Lessons In Listening - Part 1
2 min read ⭑
At the weekend I rewatched Netflix’s The Defiant Ones, a four-part documentary focusing on the careers and partnership of record executive Jimmy Iovine and music producer Dr. Dre. Upon revisiting the series, I was reminded of how diverse the listening habits are of innovative artists, especially in the case of Dre, and while this may not have been the key takeaway for most viewers, to me it reiterated just how extensive and varied our music consumption has to be in order to create anything of any aesthetic merit.
In Episode 1 at 12:15, Dre is filmed singing along to the chorus of Nirvana’s ‘Stay Away’ from the band’s Nevermind album, proclaiming them to be his ‘favourite rock group of all time’. This is quickly followed by Dre playing a live version of Kraftwerk’s ‘Metal on Metal’, a piece originally released on the quartet’s seminal album Trans-Europe Express. Later in the same episode at 30:28, early live footage of a pre-N.W.A Dre is shown - dressed in full surgical gown and medical mask - mixing the track ‘Jive Rhythm Trax - 122 BPM’ with The Marvelettes’ classic Motown song ‘Please Mr. Postman’.
The true eclectic nature of Dre’s listening habits, however, are fully illuminated in Episode 4. At 22:40, he can be seen sitting at his piano without the knowledge that he's being filmed. He then proceeds to play Frédéric Chopin’s ‘Preludes, Op. 28: No. 4 in Em, Largo’ – a short yet emotionally-charged piece for solo piano. The intimate performance comes to an abrupt end when Dre discovers he’s being filmed, humorously telling the cameraman to ‘get the f*ck out of here’. (As an aside, I do wonder if Chopin would have resonated with Dre and Iovine’s entrepreneurial spirit, as it is said that one of the reasons the virtuoso composer wrote so frequently for solo piano was due to market demand: home pianos were becoming increasingly popular in the 19th century and required a suitable repertoire).
Creativity is about synthesising ideas, but synthesising ideas depends on having a universe of ideas to recombine in the first place. It’s listening therefore, deep listening, that equips the musician with the huge sea of motifs needed to produce original work. More on this in Part 2…
