Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate.
Clark Terry
For the last three decades, Dave has been the main bass man for Jools Holland. In this interview we hear about how Dave started out, we hear about his journey to becoming a well rounded musician, his early years with Jools, all the experiences with the band & we talk a load about education.
Above all, there’s one message that I took away from the podcast & it’s directly hinted at the excerpt at the beginning of the podcast. Often the study of music - whether through education or not - can all too easily become an academic affair - in other words, our effort to study and intellectualise music can actually work against us. In this brilliant interview, Dave reminds us how important it is to “go to the source” with music - in other words, don’t study things around music, or books etc… but listen, transcribe, assimilate - and then go do your own thing. It’s amazing and deceptively simple advice.
I was inspired by this interview & I hope you will be too. Dave’s a great man with a wonderful approach to life. It’s a long interview but I hope you can stick through it - as there’s plenty of Gems in there. :)