From the moment I stumbled on the left and I yelled at what's the young man put a beat to this. So you have a brief window bro. You have a brief window when you're compatriots of Willie Lewis. You have a brief window to shoot. And why are there Willie delicious plants? Make it, make it, make it why you met. Right. I never think in two things like wow, this is really good. You guys sounded great. And then I was like, why is he wearing like a yellow cori? Oh, cori. Why is he wearing like the yellow banana? Oh, you mean the body glove? Yeah, the body glove thing that was, you know, the spruce is thing, bro. This is fake. What has riding your horse for 50 years taught? Ah, ah! Vernon Reed, thank you for being on my show. I'm so pleased to see you today. Thank you, Billy Corgan, for having me. It's fantastic. I want to start with Ronald Shannon Jackson. Yes. A name I did not know until I started doing my research. Yeah, Ronald Shannon Jackson was the beginning of my professional career. It's one of these really counterintuitive stories. I was on the R&B track. I was working, it was in a band called Stepping Stone with songwriter, keyboard player, singer, named Kashi, he had written some hits for Evelyn Champagne King. We used to bump heads all the time and because I was into rock music and we had, we had back and forth about... And you're how old at this point? Got him.

19.

OK.

Yeah.

Tom bumping heads with him.

And I moved away from my parents.

I was living in Park Slope with the drummer of the band.

And we both got fired over an answering machine.

And I got a phone call from a bass player, the dear friend

of my milvin Gibbs.

And he, oh, yeah, right. I got a phone call from a bass player, the dear friend of my milvin Gibbs and he, oh, yeah, right. I got a phone call and he says, you got to hear this drummer I'm playing with. So I go to this kind of loft jazz thing and there's this large ensemble of musicians and there's this drummer who's incredibly energetic and the music was very avant-garde but very captivating because he had this blues thing that he threw in like these kind of shuffles and things. It was very captivating and I was like, man, so I then, after seeing him, I'm intrigued and then I go to the public theater, they used to have a thing, Joe Pab jazz at the public. And he was playing with James Blood Omer. Okay, I know that. Amin Ali and David Murray was, it was James Blood Omer's band. And he was on fire. He was like complete, was, you know, incredibly aggressive. And I spoke to him. And I was like a fawning kid, you know, it's like Mr. Jackson was currently, he looked at me, so he was like, I, I'm Melvin's friend, you know, that Melvin caused me and he says, he wants to hear you play guitar. And I kind of showed up trying to play my, my busted, you know, I busted up Al D'Miole, Alex or whatever, my Bill Connors, you know, whatever. And uh, we talked, what's the, what's the famous Al D'Miole thing? Oh my the famous race with the devil Yeah, he was like the second guitar. So we returned to forever the first one Bill Connys was like my absolute But I was a total sure. Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, I saw some clip of him recently Yeah, his whole thing was muting he would do this whole thing about muting And he would play really fast But, but with the strings muting. That was his thing. Like all the guitar players that had to have one thing that they did that made them stand out. Anyway, he said, be here next Tuesday. And from there, then I started playing with him. And it's first time I flew on an airplane and all that kind of stuff. How steeped in jazz or jazz history were you at that point? I'd been exposed, but I was mainly into funk R&B. I mean, the one thing that was great about my parents is that they didn't care about what music I was listening to. They only cared about whether it was loud or not. So it could be my Vishnu, it could be the band of gypsies, it could be cool in the gang. He said, Vernon, turn it down. That was it. They made no other judgment. They never turned that noise. They said they just said turn it on. So that was the thing. And I was a sponge for all, I loved music,own rock and roll everything that I just heard you know yeah, so his his group was decoding society The decoding society makes records with him. Yeah, I made a record eye on you and then we made Mandants and we barbecue dog, you know, and we made nasty we made these are decodes yourself. Because the guys and girls, but at least the guys that I know, that in that free jazz tradition, and he was connected, you know, Mingus, or an alcoholic, Albert Eiler, like I listen to all those people. So I like that stuff, but you know, the hit or miss ratio in free jazz is kind of interesting. Oh, sure, absolutely. Because it's so free that when it works, it's amazing. And when it doesn't, it's like, what am I listening? Like anything. When it works, it does. Yes, but I mean, I guess what I'm after is your Italian young musician, you know, most Italian young musicians are not stumbling into free jazz territory. Right. You know what it was? I'll tell you what, I went to Brooklyn Technical High School, it was not a music school at all. It was a technical high school, but it had after school programs. And there was a jazz workshop and there was a Dr. Jean Geese, a saxophonist. And he used to do this thing where he would play records, right? So he put on the original James Brown version of Cold Sweat, then he would put on the Mungo Santa Maria version of Cold Sweat. And he put on the Julie Andrews version of My Favorite Things. Now I remember my favorite things because I went on a Catholic school trip to Radio City to see the sound of music. Okay. So I was very familiar with the tunes. You knew the melody. And then he put on the John Coltrane version of my favorite things. It's the first time I ever heard John Coltrane, and it was like a bolt from the blue. I have the same experience with Coltrane. It's funny. We connected for the Coltrane the exact same way. Because I was like, I know this melody and then he took me on this. And the thing and you knew that he was, you knew that he loved the tune. You knew that he was playing. It wasn't ironic. Right. He wasn't, it wasn't a vehicle to blow over. Like you could hear When the dog barks, when the beastings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad. He put all of that in the horn and I felt that. And you probably felt that at the same time. What a, sorry, it's what a beautiful musician. Oh, yeah. What a beautiful, I mean, wow. Yeah. Still, I'm still kind of an awe of him. Well, he kind of gave his life for us, I mean, on a level. He was one of his people that just really was very, it was not about his ego. He was, he threw himself. Yeah, there's that documentary where when he really turns to some more avant-garde jazz and the audience completely abandons him. Yeah. All right. But he had to go because he's a nerd. You ever hear any interviews with John Coltrane? There's a BBC interview with John Coltrane. I'm going to look this up. That's amazing. It's audio, right? So when you see pictures of John Coltrane, you see it's very serious. You know, and you project the whole thing about, and he was talking to this BBC reporter about the reads, who's just talking about, you know, and he was just going, well, you know, I had this one read and I was kind of, his voice was kind of like, I had this one read and I don't know I would didn't like it so I tried this other read and I was kind of his voice was kind of like I had this one read and I don't know

