RockOm

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Carly Simon needs no introduction. Since 1971 her music and hits such as "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", “Anticipation”, “You’re So Vain” and many others have been part of the soundtrack of millions of lives around the world. Her 1973 album No Secrets rocketed to #1 on the US album charts and held firm for six consecutive weeks, eventually going Platinum and receiving a Grammy Award nomination. One song from that album, "You're So Vain", was also nominated for Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance and as of 2008 was listed at #72 on the Billboard definitive list of the Top 100 songs from the chart's first 50 years.

In 1988 Carly won an Academy Award, Grammy and a Golden Globe for her song “Let the River Run” from the Working Girl motion picture soundtrack. Only one of two artists to ever accomplish such a feat (the other being Bruce Springsteen for "Streets of Philadelphia"), Carly hasn’t rested on her laurels, instead she has continued to write not only more great songs, but film scores and children’s books as well.

Now Carly has a new album out entitled Never Been Gone which was produced by her son Ben Taylor on his Iris Records label. Never Been Gone is a collection of Carly’s hits, re-recorded this year with minimal backing instrumentation, allowing a refined, sultry, autumn sound to emerge. This fresh take on classic favorites also includes two news songs where we hear Carly continuing to evolve and grow as an artist. RockOm recently had the extraordinary opportunity to sit at length with Carly to discuss her new album and also explore music and healing, chant, meditation, the beauty of the human voice, prayer in its various forms and much more.

Tom: Your new album is entitled Never Been Gone and is out now on Iris Records. I think I speak for millions saying through your music I never felt you had been gone. The great songs on this album are timeless, yet simplistically and beautifully refined. Which songs surprised you the most in how they spoke to you after you re-recorded them?

Carly: I’m glad that you said that because I don’t want anybody to think this is a compilation. There have been quite a few compilations of my albums but this is really a reinterpretation as if I were singing in a foreign language. I limited myself to certain instruments such as not allowing myself to use drums except for on one song. My hits were always marked by my love of the huge tom-tom fill [laughs] and since we didn’t have any of those fills I feel much more exposed on this album. On songs like “Loving You is the Right Thing to Do”, I’m not awash in production. I also feel very exposed in “Coming Around Again". Certainly in the original the emotion came across but not in the way it does on Never Been Gone. When I listen to this album it affects me more, hurts me more, elates me more; it gets back to the core of what the emotion is of the song. When I was listening and mixing "Coming Around Again" it seemed very much like a chant in a way. It sort of moves you vibrationally sometimes like when you sit and chant. I’m not sure which organ it affects - whether it the spleen, the heart, or the liver - but there’s something about it that puts you in a “hum” mood.

Tom: I agree. It’s a liberating listening experience. I imagine it must have been the same for you doing these songs in an entirely different way.

Carly: Well, yes it was and certainly my son Ben [Taylor] had a huge hand in that. He wanted to know how I originally wrote them and then he wanted me to move from there, to take my toys and do them bare and stark. You know, it’s not that I’m not very much helped by Ben and David Saw and [other musicians on the album] but there’s something so different about this album. We’re all older; we’re all approaching it in a different way. There are some new musicians who were never in on the songs before. David Foster certainly put a very new spin on “Let The River Run.” I find that song can be sung in any way. It’s a hymn, so it cannot be sung as a sultry love song, but in terms of whether it’s chorally done or [performed] by one voice or by a duo or trio; it’s very versatile. We sang this in a beautiful and simple choral way, although there are aspects of my solo voice that come through. But it’s largely a guitar-based song; it doesn’t have the thrust of the original version that I did for Working Girl.

Tom: Since we’re talking about “Let The River Run”, your Academy Award-winning song from Working Girl which became somewhat of an anthem after 9-11, what do you think it’s going to take for us to find the “New Jerusalem” and create more harmony between each other on this planet?

