Author Philip Watson on Writing ‘Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer’

By Bill Milkowski I Jul. 19, 2022

Remarkably comprehensive and exhaustively researched, Philip Watson’s Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer (Faber Books) is the definitive biography on “The Guitarist Who Changed The Sound of American Music,” as the subhead states. Completed over seven years, Watson consolidated so much information, gathered so many testimonies and connected so many dots in this admirable undertaking that it’s hard to believe it’s the Irish scribe’s first published book.

“The biography has been gestating for quite some time,” explained the Dublin-based author, a former deputy editor at GQ and editor-at-large at Esquire in the U.K. “The germ of this book has been forming somewhere in my head for the past 35 years or more — ever since I first met Bill Frisell and heard him play live in the ’80s. Things started to get more concrete, however, in 2014, when Bill and I first sat down to meaningfully discuss the idea at that year’s Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland. Bill said no at first. And then, after we’d worked out a few details about editorial independence and the amount of access he could realistically give me, he said yes. And I first began interviewing people at the beginning of 2015.”

Watson praises Frisell’s singular vision and highly individual sound, calling him a “quietly revolutionary” guitar hero who has been a “vastly transformative and unifying force.” The “Beautiful Dreamer” in the book’s title, it turns out, is an apt description. Not only was it the name of the Stephen Foster song he remembers his mother singing around the house when he was a kid (his Rosebud?), the word dream also pops up in a number of Frisell compositions, from “Like Dreams Do” to “Dream On,” “Shutter Dream” and “Blues Dream,” the latter the title track to his 2001 Nonesuch album.

The book opens with a description of a particularly telling dream the guitarist had 30 years ago that has stayed with him about hearing a wonderful sound that is impossible to describe. “It’s every piece of music he has imagined or heard, coexisting and playing simultaneously,” Watson writes of Frisell, who would spend his entire career searching for that elusive sound. It’s a process that Frisell calls, “a glimpse of something to strive for … something I know is there just a little bit beyond my grasp. But that’s what keeps me going, every day, every time I play.”

When Frisell began his ongoing collaboration with Charles Lloyd in 2013, he commented at the time, “I just can’t even believe I’m getting to do some of these things. It’s like I woke up in some unbelievable dream.”

There’s that word again.

Watson lays out the timeline, tracing Frisell’s early days with clarinet lessons in elementary school, buying his first electric guitar (a Fender Mustang) at age 13, later winning a high school battle of the bands and playing Wes Montgomery’s “Bumpin’ On Sunset” in his school auditorium. He catalogs the guitarist’s initial studies with Dale Brunning in Denver, then Johnny Smith in Greeley, Colorado, then Jim Hall in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. He covers in great detail Frisell’s time at the Berklee College of Music and his eventual emergence as a kind of ECM house guitarist, appearing on albums by Eberhard Weber, Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen and Paul Motian before debuting as a leader with 1982’s In Line. He systematically documents the subsequent recordings in Frisell’s expansive discography, up to his most recent Blue Note release, 2020’s Valentine.

More importantly, Watson examines what makes Frisell tick, most effectively done in a chapter titled “Raised By Deer.” By drawing comparisons between Bill’s slow, halting almost stammering way of speaking and his idiosyncratic approach to guitar that puts a premium on space between the notes, and by identifying a steely determination that lurks beneath the fragile voice and childlike sense of wonder he has about the music, the author keenly connects the dots. And he admits that he had to adapt his own methodology to suit Frisell’s inherently eccentric approach to the interview process.

“As soon as we sat down for the first of our many long interview sessions,” he recalled, “I realized that I had to adapt, revise my expectations, slow down to his pace, settle myself, tune in, respect the silences, resist filling in or finishing off. That was when the dots started to appear and connect.”

Throughout the richly detailed book, Watson recreates telling scenes from the road while conducting revealing interviews with Frisell’s wife, artist Carole d’Inverno, their daughter Monica, Bill’s brother Bob, road manager Claudia Engelhart and key bandmates (including the late cornetist Ron Miles) that further reveal his character. He even traces Frisell’s nature back to his biochemist father’s Swedish disposition.

Watson mentioned that he did come away with a number of lessons learned from this undertaking.

“One clear lesson and reminder: to listen with your ears, not your mouth,” he explained. “I’ve also taken inspiration from the way Bill attempts to move through the world with genuine modesty, generosity and integrity.” DB