FMP CD 53

Peter Brötzmann

Steve, old friend

Allow me to make a few comments on your liner notes. I don't want to get into your general statements, there is no time at the moment I'm going to try to react to the passages which apply to me.

I did not really get the Impression that a saxophone trio was on stage. There was a bass player, a drummer, a saxophonist. Three people don't necessarily make a trio.

In a way, I have always been prepared to bend through (subtle) pressure from my fellow musicians, if I had the impression it would serve the cause. I have certainly tried - especially regarding Fred and Rashied - to work in an area less familiar to me, and my way of playing ballads is, any times, a bit clumsy, awkward, although I think it has a certain charm.

I still get the feeling, quite often, that YOU - and now I rather cheekily put you in the same bag with the rest of the critics - don't have the time and sometimes not even the ability) to listen. You can find more than enough of what you call "reflective" passages in my work since the Bennink/Van Hove and Harry Miller/Moholo times, including my solo recordings.

I hope it is not blasphemy to contradict Coltrane when he speaks of a "common reservoir". It has never existed. I think each has his own - different and limited. And each should try - with as much distance to one's 'self' as possible to get that over both in terms of feeling and sound.

You know, nothing is possible without dialectics, that's why "competition/mutual cooperation - the beginning or end of a development' is like a cat biting its own tail.

See you soon.

Brötzm.

Translation: Isabel Seeberg &: Paul Lytton

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