ABOUT
JOHN NOVELLO
keyboardist
• composer
•
author
•
music educator
•
producer
Read John's BIO
I’m
not much for the usual pretentious politically correct bios
that publicists write for artists so I decided to write my own
bio and wax some humor and philosophy and at the same time tell
you what I’ve been up to so far this life time. Please
do not take me seriously as I sure don’t.
I was hanging out in the Spirit Universe Between Lives Area
Waiting Zone contemplating with my spirit advisors what script
I was going to write for my next journey into the love - hate
- war - peace - male - female – greed – money -
sex - have-to-make-a-living–and-pay–taxes - physical
universe when all of a sudden it came to me: Why not go to Earth
(there are other planet options but none have a dichotomy such
as Kenny G and Miles Davis both being heralded as the greatest
jazz instrumentalists of all time which puzzled me) and incarnate
into a biological unit in an all American hamburg town such
as Erie, Pa which was off the cross roads of success and had
little support of the arts. That would indeed be a challenge
and could be a catalyst to learn many spiritual lessons once
I forgot who I really was. The veil of amnesia was a necessary
part of every incarnation as otherwise how else would one come
back lifetime after lifetime and be able to start anew. The
overlapping identities and experiences would be totally confusing.
It would be like trying to play chess with one’s self
which is impossible unless you could forget your last move and
your future intentions. Anyway…I thought this would be
quite a challenge. I’ll hide in this mistake by the lake
(Erie, Pa) and see if I can still manage to learn life’s
more important lessons. Sounds easy when your on the Spirit
side but once you incarnate… quite a different story!
I had observed that most everybody was pretty robotic in this
neck of the woods. They never followed their dreams but instead
were content to a) get a 9 to 5 job that had its security, steady
pay check, benefits, sick days and vacations, b) come home after
a hard day’s work and not only read the paper, tabloids
and watch TV but actually believe what they read and saw, c)
play bingo and the lotto, d) glibly confess their bad deeds(sins)
not because they knew they were wrong but because they were
afraid of punishment in the afterlife. They made donations to
appease their souls but then went right ahead and committed
the same “sins” again and again with no lasting
realizations. Then if that didn’t do them in and it usually
did, they’d e) go to doctors and/or psychiatrists who
hooked them on prescriptions drugs( part of the conspiracy of
the huge pharmaceutical companies… nah they’re very
altruistic!) for anything and everything so they could either
numb their awareness which gives one a false sense of temporary
happiness and/or be free from pain until they got fat and inactive
and eventually developed Cancer or Alzheimer’s or had
a heart attack or a stroke and either died or had to give up
all their money to a greedy nursing home who really wanted to
love and care for them. And now “they” have a new
insanity being disseminated-where if kids were found to ask
too many questions and be too active in school, well then they
are suffering from a disease (ADD Syndrome - a made-up syndrome
of course) and they should be on drugs too. Why not ? Their
parents were!
I figured if I could figure my way out of this sea of lies con
job then I would really learn life’s important lessons
and graduate (death) summa cum laude back to the Spirit Dimension.
What a challenge.
So on Jan 31, 1948 in Erie, Pa at Hammot Hospital after careful
planning, I took over bio unit ID Tag John Novello Jr, agreed
to the total veil of amnesia which is part of any incarnation
contract, got a swat on the ass to welcome me to this dimension
(lucky me) and began spirit boot camp once again. My first three
years were pretty robotic and I fully was duped that I indeed
was this baby bio unit John Novello Jr. I cried and drooled
and ate and slept and shit my pants and everything. (Adult bio
units - spirit/mind/body machines - always assume babies are
so sweet, innocent and helpless but hmm… if they only
knew they were immortal spirits like the rest of us simply reoccupying
a brand new bio unit and getting used to its sensations and
motor controls etc.) But when I was three years old, my spirit
muscles started to flex a little.. not as good by the way as
my friend Mozart’s flexed when he was three, but at least
they flexed. I happened to be in front of the TV (thanks to
inventor Philo T Franswarth) and I saw Dick Contino, the famed
accordionist, playing Lady of Spain on The Lawrence Welk Show.
I screamed to my parents and pointed to the screen and they
thought I meant that I wanted to play the accordion. What I
had meant was I wanted to play the keyboard (organ to be exact)
as I had been very successful at this in other life times and
I guess I was beginning to penetrate the veil of amnesia (spirit
muscle flex) and rise to the challenges my new script had created
for me. My parents God love them thought that I wanted to play
the accordion and since I wasn’t articulate and stubborn
enough at 3, I did just that. But instead of getting a regular
squeeze box teacher, I was fortunate enough (part of the script
in hindsight) to study from Basil Ronzitti, a good friend from
the spirit universe, who actually wrote brilliant accordion
transcriptions of serious composers from Bach to Schoenberg
which exposed me to great music at an early age. I played believe
it or not in an accordion chamber group and it was quite an
experience.
