"It's hard to overlook the early Return to Forever or the Stanley Clarke debut solo recording, but.. again sentiment has taken over...but here is truly the FIRST guitarist to play fusion with a KILLER 'rock' guitar sound". - Steve Kahn

Bill Connors Equally adept at acoustic and electric guitar, he has successfully played jazz-rock, free and fusion material in the '70s and '80s. His best solos have been in the jazz-rock mode, where his use of distortion and electronics has been balanced by fine phrasing and intelligent solos. His great moment of fame occured when he was with Chick Corea's Return to Forever during 1973-74, recording the influential Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy. His decision to leave RTF to concentrate more on acoustic guitar may have been satisfying artistically but it cut short any chance he had at commercial success.

Previously he had played electric guitar with Mike Nock and Steve Swallow in San Francisco but his post-1974 work has been primarily acoustic, particularly in the 1970s when he recorded a series of atmospheric albums for ECM (including with Jan Garbarek). In the mid-'80s for Pathfinder Connors' music became more rock-oriented but those releases did not make much of an impact despite his talent. - Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

The liner notes to Bill Connor's "Assembler" re-release on Evidence, takenfrom an interview by Bill Milkowski in Down Beat, c.1994, state "Connors has not toured or recorded since 1987 and has no plans to undertake any serious projects in the near future." At this time, he was teaching and satisfied with his lot.

Recordings as a Leader:
1974 Theme to the Guardian (ECM)
1977 Of Mist and Melting (ECM)
1979 Swimming with a Hole in My Body (ECM)
1984 Step It! (Evidence)
1986 Double-Up (Evidence)
1987 Assembler (Evidence)

Also Appears on:
1949 Corea, Chick - Music Forever and Beyond: The Selec
1970 Garbarek, Jan - Works
1971 California Earthquake - California Earthquake
1972 Corea, Chick - Compact Jazz: Chick Corea
1972 Corea, Chick - Return to the Seventh Galaxy
1973 Return to Forever - Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy
1974 Clarke, Stanley - Stanley Clarke
1974 Bley, Paul - Quiet Song Guitar
1977 Konitz, Lee - Pyramid
1978 Garbarek, Jan - Photo with Blue Sky, White Cloud
1986 Gravine, Anita - Welcome to My Dream (Photography)
1991 Garbarek, Jan - Places
1993 Corea, Chick - Compact Jazz: The Seventies
1995 Piccolo, Greg - Acid Blue (Percussion)

"The reason I use a Les Paul is because it has a function. It doesn't have a traditional sound, but it's rapidly becoming a tradition."

So says Bill Connors, the dynamic young guitarist formerly with Chick Corea's Return To Forever. Bill says he uses an electric guitar as a whole other instrument. "Even when I'm actually playing it," he states, "I don't think of it as a guitar, because the sound I like to get from it is really more powerful than a guitar is capable of."

Bill uses his Les Paul almost exclusively, but he also has an Ovation acoustic-electric which he employs with and without amplification. The strings he chooses for the Ovation are D'Angelico acoustic light gauge, and the ones he favors for the Les Paul are Ernie Ball regular Slinky; he substitutes a .018 for the G string.

When asked about his amplification equipment, Connors smiles and says, "Oh, that's a question I get all the time. You see, I have a Hiwatt top -- which is really half an amp, the electrical part -- and then I use a Hiwatt bottom with four 12" speakers. I also use a Fender Twin Reverb. I don't have them running into one another, however, I just mix the sounds. Some of my other equipment includes a volume pedal, a phase shifter, and a four-range booster."

Bill is a Californian, raised in the San Fernando Valley. Though he has never studied guitar formally, his education in the instrument has been extensive, beginning when he was fourteen spending many hours accompanying records with his first guitar. "I was very inspired by electric music at that time," he says. "I was a heavy Rolling Stones glutton; that sound really captured me. So, right away I was learning all Keith Richards' solos."

