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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:32,996 --> 00:00:36,166 Music has always been like a curse with me. 4 00:00:36,875 --> 00:00:38,960 I've always felt driven to play it. 5 00:00:39,878 --> 00:00:41,463 It's the first thing in my life. 6 00:00:41,630 --> 00:00:44,341 Go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. 7 00:00:45,050 --> 00:00:46,801 It's always there. 8 00:00:47,510 --> 00:00:49,679 It comes before everything. 9 00:01:27,259 --> 00:01:29,928 Living is an adventure and a challenge. 10 00:01:30,553 --> 00:01:33,723 It wasn't about standing still and becoming safe. 11 00:01:35,016 --> 00:01:37,143 But I've always been the way I am, 12 00:01:37,310 --> 00:01:39,062 been like this all my life. 13 00:01:40,438 --> 00:01:42,274 If anybody wants to keep creating, 14 00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:44,192 they have to be about change. 15 00:02:14,097 --> 00:02:16,308 I was born in Alton, Illinois, 16 00:02:16,891 --> 00:02:19,394 a little river town up on the Mississippi River. 17 00:02:21,229 --> 00:02:23,940 My father moved the family to East St. Louis. 18 00:02:26,318 --> 00:02:28,737 East St. Louis and St. Louis were country towns 19 00:02:28,903 --> 00:02:30,405 full of country people. 20 00:02:30,822 --> 00:02:33,116 Especially the white people from around there. 21 00:02:33,491 --> 00:02:36,953 Really country, and racist to the bone. 22 00:02:39,539 --> 00:02:41,750 Miles grew up in a wealthy situation. 23 00:02:42,459 --> 00:02:44,461 His father was a dentist. 24 00:02:44,878 --> 00:02:50,550 He also had a farm and raised cattle and hogs. 25 00:02:51,217 --> 00:02:53,470 They were the cream of the crop in the city. 26 00:02:53,636 --> 00:02:56,389 He was the second richest guy in the state of Illinois. 27 00:02:56,556 --> 00:02:57,724 Black man. 28 00:02:57,891 --> 00:03:01,144 But, during the period that he grew up in, 29 00:03:01,311 --> 00:03:03,063 it's still Jim Crow America. 30 00:03:03,229 --> 00:03:08,401 And so, his father's wealth wouldn't have protected him 31 00:03:08,568 --> 00:03:13,114 from segregation and racism in a place like East St. Louis. 32 00:03:15,742 --> 00:03:19,371 On my 13th birthday, my father bought me a new trumpet. 33 00:03:20,538 --> 00:03:22,457 My mother wanted me to have a violin, 34 00:03:22,624 --> 00:03:24,334 but my father overruled her. 35 00:03:25,502 --> 00:03:27,837 This caused a big argument between them. 36 00:03:29,130 --> 00:03:30,799 They had been at each other's throats 37 00:03:30,965 --> 00:03:32,425 since I was a little kid. 38 00:03:33,301 --> 00:03:37,180 He would hear his mother and father talking and fussing. 39 00:03:37,639 --> 00:03:42,936 I guess that's what got in his mind as a young boy. 40 00:03:43,186 --> 00:03:45,939 Miles absorbed that. He absorbed all of that. 41 00:03:46,606 --> 00:03:50,610 The anger, that kind of attitude toward women. 42 00:03:53,113 --> 00:03:55,323 I remember my mother picking up things 43 00:03:55,490 --> 00:03:57,283 and throwing them at my father. 44 00:03:57,659 --> 00:03:59,661 He got so mad with her he punched her. 45 00:03:59,828 --> 00:04:02,539 He knocked a couple of teeth right out of her mouth. 46 00:04:03,998 --> 00:04:06,000 It had to affect us somehow, 47 00:04:06,626 --> 00:04:08,336 although I don't really know how. 48 00:04:10,338 --> 00:04:12,799 Miles was considered a genius, 49 00:04:13,508 --> 00:04:17,345 but he was also considered, I guess, weird. 50 00:04:19,013 --> 00:04:21,141 Miles would go into the woods, 51 00:04:21,307 --> 00:04:24,477 listening to the animals or listening to the birds, 52 00:04:24,686 --> 00:04:27,647 and play what he was hearing. 53 00:04:30,442 --> 00:04:33,236 He always had his own way of doing things. 54 00:04:35,947 --> 00:04:39,868 Miles started very early as a member of the trumpet section 55 00:04:40,034 --> 00:04:41,870 in Eddie Randle's Blue Devils. 56 00:04:42,579 --> 00:04:44,956 Miles is young and small 57 00:04:45,123 --> 00:04:48,960 and can barely fill the suit he had to wear for these gigs. 58 00:04:49,335 --> 00:04:51,212 While the other guys in Eddie Randle's band 59 00:04:51,379 --> 00:04:54,466 were working their day jobs, this teenager, Miles Davis, 60 00:04:54,716 --> 00:04:56,759 quickly becomes the musical director 61 00:04:56,926 --> 00:04:58,511 for this popular dance band. 62 00:05:07,312 --> 00:05:09,522 The real pivot point for Miles 63 00:05:09,689 --> 00:05:12,942 is when, during his summer after high school, 64 00:05:13,318 --> 00:05:17,155 he is invited to sit in with the Billy Eckstine band. 65 00:05:21,659 --> 00:05:24,996 Both Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie are in that band. 66 00:05:25,288 --> 00:05:27,457 You've got the laboratory, 67 00:05:27,624 --> 00:05:31,586 the future of modern jazz, right there in this big band. 68 00:05:36,716 --> 00:05:41,095 The greatest feeling I ever had in my life, with my clothes on, 69 00:05:41,513 --> 00:05:43,806 was when I first met Diz and Bird. 70 00:05:44,516 --> 00:05:46,226 I was 18 years old. 71 00:05:47,477 --> 00:05:50,104 I decided right then and there I had to be in New York, 72 00:05:50,271 --> 00:05:53,525 on 52nd Street, where the action was. 73 00:06:13,461 --> 00:06:14,879 Walter Cronkite reporting. 74 00:06:15,296 --> 00:06:18,132 War years always bring on new fads and tastes 75 00:06:18,299 --> 00:06:19,884 and the strangest taste around 76 00:06:20,051 --> 00:06:23,263 is the excitement generated by the musical noise called jazz. 77 00:06:23,429 --> 00:06:25,723 This strange music has been accused of everything, 78 00:06:25,890 --> 00:06:29,060 including the bad weather and the present decay in morality. 79 00:06:33,648 --> 00:06:38,152 52nd Street was a mecca of jazz clubs. 80 00:06:38,861 --> 00:06:41,990 They had jazz clubs on both sides of the street. 81 00:06:46,452 --> 00:06:47,662 I had never heard 82 00:06:47,829 --> 00:06:50,039 no shit like they was playing on 52nd St. 83 00:06:51,124 --> 00:06:53,501 We would go down there and listen in amazement. 84 00:06:54,627 --> 00:06:57,547 That shit was so good it was scary. 85 00:07:01,050 --> 00:07:03,094 Each little place had a speaker outside 86 00:07:03,261 --> 00:07:05,388 where you could hear what was going on inside. 87 00:07:05,555 --> 00:07:10,226 You could stand outside and hear the music 88 00:07:10,393 --> 00:07:15,064 until the club's doorman would chase you away. 89 00:07:19,944 --> 00:07:23,364 Miles enrolled at Juilliard 'cause he wanted to learn music, 90 00:07:24,240 --> 00:07:26,367 and because his mother wanted him 91 00:07:26,534 --> 00:07:28,703 to be a trained musician and all that. 92 00:07:29,912 --> 00:07:33,583 He is serious about Juilliard, he's seriously committed to it. 93 00:07:33,750 --> 00:07:36,878 And he values what Juilliard might have to offer. 94 00:07:38,296 --> 00:07:41,257 A lot of the old guys thought that if you went to school, 95 00:07:41,424 --> 00:07:43,468 it would make you play like you were white. 96 00:07:44,218 --> 00:07:45,970 If you learned something from theory, 97 00:07:46,137 --> 00:07:48,264 you would lose the feeling in your playing. 98 00:07:49,140 --> 00:07:51,559 I would go to the library and borrow scores 99 00:07:51,726 --> 00:07:53,478 by all those great composers. 100 00:07:54,437 --> 00:07:57,023 I wanted to see what was going on in all of music. 101 00:07:58,441 --> 00:08:00,735 And yet he knows there's something else going on, 102 00:08:00,902 --> 00:08:02,737 and it's not happening at Juilliard. 103 00:08:03,571 --> 00:08:07,116 So, he was to go to Juilliard in the daytime, 104 00:08:07,283 --> 00:08:10,495 and at night, he'd be on 52nd Street. 105 00:08:12,622 --> 00:08:14,791 I spent my first week in New York 106 00:08:14,957 --> 00:08:16,376 looking for Bird and Dizzy. 107 00:08:16,959 --> 00:08:19,045 I spent all my money and didn't find them. 108 00:08:20,213 --> 00:08:23,007 Then, one night, I heard this voice from behind me say, 109 00:08:23,174 --> 00:08:25,927 "Hey, Miles, I heard you’ve been looking for me." 110 00:08:27,136 --> 00:08:29,681 I turned around and there was Bird. 111 00:08:36,521 --> 00:08:39,565 Bebop musicians were rocket scientists. 112 00:08:40,400 --> 00:08:43,820 You can compare bebop to the Manhattan Project. 113 00:08:45,321 --> 00:08:49,325 It was developed by some serious sound physicists 114 00:08:50,284 --> 00:08:53,371 blowing their brains out to push this music as far as they could. 115 00:08:56,749 --> 00:08:59,419 So, Miles stepped into a hotbed 116 00:08:59,585 --> 00:09:01,212 of music research and development. 117 00:09:08,720 --> 00:09:11,013 Bebop was a black music. 118 00:09:11,180 --> 00:09:13,641 It was a music by black musicians 119 00:09:13,808 --> 00:09:17,395 who wanted to get away from any kind of hint of minstrelsy. 120 00:09:21,816 --> 00:09:25,611 No smiling, laughing, grinning and dancing. 121 00:09:25,778 --> 00:09:27,780 No entertaining, man. 122 00:09:28,823 --> 00:09:31,534 They wanted to be an artist just like Stravinsky, 123 00:09:31,909 --> 00:09:34,245 just like Stravinsky who was just a pure artist. 124 00:09:35,955 --> 00:09:40,460 Miles saw these very elegantly-dressed characters. 125 00:09:40,835 --> 00:09:44,422 The dignity and the nobility that came with that. 126 00:09:44,589 --> 00:09:45,590 And the swagger. 127 00:09:50,511 --> 00:09:54,807 Very soon after Miles starts his Juilliard studies, 128 00:09:55,266 --> 00:09:58,394 Irene arrives, his high school sweetheart, 129 00:09:58,561 --> 00:10:02,148 with their child and with another baby on the way. 130 00:10:03,775 --> 00:10:06,402 All of a sudden, there she was, 131 00:10:06,903 --> 00:10:08,780 knocking on my motherfucking door. 132 00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:11,115 My mother had told her to come. 133 00:10:11,824 --> 00:10:13,367 It seems almost impossible, 134 00:10:13,534 --> 00:10:16,788 what he would have been trying to do at that age. 135 00:10:16,954 --> 00:10:20,249 There's the domestic situation with children, 136 00:10:20,416 --> 00:10:23,586 there's the kind of time required of anyone 137 00:10:23,753 --> 00:10:25,630 who's a serious student at Juilliard, 138 00:10:25,797 --> 00:10:27,965 but there's also the kind of time and commitment 139 00:10:28,132 --> 00:10:30,301 that this music will take. 140 00:10:30,468 --> 00:10:33,054 And, at some point, something has to give. 141 00:10:35,431 --> 00:10:36,891 Music was everything. 142 00:10:37,058 --> 00:10:38,226 It was everything. 143 00:10:38,392 --> 00:10:40,394 It was sexual, sensuous. 144 00:10:40,812 --> 00:10:43,856 Everything, power. Everything, humor. 145 00:10:44,565 --> 00:10:46,776 And he could not share that. 146 00:10:47,693 --> 00:10:50,446 So, somebody had to play second fiddle to that. 147 00:10:53,574 --> 00:10:55,868 One day, the teacher said, 148 00:10:56,035 --> 00:11:03,000 "The blues grew out of the downtrodden suffering of slavery 149 00:11:03,292 --> 00:11:06,921 and the crying and wailing. 150 00:11:07,088 --> 00:11:10,341 This became the blues of people in chains." 151 00:11:10,508 --> 00:11:12,301 Miles has been back in the room somewhere 152 00:11:12,468 --> 00:11:14,470 and he raises his hand while she's talking. 153 00:11:16,430 --> 00:11:17,640 She says, "Yes?" 154 00:11:18,015 --> 00:11:22,979 He said, "You're a goddamn liar." 155 00:11:25,273 --> 00:11:26,524 He walked out of the room. 156 00:11:29,151 --> 00:11:31,320 Miles, within months, 157 00:11:31,487 --> 00:11:35,116 is hanging with Bird, he's recording with Bird. 158 00:11:35,491 --> 00:11:38,536 He really arrives, like, right away. 159 00:11:38,953 --> 00:11:41,372 Every night, he'd get on the stand with Bird, 160 00:11:41,539 --> 00:11:43,207 Bird would play the head of the tune 161 00:11:43,374 --> 00:11:45,167 and just leave him on stage by himself. 162 00:11:45,543 --> 00:11:47,253 He said he threw up every night 163 00:11:47,837 --> 00:11:51,716 because he was so stressed out and humiliated. 164 00:11:52,383 --> 00:11:55,219 Those 'cats' could wear him out on the horn any night. 165 00:11:56,721 --> 00:11:58,180 But he figured something else out. 166 00:12:10,943 --> 00:12:15,364 He comes up with a style that is truly reflective of who he is. 167 00:12:15,615 --> 00:12:18,451 Straight tone, lyricism. 168 00:12:19,410 --> 00:12:23,247 It is him. It is uniquely, organically him. 169 00:12:31,339 --> 00:12:33,424 Miles meets Gil Evans 170 00:12:33,591 --> 00:12:36,093 and there's this level of mutual respect 171 00:12:36,469 --> 00:12:42,058 and mutual dedication to the music that will last a lifetime. 172 00:12:44,143 --> 00:12:46,103 I liked the way Gil wrote music 173 00:12:46,270 --> 00:12:47,980 and he liked the way I played. 174 00:12:48,147 --> 00:12:49,982 We heard sound in the same way. 175 00:12:51,525 --> 00:12:54,487 By the end of the '40s they're working on a project together. 176 00:12:54,654 --> 00:12:56,405 It's called 'Birth of the Cool'. 