Original subtitles

With music you want to penetrate the listener.

Penetrate to the point where you reach...

what Miles Davis used to call...

spiritual orgasm.

That's bullshit.

See, that's all part of just the Miles Davis myth.

Miles Davis was trying to make some money.

Miles Davis was so great, to see him grovel before...

these commercial arenas by the end of his life was really very difficult.

So people had to say, "Oh no, no, Miles didn't sell out...

he's moving ahead."

I haven't heard myself play in the 1940's or 50's...

in forty years.

You know, having gone back to listen to myself again.

Miles, what are you gonna open with now...

what are you gonna play fiirst?

So What. Miles has laryngitis so I have to interpret his whispering.

The great Miles Davis Quintet, here they are.

It might have a little more resonance, a little more...

fullness and brighter.

But since they have synthesizers and electric instruments...

you can hear those better than acoustic.

So musicians learn a lotfaster.

What happened was I walked into the studio...

and I looked around for the acoustic piano and I didn't see one.

So I just kinda waited around and I thought...

"What does Miles want me to play?"

So I asked him, I says...

"Miles, what do you want me to play?"

He says, "Play that over there."

And I looked over in the corner, there was a Fender Rhodes electric piano.

And so I thought, "He wants me to play that toy?"

Mind you, I had never played the Fender Rhodes piano.

So I turned the thing on, and...

I played a chord on it.

And to my great surprise, I thought it sounded beautiful.

I loved the sound of it. It was rich, it was mellow...

and it was a nice kind of blending sound.

For my fiirst six months in the band, I did play piano.

There was no electric instruments.

And then Miles threw one of these in front of me.

I actually didn't... it was something new to me...

and I would come across an instrument like this...

that kind of sounded like that. I thought...

"What is this?" I didn't know what it was.

I didn't quite know what to do with it. But he was hearing something...

which he didn't describe to me too much...

he justwanted me to play it.

And then I got turned on to...

these little modules that you could distort the sound with.

Miles was going to rock/bass/electric sounds...

towards the elements that were more in pop music and rock music.

That reverb that the... the tape delay.

Bitches Brew was the album that when I fiirst heard it...

I thought I was going to climb the walls and climb across the ceiling.

I was on the floor beating my hands and feet, I could hardly take it.

It was so intense.

It was everything that I had imagined...

some kind offuture music to be. It was...

everything that I had hoped to hear was...

revealed in Bitches Brew.

When Bitches Brew came out I listened to it over and over.

I listened to it...

stone-cold sober.

I listened to it a little, with a little change in my consciousness.

I listened to it with a great change in my consciousness.

In fact I completely altered my consciousness to try to like it.

I tried to like it because it was him.

And I couldn't believe that it was what I heard.

Because it was just these formous long pieces...

that seemed to go nowhere.

After a while I felt like somebody had my hand tied down to a table...

and was slowly driving nails through it, there was nothing I could do about it...

except listen to the hammer hit the nail. Boom!

Not again. Bam!

No, not that.

To Stanley Crouch and people like that...

they need to be reminded that it takes courage...

to leave all of your security blanket behind...

and jump without a parachute.

This is why I adore Miles.

Because he would not tap-dance for anybody, like Sammy Davis, Jr....

with all respect to Sammy Davis, Jr. and Michael Jackson...

they're more like entertainers. Miles Davis was not an entertainer.

He was a seriously brutal artist, musician...

who would not comply...

with the plastic system.

I do changes, but I can't help it, you know.

Not that I'm a genius.

But it's just that I can't help it.

I play it one way so long I just have to change my way...

in order to give it to you. So you'll like it.

So he got rid of the ltalian suits, and he started wearing...

a different kind of clothing. And it all happened at the same time.

Psychologically I think the people who put it to him...

that he needed to change if he was tired of playing clubs...

four concerts a night, for very little money and very little audience.

I think it was like...

Clide Davis, Mr. Clide Davis, Mr. Bill Graham...

and of course Betty Davis.

