The moors (Shorter) In Brian Glasser's Zawinul biography In a Silent Way, Zawinul describes how Ralph Towner's guitar solo was recorded: "'The Moors' with Ralph Towner--beautiful. You know, I tricked him into this, because I could feel, man, when he came in the studio to play, he was so scared! I could see his eyes." "Do you think you're intimidating?" interjects the interviewer. "Perhaps! Anyway, I tell the engineer, I said, 'Listen man,' because Ralph said, 'Excuse me, is it possible? I want to practice a little bit before,' and the I immediately know: this is one guy, he practices 20 minutes and plays his ass off, then you put the red light on and he plays full of shit. So he tuned up, and already when he tuned up the guy put two reels on, next to each other. And I said, 'Don't please show him the red light; we're just talking in here, looking all kinds of different ways.' Son of a gun, man! And he played his heart out out there. And so then he said, 'I'm ready. I'm ready to play now.' And I said, 'Ralph, it's done. Pack up the goddamn guitar, man. We have a drink.' And out of this, we had a beautiful, beautiful introduction for 'The Moors.'" |