Has anyone read the Jaco book 'the extraordinary and tragic life of Jaco, the worlds greatest bass player?' It was an interesting read that offered great insight into the person that Jaco was. So many people only know him as an eccentric bass player that turned into a real jerk. When I hear these types of remarks it is sad because there is so much more to the story of his life than that. I highly recomend this book to anyone that is a fan or a skeptic. Here is some info I found on the book.
Bill Milkowski's biography of electric bass pioneer Jaco Pastorius provides useful insight into the life and work of an immensely talented and enigmatic musician. This is a free-wheeling account told in turns by Milkowski and, through an extensive body of interviews, the friends, family, and musical associates who populated Pastorius's all-too-brief career, from the 1970s until his death in 1987.
Pastorius began not as a bassist but as a drummer, being largely self-taught on both instruments. Chronic pain in his left wrist (from a football injury) forced him to abandon the drums at age fifteen, and he turned to the electric bass with such motivation that he was soon playing professionally. Milkowski's research is particularly illuminating here, documenting how Pastorius's work with a number of Fort Lauderdale-area bands infused his playing style with a wide range of influences -- including soul, rhythm and blues, funk, reggae, and jazz -- all of which helped him to become "the ultimate groove player" (36). By all accounts, the virtuosic technique and eclectic style that would gain Pastorius worldwide recognition were in evidence as early as 1970; the difficulties with substance abuse and mental illness that would lead to his downfall were not. It is ironic that during such a healthy and creative period of development Pastorius would begin to predict that he would not live past his early thirties.
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The bassist's musical legacy begins with the release of Jaco Pastorius (Epic Records, 1976), a document of eclecticism and stunning virtuosity that influenced not only bassists but improvising musicians in general. Pastorius's performance on guitarist Pat Metheny's first album, Bright Size Life (EMC Records, 1976), also helped him to set some standards that he himself seldom attained and rarely surpassed in later recordings. Drummer Bob Moses completed the trio on Bright Size Life and his accounts of performing live with the group and the period leading up to the recording session are fascinating. Regarding an album that features some of Pastorius's (and, arguably, Metheny's) finest playing, Moses states, "I don't listen to that album. In fact, I've never listened to it. I don't think I got past the first tune. To me, the album is lightweight compared to what we were doing on the gigs" (67).
Pastorius gained more widespread recognition in 1976 when he replaced bassist Alphonso Johnson in the electric jazz group Weather Report, led by keyboardist Josef Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, both alumni of Miles Davis's bands. Pastorius had introduced himself to Zawinul the previous year as "the greatest electric bass player in the world" (71), as was his custom. Zawinul dismissed the twenty-three-year-old as a braggart but accepted a demo tape, and the two kept in touch. Zawinul was later convinced that the presence of Pastorius transformed the band and its audience. "He was an electrifying performer and a great musician. And he was really responsible for bringing the white kids to our concerts. We had been popular on college campuses, but after Jaco joined the band we started selfing out big concert halls everywhere. Jaco become some kind of All-American folk hero to these kids" (74).
Performing and recording with Weather Report offered Pastorius an unprecedented level of exposure, and his inability to handle his new fame soon became evident, triggering drug and alcohol abuse and marital difficulties. Pastorius's life changed dramatically at this moment, as does Milkowski's book. Tales of substance abuse and erratic behavior dominate the book after a certain point, and unfortunately any musical commentary by Milkowski himself is lacking in substance and often borders on a sort of hero worship (the author and the bassist were friends in the mid-1980s, and Milkowski is a minor player in some of the anecdotes in the book). To be sure, the sensational tales that fill the latter part of the book were inextricably part of the bassist's final years, but it becomes painfully evident at this point that this book is devoid of any serious critical analysis of Pastorius's music: it contains no notated musical examples, and one attempt, by a Berklee College of Music faculty member, to analyze a Pastorius composition with regards to form and harmony falls flat in this context. A discography is included, but it does not list session dates or material recorded, often omits personnel, and lists performers only by names and not by instrument. An epilogue containing more commentary by Pastorius's musical colleagues provides some interesting anecdotes but is largely redundant: the story has been told at this point, and any worthwhile asides should have been included in the main body of the text.
This is a biography, first and foremost. Readers who are unfamiliar with Pastorius and his music may not fully understand why many believed him to be the "world's greatest bass player." Chasin' the Trane, an early biography of saxophonist John Coltrane by J. C. Thomas (New York: Doubleday, 1975), is similar in several respects. Its most engaging prose comes from Coltrane's friends and colleagues, who portray the saxophonist in such a way as to make him seem larger than life, but the book provides little insight into his musical contributions. In contrast, Bill Cole's John Coltrane (New York: Schirmer, 1976) focuses on how Coltrane helped shape the jazz vocabulary of the fifties and sixties and makes its case through critical analysis and notated musical examples. Perhaps by concentrating almost exclusively on Pastorius's life, Milkowski has inadvertently cleared the way for a more scholarly probe of Pastorius's music.
COPYRIGHT 1997 University of Illinois Press
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
Plus, I see P's outnumber J's about 5:1. Just like they do most other basses. This whole "The World Began and Ended With Everything Jaco Did" idea of ignorance is what makes me dislike the whole ordeal even more.