177 00:12:56,572 --> 00:12:59,533 A nonet that would create 178 00:12:59,700 --> 00:13:04,330 a kind of melding of modern classical ideas with jazz. 179 00:13:12,421 --> 00:13:13,756 Right now, ladies and gentlemen, 180 00:13:13,923 --> 00:13:15,841 we bring you something new in modern music. 181 00:13:16,008 --> 00:13:17,802 'Impressions in Modern Music' 182 00:13:17,969 --> 00:13:20,888 with the great Miles Davis and his wonderful new organization. 183 00:13:24,266 --> 00:13:27,228 I think the intention was to create a listening music, 184 00:13:27,395 --> 00:13:29,146 a concert music that, 185 00:13:29,313 --> 00:13:33,442 very deliberately, did not have the drive 186 00:13:33,609 --> 00:13:36,237 and the funk of 52nd Street on it. 187 00:13:45,287 --> 00:13:48,249 It's mainly about trying to create new colours, 188 00:13:48,416 --> 00:13:51,252 in a way, where you widen the palette of jazz. 189 00:13:57,717 --> 00:13:59,927 I think he was conscious of the fact that, 190 00:14:00,094 --> 00:14:02,013 to move the music forward, 191 00:14:02,179 --> 00:14:05,433 you've got to go some place it hasn't gone before. 192 00:14:12,481 --> 00:14:14,191 The heart of European civilization 193 00:14:14,358 --> 00:14:15,735 is beating strong again. 194 00:14:16,193 --> 00:14:17,445 Paris ls free. 195 00:14:18,362 --> 00:14:21,115 This is the end of four years of Nazi rule in Paris. 196 00:14:22,158 --> 00:14:24,285 Once more, it is 'The City of Light'. 197 00:14:55,066 --> 00:14:58,861 After the war, France was different, Europe was different, 198 00:14:59,028 --> 00:15:02,323 and they needed a new sound to that era. 199 00:15:03,199 --> 00:15:04,408 And that was jazz. 200 00:15:04,575 --> 00:15:08,954 You can now hear the Miles Davis and Tadd Dameron Quintet. 201 00:15:09,455 --> 00:15:10,623 Here is Miles Davis. 202 00:15:13,667 --> 00:15:16,337 This was my first trip out of the country. 203 00:15:16,545 --> 00:15:20,674 I loved being in Paris, and loved the way I was treated. 204 00:15:21,675 --> 00:15:25,346 He said that the food even tasted better in France. 205 00:15:25,846 --> 00:15:31,018 The smell in the air was even more beautiful in Paris. 206 00:15:32,228 --> 00:15:35,856 That moment, for him, was something that was galvanizing. 207 00:15:37,733 --> 00:15:39,819 Music had been my total life. 208 00:15:40,069 --> 00:15:42,196 I was always so into the music, 209 00:15:42,363 --> 00:15:45,324 I never had time for any kind of romance, 210 00:15:45,908 --> 00:15:48,077 until I met Juliette Gréco. 211 00:16:31,495 --> 00:16:34,832 Juliette and I used to walk down by the Seine River together, 212 00:16:34,999 --> 00:16:36,584 holding hands and kissing, 213 00:16:36,750 --> 00:16:39,628 looking into each other's eyes and kissing some more. 214 00:16:40,963 --> 00:16:43,048 I cared a lot for Irene, 215 00:16:43,215 --> 00:16:46,218 but I had never felt like this before in my life. 216 00:16:47,636 --> 00:16:50,139 She brings him into a circle 217 00:16:50,306 --> 00:16:53,058 of other artists, intellectuals, philosophers, 218 00:16:53,225 --> 00:16:56,896 the greatest minds of that time. 219 00:16:57,313 --> 00:17:01,650 Jazz was really seen as the height of artistry at that time 220 00:17:01,817 --> 00:17:05,362 inside of French intellectual and creative circles. 221 00:17:06,530 --> 00:17:08,490 He meets Pablo Picasso, 222 00:17:08,782 --> 00:17:10,367 Jean-Paul Sartre. 223 00:17:10,826 --> 00:17:12,203 He's treated as an equal 224 00:17:12,369 --> 00:17:14,747 by some of the most creative giants of the day. 225 00:17:16,582 --> 00:17:22,171 Paris, for Miles, is an opening up of possibility and potential. 226 00:17:22,588 --> 00:17:26,425 This sense that one can be fully oneself 227 00:17:27,176 --> 00:17:29,720 beyond the boundaries of race. 228 00:17:30,262 --> 00:17:32,932 That it isn't something to hold you back. 229 00:17:33,098 --> 00:17:35,309 In fact, it might be something that contributes 230 00:17:35,476 --> 00:17:36,936 to your ability to ascend. 231 00:17:37,895 --> 00:17:39,563 Paris was where I understood 232 00:17:39,730 --> 00:17:42,024 that all white people weren't the same, 233 00:17:42,775 --> 00:17:45,277 that some weren't prejudiced and others were. 234 00:17:46,654 --> 00:17:48,948 It had only been a couple of weeks, 235 00:17:49,448 --> 00:17:52,409 but I was living in an illusion of possibility, 236 00:17:52,576 --> 00:17:54,620 maybe a miracle had happened. 237 00:18:16,600 --> 00:18:20,145 I was so depressed coming back to this country on the airplane 238 00:18:20,312 --> 00:18:23,440 that I couldn't say nothing all the way back. 239 00:18:24,316 --> 00:18:27,152 I didn't know that shit was going to hit me like that. 240 00:18:33,909 --> 00:18:38,038 Every African-American artist who has spent time abroad 241 00:18:38,205 --> 00:18:39,957 talks about the profound disappointment 242 00:18:40,124 --> 00:18:41,834 in coming back to the United States. 243 00:18:42,001 --> 00:18:46,422 You see your country as you knew it but in an even starker light 244 00:18:46,588 --> 00:18:48,924 because you've experienced something different. 245 00:18:52,344 --> 00:18:54,054 It was hard for me to come back 246 00:18:54,221 --> 00:18:57,224 to the bullshit white people put a black person through 247 00:18:57,391 --> 00:18:58,642 in this country. 248 00:18:59,143 --> 00:19:01,228 I lost my sense of discipline, 249 00:19:01,770 --> 00:19:04,231 lost my sense of control over my life, 250 00:19:04,398 --> 00:19:06,066 and started to drift. 251 00:19:07,026 --> 00:19:10,404 Before I knew it, I had a heroin habit, 252 00:19:11,155 --> 00:19:13,741 which meant getting and shooting heroin all the time, 253 00:19:13,907 --> 00:19:15,826 all day and all night. 254 00:19:17,161 --> 00:19:18,620 That's all I lived for. 255 00:19:23,167 --> 00:19:25,878 His career is spiraling out of control. 256 00:19:27,004 --> 00:19:29,673 There's no expectation that Miles is gonna survive, 257 00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:34,511 let alone whether he's going to be a successful musician again. 258 00:19:39,975 --> 00:19:43,604 I had a little club in... I think it was Hartford. 259 00:19:44,063 --> 00:19:46,315 I booked the Symphony Sid All Stars. 260 00:19:47,232 --> 00:19:50,652 And Symphony Sid said, "Don't give Miles any money." 261 00:19:52,071 --> 00:19:54,281 Miles came up to me the first night and says, 262 00:19:54,448 --> 00:19:56,116 "George, give me five dollars." 263 00:19:56,283 --> 00:19:58,410 I said, "Miles, come on, man..." 264 00:19:59,578 --> 00:20:01,330 "George, give me two dollars." 265 00:20:01,955 --> 00:20:04,291 And I, "Come on, Miles." 266 00:20:04,458 --> 00:20:06,585 "George, give me 50 cents." 267 00:20:06,877 --> 00:20:09,129 And I, "Hey, man, you know..." 268 00:20:09,671 --> 00:20:11,799 "George, give me a penny." 269 00:20:12,549 --> 00:20:14,301 That's my first meeting with Miles. 270 00:20:18,263 --> 00:20:21,100 We were playing at a club in New York, 271 00:20:22,351 --> 00:20:24,478 and his father came from East St. Louis. 272 00:20:24,645 --> 00:20:27,815 He came to the club and took him off the stage, 273 00:20:27,981 --> 00:20:29,441 he left his horn and everything. 274 00:20:29,608 --> 00:20:31,443 He said, "Come on, you're going back home with me." 275 00:20:37,658 --> 00:20:40,577 I felt like a little boy going with his daddy. 276 00:20:41,870 --> 00:20:43,622 I had never felt like that before 277 00:20:43,789 --> 00:20:46,250 and probably haven't felt like that since. 278 00:20:47,835 --> 00:20:51,088 On the way home, I told him I was going to give up dope 279 00:20:51,255 --> 00:20:53,465 and that all I needed was a little rest. 280 00:20:54,716 --> 00:20:57,928 Before I knew it, I was shooting up again, 281 00:20:58,220 --> 00:21:02,015 borrowing money from my father to support my habit. 282 00:21:05,185 --> 00:21:08,439 You could see him moving through the night. 283 00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:11,150 You'd run into him somewhere, 284 00:21:11,316 --> 00:21:13,026 you didn't even know it was Miles. 285 00:21:13,193 --> 00:21:15,821 He might even have on clothes 286 00:21:15,988 --> 00:21:19,908 that made him look like he was homeless. 287 00:21:20,909 --> 00:21:22,494 We wanted him to be Superman, 288 00:21:24,955 --> 00:21:28,083 and it just doesn't work that way. 289 00:21:33,464 --> 00:21:37,551 I really hated to see him go down like that. 290 00:21:39,344 --> 00:21:42,681 But I don't want to talk about it. 291 00:21:47,478 --> 00:21:51,106 I went out to my father's farm in Millstadt. 292 00:21:51,773 --> 00:21:53,442 I was sick. 293 00:21:54,610 --> 00:21:57,446 If someone could've guaranteed that I would die in two seconds, 294 00:21:57,613 --> 00:21:59,281 then I would've taken it. 295 00:22:01,575 --> 00:22:03,952 This went on for about seven or eight days. 296 00:22:04,828 --> 00:22:06,163 I couldn't eat. 297 00:22:06,914 --> 00:22:09,625 Then, one day, it was over, just like that. 298 00:22:09,958 --> 00:22:11,084 Over. 299 00:22:12,419 --> 00:22:15,964 I felt better, good, pure. 300 00:22:20,302 --> 00:22:25,140 This young white guy had started a new jazz label called Prestige 301 00:22:25,390 --> 00:22:28,060 and he was looking for me to make a record for him. 302 00:22:29,686 --> 00:22:32,439 I figured there was nowhere for me to go but up. 303 00:22:33,023 --> 00:22:34,733 I was already on the bottom. 304 00:22:36,360 --> 00:22:38,904 We, the negro citizens, had it not to rise... 305 00:22:39,071 --> 00:22:40,155 Miss America Contest... 306 00:22:40,322 --> 00:22:41,323 Dodgers go wild... 307 00:22:41,532 --> 00:22:42,991 Emmett Till was taken by... 308 00:22:43,158 --> 00:22:45,536 Amazing new Motoramic Chevrolet... 309 00:22:51,708 --> 00:22:53,544 This afternoon, Disneyland, 310 00:22:53,710 --> 00:22:55,671 the world's most fabulous kingdom... 311 00:23:11,979 --> 00:23:13,855 I was in a club in New York 312 00:23:14,481 --> 00:23:16,692 and Miles is at the back of the club. 313 00:23:18,318 --> 00:23:20,779 Miles stopped me coming out of the club, he said, 314 00:23:20,946 --> 00:23:23,532 "Are you going to have a jazz festival up at Newport?" 315 00:23:23,699 --> 00:23:25,534 I said, "Yeah, Miles." 316 00:23:26,159 --> 00:23:28,787 He said, "You can't have a festival without me." 317 00:23:29,830 --> 00:23:31,832 I said, "Miles, you want to be in a festival?" 318 00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:34,543 He says, "You can't have a festival without me." 319 00:23:34,918 --> 00:23:37,379 So, I said, "All right, I'll call your agent." 320 00:23:46,805 --> 00:23:48,890 Newport was like an audition. 321 00:23:50,684 --> 00:23:52,477 Listening in the audience 322 00:23:52,644 --> 00:23:54,730 were executives from Columbia Records. 323 00:23:54,896 --> 00:23:58,859 Columbia Records was the Tiffany of labels at the time. 324 00:23:59,234 --> 00:24:00,902 He knew what this meant. 325 00:24:01,069 --> 00:24:03,280 He knew what this meant for him. 326 00:24:04,281 --> 00:24:07,367 So, if he had that opportunity, as he had at Newport, 327 00:24:07,534 --> 00:24:09,578 he was going for it, and with a vengeance. 328 00:24:19,796 --> 00:24:25,135 Miles put the bell of his horn right into the microphone 329 00:24:26,762 --> 00:24:29,931 and changed the whole world of jazz right there. 330 00:24:30,098 --> 00:24:32,392 And changed his career right there. 331 00:24:32,851 --> 00:24:35,103 Because the beauty of that song 332 00:24:35,354 --> 00:24:37,147 and the beauty of Miles's trumpet 333 00:24:37,856 --> 00:24:42,027 made bebop a music that could be accepted by everybody. 334 00:24:50,702 --> 00:24:53,163 They could now put on Miles's music 335 00:24:53,330 --> 00:24:54,790 while they were making love. 336 00:25:27,781 --> 00:25:30,283 It takes a lot of courage to play a ballad. 337 00:25:30,951 --> 00:25:34,037 It's easy to hide with a bunch of notes all over the place, 338 00:25:34,204 --> 00:25:35,831 and, "Look what I can do..." 339 00:25:35,997 --> 00:25:38,375 "Look what I can do." You know, okay. 340 00:25:46,216 --> 00:25:50,846 Most men are afraid to be vulnerable, 341 00:25:51,805 --> 00:25:54,057 that's what women love the best about a man. 342 00:26:07,779 --> 00:26:12,409 I think Miles, on one hand, he comes out like this, 343 00:26:12,576 --> 00:26:15,412 but then he starts playing and people are like, "Oh..." 344 00:26:15,620 --> 00:26:17,748 He just disarms you. 345 00:26:28,759 --> 00:26:33,805 Miles's sound is unique from the first note. 346 00:26:35,182 --> 00:26:39,352 There's a sense of pleasure, beauty. 347 00:26:41,313 --> 00:26:43,940 There's something very romantic, 348 00:26:44,232 --> 00:26:46,693 but it's romantic without being sentimental. 349 00:27:04,044 --> 00:27:07,672 He's spilling his guts to you 350 00:27:07,839 --> 00:27:13,011 so directly to the heart, to your vitals. 351 00:27:24,022 --> 00:27:28,360 I want to feel the way Miles sounds. 352 00:27:39,746 --> 00:27:43,166 Miles had a way of playing 353 00:27:43,333 --> 00:27:47,629 that sounded like a stone skipping across a pond. 354 00:27:52,467 --> 00:27:55,679 He just touched on the waves. 