Bad Plus Multiplies The Meaning Of 'Real Jazz'

A man sits behind the piano. Another picks up the upright bass, and another settles into the drum kit. They're jazz musicians, and that lineup -- the piano trio -- has been a mainstay of the music since its inception. Piano trios have produced some of the greatest music in the history of jazz, but one thing they have rarely produced is controversy.

But when the Bad Plus emerged four years ago, its music created an uproar among critics: Was this trio jazz's great new hope or a group of apostates whose rock covers were unworthy of inclusion in the genre? With the band's latest release, "Prog," due out Tuesday, the controversy is mostly behind it, but some purists continue to carp. This, after all, is a band that has covered Abba, Black Sabbath and the Pixies.

From the beginning, Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, drummer David King and bassist Reid Anderson -- who begin their latest tour tomorrow at the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland -- have carved out a singular path. And they make no apologies.

"Some people just feel like there's a manifesto with the absolute ingredients of what real jazz is," King says, "and I guess, if that's true to some people, then we're not real jazz."

On "Prog" the band has actually boosted the number of covers. They include a fairly straight reading of Burt Bacharach's "This Guy's in Love with You," a soulful interpretation of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and a full-tilt reinvention of David Bowie's "Life on Mars." What those who dismiss the Bad Plus fail to fully appreciate, though, is the remarkable composition skills at the group's core.

King and Anderson, both 36, have been friends since attending the same junior high in Minnesota, bonding as unabashed lovers of classic rock -- Led Zeppelin, Yes, the Who. Anderson later met Iverson, 34, while attending college in Wisconsin. The three of them played together exactly once, in Anderson's parents' living room.

They stayed in touch and occasionally got together over the next 10 years, but not as a trio. Anderson firmly established himself in the New York jazz scene and recorded albums under his own name. Iverson became musical director for the Mark Morris Dance Group. King played in various bands and did session work.

"It was 2000 when we had decided, man, the three of us should play," King recalls by phone from his home in Minneapolis. "We had gotten to be much more stable musicians and improvisers. And it was like an immediate connection we couldn't ignore."

When it was time to put together a set list for their first gig, they were more inclined to include classics of their generation, instead of the usual jazz standard fare. King and Anderson suggested Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- the primal anthem that launched the grunge movement -- and they were stunned when Iverson, who was mostly a strict jazz and classical scribe, admitted he had never heard it.

Their cover altered the original's shifting tempos to a simmering burn and re-imagined the explosive chorus with more minor-chord anguish. The track was the one that garnered much of the attention -- and some hackles -- on their 2003 Columbia debut, "These Are the Vistas," which also included a teasing, frenetic workout on Blondie's "Heart of Glass." The album's expansive sound came via rock-royalty sound engineer Tchad Blake (Sheryl Crow, Phish, Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel). For a jazz group debut, the band got an avalanche of press -- some of it from publications such as Newsweek and Esquire that had tuned out jazz ages ago. (Esquire's story came under this banner: "Can one album single-handedly make jazz relevant again?") And suddenly the three white guys from the Midwest with the head-scratching name were being hailed by some as the saviors of jazz. (The name, by the way, means absolutely nothing.)

The rock crowd took notice, too. The Bad Plus opened for Wilco. It played the prestigious Bonnaroo Rock festival. The trio would eventually play the 9:30 club, a few years after playing a partially filled room at Blues Alley. But all the acclaim also brought out the resentment and ire of prickly jazz gatekeepers.

Some critics couldn't get past the Nirvana cover. But was the Bad Plus doing anything more radical, really, than when John Coltrane recorded "My Favorite Things" from "The Sound of Music" in 1960? Other criticisms tended to focus on drummer King, who was seen as rocking out too much and too loudly: Why wasn't he swinging? (In fact, when Columbia A&R man Yves Beauvais first went to see the group, he walked out, complaining about King's clamorous bashing.)

Jazz Times put the group on the cover after its second album, "Give," in 2004, and in addition to the feature story let two writers wrestle with the very validity of the band's music. One was clearly a fan, while the other called Bad Plus "a one-joke movie whose premise runs thin all too quickly."

Could one band be both the future of jazz and the beginning of the music's end?

"We were all in our 30s when 'These Are the Vistas' came out," Iverson says. "I think if we had all been in our 20s, it would have been a lot harder. We had been around the block a bit. We're not like veterans of the music world exactly, but we at least had enough experience not to take anything too seriously. We just decided to keep our heads down and play the music."

On "Suspicious Activity?" in 2005, the band's original compositions dominated, with Anderson having established himself as one of the finest composers of his generation. His songs tend to start with a whisper of the simple, often melancholic melody, and then grow with greater and greater force, the same melody spinning round and round as Iverson and King help pound the tune into the ground. Yet the group always tunnels its way back to the song's original hush.

In the studio, the heart of the band's songbook comes from Anderson, but onstage King is the thundering engine you can't take your eyes off. Sometimes the drummer employs a kids' laser gun, a kitchen pot, or walkie-talkies for a little atmospheric static. On piano, Iverson alternates between waves of crashing chords and the jagged style of Thelonious Monk, letting single notes tumble out like marbles on a pegboard, all the while anchored by Anderson's luminous countermelodies on bass.

When they were ready to record what would become "Prog," they were dealing with a few shake-ups. They had left the famed Columbia label and took out a business loan to record the album themselves. Given the upheaval and mergers in the recording industry, with bands being dropped all the time, it was something of a preemptive move.

For the new batch of songs, the band ended up finding another rock legend to take the production reins. Tony Platt, who came to see the band in London, has worked with some of the biggest acts in rock, engineering AC/DC's heavy-metal juggernaut "Back in Black" in 1980.

The highlight of the "Prog" covers is the giddy celebration of Rush's "Tom Sawyer." Had Iverson heard this classic-rock staple?

"Uh, no."

But the real payoff here is Anderson's pulverizing exercise in time-signature mayhem on "Physical Cities." At the other extreme is the moving wistfulness of "Giant," set against Anderson's plaintive bass line and Iverson's ghostly phrasing .

The gig at College Park is the first of the tour behind the new album, and comes on the heels of the longest break the band has every taken -- a month. Typically, the group plays 150 to 200 shows a year. And with each gig, the old debates about the Bad Plus's music and its place in contemporary jazz seem to float farther away.

"It's like, we've stormed the castle. We feel the controversy about the band is a tired thing," King says. "We're doing what we do. Some people dig it, some don't."