George Benson returns with Guitar Man, a work that features the six-stringer covering a variety of mixtures within various contexts, and featuring some of his best playing and singing since, well…since his last album, 2009’s excellent Songs and Stories. Benson has remained a consistent force on the jazz, pop, rock, and improvisational scene for almost 50 years, spanning several generations, and finding his work championed, but never imitated. The new album cements his place as a musician who stands alongside his generous muse, whether it is a free-flowing solo instrumental, or an inspired cover.
Jambands.com got an opportunity to catch up with Benson during his tour to support the dozen-track album, a work which saw the legend gathering a core band of remarkable musicians comprising a quintet that can get that high, right sound fairly quickly. And the record showcases that tight but loose quality in a unique way. Indeed, Benson does not always work in such a freewheeling fashion, but when one is on a roll, the momentum takes one forward on the wings of yesterday’s confidence. And confidence is a trait that Benson is not lacking in, as he also shows clear signs of humility, a sound grasp of his career, and a legacy that extends back as far as the horizon. Guitar Man is a testament to the power of an artist willing to tackle the familiar and the obscure in equal measures, and come out the other side with his reputation not only intact, but enriched, as well.
RR: I love the title of the new record, Guitar Man because that’s who you are.
GB: (laughs) All my life, brother.
RR: Who had that epiphany?
GB: The producer, John Burk, of the record company is a guy who is a big Benson fan, and he keeps reminding me of how much he loves my guitar, and he always be callin’ me, “You The Man, man; you The Man on the guitar,” and we finally stumbled upon Guitar Man. Wow, I love that title, too, because it’s an honor to be called Guitar Man in this world because there’s so many cats who have made that instrument stick out, and I’m one of them, so it’s really an honor.
RR: I’m floored by how consistently great you still play the guitar on this record with nuance, taste, and flair because I know how hard it can be to keep up the chops over the years, and you are at a peak level on Guitar Man .
GB: (laughs) The big thing about this album that makes it so incredible is that one of the guitars costs less than $500, and the other one is worth over $150,000. (laughs) But every time, I pull that real expensive one out of the closet—I keep it in the closet because I’m afraid something is going to happen to it—something wonderful happens. I pulled it out for me and Earl Klugh many years ago, and then, I pulled it out recently when I did the Al Jarreau tune, “Morning Song.” Both of those songs went over like fat rats. (laughter)
Every time I pull it out, something good happens, so I keep close to it. I pulled it out for this record because there were some solo things I just wanted to come across with an old school vibe. There’s a fresh approach to it when we mixed it on the Johnny Hartman ballad, “My One and Only Love” on the record—it had a guitar solo with that guitar, and the other half is the vocals.
RR: There is a nice mixture of collaboration within the quintet, duos, and full orchestration, and then, there is another side featuring you on sublime solo guitar. What led to the decision to have you play a few tracks with just you on guitar? Was that based on conversations with John Burk?
GB: Well, that’s where John got the idea. He kept hearing me play. We’d be in the studio recording, like when we did the other album, Songs and Stories, he heard me playing these little pieces in between while I was sitting there doing nothing. I’d have the guitar on my lap, and he heard me playing, and he said, “Man, one day we’ve got to put this down.” I said, “What?” He said, “Yeah, man.” He said, “Are you sure anybody wants to hear solo guitar today ?” He said, “For history’s sake.”
It turned out that when we were doing this album, every time we did one of those pieces, and somebody heard it, they’d say, “Man, that sounds really refreshing to hear naked guitar, and to hear that it’s you playing.” Nobody else expected me to play like that. (laughs) So when they heard it, it became me from another point of view, and a good point of view. People like it very much.
RR: Yes, and I think that tone happens right from the beginning with “Tenderly.”
GB: Yeah, I recorded it once before, but it was from a whole different point of view. The other one was a show-off piece. I was tryin’ to show how much chops I had, and I was gonna mess the song up, you know. (laughter) I mean really dig in and get all the juices out—it wasn’t just based on the fact that it was a tender song, a love song. This one is more closer to tender than the other one was. Although, the other one I’m very proud of and I’m proud that people love it, but they didn’t know that I could do that kind of re-harmonization and play with that kind of virtuosity. I had to do it that one time; plus, I was on an album with one of the great pianists in history, McCoy Tyner. I had to do something that said I belong on this record. But this one is more relaxed and more tender. It’s a love song, so I’m very proud of what we did with it.
RR: What follows that track is a very unique take on The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”—the band performance on that piece is an instant classic.