For three years Connors was a "bedroom" guitarist, moving through all the then current influences -- Hendrix, Clapton, and many of the blues artists of the time. But eventually he found the confidence to go out into the world, and began gigging a little around the Los Angeles area.

Then a strange thing happened: "I'd been playing for about four years," he explains, "and suddenly had an overnight change. I didn't want to be a blues guitarist anymore. I began listening to people like Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, [bassist] Scott LaFaro, Miles Davis, [John] Coltrane -- anyone who had a 'jazz' label. Django Reinhardt really got to me. The first time I heard one of his records, I thought that was just what I wanted to be. He had all the fire, creativity, and energy that rock players have today. And the amazing purity of his melodies -- you just knew they came from a totally instinctive place."

He and Django differ however over the matter of electronics with Bill preferring the sound of the electric instrument. "I always wanted to use the electric guitar in a sophisticated context, like with Chick. I like to play jazz with that electric-rock sound. For me it's a lot closer to a horn than the traditional guitar, and that's what I love about it; I can sustain notes, get into different kinds of phrasing -- do things other instruments do naturally, only the guitar does it with the aid of technology. Electronic instruments are still very new and complex. People are still trying to figure out why a string, when amplified, sounds a certain way. And then again, every electric guitarist sounds completely different. That can be due to the kind of strings they use, or the pick. But the one redeeming factor about the uniqueness of electric guitar players is the musicians themselves."

One might suspect that since Bill is only 25 years old he is a part of the electric era and therefore has no difficulty relating to that sound, whereas some older musicians have trouble listening to, let alone playing, electric instruments. "Actually, I went through that phase, too," he counters. "Even though when I started out I was heavily into electric sounds, I gradually learned the other side of my instrument. For a while I was even in the same place of putting down electric musicians and rock music. But that was before I started tuning into the whole cultural meaning of this musical evolution in which we're involved."

Bill Connors is committed to the belief that music is meant to be *heard* to be enjoyed by the audience as well the performer. "It's much more rewarding to me to have other people take an active part in my music," he explains. "Most musicians who are developed to the point of being accepted artists have heard everything they play so often that it only begins to have meaning for them when it's put into a context where something else happens, like when other people are grooving with it."

Bill likes to look at music philosophically, to understand what is involved besides just sound. "People today are looking for more meaning. Of course, there's a spiritual trend right now, and musicians are very involved in it. I even see some older jazzmen changing, adapting themselves to the current ethos. I even think that the single element that I dig most is the strong desire to share the *feeling* of music. I can hardly believe how much music has matured for me, personally. Even before I was aware of it, I was playing in a spiritual way. I always heard it that way, only then I didn't know what the word 'spiritual' meant. All I knew was that when I had a successful venture with my music, I freed myself, became more extroverted. I'd be just smiling and laughing, and didn't know why. Sometimes when that would happen on stage, people would come up and compliment me. All I wanted to be was humble; as far as I was concerned I wasn't doing anything incredible -- I'm just God's musician."

Even being as young as he is, Bill has seen changes take place in the world of music. He recalls, "There was a time when a performer couldn't just be a person. When I first got into the rock scene, the whole business was somewhat akin to a Hollywood movie star trip. But like everything else in life, there are many stages of development, and that was just one; now we've moved on. People intrinsically understand that music comes from the level where we're all one -- rather like a catalyst. And it isn't just the music; there's a feeling that fans out from the stage, and it's really the audience that's creating this activity and feeding it back to the music. The thing that blows my mind, and keeps me totally absorbed in music is that there aren't that many people who really *understand* what's going on -- they just feel good. I consider myself blessed to be a musician, because I can take a hand in what's happening and keep it spreading."

Another of Bill's reasons for playing is just as spiritual. "Music gives us all an excuse to be what we really are. To me, it's like using drugs, only my fix is playing music. Sometimes, when I'm up there on stage I feel guilty, because I know I'm almost playing a trick on the audience; they think I'm doing something for *them*, but actually they are setting up a situation for me to have a giant excuse to totally leave my body."

