He's always been a thorn in the side of the classical music establishment, and now Nigel Kennedy has done the unthinkable and released a jazz album. But jazz has always been in his blood, the violinist told Alfred Hickling shortly before cancelling his tour due to a broken arm
Nigel Kennedy is one of those people who never seems to get any older. He still swears a lot, shaves infrequently and remains loyal to the peculiar hedgehog haircut he has sported for the past 30 years. It comes as something of a surprise to discover that this year he will be 50. Yet there must be times when he wonders if he will ever outgrow his image as the bad boy of classical music, especially since he's currently grounded.
As the owner of a violin worth more than most people's homes, Kennedy is among those musicians who, the week of our meeting, find themselves unable to travel by plane owing to anti-terrorism restrictions that prevent valuable instruments being carried as hand luggage. "I mean, I'm not going to carry a f**king Guarneri in a clear polythene bag," he says.
Actually, transporting a priceless Cremonese instrument in a carrier bag seems precisely the kind of attention- seeking slovenliness Kennedy became famous for. Even today, he cultivates an air of carelessness, choosing to be interviewed amidst the chaotic shrubbery of his garden, where the first thing one notices, casually lying on a bench in the sun, is a violin baking beneath a thick coat of resin. It hasn't been wiped clean for months.
Kennedy has made no secret of his contempt for the London classical music scene, having declared on more than one occasion that he will never appear on a British concert platform again. These days he spends his time shuttling between his home in the Malvern Hills in the midlands of England, and the new base he has established in Cracow, with his Polish wife, Agnieska. Yet this current enforced stay has provided an opportunity to rediscover the delights of the capital.
"I've had a great time," he grins, "I went to some cricket, been to the footie, and heard some well-wicked jazz." Jazz is Kennedy's current passion, and it will perhaps come as no surprise to hear that he is about to fulfil a long-held ambition to release a jazz album. It was inevitable that a musician whose interests range from east European gypsy music to an album of Jimi Hendrix covers would get round to a jazz record sooner or later - yet it's hard not to associate the words "long-awaited" and "jazz project" with maturing musicians seeking to rationalise their dwindling popularity.
Kennedy is eager not to be seen to be falling into this trap. "I've been listening to jazz ever since I had it on underneath my pillow at the Menuhin School," he says, "and there have always been post-concert jams." Kennedy's CV indicates that he is far from a stranger to the form. He has already tackled it with his arrangement of Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige suite; and part of his passion for Cracow is explained by his regular appearances at the city's jazz clubs. Yet the most significant aspect of Kennedy's jazz recording is the pedigree behind it: the album marks his debut for Blue Note, the imprint that many consider to be the most fabled jazz label of all.
Blue Note was the label behind the golden age of bebop in the 1950s and 1960s, and Kennedy performs on the record alongside musicians who were present at some of the most revolutionary jazz sessions of all time. Bass player Ron Carter and drummer Jack DeJohnette provide a living link with history, having played with greats such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins. Blue Note veterans Joe Lovano and Kenny Werner also appear on saxophone and piano. "I just drew up a wish-list of all the cats who were still alive," Kennedy says, "and luckily for me, they said they were available."
THE ALBUM FEATURES Kennedy playing electric violin with a dry, vibrato-less tone on a selection of Blue Note standards interspersed with his own compositions. Most first-timers might have found it fairly daunting to record with such esteemed names, but Kennedy claims not to have been intimidated. "It's no harder than giving out instructions to the Berlin Philharmonic," he says, "and these guys are cool. It took us three days - everything went down in no more than three takes and not once did anyone ask for a lunch break." Perhaps Kennedy's ease is explained by the fact that, but for a slightly different set of circumstances, he might easily have pursued a jazz career. The standard biography relates that the young violinist was the protege of Yehudi Menuhin. What is less well-known is that Kennedy also caught the attention of the great jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, who he looked upon as his jazz godfather.
Although temperamentally and professionally polar opposites, Menuhin and Grappelli were close friends and recording partners, which left Kennedy ideally placed to absorb the influence of both. "Yehudi and Stephane were at the height of their powers when I got to hang out with them as a kid," he says. "One day I'd see Grappelli getting ready for a gig with his brandy and a spliff; on another it would be Menuhin with his muesli and his wife combing his hair." At first, it was relatively unproblematic to study the classical repertoire during the day and unwind with some jazz after hours, but Kennedy reached a significant turning point when Grappelli invited the 16-year-old prodigy to appear alongside him at New York's Carnegie Hall. At the time, Kennedy was being heavily courted by classical recording executives, and his teachers at the Julliard School of Music warned him that if he played in public with Grappelli, his classical career would be finished.
