Matthew Fisher / David Lanz

A gold record and a signed t-shirt

It seems that the magazine-article about Matthew Fisher's Gold disc has been deleted from the davidlanz.com website. Joan May excerpted the contents for BtP to preserve. If you want a tee-shirt (unsigned!) as described below, please visit the Shine On Merchandise page.

King For a New Age : pianist David Lanz talks about his unlikely success in the Contemporary Instrumental Music Genre [Megan Murphy in Seattle magazine, February, 1994]

"Check this out," says David Lanz, gracefully bounding out of his chair. "I just got an autographed T-shirt from Matthew Fisher. Let me show it to you." For those who don't recognize the name, Matthew Fisher was the original organ player on Procol Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale." Lanz returns with a T-shirt bearing the cover art of the band's 1969 LP, A Salty Dog. "I don't know if you're familiar with this album, but it's just a classic," Lanz continues. The man known as the King of New Age then gently lays his new shirt across the back of the couch. "My record company just gave him a gold record for playing on my version of Whiter Shade of Pale, he explains with a smile. "It just tickles me."

The man who is so thrilled at receiving another musician's autograph is himself one of the biggest stars on the contemporary instrumental music scene today, a pianist with a sparse style and a melodic sense … [4 more screen pages of article] ... Just as we're wrapping up the interview, Paul Speer arrives. It's obvious they're good friends: He walks right in without bothering to knock.

"Wow, great T-shirt," Speer says, picking up the autographed A Salty Dog shirt. He stops just short of holding it up to see if it fits.

"Yeah," Lanz agrees, "I just got it."

His eyes don't stray from the shirt until Speer lays it back on the couch. As we're walking to the door, it strikes me as odd that David Lanz's gold record is nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, it's downstairs in the studio next to my piano. My label put a real nice inscription on it: 'In honor of an artist with a heart of gold. From the Narada family.' " He pauses and starts laughing, "God, it sounds like a cult or something." It seems he's just never going to be able to shake that new-age thing....

[end of article]