It's Mick Goodrick's Birthday

Reflecting on the guitar guru from a chapter in a new book

I’m writing a new book. No title yet, though a working title is Pity The Genius. I’m writing short essays about what I consider essential guitar tracks. Not famous tracks necessarily, of course. Stuff that has impacted my spirit and soul, and maybe nudged the culture forward too. I’m talking about guitar music, but it’s just an excuse to talk about life.

This is the first thing I’ve shared from it. In doing so I celebrate the great and important guitar teacher and player, Mick Goodrick. Let me know what you think.

Mick Goodrick: Vox Humana (Gary Burton Quartet/Dreams So Real ECM 1976)

Mick Goodrick resembled an Old Testament prophet when I had my first lesson with him in late 1977, long hair graying at the temples that swung back from a prominent brow, deep set eyes with a sharp, penetrating gaze. There were lengthy pauses between sentences, something remote in his being that contrasted to the shouting militia in my brain. I, like hundreds of others who walked through these doors, wanted so bad to be good. Mick wasn’t there to pat you on the back. He was there to help you see your real self. In those days lessons were not so much about chord scales and guide tones but about object relations theory or Zen and the Art of Archery. He claimed he wanted to write a book entitled Then and the Art of Pluckery. His humor was sly and dry.

Mick played a Carpenters tune on the stereo and asked me to close my eyes and sense the feeling in my arms and legs, advised doing this every day with some emotional music, prior to picking up the instrument. I later learned this was an exercise he learned by way of the mystic Gurdjieff, whose teaching he was quite involved with at the time. The point was embodiment, presence, a resource sorely lacking in the general discourse.

Vox Humana is a Carla Bley composition on Gary Burton’s record Dreams So Real that has an epic sweep to it. Its harmonic materials are simple, but the way she builds drama with these materials is quite original and unpredictable. Many guitar players we love most were deeply influenced by Gary Burton’s records of this period, and Dreams is one of the best. Gary loved the guitar, he was amongst the first to convincingly add rock and country influences to earlier incarnations of his bands, with Larry Coryell and Jerry Hahn. This 2- guitar ensemble included a new kid on the block named Pat Metheny. The rhythm section of Bob Moses and Steve Swallow was one of the finest not just of the time but of any time. Gary, a phenomenal improviser, was a born leader, and he kickstarted the careers of a few of our most beloved guitarists.

Here and elsewhere Mick’s playing is understated, lyrical. He’s using his fingers not a pick, he doesn’t pull notes, or step on a fuzz box. His solo has a lovely melodic arc, it grows upward and outward, peaking at just the right time. It sounds like anyone could do it, but…I’ve played this song, and can tell you that anyone can’t. Mick’s uncluttered, lucid approach was foundational for Metheny, who said that the first time he played with Mick he held that rarest of sensations: unlimited possibility. They thought about the instrument in similar ways. Rock n’ roll was raging at the time, but Mick and Pat chose to ignore it, preferring a quiet beauty.

Bill Frisell told me that, “When I showed in Boston in 1973 Mick had a huge impact on how I heard sound. He took the legato, liquid phrasing that Jim Hall developed even further. He was the link from bebop to what lay ahead.”

Mick’s real forte was comping, he was advanced in the harmony department and felt that not enough players concentrated on the art of accompaniment. If you want to hear phenomenal chord work check out the duo record that Wolfgang Muthspiel did with Mick from 2010 (https://www.discogs.com/release/2474939-Wolfgang-Muthspiel-Mick-Goodrick-Live-At-The-Jazz-Standard). It’s two guitars made one.

I interviewed Mick for a Jazz Times article around 2015 and learned a few surprising things. He discovered late in life that he had a condition from birth that’s sometimes mistaken for autism called the “Einstein syndrome.” “People like this tend to be high-functioning and bright,” he said. “[They’re] involved with mathematics, have a parent who is a musician or an engineer or accountant. They make dictionaries and encyclopedias.” This began to explain his exhaustively methodical approach to his instructional books, which are encyclopedias of harmonic possibilities. Mick also admitted that he’d never enjoyed performing. That’s pretty extraordinary for someone who’d performed hundreds of times over five decades. In fact he retired from performing around age sixty. “Been there done that,” he said.

There are many great players, few great teachers. Mick remains beloved by too many musicians to number. He had no method to speak of, no domineering principle, he didn’t care to shape anyone to his image. His students sound completely different. Mike Stern sounds nothing like Lage Lund. Mick emphasized fundamentals that had zero sex appeal, he encouraged you to cultivate not just your fingers but your mind, your attitude— to find your own voice free of any fashions of the day. He never married. He was a singular, solitary soul who welcomed the world into his living room.

Random advice he gave in 1978 was to "try playing badly." There wasn’t a morsel of irony. Or he might ask me to visualize mutilated teddy bears as I soloed. He was fond of saying “Don’t practice too much.” He knew that young men with a guitar could take themselves too seriously.

Yeah—Mick was different. And if I’m honest sometimes annoying as hell. He seemed to be disinterested in the guitar when I met him. His tendency to lapse into the psychological rather than the musical could be frustrating. I had mixed feelings about some of what went down that year. 15 years after studying with him I introduced myself at The Village Vanguard, mentioning he’d taught me in 1978. Sorrow passed across his face. “I apologize,” he simply said, unsmiling. He revealed no more to me, so the apology sat there, a permanent question mark. Somehow I felt like I knew what he meant, and I thanked him for apologizing. I found out he may have been swept up in the Gurdieff thing a little too far…

What a year that was for me, 1978. I was in a bad place when I studied with him. My mother had just died just before I moved to Boston, and I had no one I could talk to about it. I held my grief close, afraid to reveal anything.  While I can’t say that I had any heart to hearts with Mick, he did act as a kind of guide, pointing me inward. I was building towards a life as an artist, not just a guitar player.

Summer of 1978 arrived and it was time for me to to resume my college education after my year off studying privately in Boston. In one of my last lessons with Mick he pried a little and he got me to admit that I was down (a euphemism for depressed!). I suppose it was obvious. I probably had a whopper of a hangover, Jack Daniels was a good pal that year. For once his clinical detachment was at bay, and the distance between us narrowed. I spoke of the trauma of my mother's death, and Mick listened with complete attention. I apologized as I spoke, feeling I had no right to my sorrow when I was so lucky to be learning all this music.

When I was done he peered out the window for a few seconds, tipped his cigarette ashes into the tray and gently said. "Now, it all makes sense."

"What does," I asked?

"You. Us. Why you’re here. I'm glad you told me. This is an important time. You'll look back someday and see that.”