Sometime back in the 90s, I saw Peter Gabriel in concert with my brother. I can’t remember which song it was, but he started, went a few bars, missed a line, and stopped.
Then he said, “ladies and gentlemen, this is what we in the professional music world call a fuck up.”
He picked up at the beginning of the song and nailed it.
Strangely enough, when I related that story to a boyfriend, it turned out that the exact same thing had happened at another Peter Gabriel concert he’d been to, several years before the one I’d seen. Does this make Peter Gabriel the only rock musician who’d fuck up on purpose? If it’s on purpose, is it actually a fuck up?
When King Crimson played the Santa Cruz Civic many years ago, the crowd went nuts before they came back for the encore. Both Fripp and Belew got caught up in the moment and completely blew the beginning of a song. It was so strange to see Robert Fripp, normally so composed and self-assured, be totally discombobulated by an audience’s reaction.
It’s been too long, so I don’t remember exactly, but Judy Collins did something like that in December in Oklahoma and then again in June (when she’d surely had time to practice) in Colorado. No, I wasn’t following her around. I just moved. If I’d known it was going to be exactly the same concert down to the goofs, though, I’d have gone to hear somebody else.
As to whether a professional classical pianist has made a mistake–yes. My cousin had to be coached and practically psychoanalyzed because when he screwed up, he made it visible by screwing up his face.
Generally you couldn’t hear the goofup, because he kept going and he was good. And a lot of times it was something so subtle you’d have to be very, very familiar with the piece to realize it was what he considered a mistake, unless you saw his face.
He also needed coaching on that soulful, emotional look some piano players get. His intuitive way to play was hunched over with kind of a scowl, and reviewers would say they weren’t picking up on the emotion. A few acting lessons and his reviews changed for the better, because once his gestures looked emotional, they could hear the emotion in the music.
[QUOTE=zyzzyva]
Had a music teacher who told a story about doing a performance of Handel’s Messiah. At the very end of the Hallelujah Chorus, just before the final “Amen,” there’s a very significant dramatic rest. During this performance, though, the tympanist was a beat off and crashed down on the kettle drums right in the middle of it! OOPS!
I did that once in a rehearsal of messiah, The conductor was really looking at me for a while, the pause went a little too long…so i thought he wanted me to “strike up the band”
I’m relatively sure there’s a music related truism that goes, everyone makes mistakes, but with an amateurs you know they did it, while a professional will take it in stride and play it off so really no one notices.
Heh. The first time i heard this on the radio many years ago, I had to pull to the side of the road and park because I was laughing so hard I was a menace.
Oh that reminds me. When we want to see Jeff Tweedy in San Diego, he began a song, stopped and then said “I fingered it wrong. And everybody knows how painful that is.”
My jazz instructor’s advice for soloing was “think of a note–then don’t play it.” If you do it with enough conviction and good phrasing, it’s pretty amazing what you can get away with in jazz. No, I wasn’t in the wrong key, I was just playing “out.”
Quick anecdote:
I’m not a professional musician, but I’ve done many paid gigs and was a bit of journeyman keyboardist for an indie band. The worst mistake I recall was when I had completely forgotten a certain song was transposed down a half step. We were a fairly tight group, so big flubs were very rare. Anyhow, this tune begins with the singer and piano playing together for a verse before, then the bass comes in, then the entire band starts in. So I’m playing in C, while the song should be in B. The bass comes in, realizes something is wrong right away, and transposes up a half step while shooting me a wide-eyed look. Oh shit. I realize what’s happening and can’t think of any way to modulate down a half-step without it being completely obvious, so I try to almost telepathically communicate to the two guitarists the trainwreck that is about to occur if they don’t cover me and transpose up a half-step.
Well, as is to be expected, nobody was paying attention to the keyboardist so at the crescendo there’s this huge crash of noise where the two guitars are playing very loud B chords, and the singer, bass, and keyboards are all in C. (I suppose we can call it a Cmaj7#9#11, if we’re being charitable. Needless to say, not something you hear in most indie rock )Wow. What a wall of dissonance that was. The entire band cracks up and stops while I continue playing my little C-F chord progression and figure out the best way out of this situation is to very obviously modulate down into B, as a sort of humorous musical “My bad!” It worked. The audience cracked up, clapped, and hollered, and we continued the song without stop from the beginning in the correct key. It actually added quite a bit to the energy that night.
In Scar Tissue Anthony Kiedis mentions a few shows where songs were badly mangled due to either him or Frusciante being too fucked up on drugs, physically beaten down and fatigued, or both. In one instance, Kiedis completely blanked out on the opening lyrics to Under the Bridge. I’d wager that this happened at a lot of 90s alt-rock shows.
More recently, I saw Calexico (an indie/folk/rock band with Mexican influences - they kick ass, if you haven’t heard of them) and singer Joey Burns repeated a line from the first verse in the second verse in The Sunken Waltz. What I mean is, the line from the first verse is:
Tossed a Susan B. over my shoulder/and prayed it would rain and rain
and the equivalent line in the second verse is:
Packed his tools and his keys and left/and headed out as far as he could
Burns sang:
Packed his tools and his keys and left/and prayed it would rain and rain
I am fairly certain this was a mistake on his part. I don’t see why he would have done it intentionally. Besides that, the show was great.
In 1978, the Swedish entry in the Eurovision song contest was the song Det blir alltid värre framåt natten, sung by Björn Skifs. At the time, songs had to be sung in the country’s native language (a rule that has now been repealed, mainly because English-speaking countries kept winning), but Björn had written a version of the song in English and planned to sing it at the live performance. The backup singers had been taught the English version, but Björn apparently couldn’t make up his mind on whether to make his statement and be disqualified. He went back and forth and eventually told the backup singers that he’d decide on stage.
Once on stage, he decides to do the Swedish version, but draws a total blank. He can’t remember the words. He swiftly realizes that whatever he sings, only the comparably small Swedish section of the audience will notice something wrong, so he starts to sing whatever gibberish comes into his head. At the end of the first verse, he remembers the end of the second verse, sings it, and that somehow brings him back on track. He successfully finishes the song.
Oh, that reminds me. Here is one of the most amusing screw-ups that I have heard (links to an mp3 played through QuickTime). I don’t know what happened to the organist here … maybe hit some sort of auto-transpose function by mistake or something. Or it was an amazing practical joke.
Ella Fitzgerald did a recorded live version of Mack the Knife in Berlin, and completely forgot the words. Had to improvise her way over it all - “what’s the next verse; to this song, dear; that’s the one thing; I don’t know” (or very similar).
And even the greats aren’t automatons, technical perfection is not the measure of great music.
A ‘name the pianist’ game was played on me by a friend, with an LP of a live recording which AFAWK has never been rereleased. It’s the last movement of a Beethoven sonata, and it’s a tumultuous, haphazard and almost chaotic performance. Just about every single bar has spectacular mistakes in it. It’s hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny, but at the end the audience go wild. Go back and listen again, stop yourself from laughing, and you can hear that it’s also a spectacular musical performance.
No, I didn’t guess the pianist, but it didn’t surprise me that it was Richter.
Toscanini created such a cult of personality that these stories sound plausible. Other conductors will freely tell you about the stupid mistakes they’ve made.