355 00:28:09,109 --> 00:28:11,111 Sometimes he leaves a note out, 356 00:28:11,278 --> 00:28:13,613 and I've seen people literally like this, 357 00:28:13,780 --> 00:28:15,156 waiting for that next note. 358 00:28:26,084 --> 00:28:28,086 His sound was so pure 359 00:28:29,045 --> 00:28:35,385 and elegant and tasty, musically tasty. 360 00:28:42,267 --> 00:28:46,438 Miles could play one note, I've seen him play one note, 361 00:28:46,605 --> 00:28:52,027 and some of these high rollers that came to the club would say, 362 00:28:52,193 --> 00:28:55,113 "That did it for me! I just got my money's worth!" 363 00:28:55,322 --> 00:28:56,948 And they're ready to leave. 364 00:28:57,657 --> 00:29:00,619 Miles would say, "Bam!" They'd say, "That's it, man." 365 00:29:04,122 --> 00:29:06,583 In February or March 1956, 366 00:29:06,750 --> 00:29:10,503 I had to have a non-cancerous growth on my larynx removed. 367 00:29:11,463 --> 00:29:13,506 It had been bothering me for a while. 368 00:29:14,049 --> 00:29:17,427 I wasn't even supposed to talk for at least 10 days. 369 00:29:18,386 --> 00:29:20,931 One week went by and he was in pretty good shape. 370 00:29:21,806 --> 00:29:25,936 The second week, he couldn't keep his mouth shut. 371 00:29:27,562 --> 00:29:29,814 Everybody was "a sack full of motherfuckers". 372 00:29:32,359 --> 00:29:33,818 And that was it. 373 00:29:33,985 --> 00:29:37,614 He got that rasp and it never healed. 374 00:29:38,990 --> 00:29:42,577 At that time, nobody knew that Miles had had an operation 375 00:29:42,744 --> 00:29:44,829 and that his voice had suffered from it. 376 00:29:45,372 --> 00:29:46,790 He came on the stage 377 00:29:46,957 --> 00:29:49,250 and began to announce, in that gravelly voice, 378 00:29:49,417 --> 00:29:51,378 what he was going to play for that evening. 379 00:29:51,544 --> 00:29:54,172 I think he got two or three sentences out, 380 00:29:54,339 --> 00:29:56,216 and the audience, a large number of them, 381 00:29:56,383 --> 00:29:57,467 began to laugh at him. 382 00:29:58,301 --> 00:30:01,596 Miles turned around and looked at the audience. 383 00:30:01,763 --> 00:30:05,725 He had this very strange look on his face, and he left. 384 00:30:14,567 --> 00:30:16,194 I could communicate with the band 385 00:30:16,361 --> 00:30:18,363 just by giving them a certain look. 386 00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:20,448 That's what I'm doing 387 00:30:20,615 --> 00:30:22,659 when I have my back turned to the audience. 388 00:30:23,410 --> 00:30:25,954 I can't be concerned with talking and bullshitting 389 00:30:26,121 --> 00:30:27,497 while I'm playing, 390 00:30:27,872 --> 00:30:30,875 because the music is talking to them when everything's right. 391 00:30:42,762 --> 00:30:46,433 George Avakian, the jazz producer for Columbia Records, 392 00:30:46,599 --> 00:30:48,685 wanted to sign me to an exclusive contract. 393 00:30:49,686 --> 00:30:51,730 I told him that I wanted to go with Columbia 394 00:30:51,896 --> 00:30:53,982 because of all the shit that he offered me. 395 00:30:56,609 --> 00:30:57,902 George Avakian says, 396 00:30:58,069 --> 00:31:01,114 "Here's a list of demands that I'd like you to meet, 397 00:31:02,198 --> 00:31:05,702 you've got to be clean and have a consistent band." 398 00:31:06,661 --> 00:31:07,787 And the last thing is, 399 00:31:07,954 --> 00:31:10,290 he's got to get free of his Prestige contract. 400 00:31:10,498 --> 00:31:12,751 I’ll play it and tell you what it ls later... 401 00:31:25,638 --> 00:31:27,098 He had a new quintet 402 00:31:27,265 --> 00:31:30,477 with John Coltrane as the tenor saxophone player. 403 00:31:30,643 --> 00:31:36,399 And he took that quintet into the studios of Rudy Van Gelder 404 00:31:36,566 --> 00:31:40,236 and he called tune, after tune, after tune, 405 00:31:40,445 --> 00:31:44,324 and recorded enough music in a couple of days 406 00:31:44,491 --> 00:31:47,118 to get rid of his obligation to Prestige. 407 00:31:56,336 --> 00:31:59,923 He basically took the handcuffs off the musicians and said, 408 00:32:00,090 --> 00:32:04,010 "Here, do you, be you." 409 00:32:05,053 --> 00:32:08,515 "I'm just going to let the music live, let it breathe 410 00:32:08,681 --> 00:32:11,184 and let it develop as we feel it." 411 00:32:19,442 --> 00:32:20,819 Miles thought he was just 412 00:32:20,985 --> 00:32:24,030 dispatching his obligation as fast as he could, 413 00:32:24,197 --> 00:32:27,992 but in fact they are gems of spontaneous jazz music. 414 00:32:32,455 --> 00:32:36,835 Two marathon sessions, three hours or more of recorded music. 415 00:32:39,045 --> 00:32:42,006 One of the great feats, really, of jazz history. 416 00:33:02,819 --> 00:33:04,154 I first met Miles Davis, 417 00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:07,240 I was performing with the Katherine Dunham Company. 418 00:33:09,826 --> 00:33:12,453 It was the introduction to so many different people 419 00:33:12,620 --> 00:33:15,415 that I met at that time in the show business world. 420 00:33:17,667 --> 00:33:20,837 I mean, I was in Paris, I was in Berlin, I was everywhere. 421 00:33:22,338 --> 00:33:24,924 I was told I had the best legs in the business. 422 00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:30,680 Hugh O'Brian wanted to date me. 423 00:33:31,598 --> 00:33:34,684 Rory Calhoun wanted to take me to Las Vegas. 424 00:33:36,102 --> 00:33:40,648 Oh God, trying to think of all the different gentlemen. 425 00:33:43,109 --> 00:33:46,696 Well, as a dancer, I was spectacular on that stage 426 00:33:46,863 --> 00:33:50,116 and I guess they just wanted to find out more about me. 427 00:33:52,202 --> 00:33:55,288 I didn't know that much about jazz. 428 00:33:55,997 --> 00:33:58,917 Who I did know about was Johnny Mathis. 429 00:34:13,056 --> 00:34:18,561 I was performing at Ciro's and Miles saw the performance. 430 00:34:19,229 --> 00:34:23,650 And he was smitten right away, but so was everybody else. 431 00:34:27,195 --> 00:34:29,197 This was just another chapter 432 00:34:29,364 --> 00:34:32,617 of gentlemen wanting to be with Frances. 433 00:34:38,414 --> 00:34:43,628 Sammy Davis Jr. asked me to join this new play that he was doing 434 00:34:43,795 --> 00:34:45,171 called 'Mr Wonderful'. 435 00:34:46,339 --> 00:34:51,427 On my way to rehearsal one day, Miles is coming down the street 436 00:34:52,011 --> 00:34:55,014 and we looked at each other and he looked at me and he said, 437 00:34:55,682 --> 00:34:58,226 "Now that I found you, I'll never let you go." 438 00:35:00,019 --> 00:35:03,731 And what happened was, I moved in with him. 439 00:35:16,536 --> 00:35:21,124 Frances Taylor was really a muse, an inspiration. 440 00:35:21,833 --> 00:35:26,546 She was the most inspirational person he had partnered with, 441 00:35:26,921 --> 00:35:28,756 the one he was with the longest. 442 00:35:29,549 --> 00:35:32,135 She was someone who gave him stability and love 443 00:35:32,302 --> 00:35:35,179 at a time when he produced some of his most groundbreaking 444 00:35:35,346 --> 00:35:36,931 and popular work. 445 00:35:41,686 --> 00:35:46,524 He had to go off to Paris and he left me the music. 446 00:35:49,027 --> 00:35:52,989 I fell in love with his sound, it got to me. 447 00:35:56,034 --> 00:35:57,952 And I just played it over and over. 448 00:35:59,370 --> 00:36:02,165 And that was my introduction to his music. 449 00:37:24,372 --> 00:37:25,373 That's not very daring. 450 00:37:25,540 --> 00:37:27,041 Miles happened to be in Paris 451 00:37:27,208 --> 00:37:31,337 at the time when Louis Malle had finished his movie, 452 00:37:31,504 --> 00:37:34,340 'Ascenseur pour L'Échafaud', 'Elevator To The Gallows'. 453 00:37:40,012 --> 00:37:44,892 Malle was very young and was at the beginning of his career. 454 00:37:46,060 --> 00:37:49,647 He wanted also to make different cinema 455 00:37:49,814 --> 00:37:52,191 and change the way of doing films 456 00:37:52,358 --> 00:37:57,530 like having real people in a real setting. 457 00:38:01,951 --> 00:38:04,162 He approached Miles with the idea, 458 00:38:04,328 --> 00:38:07,748 "Would you be willing to create a jazz soundtrack?" 459 00:38:50,833 --> 00:38:53,544 Miles didn't write any music. 460 00:38:55,630 --> 00:38:58,049 He played the entire music 461 00:38:58,716 --> 00:39:01,344 directly along to the screening of the movie. 462 00:39:12,313 --> 00:39:16,067 Just improvising and creating the sound 463 00:39:16,234 --> 00:39:18,903 in reaction to the images of the film. 464 00:40:02,947 --> 00:40:05,575 That soundtrack made the film famous. 465 00:40:07,201 --> 00:40:10,371 A lot of people, they heard the record first, 466 00:40:10,871 --> 00:40:13,040 and then they wanted to see the movie second. 467 00:40:18,963 --> 00:40:21,549 During the recording of 'Elevator To The Gallows', 468 00:40:21,716 --> 00:40:25,511 Miles experienced a new way of approaching improvisation. 469 00:40:26,095 --> 00:40:29,557 That's something he'd develop in the next following years. 470 00:40:30,891 --> 00:40:34,270 So, something started in the recording studio 471 00:40:34,437 --> 00:40:36,856 of 'Elevator To The Gallows'. 472 00:40:41,193 --> 00:40:42,695 Start again, please. 473 00:40:44,238 --> 00:40:48,326 Here we go. 300622981, number 2, take 1. 474 00:40:48,492 --> 00:40:49,702 Wait, one minute! 475 00:40:51,078 --> 00:40:52,663 I was probably the first one there 476 00:40:52,830 --> 00:40:54,457 because I had to set up the drums. 477 00:40:55,708 --> 00:40:57,668 So, I had my drums, set them up 478 00:40:58,044 --> 00:41:00,338 and waited until everybody else filed in. 479 00:41:03,841 --> 00:41:06,093 He just came in with little notes that he had, 480 00:41:06,260 --> 00:41:08,179 he didn't even have sheet music for that. 481 00:41:10,056 --> 00:41:11,724 And the only thing he'd tell me was, 482 00:41:12,099 --> 00:41:15,311 "Just swing, just swing." 483 00:41:19,023 --> 00:41:21,651 I didn't write out the music for 'Kind of Blue', 484 00:41:21,817 --> 00:41:23,235 but brought in sketches, 485 00:41:23,402 --> 00:41:26,155 because I wanted a lot of spontaneity in the playing. 486 00:41:28,032 --> 00:41:30,409 I knew that if you've got some great musicians, 487 00:41:30,576 --> 00:41:34,580 they'd deal with the situation and play beyond what ls there 488 00:41:34,747 --> 00:41:36,916 and above where they think they can. 489 00:41:38,709 --> 00:41:40,127 The first part of 'So What'... 490 00:41:47,593 --> 00:41:50,054 Then, Paul would go into the bass saying... 491 00:41:55,851 --> 00:41:58,562 Man, that was the first thing I ever heard from Miles. 492 00:41:59,063 --> 00:42:01,816 I grabbed the record out of my father's collection, put it on. 493 00:42:04,110 --> 00:42:05,861 The first thing that catches your ear 494 00:42:06,028 --> 00:42:07,988 is Paul Chambers playing that bass line. 495 00:42:15,746 --> 00:42:18,499 We can't even question the sacred texts that we have, 496 00:42:18,666 --> 00:42:20,960 like, why is the Bible the Bible? 497 00:42:21,127 --> 00:42:22,878 It's the Bible, you know. 498 00:42:23,045 --> 00:42:24,922 Why is 'Kind of Blue' 'Kind of Blue'? 499 00:42:25,089 --> 00:42:26,382 It's 'Kind of Blue'. 500 00:42:26,549 --> 00:42:29,719 It just is and it changed the sound of jazz. 501 00:42:37,810 --> 00:42:39,770 The cymbal crash at the start of 'So What', 502 00:42:39,937 --> 00:42:41,647 I thought I had overdone it. 503 00:42:41,897 --> 00:42:44,483 It sounded louder than it should've been to me. 504 00:42:47,570 --> 00:42:52,241 It seems to ring forever but it brings you right into the tune. 505 00:42:53,325 --> 00:42:55,578 It's like you've hit the highway, 506 00:42:55,828 --> 00:42:58,038 and the rest of the tune just takes off. 507 00:43:11,552 --> 00:43:14,889 On 'Kind of Blue', what he asked them to do 508 00:43:15,473 --> 00:43:19,810 was to think deeper about what kind of sound can you create. 509 00:43:23,731 --> 00:43:27,318 He said, "I have these few ideas. Let's go." 510 00:43:30,237 --> 00:43:34,158 And this is something that Miles does for the rest of his life. 511 00:43:46,504 --> 00:43:50,216 'Kind of Blue' doesn't really give away his passion so easily, 512 00:43:50,382 --> 00:43:52,802 but at the same time, once those musicians open up, 513 00:43:54,053 --> 00:43:58,557 they show you how inventive and ingenious they can be, 514 00:43:58,974 --> 00:44:00,851 and how incendiary. 515 00:44:24,416 --> 00:44:26,502 'Kind of Blue' really signified 516 00:44:26,669 --> 00:44:28,671 a different way of thinking about your music, 517 00:44:28,838 --> 00:44:30,631 a different way of playing the music, 518 00:44:30,798 --> 00:44:32,258 and approaching the music. 519 00:44:32,633 --> 00:44:38,472 For Coltrane, it was the door he needed to find his own identity. 520 00:44:44,395 --> 00:44:47,982 Few people hear the potential in the young John Coltrane, 521 00:44:48,983 --> 00:44:53,362 but Miles brought him along and provided Coltrane the space 522 00:44:53,529 --> 00:44:57,575 to become the artist who we would later love and revere. 523 00:45:17,136 --> 00:45:19,930 People that don't even like jazz like that album. 524 00:45:20,514 --> 00:45:24,643 Every decade, there's new people talking about 'Kind of Blue'. 525 00:45:24,810 --> 00:45:27,563 "That's what started me to listening to jazz music." 