You got to understand, that was 1976:
James Brown, Stravinski, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra.
All of these people were making music at the same time.
Everybody wore it as a badge, it was a war cry, to be different.
Musicians owned the music business.
This guy approaches me and says:
"by the way, I want to introduce myself, my name is John Francis Pastorius,...
I'm the greatest bass player in the world"
And I said: "Get the fuck out of here"
And I'm thinking "I'm gonna show this white kid...
how to play".
But I didn't say any of this, you know...
All I could say was "Slow down, man!"
He could play Blues fills like nobody could play since 30 years.
No-one is more funky than John Francis Pastorius III,
you're kidding me?
He had a mystical face,
and a contact with the "great mind",
the divine mind that permeates our souls.
We were all like: "Man, Jaco!"
It was like going to a game and rooting for Michael Jordan.
there were people who broke the bones in their thumbs
so they could bend their thumb back like Jaco.
It was the sound, that sound he got.
We said: "What the fuck is that?" "A bass player is doing that".
In your lifetime you won't find another one like that.
Good evening, welcome to Okland Park, Florida, where I grew up.
I had the fortunate experience of growing up with everybody that played music,
(...) every note.
I was raised by the best musicians in the world.
Thank you Jesus and God.
Had to be 1983 or 84.
-How you feelin' today, Jaco? -OK, Jerry.
All right. You know, Lot have been said about you,
but the main thing is that people recognize the fact that
you are able to play, with real sincerity,
every style of music.
Not only every style,
but you can play all parts of a given piece at the same time
on this one instrument, the bass.
Now because of this, a lot of people are going crazy trying to do what you do,
people are becoming fans of the bass and it's given it quite a bit of attention.
How do you feel about that?
Give me a gig!
He was like: "Heck, you know, give me a gig".
Ironically, at that moment, he couldnt get a gig...
he couldnt get a gig.
What drove you to this point?
It was all over him,
you could see it, that it was a man who had trouble,
but "getting it out" was very important,
even in the shape that he was in.
It wasnt just notes.
They had feeling, they had meaning, they had character.
You cant really teach that, it was something
that was in his heart.
Jaco. Four letters. Who is this guy?
and once you actually heard him play,
it was like getting slapped in the face.
Everything changed when he started playing, it was never the same again
He shredded everything that came before him and it would never be done again.
He just changed the rules of what was possible on the bass
and what could be done.
That dude was the greatest.
We all say it : He's our Hendrix.
A remarkable talent.
the delivery system was there, the chops were there,
but the support he needed was pulled away
for whatever reason.
He was already an artist, see?
And when you're an artist, it's hard to go back.
Jaco : I grew up in Florida, where there was no real musical prejudice
It was all sorts of music, everything from cuban to symphonic. Everything.
Whatever you wanted to hear. You could hear it. Everything was here.
I really wasn't influenced that much by bass players.
To tell you the truth,
I didn't even know who the bass players were most of the time.
The main thing was just the music itself.
Whatever was hip then
that's what I was checking out.
most of the time on 45's.
When we moved to Florida around 1958, 59,
There has never been a record in our house.
Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, all the big bands.
that was all I would listen to.
Jaco used to come up and watch us.
Believe it or not, we were working in Charlie Johnson's Crab House
And his mother brought him in for dinner.
And I got Jaco up on the bandstand, sat him on the piano,
He sang the whole Come Fly With Me, Sinatra album.
That was the first time I thought "This guy is gonna be something else".
He just sat here like nothing, singing the whole album!
Jaco used to go to bed at night with a little transistor radio,
and He would listen to cuban.
He would get cuban on that radio.
He was incensed with good music.
He sold (news)papers.
He sold 250 newspapers a day, in the off season.
He was a worker. He was a worker.
One day, he went out and bought a whole set of drums.
with all the money he saved.
Jaco was born John Francis Pastorius the Third,
but my mum didn't wanna call him John, because that was my grandfather.
And it wasn't gonna be Jack. She says she came up with "Jaco".
My mum had a really horrific job.
Her mother took everything that was wrong in her life
out on my mum.
She was the middle of nine children.
My mum wanted to be the home maker.
She wanted to take care of somebody and my dad didn't want to be taken care of.
They would go out to dinner and everybody wanted to buy Jack a drink.
He was an entertainer.
It became pretty evident, when we moved to South Florida,
that we were gonna live with mum, and my dad would gonna "float around".
My dad sent money.
a couple of times, then stopped.
Clothes got passed on
I can remember pancakes and Kool-Aid for dinner.
That was life with mum.
Las Olas Brass was based on The Tijuana Brass,
Herb Alpert's thing.
Soul tunes and anything Motown
But back then, South Florida was a cracker town, man.
You got the nice white side, over here, on the east,
and to the west was what you now call "the hood".
We would go ride our bicycles over into the hood,
and I remember they used to sit on sacks.
In the neighborhood there's this club. There it is.
It's like two houses put together and fenced around,
and everyone's harrowing in the streets,
they got a couple neone signs
and they were working in a nightclub in this neighborhood. It was wild.
I'm thinking: "OK..."
I don't want to act like I'm frightened or concerned about this.
We were kids. But He says:"Park there".
He drags me to park over weeds, in this field,
and he goes: "listen man, I'm gonna go get ready to play
and, you know, be cool".
This place was wild, it was a total black club of course.
And he's already got this thing, like "Hey man, what's happening?"
And they say: "Oh hey, Jaco!".
It's like he practiced with the band, he knew all the tunes.
Jaco was looking for the best musicians, searching out the hottest cats.
He loved guys like Little Beaver, Frankie Williams & The Rocketeers.
These guys had no records on the stores,
they were being played on black stations only, like WRBD Radio,
which was a black station.
By the way, Jaco got 3 dollars that night. 3 dollars!
That was it. I just started that simple.
I just went out, bought a bass, and I was working at night,
so that I could play
R&B, or maybe some rock and roll,
just to get some work, have some fun.
