The name “Mordi Farber” is not known in every household in Israel, partly because he has not been in the country in the last 40 years, yet in musician circles he is seen as a meteor, as a phenomenon and as one of the leading jazz musicians in the world. In a period of two years Farber managed to play on Eric’s recordings Einstein, Shlomo Artzi, Shlomo Gronich, Shem Tov Levy and Nurit Galron, but there was not enough time left to enjoy the fruits of his success and he immediately went to the United States to study music, play, record, perform, write music for series and movies and cultivate a career that led him to become one of the greatest guitar players in the world The times, according to the book of the jazz historian Scott Ynoo.
Now he is in the midst of preparations for the tribute show he is putting on in memory of Einstein, his good friend, who he says working with him was one of the highlights of his life, much more than playing with the world’s greatest musicians. “Since the tribute show that Eric had in 2014 in Yarkon Park, I make sure to hold a show in his memory every year,” he says. Drummer Meir Israel and bassist Micha Michaeli. The three of us played with Eric in concerts and recordings. And we were also joined by pianist Gil Feldman, who has been playing with Shlomo Artzi for 20 years. We decided this time that the show would be in the style of ‘Singers singing Eric’, so it would be Leah Shabat, Si Hayman and Raz Shmoeli. I will also sing a few songs, and I hope he will not be angry with me from above.”
Are you invited to other shows that are held in his memory, such as the one that was supposed to be at the Rishon LeZion Festival?
“No. People think I still live in the United States, but I’m more in Israel. They ask me, ‘When are you coming to Israel?’ Since I’ve been here, I participate less in productions and play with artists, because there are enough talented and excellent musicians who should do these things. I understood that the show in Rishon LeZion was canceled, and it hurts me that the people who left us are being forgotten. Eric was like another father to me.”
Do you feel that the myth around him is getting stronger over the years?
“Eric is Eric, not an ordinary person. For me he is bigger than Frank Sinatra. There was and never will be a singer like him. It’s a period, it’s a mood, it’s innocence. I lived for 40 years in New York and I was not into rock music, in my eyes Eric always was and will be one of Israel’s greatest singers. A simple man, when he opens his mouth you are amazed.”
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The relationship between Farber (64) and Einstein began in 1979 thanks to another talent that Einstein cultivated, Miki Gavrilov. Farber, then just released from a military band, played with Gavrilov on the program “Songs by Composers”: “Miki, who was in the reserves in Sharm el-Sheikh, saw me playing in a military band. When he came up to play and sing his part, I went on stage and played with him without asking him . He smiled, and didn’t take me off the stage. A conversation started between us and we sat talking and laughing until five in the morning. One day he told me he was working with Eric on an album, and offered me to join.”
What do you remember from the first meeting with Eric?
“Eric didn’t like working with new people, and suddenly a wild 21-year-old guy came. He didn’t know how to eat me at first. I was so deep into jazz and not really into his music, regardless of the fact that Eric is a legend. We met at Miki’s house and I saw what a character he is, beyond the songs, what a warm man, even though he was a little cold to me at first and rightfully so, suddenly a stranger comes to him and starts working with him on an entire album.”
Most of the songs on the album, “Armed with Glasses”, Einstein’s 18th, were composed by Gabrielov and produced together by Gabrielov and Farber, who played guitars on it. At 10 in the morning,” recalls Farber. “There is a picture in the album of Eric, Mickey and me, while people more famous than me took part in it.”
What kind of man did you know?
“A very funny man, generous, who knows exactly what he wants. Once we played a Mickey song, and I hit a guitar solo and went crazy playing jazz-rock. Eric, who most of the time would lie on the floor and not intervene, got up and said to Mickey: ‘What’s going on with his fingers? What is this thing? What is he playing?’. Eric allowed me the artistic freedom, these solos.”
When Eric arrived at the apartment
In November 1980, “Armed with Glasses” was released and was an immediate success and produced huge hits such as “San Francisco on the Water”, “The Kinashini Under Your Wing”, “Lonely Drum” and “She’s Sitting in the Window”, which scorched the radio. The release of the album was accompanied by a concert tour, in which Gabrielov, Farber, Yoni Rechter and Dafna Armoni participated. On August 29, 1981, the last show took place at the “Empress” club in Caesarea, after which Einstein retired from concerts and began his period of domestic isolation. “Never in my life did I dream that this would be Eric’s last performance on stage,” says Farber. “He had some interest in going on stage. Also his vision, also the stress is accompanied by excessive drinking of ‘Stok 84’. It’s not that he was an alcoholic, not at all, he no longer felt the attraction to the stage like he used to. The tour was great, and it saddens me that there is not one video of it. A whole year of performances without documentation.”