Bill Connors is best known today for his stint with Chick Corea's Return To Forever. But he almost backed out of the audition because of fright. In 1971 he left Los Angeles with a band, studying Joe Pass books and listening to "every conceivable music and musician." After five months working in Sacramento, Connors returned to San Francisco. "Almost immediately," he remembers, "I found myself a part of The Fourth Way [the group that had been backing up saxist John Handy] -- my first real jazz band!"

The noted bassist Steve Swallow joined the group after Bill had been with them about five months. The two started jamming in each other's homes, then eventually formed a trio with drummer Glen Cronkite.

And then pianist Chick Corea came to town.

"A miracle!" Bill claims. "Chick was my hero. I wanted to be Chick Corea on guitar. I didn't know him, but whenever I really wanted to get off on music I'd play some of his piano solos and Return To Forever songs. I heard that Chick was looking for a guitarist. Steve encouraged me to call Chick, and though I was very nervous, I did, and he invited me to come over to the club where he was working and sit in. I was so scared that I almost turned him down. But after running around and saying to everyone, 'Guess who I'm going to play with tonight,' and everyone telling everyone else, all this energy was formulating -- and I took to my room and practiced my ass off."

That night, the fright totally disappeared. "The minute I got up on stage I had this feeling like I'd been preparing for this all my life. I was so relaxed that I felt as.though I was in my own living room. Chick and I played musical games -- he'd play these real simple lines and I'd be giving my interpretations of them, then go off into the Chick Corea 'outness.' I ended up in New York two weeks later."

But there is often a problem when wishes come true. Last April, after the band's tour of Europe and Japan, Bill quit the group. The musical direction seemed to him to be changing from what it was when Connors joined. He explains, "Everything started getting less aesthetic, more rock. Just too much like Mahavishnu (John McLaughlin). I was having trouble expressing myself the way I wanted to in that context."

Bill still considers Corea "one of my favorite musicians and greatest influences," but he admits to preferring the band's earlier direction, a direction that he says was evident even before the guitarist became a member.

Now living in Brooklyn, Bill Connors works occasional gigs with New York tenor player, Horace Arnold, but spends the bulk of his time writing music, practicing, and otherwise preparing for his first solo album. The record, unnamed as of this writing, should be released soon on the ECM label, and consists primarily of original acoustic guitar tunes.

Switching from Return To Forever to solo recording, switching from an emphasis on electric guitar to the sounds of the acoustic, switching from a high-powered public presence to the relative seclusion of his home, are all facets of the complex and highly talented young guitarist, Bill Connors.

"SOMETIMES I FEEL like I deserted my own boat," Bill Connors explains, surrounded by guitars in his loft in New York's Chelsea district. "When I got out of Return To Forever in 1974, I threw the concept of fusion out for myself -- I figured by '76 or '77 it'd be totally dead. But then all these guitarists came up sounding like me, doing things that I was trying to do. In the last two years, I've decided that there was something about what we were trying to do that I want to do again, that I *feel* again. Bad timing, huh?"

Whatever his sense of cultural timing, Bill Connors has been admired by aficionados and fellow players for his finely developed musical sense since he first broke on the national scene as a member of keyboardist/composer Chick Corea's pioneering fusion unit, Return To Forever. But although Bill's reputation was established on electric guitar, most of his work over the last 10 years has featured him exploring what is best termed third-stream guitar music, combining classical motifs with acoustic-oriented improvisation. However, with the release of his most recent album, "Step It", Connors has firmly committed himself to a rock beat and the searing, processed sound of his Charvel solidbody. "It's funny in a way," he adds. "It's like I came full circle."

For Connors, the first point of the circle lies in southern California, where he was born 34 years ago. Although initially drawn to music through blues-oriented rock in his mid teens, he eventually became aware of more complex musical forms: "Eric Clapton with Cream was just *so* inspired -- listening to him is like falling in love. His phrasing and sound just kill me. When I first heard [pianist] Bill Evans, I realized that a musician could *learn* about music. I got the impression that he really knew all the notes he was playing. It had a big impact on me because ever since then, I've been serious about my music. After hearing Joe Pass, I realized that sophistication could be applied to the guitar. It made me start dreaming about what it would be like if I knew as much about music as Joe Pass but could play it with a sound like Eric Clapton. It was another one of those impressions that I'm still trying to live up to."