And I had no ambition whatsoever in life, at all,
except for "playing tonight".
That was all. Play tonight, over at this club.
I love rotgut, stomp, keke blues, rhythm & blues.
Over the years, I was known as the "king of blue eyed soul".
At the time, people only toured.
You were on tour all year round.
I have toured 48 to 50 weeks a year, for 25 years.
And if you walked off with any energy left, then you didn't give your all.
You had to be the best, the most exciting,
the baddest that ever lived.
It was hell on any musician.
They didnt believe, when you come in the band, that you could cut it.
Because they believed they were the baddest kickers in the world.
They could chew a little kid like Jaco up.
He came to the audition, the band put charts in front of him.
From what I gathered, he didn't read much at all.
All that mattered to me was: can he play a fill?
I just gave him a chord and said:
"I'm gonna count to four, and we're gonna play a blues.
Play some lead blues, right now".
It was strange. He could play fills, blues fills.
that people hadn't played in 30 years.
If he heard it one time, he could play it authentically,
not only with the notes right, but with the feeling right.
And that was the one thing that impressed me.
And some people in the band were teaching him how to read music.
Jaco had 2 pairs of corduroy jeans and 3 tee-shirts.
Everything he owned fit in his Fender bass case.
The tux was way too big for Jaco,
so he just left all his clothes on and put the tux on.
he got two layers of clothes to make the tux fit.
He kept all his money in cash and put it in his sock.
and he put it in his Fender bass case.
He spent very little money.
If we ate in a restaurant, he ordered the cheapest thing on the menu,
usually a hot dog.
That's what he ate, put the rest of the money in his sock,
kept it and sent it home.
He was a great role father.
I was instantly comfortable with him.
he had that kind of power over people, instant charm.
I was a junior (2nd year), he was a sophomore (3rd year).
He and I just sat on a beach bench and talked for couple hours.
Both our fathers were jazz musicians
both our families had broken up,
our fathers drank too much...
I didn't have to put on any arrows.
He had it figured out, mathematically,
that when I was a senior in High School,
it's time for us to have a baby.
He had places to go.
When Mary was born, that day, Jaco & I went to the hospital.
We were looking at her through the glass, she sat there,
Jaco looks at me and goes:
"Gregory, I got to do something on the electric bass
that's never been done before". and he pointed at Mary.
I thought: "OK, I get it".
he's got to support this kid, he's a working musician,
but, a working musician around town, that's tough.
And, the way he said it :
"I got to do something that's never been done before".
Well, he did.
That voice.
What's the voice of music?
It's the singer in the horn. It's not the rythm section.
the rythm section is there doing the work to support it,
with the setting of the ring.
We make that diamond shine brilliantly.
in the right setting, the gem is beautiful.
in the wrong setting, you can't see the brilliance of it.
So our job, primarily,
is to support that stone.
But he was able to become the stone also.
First thing was to learn the melody to every tune.
Which, I feel, is like ultra important.
The melody is always designated, let's say,
to a horn player, a piano or a guitare.
But it's nice to play it on a bass too.
Certainly. And the fretless bass?
The fretless, I... I took the frets out of my bass.
because I was into jazz a lot and I wanted to have that upright sound.
I had an upright.
It took me years and years to get enough bread to get it.
One morning, I woke up and in a corner the bass is in a hundred pieces.
because the humidity was so bad, the upright just blew up!
I thought: "forget it, I can't afford this anymore".
I went out, took a knife, and took all the frets out of my Fender.
And that was it.
And the rest is history.
Careful. Don't cut yourself. Don't cut me !
It's closer to the sound of a voice,
to the flexibility of a voice, the inflexions,
this add a delicate tone to the sound.
right, it's less metallic.
Using a fretless bass gave the instrument
a resonnance not dissimilar to a cello.
A resonant, rich, warm, round tone,
that sounds like a cello.
I think every bass player in the world,
whan they heard that, their world was suddenly recalibrated.
What about harmonics ?
That's something that you pioneered.
Instruments always had harmonics
but what you did is almost having gone to a mine
and found gold where there was nothing before.
Well, when I was first playing, a friend of mine
I saw him tuning his guitar with harmonics,
which everybody does.
I was just doing this...
and it sounded like music to me.
So I kept exploring this. That's all there is to it.
He explored the harmonic range of the instrument
by playing harmonics that gave the bass
a symphonic range,
which, again, was mindblowing.
I think they gave me a cassette of Jaco playing,
And I'm listening to this, wondering "who the heck is this? Nobody plays like this!"
It was hard to describe.
Jaco married Tracy, had two kids, John & Mary,
definitely a family man, almost like a farmer.
His own personality is so much in what he does,
He was not even aware of his influence.
You're hearing something new.
What I heard was him.
And that's one of the most important elements
that a musician must have.
Jaco had developped his own sound.
This was, I think, 1974.
My band, Blood, Sweat & Tears,
was doing a residency down there, in Bachelors III, in Fort Lauderdale.
The softball team of Bachelors III asked me to play.
In the center field was a blonde woman
She had gloves on and her hands on her knees
I just said "who are you?". She said "Oh I'm Tracy".
I said: "How are you affiliated with this group?"
She said "I work at the club".
I said "I never saw you at the club".
"I don't hang out much. I just got to go home".
She was really cute, very sweet girl.
I said "you're married?"
She said "Yes", pause... "to the best bass player in the world".
This fella shows up, thin guy, with plastic glasses,
and he says "I'm Tracy's husband, Jaco".
I say "Oh, I understand you're the greatest bass player in the world".
And he says "I am".
Of course, the arrogant New York side of me came out,
and I said "well, why don't you get your bass and play a little bit?"
Just play".
He played "Donna Lee". It's a Charlie Parker song, with a solo.
He plays it with the facility and phrasing and nuance of a sax player.
He wouldn't go...
He'd go,
which I had never heard before on that instrument.
