Jose took a drag on his cigarette, and said, “We have much work to do.” I felt this cold finger of fear go up my back. The tip should have been when he showed me the ten new guitar tuners he bought in Madrid. “Here, Bob. Here’s a tuner.” Jose’s a serious composer, and takes music very seriously. For me it’s always been a means to an end. Put yourself through art school, pay the rent, get down the road.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was affording me the status of a visiting writer, because he comes from a literary family. And so he was taking me more seriously than I was. At first, we just jammed and he worked out some pieces. I figured the whole thing would just be sitting around a table and banging on a few bongos. He said, “Oh no, you have to meet some friends of mine.” Of course, these were the great musicians in Cuba. The best horn players in town, best guitar players. He afforded the whole project a lot of dignity.
ND: How long did the recording last?
BN: I was in Cuba for ten or twelve days. But we did the actual recording in two and a half days. It was alive, you know. I was surrounded by these incredible players. I was the weak link in the chain, which is the way I like it.
ND: Were the musical differences hard to overcome?
BN: Silvia Rodriguez, Jose’s wife, she was the co-producer, and we’d get done with a song, and I’d be like, “Let’s do the next one,” and she’d say, “No, no. Jose wants to get the percussion part perfect.” That was the first time I ever realized there was perfection in percussion.
In the end, I never went to the beach, never went diving. When it was over we sat in his backyard eating a mango, freshly picked. Jose said, “Bob, I know two things. One, we have made something that no one has ever made before. And two, I am very, very tired.” I realized how stressed he was.
These songs weren’t their form. They can play what’s called descarga. But it’s hard for them to do simple chords, and it was impossible for me to play their music. I don’t have the chops. These great musicians had as much trouble with that jam at end of the album as I’d have playing salsa. It was contrary to the way they play, to approach these songs. But in that sense it was a true melding of two separate styles.
III. THAT FEELING OF WIND ON THE MALECON
ND: The opening and closing theme, “Havana Midnight”, and its evocation of the Malecon promenade, captures the city wonderfully.
BN: It’s like trying to take a picture and getting it on tape. I wrote that song as a gift for Jose Maria, as if to say, this isn’t going to be as hard as you think. Initially, he gave it a really rhythmic approach, and I wished I taped that version. He told me, “You know, you’ve written what we call a havanera.” I said, “What’s a havanera?” He said, “When people move away from Havana, they write these songs of longing, of missing Havana.” It’s like New Yorkers. They can’t imagine living anywhere else. All those people who’ve gone to Miami, they want to get back and have Havana for themselves. And the people in Havana, they don’t want to leave.
I just tried to be evocative of the place. You know, that feeling of wind on the Malecon. But I wrote most of it on the way there. I messed around with it at home and then pretty much finished it on the airplane.
ND: Were there any songs you wrote while you were in Cuba?
BN: “Don Quixote, Don Simpson And Me”. Cervantes is known as the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and so it was my homage to Jose Maria’s literary household. It’s also my metaphorical take on Cuba. What it was like and what it will be like, whether or not it will end up a Cu-Vegas. But one of the great things about this project is that I never had to deal with politics. It was a pure art project. There was no money involved. That blew my mind. But I’ve always been fortunate in that way, to make art records, not to be in the commercial recording business, not to have to sell records.
ND: But it’s almost impossible for people in this country to think of Cuba, except in political terms.
BN: That’s a lot of special interests driving that. It sure as hell isn’t humanitarian interests, is it? What has this father done not to deserve his kid [Elian Gonzalez] back? As far as this record is concerned, it’s a blessing that I didn’t have to deal with political issues. It’s one thing if you write about the Titanic going down, or if you’re Lightnin’ Hopkins writing about John Glenn, that’s one kind of time-referential thing. But on the other hand, when you listen to great bluegrass or country songs, you don’t hear Hank Williams singing about 1949. You hear him sing about common human situations. That’s what this project was like.
IV. YOU DON’T MAKE ANY MONEY, BUT YOU HAVE FREEDOM
ND: At the center of the album is “The Call”, a lyrical piece about musical friendships. Is there a story behind that song?
BN: The song doesn’t refer to anybody specifically. There are people who hear it and think it’s about them, sort of like “You’re So Vain” or something. I don’t intellectualize songs when I write them. I’m not professional. I think of my songs as outsider art. I can’t seem to write about things I don’t know about, and I can’t seem to write any hits, not that I try. I come from a tradition of making up songs onstage. I never had any material or stage show.
When I was going to art school, being a guitar hustler, I’d just go onstage and make up songs about what was happening in the club or on the street or in my mind, or ripping off somebody’s melody. The songs just blurred out, and that’s what happened in Havana. They get refined, but they still just have to come. Like a good painting, a good song should keep revealing itself. The more you listen to it, the more you should hear.
ND: Does your informal approach to songwriting lend itself to that?
BN: I don’t know. In our society the tradeoff for making art is that you don’t make any money, but you have freedom. That’s not a complaint. What it affords me is the freedom to write songs about anything I feel like writing about. We all know about the unfairness of the world, but I never felt the need to cover ground other people were already covering. I never had to do certain things, or write certain things. If “Havana Midnight” was evocative of the place, then it’s a success for me. If it made you nostalgic, then it’s a successful piece of art.