In the early '70s, Connors moved to San Francisco, where he teamed with numerous top-flight musicians, including pianist Art Lande and bassist Steve Swallow. These efforts brought Bill to the attention of Corea, who was abandoning his Latin-flavored jazz in favor of something completely different. Before long, the guitarist was signed on with Return To Forever, which also featured bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White. But although his career took an enormous step forward, Bill's memories of the trailblazing fusion unit are bittersweet. "We were burning then," he recalls, "and getting into that band was one of those wonderful acknowledgements that you get once in a lifetime. But I was young and couldn't take certain disappointments, and Chick wanted the music to go more into a rock thing. It made me want to say to him, 'Look, I've got this idea about playing sophisticated music with the sound of Eric Clapton.'"

Bill continues, thoughtfully, "Chick had a lot ideas that were part of his involvement with Scientology. He got more demanding, and I wasn't allowed to control my own solos. I had no power in the music at all. Then, we'd receive written forms about what clothes we could wear, and graphic charts where we had to rate ourselves every night -- not by our standards, but his. Finally, we had to connect dots on a chart every night. I took all of it seriously because I had a lot of respect for Chick, but eventually I just felt screwed around. In the end, my only power was to quit." After leaving Corea, Connors explored the New York jazz and session scene, performing with people such as guitarist John Abercrombie and keyboardist Jan Hammer. "It was great,"he states, "because it wasn't this contrived thing in order to communicate to the audience. We were *playing* again and *learning* again, and it felt real good."

During this period, record dates with artists as diverse as vocalist Gene McDaniels and Stanley Clarke kept the guitarist's creative impulses occupied with a variety of challenges -- but not for long. "Around 1975, I'd decided to become a classical guitar player," he muses. "I did my first solo album in 1974, and just decided on the spur of the moment to do it all on acoustic. That was just such a contrast from blowing people's ears off with my 200-watt Marshall that it really started to capture me." A further impetus came with Connors' discovery of classical artist Julian Bream. "I was sitting with his album "20th Century Guitar" [RCA, LSC2964] -- a real classic -- and it has this piece by [German composer] Henze that I really loved. It was just getting to me, so I sat down for a couple of days and transcribed it -- on my steel-string guitar, with my funny pick-and-finger technique [laughs]. When I got it, it gave me so much pleasure that I said, 'Okay, I'm going to be a classical guitar player.' And that's what happened."

The *way* it happened, though, tells you about the kind of dedication Bill Connors has: "I bought a bunch of books and a classical guitar, and started with the C scale, playing 'i m i m' [index, middle, index, middle], etc. For about three years, I practiced eight hours a day: up early, play for five hours, take a break, and play for three more hours. I'd throw in some extra hours if I could. My reading sure improved after that. You've got to understand that I come from an unschooled background -- all my schooling is self-inflicted [laughs]. I like scales, technique, and intelligence, but they weren't *natural* for me. Being a blues player was natural for me, but it wasn't enough."

Frustrated by having to pay high New York rents while he tried to find time to woodshed, Connors moved to the West Coast. But as he intensely honed his classical skills, the limitations of his classical training became all too apparent. As he sums it up, "I'm not a good memory player at all. By the time I'd memorize something, I'd already be sick of it. Besides, I always kept wanting to improvise on it [laughs]. But I love the classical sound, and the technique is so intense that you just can't put it down."