Have you kept in touch over the years?
“Yes. Because I was so loose and pretty crazy in my youth, so after we finished working on the album and the shows, there was a time when Eric would come to my apartment every morning, regardless of the music. We would go out to eat at the Keter HaMizrah restaurant, walk around the park. I didn’t understand then why he was looking for my closeness. He would bring me songs and suggest that I try to compose them. I did not understand the meaning of this. He would recite words and I would accompany him with the guitar. But nothing came of it. When Eric would work with Yoni Rechter or with Shami (good name Levy – DP), he explained to them specifically what he wanted. Shami was very surprised when Eric said he would like me to compose for him. I probably didn’t show any signs that it was interesting. In retrospect, I think that he felt comfortable with me and all the other musicians were busy. Eric only worked with whom he felt comfortable with. I didn’t understand it at the age of 22. When I lived in the United States, we would talk on the phone, and when I came to Israel we would meet and play each other’s material. He would find out how long I came because he wouldn’t make an album in two days, but only after months of work.”
When Farber mustered up the courage to offer Einstein his compositions, it was already too late: “After years I woke up, even though I was in a different musical world. I made an appointment with him. I arrived at his house. I knocked on the door, Sima opened the door for me and he did not leave the room. He was lying in bed, not feeling well. His stomach hurt. He didn’t want to go out to the living room. I sat with Sima (his partner – DP) in the living room for an hour. Then she took me to his bedroom. I told him ‘Eric, maybe I’ll bring the guitar and get in bed and make like John and Yoko’. I told him that I had some new songs that I would like to play To him. ‘It’s fun,’ he told me. ‘But not today, I don’t feel well.’ On my next visit to Israel, I was at Shlomo Gronich’s concert when I was told that something had happened to Eric. I flew to the Ichilov hospital. I saw that people had gathered and they didn’t let anyone in. Somehow I managed to start, and after the family left his room, I saw him lifeless. This is a sight I will never forget, like losing a spiritual father.”
Mafia of musicians
Farber was born and raised in Kiryat Bialik, the son of Holocaust survivor parents. “I came from a perfect home, a very difficult home in all respects,” he says. “Music saved me. If it wasn’t in my life, I might end up in bad places. I always say that if music is like air for you to breathe, it’s already 50% success. Because if the desire to engage in music comes for other reasons, it will not lead you to the highest place.”
Thus, at the age of 6 he started singing and when he was 12 he was already playing the classical guitar and moved to the tram. In his youth, Farber played in rhythm bands in the Kiryat area, including the Sweets, the Bialiks and the Night of the Bats. At first he focused on rock’n’roll and later moved to progressive jazz-rock. In 1976, he enlisted and served in the armor band. When it was disbanded, he moved to play in the singing group of the Northern Command, in its only program “Night on the Grass.” “I didn’t really want to play in a military band, because I was into jazz,” he says. “In the beginning I was a maintenance officer in Sde Boker, but the commander told me that if I didn’t go to a military band – I would probably be in prison for the nonsense I would do. I would sit in the police station with the guitar and play to every car that passed by. In the band they called me ‘representative of the Association for the War in Jazz.'”
Upon his release from the army he began to play with Gavrilov and later with Einstein, work that led him to play on the albums of Israel’s top artists: “Midnight” (1981) by Shlomo Artzi, “Sweet Cotton” (1982) by Shlomo Gronich, “Songs in the middle of the night” (1981) ) by Nurit Galron and in the recordings of Judith Ravitz, Shem Tov Levy, Yoni Rechter, Efraim Shamir and Esther Ofarim. “I met Shlomo Artzi when I was a 15-year-old boy. I performed with the Bialikim rhythm band in Caesarea and he performed with the Mrs. Tapuh band,” he recalls. “Later, Michael Tapuh, who was Eric’s, Shlomo’s and mine’s manager, said that I couldn’t be playing only with Eric. He directed me to play on Shlomo’s album. When I look at it today, I realize that I broke a mafia of musicians. There were the leading musicians and suddenly I came out of nowhere and played with all the greats.”
You played with everyone, so why leave suddenly?
