Rick Suchow: Bass

"The harmonics I play on the bass, they've always been on the instrument, and I can't believe I'm the first one to play them."

Early in 1977, writer Bob Blumenthal sat down in a Boston motel room to interview Jaco. Already enjoying the critical success of his debut solo album, the interview takes place just months before the start of Jaco's rocket ride to global fame as a full time member of Weather Report. With the upcoming release of what would be their biggest album, Heavy Weather, and the world tour to promote it, Jaco Pastorius would soon be regarded as the greatest electric bass player of his time.

The interview was published in the May 5th, 1977 issue of Rolling Stone magazine as a companion piece to the Conrad Silvert article, "Weather Report Heads Down Thunder Road".


Jaco Pastorius: Tempest In A Bass - by Bob Blumenthal

Boston -- It's a miserable Thursday afternoon, with freezing rain falling on snow that might have been picturesque four sandings ago. Twenty-five year old electric bassist/composer Jaco Pastorius ought to be in California playing prestigious studio gigs (like Joni Mitchell's Hejira, where he appears on four tracks) or resting at home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in preparation for the Weather Report tour set to coincide with the release of Heavy Weather (Jaco joined Weather Report last April). Instead, he's sitting in a suburban Boston motel room, explaining why he accepted Herbie Hancock's invitation to spend a couple of months on tour, and why he only found three months last year to be with his wife and two children.

"If the studio cats want to sit there in L.A. making $200,000 a year on these nice little records that all sound the same that's okay; but the cats who are making modern music are out beating their ass on the road, having to struggle to keep their families together. That's why their music is so strong, and why studio music will always sound like copy music."

Even in this era of unprecedented eclecticism, Jaco's background is amazingly diverse. Almost from birth he was exposed to the Frank Sinatra-Tony Bennett school of pop balladry through his father, a professional singer and drummer. "I was exposed to all types of music, but no one ever told me what to listen to," Pastorius remembers. "You could still get radio broadcasts from Cuba for a couple of years, and my mother would take me to see steel bands and all the bad calypso cats. And, of course, all those funk rhythms come from Florida and Georgia."

Jaco followed his father's lead, and by 13 was working as a professional drummer. At 15 he was kicked out of a band then hired to play bass in another. "I had $400 in the bank from selling newspapers," Jaco recalls, "so I just went out and copped a Fender. I didn't know what I was doing gigging that night. But I've always been pragmatic.

"At the time, music was just another thing I did, like playing baseball or hanging out; but I had a good ear, and I always experimented with a bunch of instruments. I'd go to a pawn shop, get an old flute for $50, keep it for a month, then trade it in on an old alto sax. It was totally haphazard trial and error, but through these other instruments I got the musical facility I have on the bass".

In a short time Jaco found himself working black music gigs, unusual for a white teenager in the segregated South of the Sixties. While on the cruise boats so popular with older tourists, he learned to play "Cabaret" in every key. For further variety, Pastorius joined Wayne Cochran's C.C. Riders for seven months of one-nighters. "After Cochran," Pastorius says, "I took a while off to practice. That's when I really decided to be a musician, in 1971."

Through pianist Alex Darqui, Jaco met multi-instrumental jazz legend Ira Sullivan and began his three-year association with Sullivan's quartet and big band, the Baker's Dozen. He also did a few East Coast jobs, with pianist Paul Bley in New York and guitarist Pat Metheny in Boston, but the big break ultimately occurred at Bachelors III in Ft. Lauderdale. "Blood Sweat & Tears were playing there, and everybody -- including my wife, who was working as a waitress-- kept telling Bobby Colomby he had to hear this fantastic bass player. After I played for him, he set up a New York audition where I played solo bass in the Epic office."

Jaco Pastorius, the resulting album, contains a little of everything Jaco has encountered, from Charlie Parker to Cuban religious music, Sam & Dave and steel drums. With no plans for a follow-up album at the moment ("I got lots of music, but business has to be right"), all of Jaco's current energy is invested in Heavy Weather. "The album is very creative and modern, but very entertaining. As opposed to all that 'typewriter music' being played today, it's very warm and romantic."

Considering the extent of his involvement, it's a shock to discover how little attention Jaco pays to his contemporaries. "My two biggest influences are Charlie Parker, for his incredible virtuosity, and Miles Davis, for the beauty of his improvisations. But I have very few records, and I never listened to bass players. I never studied music in high school because what they were playing sounded like a joke. Technically maybe I couldn't play what the fifth trumpet was playing, but I already knew so much more than that just from watching TV. You can hear all the counterpoint and harmony you need on the Wonderful World Of Disney or the Dick Van Dyke Show; everything has music.

"It's like the harmonics I play on the bass; they've always been on the instrument, and I can't believe I'm the first one to play them. But most bass guitarists are either frustrated guitarists or guys who played the big bass and chickened out. Too many people can't think beyond conventions, so by using harmonics I'm unique as a bass player.

"But there isn't a single note of music that hasn't been played before; it's in the air, and it's all just one common denominator to me. Music is so beautiful because it's intangible. After the record industry standardizes music and sells hundreds of bullshit records that all sound the same, music is still going to be abstract. It's that hip."

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