And I said "I'm gonna try to get you a record deal".
I brought Jaco to New York.
He lived there with me while we were doing this album.
Luckily, the head of New Artists was a bass player.
And I thought "there is no one that's gonna hear this
who plays a stringed instrument, and isn't gonna go
"All right, let's start all over and figure out what's going on".
And Jaco had a tremendous sense of loyalty.
His friends in Florida meant a lot to him,
and he wanted to keep them invloved as much as possible.
He comes to my house and he says:
"We got signed !" And I say: "We?"
As if we were Simon and Garfunkel.
He said: "Come, you got to fly up here, to New York.
Do not come up if you're not gonna deliver".
He didn't tell me a lot about what we were walking into.
My first day there, I walk into Columbia Studios.
Hubert Laws is the first one I see.
I turn and there's Lenny White sitting behind the drums.
And Jaco's eyes were lit up, because he knows he's found home.
this is the level that he belongs to.
Word got out really fast around the New York scene.
Jaco was able to hand pick whoever he wanted.
If you look at the pictures from that recording,
My hair was all over my head. It was wild.
And basically, what would happen is we would go play, take a take,
and go outside and play basketball.
I mean we could have done this on bicycles, with microphones,
and we would have played it perfectly
I don't think there was a lot of takes of anything.
And there were no expectations.
this wasn't a hit record pop radio sort of thing.
my goal was to bring Jaco to as many people as humanly possible,
to just have them listen and recognize this genius.
and then, from there, whatever happens happens.
But that's the goal of a first record.
And that's what I wanted to happen
and I'm totally confident that that's exactly what happened.
Everybody was interested in working with Jaco.
I went over there with Ronson. "You gotta see this guy".
Jaco just sat there, in Bobby's house,
playing as if he was a circus freak.
Enormous ego, but innocent.
He was 21 years old at that point.
He knew about dope, he knew about all that stuff.
He was too clever for that.
He used to sit on top of a hill and meditate.
He had it all down, you know.
I was just about to do "All American Alien Boy"
and so he said : "I'll do that".
He was totally immersed into whatever he did.
In my case, it was the record I was doing, but 3 month later,
he was totally immersed in something else.
Hello, tonight's South Bank show is about
the american jazz band, Weather Report.
Josef Zawinul was born in 1932
and he grew up in a village in the Vienna woods.
his music still draws on his memories of Austria.
There was a guy who played the piano,
playing something I never heard even the name :
jazz.
But there was something about the name, jazz,
and I was kind of ego-tripping on this
I said "J-A-Z-Z". Somehow, I saw my name in there.
Zawinul began with Wayne Shorter
in Miles Davis grand band, in 1969.
At that time, Davis was gathering the most talented young musicians around him.
Men like John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock,
Tony Williams and Chick Corea.
together, they were forging a new kind of electronic jazz.
We were getting in the 70s
and we knew there was a hell of a change happening
and that we would be somehow responsible for it.
When we went to Florida, we were leaving a theater, walking down the street.
Someone from Florida walking with us, said :
"this guy, Jaco, he's right behind you !"
Jaco brought his album, he threw it like a frisbee to Joe
and he said : "Hey, Joe, check this out"
And Joe got it.
Then he said : "I want to introduce myself.
My name is John Francis Pastorius III. I'm the greatest bass player in the world".
And I said : "Get the fuck outta here".
That's the way I said it.
That evening, after we finished playing,
I could hear music coming out of a room
I kinda stopped, and it's Joe's room.
I peep in. I didn't see Jaco, I saw his back.
He sat back, and I could hear this recording
and I was like "woa, who's that?"
And Joe said "come in, come in, I want you to meet this guy,
he's a bad motherfucker".
So he introduces me to Jaco and we listen to his record.
It was incredible.
I started to put 2 and 2 together.
Here is this phenomenal bass player Joe is interested in,
What are my chances of being around much longer?
So I just went to the other gig, and it worked out perfect.
All of a sudden out got the news.
Alfonso Johnson leaves the band to join another band
with George Duke and Billy Cobhan.
It was July 1975. we just came back from Boston.
Cannonball Adderley had died.
It was a very hard thing for me.
I wrote a song that was called "Cannonball".
I had this little melody in the begining,
and I thought this guy's tone would be perfect for this.
We started right with this particular tune.
In the beginning, he was busy, so we stopped the band and said:
"We already know you can play.
Forget about this, you are here with us, with Weather.
you have a beautiful tone, use that tone".
And what happened at that point is on the record.
Joe told me he wanted that Florida sound on "Cannonball".
- "That Florida sound"? - Yeah.
For Wayne and me, he was the third...
If you have a triangle, this was 3 forceful personalities,
totally different, and nobody giving an inch.
Joe, when we finished that tune, he called his wife, Maxine,
"Maxine, please, tell so and so to cook tonight.
make a lot of food, lots of wine, etc,
We're gonna have a banquet tonight because we're gonna celebrate...
a new guy has come, a genius.
and Jaco, right there, told Joe :
"I need to talk to the managers of Weather Report".
Jaco told them :
"I want to know if I can put one song in the album".
And they laughed at him.
The guys were telling him on the phone :
"Hey, Weather Report are the best writers in the world".
And he said : "that's right, but I want to put in a tune".
And then... That's...
He knew how serious it is
to leave a piece of your soul in the recording, because,
it's gonna stay there forever.
it's not about bass playing.
it was being a storyteller.
We said we were playing music with hills, valleys...
extremes and confrontations.
people think that playing jazz is just a couple chords.
They call 'Earth, wind & fire' jazz and they call 'Kenny G' jazz.
It's not. It's deeper than that.
Jazz is a challenge to improvise and be in the moment.
that one moment equals eternity.
The sound of the music that is produced is the greatness of the human being.
It was just new, it was fresh. There was nothing like it.
And we were all like: "Man, Jaco !"
It's like going to a game and you're rooting for Michael Jordan.
