Bernie Worrell rocks the Brighton; receives key to the city
BY KEITH HEUMILLER Staff Writer (original article)
LONG BRANCH — From the look of the crowd, you would have a hard time guessing who they were there to see.
Some of them, like Gilbert Davis Jr. of Red Bank, were on the plus side of 50. Others, like north Jersey native Declan Devlin, looked closer to 25. But when asked why they were there, they both gave the same answer.
To see a legend.
Saturday night in Long Branch saw the return of one of the town’s most successful, and most revered, sons. Bernie Worrell had come home.
At 68 years old, Worrell acknowledged that it had been a long time since he first began studying piano in the small, coastal city. The year was 1947, and he was three years old.
Worrell would write his first concerto five years later, and perform on stage with the Washington Symphony Orchestra at age 10.
The road that took him away from Long Branch would wind through Juilliard and the New England Conservatory of Music before it crossed paths with George Clinton, the funk legend.
As a founding member of Parliament Funkadelic, Worrell’s classical training and innate perfect pitch would enable him to explore new territories and push boundaries on both keyboards and with relatively new synthesizer technology.
When celebrated keyboardist Bernie Worrell moved to Lebanon Township in 1999, it was not to retire and look back on a triumphant career. That career began when Bernie sat down to his first keyboard at age 3 and learned to play the piano and proceeded to write a concerto while still a child.