For a guy who's routinely credited with revolutionizing the sound of jazz, Pat Metheny sounds surprisingly detached from his mode of musical expression.
"I don't really care about the guitar," he tells The Japan Times by phone from his New York home, ahead of a tour with pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard.
Of course, things aren't quite as simple as that blunt statement makes them out to be. Metheny thinks a lot about his playing, it's just that he doesn't regard himself as a "guitar freak." In his own laid-back way, the 53-year-old Missouri native views the guitar prosaically as a means to an end. That end, however, is pure poetry.