Cris Cohen: Regarding your album “Green Chimneys: The Music of Thelonious Monk,” what are the challenges in playing pieces on the guitar that were created for the piano?

Andy Summers: Well, that's a good question. I guess the challenge is to make it sound authentic on the guitar, which specifically for me involved things like changing keys, which of course some people think is sacrilegious. I think that is a little purist. For example, a piece like “Round Midnight” was composed in the key of E flat minor, which is difficult on the... not difficult, but it doesn't give you a lot on the guitar in terms of the guitar voices. If you move it up one fret or half a step, you get into E minor, which is of course basically the key the guitar is in, and you’ve got a lot of open strings, a lot of very interesting dissonances and open voicings that you wouldn't get in E flat minor. So it starts to really sound like a guitar piece then. It can sound a lot more beautiful, actually. There's a lot of stuff you can do, which is not available in E flat minor. 
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Stanton Moore of Galactic on the instructional videos and live streams he has been releasing - "I've come to realize that yes, there is an abundance of drumming information out there. There's an abundance of online teachers and videos and websites. What I want to do is make myself available to the people who decide that I'm their guy. That they want to learn what I have to offer. If they want to learn from a guy who has studied brushes with Jeff Hamilton, but has also played double drums with Zigaboo Modeliste, but who also has learned from Shannon Powell, Herlin Riley, Johnny Vidacovich, and has actually spent 25 years on the road touring, then I'm your guy. It's not a competition thing. I love doing it. I love when I can present something to somebody in a way that makes the light bulb go off and I know that I've helped them to maybe be a better musician. I also love when they tell me, 'Man, that thing that you wrote… I worked on it for months and months and months. And then my band noticed that I had become a better drummer. And then that made me happier, made me more pleasant to be around.' That's why I get into this."
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Chris Fryar of the Zac Brown Band:  On “The Grohl Seessions” with the song “Let It Rain,” Dave Grohl actually played drums on that one. He wanted to play drums on one of the tracks and I was more than happy to let him play. (“Let It Rain” was) the one he chose. Now that same week, the guys went and performed at the CMA Awards in Nashville. And they wanted Dave to perform with them. He said, “Well, only if I get to play drums.” And everybody just looked at me. I'm like, “I'm cool. I'll cheer you on. That would be awesome.” And so it was kind of comical in that Dave had to learn all of my parts from “Day For The Dead,” which was the song they played on CMA awards. And then I had to turn around and learn all of his drum parts from “Let It Rain” to be played out on the live tour.
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Normally I edit myself out of anything that runs on my clients' properties. This video with John Papa Gros was an exception. We agreed that the question / set-up needed to be included.
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From the archives, an interview I did with Andy Summers of The Police back in 1999. We discussed:
- His solo album "Green Chimneys: The Music of Thelonious Monk"
- Playing songs on the guitar that were created for the piano
- Internalizing the Thelonious Monk repertoire 
- Why he mixed the album twice
- Getting Sting to sing on “Round Midnight”
- Jazz guitar versus rock guitar
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Huey Lewis - "Once you have the song, how it's handled, how it wants to be recorded and produced, is an interesting thing. Because it's very easy to hear a great song in your head and then lose it while you're trying to record it. The key is to try to stay true to that song. Let the song kind of dictate how it wants to be produced and how it wants to sound."
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​Cris Cohen: You talked about how, if you know her, if you're in her circle, Patty will eventually write something about you and be brutally honest about it. Were you cool with that from moment one? Or was it odd the first time it happened to you?

Dwight Baker of The Wind and The Wave: I will say that it doesn't happen to me as much, but to be a friend of hers or her husband, who is a hell of a man, because he, his name, or his personage are in those songs a lot. I think he's had to be a pretty strong person. I think they've done some couples therapy about lyrics that she's written before. I don't know if I said that in the interview you saw, but I've said after she's presented a lyric, "Are you sure you want to sing that? You are going to have to have a real conversation with at least two people after singing that." 

And she's just like, "I can't do it any other way. This is the way I do it." 

Speak your truth.
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Cris Cohen: I read in another interview you did where you said, “I have a philosophy that every single note I play matters.” Does that ever get in the way of seeing the big picture? Because it sounds like, if you go down that road, you could get really hyper-focused and miss some of the grand scheme of things.

Mark Schulman, drummer for P!nk: That's a fantastic question. But remember what I said earlier: First and foremost, I'm there to be of service. It's funny, because people describe what it is like when you are playing on stage. It's this sort of hyper-awareness where you are totally present and foreshadowing the future, paying attention to everything you do, as well as really paying attention to what everybody else does. I am so acutely aware of everybody else. That's one of the reasons why I get the gigs that I've gotten is because of my awareness of others. So it's this hybrid of me paying attention to the nuances of what I play and paying attention to every little nuance so I can play off of everybody else and respond or change or shift or whatever needs to happen. Because I'm there to be of service first. 
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​Matt Starr, drummer for Ace Frehley and Mr Big - "I wanted the drums to sound the way I felt. When I listened to records by KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, AC/DC, and Iron Maiden, which was the first stuff I was influenced by, the drums sounded massive and super powerful."
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Professor Louie of clients Professor Louie & The Crowmatix: When we record an album, we do everything live, everyone playing at the same time. There's no recording people one at a time on this kind of work. It won't work. You might get a great record technically, but there's something special in a live recording, a communication that you try to get. And if everybody's playing to the vocal, that means all the music is wrapping around that vocal. As soon as you start over-dubbing that vocal, the music has nothing to do with that, because the guys didn't play to that vocal. So we do everything live. 
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