526 00:45:32,526 --> 00:45:34,320 You can listen hundreds of times, 527 00:45:34,486 --> 00:45:37,156 it always has something new to say. 528 00:45:38,699 --> 00:45:42,453 And that, for me, is the definition of a masterpiece. 529 00:45:56,675 --> 00:46:00,220 I don't think Miles knew that that was gonna be a record 530 00:46:00,387 --> 00:46:02,765 that would sell more records than any record 531 00:46:02,932 --> 00:46:05,225 in the history of the jazz music. 532 00:46:06,018 --> 00:46:08,604 If Miles thought that that was gonna be like that, 533 00:46:08,771 --> 00:46:10,564 he would've asked for the building, 534 00:46:11,565 --> 00:46:15,152 and he would've asked for two Ferraris outside right now. 535 00:46:15,361 --> 00:46:17,237 He would've really gone crazy. 536 00:46:18,238 --> 00:46:20,449 If he thought anything like that was happening, 537 00:46:20,616 --> 00:46:22,451 he would've gone out of Harlem. 538 00:46:39,635 --> 00:46:42,763 'Kind of Blue' becomes successful immediately. 539 00:46:43,472 --> 00:46:46,892 He's becoming a popular, mainstream star. 540 00:46:48,519 --> 00:46:52,898 The Columbia deal gets his music into mainstream America 541 00:46:53,065 --> 00:46:54,400 like never before. 542 00:46:58,612 --> 00:47:02,866 He elevates himself into music maestro land. 543 00:47:09,999 --> 00:47:11,333 All I ever wanted to do 544 00:47:11,500 --> 00:47:14,294 was communicate what I felt through music. 545 00:47:15,504 --> 00:47:18,257 Going with Columbia did mean more money, 546 00:47:18,424 --> 00:47:20,718 but what's wrong with getting paid for what you do 547 00:47:20,884 --> 00:47:22,219 and getting paid well? 548 00:47:32,438 --> 00:47:34,940 It was the black man's era 549 00:47:35,107 --> 00:47:38,902 when he wanted to show his pride of what he was 550 00:47:39,445 --> 00:47:41,822 and Miles was Exhibit A. 551 00:47:41,989 --> 00:47:45,325 And he would look clean as he could, man. 552 00:47:56,754 --> 00:47:59,923 Miles Davis was the personification of cool, 553 00:48:00,674 --> 00:48:02,634 that mythological hero. 554 00:48:07,347 --> 00:48:09,600 He becomes our black Superman. 555 00:48:13,854 --> 00:48:15,856 When the new Miles album came out, man, 556 00:48:16,565 --> 00:48:19,109 we would walk around with the album. 557 00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:25,616 Being into Miles was, in itself, a definition of being hip. 558 00:48:31,997 --> 00:48:35,959 Miles Davis wore slick clothes, drove fast cars, 559 00:48:36,126 --> 00:48:38,045 and had all the women and everything. 560 00:48:38,921 --> 00:48:41,381 We didn't just wanna play with Miles Davis, 561 00:48:41,548 --> 00:48:43,050 we wanted to be Miles Davis. 562 00:48:49,056 --> 00:48:52,142 I'd say, "Miles, what are you doing with your children 563 00:48:52,351 --> 00:48:54,937 when you wanna take them out with you?" 564 00:48:55,104 --> 00:48:57,773 He said, "I tell them to get a taxi." 565 00:49:07,324 --> 00:49:10,869 Miles becomes representative of a kind of cool, 566 00:49:11,078 --> 00:49:15,040 a kind of sophistication, a kind of masculinity. 567 00:49:16,792 --> 00:49:20,420 A kind of black man who takes no shit. 568 00:49:27,886 --> 00:49:30,264 Being cool and hip and angry, 569 00:49:30,430 --> 00:49:32,683 and sophisticated and ultra clean, 570 00:49:33,308 --> 00:49:35,644 I was all those things and more. 571 00:49:36,270 --> 00:49:39,273 But I was playing the fuck out of my horn and had a great group 572 00:49:39,815 --> 00:49:43,485 so, I didn’t get recognition based only on a rebel image. 573 00:49:44,862 --> 00:49:48,657 People were starting to talk about the Miles Davis mystique. 574 00:49:54,663 --> 00:49:58,167 I think the darkness of Miles Davis' skin, 575 00:49:58,333 --> 00:50:01,211 instead of seeing that as a liability, 576 00:50:01,378 --> 00:50:02,963 he saw that as an asset. 577 00:50:06,049 --> 00:50:09,011 It was very different from anything that was projected 578 00:50:09,178 --> 00:50:11,722 on television or in movies at that time. 579 00:50:12,723 --> 00:50:17,519 Miles turned that into something cool, something desirable. 580 00:50:19,062 --> 00:50:22,024 I was sharp as a tack every time I went out in public, 581 00:50:22,191 --> 00:50:23,650 and so was Frances. 582 00:50:24,693 --> 00:50:27,404 A real black motherfucker like me 583 00:50:27,571 --> 00:50:29,865 with this stunningly beautiful woman. 584 00:50:30,032 --> 00:50:31,783 Man, it was something, 585 00:50:31,950 --> 00:50:34,870 people stopping and looking with their mouths hanging open. 586 00:50:42,336 --> 00:50:45,172 Miles would buy clothes for me 587 00:50:45,380 --> 00:50:49,176 because everybody knows I have great legs. 588 00:50:51,428 --> 00:50:53,639 He was chic, I was chic, 589 00:50:55,724 --> 00:50:58,685 and then of course getting in and out of a Ferrari. 590 00:50:58,852 --> 00:51:01,855 I mean, we were a hot couple, there's no two ways about it. 591 00:51:02,773 --> 00:51:05,317 Miles and Frances on fire. 592 00:51:37,099 --> 00:51:42,062 As a kid, when I would see them together, it was just like wow. 593 00:51:42,229 --> 00:51:46,108 They dressed to the nine. Just clean. 594 00:51:47,317 --> 00:51:48,443 And in love. 595 00:51:49,736 --> 00:51:52,072 It was like a prince and a princess. 596 00:51:58,787 --> 00:52:01,707 I had a friend who was a writer, his name was George Frazier, 597 00:52:02,708 --> 00:52:07,087 and he picked up on a word which he applied to Miles. 598 00:52:09,631 --> 00:52:14,678 It had to do with the Spanish matadors, the bull fighters. 599 00:52:17,180 --> 00:52:19,099 A lot of guys could kill the bulls. 600 00:52:19,266 --> 00:52:21,560 Some of them were very exciting fighters. 601 00:52:22,102 --> 00:52:23,895 But others would just walk in the ring 602 00:52:24,062 --> 00:52:28,150 and stand there, hold the cape, and the bull would charge, 603 00:52:28,859 --> 00:52:31,778 and the audience would just gasp their breath. 604 00:52:34,406 --> 00:52:37,075 That fighter had "duende". 605 00:52:39,661 --> 00:52:42,789 And Miles had "duende". 606 00:52:46,585 --> 00:52:49,963 Miles was the kind of guy, he had things that he liked. 607 00:52:50,172 --> 00:52:51,465 If he liked you, he liked you. 608 00:52:51,631 --> 00:52:53,383 If he didn't like you, he didn't like you. 609 00:52:53,550 --> 00:52:56,011 He was just that kind of guy. 610 00:52:56,178 --> 00:53:00,766 If you were on his right side, that's where you were. 611 00:53:00,932 --> 00:53:02,559 And if you were on his wrong side, 612 00:53:02,726 --> 00:53:05,437 that's probably where you stayed. 613 00:53:08,523 --> 00:53:11,318 I was just cold to mostly everyone. 614 00:53:12,069 --> 00:53:14,154 That was the way I protected myself, 615 00:53:14,321 --> 00:53:17,866 by not letting anyone inside of my feelings and emotions. 616 00:53:18,742 --> 00:53:20,994 And, for a long time, it worked for me. 617 00:53:23,205 --> 00:53:28,418 I went to the Village Vanguard where Miles was performing 618 00:53:29,503 --> 00:53:35,092 and I said, "Mr Davis, my name is Archie Shepp, 619 00:53:35,967 --> 00:53:37,928 I wonder if you'd let me sit in." 620 00:53:38,637 --> 00:53:41,014 And he said, "Archie who?" 621 00:53:42,599 --> 00:53:45,477 And I said, "Archie Shepp." 622 00:53:45,644 --> 00:53:50,440 He said, "Fuck you. You can't sit in with me." 623 00:53:51,108 --> 00:53:52,526 Miles didn't care. 624 00:53:53,568 --> 00:53:57,781 Miles didn't have to please anybody but Miles. 625 00:54:02,077 --> 00:54:05,247 Miles was not interested. 626 00:54:07,249 --> 00:54:10,168 You know what I mean? He wasn't interested in people, 627 00:54:11,086 --> 00:54:12,963 because he was Miles Davis. 628 00:54:16,091 --> 00:54:18,844 There were all these personality quirks that he had. 629 00:54:20,011 --> 00:54:22,597 He was angry, antisocial, 630 00:54:23,890 --> 00:54:27,519 but often times those insecurities and those demons 631 00:54:27,686 --> 00:54:30,647 are the very things that are the basis of arts 632 00:54:30,814 --> 00:54:34,109 so that art becomes a way of healing. 633 00:54:36,194 --> 00:54:39,364 It gave him an opportunity to show a vulnerability, 634 00:54:39,531 --> 00:54:41,032 and to show a side of him 635 00:54:41,283 --> 00:54:43,618 that, in the real world, he could not show. 636 00:54:53,879 --> 00:54:55,464 We were working at Birdland 637 00:54:55,630 --> 00:55:01,136 and we got through a set and Miles came upstairs to smoke. 638 00:55:04,431 --> 00:55:07,517 I'm standing there, in front of Birdland, wringing wet, 639 00:55:07,684 --> 00:55:10,645 because it's a hot, steaming, muggy night in August. 640 00:55:11,771 --> 00:55:14,357 I had just walked this pretty white girl named Judy out 641 00:55:14,524 --> 00:55:15,650 to get a cab. 642 00:55:17,277 --> 00:55:21,072 This white policeman comes up to me and tells me to move on. 643 00:55:23,492 --> 00:55:26,161 Miles said, "Why? I'm smoking a cigarette. 644 00:55:26,328 --> 00:55:28,830 I'm working downstairs and I'm smoking a cigarette." 645 00:55:28,997 --> 00:55:31,208 And he was standing right by the sign with his name on it. 646 00:55:31,458 --> 00:55:35,212 "M-I-L-E-S... M-I-L-E-S. Miles. 647 00:55:35,670 --> 00:55:37,839 That's me. Who are you?" 648 00:55:38,089 --> 00:55:42,344 'Kind of Blue' has just come out, he is the talk of the town. 649 00:55:42,511 --> 00:55:47,599 He is at the top of the marquee, top of his popularity. 650 00:55:49,351 --> 00:55:52,062 The guy said, "I don't care, you just can't stand there." 651 00:55:52,229 --> 00:55:54,105 Miles said, "Well, I'm not moving." 652 00:55:54,648 --> 00:55:56,024 I just looked at his face 653 00:55:56,191 --> 00:55:59,277 real straight and hard, and I didn't move. 654 00:56:00,904 --> 00:56:04,407 Miles, at that point, was in such good shape 655 00:56:04,574 --> 00:56:07,035 that it was hard for them to actually get a hand on him. 656 00:56:08,870 --> 00:56:11,623 From out of nowhere, this white detective runs in 657 00:56:11,790 --> 00:56:13,959 and, bam, hits me on the head. 658 00:56:14,918 --> 00:56:16,628 I never saw him coming. 659 00:56:17,754 --> 00:56:19,548 I received a telephone call 660 00:56:19,714 --> 00:56:22,133 that I should come down to the police station. 661 00:56:23,593 --> 00:56:25,220 And I saw his face. 662 00:56:27,722 --> 00:56:29,432 It was just terrifying. 663 00:56:30,517 --> 00:56:31,851 I was in tears. 664 00:56:38,942 --> 00:56:42,946 I'd have expected this kind of bullshit back in East St. Louis, 665 00:56:43,113 --> 00:56:46,283 but not here in New York City, which ls supposed to be 666 00:56:46,449 --> 00:56:48,994 the slickest, hippest city in the world. 667 00:56:51,663 --> 00:56:54,708 It was racial, the whole thing was racial. 668 00:56:54,874 --> 00:56:57,877 The whole city was racist, the whole world, I guess, 669 00:56:58,044 --> 00:57:01,089 so, what is it, you know? 670 00:57:02,424 --> 00:57:04,593 I can't see it being nothing else but that. 671 00:57:08,138 --> 00:57:12,142 It is a reminder that no level of accomplishment, 672 00:57:12,434 --> 00:57:15,186 no level of achievement, no level of financial success, 673 00:57:15,353 --> 00:57:21,693 or recognition, even, for that, actually protects you 674 00:57:21,860 --> 00:57:25,196 from the racial hostilities of the United States. 675 00:57:25,989 --> 00:57:30,577 Damn. Like, there is no way out of this thing. 676 00:57:34,080 --> 00:57:36,333 That incident changed me forever, 677 00:57:37,208 --> 00:57:40,795 made me much more bitter and cynical than I might have been. 678 00:57:47,218 --> 00:57:48,970 He used to flash back, we'd be talking 679 00:57:49,137 --> 00:57:52,098 and randomly he'd just go, "Those fucking cops, man." 680 00:57:52,265 --> 00:57:55,268 Just out of nowhere, it'd be completely random, 681 00:57:55,435 --> 00:57:57,103 he'd flash back to that. 682 00:57:58,396 --> 00:57:59,814 Man, that stuff don't go away 683 00:57:59,981 --> 00:58:02,192 just because all of a sudden you got a little success. 684 00:58:02,359 --> 00:58:04,569 That stuff that happens to you when you're young, 685 00:58:04,736 --> 00:58:07,322 that stays with you for the rest of your life. 686 00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:23,672 'Miles Ahead' was the first collaboration 687 00:58:23,838 --> 00:58:25,590 between Miles Davis and Gil Evans 688 00:58:25,757 --> 00:58:28,134 after Miles signs with Columbia Records. 689 00:58:28,385 --> 00:58:31,638 It's one of the reasons why Miles went to Columbia Records 690 00:58:31,805 --> 00:58:33,556 because Columbia had the budget 691 00:58:33,723 --> 00:58:37,143 and the wherewithal to make a project like this possible. 692 00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:52,659 Gil and I were something special together musically. 693 00:58:53,410 --> 00:58:54,869 I loved working with Gil 694 00:58:55,036 --> 00:58:57,455 because he was so meticulous and creative, 695 00:58:58,373 --> 00:59:01,042 and I trusted his musical arrangements completely. 696 00:59:06,297 --> 00:59:07,841 We worked together at the piano all the time, 697 00:59:08,007 --> 00:59:10,009 always saying, "How about this, how about that?" 698 00:59:11,302 --> 00:59:15,140 I was just crazy about his interpretations of the songs. 