Chris Caswell on Playing the GRAMMYs with Daft Punk and The Beatles
More than four decades into his career, writer/arranger Chris Caswell is still working like a young man, sometimes pulling all-nighters like he did at the GRAMMYs just a few weeks ago. There, Caswell performed in Daft Punk’s live appearance, and then for the taping of The Beatles tribute, which aired earlier this week.
Caswell is in essence, a background man. “Fame is just not a thing I like,” he says. “I just like the playing. That’s the fun part for me.”
Like his longtime friend and collaborator, songwriter Paul Williams (who accepted the GRAMMY for Best Album on behalf of Daft Punk this year) Caswell is the kind of of guy whose name you might not know, but whose work you have almost definitely heard.
He’s written themes songs for shows like Alvin and the Chipmunks, arranged and orchestrated for movies from The Muppets to Iron Man 2, performed with or led bands for artists like Stevie Wonder, Greg Allman, Spinal Tap, Bonnie Raitt, Wyclef Jean and Nas.
Most recently, he’s acted as M.D. for Garry Marshall’s Happy Days musical, and played an integral role in Bringing Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories to life.
On Playing the GRAMMYs with Daft Punk and The Beatles:
Kazz and Ringo
“It was kind of last minute. [Producer] Don Was called me the week before the Grammy’s to see if I could help out with The Beatles tribute. At first, he just had me doing “Photograph” for Ringo Starr. That song is filled with all of these great orchestra parts — there’s French horns and strings and tubular bells and flutes.
So [Was] said ‘Can you learn all those parts, divide it up across a couple of keyboards and play all of that?’ And of course I said yes! I’m not going to say ‘No, I don’t want to play with the Beatles.’ Are you kidding?
“He knew that I had to rehearse with Daft Punk and help with all the arrangements for their medley, so he said he’d work around it. But by the time he asked me to work on the whole Beatles tribute, it was Wednesday. The GRAMMYs were on Sunday, and the taping for the Beatles tribute was on Monday.
“So I’d drive to the studio to do a midnight-to-4AM rehearsal with Daft Punk, then sleep for a few hours and then wake up to rehearse for the Beatles tribute early in the morning. I had a little portable keyboard set up in my hotel room to work on the arrangements. It was pretty crazy, but it was all for great stuff.”
On Recording with Daft Punk:
“They wanted to take the electronic tracks that they had been doing and use real musicians to augment them. So they wanted me to bring in two rhythm sections: one from the East Coast and one from the West Coast. We had myself, James Genus and Omar Hakim on the East Coast, me Nathan East and John Robertson on the West Coast. And then we’d add on the guitarists: On the East Coast is Nile Rodgers, and on the West Coast Paul Jackson Jr.
Chris “Kazz” Caswell with half of Daft Punk
“They’d have us take eight or sixteen bars, play it one way the first time through, play it a second way the second time through, play it a third way the third time through — so they could pick between all those different feels.
“We might play along with those loops for up to 10 minutes, just kind of fooling around and improvising on it. By the time it went around 24, 25 times we’d be bringing in jazz and fusion feels and all kinds of things.
“When they called me up to finally hear the finished tracks, I was just blown away. They’d have taken a piano part I played the 28th time around, and follow it up with something I played the 10th time through. They put together these tracks just by pulling little bits and pieces from each session. It was very experimental.
“They were like that day by day — just so experimental. It was never all plotted out in advance. They would say ‘You know it would be great to have a big orchestra on this sound’, and it would suddenly turn into us getting a 60 or 70 piece orchestra, so big that we had to take the wall down between the A and B [rooms] at Capitol Studios, just to make it big enough. We would bring in a 15 or 20 piece children’s choir. And when I’d say ‘ Hey, we’re going into the studio with an Orchestra tomorrow, do you want to hear mockups? They’d just say ‘No, we trust you.’ Very seldom does that happen anymore!”
“I remember asking them about their helmets one day, and they told me they had been influenced by a movie called Phantom of the Paradise when they were kids and I said ‘are you kidding? Paul Williams did that, and we’re very good friends.’ They asked if we could arrange a meeting, so we had Paul come to the studio. And then they said “Maybe Paul can sing this song.”
They had him write lyrics to “Touch”. And I worked out a counter-melody that I thought maybe the strings could play. They started talking in French and when they were done, they said ‘We like that. That’s a better melody. Can we have Paul write to that instead?’ And by the end, I was credited as a co-writer too.”
“They’re great like that. Really open, honest. With them, it’s like nothing is set in stone ahead of time. And when we went to play the GRAMMYs, of course they didn’t want the show to sound just like the record!”
On Playing Music Every Day
“Music is like a psychiatrist. Maybe it’s strange, but sometimes, I like sitting down at the piano late at night with the lights off, and without looking, just start playing, not even knowing what key you’re in at first. You can come up with some really interesting things that way.
“The path to working in music seems a lot different now. When I was young, my whole thing was to just be playing as much as you can. To have people see you play, and let them know what you can do. It seems to me that there are a lot less places to play now. But on the other hand, you have the Internet and that’s a whole new way to play and get yourself heard.
“I think that you’ve got to keep in mind that no matter what: You have to do it because you love music so much that there’s nothing else you would rather do. Sure, I’ve done sessions for commercials when you’re playing something that’s going to end up behind someone pouring a cup of coffee up on the screen. There are things you might want to do even more, but as long as it was something that keeps me playing, that’s where I always wanted to be. Whatever it takes to keep playing, that’s what I’m going to do musically.”