It's impossible, or very difficult, not to like someone who...
we all identified with at that point. we all rooted for him.
He pushed the envelopped.
He pushed you to do your best.
And I think, in doing that, he helped push that whole era
There was no boundaries.
It was like : "if he can do that, then maybe I can do this".
It was a musical movement going on, and we were in it.
So Google it, baby.
Lot of promotion, sold out shows across the country.
People going crazy.
It was really exciting, because prior to that, that didnt exist.
Rock was rock, jazz was jazz, there wasn't a lot of fusion going on.
Back then, you went to see Van Halen
and then you would go see Jaco Pastorius with Weather Report
or Stanley Clark with Return to Forever.
it was an outrageous virtuosity
you know, like playing all this crazy shit.
I was a kid, and I was like :
"this guy is the coolest motherfucker that ever lived !".
The so-called "jazz police" was furious.
That same people that was going to Ozzy Osbourne concerts
were now coming to Return To Forever and Weather Report.
you go there, you play everything at 99 miles per hour,
and as loud and as fast as you can.
The band hired me
pretty much exclusively thanks to Jaco's recommendation.
Jaco and I were half the age of Joe and Wayne.
We were the kids and they were the elders.
and yet, Joe y Jaco would compete like brothers.
He could go toe to toe with Zawinul,
were anyone else would feel the tread.
Thank you !
Danke Schön !
Peter Erskine !
Jaco... Pastorius !
Joseph Zawinul !
Jow Zawinul would come and say :
"We got the greatest band in the world, man, you know.
I mean, like, please...
everybody's playing this stuff, but we play the real deal".
And Jaco considered himself the greatest bass player in the world.
So you got the greatest bass player in the world in the greatest band in the world.
Oh man, those two
were like two cobras
Two cobras in a very small cage,
with nowhere to go, they have to make their relationship work.
that's what it was like, watching them on stage.
and I can remember Zawinul, with his speed
in between the cracks, there would be Jaco
and I remember sitting there, hearing this conversation,
he would come in and out
this is when I realized : man, this is like a boxing match.
it was always surprising when I heard him criticize Jaco. "He sounds like a trombone sometimes"...
"'Teen Town', this is not really a Weather Report song".
Jaco hated that. He didn't want to hang around for any of that.
so he would disappear.
Jaco respected his jazz elders,
and yet, he wasn't above ruffling their feathers.
In these photos, you can see Wayne in the background
He has a drink and a cigarette, he's just watching.
Wayne never said anything. Joe was doing all the talking.
Jaco just said "Me and Frank Sinatra we're Sagitarians.
I'm a Sage, he's a Sage".
He met my mother, and he said : "you're a Sage?"
My mother said : "I'm a Sage too".
She always talked about courage and guts to get through the damn day
She was saying about Jaco : "That child" - she was saying like this -
"That child, he knows what he's talking about".
"but he's mighty wild, though, ain't he?"
His identity in music and theater was coming out.
That's what Jaco had, a history.
Not like a library, but a history of being open
and not shutting out many kinds of music.
the bass almost became incidental.
For this next song, I have to use a funny tune.
This is a song about a daydreamer.
Daydreaming can get you into a lot of difficulties sometimes,
if it's not used properly.
It took me a long time to find a rythm section
that could play my music.
so I went thru a lot of players,
put them on the record and take them off,
it wasn't until my 6th album, that one of the guys in the section,
Russ Kunkel, the drummer, said to me :
"Joni, you're gonna have to play with jazz musicians".
I had this guy, he'd play what I was gonna play, and I said:
"Could you play this note?" and he went : "I'm not playing that !
That's not the root of the chord !"
And I said : "Well, it will be when you play it".
And he rebelled on another issue and, finally, he said :
"There's this really weird bass player in Florida. You'd probably like him".
I asked : "Would he play these things I'm asking you?"
"He's alreaady doing that weird stuff".
So I sent for Jaco.
I set up this architecture...
and he just kind of instinctively played, figuratively.
you're inviting another painter to join you on your canvas,
It's very conversational.
Jaco went into work one night and he said : "Look at my neck".
I looked and on this side, there was a bruise and a redness,
hollow, looked like it had been made by a pipe.
He was driving home the night before, from the studio,
straight up Sunset Boulevard to this hotel where he was staying
and the cops pulled him over.
and I dont know what he said to that cop,
but the next thing he knew, the cop had his pistol shoved into his throat.
Deeply, because the impression was still there
24 hours later, or 20 hours later.
And while that cop had that pistol in his throat,
he said : "I said to myself it's not my time to die".
but he, apparently, seemed to know when his time to die was.
This was a side of him that not many people knew about.
I remember he took me to a bar in Keio Plaza to have a drink.
And we get the sake, we have a drink, and he starts crying.
I said : "What's wrong? What's wrong, man?"
And he said: "Well listen, I'm gonna die when I turn 34
and I would like you to look after my babies".
So I said : "You got it".
Sometimes you see things you don't wanna know,
Especially about yourself.
And this was one of those times for Jaco.
My vision of my dad, in my mind's eye, always goes to that period.
He has no shirt on, he's in corduroy cutoff Levi's shorts,
he's in bare foot and his hair's long.
He's tan.
He was so young when I was born, he wasn't famous yet.
If he had gigs outside, in a bar, we went.
So I had him there every day.
He would point out birds sounds,
wind blowing through leaves or chimes.
he heard music in everything.
it's a gift, and it's a burden too.
Mi padre was my hero, man. He is my hero.
Every dad should be their son's hero.
He bought a Yamaha 750,
we would jump on, and ride all the way up to the coast.
I would never tell him I'm scared.
You know, I would hold on, terrified.
Hold him on, that's what I miss the most.
He was a great dad.
But I know he wanted to be there more.
I remember poscards he always sent to John and Mary.
Every postcard would point out a historical fact,
or post a question to get the kids thinking.
Almost every morning, without fail.