699 00:59:15,306 --> 00:59:17,225 They just fit in so naturally. 700 00:59:27,986 --> 00:59:29,779 When 'Miles Ahead' comes out, 701 00:59:29,946 --> 00:59:33,116 there's this young white female model 702 00:59:33,283 --> 00:59:38,329 on the deck of a sailing ship as the original cover. 703 00:59:41,332 --> 00:59:46,004 This was meant to evoke the high life, the good life. 704 00:59:46,546 --> 00:59:48,757 And it would allow the album to be marketed 705 00:59:48,923 --> 00:59:51,718 to a broad, that is, white, audience. 706 00:59:52,844 --> 00:59:56,598 Miles goes up to George Avakian and he says, 707 00:59:57,265 --> 01:00:00,518 "What's that white bitch doing on the cover of my album?" 708 01:00:04,397 --> 01:00:06,399 He becomes aware of his power 709 01:00:06,566 --> 01:00:09,611 as an artist who is generating a tremendous amount of income, 710 01:00:09,778 --> 01:00:11,154 for his record label as well, 711 01:00:11,321 --> 01:00:13,740 that he has some say in these decisions. 712 01:00:14,991 --> 01:00:18,411 The next pressing of the same music comes out 713 01:00:18,578 --> 01:00:20,997 under another title, with another cover. 714 01:00:21,456 --> 01:00:23,875 And Miles Davis himself is on the cover. 715 01:00:30,256 --> 01:00:34,469 'Miles Ahead' was the first of three wonderful collaborations 716 01:00:34,636 --> 01:00:37,388 with Gil Evans and the 19-piece orchestra. 717 01:00:37,847 --> 01:00:40,683 Two years after 'Miles Ahead' came 'Porgy and Bess'. 718 01:00:42,894 --> 01:00:45,021 And then, two years after that... 719 01:00:52,654 --> 01:00:56,324 I had spent time in Barcelona. 720 01:00:58,618 --> 01:01:01,079 After we would finish our shows, 721 01:01:01,246 --> 01:01:04,499 we'd watch and listen to flamenco music and dance, 722 01:01:04,666 --> 01:01:06,459 and I was just taken with that. 723 01:01:09,796 --> 01:01:13,049 I said to Miles, "I want you to really see what I see, 724 01:01:13,216 --> 01:01:15,552 and feel what I feel with flamenco music." 725 01:01:15,718 --> 01:01:18,179 He didn't want to go, but finally he gave in. 726 01:01:19,264 --> 01:01:22,809 And we'd go to see flamenco music and dance. 727 01:01:28,106 --> 01:01:29,691 When we left the theater, 728 01:01:30,775 --> 01:01:35,196 we went right to the Colony record shop 729 01:01:36,447 --> 01:01:39,200 and he bought every flamenco album he could. 730 01:02:00,096 --> 01:02:03,766 That was the hardest thing for me to do on 'Sketches of Spain', 731 01:02:04,601 --> 01:02:06,144 to play the parts on the trumpet 732 01:02:06,311 --> 01:02:08,563 where someone was supposed to be singing, 733 01:02:08,771 --> 01:02:10,648 especially when it was ad-libbed. 734 01:02:12,483 --> 01:02:16,029 My voice had to be both joyous and sad in this song, 735 01:02:16,195 --> 01:02:18,114 and that was very hard, too. 736 01:02:19,282 --> 01:02:21,910 If you do a song like that three or four times, 737 01:02:22,076 --> 01:02:24,579 you lose that feeling you want to get there. 738 01:02:29,959 --> 01:02:33,880 It seemed to work out all right, everyone loved that record. 739 01:02:37,550 --> 01:02:39,260 Once there was a princess... 740 01:02:39,427 --> 01:02:41,220 Was the princess you? 741 01:02:41,638 --> 01:02:42,722 And she fell in love. 742 01:02:42,889 --> 01:02:44,682 Was it hard to do? 743 01:02:45,016 --> 01:02:46,851 Oh, it was very easy. 744 01:02:47,018 --> 01:02:50,188 Anyone could see that the prince was charming. 745 01:02:51,189 --> 01:02:52,523 The only one for me. 746 01:03:07,038 --> 01:03:09,040 Miles always loved a strong melody. 747 01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:14,212 He really felt like those melodies 748 01:03:14,379 --> 01:03:16,798 would allow him to speak, 749 01:03:17,173 --> 01:03:19,676 saying here's something that you're familiar with. 750 01:03:20,343 --> 01:03:23,638 I'm going to show you how beautiful it can really be. 751 01:03:27,558 --> 01:03:29,268 So, he could take something like 752 01:03:29,435 --> 01:03:30,937 'Someday My Prince Will Come' 753 01:03:31,104 --> 01:03:33,022 from a Walt Disney movie 754 01:03:33,272 --> 01:03:38,027 and he could invest that with amazing feeling and depth. 755 01:03:38,194 --> 01:03:41,280 He said, "I'm playing it for my wife Frances." 756 01:03:42,156 --> 01:03:47,495 And you can feel the love and care in his playing. 757 01:03:55,878 --> 01:03:57,463 'Someday My Prince Will Come' 758 01:03:57,630 --> 01:04:00,383 was the first album cover I was on for Miles. 759 01:04:01,384 --> 01:04:06,431 He was out of town and I remember going to the shooting, 760 01:04:06,597 --> 01:04:09,267 and he was calling every two minutes 761 01:04:09,434 --> 01:04:11,853 to see what I was wearing and how I looked. 762 01:04:12,020 --> 01:04:16,315 He wanted to make sure that I looked perfect 763 01:04:17,191 --> 01:04:19,861 and, of course, I thought I did. 764 01:04:25,616 --> 01:04:28,369 I put the mole on my little cheek 765 01:04:28,745 --> 01:04:31,164 'cause I thought it had flair. 766 01:04:36,711 --> 01:04:38,796 It was on 'Someday My Prince Will Come' 767 01:04:38,963 --> 01:04:42,175 that I started demanding that Columbia use black women 768 01:04:42,341 --> 01:04:43,843 on my album covers. 769 01:04:45,511 --> 01:04:49,098 It was my album and I was Frances's prince. 770 01:04:49,265 --> 01:04:51,768 So, I was able to put Frances on the cover. 771 01:04:53,603 --> 01:04:57,231 He was standing up for the beauty of black women. 772 01:04:57,398 --> 01:05:01,444 And saying, "This beauty here is the beauty that I'm projecting 773 01:05:01,611 --> 01:05:03,529 through this music, through this song." 774 01:05:03,696 --> 01:05:05,573 A major statement to make. 775 01:05:06,532 --> 01:05:08,618 And I'm sure it was just because he thought his wife was hot, 776 01:05:08,785 --> 01:05:10,119 and fine too. 777 01:05:19,712 --> 01:05:22,256 Everybody wanted to be in 'West Side Story'. 778 01:05:22,715 --> 01:05:27,053 Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, it was, like, the one. 779 01:05:32,433 --> 01:05:36,312 There were at least, I'd say, 300 girls auditioning. 780 01:05:38,189 --> 01:05:40,233 I got on stage, and I stood up there 781 01:05:40,399 --> 01:05:42,193 and I snapped my fingers, and I went... 782 01:05:46,989 --> 01:05:49,033 I did an Ella Fitzgerald scat. 783 01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:52,286 Jerome Robbins and they all freaked out. 784 01:05:52,453 --> 01:05:54,038 I was in, I was in. 785 01:06:06,592 --> 01:06:10,346 Around this time, I was drinking more than I had in the past 786 01:06:10,555 --> 01:06:12,807 and I was snorting a lot of cocaine. 787 01:06:13,766 --> 01:06:16,519 That combination can make you real irritable. 788 01:06:18,813 --> 01:06:22,024 Frances was the only woman that I had ever been jealous of 789 01:06:23,401 --> 01:06:26,237 And being jealous and using drugs and drinking, 790 01:06:26,404 --> 01:06:28,447 she just looked at me like I was crazy, 791 01:06:29,031 --> 01:06:30,908 which I was, at the time. 792 01:06:32,660 --> 01:06:35,663 I thought I was sane and on top of the world. 793 01:06:37,915 --> 01:06:40,543 He was a jealous person when it came to me. 794 01:06:41,085 --> 01:06:44,630 He just couldn't handle me being with these people 795 01:06:44,797 --> 01:06:48,885 and getting all of this attention. 796 01:06:50,511 --> 01:06:52,305 That's when he came to the theater 797 01:06:52,471 --> 01:06:55,016 and picked me up in his Ferrari, and said, 798 01:06:55,183 --> 01:06:57,560 "I want you out of 'West Side Story'. 799 01:06:58,102 --> 01:06:59,937 A woman should be with her man." 800 01:07:04,192 --> 01:07:05,610 I froze. 801 01:07:10,615 --> 01:07:14,118 But I was in love with him and I did as he said. 802 01:07:15,536 --> 01:07:16,662 I quit the show. 803 01:07:19,874 --> 01:07:21,751 He sent for his children 804 01:07:21,918 --> 01:07:25,046 Cheryl and Gregory and little Miles. 805 01:07:27,256 --> 01:07:30,801 What I ended up doing was performing in the kitchen. 806 01:07:33,846 --> 01:07:37,642 I came to New York and Frances got us enrolled in schools. 807 01:07:37,808 --> 01:07:42,230 And we started going to school, coming home, doing our homework. 808 01:07:43,439 --> 01:07:45,191 So, it was a big change for her. 809 01:07:47,485 --> 01:07:49,237 I didn't know how to cook or anything. 810 01:07:49,403 --> 01:07:51,072 I'd been on the road, I mean no. 811 01:07:53,241 --> 01:07:59,664 He said to me, "Look, listen. Watch what I'm doing and do it." 812 01:08:02,375 --> 01:08:03,668 So, I learned to cook. 813 01:08:05,836 --> 01:08:07,546 She would be downstairs cooking 814 01:08:07,713 --> 01:08:10,633 and every now and then she would go upstairs and disappear. 815 01:08:10,800 --> 01:08:12,134 Later on, she told me, 816 01:08:12,301 --> 01:08:14,804 "Remember when I used to disappear, go upstairs?" 817 01:08:14,971 --> 01:08:16,013 I said, "Yeah." 818 01:08:16,180 --> 01:08:19,350 She said, "I went upstairs to look at my ballet slippers." 819 01:08:24,689 --> 01:08:30,820 She always seemed to be holding in certain feelings 820 01:08:30,987 --> 01:08:34,615 about what she could've been doing. 821 01:08:39,495 --> 01:08:43,082 My hip was operated on in April 1965, 822 01:08:43,457 --> 01:08:46,627 and they replaced the hip ball with some bone from my shin, 823 01:08:47,086 --> 01:08:50,631 but it didn't work and so they had to do it again that August. 824 01:08:51,799 --> 01:08:54,051 I was in a lot of pain all the time. 825 01:08:54,969 --> 01:08:57,388 I was starting to drink more than I had in the past 826 01:08:57,555 --> 01:08:59,432 and I was taking pain medication. 827 01:09:00,308 --> 01:09:02,435 And I was starting to use more coke, 828 01:09:03,477 --> 01:09:05,479 I guess, because of the depression. 829 01:09:07,315 --> 01:09:11,277 It was a combination of jealousy, cocaine, 830 01:09:12,737 --> 01:09:15,531 Percodan, scotch and milk. 831 01:09:15,698 --> 01:09:19,535 That's the combination that I found out later. 832 01:09:21,078 --> 01:09:22,163 And... 833 01:09:22,621 --> 01:09:29,545 This combination causes you to snap, which he did. 834 01:09:37,261 --> 01:09:40,598 I was with Miles at Birdland one evening, 835 01:09:49,190 --> 01:09:52,443 and Quincy Jones was there. 836 01:10:05,331 --> 01:10:07,041 When we got home that night, 837 01:10:07,291 --> 01:10:12,171 I just mentioned to Miles that Quincy Jones is handsome. 838 01:10:18,344 --> 01:10:19,595 And before I knew it, 839 01:10:21,722 --> 01:10:27,186 it was so fast and I saw stars, I was on the floor. 840 01:10:29,897 --> 01:10:32,983 It was the most unbelievable thing that ever happened to me 841 01:10:33,150 --> 01:10:35,236 because I'd never been hit in my life. 842 01:10:38,114 --> 01:10:39,490 That was the first, 843 01:10:40,699 --> 01:10:44,370 and it wasn't going to be the last, unfortunately. 844 01:10:49,834 --> 01:10:52,795 I didn't know at the time, that I was close to leaving, 845 01:10:53,754 --> 01:10:57,174 but that's when it happened. 846 01:11:04,557 --> 01:11:06,976 I can say this right now, 847 01:11:07,226 --> 01:11:10,438 Frances was the best wife that I ever had. 848 01:11:12,440 --> 01:11:16,152 I realised how badly I treated her and that it was over. 849 01:11:17,778 --> 01:11:22,032 I know that now and I wish I had known that then. 850 01:11:24,827 --> 01:11:26,537 He was always talking about her, 851 01:11:27,413 --> 01:11:31,834 even after it was all over, four or five years later, 852 01:11:32,501 --> 01:11:36,255 he would say, "See that suit that girl's wearing? 853 01:11:36,422 --> 01:11:38,799 I bought Frances a suit like that once." 854 01:11:42,386 --> 01:11:47,183 After I left, I heard Miles say that he really screwed up. 855 01:11:48,058 --> 01:11:53,689 He also said, "Whoever gets her is a lucky motherfucker." 856 01:11:58,486 --> 01:12:00,362 That's what I heard he said. 857 01:12:02,531 --> 01:12:03,699 Well, he was right. 858 01:12:30,267 --> 01:12:33,062 In the last years that Trane was with my group, 859 01:12:33,229 --> 01:12:35,147 he started playing for himself 860 01:12:36,398 --> 01:12:39,318 When that happens, the magic is gone out of a band 861 01:12:39,485 --> 01:12:41,654 and people who used to love to play together 862 01:12:41,820 --> 01:12:43,405 start not caring any more. 863 01:12:44,240 --> 01:12:46,575 And that's when a band falls apart. 864 01:12:47,660 --> 01:12:50,371 I'd be lying if I said that it didn't make me sad, 865 01:12:50,538 --> 01:12:52,831 because I really loved playing with this band. 866 01:12:54,375 --> 01:12:57,127 I think it was the best small band of all time, 867 01:12:58,837 --> 01:13:01,465 or at least the best I had heard up until then. 868 01:13:02,800 --> 01:13:05,678 I had always been looking for new things to play, 869 01:13:05,844 --> 01:13:08,514 new challenges for my musical ideas. 870 01:13:09,807 --> 01:13:12,017 Now it was time for something different. 