If you want to act, you have to devote yourself to it. Send out letters and photos every day, work all the hours under the sun, whatever it takes. If you're not determined, you won't get anywhere. ↗
A kind of synthesis, but with some elements that perhaps you wouldn't have expected in advance. I always like that when that happens, when something comes that is more than the sum of the parts. ↗
Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days. ↗
Certain kinds of speed, flow, intensity, density of attacks, density of interaction... Music that concentrates on those qualities is, I think, easier achieved by free improvisation between people sharing a common attitude, a common language. ↗
I think it's a great document of John Stevens' originality. At that time he was already much more fully formed in his conception than I was. I was sort of struggling to keep up, and sometimes it's pretty obvious. ↗
I think the solo playing, the decision to start playing solo, came out of having discovered what lay behind the doors that that technique opened for me. ↗
