The Jan Hammer Interview

When the Cage Came Down
by Jan Hammer
​When I was growing up in Prague, my mother was a jazz singer. She was forbidden to sing songs that were in English. People were quite persecuted, not allowed to perform, not allowed to travel out of the country. The government felt jazz was a capitalist, subversive form of art.
​In the early 1960s, the country started opening up a bit more. People like Louis Armstrong wound up visiting and playing in Prague. That combined with Willis Conover’s jazz hour on Voice of America really had a large role in open-ing up our ears in Eastern Europe. That created the wave of young musicians who eventually grew up and came to the States.
​I first moved to Munich, playing in a coffee house with a band, and playing around town doing all kinds of studio sessions. I got there two or three months before the Russians came to visit Prague, although my parents still lived there when “the cage” came down. We were planning on going to the United States in the fall, but for a while they weren’t sure if they were going to get out at all. One day they somehow caught a train out of Prague and wound up staying with me in Munich.
​I had a scholarship to go to the Berklee College of Music, but I had no idea I would be leaving my home country and not coming back for a long time. Initially, I was on my own, no money, so I had to find any gig available. I would play gigs on a boat going through Boston Harbor. Eventually, through Berklee, which was a hotbed of musical activity at that time, I met lots and lots of musicians, which was the most important thing about the experience-more so than the school itself.
​As a kid, I was playing drums on the side. I was brought up classically trained on piano and all official. But any free chance I’d get, I’d set up my little homemade kit and play along with American jazz records. By the time I got here, I guess I was good enough, because I played drums with Jeremy Steig, Glen Moore, and Paul Bley. I played double drums with Michael Shrieve on Love Devotion Surrender by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin. Billy Cobham played on some things; some things Don Alias played on.
​I met Gene Perla when he was with Nina Simone, and she was going through one piano player a week. We met at some friends’ house and played. He suggested, “Why don’t you try out and, if it works, come on the tour?” Of course, I tried out and went on the tour.