871 01:13:19,692 --> 01:13:22,444 I was working at a place called The Half Note. 872 01:13:22,611 --> 01:13:24,572 Miles came in during the course of the set 873 01:13:24,738 --> 01:13:28,284 with his black cape and his black hat, looking mysterious. 874 01:13:28,993 --> 01:13:32,580 He said, "I'm looking for a bass player, are you interested?" 875 01:13:32,997 --> 01:13:35,499 Well, at the time, the only thing hotter than Miles Davis 876 01:13:35,666 --> 01:13:36,959 was the pancake. 877 01:13:39,253 --> 01:13:42,506 My phone rang, and I hear this guitar, 878 01:13:42,923 --> 01:13:45,843 somebody strumming a guitar. 879 01:13:46,635 --> 01:13:47,928 Then this voice said, 880 01:13:48,679 --> 01:13:50,973 "The guitar is a motherfucker, ain't it?" 881 01:13:52,641 --> 01:13:56,228 "Come to my house tomorrow at 1:30," click. 882 01:13:57,646 --> 01:13:59,481 He never said his name. 883 01:13:59,648 --> 01:14:03,110 He never gave me his address, phone number, nothing. 884 01:14:03,277 --> 01:14:04,862 But Miles called me. 885 01:14:08,741 --> 01:14:10,909 He sent me a first class ticket 886 01:14:11,076 --> 01:14:14,121 and sent me to his tailor to get a tuxedo made. 887 01:14:14,872 --> 01:14:16,957 And I flew to California. 888 01:14:17,541 --> 01:14:19,543 Miles, what are you gonna play this time? 889 01:14:20,753 --> 01:14:23,213 Somebody else tell me because Miles has laryngitis. 890 01:14:26,175 --> 01:14:27,635 Blues of some kind, or other. 891 01:14:27,801 --> 01:14:30,137 All right, once again, the Miles Davis Quintet. 892 01:14:35,851 --> 01:14:38,687 Miles's great quintet of the 1960s 893 01:14:38,854 --> 01:14:42,232 created a way of improvising that was totally new, 894 01:14:42,399 --> 01:14:45,653 that allowed this incredible level of democracy 895 01:14:45,819 --> 01:14:48,072 to enter into the music. 896 01:14:48,238 --> 01:14:51,742 And anyone could take the music where they wanted to. 897 01:15:03,212 --> 01:15:04,880 He consistently 898 01:15:05,047 --> 01:15:09,677 surrounded himself with young, emerging, unknown voices. 899 01:15:10,052 --> 01:15:14,264 He allowed them to develop their musical identity in that band. 900 01:15:14,848 --> 01:15:17,851 And he continued to just keep regenerating 901 01:15:18,018 --> 01:15:20,312 over and over for the remainder of his career. 902 01:15:24,191 --> 01:15:27,361 At the time I joined Miles's band I was 23 years old. 903 01:15:27,528 --> 01:15:30,197 Tony Williams, the drummer, was 17 years old. 904 01:15:31,990 --> 01:15:34,326 We were kids. Just kids. 905 01:15:47,798 --> 01:15:52,052 Creativity and genius in any kind of artistic expression 906 01:15:52,219 --> 01:15:55,973 don't know nothing about age, either you got it or you don't, 907 01:15:57,349 --> 01:16:00,018 and being old is not going to help you get it. 908 01:16:02,312 --> 01:16:05,107 We were looking at it like every night going to a laboratory. 909 01:16:06,358 --> 01:16:07,735 Miles was the head chemist. 910 01:16:08,527 --> 01:16:11,739 Our job was to mix these components, 911 01:16:11,905 --> 01:16:13,657 these changes, this tempo, 912 01:16:14,491 --> 01:16:17,369 into something that explodes safely every night 913 01:16:17,536 --> 01:16:19,121 with a bit of danger. 914 01:16:19,955 --> 01:16:21,206 And it happened every night. 915 01:16:33,510 --> 01:16:38,766 Miles wanted us to live on the stage in front of the people, 916 01:16:39,016 --> 01:16:40,726 creating in front of the people. 917 01:16:41,685 --> 01:16:45,147 In other words, don't lean on what you know, 918 01:16:45,731 --> 01:16:48,275 what he was looking for is the stuff that you don't know. 919 01:16:56,074 --> 01:16:57,993 I like that idea. I hate to rehearse. 920 01:16:58,702 --> 01:16:59,953 All the good ideas get shot. 921 01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:02,748 I wanna make mistakes on the bandstand and fix them there. 922 01:17:04,666 --> 01:17:05,959 Miles even told us, 923 01:17:06,210 --> 01:17:10,130 "I pay you to practice on the bandstand 924 01:17:10,297 --> 01:17:11,715 in front of the people." 925 01:17:11,882 --> 01:17:14,134 I said, "The public's not going to like that." 926 01:17:14,301 --> 01:17:19,973 He said, "I'll take care of the public. You just play." 927 01:17:29,650 --> 01:17:31,860 Teo, you know I can’t play this shit, man. 928 01:17:32,027 --> 01:17:33,320 Yes, you can. 929 01:17:35,447 --> 01:17:37,407 - You're getting there. - You know what I mean? 930 01:17:37,574 --> 01:17:39,076 Herbie, can we do it like that? 931 01:17:40,494 --> 01:17:43,330 -We gonna divide it up. - Yeah, that's a good idea. 932 01:17:44,373 --> 01:17:45,290 Six! 933 01:17:46,041 --> 01:17:47,376 Wait a minute, Teo, 934 01:17:47,543 --> 01:17:49,044 I don't even know what to play there. 935 01:17:49,211 --> 01:17:51,463 -Don’t play that first beat. -Play that, Teo. 936 01:17:52,506 --> 01:17:59,346 Once, he does a take where the horn players all play the melody 937 01:18:00,264 --> 01:18:03,642 correctly, without any major kind of flub. 938 01:18:03,809 --> 01:18:05,310 That take's going on the record. 939 01:18:21,076 --> 01:18:22,870 I had this book I have with me 940 01:18:23,370 --> 01:18:25,539 that I'd been using when I was in the Army. 941 01:18:26,081 --> 01:18:29,793 I'd wrote stuff down a bit and he said, "You got any music?" 942 01:18:30,544 --> 01:18:32,921 I said, "Yeah. I got some stuff in this book." 943 01:18:33,130 --> 01:18:35,299 He opened the book and he said, "Let's try this." 944 01:18:35,549 --> 01:18:37,217 -What's this called? -'Footprints'! 945 01:18:37,384 --> 01:18:38,385 'Footprints'? 946 01:18:42,389 --> 01:18:44,016 Then we... just no rehearsal, 947 01:18:44,182 --> 01:18:46,310 just looked at the music, went over it a little bit 948 01:18:46,476 --> 01:18:47,686 and then recorded. 949 01:18:53,650 --> 01:18:55,986 And the next time we went to the recording studio, 950 01:18:56,153 --> 01:18:59,865 he'd say, "We're gonna record next Wednesday. Bring the book!" 951 01:19:23,639 --> 01:19:28,352 In 1969, historically, a man had walked on the moon, 952 01:19:29,269 --> 01:19:35,651 and the United States is still in this bloody, Vietnam War. 953 01:19:35,943 --> 01:19:38,737 I think Miles sensed the importance 954 01:19:38,904 --> 01:19:40,280 of the younger generation, 955 01:19:40,447 --> 01:19:42,449 'cause Miles was always looking forward. 956 01:19:45,702 --> 01:19:50,207 1969 was the year rock and funk were selling like hotcakes. 957 01:19:51,083 --> 01:19:54,294 People were packing stadiums to hear and see stars in person, 958 01:19:54,878 --> 01:19:57,714 and jazz music seemed to be withering on the vine. 959 01:19:58,423 --> 01:20:02,302 We played to a lot of half-empty clubs in 1969. 960 01:20:03,553 --> 01:20:05,097 That told me something. 961 01:20:12,729 --> 01:20:16,358 The music of Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and James Brown, 962 01:20:16,900 --> 01:20:19,778 it made Miles aware that you could play one concert 963 01:20:20,904 --> 01:20:22,155 and hit a lot of people. 964 01:20:24,908 --> 01:20:26,451 You could make more money 965 01:20:26,618 --> 01:20:28,996 playing one concert for 45 minutes 966 01:20:29,162 --> 01:20:31,373 than you might make playing a week in a club, 967 01:20:31,540 --> 01:20:32,708 three sets a night. 968 01:20:34,251 --> 01:20:35,961 One reason he got the electric band 969 01:20:36,128 --> 01:20:39,464 was because he had hung out with Sly & the Family Stone. 970 01:20:41,299 --> 01:20:43,385 Sly was telling him how much money he made. 971 01:20:43,552 --> 01:20:45,178 And Miles said, "What? What?" 972 01:20:46,972 --> 01:20:50,767 So, after that, Miles kind of changed his stuff up. 973 01:20:53,061 --> 01:20:54,563 I started realizing 974 01:20:54,730 --> 01:20:57,524 that most rock musicians didn't know anything about music. 975 01:20:58,608 --> 01:21:00,068 I figured if they could do it, 976 01:21:00,569 --> 01:21:02,487 reach all those people and sell all those records 977 01:21:02,654 --> 01:21:04,740 without really knowing what they were doing, 978 01:21:04,948 --> 01:21:08,243 then I could do it, too, only better. 979 01:21:10,746 --> 01:21:12,998 Miles asked to see me 980 01:21:13,665 --> 01:21:17,127 and it was a very, very tense meeting. 981 01:21:18,462 --> 01:21:21,339 He said, "these fucking long-haired, white kids" 982 01:21:21,506 --> 01:21:25,844 were stealing his music, his riffs. 983 01:21:26,511 --> 01:21:30,265 He was irate, and asked to be released from the label. 984 01:21:31,308 --> 01:21:34,478 I said, "Look, I can get you dates 985 01:21:34,644 --> 01:21:39,816 playing with musical artists of a different generation, 986 01:21:39,983 --> 01:21:42,319 playing a different kind of music. 987 01:21:42,486 --> 01:21:46,573 I just know that if you play those dates, 988 01:21:47,032 --> 01:21:48,241 something will happen." 989 01:21:57,125 --> 01:21:58,418 Around this time, 990 01:21:58,585 --> 01:22:01,171 I had met a beautiful young singer and songwriter 991 01:22:01,338 --> 01:22:02,631 named Betty Mabry. 992 01:22:03,381 --> 01:22:06,093 She was full of new things and surprises, 993 01:22:06,259 --> 01:22:08,053 and helped point the way I was to go. 994 01:22:09,096 --> 01:22:14,351 Betty Davis was just a very fierce, dynamic sister 995 01:22:14,518 --> 01:22:18,271 who was a part of that whole New York and California rock scene. 996 01:22:19,815 --> 01:22:24,027 She totally changes his sense of what's happening in music. 997 01:22:29,658 --> 01:22:31,326 Betty was a big influence 998 01:22:31,493 --> 01:22:34,412 on my personal life, as well as my musical life. 999 01:22:34,746 --> 01:22:37,415 She also helped me change the way I was dressing. 1000 01:22:38,708 --> 01:22:41,586 I went by his house, he had a bunch of funny-looking suits, 1001 01:22:41,753 --> 01:22:43,880 and things hanging in his closet, 1002 01:22:44,047 --> 01:22:46,466 funny-looking shoes, hats and all of that. 1003 01:22:46,633 --> 01:22:47,968 I said, "What's going on, man?" 1004 01:22:48,927 --> 01:22:51,346 So, he changed up, he went from that to that. 1005 01:23:03,733 --> 01:23:05,402 I wanted to change course, 1006 01:23:05,569 --> 01:23:07,904 I had to change course for me to continue to believe in 1007 01:23:08,071 --> 01:23:09,573 and love what I was playing. 1008 01:23:12,993 --> 01:23:16,079 My interest was in an electronic bass player. 1009 01:23:16,246 --> 01:23:19,916 It gave me what I wanted to hear instead of the stand-up bass. 1010 01:23:24,462 --> 01:23:26,256 He called me and said, "I want to talk to you." 1011 01:23:26,423 --> 01:23:27,632 I said, "OK." 1012 01:23:27,799 --> 01:23:29,259 He said, "Look, all you got to do 1013 01:23:29,426 --> 01:23:30,760 is play like you're playing upright." 1014 01:23:30,927 --> 01:23:32,262 I said, "It's not the same." 1015 01:23:33,013 --> 01:23:35,515 "The notes, the sound and the impact are different. 1016 01:23:35,682 --> 01:23:37,934 The note length and placement are different. 1017 01:23:38,101 --> 01:23:40,395 The only thing the same, Miles, is the same fucking notes. 1018 01:23:43,815 --> 01:23:46,318 I'm hearing this since I was 18, man. 1019 01:23:47,027 --> 01:23:48,737 Why the fuck would I give it up? 1020 01:23:48,904 --> 01:23:51,198 To join you... No, man, I'm not going to do that." 1021 01:23:52,407 --> 01:23:53,617 He said, "OK." 1022 01:23:56,995 --> 01:23:59,497 So, I put my hat on and got in the wind. 1023 01:24:07,047 --> 01:24:09,758 The group broke up when Ron decided to leave for good 1024 01:24:09,925 --> 01:24:12,093 because he didn't want to play electric bass. 1025 01:24:12,844 --> 01:24:15,305 Now, I was starting to think about other ways 1026 01:24:15,472 --> 01:24:17,057 I could approach the music. 1027 01:24:19,309 --> 01:24:23,021 I went into the studio in August of 1969. 1028 01:24:25,106 --> 01:24:29,236 Miles had said to be at Columbia Studios at 10 o'clock. 1029 01:24:30,153 --> 01:24:33,531 I was there at 9:30. The cleaning lady let me in. 1030 01:24:36,868 --> 01:24:39,996 I brought in these musical sketches that nobody had seen, 1031 01:24:40,455 --> 01:24:42,415 just like I did on 'Kind of Blue'. 1032 01:24:43,959 --> 01:24:46,920 I told the musicians that they could do anything they wanted, 1033 01:24:48,004 --> 01:24:52,133 play anything they heard, so that's what they did. 1034 01:24:57,055 --> 01:24:58,431 There were four percussion players 1035 01:24:58,598 --> 01:24:59,849 playing at the same time, 1036 01:25:00,308 --> 01:25:02,686 two bassists playing at the same time, 1037 01:25:02,852 --> 01:25:05,855 two or three keyboard players playing at the same time, 1038 01:25:06,064 --> 01:25:07,107 a guitar. 1039 01:25:08,608 --> 01:25:12,028 It was a great, massive improvisation. 1040 01:25:17,659 --> 01:25:20,662 All he had me bring was a cymbal and a snare drum. 1041 01:25:21,204 --> 01:25:26,126 And we went over the first part of 'Bitches Brew'... 1042 01:25:29,754 --> 01:25:30,672 and then... 1043 01:25:38,430 --> 01:25:44,269 You hear Miles's trumpet bouncing against the buildings 1044 01:25:44,436 --> 01:25:45,979 at night, 3 o'clock in the morning. 1045 01:25:48,940 --> 01:25:52,193 It sounds like New York is a grand canyon of buildings. 