It was an important part of the routine, when we travelled, to find postcards.
to get stamps for those postcards.
Any city we went to,
no matter how tired we were,
we were gonna hit the streets.
we were going to see the best of what Florence, Rome or Milan had to offer.
Venice, let's ride on the gondolas, let's go to the canals.
When would we get the chance to do that? We had fun.
I never saw him in those first tours act tired, drunk,
It was all a good time.
But it was present.
He was like a kid.
He would do things like hide on a bus while it's moving.
And Zawinul would be looking for him for 30 min, nobody would find him.
Then he would give up, and Jaco would come out, laughing.
The kind of things he would do. Very playful.
Going on stage,
"No prisoners" was the last thing you would hear him say.
"No prisoners".
March, 1979, 200 singers, musicians and technicians
and 70 tons of equipment
arrive at the José Martí airport, at the Havana, for "The Havana Jam".
OK, Havana, here we are.
It's really happening for the first time ever.
Looking out the window of this car,
I feel more like Christopher Colombus than Kris Kristofferson.
Havana Jam.
Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Steven Stills, Billy Joel.
It was odd. Billy Joel and Jaco giving each other attitude.
With all the bands there to support each other,
but were kind of dissing each other.
It's gonna be a face to face confrontation between
people who had best only heard of each other
over 90 miles of Caribbean water.
For 3 nights,
the stage of the Carlo Marc theater, in La Havana, Cuba,
will be shared by american and cuban musicians,
in a unique cultural exchange.
the first of its kind,
since political, economical and philosophical differences
separated our two countries 20 years ago.
That characteristic pulse in the center of Cuban music
is an african heartbeat.
I think you've heard it in the works of the astonishing Tata Güines.
Jaco was like a kid getting the autograph of Tata Güines.
Many of the patterns Jaco had played on the bass
were really conga patterns.
Jaco's whole Florida beat, this whole caribbean thing, it's that.
Coincidentally, The Havana Jam
was the first sign of things going wrong.
Jaco got into a thing with one of the musicians of the Nathaniel All Stars.
I think these guys were from Puerto Rico.
And I don't know if there was some cuban,
portorican musical dynamic,
but the guy, definitely, was giving Jaco very little attention.
Jaco almost got into a fist fight.
I think Joe had to break it up.
And then, Jaco lost face,
and I think part of his mecanism of defense against losing face
played out in his Trio of Doom,
that had tremendously successful rehearsals in New York
It was the buzz talk of the whole trip, the Trio of Doom.
the jazz, rock, or whatever you want to call it,
of the Three Tenors.
Tonight we have the visit of a group of american artists...
It could have been great.
But once Jaco got into his self-destruct mode...
which unfortunately occured during this set,
the concert was pretty much considered a disaster.
Jaco was not himself.
Playing "Portrait of Tracy" turning up the bass really loud,
not playing the tunes...
Tony never forgave him. And there was an odd pattern.
Whenever Jaco would lose face
there would be this odd acting out.
I don't know what the dynamics are.
My dad was a psychiatrist who tried to help Jaco.
But my father didn't pass on too much to me...
There was some complicated stuff going on.
We played in Santa Barbara, Jaco came onto the tour.
He came late to the rehearsals, shoved my microphone off the center,
plugged in his bass, dirtied the floor,
he played long solos where he danced a lot.
on bass, Jaco Pastorius.
In Santa Barbara, where we filmed, his wife and his mother showed up.
I don't know what these women did to him in the backroom, but it was good,
because when he came out that night and took his solo, he opened up by quoting:
"I feel high and mighty".
He was starting to fall apart.
Jaco, the kids, Tracy, fame and all that.
Something's changing.
Jaco took the fame hit.
I can't imagine walking out or doing something
and all of a sudden all these people congregate around you
and want to know you, talk to you, be part of what's going on,
that frightens me.
Suddenly he was entering some kind of challenge that didn't exist before
Certainly, Tracy's relationship was home for him.
And it pained him and saddened him that this relationship ended.
I think that was a huge loss for him,
a failure in the life of a guy who had experienced so much triumph.
he was conveying his inner self onto his canvas.
Everything came out on the instrument.
as if he was on the psychiatrist couch
and revealed everything about who he was.
- So tell me, what happened on that tour with Joni,
did it opened any new things for you?
- No, no. I'm just doing my own thing.
- But have you got any project happening?
- I don't know, you know.
Because I still have this assignment, you know?
So, you're hanging on with Epic?
or you try to renegociate with them?
Oh, they're such assholes, you know...
Do you have a contract that gives them an option on your next album ?
Yeah, but that doesn't matter to me, ha ha ha !
All this legal shit
in the record business has got to change,
because it's 100% rip-off.
I will never put up with any of that shit.
I will never get ripped off like that.
Because I don't care,
I'll just go home and play base-ball all day.
Which I do when I'm home, you know what I mean?
And play basketball, and play frisbee, and just have fun.
The key issues in his life were family breaking up,
big changes in his family,
and also dissatisfaction with his established work.
what was on record so far for him left him dissatisfied.
He had married Ingrid and moved up to Deerfield Beach.
We would get together at 4 a.m.
and he wanted to be recording every morning when the sun came up.
he obviously had compositions or ideas
there is a lot of hints of those on the first record.
"Okonkolé y Trompa" is a masterpiece.
Almost classical music.
He had things to show people they never heard before.
They were in his head for quite a while.
People realized that :
"We don't know what this is. Show us".
There was a buzz on Jaco, of course.
Here is a guy that can write, that can arrange, that can play.
He was a collaborator.
It was apparent to some of us that this guy was really something special.
And, in addition to being something special,
he had the potential to break through and cross over.
We set out on a quest to get Jaco to Warner Brothers.
It was a star-level deal, make no mistake about it.
And, because the record business is a business,
expectations tend to follow the deal.
If you sign an act for 75.000 dollars,
your expectations are at one level.
If you sign an act for four times that...
