FluxBlog

The guitar world lost a master teacher and player this week. Tributes to Mick are all over facebook. He taught so many people the art of jazz guitar that you might say there is no other teacher in our lifetime that has had a deeper influence. Here is a profile I wrote for Jazz Times in 2018 that pulls back the curtain a bit.

Very little has been written about Mick. He has always disdained the spotlight. As we mourn his loss from Parkinson’s I want to celebrate his legacy by sharing this portrait. I do hope Jazz Times doesn’t mind!

A personal note: When I studied with him at age 20 I had just lost my mother. I was a wreck. In some weird way I look back on him as much as a therapist as guitar teacher! One time I spent 3 hours there as the sun went down talking about Freud, Zen, my own aching desire. Mick was inscrutable. He’d lay a gold mine of info on you and then piss you off. He’d wink and say “Don’t practice too much!” or listen to you play and just stare at the wall, silent…TOO silent. He once told me to take out an add in the paper if I needed friends. It all seems funny now. He had a wicked sense of humor, and keen sense of irony. He was just SO different you never felt quite stable. With the passage of time I now see I was in the perfect place for what I needed— that this study of jazz guitar, a mysterious, bottomless, sometimes impossible art, gave me ballast and infinite reasons to live and grow in that year with him. I came looking for guitar knowledge and got life knowledge too. He was a deep well. It takes a lot of devotion to deal with half-crazed 20 year olds all day for 40 years. Thanks, Mick.

MICK GOODRICK

There was a golden age for jazz guitar in the mid 1970's, when new blueprints were being created by Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Mike Stern, and others. The foundation was still Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery, but the times called for different aesthetics. A new crop of players arrived in Boston all of whom would reshape the landscape- and they shared the same mentor, Mick Goodrick.

Mick has taught a remarkable number of prominent guitarists, such as Wolfgang Muthspiel, Lionel Lueke, Nir Felder, Lage Lund, Julian Lage, and Stern, and inspired many, many more. Today's guitar music wouldn't be the same without him. Now seventy two, thousands of students later (including this writer), Goodrick has been an eminence since the late 60's, most of that time on the faculty at Berklee. He is beloved by pupils and colleagues in ways that few jazz guitar teachers have ever been.

Julian Lage, who worked with Mick for two and a half years, says, "He had an extraordinary way of unpacking my problems by listening attentively and then offering organic and often surprising solutions. There was no limit to what he wanted to share. I owe an enormous part of my way of looking at the instrument to him."

Goodrick's signature contribution has been his attention to chord structures, harmony, and comping. "For the most part," he says, "I think I got hired because of my comping. And that's one of the things I still encourage of my students. If you can make someone sound good, maybe they'll hire you again. The person who is comping," he says, "has the best job. That person is really the head of the rhythm section, the liaison between bass and drums and the soloist. Plus we also get to solo."

Mick illustrates this point with a story. A well known drummer was on the bandstand with a bassist that displeased him. The music felt locked in, tepid. All of a sudden Chick Corea (a master accompaniest) showed up and asked if he could sit in. The moment Chick started playing the music caught fire. His comping lit the rhythm section up.

Goodrick's many books, such as The Almanac of Guitar Voice Leading and Creative Chordal Harmony for the Guitar, are exhaustive studies in voicings, the work of a scientist, a completist, where every last solution to a given problem is considered and annotated. He has also brought his meticulous attention to rhythmic cells and strategies for opening up the fretboard in soloing. The books are a monumental achievement.

Says guitarist Ben Monder, "Every subject, whether voice leading, rhythm, motivic cells, etc. is logically taken to its comprehensive end point, so that nothing is left unexplored. But then he doesn’t make it easy for us; we are challenged to become our own cartographers of the maps that these systems suggest, thereby ensuring that we all take personal journeys and arrive at unique solutions." I asked Mick how he had mustered the patience to so painstakingly document each variable in a given subject, a mind boggling feat.

The first answer is that his father was an accountant and pianist, so he had an early affinity for not just music but numbers, for math, for detailed research. The second answer was one he was a bit reluctant to share. Mick realized about eight years ago that he had a mild form of autism, commonly called the "Einstein Syndrome." Says Goodrick, "people like this tend to be high-functioning and bright, be involved with mathematics, have a parent who is a musician, or an engineer or accountant. They make dictionaries and encyclopedias." Despite any difficulties this syndrome brought to Goodrick's life, the effect on his teaching was enduringly positive.

Mick advises a practical approach to his materials so as not to become overwhelmed by the gobs of information. Approach the books passively, don't worry about memorizing or even remembering the material. Walk through a page a day, and in three hundred days your playing will have changed without you realizing it. Consider that one line might occupy a month's attention.

Goodrick, of course, is not just a teacher, but a storied performer. He downplays his performing career saying, "I always considered myself to be like a Triple A ball player- I got called up to have coffee a few times with some great musicians." But the list of artists he has performed with belies this modesty: Gary Burton, John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Steve Swallow, and Jack Dejohnette. High moments along the way were the two guitar band with Metheny that Burton led in the 70's, Haden's Liberation Orchestra, Dejohnette's Special Edition, and a long association with saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi.