"I remember being backstage, with a bottle of whisky, trying to rationalise my decision," says Kennedy. "Eventually I got so pissed that I thought 'sod it' and went out there. What was I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn't play at Carnegie Hall with Stephane Grappelli?" Yet, supposing the Julliard professors had been right and Kennedy really had scuppered his classical career, would he have been content with a much less lucrative calling as a jazz musician? "Yeah, man. The basic difference between classical musicians and jazzmen is that, for the orchestral players, it's a job. For jazz players, it's an extension of their social lives." You could put this another way and say that classical musicians are expected to behave, whereas nobody minds if a jazz player goes off the rails a bit. And even though the violin has never been the most fundamental jazz instrument, it's worth noting that some of the greatest hell-raisers in jazz history have been fiddlers - figures such as the first amplified player, Stuff Smith, who was said to have taken the apron strings off the violin; or the notorious joker Joe Venuti, who once astonished a New York hostess by arranging a platter of salad vegetables around his penis.
"Yeah, I got to meet Venuti in New York, just before he died," says Kennedy. "He pulled out this Stradivarius and said, 'I bet my fiddle's f**king louder than yours.' It was, because he'd drilled a hole in it for a volume knob." It's stories such as these that make you think that if Kennedy had stuck to jazz he might have avoided a great deal of grief from critics who applauded his tone while abhorring his behaviour. "I suppose I took a bit of flak for taking the jazz attitude into the classical world. But so many people from the classical establishment are stuck in closets on top of their ivory towers. The great thing about Menuhin was that he wasn't like that, which was why he was such an admirer of Grappelli. If I learned anything from those two, it was the value of always keeping an open mind."
Kennedy was due to tour with his quintet of Polish jazz musicians, but that tour, including performances at this year's Guinness Jazz Festival on the bank holiday weekend and at the Pod in Dublin, had to be cancelled when he broke his arm this week. Those anticipating the violinist's return to the classical stage will have to wait a while longer. Kennedy's refusal to play with London orchestras is often cited as an example of his arrogance; he prefers to explain it in terms of frustrated perfectionism.
"It all comes down to the amount of rehearsal you get, or don't get, in Britain. I insist on three or four sessions prior to a concert, and orchestral administrators won't accommodate that. If I didn't care about getting it right I could do three concerts in the same amount of time and earn three times the money. But you can't do something properly in less time than it takes.
"If I were booked to play a gig on Boxing Day with the Berlin Philharmonic, you can be assured those guys will show up ready for work on Christmas morning. But the real issue is that the amount we pay musicians in Britain is a scandal. The average orchestral player has to take on three or four jobs to make a living. The members of the Berlin Philharmonic are well-paid enough to be able to take their culture seriously." You only have to spend a short time in Kennedy's company to realise that, for all his famed irreverence, he actually takes culture very seriously indeed. It's those who approach the arts in a falsely reverential fashion who are the real philistines, he claims. "The problem in Britain is that we don't see classical music as part of our root culture. So we approach it in this ridiculously gentrified manner, and play the music in an uptight fashion completely alien to the blokes who wrote it.
'I MEAN, BEETHOVEN and Mozart were two of the greatest geniuses who ever lived - but they also knew how to have a good time." So it's the people in black tie and tails who are the real impostors? "Exactly. It's like pretending to be German and over 200 years old - you end up looking like a pillock." This may seem a bit rich - Nigel Kennedy accusing the rest of the classical establishment of looking like pillocks. But he simply grins. "Listen, if a job requires someone to be a pillock, I'll do it." It's heartening to find that Kennedy has entered his 50th year having developed an ability to laugh at himself. There was a time when his outlandishness seemed merely a front for a different kind of pomposity, such as issuing his recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the directive "just listen", or his announcement that he wished to be known only by his surname.
But the older he becomes, the more consistent he seems. He chats genially about Martin O'Neill's appointment as manager of Aston Villa, reminding you that Kennedy was a die-hard long before it became fashionable for middle-class males to adopt unlikely teams. The truth is, the world needs its Nigel Kennedys, if only to keep the stuffed shirts on their toes. It would be a shame if he were to be sucked into into the standard career spiral of the maturing soloist, routinely re- recording the same handful of repertoire pieces over and over again.
"Can't think of anything worse," he says. "I've done the Elgar Violin Concerto twice, and the Four Seasons, of course. And I'd like to have another go at the Beethoven because I did it right f**king slow last time. But really, it's only critics and record company executives who give a shit about things like that. I just play what I feel like playing at the time. In fact, that's my definition of jazz - just play what it is you want to play."
Nigel Kennedy: The Blue Note Sessions is on Blue Note