More from Lindsey's 'Inner view" with Jim Ladd 1981

"When my father died a few years ago, he left me his collection of 78s, and I just really got around to getting them this last Christmas at my mother's and drove them back to LA and started taping them, and I was amazed ...I had listened to a lot of it when I was young, but not since I'd really, you know, become someone knowledgeable or was able to hear more.. for one thing , the process of recording was at such an infant stage in in the early 40s and late 40s that there was... it didn't hinder performance, those guys had to go in and be HOT when they played it, and they *were*!!  I'm telling you, it's like "set up those mikes, boys, play it like you do down at the Coconut Grove!" I think there's a difference, though , maybe you're talking about the real white versions of jazz , you know , there was something almost that could be considered society jazz-- somebody like Hal Kemp, when a guy would come in and go and (sings in the old fashion style ) I've got a date with an angellll... and that IS! You're absolutely right, There were certain people who made jazz safe for white America, and acceptable, because in the 30s and 40s, it was still considered in a way what rock and roll is for the 50s rhythmically, structurally... there's not a whole lot of difference between Johnny B Good and BoogieWoogie Bugle Boy of Company C, They have very similar melodies even, it's just you are put off because you were weaned on Chuck Berry, you were weaned on a scale down format and so was I, but you can go back and hear that , and hear the connection between 1 and the other. There's one called "love from here love from there", which is one in which I tried to recreate the roles of the horn parts, the coronet, the clarinet and the trombone, which were the 3 typical roles of improvisational, small combo jazz.

Jim: The way that you did the trombone, and the coronet and the clarinet with the guitar, man is great , especially the trombone.., I thought you did really well.

LB:  It's a slide guitar. And i tried to use the type of guitar that would, you know, represent more closely the brass versus a reed, I mean, I used a stratocaster for the clarinet, I used a gretch (?) for the trumpet or coronet sound, and then, you know, it's just taking the abstraction and reapplying it ,I mean, that's sort of a novelty song, really, but I don't think the melody is really the most important thing. The important thing for me about that song is those instrumental sections, I would lift a few lines from there and work it into a format where the trombone is coming in at a certain place In the major, You know, and the clarinet on the top sort of twinkling over the whole thing. And the trumpet or  the coronet more or less providing the sense of melody.

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Then they were discussing the way that he worked on his own in his hotel room on the road before making tusk---

"Realizing that everyone who works in the studio is so locked in to one set of sounds .. ( Chuckles)  It made me realize how narrow that view is. the result of that was basically a very strong, almost a fanatical commitment to trying a few-- a LOT of different ideas on my own for the tusk album, but the price I paid for that at times was the conflict of camaraderie with co-workers versus something you really had to do for yourself and uh... I'm certainly glad I did it. It's helped me musically and music, again.... music and a relationship with a good woman are probably the things that I will often place above the sense of camaraderie, which sometimes isn't really a deep feeling anyway. ..There's a lot of bull that goes down when you're hanging out.. and uh...

Jim: Yeah, but i think the camaraderie you're talking about is being able to sit down with a friend and say, "look, I hurt in this manner", Or "I have something I really want to say to you"..

LB: Yeah, I've never been one that's been able to talk about inner feelings that much, so...

Jim: You have a hard time expressing that, let's say to a male friend that kind of camaraderie, or..

LB:  well, if it gets too bad, I'll start opening up, but I'll keep a lot to myself and hope that it works itself out. I mean, Stevie is really just the opposite. She's such a total romantic and her songs reflect that, you know, everything is a very specific image of poetry that that lends itself to her whole vision of life. You know, my expression is in a less direct sense, one of--  as I said earlier, especially maybe a vast array  of emotions through colors and through music and through playing... Through yelling and screaming (laughs)
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They also touched on how doesn't really talk about his guitar playing when he describes himself and he says it's because he's been playing since he was about seven and can't really separate that part of himself. How mick played drums on trouble and the used just a 4 second tape loop...But how it still somehow sounds like mick With that tension that he kind of gets with his kick drum. Also, the reason that the lyrics to "shadow of the west" were not included on the album was because the artwork had to be submitted at a certain point and he did not have the lyrics yet lol, He said there was no deep reason. How with the lyric of the "setting of the Sun scares me to death"-- Ladd was asking lindsey if he felt scared at age thirty two... The loss of his youth...

"No. I mean again, this is something I can imagine, it's like looking forward ,Satisfied Mind starts off with the present and imagines forward to when his life is done, he'll be, he'll have a satisfied mind because he's made the right choices about how to live his life, hopefully.  obviously September song I'm not,... it's not the September of my years right now, but I mean, it's it's just shifting the perspective back-and-forth and how it relates to the title of the album, really, and the innocence of Shadow of the West is sort of, I suppose you could say the other side of September song, so he's looking back at his life and realizing he's had a rich life, including bad times , and is ready, more or less to accept the final years of his life..... uh, shadow of the west is someone who may NOT have been able to reconcile his life. And uh... yeah, still not living in the present,  maybe he made the *wrong* choices--  he's alone, it's like he's in a desert emotionally, the sun is going down and he's watching it and he knows its gonna be dark pretty soon."

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So there we go.

Wow. Those are interesting final lines...!!