GB: My musical director, David Garfield wanted me to do that piece because we used to rehearse it almost every day at soundcheck. We’d just mess with it, and they said, “Oh, man, I really like that.” We played it a couple of times live, and it went over very well,
but we never go to the studio with it. What Garfield did was he went and taped one of my versions of it live, and then he went into the studio and re-produced it and put an orchestra in the back. Garfield’s the guy who did the orchestra on the synthesizers, just to see what the possibilities were. When John heard that—finally, two, three years later—and he said, “Man, what are you gonna do with that?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know. We never really got around to it. Let’s put it up and see what happens.” So we put it up, I did one or two takes, and it came out like that. They went back and did real instruments with flutes [Dan Higgins] and violins [Charles Bisharat]—things to give it a real sound, a real orchestrated sound. A South American arranger, Oscar Castro-Neves gave it that romantic sound that it has, a lush sound, and I like that because I think Latinos really have a knack for making things really sound romantic. It came out really nice, but Garfield is the cat who gets all the credit for that by staying on me by saying, “Hey, George, you’ve got to put this down, man. You can’t just leave this in this state. Finish it.” And I did, and I only did a couple of takes on it with my classical guitar, my little 440 dollar and change one, but it looks like 500 dollars.” (laughter)
RR: Your arrangement on the song is a good example of how the listener thinks they may know where you are going on guitar, but you always play something unpredictable, make it your own, and turn in a unique performance.
GB: That’s really a nice song, man. Paul McCartney is one of my very good friends in the music world, and one of the best composers of all time. He’s a great musician, too. And his singing is spectacular. I always admired his singing. We’re very good friends, and now, there’s another song of his that I’ve added to my repertoire. I’ve got a lot of his (laughs), but we remain friends, man. I hope he likes it as well as people seem to like it.
RR: Your version of Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” is also quite strong.
GB: You know what he did—we did a tribute for him about four or five years ago. They gave me that song to sing at the tribute; they assigned it to me. When I started singing it on stage, Stevie was in the audience and he stood up and he started doing his rockin’ back and forth. After it was over, he came backstage and said, “George, you’ve got to record that, man. You have to record that song.” So, I finally got around to doing it. I wanted to keep it in his bag because you can’t really improve on Stevie Wonder. His melodies are some of the finest we’ve ever heard, but I said I would put in the ensemble part in the center where the instrumental part is. I did an instrumental part, which I made up in my mind, on the spot, and it came out so nice. I hope Stevie likes what we did here, but people love it. They are calling me from all over the world—Australia, New Zealand, from Europe, and other places—telling me how much they liked that particular song.
RR: There is so much in John Coltrane’s catalogue that you could tackle, but “Naima” is yet another fascinating and poignant track on Guitar Man .
GB: I think about John Coltrane every now and then. I met him many years ago, when I
was still 19 or 20 years old, and hung out with him and Wes Montgomery and Jack McDuff and Kenny Burrell. When I met him, he was such a mysterious kind of guy. And he was considered the greatest musician of his time. He and Wes Montgomery dominated the jazz world. When I think about the first time I heard him play, how a man with that kind of power could still make things sound so soft and tender. Because, you know, he played with a lot of force, but somehow or other, the romanticism came out. That’s a very fine line to be able to make both of those things happen at once—to be powerful and dominate, and still be tender at the same time. He was one of those guys that mastered that, so when I did the song, I kept thinking about him. I said to myself, “Would John Coltrane like what I’m doing here today?” So I started throwing in some strange harmonies (laughter), you know, and my take on what I think should go here and there.
It was interesting for me to play [“Naima”], and not have any preconceived thing in mind, and not worrying about it. Just playing it for the sake of doing something and I know that it was brilliant as a song. I put it together hoping John Burk would love it, and John loved it.
RR: Another lesson for musicians of any age—George, you can play what you want on guitar, you have a beautiful voice, you can scat, you can improvise, you can play within a structure, and yet, there are times when you hold back a little bit to have that balance, to balance romanticism with something that has great force.
GB: Because half of the world is made out of romantic people called women. (laughter) They like romance, brother. But you’d be surprised how many guys know that they can’t live without ‘em, so they say, “Well, I’m going to play this for my lady and I know she’s gonna like this,” even if he might be lukewarm, she’s gonna like it. (laughs) We have to speak for each other, too. I’m tryin’ to make it easy for them to walk in the door—know what I’m sayin’? (laughter)
RR: Let’s continue with the talk about the ladies with Rod Temperton’s “The Lady in My Life,” which you also cover on the new record.
GB: I was unfamiliar with that song. I had heard it somewhere before, but I never knew the name of it, and I never realized it was Michael Jackson singing it. I should because his style is as clean as anybody else and very recognizable. But I never paid any attention because the world moves so fast. I wasn’t particularly in that part of the musical game, anyway, but I had heard it before. John said, “Take a listen to this, George; see what you think,” and I said, “Wow, that’s incredibly beautiful,” and it sounded like a Rod Temperton song when I analyzed it. I thought, “Yeah, that’s right down his alley.” I said, “I don’t know if I can do anything that means anything on this,” and John said, “George, don’t think about it, just play it just like it is. We don’t need to go left or right, just lay down an instrumental version of it,” and that’s what we did. After a while, I began to get comfortable with it, so I’m glad we did it. At first, I was saying, “I don’t know if it has any meaning or not,” but everybody that heard it gave it some nice positive comments, and we’ve got a lot of requests for airplay.