Carly: Oh, what a good question. I think that if we all chanted at the same time, everyday, from country to country to country, without any time zones interfering that we would all be vibrating on the same plane, which has always been a great healer. Music has always been used to heal because it makes people feel a lot better. Not all music does; there are certain songs, intervals and chords which don’t make you feel very good. Pythagoras freed the minds of his disciples from the worries of the day by playing music, which would calm their minds and would also produce deep sleep and prophetic dreams. In the morning he would banish the lingering effects of sleep by playing stimulating melodies and rhythms. Major chords will do one thing to your mind and body and minor chords will do something else. Suspension chords will do something else. Then there’s the Devil’s interval which does something. So music and its properties are just fantastic the way they can alter your state of mind.

Tom: I think that’s why we come back to our favorite music over and over again when we want to recreate that original experience.

Carly: Yeah, when you think of it the ancient Hebrews or the prophets foretold the future through chanting and the sister of Moses was said to have immense visionary powers which were conveyed through chanting. Shamans cured diseases and mental anguish by coaxing the evil spirits into leaving their victims through the powers of chanting. There have been all kinds of enlightenment through music, but healing the sick is also a major [attribute]. There are so many curative powers in music. I think that music is the strongest of all the arts in terms of being able to cross all the boundaries and being able to do so many things, especially vibrationally to the body. Looking at a piece of art is very effective and impressive, but I don’t think that it does the same thing if you’re not also the participant. There’s something about the way music brings people together in a communal way; it's such a terrific thing. And it seems to me that the most powerful thing about church or temple for me was always the music.

Tom: Do you use music in meditation to relax? It’s widely known that you have some issues with stage fright and it’s ironic that you create this beautiful music and yet you have stage fright before going on. Does music help you to calm yourself?

Carly: [Laughs] I would love to be on stage and perform music - just the vocal aspect of it - with a whole lot of other people. I would love to sing in a choir or as some of the Irish folk musicians do; they’ll sing while being held from the back by another singer, and that person will be held by another person, and that person by another so that it’s like a chain of singers who are holding each other and they feel each other vibrationally. I would love that. When I’m singing by myself I feel incomplete a little bit. I wish that I could actually feel the warmth and the vibration of another human being right next to my body while I was singing.

Tom: Well you certainly have the vibration of millions of fans that you’ve performed for over the years supporting you. I hope you feel that at times.

Carly: Oh I do, I do! I love it when the audience sings with me. What I don’t like is the very stillness of a room and then just my voice. That’s what sort of scares me. I jump at the sound of it, it’s so solo. I think there are some people who really feed on that and feed on the complete solo-ness of their voice as a lone instrument in the dark. I like the togetherness of the community singing.

Tom: Let me ask you about the creative process. I know that besides being a musician you’re also a very successful film arranger and children's author. Can you explain where all the magical melodies and lyrics, the ideas and words for your books and music come from?

Carly: Oh I have a thousand stories and as I was explaining to somebody the other day, I think I was born with a faucet in my mind. It’s always dripping a melody but there are other things that will be in the way of it. For instance, I’ll be talking to you and I won't necessarily be thinking of the melody, but as soon as I’m still again the melody will come. So anytime I want to tap into it I can and then I‘ll go from there. I go from whatever melody I’m given to a lyric that will seem to go with it or to a better melody or to a chord that I play on an instrument. There's always a starting place. It happened to be with my children’s book that the starting place was in telling my own children stories that I would be making up, because it would be easier to put them to sleep when the lights were out and I was not reading a book. So I would turn off the lights and I would make up a story. Everything that I write has to be very real to me or I have to be able to identify with it.

Tom: Who do you turn to musically for inspiration?

Carly: It’s usually classical music. To be specific I would say the music of Debussy, Poulenc and Gershwin, who's obviously not just classical but he’s the modern composer who I’m most attracted to in terms of melody. There are so many people in pop music and in jazz that it would be to hard to limit myself. If I go to my CD collection it’s almost impossible to chose one myself. It’s easier to turn on the radio and see what happens by accident. There’s always something that I’m fascinated and/or moved by.

Tom: Included in the new album is your song “Coming Around Again.” You write about coming back home to Martha’s Vineyard:"I know nothing stays the same / But if you're willing / to play the game / It's coming around again / So don't mind if I fall apart / there's more room in a broken heart." The music has changed this time around but the words still hold a simple truth that is unchanging about a space - in this case your home - which holds peace and serenity. Other than your home what sustains you when all else fails?