She was this young, beautiful Black woman that...

with this fiire, spirit and freshness...

that kind of opened Miles' eyes up.

Wayne Shorter, Herbie, Ron, Tony.

And then you put out this record which is essentially a jam session...

and it becomes the top selling jazz record of all time at the time.

On top of that you get, you do the Fillmore...

and you're on the Newsweek magazine...

and within the space of seven months...

from March, April, May, June, July, August, six months...

he played the lsle ofWight.

Half a million people, minimum. Playing opposite Hendrix...

all those pop acts at the time who were on the scene at that moment.

For Miles Davis that's as high as any jazz musician ever got in this world...

a guy playing that kind of music. I mean that was the mountain top.

Isle ofWight was...

a pure result of consciousness revolution music.

"Hell no, we won't go to Vietnam"...

and "We shall overcome", which was a...

the 60's was probably the most important decade...

Iate 60's early 70's...

was the most important decade in the 20th century. Why?

Because it gave birth to questioning authority...

if it's not enlightened by God. Are you listening, George Bush?

You know, we said "Hi"...

but I don't think Miles really fiirst knew what to do with...

a woman except drag her into his lair.

Folk music and jazz occupied the same room at different times...

and there was an overlap sometimes.

The point we differed on was electronic music.

And I already went through this in the folk circles...

Iike Pete Segert crying when Bob plugged in.

People are afraid that they can't make that change.

Not everybody is fluid and changeable...

I am, Miles is, some people thrive on change.

But every time you change you have to be ready to experience massive rejection.

Listen a minute, will you?

Will you listen a minute!

Now listen, a lot of people who get up here and sing, I know it's fun...

it's a lot offun. It's fun for me...

I get my feelings off through my music.

But you've got your life wrapped up in it. Give us some respect.

Most of music, pop music, it's like they get these formula chords...

or people like these chords, and so they play them ad nauseum.

Music is when you pull the chords from your inner core...

whether they sound weird to people or not.

And anyone adventuresome is doing that, and Miles certainly was adventuresome.

We were human and they let everybody after that do their thing.

Everybody was interested in playing with Miles...

because he was the number one band. The lsle ofWight, like I said...

that was about my third concert with the band.

That music was a transitional music.

That was the music he had been playing in the band before.

Now once I joined the band we were on our way...

to play different music.

I was coming from a totally acoustic, you know...

I hadn't dealt with electricity.

Initially, electricity, well that's something you getfrom...

But in reality, electricity is life itself...

so how can I say...

that I'm not into electricity when I'm electric, we're all are electric.

Miles didn't change through the years, he got better I think...

but as far as musically he didn't change...

things around him changed. The world changed.

Ok, so what're you gonna do? The world changes...

you're gonna still wear the clothes that you wore back in the 40's.

You know, you keep up. So he just kept up, that's all.

Most of what we did was an improvisation, it was a jam.

Miles had certain themes that he would bring in...

that would establish a tempo and a groove.

And then he may have some melodic themes on the top...

and then he would just set a mood.

I think there's a certain point where you have so many people out there...

that it no longer means anything in a way, I don't know.

We got on stage and we started playing.

And you're this very small event in this huge space of things that are going on.

And the sound is coming from all over the place...

and so there's a sort of detachment that happens sometime in those live concerts.

That's differentfrom the more intimate venues...

but it was a stunning sight to see that.

As far as I was concerned, every time Miles put the horn to his lips...

it was a great event.

The bass player has a tremendous responsibility I think in the music...

to create a center, a focus, within the music that Miles was creating.

But how you do that can change tremendously from...

one musical situation to another.

What I did with Miles was influenced by the things that I heard...

around me at those times.

WhatJack Bruce was doing with The Cream...

whatJimi was doing with his band, you know.

And of course, there was also the influence of James Brown's music...

and a lot of the other things that were going on at that time.

Miles' music was crossing over there at that point.

So he was reaching a larger audience.

And a lot of the rock musicians were really also...

getting turned on to Miles and really...

it was a great meeting of musical cultures.