He said : "You know what dub is?"
I said : "I believe I do, yeah...
it's like the old reggae, the guy dropping the fader,
talking over..." and he goes, "yeah, it's gonna be different.
we're not gonna let anybody hear anyone else's parts.
Whatever happens, let's see if it fits".
It had a life of its own, it really grew powerfully.
It's very rare that any record has a piece on it like this.
Pablo Picasso 'Guernica', Jaco Pastorius 'Crisis'.
They are of the same cloth.
He wanted to open the record with this.
A lot of people in this company, if they heard this track,
they would say "we can't even have this,
this is crazy,
It's a cacophony, it's atonal, nobody can follow it, it's scary..."
I'm shaking right now just thinking about it,
I was scared of the idea of it opening the record.
They pleaded with him. They said : "Any other tune, but that.
We can't get this album onto radio if that's the first track".
I think it made him very happy, this going on to record.
I would say that he was venting.
He was venting a little bit of personal frustration.
And then he realized this is the only way
to start a record like this.
It's to make people wonder : "What's coming?"
And then what comes is so different.
The 'Word of Mouth' album was so revealing of Jaco as a person.
It was almost embarassing to listen to, it was so intimate at times.
It was the most courageous thing he's ever done,
the most daring thing he's done.
It's Jaco's internal thing, the real truth of who he is.
There were some people that were less than thrilled about this.
They said: "Wait a minute. This is like a switcheroo.
We signed this guy to make this big hit fusion record,
now he's doing this thing over here".
I know how comfortable he was with the concept,
how good he felt with what he was doing, and it was right.
The label had never acknowledged the master work that it was
and it hurt Jaco. Deeply. To tears. It really did hurt him.
I remember Jaco really needing Joe's approval.
We would call him on the phone and play the tape with the phone held up.
All the time, and it was often the end of the day session,
because Joe would be cruelly dismissive.
I kinda wanted to say to Jaco: "Let's not call Joe today".
Joe had a fighter's instinct, a boxer's instinct.
He had a Miles instinct.
So he had a glass chin, a soft spot in the belly,
They knew how to fight it pretty quick.
The final tour began with Joe listening to the Word of Mouth album.
He wanted to wait for the perfect moment to play the music for Joe.
And he thought after flying to Tokyo would be the perfect moment.
Joe takes off his earphones and I hear him say :
"That sounds like some typical high school big band bullshit".
That's what Joe said about 'Liberty City'. I couldn't believe it.
That was Joe's way of slapping down the son
who's threatening his reign, in a sense.
That fucking music was on the highest level.
John and Mary...
Joe would love to write something like that.
I think that was fear from Joe,
feeling that the son had taken over.
Where do you wanna go from here?
I got it, I got it !
In 1982, I'm gonna take off from Weather Report.
We've been together a long time,
but, just like everything else, you gotta have space too.
Playing with Weather Report didnt allow me any time to do anything.
So i said to myself : "Forget it Jaco, you got to get to work".
And I don't care what Joe thinks about it,
because I know I can get the job done.
And that's it".
Jaco would come up and just stay with us.
We would play in a club, right down where I lived,
called 55 Grand Street.
The problem for me at that point was that I was totally out.
I was really high a lot.
So much that Miles actually tried to put me into rehab.
If Miles tries to put you into rehab,
you know you got a little problem.
The nickname of 55 Grand was 55 Grams...
Is that what you talked about?
There was a lot of condiments floating through, you know...
People were doing what they wanted to do.
I mean, nothing in the open, but, you know...
If you were there late enough, it was...
Jaco and I got together there and we kept together for days,
without paying.
Delmar called us "The Hang Dynasty"
I said "let's create the Hang Dynasty club.
Which means you have to hang three days to be a member of this club.
If you didn't hang three days straight,
you weren't in the club".
Everybody passed the test.
And so we had a band !
At that point, that was normal.
There wasn't anything far out for musicians.
But Jaco's playing became almost like an extension...
of his behaviour off stage,
sort of John Belushi kind of man.
people almost felt cheated if there was no:
"Wow, Jaco really acted like Jaco tonight".
They got their money's worth.
Meanwhile, he's got to be a wreck the next day.
And so I think there was some pressure.
It didn't occur to me not to be with him.
We were just like brothers in a way,
We were in the same boat.
He was a cult figure of sorts,
what struck me, at one point, was :
"Man, we're playing an old be-bop tune from the 40s
for these youg people, and they're freaking out.
Isn't this fantastic?"
what was frustrating for me was that this thing was up and running from note one.
We sold out wherever we played.
All the luminary musicians came to see what was going on.
It was working.
It made everybody feel like a rockstar
playing a jazz tour.
The japanese adored him. We're talking about 20.000 seats.
There were people who broke the bones in their thumbs
so that they could ben the last digits of their thumbs back, like Jaco.
I've seen unbelievable things.
But the things I saw early were the same things I saw later,
and that knocked me out.
It's his ability to communicate music to everyone,
including to the average person.
He had tribes of people waiting for him in every city he was going to.
Even if they didn't know anything about his facility.
But, at the same time, he was leaving Weather Report,
starting his own career path with his own Word of Mouth band,
he was, essentially, leaving a family.
Ingrid gave Jaco these magical twins that he was amazed by.
The concept of twins was spiritual and magical to him.
Poundering their birth was astounding to him
but unfortunately, that was happening at a time he was unravelling
and Ingrid...
being so protective of the children,
didn't want Jaco around them.
so he didnt have much of a relationship with them.
because, at the time,
he was not in the place to be a responsible parent,
and that caused him a lot of pain.
I said : "What's happening, man? What's wrong?"
He said : "You ever been married?" I said : "No".
He said : "You got any kids?" I said : "No".
"I can't tell you what's wrong,
because you wouldn't understand it".
I guess that was his way of letting me know that there were problems.
Before the Japan trip, I go to the airport,
I turn a corner and here is Jaco.
