Right now, my career is in three directions: as a performer, as an arranger, as an author - and I don't give any one of them true precedent, or true top marks, as opposed to the other two. ↗
I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that. ↗
Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires. ↗
I picked all the tunes before I went to Memphis, and the band was all set. Willie Mitchell is an arranger like I am, and he let me do what I had to do. ↗
We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour. ↗
When I was a kid and I bought a record, I ripped that thing open, I wanted to know who was playing what, what studio it was cut at, who was the string arranger, who was the engineer. ↗
But, I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom. ↗