Wednesday, February 26, 2020

A Sonny Rollins interview

“This world is not what it’s cracked up to be”: Sonny Rollins, interviewed for The New York Times. The interview dwells mostly on matters of life and death, with many deeply Buddhist observations.

On an unrelated note, Rollins confesses that he never cottoned to the Rolling Stones, thinking them merely derivative of black music. He then tells this story:

“I do remember once I was in the supermarket up in Hudson, New York, and they were playing Top 40 records. I heard this song and thought, Who’s that guy? His playing struck a chord in me. Then I said, ‘Wait a minute, that’s me!’ It was my playing on one of those Rolling Stones records.”
Trivia: I noticed Rollins again invoking ice cream and sex as examples of fleeting, inconsequential pleasure.

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard)

[Rollins played with the Stones on Tattoo You, most famously on the single “Waiting on a Friend.”]

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