I would didn't like it so I tried this other read and the report is like

Yes, Mr. Coltrane. I'm sure that your reads are fascinating. He is completely frustrated, but he was like

Yeah, okay, so he was it was a whole his

You know, there's a picture of town Coltrane when he was in the Navy

When he's like maybe 18 years old and it's incredible. All his humanity is there and you could tell he's a scared kid. And when you see the picture, you're going to go, you don't know, but you are going to turn the world of music upside down. Yeah, what an incredible, beautiful cat, man. Wow. So I remember this period of music, if you let me set this up, it won't make any sense what I'm saying until I get to the end, but I remember this period of music because I was interested in guitar and I was interested in music. And you know, because New York is always a media epicenter, what goes on in New York tends to get preference for what goes on in Chicago, which is where I'm from. So I kept hearing about the New York art scene and, you know, Zorn and what's his name, Blaswell. Oh yeah. You know, and I'd even occasionally get those records. Right. And I didn't really know what the guy was hearing. It's not that it was bad. I just didn't understand it. Right. But you were actually in that world at that time. So can you kind of show, tell me at least what it felt like to you as a musician being in it. Well, it was very, it was very confrontational. In the sense of, I mean, I came up loving pop music. I love popular music forms. Yeah. Funk, R&B, rock and roll. Yeah. That is never... That's not to like. That's never, right? That's never, but this other thing, these other modalities came in. And for some, and maybe the gateway was my favorite things. And I could see how they were related. And then I slowly was introduced to Miles Davis and all of that. And then Hendrix, what Hendrix, they would feedback when he, the way he was able to negotiate noise and melody and kind of move seamless here. So there's a bridge, so here in Coltrane screen and here in Hendrix's guitar screen, there was something that was relatable even though they weren't the same things. And then here in Eridolfi was completely blew. Yeah. So there was a place where it all worked.

And then, you know, talking about Chicago, I mean, thinking about Pecos, you played with Miles, you know, when Miles was in the super psychedelic period. Or when he did electric, he's a guitarist on electric mud, you know. Yeah. When Miles was playing to the wild. Exactly. you know, I think you have the art on some of Chicago, which is the most one of the most important.

But I'm just saying as it is. When Miles was playing to the Y. Exactly. And then, you know, I think of the art on some of Chicago,

which is one of the most important. But I'm just saying, as a kid, I'm not trying to interrupt you, but I'm saying it's a kid. Chicago was about the blues, which at that point in the 80s was very tourist blues. Some of those guys were still around, but it was the tourist blues. Right. We had the blues festival. was the tourist blues festival.

Right.

So even my exposure to blues was kind of funky.

Yeah. Yeah. And then where I was growing up, I didn't have any exposure to any whatever Alvin Garb was going on in Chicago. I wasn't here about, but I kept hearing about New York because New York is always New York. It's always New York first and everybody else second, second city, right? So I'm just saying, And, you say it was confrontationally. Yeah, confront well, I mean confront confrontation in the terms in the sense of aesthetics were confronting one of the commercial you love that stuff was yeah, it was like I loved You know, I my process was additive We got subtractive. I didn't suddenly dig James Brown.

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