Norman Lear, the legendary TV producer and devoted advocate of liberal causes, will be best ed for revolutionizing mainstream TV in the 1960s and ’70s with such hit shows as “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Maude”
But Lear, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 101, was also an avid music fan. He co-owned Concord Record, one of the nation’s largest and most diverse independent labels. And he was an avid fan of jazz and rock, who — in his late 70s — was attending and moshing at concerts by Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“I loved the experience. I don’t know what I think of the Foo Fighters, but I loved to be in a room with a mosh pit with young people and music that gets me moving,” Lear said in a 2003 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.
“But you know something? I turned 80 last year, and it’s like I’m one of them (in the mosh pit). Nobody pays any attention to my age. They deal with me the way they deal with each other. I was in a mosh pit about two months ago and they started to push me around. This was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show.”
In 1999, Lear teamed with his business partner, Hal Gaba to buy Concord Records. The independent label was home to a host of jazz luminaries, including San Diego guitar great Barney Kessel and Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham & The Sweet Baby Blues Band.
In our 2003 interview, Lear discussed music, including The Beatles, Eminem and the Concord-signed band Ozomatli. He also spoke about the Declaration of Independence.
In 2000, Lear spent $8 million to buy one of the few surviving original versions of the Declaration of Independence. He then spearheaded a nearly four-year-long national voter empowerment tour, the “Declaration of Independence Road Trip,”that included a 2004 stop at San Diego Syate University.
“There’s a great relation in jazz to freedom,” Lear said.
Here is the Union-Tribune’s 2003 interview with Lear in its entirety.
ion for life stills drives Norman Lear
BY GEORGE VARGA, POP MUSIC CRITIC
July 13, 2003, The San Diego Union-Tribune,
Moshing at concerts by the Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Collaborating with the creators of “South Park” on new scripts for the wonderfully nihilistic cartoon series.
Rescuing Concord Records, one of the best jazz labels around, from the brink of potential financial disaster.
These actions may not make Norman Lear the hippest 80-year-old around — a tag he couldn’t care less about. But they suggest he’s more in tune with the times than many people who are half or a third his age.
“When the Beatles first came around in the early 1960s, my generation — or at least my friends — didn’t begin to understand that phenomenon,” said Lear, who will turn 81 on July 27.
“They hated the Beatles and disliked what we thought was a bunch of ‘unruly kids’ screaming. We’d forgotten that we did the same thing for Sinatra much earlier. We didn’t like the long hair and were upset with the whole thing.”
Lear, the creator of such seminal TV series as “All in the Family,” “Good Times” and “Fernwood 2Nite,” laughed.
“I don’t know how much time ed before our hair was long, we were adoring the kids and rock was leading pop culture,” he continued from his Beverly Hills office. “It’s the same thing that happened with Eminem more recently. The first reaction is: ‘Oh, my God! What is that?’ “
Lear’s ions for music, pop culture and social responsibility merge in the music of Concord Record’s latest g, Ozomatli. The Los Angeles band’s songs combine socially and politically aware lyrics with a zesty fusion of hip-hop, merengue, cumbia and other Latin styles.
“I met everyone in the band when we signed them, and to say that we are kindred spirits is accurate,” he said.
Lear and his business partner, Hal Gaba, bought Concord in 1999, when the label and its Latin-music offshoot, Concord/Picante, was about to be auctioned off and faced being shut down.
The label, which was founded by Bay Area auto dealer-cum-jazz-entrepreneur Carl Jefferson, turns 30 this month.
This past Tuesday saw the release of a limited-edition six-CD boxed set, “Concord Records 30th Anniversary.” It includes the work of such jazz and Latin-jazz stars as Chick Corea, Tito Puente, Gerry Mulligan, Mel Torme, Dave Brubeck, Marian Martland, Kenny Burrell, Tania Maria and others, including — from San Diego — ailing guitar great Barney Kessel and the irrepressible Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham & The Sweet Baby Blues Band.
Plans are under way for a U.S. concert tour, to begin late this year, featuring four singers who record for the label. The four — Dianne Schuur, Nnenna Freelon, Karrin Allyson and Curtis Stigers — will perform July 17 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, where they’ll be ed for “Concord Records Night” by label-mate Poncho Sanchez and his band.
A longtime jazz and classical music fan, Lear fondly recalls attending concerts by Count Basie, Duke Ellington and other immortals when he was growing up in Hartford, Conn. After World War II, while working in New York as a press agent, he frequented jazz clubs on the Big Apple’s famed 52nd Street.
“I was fascinated by the creativity of improvisation in jazz, which I realized much later is like the writing process when everything is flowing,” he said.
Lear cites pianists George Shearing and Roger Kellaway (who played the theme music for “All in the Family”) as two of his favorites. But he its he isn’t conversant with the music of many current jazz artists. And he is happy to leave Concord’s day-to-day operations to label president Glen Barros and vice president John Burk, whose latest success is teenage jazz piano and vocal sensation Peter Cincotti.
What appeals most to Concord’s owner is the sound and spirit of this quintessentially American music.
“There’s a great relation in jazz to freedom,” said Lear, whose Declaration of Independence Road Trip is slated to visit San Diego State University next March.
In 2000, he spent $8 million to buy one of the few surviving original versions of the Declaration of Independence. Lear then spearheaded a 3½-year national voter empowerment tour, which he dubbed the “Declaration of Independence Road Trip.” The nonprofit, nonpartisan tour is designed to bring the declaration directly to the people, with the expressed hope of inspiring Americans — and young people in particular — to exercise their rights, become civically active, and vote.
Lear describes the Road Trip as “the biggest production of my life. I’m 100 percent involved with this tour. It’s my life until the next (presidential) election.” (For more information, log onto www.independenceroadtrip.org, the tour’s Web site.)
As for his moshing experiences at concerts earlier this year by the Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers . . .
“I hear live music fairly often now with my son, Ben, who plays guitar and sings and writes,” Lear said. “So I wind up at Foo Fighters concerts. I loved the experience. I don’t know what I think of the Foo Fighters, but I loved to be in a room with a mosh pit with young people and music that gets me moving.
“But you know something? I turned 80 last year, and it’s like I’m one of them (in the mosh pit). Nobody pays any attention to my age. They deal with me the way they deal with each other. I was in a mosh pit about two months ago and they started to push me around. This was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show.”
And whom did he prefer, the Peppers or the Fighters?
“I think I liked the Peppers more,” Lear replied. “I can’t tell you why. Maybe it was the evening and not the music. But the Peppers have a guitarist who is just amazing.”