1046 01:26:04,331 --> 01:26:06,958 It's this ominous thing, 1047 01:26:07,125 --> 01:26:09,878 it's like something getting ready to happen. 1048 01:26:23,099 --> 01:26:27,687 Moving like an amoeba that just moved along, 1049 01:26:28,188 --> 01:26:32,067 and it did like this, and then something would stick out. 1050 01:26:32,233 --> 01:26:37,906 It was like this whole thing just moved like this, together. 1051 01:26:55,340 --> 01:26:57,550 I had the jazz station on and the guy was like, 1052 01:26:57,717 --> 01:27:00,595 "Oh, my God. The new Miles just came in." 1053 01:27:16,069 --> 01:27:17,362 Then he said the name of it. 1054 01:27:17,529 --> 01:27:19,906 I was like, "Can you even say that on the air?" 1055 01:27:20,073 --> 01:27:23,993 He said, "Forget the music. Y'all gotta see this cover." 1056 01:27:27,580 --> 01:27:29,416 'Bitches Brew' sold faster 1057 01:27:29,582 --> 01:27:32,210 than any other album I had ever done, 1058 01:27:32,377 --> 01:27:35,964 and sold more copies than any other jazz album in history. 1059 01:27:38,967 --> 01:27:40,468 After he did 'Bitches Brew', 1060 01:27:40,635 --> 01:27:43,054 he started at the Fillmore East and all of that stuff. 1061 01:27:44,431 --> 01:27:47,267 We're in the dressing room and Miles got the check. 1062 01:27:48,768 --> 01:27:54,190 He's looking at it and we heard him say, "I feel like a thief." 1063 01:27:59,487 --> 01:28:02,782 It was an Indian restaurant on 125th Street. 1064 01:28:03,825 --> 01:28:06,494 We're sitting there, eating and talking for about two hours. 1065 01:28:07,245 --> 01:28:09,914 So, we get up, and as we're walking out, 1066 01:28:11,082 --> 01:28:12,917 he says, "So, what do you think?" 1067 01:28:13,710 --> 01:28:17,380 I'm like, "First of all, think about what?" 1068 01:28:17,547 --> 01:28:20,258 I mean, I'm trying to get my brain into the conversation. 1069 01:28:20,425 --> 01:28:22,719 He said, "What do you think about the music?" 1070 01:28:24,554 --> 01:28:28,433 And I do this because they're playing Indian music. 1071 01:28:29,017 --> 01:28:32,145 And he said, "That's where we're going on the new album, 1072 01:28:32,312 --> 01:28:33,354 'On the Corner'." 1073 01:28:33,521 --> 01:28:36,441 He said, "I'm gonna mix tablas and sitar, 1074 01:28:36,608 --> 01:28:38,693 electric sitar with the funk." 1075 01:28:56,711 --> 01:28:59,589 The 'On the Corner' album, there's no ambiguity. 1076 01:28:59,756 --> 01:29:00,965 We're going for this. 1077 01:29:02,050 --> 01:29:03,551 Bap! Boom! Bap! 1078 01:29:03,843 --> 01:29:05,470 It just got more intense. 1079 01:29:05,637 --> 01:29:08,139 Four, one, two. That's what funk is. 1080 01:29:15,605 --> 01:29:16,940 They were just taking off. 1081 01:29:17,190 --> 01:29:20,568 They were making the Big Bang, upping the ante every night, 1082 01:29:20,777 --> 01:29:24,656 just so gnarly and dangerous with it 1083 01:29:24,906 --> 01:29:26,741 in terms of the use of percussion 1084 01:29:26,908 --> 01:29:28,993 and the use of distortion. 1085 01:29:36,209 --> 01:29:37,835 This cosmic jungle music. 1086 01:29:40,755 --> 01:29:43,424 That's when we really locked in to Miles 1087 01:29:43,591 --> 01:29:47,303 as kind of our Hoodoo-voodoo priest of music. 1088 01:29:51,724 --> 01:29:54,269 This is acid music. 1089 01:29:55,478 --> 01:29:58,022 People who smoke weed and they go there high 1090 01:29:58,189 --> 01:30:00,400 all of a sudden they're straight. 1091 01:30:00,567 --> 01:30:02,694 And people who are straight, they're high. 1092 01:30:03,570 --> 01:30:06,364 He totally changed everything just by the way he was playing. 1093 01:30:13,746 --> 01:30:17,125 Miles's audience was changing because his music was changing, 1094 01:30:17,709 --> 01:30:20,169 absorbing what was happening now. 1095 01:30:20,336 --> 01:30:24,465 What was happening now. Not ten years ago. Now. 1096 01:30:29,762 --> 01:30:34,058 I never understood what was so appealing to so many people. 1097 01:30:36,978 --> 01:30:39,022 I was trying to figure out what he heard in it. 1098 01:30:39,188 --> 01:30:40,356 I didn't understand it. 1099 01:30:41,274 --> 01:30:42,942 Plus, it didn't sound good. 1100 01:30:47,322 --> 01:30:48,698 People who say that, 1101 01:30:48,865 --> 01:30:51,909 I just always looked at them like, "You're really ignorant 1102 01:30:52,076 --> 01:30:54,495 and what drove you to say that is because you're jealous 1103 01:30:54,662 --> 01:30:58,708 because you could never be, or have, or even comprehend 1104 01:30:58,875 --> 01:31:03,421 something that is beyond your limited, twisted, crooked mind." 1105 01:31:04,505 --> 01:31:06,382 "Damn, Carlos, that's a little harsh." 1106 01:31:06,549 --> 01:31:07,842 But it's accurate. 1107 01:31:15,433 --> 01:31:19,395 When you listen to that slew of records 1108 01:31:19,562 --> 01:31:24,525 he made in rapid succession about '69 through '75, 1109 01:31:24,692 --> 01:31:27,987 I mean, you hear the template for hip-hop, for house, 1110 01:31:28,154 --> 01:31:30,490 drum and bass, electronica. 1111 01:31:30,657 --> 01:31:33,743 Miles was doing all of that in the early '70s. 1112 01:31:34,452 --> 01:31:38,748 He's creating new music and kind of disturbing the fabric. 1113 01:31:50,968 --> 01:31:52,804 When I was with him he was pretty healthy. 1114 01:31:52,970 --> 01:31:54,138 He was doing very well. 1115 01:31:55,640 --> 01:31:58,851 Eating a good healthy diet, keeping his body clean. 1116 01:31:59,894 --> 01:32:03,439 Of course he worked out in the gym every day, boxing. 1117 01:32:03,606 --> 01:32:06,234 Those things were very important at that time, 1118 01:32:06,401 --> 01:32:07,777 and that was really good. 1119 01:32:17,245 --> 01:32:19,789 I knew that Miles was getting back into drugs, 1120 01:32:20,415 --> 01:32:22,875 even though he hadn't been doing them around me, 1121 01:32:23,042 --> 01:32:25,294 because he was getting paranoid a lot. 1122 01:32:26,671 --> 01:32:29,382 He was violent, he was abusive. 1123 01:32:31,426 --> 01:32:33,761 I said, "I'm not going to live like this." 1124 01:32:38,683 --> 01:32:42,854 In October 1972, I fell asleep at the wheel 1125 01:32:43,020 --> 01:32:45,690 and ran my Lamborghini into a divider. 1126 01:32:46,649 --> 01:32:49,485 I was laid up for almost three months and when I got home, 1127 01:32:49,652 --> 01:32:51,279 I had to walk on crutches for a while, 1128 01:32:51,446 --> 01:32:53,698 which further fucked up my bad hip. 1129 01:32:55,742 --> 01:32:59,287 That was probably the most pivotal moment in his life. 1130 01:33:00,663 --> 01:33:04,500 The abject pain that he was in from awakening to going to sleep 1131 01:33:05,251 --> 01:33:08,129 forced him, and I say "forced him" to use 1132 01:33:08,296 --> 01:33:12,759 prescription medicine, cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes, 1133 01:33:12,925 --> 01:33:14,302 anything to dull the pain. 1134 01:33:15,511 --> 01:33:19,557 He started taking fewer and fewer jobs and tours. 1135 01:33:20,892 --> 01:33:24,187 Eventually, there was no band, there was no Miles Davis band. 1136 01:33:27,356 --> 01:33:28,941 I was spiritually tired 1137 01:33:29,108 --> 01:33:31,360 of all the bullshit I'd been going through 1138 01:33:31,527 --> 01:33:32,904 all those long years. 1139 01:33:33,738 --> 01:33:35,656 I felt artistically drained. 1140 01:33:37,450 --> 01:33:40,036 I didn't have anything else to say, musically. 1141 01:33:40,912 --> 01:33:44,123 I knew that I needed a rest, and so I took one. 1142 01:33:44,957 --> 01:33:48,377 I put down the thing I love most in life, my music. 1143 01:33:49,712 --> 01:33:51,422 And the more I stayed away, 1144 01:33:51,589 --> 01:33:54,550 the deeper I sank into another dark world. 1145 01:33:57,011 --> 01:34:02,016 His apartment building was his cave 1146 01:34:03,017 --> 01:34:05,520 and he sequestered himself there. 1147 01:34:06,395 --> 01:34:09,690 There were days, weeks, he wouldn't go out. 1148 01:34:12,610 --> 01:34:13,945 When I was 15 or 16, 1149 01:34:14,111 --> 01:34:17,865 I would go and stay in New York during that dark period. 1150 01:34:19,075 --> 01:34:21,869 I remember it being dark, always dark in the house. 1151 01:34:22,286 --> 01:34:27,875 I just remember cigarettes, beer bottles and cocaine. 1152 01:34:31,420 --> 01:34:34,799 I remember going to visit him a couple of times. 1153 01:34:35,341 --> 01:34:36,801 It was a dark time for him. 1154 01:34:38,010 --> 01:34:39,804 He was... I wasn't... 1155 01:34:41,806 --> 01:34:43,266 I was a little bit scared of him. 1156 01:34:45,560 --> 01:34:48,104 He was in there by himself, just dealing with pain 1157 01:34:48,271 --> 01:34:49,522 and not playing. 1158 01:34:50,690 --> 01:34:55,945 I know, for him, not playing is like not having water any more. 1159 01:34:59,323 --> 01:35:00,950 I just wanted it to stop. 1160 01:35:01,117 --> 01:35:02,869 I wanted the darkness to stop. 1161 01:35:04,203 --> 01:35:05,830 He was like a person I never knew. 1162 01:35:06,497 --> 01:35:12,712 And I wanted him to get back to being my uncle, my superhero. 1163 01:35:19,969 --> 01:35:21,470 I remember going up to Harlem 1164 01:35:22,138 --> 01:35:24,348 and there would be a woman in the car with us. 1165 01:35:25,516 --> 01:35:29,103 She'd be sitting next to me and Miles would drive up there 1166 01:35:29,270 --> 01:35:30,813 and then just say, "Wait." 1167 01:35:33,524 --> 01:35:38,487 He'd come out of the building that he was in very high. 1168 01:35:40,823 --> 01:35:43,701 There would be cocaine smudges on his face 1169 01:35:43,868 --> 01:35:47,163 and I'd wanna say something but I was too afraid. 1170 01:35:49,624 --> 01:35:54,545 He would kind of nudge me over, and he'd say, "You fucked her." 1171 01:35:55,755 --> 01:35:57,798 And I'd say, "I didn't fuck her." 1172 01:35:57,965 --> 01:36:01,135 He goes, "We're not leaving 'til you tell me you fucked her." 1173 01:36:03,387 --> 01:36:04,722 He'd shut the car off. 1174 01:36:05,765 --> 01:36:08,184 I said, "All right. I fucked her on the hood. Can we go?" 1175 01:36:08,351 --> 01:36:11,187 And he goes, "And I thought we were friends." 1176 01:36:11,979 --> 01:36:14,857 This is an evening with Miles. 1177 01:36:23,074 --> 01:36:25,493 Miles would come around during that time. 1178 01:36:25,660 --> 01:36:28,663 He needed money and we'd lend him some money, 1179 01:36:28,829 --> 01:36:31,874 which we figured was gone. 1180 01:36:33,542 --> 01:36:36,796 Whatever the case, we left there one day, and I said to Marie, 1181 01:36:36,963 --> 01:36:38,547 I said, "I think that's the end, 1182 01:36:38,714 --> 01:36:40,675 there's no way he can come back from this." 1183 01:36:41,801 --> 01:36:44,553 And I said, "But you never can tell." 1184 01:36:47,056 --> 01:36:48,724 Around this same time, 1185 01:36:48,891 --> 01:36:51,769 Cicely Tyson started coming to see me again. 1186 01:36:52,979 --> 01:36:55,356 She had been dropping by throughout all of this, 1187 01:36:55,523 --> 01:36:58,234 but now she started coming by more often. 1188 01:37:00,111 --> 01:37:03,781 He was in terrifically bad health in those years. 1189 01:37:04,156 --> 01:37:06,575 It was thought by many people he was in such bad shape 1190 01:37:06,742 --> 01:37:08,411 that he would never play music again. 1191 01:37:08,577 --> 01:37:10,705 He even thought he might never play music again. 1192 01:37:11,998 --> 01:37:13,666 Cicely inspires him 1193 01:37:13,833 --> 01:37:17,670 to see, once again, that he has something to offer, 1194 01:37:18,004 --> 01:37:20,840 that with his creativity, his creative voice, 1195 01:37:21,048 --> 01:37:22,925 he has not reached his creative peak. 1196 01:37:25,177 --> 01:37:27,805 She helped run all those people out of my house. 1197 01:37:27,972 --> 01:37:30,016 She kind of protected me and started seeing 1198 01:37:30,182 --> 01:37:32,852 that I ate the right things and didn't drink as much. 1199 01:37:33,019 --> 01:37:34,937 She helped get me off cocaine. 1200 01:37:36,022 --> 01:37:39,316 She would feed me health foods, a lot of vegetables, 1201 01:37:39,483 --> 01:37:41,110 and a whole lot of juices. 1202 01:37:42,611 --> 01:37:45,489 He was running up and down the beach 1203 01:37:45,656 --> 01:37:47,616 and trying to be a vegetarian, 1204 01:37:47,783 --> 01:37:51,412 which was amazing because he couldn't do it. 1205 01:37:53,039 --> 01:37:56,042 Miles would say, "Come by the house, pick me up, man, 1206 01:37:56,208 --> 01:37:58,335 take me somewhere where they got meat. 1207 01:38:00,379 --> 01:38:03,591 Just let me smell the smells 1208 01:38:03,758 --> 01:38:06,093 and then get me a hot link sandwich." 1209 01:38:09,555 --> 01:38:13,350 Miles needed those years to summon up the strength 1210 01:38:14,060 --> 01:38:20,733 to kick drugs, to play again, to handle the public, 1211 01:38:21,358 --> 01:38:25,529 to handle the touring, to handle the critics, to live. 1212 01:38:27,656 --> 01:38:32,369 From 1975 until early 1980, I didn’t pick up my horn. 1213 01:38:33,037 --> 01:38:36,499 For over four years I didn’t pick it up once. 1214 01:38:38,793 --> 01:38:41,504 In the end, it was almost six years. 