LARRY CORYELL AND THE ELEVENTH HOUSE BY BOB NESS CODA MAGAZINE: MAY 1974

I first saw Larry Coryell in the summer of 1967 at the old original Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.  He was with Gary Burton and Steve Swallow and a bill headed by the Cream and Mike Bloomfield's Electric Flag. 
It looks so strange with Clapton‘s huge stack of Marshall amps at the back of the stage, to see Coryell playing out of a small suitcase sized fender amp.  With only a fraction of the other groups volume, they still immediately went over the audience.  Since then Coryell has gone on to lead a number of groups, the latest being The Eleventh House, which was named after the strongest house in his astrological sign, Aries. 
Without question, Coryell is one of the best guitarists now playing.

The Eleventh House is composed of Coryell, Randy Brecker on trumpet, Mike Mandel on keyboards and synthesizers, Danny Trifan on bass, and Alphonse Mouzon on drums.  They have recorded one album which has just been released on Vanguard called "Introducing the Eleventh House", and are set to record another shortly.  They have completed a successful European tour as of this writing and are winding up a tour of the states and Canada.

About his recent musical changes, Coryell says, “The old band just kind of disintegrated.  It had been together for two years or more and it was time for a change.  I have a much better band, better musicians now.  There is a stronger cohesion in the Eleventh House.  It’s more than five individuals.  Even though everyone is very strong on their own, it’s the togetherness that’s the focal point in the group and that’s what’s going to carry us through. “Mike Mandel is the only member of the old group who I felt had the ability, the preparedness, to move into this new kind of music.  I would’ve kept Steve Marcus except that I needed a stronger horn.  The trumpet is much stronger in this loud electronic music. The poor soprano just gets drowned out.  A trumpet adds an extra dimension.  Randy is not only a good jazz horn soloist but he makes the ensemble passages much stronger, and he writes. “When I was forming the Eleventh House, I originally wanted to have two horns, but I just couldn’t afford it.  I do want to keep things fluctuating.  I want to keep the personnel changing if there’s ever any let down in the creative effort.  If there’s a bad apple in the works, even if it’s me, I’ll remove it.  What the Eleventh House will do as a group is more important than any individual effort in the long run.  My goal is for the world, the mass audience to receive us while we’re still playing at our peak.  I’m not out there to get good reviews, I’m out there to make some money, as terrible as that may sound.“

Mike Mandel speaks up on the question of money: “Number one, a musician needs money because when he’s on the road he has to lay out in say, a seven day period, from $100-$200 just for a place to stay - as well as paying rent for his apartment at home. Money is needed for equipment and for traveling.  I for one do not intend to be some poor old jazz musician who, when he’s 43, he’s laid up with a liver condition in New York City and all through.  I want money so I can live in a good place, in a good climate, and so when I’m ready to raise a family I can do it in a healthy environment.  Playing music is one way of doing it and it happens to be my choice.  Why shouldn't we make money?  When people make records, the record company makes a bundle.“

All of the members of The Eleventh House are aware of the developmental history of improvised music.  Randy Brecker is currently listening closely to the records of Kenny Dorham.  Mandel is most impressed with Chick Corea and Jan Hammer.  Coryell has this to say: “Contemporary music has absorbed the whole thing called rock, or rock and roll, and what’s coming out now is a wide variety of creative efforts by people with both jazz and rock backgrounds.  It’s not classified as both either jazz or rock, it’s just music that is as good as the people doing it. “In order to carry this kind of music forward there are certain past musicians who you must have listened to.  They are the required reading:  Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Clifford Brown, Charlie Christian, Charlie Mingus, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, John Coltrane and all the people who ever played with Miles Davis, the Montgomery brothers, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman - a lot of beautiful people, man.  “I got into just my first guitar teacher.  He played me some records of the foremost jazz guitarist at the time - Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel, and even Les Paul - and when I heard them, I said that’s for me.  All those complicated, fast, beautiful sounding single note lines and chords.“

“There’s a distant distinct difference,“ Mike says, “between what The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea, and the Eleventh House is doing.  We are a hybrid and synthesis of everything that young people have listened to for 10 years and it’s kind of a marketable thing right now, especially since Mahavishnu blazed the trail.  Our net is still traditionally as jazzers and that label can be a stigma.  Why shouldn’t Art Blakey and a lot of other jazz people fill auditoriums and make five grand a night?  A lot of jazz players make the mistake of aiming just for the listener's head and don’t try to get out, don’t try to get to their body.  Rock gets to peoples bodies and people have to be moved.  Some jazz players do an artistic masturbation trip where they play just for themselves and don’t really try to reach the audience at all.  The excuse for what goes down is that they’re too good for the audience.  Cannonball Adderley, on the other hand, always makes sure the audience can participate in anything he does.  Herbie Hancock is another giant who cares about the audience.“