The moment was as jarring as that moment in Taxi Driver,
when the camera pans, and then begins to pan up,
and you see the body of De Niro.
You know it's De Niro, but then you see the shaved head with the mohawk.
I had that same creepy, frightening feeling.
And I went : "Hi, Jaco".
He's got pieces of electrical tape on his face,
with a crew cut.
At some point, he changed into this blue, seminal dress
and he was walking around the plane like he was Sun Ra,
or one of these mystical elders.
A lot of the musicians were amused,
not sure what to make of it.
Those of us who known him longer were alarmed.
So there's this balance of the Emperor's new clothing,
Nobody saying anything, and we're whispering...
What do we do?
Something's definitely wrong".
Hello, I'm an electric bass player.
Jaco was not doing so well at that time.
Things were not going well.
What's up in the future for you two?
- Well, more records... - Champagne, and looks like beer.
More records, I'm sure.
What kind of records?
We're working on a new studio album, solo album...
We're working? It's done, bro! We've just got to mix it.
There definitely was a feeling of uncertainty
that never reared its ugly head
during Word of Mouth.
The label had zero interest in the record.
And I didn't know what options he had.
Do you ever see yourself tapping the commercial market?
-We are. -I am commercial !
You're not commercial yet.
Jaco's very aware that, he could have easily just gone pop,
make some records and BAM !
"I'm not selling out, man. I'm not selling out"
Well, you know, we are tapping the commercial market
Maybe you're referring to the pop Top 40 music market.
-Yeah. -Well, yeah,
If they ever come around and get smart, sure.
Like Chuck Mangione.
-No way. -Impossible, he plays out of tune.
Chuck Manicotti.
I don't dig this at all. I don't, you know?
Listen man. He's a very nice guy.
He does way too much coke.
And the motherfucker eats too much pasta.
And, fuck me, he wears a hat.
When he was in the midst of recording 'Holiday for Pans',
Warner Brothers decided to rip up, literally,
Jaco's contract.
It was like a huge rejection.
He knew that he was onto something very special
He just continued this downward spiral.
People didn't understand there were forces and conditions
beyond his control that were grabbing hold
and it was too easy to just describe it as "substances".
Hey dad, it's Jaco. You're there?
Hey.
-Daddy! -Yeah.
Who loves you?
I don't know, I haven't heard from you.
Where you at?
New York City.
Where about?
We're right here. Jada's house.
I called there all last week.
Daddy, it's hard to get me.
Nobody answered.
Can I tell you one thing?
What's that?
Who loves you?
Who loves you, kid?
When things happen to people, good or bad,
it's always a convergence of many elements and components.
it takes 4 fingers and a thumb to make it solid
but you need to make impact or to make a stranglehold.
He's like : "I got this video, they want me to do this video.
I told them I want to do it with you. We're gonna do this".
He was in bad shape, but he wanted to leave something.
I don't know if he thought something was gonna happen to him,
But he wanted to help other musicians
and help the kids. That's what he wanted to do.
-OK -What about something like that?
That's better than what I do.
Any advice to musicians, young and old? New and beginners?
Keep your minds open, keep an open head about music.
When I first came to New York, everybody wanted to play jazz.
They didn't know about rock and roll, They didn't know about funk,
They didn't know about nothing. All they wanted to do was jazz.
Now, New York is cool. They play everything.
When I grew up in Florida, everything was hip.
I was fortunate to be exposed and be able to play
all kinds of music.
I played in a country band for a year and I had a ball.
I love country and western too.
If it's good, I dig it. Whatever it is.
Just keep an open mind about everything.
-Yeah. -That's about my only advice.
-Keep listening. -Beautiful.
Keep your ears open.
You got to support your music or your art with your life,
and how they intertwine,
if your life doesn't have enough stability,
then your art is gonna suffer.
you're not gonna be able to get those tomatoes to the market.
...they gonna be flat tires, they gonna go on the side of the highway.
he was in this stage where this was going on.
Hi, Jack, Sorry to call so early.
this is Terry.
I just saw Jaco on the streets, he's doing some crazy things.
I don't want tot ell you this, but he needs help again.
He almost got himself killed a little while ago, I don't know what to tell you.
I hope you can help.
Between the street door and our security door, inside,
there was some six foot space
Some morning he'd be there waiting for us.
Obviously he'd been up from the night before
he knew it was a safe place.
He was comfortable here, because he was around musicians.
Say : "Hey, let me show you something on drums".
Or "let me show you something I'm working on on the piano.
Come here, check this out.
here's something I wrote Weather Report never recorded".
It would jolt you. "How?
How could this be for this guy who was on top of the world,
and reinvented the sound of this instrument
and left such a strong mark on music?"
the singer of my band, Anthony,
they were walking down the street in New York
and they saw Jaco sitting on the sidewalk.
And they said : "this is Jaco Pastorius, sitting on the sidewalk, drunk,
playing 'Louie, Louie' for change".
I went to an art opening in Soho.
When we came out, there was this little club across the street
with a cardboard sign, magic marker, saying :
"Jaco Pastorius tonight".
So I went in and I found him at the bar.
He asked me to jam with him,
but he trailed the cord of the microphone over the keyboard,
so it got in my way.
and I'd flip it off while I'm playing.
and he'd flip it back on.
And he was playing way outside the chord.
You know, it was... not good.
Nothing was good about it at all.
And he was kinda praising me too much.
It was a skitty behaviour.
And that's the last I saw him.
In july 1986, I commited him to Bellevue.
Jaco was in the hospital for seven weeks.
he was admitted in late july
and discharged in about mid september.
this is almost exactly 25 years ago.
When he came in, there was this grandiosity and this kind of oppositional behaviour
and he was certainly in danger of provoking somebody
that could be dangerous to him.
this sort of scaled down over weeks.
While he was in the unit, he became very engaged with other patients.
He could reach out to them in ways that others patients couldn't.
