hopefully everybody's gonna come and check out what our notes say. -Lenny White |
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Romantic Warriors
Return To Forever is comprised of four strong personalities, each throwing in hard at all times. White has been asked to comment on his bandmates a lot since they announced the reunion earlier this year. It's always a question that makes him squirm a bit.
Lenny White by Lynn Goldsmith
"When you have friends you grew up with in the neighborhood – the ones you play ball and see movies with, the ones you chase girls with – and somebody says, 'Let's talk about your friends.' What do you say? You can't say the intimate things. I grew up somewhat musically with this band, and I grew up as a man. I learned a lot of things about life playing in this band," White says. "Chick's such a great composer that when he gave us the opportunity to write music for the band the bar was raised SO high. It really kept you on your game. Al joined the band maybe a year after I joined, and he was maybe 19 years old! I saw him grow up as a musician. Now, he's an accomplished, virtuoso guitarist known all around the world. But, he's still Al to me [laughs]. And I met Stanley when he was 18 or 19, and we've played together since that point in a lot of different situations. The one thing that is consistent about Stanley is he's such a great person and that makes him a better musician. I've watched him grow into a master musician, not just on his instrument. He just got a doctorate, but he's still Stanley from Philly, my friend. I played his first gig ever at Gino's Empty Foxhole in Philadelphia."
During the 1970s, Return To Forever played in the kind of venues normally reserved for big rock acts. Such was the power and appeal of their music that it quickly jumped from jazz's normally small club setting to a much more populist setting.
"It was great that it happened, and I'm hoping that it might again because there's a void that's happened again. And don't get me wrong about the 'void' stuff because we all had our stuff that was cool over the years. Apart, it's like four different doctors looking for a cure for cancer and everybody has a different approach. But, the four doctors come together and suddenly say, 'We have an elixir! We have a cure!' We're coming together again and comparing notes, like we're in front of the World Congress of Doctors, and hopefully everybody's gonna come and check out what our notes say," muses White. "I was always of the mindset that we made better live shows than the records that we made. The records are somewhat of an example but the live show was what you really had to see if you wanted the music translated. Hopefully that'll continue now."
"The philosophy behind what we did together was to communicate. How you do that provides answers. In finding ways to communicate, you find out things about yourself and find ways that work and don't work. We do that with music and not anything else," says White. "A lot of times today, they help it along with lights, dancers with no clothes on, guys flying from the roof and all sorts of stuff. All those things work but it's like a circus with music. We really play music. That's what we do. It's our way of communicating. If you play music with a passion that communicates, that's the purpose. Today, they often let other things help them communicate, and there's a big difference to me. There's something to be said for just getting down and playing your instrument, which is not the norm today. It will make us unique."
Here's a glimpse inside the first day of 2008 tour rehearsals at Mad Hatter Studios in Los Angeles:
Jump back to 1976, and here's the boys conjuring "Sorceress" on England's beloved Old Grey Whistle Test:
Return To Forever's massive international tour begins next week, dates available here. And on May 27 Concord Records will relese the two-disc retrospective The Anthology...
JamBase | Light As A Feather
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