33% minutes with...Don Was

Bassist, producer, and filmmaker Don Was was born Don Edward Fagenson in Detroit in 1952. With school friend David Weiss he enjoyed his first success in Was (Not Was) when they hit the UK  Top 10 with 1987’s Walk The Dinosaur.

- Lois Wilson

Now a noted producer, he has worked with artists including Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Ziggy Marley and The Rolling Stones. He also directed and produced the 1995 Brian Wilson documentary I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times and, since 2002, he’s been at the helm of Blue Note Records. He is also the bassist in Wolf Bros, the Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir’s band.

Do you have to pinch yourself when you remember you are President of Blue Note?

There are at least two moments in every day when it hits me that I’ve got the best job in the world. I got my first Blue Note record in 1966 and it was a lifestyle choice. As a teenager I defined myself through those Blue Note records. Now I’m the president I love it. I take the responsibility with it very seriously. I know how much the music means.

That first Blue Note record you bought was Joe Henderson’s Mode For Joe, wasn’t it?

That’s right. My mum was making me run errands with her, and I was being a crappy 14-year-old asshole, so she left me in the car with the keys and told me to play with the radio. So, I found the Detroit jazz station and tuned in just as the saxophone solo on Mode For Joe started: it’s at 1 minute and 26 seconds. And he’s letting out cries of anguish and in my 14-year-old way I related to it; the message that came through was you’ve got to groove in the face of adversity. When my mum got back to the car, I was nice again. I did a 180 turn because of the music. I went and bought it and then got an FM radio so I could listen to the jazz station all the time. I soon discovered that most of the records I was really digging were on Blue Note, this little label in New York City, and I started collecting them.