Where were you when Jaco died?

[bassrique]

I was drinking in Annapolis.

[Schlyder]

Walking into class at music college.

[tayal01]

Sep 1987 I was backpacking somwhere in Italy.

A few months earlier I was in Spain tavelling by train from Barcelona to Madrid and met an American traveller who played the banjo and on hearing that I played fretless bass told me he had met Jaco a couple of years previously either in LA or Miami. Jaco had asked to play his instrument and proceeded to blow him away with some incredible playing. I didn't know he played banjo and neither did my travelling companion.

However, what most impressed my new buddy was that once Jaco was done he handed the instrument back to him, said "Now you play.", and sat listening intently and nodding until my friend had exhausted his repertoire. There was no question in his mind that Jaco was an absolute musical genius and it was obvious that he had been touched by the experience but he also left me with a sense that Jaco was really "out there" in a wild, creative and potentially destructive way.

We weren't to know what was to happen a few months later and I forgot about the incident until I heard of Jaco's death some months after it happened and I wish now I had asked more questions and written something more about it in my travel diary. We headed in separate directions when we got to Madrid and our paths weren't to cross again. I wish the brief experience with Jaco had been mine.

[hover]

I was ending my school day getting on my bus when I got the news. I was livin in Colton, CA at the time.

[Skitch it!]

Working a shift, British Steel Corporation. I wouldn't have had 'Heavy Weather' that long by that point, it was a revelation, I'd never heard bass played like that before.

[Stingray89]

I was a stain in my dads pants-leg.

[jonathan_matos5]

i was 3 so at home probably playing with blocks, or asleep.

[Big_Daddy]

I wasn't even a dirty thought in my dad's head. My brother wasn't even born yet.

[SoonerMatt]

I was 2 and probably trying to play with my then-baby brother while my parents wondered why they were still in middle-of-nowhere/Winchester, Kentucky.

[Mike M.]

I didn't know he had died until a few years after the fact.

[Ziltoid]

I wasn't even a thought in my parents' minds.

[Unrepresented]

Grade school. Completely oblivious to Jaco and to the electric bass.

[machine gewehr]

Most likely at home,I was busy with being a 3 year old kid.

[odin70]

Had a gig the day i heard it. I was 17 and had just bought his first solo album.

[Joe Gress]

Wasn't even born. Hell my parents didn't even know who Jaco was.

[Pilgrim]

Don't know. Don't care. Didn't like his playing much.

[bassybill]

I was just starting a new job, working with a guy I saw Jaco with a few years earlier.

Jaco is still the greatest bass player I know of, nearly thirty years later. I honestly don't think anyone else will ever come even remotely close.

[Skitch it!]

I remember a great Welsh bassist Laurence Cottle relating that it was a good experience meeting with Jaco, and a bit bizarre at the same time, cat was on his own planet for sure.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

I was 2, probably not doing much of anything!

[jonathan_matos5]

this thread feels a bit like "Jaco is dead. where where you. . ."


followed by everyone's alibi.