Sitting down with John Payne, part 2

More from my chat with flautist/saxophonist John Payne, who gigged with Van Morrison at the Catacombs and then later appeared on Astral Weeks.

Payne on playing with Morrison and bassist Richard Davis during the recording of "Slim Slow Slider" ...

Then the producer said, "Okay, I want everyone in the control room except for Richard and John and Van." He just got the idea it should be sparse. And they put all this echo on the soprano sax so it doesn't even sound like a saxophone. It sounds like it's coming over the mountains. I don't know whose idea that was. And at the end, we just keep playing, instrumentally playing. It's about three or five minutes long. Just something at the end where we started going crazy. And then I can remember we walked back into the session, to the control room, the three of us, and there was dead silence, like no one said a word. Because it just had blown them away. It was just this moment, just something happened.

On what made Astral Weeks so unique ...

First of all, I don't know of anything where they got a bunch of jazzers and put them with a rock guy. But the rock guy was the guy who knew jazz and studied jazz and listened to jazz all his life. And he's a guy who phrases like a jazz musician. He never sings anything the same way twice. He improvises his rhythms and how he sings. So he could respond to it, yet it was still him. And none of these guys [the session musicians] ever played this stuff before. So there was that first moment of discovery.

On guitarist Jay Berliner and "Beside You" ...

That opening to "Beside You" ... They were fooling with it and he [Jay Berliner] said, "Wait a minute. I think I got an idea for the opening." He just made up that intro. And no one decided to play that with no rhythm. Notice there's no time, no one keeping time. They're just playing free through the whole thing and it just rolls around. That wasn't decided, it wasn't discussed. That's the one that drove me crazy in the control room. It just flipped me out it was so gorgeous. I just wanted to be out there so bad I could practically scream. It would have been so much fun.

On his flute playing in "Astral Weeks" ...

I don't want to sound egotistical, but I'm actually very proud of what I did on "Astral Weeks." I look at it now and I go, how did I have the maturity to play like that at 22? All I know, it's just instinct. I'm just way in the background, but if you listen to the lines and how I build in the stuff ... If you listen to the little lines, they all work. They work and they're all simple. I couldn't play that any better. I'm as proud of that as anything I've ever done—just artistically. Not just because it's a famous album.