We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn.
When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.
When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.
When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.
You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.
You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.