Carly: I think it’s prayer, in its various forms. It’s prayer, where I stay quiet and see whether I can hear the voice of God and how the voice of God comes to me. If it’s in the form of music, then there’s some kind of spiritual prayer which is more sacred than it is secular and that can be any number of things. There’s a requiem by Fauré I happen to love. My thing is I have to remember to [pray]. When I’m not being sustained or when I lose myself or when I’m angry or when I’m in the wrong space I have to remember I can click it off. I have to remember that I can pray if I choose to do so.

There are many things that are meditative for me. Painting is meditative; I love to paint. I love to garden and to look at my beautiful trees that I’m so lucky to have. My son’s music is just exquisite. I listen to that; I listen to the beauty of his voice. Just the beauty of the human voice is really something; it’s a meditation all of its own. The voice of my daughter… there are so many beautiful voices that I just love. My favorite tenor is Yussi Beurling and some of the beautiful music that he sang, just that voice in itself can pull me in a whole different direction, as can various pop songs. I listen to a lot of Motown, especially to Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. And dancing... I would be a whirling dervish if I lived in that time. In fact, I might start a little group of my own right here in my apartment. [Laughs] That would be fun!

www.carlysimon.com

Photos by Amanda Borland

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Most formulas for success in the music industry don't include exiting the lime-light at the pinnacle of one's career, but Matt Malley (bassist and co-founder of the Counting Crows) did just this in 2004. Matt retired after 14 years with Counting Crows just as the band was celebrating an Academy Award nomination for their song "Accidentally In Love," which appeared in the motion picture Shrek 2 Soundtrack.

Matt now follows another path, one focused on the home-front and family. He's now a full time father and husband as well as a record producer, session bassist, ashram keeper and student of the Mohan Veena or Indian slide guitar. Matt is a student and friend of Grammy winner Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and when chance brings them together, is either learning from his music "guru" or recording Bhatt's guitar in his home studio at the family ashram.

Matt has also just released his first solo record titled The Goddess Within. As a longtime student of Sahaja Yoga meditation Matt has infused The Goddess Within with sacred sounds, rhythms and harmonies, but don't expect this collection to be a velvety venture into serene, mystical realms. Matt rocks out when he's blissed-off and proves higher states needn't be all sanctified-sounding. One can be on the edge, pushing the boundaries both cosmically and musically at the same time.

In this exclusive interview with RockOm Matt speaks about the reasons he left Counting Crows, Kundalini energy and Sahaja yoga, learning the Indian slide guitar, his debut album and his musical intentions for the future.

Tom: You're an Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated songwriter and a co-founder as well as a 14-year member of Counting Crows. The question is, why does one leave a band as successful as the Counting Crows?

Matt: Good question. Actually it was fatherhood. But when my second boy was born in January of 2004 I just couldn't handle being a missing-in-action dad. My first one was born in 2000 and I missed the first three or four years of his life because we lived in hotel rooms out touring. That was really hard. So when the second child was born I lasted about another year and then I just had to get out and push the eject button. I haven't looked back. The money was good but money doesn't mean anything. We're still friends and the guys in the band are all like brothers, but I didn't need to be away from home anymore. It was grating on my soul and that's why I left.

Tom: How does something that you love so much turn into something you have to get away from?

Matt: When I first joined the band I wasn't married and wasn't a father yet so my life was better suited for touring and traveling like we did. I'm still a fan of ol' Adam; he's a great songwriter and that's why I stuck with him so long, but family came along and it outweighed my enthusiasm for being the bass player in Counting Crows. I didn't want to be the dad that comes home once every four or five months and visits for a couple of weeks and the kids don't know me that well. Even though the band was still fun, my life on the outside changed.

Tom: How did you get started into music?

Matt: When I was about seven years old a guy came to our grammar school and tested everyone in the class to see who had musical talent. He singled me out and told my parents that I needed to start taking piano lessons. I took classical piano when I was seven or eight and also went through trumpet and violin in the school bands through grammar school. That was my first exposure to music. Honestly, I didn't really like classical piano because it was kind of like typing. I had to memorize these pieces and I didn't feel it in my heart, I just had to memorize things with my brain. I wish I had stuck with it because classical music is an incredible art form.

