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Where were you when Jaco died?
- Thread starter bassrique
- Start date
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.
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.
I was ending my school day getting on my bus when I got the news. I was livin in Colton, CA at the time.
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.
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.
Unrepresented
Something Borderline Offensive
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.
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.
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.
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