Bill Frisell says that "When I showed up in Boston in 1973 Mick had a gigantic impact on the way I think about sound. He took the legato, liquid phrasing that Jim Hall had developed even further. He joined notes together in ways I never heard before. He was the link from bebop to what lay ahead." Others point to the thoughtfulness of his playing; it is focused, almost austere, never "showy." As a person and a player he only speaks when he  has something to say. His lyricism and gorgeous chord movement brings an almost classical sound to a jazz tune, with long legato phrases, lots of hammer ons and pull offs. There is a singing quality to his phrasing, and he admits that his goal as a player has always been to emulate the human voice, from the beginning when he was bowled over by Elvis Presley.

"I was already aware of Mick when I moved to Boston to teach at Berklee," Pat Metheny says. "When we got together to play at his Back Bay apartment a few days after I got to town, there appeared that sensation that I rarely get with another player, particularly on another harmonic instrument- that amazing feeling of unlimited possibility.  It just seemed like we could both do anything we wanted... To be on the bandstand with Mick night after night (in Gary Burton's band) was incredible. Hearing him craft his magnificent solos was inspiring and illuminating in so many ways. And two guitars (with vibes!) can be a challenging thing, but somehow we were gradually able to transfer a lot of the qualities that made our duo concerts so special into an ensemble sound behind Gary." Wolfgang Muthspiel feels that one of Goodrick's great assets is how interactive he is. Witness their duo playing, where it is difficult to even tell who is playing what, as the lines crisscross in an endless contrapuntal stream. 

And yet Mick retired from performing around ten years ago. Why? Goodrick reflects that, "I had assumed I would play forever, but when I hit 60 the desire kind of stopped." He described playing the Montreal Jazz festival with Metheny in 2005. They did standards and free improv, and the music went extremely well. When it was done he felt like he was waking from a dream, as if the audience had disappeared. He had no idea where he was, felt that he'd played at the highest level he was capable of. A voice inside said, "You may not need to do this anymore." So other than a couple of faculty shows at Berklee, this duo concert was his last performance. "Been there done that," he says.

What is a lesson with Mick Goodrick like? The first thing a student might notice is that he's got a sly and disarming sense of humor. He is enigmatic and prone to silence. He suggests, he does not demand. Recently he has focused on finding ways to quiet the part of the brain that interferes with the creative process, asking students to use drawing as a tool towards that end. Drawing, he says, helps us get past our creative filters, allowing us to be more present. These exercises help "trick" the mind into letting go of inhibitions and analytical mental structures. Now as interested in neurology as he is in music, Mick asks for a drawing a day. He also recommends that his students take Zemberin an ancient herbal supplement indigenous to South Africa that helps calm the mind.

"I keep it pretty simple," he says. "I assign the drawing exercises, offer the Zemberin, make sure they practice with the metronome on 2 and 4, and build their repertoire of standards and the attendant chord work." Simple? Perhaps- but also deep.

I was curious if Mick remembered some of the more anarchical, arcane advice he offered this writer in 1977. For instance, "Don't practice too much," or "Sense your tear ducts when you are playing a sad song," or "Solo on one string," or "Try destroying a solo mid flight."

He did not. And yet, I sensed that the man had very much the same concerns 40 years ago as he does now. Back then Mick espoused the virtues of psychoanalysis and now neurology. Now it's drawing, then it was reading Zen and the Art of Archery. He still is quick to disarm a student's ego and place attention on the deeper issues of practice. He builds a student's capacity to flow, to be aware and in the moment, favors intricacies of harmony, voice leading and accompaniment over blazing solos. He enjoys dry witticisms.

So what is his practice routine now? Mick still explores endlessly. Not long ago he wrote out 55 different ways to comp through the tune Falling Grace. He was worried he might never want to play the tune again from so much exposure to it, but instead he finds he still can't get enough and returns to it again and again. His practicing often turns into research, and a new book is born.

So then what is Mick Goodrick's legacy? "The books," he says. "Without a doubt." He mentions Ben Monder, himself a master at chord structures. Mick says, "With all the work the books took, all the money I lost, it all feels justified knowing where Ben has taken this material."

The voluminous content Mick has compiled offers an almost unlimited supply of ideas to us all for years to come. Sadly, many books are out of print, but the diligent seeker can still find a copy. But don't forget his records. There are several that Mick points to as high points in his career: Sunscreams with Jerry Bergonzi, Bruce Gertz, and Gary Chafee, Dreams So Real with Gary Burton's quintet (including Metheny), and a trio recording entitled In The Same Breath with Dave Liebman and Wolfgang Muthspiel.

"Mick has a brilliant mind," says Liebman. It's amazing to watch him play. There's a stillness, a detachment. He barely moves. You feel his presence, both strong and subtle."

Says Metheny, "He is a truly considerate person in the broadest meaning of the word. There is a kind of awareness in the way he listens, both as a musician and as a person that invites engagement and communication. It seems we always take up right where we left off."

I asked how the landscape of jazz guitar might be different today than it was in his formative years. "Back then," he says, "You either wanted to move to New York and play with Miles or get the gig with Gary Burton. So when Gary asked me to join it was an important moment of mentoring. When I graduated from Berklee in the late 60's I had a six night a week gig, 5 sets a night with Rick Laird and Alan Broadbent. It may be harder to get that now. We gigged all the time. On the other hand the instrument is still evolving. It's amazing what some people are doing. So there are still all these possibilities that are being explored."

Mick is in the process of retiring from Berklee. A big hole will be left when he leaves. Catch a lesson with him while you still can.

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