PARTISAN REVIEW
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stayed for a couple of months and taught me a little bit about chords
and then Cyril Caster came up and stayed and taught me more about
chords till I could work with two chords or three chords. But they
started making chord notations for me and also transcribing it for
me. And then I began learning how to write the melody line myself
and then later someone taught me the basic principle of chords
which is major chord is the first note then you count up four more,
then you count up three more....
INT: You never had piano lessons when you were a kid?
GINSBERG: Yeah, when I was nine.
INT: It didn't stick?
GINSBERG: That's right. I hit my mother over the breast finally, I was
so angry. So, I slowly began learning notations so at this point, A.D.
1971, I can write lead sheets. Except for time; I can't put the time
bars in, I haven't experimented with that. So, in other words, it be–
gins with a vision, with a much earlier vision, years ago. With a
realization of ashes of the body, ashes of sexuality, seeing Neal Cassady's
ashes. With a realization of the ashes of the body of American democ–
racy in Chicago. And then attempting to vocalize the wisest language
sounds . . . from Blake.
INT: When you did the recording, were there rehearsals?
GINSBERG: I had it all written down, finally. I had the music written
down and we actually rehearsed - a lot. I mean not a lot as profes–
sionals do, but like we had a couple evenings with Don Cherry and
Bob Doro and Cyril Caster and other people who are on the album.
We had formal rehearsals with music stands and pianos at people's
houses and we taped them - and filmed some of them even. At
Robert Frank's house, the movie maker. And then some things were
rehearsed at my house with John Sholle, the guitarist, who's a studio
guitarist, and is very brilliant and who immediately picked up - a
kind of feminine intelligence. He was able to follow along and bring
me on
- musically.
INT: Did you make very many improvisations in rehearsal at all, things
which sort of came out from working together?
GINSBERG: The whole thing is an improvisation in the sense that all
the main lines are laid down, like the track with Elvin Jones is, I
think, the second or third of three attempts done in the studio with–
out rehearsal. The Elvin Jones was without rehearsal. Some of the
people that were working on the record were, uh, unstable. And so
surprises came in and we had to improvise whatever we could.
INT: Yeah. Cause that's one of the things I specially liked about it,
especially like the
Songs of Innocence,
there's a very spontaneous