Tom: When kids discover music for the first time and have the opportunity to play an instrument, especially alongside other kids, they discover something about themselves that's brand new. What did you discover about yourself through music that you may not have otherwise?

Matt: It was my first taste of collective awareness or collective consciousness. You're with a group and you all are achieving something harmonious at the same time. That was new to me as a kid... as I imagine it would be to any kid. [Laughs]

Tom: Tell us about your debut album The Goddess Within. How did that come about?

Matt: The lady on the album cover founded a type of meditation that I've been doing for over 20 years. Her name is Sri Matajii. She was born in the center of India in 1923 and is still alive today but is elderly and quiet and has stopped giving public programs. She's was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in the late 90s, though she didn't get it. [She teaches] a technique and a knowledge of the spiritual machinery that we're all born with. It's a universal truth and not from one religion; in fact it ties a lot of the prophets' teachings together. It involves an awakening of what's called the Kundalini or what in the Orient is called the Chi and it resides at the sacrum bone at the base of the spine. Sacrum is Latin for sacred, so whoever named the bone knew that it contained something. The Kundalini is regarded as the feminine aspect of divinity and so the Goddess within is kind of like my term for the Kundalini, the Goddess. The masculine aspect of God or spirit is in our heart as a spark called the Atman in India. The Kundalini is like a gas that rises up and unites with the spark, carrying it up to the fontanelle bone area at the top of the head. Fontanelle is French for fountain, so whoever named that area named it auspiciously as well. This teaching just connects a lot of the world's religions. Even in Christianity, the saints at Pentecost had tongues of fire coming out of the top of their heads but Christians have just seen that as a mystery.

In learning about the Kundalini, I've approached it like a scientist... no blind faith. Smart people don't just believe something that they're told; they have to find out for themselves. When the Kundalini is awakened you feel it as a cool breeze on the palms of your hands and out the top of your head. You could say that the central nervous system becomes integrated with the spiritual nervous system or the parasympathetic, the seven chakras. The knowledge that [Sri Matajii] teaches is really in depth. She's spoken to the Jungian Society and she's a Nobel Peace Prize nominee... you could say I'm a disciple of hers.

Tom: Did you ever get a chance to meet her in person?

Matt: Yes, a few times, but it was very formal. You don't just talk casually with her. I let her do the talking. Back in the late 90s I got to sit with her a couple of times. She knew I was in a rock band so the way she saw that was that I was helping bring vibrations into the music industry. She had asked me about Kurt Cobain who had killed himself a couple of years before. I remember responding, "I think it was drugs that made him do that." And she said, "I think he was frustrated." She asked about a lot of things related to music with me; it was very interesting.

Tom: I suppose she felt you could reach a lot of people.

Matt: Yes and by reaching them it doesn't mean preaching about her yoga. It's just that the presence of being out there puts vibrations into where you are. Wherever you put your attention, the Kundalini will follow.

Tom: So for this CD, did you go into meditation or prepare in some other way?

Matt: I didn't do any exercises or anything like that. We live in an ashram; in fact, I own an ashram with three buildings and our friends who do our meditation live here. We kind of live in vibration so I don't meditate or anything right before playing music. We meditate every morning at day break. The record was just done during the day somewhat spontaneously and when I felt good I would go work on it.

Tom: What are the intentions for this album?

Matt: Rather than clobber people over the head with my one practice, I'm hoping to continue to introduce spirituality to the Western world. I'm interested in Indian culture, the Hindu deities, the great religions of the world including Christianity, Mohammad was a great teacher... I'm just hoping to continue what a lot of artists are doing by introducing a spiritual outlook - without being religious - to the Western world.

Tom: You've expressed interest in Qawwali as well. How did you get interested in that?

Matt: I discovered Qawwali in the 90s and fell in love with it. It's a very aggressive Indian vocal style of singing. When I would do pilgrimages to India and I'd be at my Sahaja Yoga get-togethers, they'd often have Qawwali artists or bhajans or lots of Indian classical music and the Qawwali artists always stuck out to me. They would be almost frightening and wearing their matching hats; I almost consider it the heavy metal of Indian classical music. [Laughs] When I learned about the translation of the words, I was blown way. Qawwali music originated in what was Persia about 700 years ago as Sufi devotional music and has a connection to Islam but it's beyond just that now. I'm just a big fan of that art form.

