Joshua Redman

Jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman is touring to promote his new album, Timeless Tales (for Changing Times).

Q: You doing a lot of interviews?

A: I’d say only about 10% of my profession is making music. The rest is trying to get to the gig and make the gig happen.

Q: Saying gig is just so cool, isn’t it?

A: That’s why I became a jazz musician. You can’t really say you got a gig if you work on Wall Street.

Q: You play Eleanor Rigby on the album. Didn’t you learn from Frank Sinatra that covering Beatles songs is a mistake?

A: To me a good song is a good song, wherever it comes from.

Q: So Eleanor Rigby is one of your favorite songs?

A: Yeah, it is. But there are plenty of my favorite songs that would never have made it on this album. For example, I love Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. I wouldn’t have thought about touching that with a 1,000-ft. pole.

Q: Because it wouldn’t work, or because I’d be all over you?

A: You are all over me anyway. There are some songs that in the way they were originally played, they refuse to allow for any other interpretations.

Q: You’ve played with the Rolling Stones and Big Daddy Kane. Who was tougher?

A: They were all really cool. No one was really tough. With Big Daddy Kane we spent four hours in the studio before I even had to pick up my saxophone. But that wasn’t tough. That was just a waste of time.

Q: You can’t mess with Big Daddy Kane when he’s chillin’.

A: No. That definitely wasn’t my place. I waited for him to point, I played, and I got out of the studio.

Q: In fact, you probably shouldn’t have even said the part about wasting time.

A: Yeah. You shouldn’t print it.

–By Joel Stein