“I didn’t leave – I ran away. I walked with my head against the wall and chose the hard way. I had self-destruction, which has moderated over the years. I ended up with this group of regular musicians, and I’m sure I didn’t do them any good. I had a different sense of humor and was quite different. The beginning was not fun. When I was at my peak in Israel, all the artists wanted to work with me, but I have destructive things inside me. At least I had at the time. I was in the highest place artistically and I chose to run away, to hide so as not to work all the time. I didn’t want my guitar to be played everywhere. Nowadays no one can convince me to play on recordings, I prefer to teach. This is what I have been doing for years in the United States and here.”
do you regret
“Maybe there was a reason for it, beyond what I understood myself. Everyone says it seemed like my world wasn’t here and I should be somewhere else. The truth is that I had no reason to run away and I also lost the right to make an album with Eric as a composer. If there’s one more thing I regret, it’s that Danny Sanderson, who I admired a lot since the beehive, suggested that I join Doda’s band together with him and Gidi Gov, he’s also a hero of mine. I told him I couldn’t, because I was going to study at Berkeley. ‘Not bad,’ he answered me. ‘I won’t play in your band either.’ I could have worked a little longer in Israel, stayed two more years, but I don’t believe I would have stayed in Israel.”
Suburban Rebels (Photo: Peter Witt)Keeps the guitar
Farber left in 1982 after receiving a scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “After a year and a half of studies, I started teaching there,” he says. “Many Israeli musicians went to study abroad and returned to Israel to work in prominent productions. For me it was the other way around: I worked in notable productions and left to study and teach abroad. I left my mark in Israel on the albums I played on, but it was so short and I could do more. At the time I didn’t care. In retrospect, I don’t understand what that speed was. I felt like I was just starting Being stressed by success. Not every person is built for that.”
During his stay overseas, he taught music not only at Berklee, but also at the New School University and New York University, conducted master classes in the United States, Europe and the Far East, published books and was considered a sought-after lecturer. At the same time, Farber recorded five successful international solo albums, featuring leading jazz and rock musicians. “I planned to go for two years, but I grew and grew there and every time I thought of returning to Israel, I decided to stay because I wanted to grow more and learn,” he says. “There are more and more things I want to do and accomplish. I don’t get stuck in what I’ve done but always look forward.”
Over the years, he has written music for many famous series, including “Jackass”, “Everybody Loves Raymond”, “The Sopranos”, “CSI Miami”, “The Hot Prince of Bel Air”, “Felicity”, “The Chris Rock Show”, “Tonight with Jay Leno”, “Gulf Watch” and more. “Over the years I have connected with my students, who play in very large productions,” he replies to the question of how he came to this. “One of the students said that he has a company with which he creates music for various productions and suggested that I play on some recording for the Grammy Awards ceremony. I flowed and played. I told him casually that he lacked certain music in his musical library, so he asked me to record two albums for him. I did so and he continued to order more and more work and music from me for all the series and films he worked with. I am still involved in this field today, with another company.”
In the last decade, Farber downshifted in his career, for an exciting reason: becoming a father at the age of 53. “Since my child was born, I’ve been in Israel more,” he says. We live five minutes away from each other in Carmel. Two weeks before the outbreak of the corona virus, I came to Israel to perform with Steve Vai and I had no reason to return to the United States, so I stayed here for two years. Now I am in Israel most of the time, even though I am still considered a foreign resident.”
How did you accept late fatherhood?
“My son is lucky to have me at such an age, because I am no longer in the race for a livelihood and a career, and I have all the time and ability to invest in him. He has a calmer father. I’m no longer stressed that I don’t play, and I don’t play ten hours a day like I used to, because I invest in him, and when he’s with me – that’s all for me. I couldn’t get it from my father, because he worked hard and didn’t have time to play with me. I make sure to give everything to my son, and I enjoy it. I sacrificed a lot to be here next to him, because all my equipment is in New York. It is true that I feel better there, but I miss the child very much and it is hard for me to be away from him. Fatherhood changed me for the better.”
what are you doing these days
“What is important to me is to perform with my music, so I have a duet show with the talented pianist Tom Oren and I had a jazz quartet here in which I played my own material. At the same time I teach at Rimon school. In the past, when I would come to Israel, I would call all my friends and play with them in the studios. For fun and friendship, not in the financial section. It’s been many years since you can’t find me playing in a production or an album. It’s not from a place of being in the nose but from the need to keep my guitar. When you get money it’s fine, but if your guitar is heard everywhere – you lose your uniqueness. The whole point is to be preserved as someone who cannot be seen every Monday and Thursday.”
What is your professional fantasy?
“There are things I should have been less fanatic about, such as renouncing my past which was very good and my actions in Israel. I wouldn’t be opposed to Eric coming back some year and we’ll have enough time to make an album. I love Chava Alberstein and I have always loved her, I would be happy to deviate from my norms and collaborate with her. There are some other artists from abroad that I have a lot of respect for and I would be happy to play with them. But I go with the flow, I don’t push anything, and we’ll see where the wind blows. In any case, I always move forward and never stop wanting to be better in everything I do “.
# The show “Women serving Eric” will take place on November 12
At 20:30 at the “Snail” club in Tel Aviv.
# The show with Tom Oren will take place on December 8