Tom: You're also studying Indian slide guitar. We interviewed Debashish Bhattacharya last year when he was in Savannah, GA with Derek Trucks, Bob Brozman and Jerry Douglas. It's a difficult art to learn. How long have you been studying this?

Matt: It's really not easy at all. [Laughs] After ten years of learning it, I'm still on the tip of the iceberg. I know that when children start playing in India they'll be doing what's called the alankar for two or three years which is just exercises up and down the major scale before they actually start learning anything. They spend all that time just getting their pitch right. Slide guitar is like that; it's hard to get the pitch just right unless you practice the alankar for a long time.

Tom: Are you going to continue to move forward with spiritual music or get back in with the Crows? What does the future hold for you?

Matt: I'm not all that interested in a rock band anymore. It's a very blunt art form. Not to diss it or anything; a lot of the great rock records are also spiritual records. "Stairway to Heaven" is a Goddess song. I don't know if it's age or what but I'm getting more subtle. I'm reinventing myself and I'd like to give Indian music concerts on my slide guitar some day; I don't know when. I'd like to spend the rest of my life doing that.

www.mattmalley.com

"Artists reach areas far beyond the reach of politicians. Art, especially entertainment and music, is understood by everybody, and it lifts the spirits and the morale of those who hear it." [Nelson Mandela]

Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s most inspiring and influential men, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the first President of post-apartheid South Africa turned 91 on Saturday. Mandela's legacy was celebrated at a star-studded concert at New York City's Radio City Music Hall and was attended by some of the industry's brightest.

It has been almost two decades since Mandela was released from his 27 years of imprisonment at Robben Island and Victor Verster prison where he was known by the infamous prisoner number 46664. The entire world cheered upon watching the live coverage of Mandela's release on February 11, 1990. We delighted again three years later in 1993 when he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Then, scarcely a year later upon his election as President of South Africa we came to understand the full significance of how far the human race and spirit had evolved.

Over the 27 years Mandela was imprisoned by the separatist South African government, musicians worldwide kept Mandela and his fight for an integrated South Africa in the forefront of our social conscience through music and song. One of the first and most popular songs elevating Mandela and the outlawed African National Congress to the world stage was from the group The Specials, who in 1983 recorded the song "Nelson Mandela". In 1985 Stevie Wonder won an Academy Award for his song "I Just Called To Say I Love You" and dedicated the Oscar to Mandela. Also, in 1985 the album Sun City: Artists United Against Apartheid featured songs by a who’s who of the music world including Steven Van Zandt, Bono, Keith Richards, Peter Gabriel, Ringo Starr, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Joey Ramone, Jimmy Cliff, Daryl Hall, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Stanley Jordan, Bonnie Riatt, Bruce Springsteen and many others.

On June 11, 1988, The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute took place at Wembley Stadium, London and was broadcast to 67 countries and an audience of 600 million. Musicians taking part in the concert included Dire Straits, Simple Minds, George Michael, Whitney Houston, Aswad, Hank Wangford, Sly and Robbie, Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Dammers, Al Green, Bryan Adams, Jackson Browne, UB40, Salt-N-Pepa, Chubby Checker, Miriam Makeba, Eric Clapton, and Sting.

Music certainly played a part in helping bring about the freedom of Nelson Mandela. Mr. Mandela's story continues to serve as a reminder of the awesome power music plays in lifting human rights and social causes to a higher ground where change occurs. The soundtrack in which to remember that special moment in time will never be forgotten. It will be looked upon as an example by generations to come for furthering future causes of freedom and equality for the oppressed and subjugated.

Today we celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela as he turns 91 and offer acknowledgment and gratitude to not only Mandela for his graceful example of humanity at its most noble, but to those musicians and social activists as well who took up the cause of equality for all, becoming Mandela's voice at a time his voice was seemingly silenced.

Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures
CNN
Nelsonmandela.org
Mandela.tv