Jaco Pastorius: I hope to never play the same thing twice

“Birdland” is the closest thing to a hit single that i Weather Report have ever had, as well as being a cornerstone of modern jazz. The song was written by the keyboardist and founder of the group, Joe Zawinuland would win three Grammy Awards after being reinterpreted by Manhattan Transfer And Quincy Jones in the years following its publication in 1977 as the first track of the seventh album Weather Report, “Heavy Weather”the group’s most commercially successful album.

The American jazz fusion group that played
“Birdland”
was composed by Zawinul on piano and synthesizers,
Jacob
Pastorius
on bass and mandoloncello,
Wayne Shorter
to the saxophones,
Manolo Badrena
on the tambourine and
Alex Acuña
to the battery. The song was named as a tribute to the famous New York jazz club Birdland which hosted numerous jazz legends on its stage between 1949 and 1965.

Birdland was a place particularly dear to him
Joe Zawinul
. There he saw artists such as
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington
And
Miles Davis
… and also met his wife Maxine there. He once said, “Old Birdland was the most important place in my life.”

In an interview on British radio in 1978,
Jaco Pastorius
explained how it was born
“Birdland”
. “I read treble clef thanks to Joe Zawinul. He writes all his stuff in treble clef and I have to read it. Like “Birdland,” for example. He said, ‘Jaco, I want you to do this and play the false harmonics.’ One take. ‘Birdland’ was recorded the first time. One of the greatest songs ever. We did it in one take. That’s it.”

In a May 1983 article in Guitar World, Pastorius was asked how he became one of the most respected creative forces in his field. His response was ironic at first, then it became more serious. “I am not an original musician, I am a thief. As Igor Stravinsky said: ‘No good composer borrows, he steals!’. I copy everything. I have no originals. Only animals and children can understand my music. I love women, children, music, I love everything that goes in the right direction, everything that flows… I love music. I don’t know what I’m doing!”.

For
Jaco Pastorius
the bass was a vehicle for soul searching and creative freedom. “I’d rather just be Jaco. I improvise all the time. I hope, I think, to never play the same thing twice. I’m not a magician, I’m not a politician, I’m a musician. I have no goals. You don’t improve, you grow. I’m a musician and I finally understood it!”.

Pastorius died in 1987 at just 35 years old following an argument outside a club in Florida. In 2014, the bassist of
Metallica
Robert Trujillo
produced the documentary
‘Jaco’
in which he celebrated his talent. In an interview with MusicRadar upon the film’s release, Trujillo described
“Birdland”
as “a classic in its own right” and told us how “Jaco could adapt to any situation” because it was “focused on creativity” rather than “the rules you should play by”.