1215 01:38:44,215 --> 01:38:46,425 He kept bringing tapes to my office 1216 01:38:47,093 --> 01:38:50,429 of a different sounding band, electronic band. 1217 01:38:51,514 --> 01:38:55,434 I said, "I'll pay you $70,000 to do two concerts 1218 01:38:55,601 --> 01:38:57,103 at Avery Fisher Hall." 1219 01:38:58,479 --> 01:39:01,649 He looked at me as if I was crazy, nobody did that. 1220 01:39:03,526 --> 01:39:09,782 I wrote out a check for $35,000 and gave it to him. 1221 01:39:14,078 --> 01:39:15,454 I held my breath. 1222 01:39:17,248 --> 01:39:18,874 I bought a brand-new, 1223 01:39:19,041 --> 01:39:25,756 canary-yellow 308 GTSi Ferrari sports coupe, with a targa top. 1224 01:39:27,466 --> 01:39:29,635 I was ready to go back to music. 1225 01:39:33,347 --> 01:39:36,976 He bought that car just to show up at that gig. 1226 01:39:37,143 --> 01:39:42,690 Yeah, man. I bought a new shirt, he bought a Ferrari. 1227 01:39:46,360 --> 01:39:47,903 Miles was back. 1228 01:39:54,660 --> 01:39:57,955 And he had this whole new sound with all the young musicians. 1229 01:40:05,838 --> 01:40:07,131 He was seven years out 1230 01:40:07,298 --> 01:40:08,799 and all of a sudden he came back. 1231 01:40:09,675 --> 01:40:12,219 I mean this cat could've stopped completely and said, 1232 01:40:12,386 --> 01:40:13,679 "I've done enough." 1233 01:40:13,846 --> 01:40:16,015 And everybody would have said, "You sure have." 1234 01:40:16,182 --> 01:40:17,600 But he wanted to keep going. 1235 01:40:30,196 --> 01:40:34,658 It wasn't just a comeback of an artist, 1236 01:40:34,825 --> 01:40:36,410 it was a comeback of a human being. 1237 01:40:40,206 --> 01:40:42,625 I never saw anybody do that like he did. 1238 01:40:45,628 --> 01:40:48,464 Do you still enjoy playing jazz festivals in Europe? 1239 01:40:48,631 --> 01:40:51,508 Yes. I love to play in Europe jazz festivals. 1240 01:40:51,675 --> 01:40:54,053 What about Molde? You're arriving late. 1241 01:40:54,720 --> 01:40:56,096 I was sick this morning. 1242 01:40:56,680 --> 01:41:00,017 Starting with the first tour, we were in a different city 1243 01:41:00,184 --> 01:41:02,478 or a different country every single day. 1244 01:41:05,689 --> 01:41:07,942 Say a show starts at 8 o'clock, 1245 01:41:09,652 --> 01:41:12,696 we'd get back to the hotel by midnight, 1246 01:41:13,239 --> 01:41:15,032 after that, he wants to paint. 1247 01:41:17,368 --> 01:41:20,204 He'd just pick up whatever writing device he had 1248 01:41:20,371 --> 01:41:21,580 and start to draw. 1249 01:41:25,334 --> 01:41:26,460 When we were on the road, 1250 01:41:26,627 --> 01:41:29,004 he drew on the plane, he drew in the car. 1251 01:41:29,171 --> 01:41:31,173 He drew in the lounge waiting for the plane. 1252 01:41:31,924 --> 01:41:34,677 We get to the gig, he's drawing in the dressing room. 1253 01:41:35,594 --> 01:41:37,638 It was literally flowing through his arm, 1254 01:41:37,805 --> 01:41:39,473 into his hand, onto the paper. 1255 01:41:41,225 --> 01:41:42,977 When you make a wrong line, 1256 01:41:43,143 --> 01:41:46,355 does it feel with you like the same as in music? 1257 01:41:46,772 --> 01:41:50,192 The note next to the one that you think is bad, 1258 01:41:50,985 --> 01:41:53,362 corrects the one in front. 1259 01:42:01,996 --> 01:42:04,290 It was early morning and I was going running. 1260 01:42:04,581 --> 01:42:07,209 I was waiting by the elevator and the elevator opened 1261 01:42:07,376 --> 01:42:09,670 and there he was. 1262 01:42:10,504 --> 01:42:15,426 My heart was racing. It was like in a movie 1263 01:42:15,592 --> 01:42:17,303 when you meet the vampire 1264 01:42:17,469 --> 01:42:19,847 and you know you're gonna die and you don't care. 1265 01:42:20,681 --> 01:42:22,683 I looked back and he said, "You better run fast 1266 01:42:22,850 --> 01:42:24,727 'cause when I get back I'm gonna catch you." 1267 01:42:25,602 --> 01:42:28,564 And that was it. We started painting together. 1268 01:42:35,612 --> 01:42:38,615 There was just all this interest in everything he was doing 1269 01:42:38,782 --> 01:42:39,867 coming from everywhere. 1270 01:42:40,034 --> 01:42:41,910 Miles, what got you into painting? 1271 01:42:42,119 --> 01:42:43,954 He was never more in demand. 1272 01:42:44,204 --> 01:42:45,331 Who are you guys? 1273 01:42:46,081 --> 01:42:48,709 It seems almost as if he forgot who he had been. 1274 01:42:48,876 --> 01:42:50,377 It's like a brand-new start for me. 1275 01:42:50,544 --> 01:42:51,962 He was on talk shows... 1276 01:42:52,129 --> 01:42:54,590 Hello, good evening. This is Miles Davis. 1277 01:42:54,757 --> 01:42:55,924 ...on late night television. 1278 01:42:56,091 --> 01:42:56,675 Miles Davis. 1279 01:42:56,842 --> 01:42:57,426 Miles Davis. 1280 01:42:57,593 --> 01:42:58,218 Miles Davis. 1281 01:42:58,385 --> 01:42:59,261 Miles Davis. 1282 01:42:59,595 --> 01:43:00,512 Miles Davis! 1283 01:43:01,555 --> 01:43:05,684 He was accepting interviews in every city he played in. 1284 01:43:06,185 --> 01:43:09,104 He was a totally different seeming person. 1285 01:43:16,904 --> 01:43:19,990 He was even going out and sitting in with Prince. 1286 01:43:20,282 --> 01:43:24,411 He loved Prince. It was destiny that they worked together. 1287 01:43:31,293 --> 01:43:33,796 I got a call from Tommy LiPuma 1288 01:43:33,962 --> 01:43:37,508 who was an A&R vice president at Warner Bros. 1289 01:43:37,674 --> 01:43:39,968 He said, "Miles Davis just left Columbia 1290 01:43:40,135 --> 01:43:41,553 and he's coming to Warner Bros." 1291 01:43:41,720 --> 01:43:43,430 I said, "Really? Congratulations!" 1292 01:43:43,597 --> 01:43:44,807 He said, "Do you have any music?" 1293 01:43:50,437 --> 01:43:54,233 As soon as I hung up the phone, that bass line to "Tutu" hit me. 1294 01:44:04,993 --> 01:44:07,996 When I'm writing a song for somebody if I can see them going 1295 01:44:08,288 --> 01:44:10,916 like grooving to the song, I go, "OK, this is right for him." 1296 01:44:16,755 --> 01:44:19,508 I'm looking across the studio and I'm looking at Miles. 1297 01:44:20,008 --> 01:44:22,803 And then he just started playing stuff on the piano for me. 1298 01:44:24,805 --> 01:44:25,973 Looking back on it, 1299 01:44:26,140 --> 01:44:29,726 I realise this dude never recorded like that before, 1300 01:44:30,018 --> 01:44:32,271 with headphones, playing to a track 1301 01:44:32,438 --> 01:44:34,857 with drum machines and all that stuff. 1302 01:44:38,318 --> 01:44:39,528 He was into it, 1303 01:44:39,695 --> 01:44:42,531 he wasn't just like stepping gingerly into it, he owned it. 1304 01:44:42,698 --> 01:44:43,532 Yeah! 1305 01:44:45,951 --> 01:44:48,871 At the core, he's just staying that young kid 1306 01:44:49,037 --> 01:44:50,831 who came to New York to play the hip music. 1307 01:44:50,998 --> 01:44:52,916 He wanted to always have that feeling. 1308 01:44:56,879 --> 01:44:59,756 Miles never talked about his old records. 1309 01:45:00,215 --> 01:45:01,550 He didn't keep them in the house. 1310 01:45:01,717 --> 01:45:02,968 He didn't have any of them. 1311 01:45:03,177 --> 01:45:05,971 Not one of them and he didn't want them in there. 1312 01:45:06,138 --> 01:45:08,348 He wanted only the stuff he was working on. 1313 01:45:19,026 --> 01:45:21,862 When I first got in the band, Miles seemed cool. 1314 01:45:22,029 --> 01:45:25,240 He was alert and on top of it, 1315 01:45:25,407 --> 01:45:29,244 but soon after that, he started looking not so good. 1316 01:45:30,537 --> 01:45:33,081 If you see a concert we did on Saturday Night Live, 1317 01:45:33,248 --> 01:45:34,791 you'll see what I'm talking about. 1318 01:45:34,958 --> 01:45:38,504 He's just kind of moving and his sound is very fragile. 1319 01:45:40,255 --> 01:45:44,343 He was tormented 'cause he couldn't get the tone. 1320 01:45:46,386 --> 01:45:48,722 Sometimes he'd hobble around the stage. 1321 01:45:48,889 --> 01:45:51,391 But he was still Miles. 1322 01:46:03,695 --> 01:46:05,531 I'd been trying for fifteen years, man. 1323 01:46:06,698 --> 01:46:10,953 I kept bugging him about it. Kept bugging him about it. 1324 01:46:11,119 --> 01:46:13,539 And he said, "OK, motherfucker." 1325 01:46:14,289 --> 01:46:16,583 If he never played another note, he doesn't have to 1326 01:46:16,750 --> 01:46:19,920 because he has led the way on the cutting edge 1327 01:46:20,087 --> 01:46:21,630 for the last 50 years. 1328 01:46:21,797 --> 01:46:24,216 To see him at 65 years old 1329 01:46:24,383 --> 01:46:28,679 trying to recreate his 25-year- old self was just amazing, man. 1330 01:46:29,304 --> 01:46:30,973 My love, my brother, 1331 01:46:31,139 --> 01:46:34,476 and one of my favorite musicians and idols, Miles Davis! 1332 01:46:36,270 --> 01:46:37,813 Yeah, I loved him, man. 1333 01:46:38,855 --> 01:46:41,733 It just makes my soul smile. 1334 01:46:46,989 --> 01:46:49,074 There was a tune called "The Pan Piper". 1335 01:46:49,700 --> 01:46:53,328 I knew that that was a hard piece, 1336 01:46:54,204 --> 01:46:57,457 and I wasn't sure that he'd be able to play that one. 1337 01:47:03,672 --> 01:47:05,173 He would never say that. 1338 01:47:10,804 --> 01:47:15,058 So, when it was time for us to do it, I remember jumping in. 1339 01:47:29,114 --> 01:47:30,490 I remember him telling me, 1340 01:47:30,657 --> 01:47:33,619 "Listen, if I ever went back to that old stuff, I'd die." 1341 01:47:35,579 --> 01:47:38,874 I sat there in front of the TV and I was like, "He's sick. 1342 01:47:40,250 --> 01:47:41,209 He's sick." 1343 01:47:52,721 --> 01:47:57,059 He said, "When God punishes you, it's not that you..." 1344 01:47:59,144 --> 01:48:00,354 It's so sad. 1345 01:48:01,396 --> 01:48:03,607 "...It's not that you don't get what you want. 1346 01:48:05,317 --> 01:48:09,488 You get everything that you want and there's no time left." 1347 01:48:17,746 --> 01:48:18,914 Miles Davis! 1348 01:48:20,082 --> 01:48:21,208 Quincy Jones! 1349 01:48:27,839 --> 01:48:32,135 Miles went into the hospital, Labor Day weekend of 1991. 1350 01:48:33,595 --> 01:48:36,014 We were talking and listening to music. 1351 01:48:36,181 --> 01:48:40,852 I looked at him and he looked funny, like, still. 1352 01:48:41,019 --> 01:48:44,356 Then I looked up and a doctor came in to the door, 1353 01:48:44,523 --> 01:48:47,984 he walked over and it was just a second. 1354 01:48:48,151 --> 01:48:50,362 I was sitting with his head in my lap 1355 01:48:51,196 --> 01:48:53,073 and the doctor started pounding on him. 1356 01:48:53,240 --> 01:48:55,784 Then he beeped something and then another doctor came in 1357 01:48:55,951 --> 01:48:58,245 and a bunch of doctors and nurses came in. 1358 01:48:58,412 --> 01:49:02,082 And I was still sitting on the bed and he was blank. 1359 01:49:02,290 --> 01:49:05,293 I mean, he was breathing. I knew he didn't die. 1360 01:49:05,460 --> 01:49:07,003 It was horrifying. 1361 01:49:07,170 --> 01:49:11,258 They're working on him and pounding him and injecting him, 1362 01:49:11,425 --> 01:49:13,677 and then they roll us both out like that 1363 01:49:13,844 --> 01:49:16,138 into the elevator, into the hall. 1364 01:49:16,304 --> 01:49:18,890 They didn't even notice that I was on the bed 1365 01:49:19,057 --> 01:49:21,268 when his head was still next to me. 1366 01:49:21,435 --> 01:49:24,354 We were surrounded by people, 1367 01:49:24,521 --> 01:49:29,985 we're in the elevator and they said, "He had a stroke." 1368 01:49:45,876 --> 01:49:48,170 Deborah, my ex-wife, called me, and she says, 1369 01:49:48,336 --> 01:49:51,089 "I think you'd better hold on to something." 1370 01:49:51,256 --> 01:49:53,425 I said, "Well, what's going on?" and she says, 1371 01:49:54,885 --> 01:49:56,511 "Miles Davis just passed." 1372 01:50:05,854 --> 01:50:08,356 And it just felt like... 1373 01:50:12,235 --> 01:50:17,240 someone hit me with a jackhammer over the head. 1374 01:50:29,294 --> 01:50:30,670 I think Miles was definitely, 1375 01:50:30,837 --> 01:50:33,548 without a doubt, the most unique person I've ever known. 1376 01:50:39,095 --> 01:50:42,474 He did things in a different way than everybody else. 1377 01:50:42,641 --> 01:50:45,393 He looked at things differently, he saw things differently. 1378 01:50:48,146 --> 01:50:49,689 You have to be true to yourself, 1379 01:50:49,856 --> 01:50:52,234 and I think a lot of that was his philosophy. 1380 01:50:59,866 --> 01:51:03,036 How can someone come up with such beautiful music 1381 01:51:03,203 --> 01:51:04,996 when you can have that other side? 1382 01:51:06,498 --> 01:51:11,002 Sometimes I couldn't take it. Sometimes it was just perfecto. 1383 01:51:15,298 --> 01:51:21,054 I don't regret, I don't forget, but I still love. 1384 01:51:27,853 --> 01:51:28,895 I miss him. 1385 01:51:29,062 --> 01:51:31,273 I miss him. I dream about him a lot. 1386 01:51:33,900 --> 01:51:35,110 He... 1387 01:51:36,236 --> 01:51:37,612 What a big presence. 1388 01:51:48,748 --> 01:51:50,083 Of course I loved him. 1389 01:51:52,002 --> 01:51:57,507 He was like a brother who did dumb things and you accepted it. 1390 01:52:05,265 --> 01:52:06,349 He was real. 1391 01:52:10,854 --> 01:52:11,855 Very real. 1392 01:52:15,066 --> 01:52:18,069 There won't be many Mileses again. 1393 01:52:19,905 --> 01:52:21,948 That's enough. I'm through. 109148

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