But finally, one day, the guy said to me, "I've seen 'em."
"Seen what?" I asked.
"The saucer people," he says. "The flying saucer people in the field across the street."
"Oh ..." I said. "Okay ..."
He said, "I’ve only told two people about this. You, and that crazy writer up on the hill."
Of course, the crazy writer was Hunter Thompson. Years later, when Ron Whitehead and Doug Brinkley organized an award ceremony for Thompson in Louisville, Kentucky, they asked me to be the music director. I had the chance to sit and reminisce with Hunter about the guy in the Superette who saw the saucer people and other, more serious things, as well. Hunter was more than just a crazy Gonzo character, he was first and foremost a serious writer.
Bill: There is another song on Southern Stories, 'Alfred the Hog', where you play a flute solo that knocks me out as much as any electric guitar solo. At one point, it sounds like you are playing two flutes at the same time.
David: Thank you, thanks a lot. That instrument is actually an Irish pennywhistle, and yes, on part of the solo, I’m playing two pennywhistles at the same time.
Bill: How did you learn to do that?
David: It just came naturally.
Bill: That figures…
David: The pennywhistle is a versatile instrument. Just as a violin can be used for either classical or bluegrass, the pennywhistle can be used different ways. Audiences in Kenya enjoyed it when I went there for the World Council of Churches and played African music in 1976. Dizzy Gillespie dug how I used the pennywhistle as a jazz instrument when I played with him in Havana in 1977.
Bill: You composed the soundtrack for the original version of The Manchurian Candidate in 1962. I read that Frank Sinatra, the star of the movie, was very pleased with the score you created for that movie. Did you meet Sinatra?
David: I met him in New York a few years after making the film. He said he liked the fact that I’m a jazz musician as well as a classical composer, and he was impressed that I write my own music, orchestrate every note myself, and don’t use ghost writers.
Bill: Frank Sinatra, Jr. said that the Manchurian Candidate score was an "ingenious combination of polytonality and jazz." Can you explain what "polytonality" means?
David: Polytonal means using more than one harmonic pattern, or two separate tonal bases at the same time.
Bill: Yeah, Google says, "Using more than one key or tonality simultaneously," but I still don't quite understand it. I play guitar and I thought you could only play in one key at a time.
David: Well, for example, you can play a G7 chord and play a D flat against it.
Bill: No doubt, you can. I'll have to work it. Moving on, I have to ask you this, because there's a debate going on among some friends of mine. You know that famous black & white photo of Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac, you, and Allen Ginsberg, all sitting in the diner? Is that a spoon or a toothpick you are chomping on?