The drummer was the anchor...

the function of laying down the groove, especially in that electric period.

Laying down the groove and also embellishing the groove.

Keeping a steady pulse, but changing it, shifting it...

making subtle changes in it. And providing the...

the fiire, the stoke in the fiire.

Putting the heat on.

Putting colors on top of what I was doing.

The fiirst thing that I played at the lsle ofWight...

was a "cu�ca", it's called "cu�ca".

And actually Miles used to love this sound.

We used to play off each other.

When he went... I went...

And I know he liked it. Even though he never told me...

but I know he liked it.

We flew to the site...

and it was very incredible to look, to see all the people...

on the roads and everything.

Off the roads they were like ants, it was incredible.

And we were right there in the middle of everything.

Before us I think it was Tiny Tim.

And then they announced Miles Davis and band...

and then I just walked in on stage...

and that was it, we played that beautiful concert that was incredible.

And it's incredible that I can remember that because...

I was pretty out at that time.

"Are you in a trance?" That's a good question.

This is the limit of what two hands can do on the piano.

And I go into this other place which you might term a trance.

You can actually do things you hear...

that are so unrelated to your instrument...

that they are frightening to even yourself.

Miles probably knew that I didn't even want to get near an electric piano...

but he might have fiigured that if I wanted to play with him...

I'd show up and I'd play whatever was on stage.

So when Chick was in the band, Chick was playing a Fender piano.

And when Miles heard I was coming they had to get a second instrument...

so that was an organ. I wasn't sure which one I hated more.

What I thought I was bringing to the band was energy.

I wasn't bringing music to the band, I wasn't bringing...

any special cleverness. Or I wasn't writing material.

But energy, energy and the quality of energy is what makes music...

powerful.

The funkiness and...

the sort of primal stuff that he wanted was fiinally coming out.

People who listen to Miles can listen to the same tracks over and over and over.

Doesn't matter how, even if it's a bad night, you're listening to this sound.

But what is that, I think was his...

his...

that's the trance, I mean he was...

doing something a trumpet wasn't supposed to be able to actually do.

Some effect to your body when you listened was being achieved.

If you see a band who's working on this thing...

and they're all willing to be ignorant of it...

even though their heads are very together.

Every second they're willing themselves to be ignorant...

of exactly what it is that's coming next...

then that's something to see.

When I see Miles play a note...

how he comes at that note is not on a CD, you know.

I believe that on this little 37 minute fiilm...

is a micro history lesson in Jazz...

and it's just coming out of Miles' horn.

There are these little moments when he's playing, there's even...

a Dixieland moment in the thing.

And when I heard that I thought, "This is compressed into this one set."

People are hearing almost where the whole thing came from...

where everything that's happened until that moment in time...

came from, including all the modern stuff.

I can tell by the reaction that it was a triumph...

for Miles Davis to play in probably one of the biggestfestivals...

along with Woodstock...

and converted a lot of people into...

multidimensional consciousness.

Isle ofWight is...

is a masterpiece.

If you had something that was a tribute to Miles, what would it be?

I spent the days after his death...

doing a portrait of him, which I frequently do when...

I lose somebody I cared for.

Wayne took a look at the painting and he said...

"Well, you painted him kind of blue."

His skin tone, 'cause he had that magnifiicent mahogany color.

In my rendition of it was kind of blue.

More sketches of Spain.

And then, he'd always fiind like a resting place.

You know, so it's...

He would take you on a journey whether you wanted to or not...

if you listen, Miles was the epitome of like, what he used to say...

"lf you listen, I got you.

All it takes is for you to just listen a little bit...

and I'll take you to a different place."

Play a tribute to Miles by myself, without hearing his sound...

it's a little sad, but...

I could go let's say...

I could go...

I couldn't pick a piece...

because Miles is all of the pieces. It's his interpretation...

of whatever elements...

he has to deal with...

that is Miles' genius.

So to me there isn't necessarily a particular piece...

that was written before.

Whatever is written now...

to me, is what Miles' was about.