Like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock, Coryell knows instinctively how to lead a group.  To the casual observer, there doesn’t seem to be a leader, and this is a tribute to Coryell‘s ability to support and inspire the other members.  “My managers are always telling me to dominate but I don’t know… I call it like I see it.  If I want my band members to take a long solo, they do.  That’s what they’re there for.  There’s no reason why they should be held back and play merely supporting roles when they’ve got that much raw talent.  The thing I’m really interested in is organized playing together.  That’s where I like to dominate.  I like to be the quarterback.  I don’t like to be the tight end and the full back and a half-back all at the same time.  A good leader is supposed to get the best out of the assignment.  If you don’t have the guys, you can't put it out, then you’re forced to be the hog, the so-called start up there on stage, and it can be very damaging. “I try to check and balance myself.  I’m never really happy with my own playing.  I just want to keep improving and keep on my own back about my own artistic duties and responsibilities.  I’ve been lucky to be able to play with the right people and gotten a decent enough reputation to be a leader and get gigs and acquire musicians of the stature of my present group.  I’m a very lucky cat, man, a very lucky cat.  I’ve got a beautiful wife and two healthy young children.  I should get down on my knees every day and think Karl Marx or God or whoever it is that made this possible.“

Coryell resists talking about Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and his own short association with a guru, Sri Chimnoy.  “I have no comment on Mahavishnu and I’ll tell you why. That’s the standard question that I’ve gotten for the past three years and I’ve given 100 different answers, totally inconsistent, depending on what kind of mood I’m in.  Mahavishnu is an incredible guitar player. I think he’s about the fastest cat around, speed and everything. Speed doesn't make you number one.  Carlos Santana‘s another fine guitarist.  He’s embarked on a very strict, richer, spiritual discipline with McLaughlin and Sri Chimnoy.  I had some beautiful experiences with with Chimnoy, but I’m just not a disciplinarian.  I would rather forge out my own way and not try to wear someone else’s cloak.  I entered into it for a while in the spirit of trying to improve myself and found that it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  Maybe I’d be much further ahead if I stuck with it but I didn’t.“

Larry is, of course, aware of the looming presence of John Coltrane in the new music. “There’s no getting around him.  Unfortunately, 85 million saxophone players are stuck with him, and that’s why I admire people like Albert Ayler.  Ayler was Coltrane spiritually but he didn’t play note for note cutting licks.  Reed players like Steve Marcus and Mike Brecker are kidding themselves if they won’t admit that they've copied Coltrane and Albert.  The whole Albert Ayler story is weird.  It was his emotion that was great.  That’s all he plays.  Musically speaking, he played really dumb garbage.  Ayler scat sings the melody of ghosts.  Yet he had the guts to be different in a time when everybody else was copying the sheets and sound of John Coltrane.  You can be a great craftsman or you can be a pioneer, and Ayler, through no fault of his own, was designated to be a pioneer.  He was designated to be a ghost.  And I’ll be damned if it didn’t break my heart and everybody else's when they pulled him out of the East River a few years ago - dead.  That was a drag, man, a big drag.  Albert Ayler was alright.  He had a kind of pseudo-hit right before he died.  It was a rock vocal called, "New Generation" - kind of a little Richard thing: “It’s a new generation, you know – got to give them a chance.“

Conversation turned to some of Coryell‘s contemporaries.  When asked about Billy Cobham‘s album, "Spectrum", he said, “Billy Cobham will never make anything less than excellent.  Chick Corea‘s "Light as a Feather" is a great recording - "Spain" is just beautiful. And his new group Return to Forever I like very much.  Chick has a great guitar player in that group, Bill Connors, who is definitely one of the guitars to contend with in the future. The Larry Coryell's will be going down the tubes and the Bill Connors will be taking over. There’s a whole younger generation of guitarists…there’s some cat named Spencer Barefield who’s really good, and some cat in Worcester, Massachusetts named George.  These are two black cats.  There’s a lot of great players out there. Generally, the scene is very good and I can only see it getting better.  The quality of the younger musicians is better than before.  Their hopes are higher and their level of aspiration is deeper.“