I recall there was a woman there, very psychotic patient,
who had cut herself all over her body in response to some illsuion.
and she was very withdrawn and very inaccessible.
and Jaco really reached her, made some kind of connection,
he made contact. Jaco had that capability.
His diagnosis was bipolar disorder.
The classical form of bipolar disorder
is weeks to months of depression,
and days to weeks of mania.
Jaco had what you would call either "rapid cycling",
where the features of depression and mania
alternate rapidly,
or mix with one another.
That interacted with exposure to alcohol.
He was not at the point
where he looked like just another drug using musician,
it was not like that.
Who is to say that
the chemical imbalances,
they ushered actions that could not have been taken
if you were living without it.
He was an explorer.
I see... an image of Jaco, like CHarlie Parker,
Coltrane, Miles.
Same thing I saw in the comic books. Superheroes!
Hello, collect call for Jack from Jaco.
Hello dad. It's Jaco. You there?
Alive and well in Florida. Love you.
Jaco returned to Florida after he was treated.
He was intermittently complying with the medication.
That is not unusual.
He was going through a phase that a lot of bipolar patients go through.
And that's where lies the ambivalence of that treatment,
they are struggling to accept the illness.
and that's what was going on
in the year after he was discharged from Bellevue.
One day, I look up and it's daddy.
And he doesn't have a bass...
I don't even think he had a shirt on.
And he's hang out with some fellas,
I assumed they were hanging out here too, to whatever degree.
He had an acoustic guitar,
He had some albums, some of his albums.
And I realised : "Man, he's hanging out here".
I mean, he could have stayed anywhere.
The thought of my dad, Jaco Pastorius,
sleeping in a park is absurd.
And I don't think we'll ever know exactly why.
He was in a constant state of motion, at all times.
He was like trying to grab a cloud, or a wind.
One day he chose to get better,
but that choice was taken away from him.
He didn't die on the streets from a blown out liver,
or a heart attack or anything. He was killed.
The song is called 'Mr. Pastorius'.
It's on your last album, Amandla, right?
I remember he came to a gig I had in Fort Lauderdale.
and the owner ran out and said : "I'm gonna call the cops right now!"
And Jaco hadn't done anything.
All he did was just walk into the restaurant.
So I told the band :
"Look, this is my brother. I have to take him home.
I can't let him go to jail".
I put the sticks down, got up, got my car keys,
I got Jaco and I said : "Come on man, let's go".
So we get in my car, and I say : "OK Man, where do you live?"
And he says : "in the park".
And I said : "What? In the park?"
"Yes, I live in the park. Just take me to the park".
So we're driving in the park,
and he grabs my hand and starts crying.
and I say : "What's wrong, man?"
He goes : "I don't want to be here anymore".
And I said : "What do you mean by that, Jaco?"
"I don't want to be here anymore, man. I've had it".
That night he went to hear Carlos Santana,
and the incident happened.
I found out pretty quick because my ex-girlfriend
dated one of the assholes that beat him into a coma.
And this was pretty tough.
Very tough for me to hear.
This is very sad.
I remember, at the funeral, the boys.
Ingrid looked at me and she just walked away.
She couldn't take it.
Everybody was walking away.
It was the end of the funeral, man.
Julius and Felix, they're looking at me, and they say :
"Uncle Bobby, when is daddy Jaco gonna jump out of the box?"
I remember that it took 20 minutes talking to them to let them know
"Daddy Jaco is with the angels now.
He's not gonna jump out of the box".
Just thinking about what he had said,
and watching his life unfold after that...
Everything he said came to pass.
Not too long afterwards, I was flying in Italy.
After the concert,
Came down the stage, met some fans.
I went to Stage Right,
where there were a stairway that led off the stage.
I started to go halfway down, to say hello to someone I think.
And this fan came up to me. Very emotional.
He says : "How could you do this?
How could all of you let this happen?"
I said : "We all tried to help".
That wasn't a good enough answer for him.
We are influenced by life, whether we like it or not.
It's not necessarily music that makes us play a certain way.
It's the life we live.
It's our experiences, it's our upbringing.
It's what we experienced as kids,
before we were even conscious of our own personality,
or what we are,
or what we want to do with life.
That's the stuff.
The torments that go on inside us,
that is what comes out in music.
Everybody gets their own burden.
Everyone get their own special beating in life.
he just took this energy and turned it into what he could.
and you feel it in every note. you feel it.
you feel his nervous system, you feel his joy,
you feel his neurosis, you feel his suffering.
You feel it all.
Where do you go after Jaco?
There's not too much soul and feeling.
That original stuff.
There's not too much you can do without.
Where is he at?
Usually right next to Charlie Parker.
How do you spell "Pastorius" again?
With a capital "P".
The music is just a byproduct of his life, man,
and you can hear his sound everyday.
Be it Sting from The Police, or Flea from Chili Peppers.
it's amazing how many people are close to his music
and are so appreciative of what he gave in a short amount of time.
It is an honor to play here in the Yankee Stadium,
New York City.
Thank you for coming here and supporting heavy music!
I had the good fortune to see Jaco play four times.
It was an amazing moment for me.
Jaco, to me, was Punk Rock.
He was fearless.
You can label him,
You can try to label him as your own and say : "Jaco was pure jazz".
But there are some jazz musicians that are punk rock.
All of us stand on Jaco's shoulders.
No one could have missed that section of DNA.
You needed Jaco to get to this point.
The things that I know that he has written blow my mind.
Somehow a part of him has influenced me in so many ways
especially the way I put together instrumental songs
Whatever the genre I can take, the genre I can take, you know
So, stretch it, bend it, pull it, it won't break.
I just remember him being amazing, I remember the backflips,
I remember just thinking : "this is what it's all about"
"this is what I aspire to"
He was the best bass player that ever played, nothing else like him.
When I'm thinking, am I missing anyone? Am I missing something?
Is there anything close to it,
other than that, on the bass?
Not to me, man.