Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity

There are two great events in one's life.

One is being born

and the other is knowing why.

I think that it's important that greatness

be recognized in this culture.

Visionaries open doorways

and those doorways are open not just for themselves.

The doorways are open for everyone.

You can just have a conversation

with him and you know that you're in the presence

of no gravity, no time, no fear.

You're into a place of grace and wonderment.

Wayne's playing, it really has no definition.

And so it's very hard to categorize what Wayne does.

It's his genius, his own genius

that makes what he does so spectacular.

When I listen to Wayne Shorter,

my emotions are taken to places that I didn't know existed.

Or they feed places that I didn't know were hungry.

He may be the single most influential person

in my musical listening life.

There was a railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad

at the end of one block.

Everyone was told not to go on the railroad track.

When we first moved there, you gonna hear these trains every night.

Then you found out you couldn't go to sleep without hearing the...

The mysterious traveler.

The radio shows I listened to had mostly to do with mystery.

This is the mysterious traveler

inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm

of the strange and the terrifying.

The one I liked a lot was called "Lights Out".

This person say lights out, everybody.

Growing up in Newark really toughened Wayne up, the Ironbound District

got its name because it was bounded by the Pennsylvania railroad on three sides.

The house we lived in, 106 South Street.

The foundation had a little bit of lean too, little bit. And my mother said,

don't you ever be ashamed to bring anybody to your home.

Don't be ashamed of that, inside clean, I mean immaculate.

He grew up with a very strong message

that he could be and do whatever he wanted.

My mother, she'd go downtown and come home with surprises

and a bunch of wrapped packages like blocks of clay.

Then we start doing things with it on the kitchen table.

The kitchen table was round.

And that roundness, it represented the planet to us.

Within this stark ironbound land of steel and bricks,

Wayne's mother almost cultivated he and Alan's creativity,

almost like hot house flowers.

Next to our house was a vacant lot.

We couldn't wait till school without to go in that lot.

It became whatever you wanted it to be. And that lot became Sahara Desert.

It became Mars.

We did a lot of play acting, inventing crises that we would win over.

Let's tackle something big.

My father would turn on the radio every evening.

Hello everybody, this is Martin Block.

His name was Martin Block.

Said, I'm gonna play something different tonight

and then let me know what you think.

It's a new music called Bebop.

I'm not thinking about being music, I'm hearing this stuff.

What is that, what's going on?

Sort of brought back stuff I heard in movies too.

He would go see films with his brother Alan,

and that night when they were supposed to be asleep,

they would sit up and play a game called Say About.

And they would try to remember as much of the film

as they could, the dialogue, the cinematography,

and especially the music.

They would sing back to each other

as much of the score as they could remember.

And Wayne said that this would go on for hours.

Film scenes came to be linked very closely to emotions for him.

Listen to them, children of the night,

what music they make.

When I was eight years old, I started to draw comic figures

outta comic books using tracing paper.

And to me, the comic book is like adversity. It's overcoming something.

Talks about becoming something.

What would you do if you were in a crisis?

What are they gonna do?

That's the ride.

Oh my God, what is this, dated 1949?

1949, I saw a movie called "Rocket Ship XM".

Three, two, one, zero.

- Did you draw these? - Yeah.

This is a comic book, with Rocket Ships.

Yes.

How old were you?

I was 15.

This is out of control.

Yes and that, and 15...

Wayne, no, Wayne.

You start looking at.

Wayne.

Anatomy...

Wayne.

Of Girls.

'Cause you have to draw them.

Yeah, there's some curvy linear shapes in here I'm noticing.

I don't even know what to say. I just have to say your name. Wayne.

And my father brought over a friend and he said,

let me show you something.

He took away the tracing paper.

He took my hand and guided my hand in a certain way.

He said, okay, try that by yourself.

And I tried to draw like Superman or something like that

without the tracing paper, and it came easy.

The teacher I had said it's a school contest.

And I did a painting called "The Football Game"

in watercolor, got first prize.

That's when they decided between my mother

and the school teachers that I should apply

for Arts High School after grammar school.

There wasn't another high school in the Newark area

that could compare with Arts High. That was a special school for the arts.

In my second year, I started cutting classes.

I started going to the movies.

I would go to the movie, then go to a class and I'd forge notes,

like some fictitious doctor, Wayne cannot make it,

he could not make it to class today because,

I walked past the school and then there's the Adams Theater.

And I'd go in there and they had like two motion pictures

"The Last Day's of Pompeii" and "She".

And then there's a band that rolls up from the floor,

one time it was Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Canton,

two big bands on one stage together.

And all the trumpets were all together and they were all playing,

they were playing something called Peanut Vendor.

And then they caught me.

They call me on the Inter intercom,

Wayne Shorter report to the

Vice Principal's Office immediately, if not sooner.

I went down there and I'm standing there.

I'm immaculately dressed every day.

And they never thought that someone like, I'm quiet, nice,

you know, they said, but wait a minute,

before we found out what to do, where did you go?

I said, to the movie, the theater.

And they said, you like the stage shows and all that?

Yeah.

So the vice principal,

she got on the phone and called Achilles D'amico,

who was the head of the music department,

the instrumental music.

He came in there and she said,

we're gonna put Wayne in your class and see what happens.

And I went in his class and that's the same time I was listening

to stuff on the radio, Charlie Parker and all that.

Achilles had three records on his desk and he said,

music is gonna go in three directions.

And the first one he lifted up was a record by from Peru.

Second record was "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky.

The third one was record by Charlie Parker.

I got a clarinet with the help of my grandmother

and my mother, for one year I took clarinet lessons.

Then he said, okay, we're gonna move you on to tenor saxophone.

I just started studying.

I had a final exam with the head of Vocal and Choral and piano.

And a lot of the kids there had been studying music

since they were six years old.

And she said, bring your paper and brought the paper to her desk.

And you have to leave class.

I'm walking toward the door, she said, just a minute.

She held the paper up and she said, class, this is a perfect exam paper.

I want you to think about this.

As I'm walking down the hall,

it was something I was mulling over in my mind.

What does this mean?

What is that?

It's like euphoria without the words.

You better not ignore this.

I saw these pictures of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis in magazines,

these are the new guys, new this and everything.

I can realize now that they were the new Superman and Captain Marvel.

They were playing something that went against the grain

of what was being sold, pop music, pop.

Still do.

So Bebop became a cause

and the social implication became a cause. Let's fight for this.

And how you gonna fight for it, by finding out what it's about.

That was the beginning of this band called "The Group".

We called ourselves The Group, we had nine players.