RR: You said the world moves so fast, and it certainly does, but you’ve always seemed to keep pace with it; sometimes, you outpace the world, and sometimes, you hold steady with it. I was wondering if you had a great secret about that skill or if you just stuck close to what you are really good at over time.
GB: I’m fortunate to have a lot of young people in my life—my children. (laughs) They keep me on point, man. “Hey, man, have you ever heard of Roger?” I say, “Roger who? Roy Rogers?” (laughter) “Roger, man,” and they turn me onto Roger, and we became great friends. He was a great guitar player, a great producer, a wonderful singer, and a great personality, man. He was a showman. And, so, if it wasn’t for my kids, I wouldn’t know that. He is several years younger than myself, but he was also a big fan of mine. Between my children, I got a chance to become friends with him because they used to call him all the time, and worry him to death: “Roger, we love you man. My dad said hello.” He said, “Who’s your dad?” They said, “George Benson.” And he said, “WHAT?!” (laughter)
So we became friends. But that kind of thing—my children used to bring in songs from off the street, and they introduced me to all these artists, man. And I became interested. I started hearing the positive side of some of these artists because some of ‘em have reputations in a lot of different fields. Some of them go crazy, and go off the deep end. But within that artistry, within their playing, or their presentation, there is some art in there, and that’s what I’d be listening for, and I find that a lot of them, man, are really true artists. It’s just that they’re in a different era than we are. So what we consider art from our era is different from the art we have today. You have to listen very carefully, but there is art in there.
RR: Speaking of that art of listening, when you went into the studio to record Guitar Man, you recorded it a little differently than you normally do. You had musicians that could work fast and play with passion, right?
GB: That’s right. Harvey Mason, one of the greatest drummers of our time because he’s so versatile and he’s good at everything he does—he’s got the great sound, he understands recording, the recording industry, the recording studio very well, and he doesn’t have to play loud in order to be felt, so he understands the art of studio recording, but he’s also just a great drummer all around. Joe Sample—his reputation started with the Crusaders many years ago, and he’s gone on to become one of the staples in American music, especially in jazz contemporary music. He’s the most dependable cat. If you’ve got something you want to say, just talk to Joe about it, and he’ll show you how to make it sound better. (laughs) He’s just an improvisational genius. He’s got a lot of things at his command, and when I spoke, he knew exactly what I was talking about, so when I did those head arrangements such as the one on Stevie Wonder’s tune and the song by Ronnie Foster called Fingerlero, he jumped on it with both hands and two feet, too (laughs), and made it come alive. It is really great working with him. He’s one of my favorite musicians.
RR: You’ve got a new cat, too—bassist Ben Williams.
GB: I had never heard of Ben Williams before, but they brought him to the studio, and they said, “This is the guy we want to make this record with,” and I thought, “He’s gotta be good.” That’s why I didn’t even worry about it. But when I heard him, I was really impressed because as young as he is, I mean it was like playing with Paul Chambers (laughs) and Ron Carter at the same time. He’s got great rhythm. His polyrhythm and his harmonic concept, in addition to being modern, are so right on because I never lose the feel of the tune, and every bar swings. You can’t ask for anything more. He’s only 26. Fabulous musician.
RR: Do you look back at your legacy and think of what you’ve done, or do you always look straight ahead, or is it a combination of the two?
GB: It’s a combination. I look back to see what kind of trail I’ve got hangin’ out back there. Most of it, I’m proud of; I can say that I’m glad I did that. Every now and then, I’ll ask myself the question, “Why did I go down that trail?” That’s part of being improvisational, and being a jazz musician. Basically, after I got into jazz music, everything that happened yesterday didn’t mean anything. What we’re getting ready to play was what was important. But, in life you’ve got to think about the footprints that you’ve laid down, and how it affected the world in general, and how it is going to affect your legacy to the world. I go back and I listen to something, and most things I’m very proud of, and some things I don’t even believe that I did because it was so off the cuff.
When I think of “On Broadway,” that’s one of those things that we did on one set on a Friday night on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in front of a loud, boisterous crowd. How do you get art over in that setting? But we did. We managed to get something classic going on that day, and I think it was mainly because the people were so into what we did that they forced me to go to the height of my talent, the height of what I do. I am proud of those moments. I’ve got more to be proud of than I have on the negative side.
