Mars Needs Evil Princes. - Revision history

Spider of Destiny at 13:25, 25 April 2026

2026-04-25T13:25:57Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 15:58, 14 December 2021

2021-12-14T15:58:09Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 16:07, 10 September 2021

2021-09-10T16:07:19Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 23:32, 19 July 2021

2021-07-19T23:32:40Z

Spider of Destiny at 12:47, 23 January 2012

2012-01-23T12:47:53Z

Propellerkuh at 11:01, 4 March 2007

2007-03-04T11:01:58Z

Propellerkuh at 11:00, 4 March 2007

2007-03-04T11:00:59Z

Show changes

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:25, 25 April 2026
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	I think to be myself. It's really cool to be yourself. Also music is the greatest.		I think to be myself. It's really cool to be yourself. Also music is the greatest.
	[[Category:Bandmember Interviews]]		[[Category:Bandmember Interviews]]
		+	[[Category:1997]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:58, 14 December 2021
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−	Another one of those Evil Prince interviews, this time a chat with the exuberant Mr. Thomas Mars, recorded at his place on April 20, 1996. Should we take some of this with a pinch of salt? You decide! Mr. Jerry Fialka was also present and can be heard laughing periodically.	+	Another one of those Evil Prince interviews, this time a chat with the exuberant Mr. Thomas Mars, recorded at his place on April 20, 1996. Should we take some of this with a pinch of salt? You decide! [[Gerry Fialka\|Mr. Jerry Fialka]] was also present and can be heard laughing periodically.

	'''What was your musical background before [[Biography\|FZ]]?<br>		'''What was your musical background before [[Biography\|FZ]]?<br>

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 That was one of the good things I could bring to the table with Frank was all those classical styles. He loved to caricature all different kinds of classical music. Not a lot of players could do that. Many of the guys who played with Frank were either real rockers or jazzers. Not too many classical dudes. Peter's not a classical guy; he's fusion.
-'''Frank was well into technology. Can you tell us something about Frank's use of this and keyboards and the equipment you would use? He tried to replace horn sections with strings, like on '[[Yo Mama]]'.<br>
+'''Frank was well into technology. Can you tell us something about Frank's use of this and keyboards and the equipment you would use? He tried to replace horn sections with strings, like on '[[Yo' Mama]]'.<br>
 That section on that song, the whole instrumental reprise, is very dear to my heart. When we did that, I'll never forget that he just said 'Tommy, go wild. Do anything you want on this.' It was just me and him in the studio. It was like a composer for a movie giving an orchestrator an idea and saying 'Here's what the deal is'. I felt so esteemed by that. I knew that it was subject to his editorial control, but however ... I could do it. It was such a great thing to have all those little lines, all these things getting weaved in. Up to that point, I had never had a section of music that ever hit me as dramatically as that. That was sort of a pinnacle for me for a few years. Whenever I heard that, I thought it was the best thing I'd ever done musically. It's surprising; a lot of people know that piece and that section.

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 Another one of those Evil Prince interviews, this time a chat with the exuberant Mr. Thomas Mars, recorded at his place on April 20, 1996. Should we take some of this with a pinch of salt? You decide! Mr. Jerry Fialka was also present and can be heard laughing periodically.
-'''What was your musical background before [[Frank Zappa|FZ]]?<br>
+'''What was your musical background before [[Biography|FZ]]?<br>
 In my world of music, I really believe I came out of the womb, singing and beating. I was musical from the gate. Everything was music to me. My literal musical background is first in classical music, although I wanted to take piano lessons when I was five. My brother and sister were taking lessons and the woman that was teaching them said I had to wait until I was eight. At five, I was mimicking the method books my brother and sister were using. I could play them way better than they could.

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 In my world of music, I really believe I came out of the womb, singing and beating. I was musical from the gate. Everything was music to me. My literal musical background is first in classical music, although I wanted to take piano lessons when I was five. My brother and sister were taking lessons and the woman that was teaching them said I had to wait until I was eight. At five, I was mimicking the method books my brother and sister were using. I could play them way better than they could.
-When I was eight, and they said 'You have to take lessons now, Tommy', I didn't want to but I took them anyway until I was in high school. When I got to high school and started to play in bands, then I stopped music until I graduated and decided to go into music as a career and I learned four pieces to get into a conservatory and then I really started learning classical music. There I learned all the war horses, all the most difficult pieces to play. I was always also playing by ear so I picked up a lot of styles by ear. I was very influenced by the Animals, the Beatles, [[wikipedia:Art Tatum|Art Tatum]]; [[wikipedia:Béla Bartók|Bartok]] was a big influence. Then I graduated from the conservatory and started playing solo piano, classical music and jazz. I was sixteen when I learned how to read. I had a very good ear, so in grammar school if you told me how something went, I would sort of look at the page and listen to what you did and sort of read it. But when I went to Conservatory is when I learnt to read music. I acquired perfect pitch. I always had excellent relative pitch.
+When I was eight, and they said 'You have to take lessons now, Tommy', I didn't want to but I took them anyway until I was in high school. When I got to high school and started to play in bands, then I stopped music until I graduated and decided to go into music as a career and I learned four pieces to get into a conservatory and then I really started learning classical music. There I learned all the war horses, all the most difficult pieces to play. I was always also playing by ear so I picked up a lot of styles by ear. I was very influenced by the Animals, [[The Beatles]], [[wikipedia:Art Tatum|Art Tatum]]; [[Béla Bartók|Bartok]] was a big influence. Then I graduated from the conservatory and started playing solo piano, classical music and jazz. I was sixteen when I learned how to read. I had a very good ear, so in grammar school if you told me how something went, I would sort of look at the page and listen to what you did and sort of read it. But when I went to Conservatory is when I learnt to read music. I acquired perfect pitch. I always had excellent relative pitch.
 '''How did you like playing classical music as compared to jazz?<br>

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 That Vocoder had only two sounds on it: this heavenly angelic choir sort of sound and what we called the Ant Sound which had no vibrato and sounded very flat and monotone. That's what Frank liked on his voice, the ugly sound.
-When it came to strings, I built up a tremolo kind of sound which would reiterate itself. I could flick this switch and it would re-attack itself. I used to do it really fast, like a tremolo on a violin and play in time with that. I remember when we did the concert with [[L Shankar]] in 1981. Shankar and I had a little violin battle – I had a violin sound on the keyboard – and I was playing just as fast as he was. I would put this note in with the tremolo sound and then play piano, and Shankar would be looking wondering how I was doing that.
+When it came to strings, I built up a tremolo kind of sound which would reiterate itself. I could flick this switch and it would re-attack itself. I used to do it really fast, like a tremolo on a violin and play in time with that. I remember when we did the concert with [[L. Shankar]] in 1981. Shankar and I had a little violin battle – I had a violin sound on the keyboard – and I was playing just as fast as he was. I would put this note in with the tremolo sound and then play piano, and Shankar would be looking wondering how I was doing that.
 Another good story about technique comes from when we were playing '[[Inca Roads]]' in 1977. We were working on it and when it came to the fast mallet licks, I was wondering how the hell I was going to play it, though I didn't have to as it was only written for mallets. Everybody wanted to play all the licks all the time. I went home and looked at that sonofabitching lick and decided to play it with two hands. I'll never forget the look on Peter Wolf's face the next day when I played it. It's a snap with two hands, but it's difficult with one hand. Peter couldn't see me playing the piano with two hands and his mouth just dropped.