Alan Pasqua has had one of the wildest careers in rock, playing piano for everyone from Bob Dylan to Eddie Money to Santana. He told us some of his best stories from a lifetime in music.
When I go back and play my students outtakes of Miles’ recording dates, like “Freedom Jazz Dance,” nobody knew what to play at first. Little by little, Miles make these very subtle suggestions to every band member. Boom. And little by little, by take 13, there’s the master. But when they started playing it, they were just trying to figure it out. Tony did not have an agenda. He led by example.It was through Bruce Botanic, who produced the Tony Williams record, and who also produced the Doors.
He was kind of a regular knucklehead guy from back East. I related to him since that’s where I grew up. But onstage, he totally turned it on. He knew what to do when he got onstage in front of a microphone.I’d been on tour with Tony prior to that. That was a lot of station wagons and driving through the U.S. and doing a few dates in Europe. This was flights and driving. Two guys to a room. This was bare bones. I was making no bread at all.
Eddie’s tour was three months. It was absolutely brutal. I get home right before Christmas. I’m sitting at my little place on the couch, just trying to decompress. The phone rings. It was Rob. “Hey, I’m in Santa Monica. Why don’t you come down and we’ll play. I’ll put a tape together for Bob.”[laughs]
Looking back at it, that might have been the reason I got the gig. I was honest with him. I didn’t try to bullshit him and play it poorly. Through my lifetime, we’ve intersected a number of times. It’s always gone really great. He serves and it’s like a fastball. I’m holding on the best I can. I went for this ball and ran smack into a steel beam. It didn’t knock me out, but it knocked me down, and blood started coming down. I cut my scalp pretty bad. Patrick Stansfield, who was our tour manager, took a turban and basically made a tourniquet out of my head, pumped me full of Tylenol, and said, “Get out on stage.”
We waited about an hour and a half. We went back on. I mean, he was a hero. It was all those people that paid their money to see them. He didn’t want to let them down. Yeah. We recorded it in the rehearsal studio. Don DeVito produced it for CBS. There was a remote truck. It was a horrible room to make a record in. There were vinyl floors. Everything was reflective. They put Bob in one of the bathrooms as a vocal booth. I think, if memory serves me correctly, we recorded the first day and then everyone got fired. Fired the whole band. I think that was during the recording ofWe definitely were fired at some point early on.
Traveling through Europe, we had our own private train cars that were attached to other trains that pulled us through Europe. And then in the United States, we had a beautiful jumbo jet. I used to ride with the pilots every night. It was the coolest thing.We played Earl’s Court for a week. We did a week in Paris. It was just amazing.
There are some board tapes. Arthur Rosato was our head honcho. I remember him telling me there were some board tapes floating around. As a fan of the early records, it must have been fun to go on tour and play old songs like “Black Magic Woman” and “Evil Ways.”Well, Keith Olsen. When my stint with Santana ended, I came back to L.A. and had to circle the wagons and figure out how I was going to continue making a life as a musician. And Keith called. He was working at Sound City. He invited me to come up and play piano on that record. That’s where I met Pat and Neil [Giraldo] and [drummer] Myron [Grombacher]. Great people.
I don’t know about hostility. Maybe some disappointment. John was unbelievable, man. That’s the thing. All these guys that we’re talking about, the amount of output that they have night after night after night to bring it to their fans… Nobody phoned it in.Exactly. His voice is so iconic, and his energy. The band was great. It was so much fun for me. I was a big baseball fan, as was John.
Tell me about forming Giant. Why did you feel it was time to join a proper band and move away from session work? She’s a great pianist, a great musician. John is a great bass player. They started bringing me into their fold. They were doing a lot of composing for commercials, radio and television. They got so busy that they said, “We could use an extra hand.” I started writing with them.
[Dylan manager Jeff Rosen] calls me in his typical fashion and goes, “What are you doing?” I go, “What do you want?” He said, “Do you remember? He’d sit around the show, kind of noodle, and interview his guests?” I go, “Yeah.” He said, “We need some music like that.” It was this kind of roundabout thing. I go, “When do you need it?” He goes, “Today.” I was like, “OK.”
I recorded them. We came to our terms [regarding money], and I sent it in. He goes, “It’s all perfect.” I go, “Jeff, what is this for?” He said, “Bob got the Nobel Prize. He has to give a speech, but he won’t be able to attend in person.” I said, “When is the speech?” He goes, “It’s tomorrow. We wanted to just have an underpinning of piano. What you did was perfect.” I said, “I’m honored. Thank you.”[laughs]Yeah. I saw him in the studio a few times.
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