When he finally did put his classical guitar down to pick up an electric again, it was only due to circumstances -- at first. After a year or so of totally improvised concerts "so draining you wouldn't believe it" on his nylon-string Hassenbachers and Velasquezes, and some performances with "new music" composers Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian, saxophonist Jan Garbarek asked the guitarist to join his band in 1981. "I just assumed I had to play electric," says the bemused Connors, "so I picked up a Les Paul -- right where I'd left off in '74." However, transferring his recently acquired classical technique to his new solidbody was not so easily accomplished: "I embarrassed myself for the first two weeks. When you play classical guitar, you lose all respect for the electric. But having to hear myself play crummy for a while shook me out of that attitude. It wasn't until over a year later, though, that I began to feel really comfortable on electric again, and I started to use a pick. I had to repractice and redevelop."

It was also during this period that he began putting together the music and musicians -- Dave Weckl on drums and Tom Kennedy on 5-string bass -- featured on his new album. The eight instrumental tunes on "Step It" mirror the range of Connors' musical knowledge. The chorused guitar intros are reminiscent of Steve Khan (who produced the LP) and John Abercrombie; the aching blues phrases sing with the expressiveness of early-to middle-period Clapton; the sudden note blizzards strike with the stark power of a John Coltrane sax solo. "Anybody could pin me easily enough if they wanted to," peculates the guitarist. "I'm just trying to pull together, in my mind, Eric Clapton and John Coltrane. Those two guys are it for me because they have that voice that speaks to you. When we recorded 'Twinkle' on the new album, I told the engineer I wanted a sound like Clapton's on the studio version of 'Spoonful' [Fresh Cream, RSO, 1-3009]." The British guitarist's influence on Connors' wrist and finger vibrato is amply displayed on "Cookies."

Connors' adroit use of a volume pedal, producing a virtually attackless sound on "A Pedal," is reminiscent of Andy Summers' work. "Police's "Synchronicity" [A&M, 3735] is the only rock album I've bought in the last five years," declares Connors. "It really floored me, especially the drummer [Stewart Copeland]. He's so creative and so clever and puts so much emotion into it. He really thinks about the music as a whole. All of them have so much creativity in what they do -- *that's* what I don't hear from jazz. That's why I don't think of my group as a jazz band -- no way."

On "Step It", Connors and friends achieve a cohesion that eludes many fusion players. In the hands of less group-oriented musicians, tunes like "A Pedal" or "Cookies" could degenerate into free-for-all games of dodgeball soloing; instead, the trio crafts coherent, musical statements. Bill comments, "Being creative is like what the Police do: Think of a note, then another note, then another note, until you've got a song. It doesn't mean anything to just be a good musician and play great 20-minute solos."

This attitude underlies Connors' carefully considered assessment of contemporary pop formats, such as heavy metal: "Van Halen is better than the rest of those guys because at least what he's chasing in his mind is farther ahead of what he's able to do, so where he falls back is much farther ahead of most heavy metal guitarists. But he *does* fall back. I wouldn't put him in the same league as Clapton. Van Halen doesn't have that voice, and half of what he plays is throwaway stuff that impresses people who don't understand the techniques. That doesn't mean anything to me. I can do a lot of what he does without using the karate [laughs]. But at the same time, I like him because he's clever and Van Halen is a fun band." He considers, then continues, "It's hard for me to come out of the jazz world and evaluate somebody like that, though, because in jazz we expect each other to be able to play changes, have decent time, have a little bit of creativity, have a harmonic understanding of music, and read -- we just *have* to. It's different with Clapton: he speaks to me because he's a soulful guy."

In his own driven way, Bill Connors is equally soulful. "I feel like a kid again," he concludes. "I'm still chasing the music. I haven't zeroed in on what I want to do, exactly, but it's going to take time. I'm looking for something that none of us has done -- putting together some decently rich music with a pretty solid rhythm and clear arrangements. I don't want it to be what people think of as fusion -- a lot of vamps with cute, forceful solos, a lot of double time, a lot of 9ths, and stuff like that. That's not what *I* like. Electronically, instruments are doing things that they never did before, and that intrigues me. To me, the guitar is now what the violin was: the primary singing voice, the strongest voice in the orchestra. That's what I'm working on. I'm not concerned about whether it's fusion or not."