Basil entered me into a national accordion competition and I
came in second place only because my mind went blank playing
a 22 page Rhapsody and I improvised my way through the dilemma
until I remembered where I was. One of the Judges wrote in red
on my music “nice job of improvisation. You should consider
a career in jazz.” So that part of the script led me into
asking Basil about jazz and off the deep end I went! But one
day I heard a bare-murmur-to-primal-wail absolutely righteous
sound. What the hell was this? It was a Hammond B3 organ and
little did I know that I caught the “organic” virus
and have been infected ever since! To those who haven’t
been infected either as a player or a listener, I invite you
to research just a fraction of the artists and groups that have
used this unique instrument – the Hammond/Leslie combination.
I put a couple of bands together while I was hanging in dreary
Erie and one of them Symon Grace & The Tuesday Blues got
discovered by famed producer Roger Karshner from the band The
Outsiders. We got signed instantly and released a single entitled
'You Won’t Get me Workin' which went to number 7 on the
East Coast. All looked too simple but I guess that wasn’t
the lesson I was supposed to learn at this time. The lead singer
got drafted and the record company dropped us like a hot potato
when they found out he was unavailable. The resultant loss and
depression was so intense that it motivated me to discard “commercial
music”. I then formed a progressive organ trio called
C.J. Bri and wrote all original music. Boy was that fun. I really
started studying all the great cats: Jimmy Smith, Keith Emerson,
Bryan Auger, Keith Emerson, Peter Robinson from Quatermass,
Jack McDuff, Larry Young, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Herbie
Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Al Cooper, Matthew Fisher, of Procol Harum
Oscar Peterson, Mark Stein, Felix Cavilier, Chester Thompson,
Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins, Jan Hammer, Lee Michaels etc.
Wrote some good shit if I do say so myself but I just couldn’t
get that band a national deal and so after studying some serious
composition from Dr. Paul Martin at Edinboro University (another
sweet spirit friend who just made his transition), I moved to
Boston to further study my craft and hang out with other obsessed
musicians. Who would have thought that 25 years later in Los
Angeles I would revisit this project with different players….
This time the band was called Niacin!
I guess the lesson was never give up and follow your heart and
passion, huh?
While in Boston I studied composing and arranging, synth programming,
jazz improvisation from Gary Burton, Ray Santisi and Charlie
Banacos during the day and at night I played in strip clubs
playing standards behind strippers. (Hey, it was tough but somebody
had to do it!:) At one of the strip clubs I met another incredible
spirit named Gary Peterson who was and still is an absolute
m… f…. organist. I’d go down and sit at the
bar and watch this cat play especially his pedal work and ignored
all the naked chicks. They all thought I was gay until I started
a relationship with one of the them. This was really a fun time
of my journey as I studied music all day, played it all night
and had a great view if I do say so myself! About this time
my spirit muscles were beginning to really exercise and I was
seriously interested in philosophy especially if it helped my
playing and composing. I eventually through a friend and through
a communication I had with Chick Corea discovered Scientology
which is an applied religious philosophy. Man.... this accelerated
my spiritual learning curve into warp drive and my playing along
with it! My inner voice which I had learned to really trust
was serving me well and now it was saying "It's time to
move to Los Angeles" and so away I went.
No sooner than I arrived in the City of the Angeles did I meet
my soul mate Gloria Rusch and get a big gig with a new disco
band (like we needed another one!) called A Taste of Honey!
Within a few short months we had the number #1 song in the world
Boogie Oogie Oogie! Boy was that wild. One minute I was broke
and then rich and famous and it wasn’t even music that
I liked and boy was I f…. up!. “Did I write this
part of the script?” I thought to myself. There must be
a lesson here but it was escaping me at the time. Anyway that
gig led to many other gigs with Donna Summer, Manhattan Transfer,
Ramsey Lewis, Edgar Winter, Ritchie Cole, Chick Corea,…
now there’s a talented muther and what a great dude. I
wrote him a letter one day from an address on the back of one
of his records and he wrote back. We became pen pals and eventually
hooked up. I programmed his Synclavier for awhile and did some
gigs and recordings and to this day we have maintained a very
special relationship. In fact, after I had come off the road
with all of these other artists I decided it was time for me
to do my own thing again like I did in Erie with C.J Bri as
I hungered to get my melodies heard. So I began teaching to
support myself and eventually wrote a huge tome called The
Contemporary Keyboardist which has become the bible of contemporary
keyboard studies. And Chick Corea wrote the forward. “Wow..
life is full of surprises when you follow your heart”
I thought.
That brings me to the present. I built my dream studio called
Studio 2B3 and am writing and producing
away. I started a film scoring company called Lunatek
Music with famed composer/sound designer Alan
Howarth Niacin is working on its 6th CD; I have a new solo
CD that just got released on Holographic
Records called Threshold (link); am producing an incredibly
talented female singer named Carmel
Helene who really rocks; working on a new keyboard instructional
manual and of course I continue to learn those lessons.
My motto is: Life is for learning lessons; not for accumulating
things but where the hell are the strippers?!”
To be continued….
Yours,
John Novello
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