Jaco Pastorius (1951 - 1987)
 This
part of my site, of course, is dedicated to "The Greatest Bass Player in the
World" - the late: Jaco Pastorius !
On sunday the 21'th of September 1997 it was 10 years ago, that Jaco died under tragic
circumstances. At this occasion I made a small self-produced "booklet"
(in paper) about the
man. Most of the stuff about Jaco was collected on Internet and therefore in english. Now
I work on in cyberspace - on World Wide Web ... And here is several hours of reading, if
you like !! Remember that it's "cheaper" to read the long texts
off-line, and then re-connect to Internet afterwards without leaving my site !!
The quoted remark at the top of this page comes from Jaco himself (his first remark,
when he met Zawinul !!) and "It ain't bragging if you can
back it up ..." is another one.
Jaco was a genius as well as a madman - but this has been typical for many great
personalities in the world history ... and Jaco was really one of them - revolutioning the
bass-playing ! And maybe this fact was leading to his final emotional situation: it was
simply too difficult to live up to. The expectations were VERY high all the time - and
sometimes (at least in the end) they were almost impossible to deal with. From what I've
read, this was a very big problem to Jaco ! He developed a kind of "megalomania"
that was very hard to handle for him. Instead of just playing the (great) way he did, he
sank down in depression, maybe because of the heavy expectations ... And what a shame it
was ! The way he ended up, was really a disaster for a genius like Jaco ... You can only
feel sorry and then hear the music he made. The music lives on - it will be there forever.
There were a lot of us, who in the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties
were stunned every time some new music from Jaco came to our ears. For me and my friends
it started, when I first brought in the "Black Market" record of Weather Report. My friends first didn't accept it, because it
didn't have any fancy guitar solos, but soon they were able to hear and enjoy all the
solos and the playing of Zawinul, Shorter and definitely: Jaco
Pastorius. I think it changed the life for many of us ...!
To all the fans in the world - this record must be a milestone. Jaco got into the
recordings in the middle of it all because of Alphonso Johnson's "drop out" -
and already on the next (amazing record) "Heavy weather" Jaco was credited as
"co-producer". Joe Zawinul was was a hard but fair
man. ("Folks should have the credit they deserve ...")
By the way I also dedicate this thing to three of these good friends, who were there,
when we discovered this new kind of music.
- Kim Bonde - the greatest bassplayer, that I've ever played with myself.
And he had a really hard time trying to sound like Jaco ... whom he admired so very much.
- Morten Kargaard - a great guitarist and friend from my very first band.
Now he lives on playing jazz music himself - very much influenced by Pat
Metheny, who was a personal (and musical) friend of Jaco.
- Niels Plaschke - journalist and a true "esquire", roadie and
fan through all the years of my own playing the drums.
Thank you for all of it ....!!
I'm still finding new stuff, pictures and links and adding
this to my site about Jaco. I get e-mails from Jaco-fans from other countries telling new
things and adding new adresses for sites. So have a good time reading my thing on "JACO"
...!
And then listen to Jaco's playing on Joni Mitchell's "Hejira" and
"Shadows and light" - and Pat Metheny's first record
"Bright size life" - and of course the records from Weather
Report, especially "Heavy weather" ... Enjoy the pics and use the links listed on this website !!
Also remember to check out the new website run by the kids of Jaco:
www.jacopastorius.com and the site run
by Jaco's second (and last) wife, Ingrid Pastorius: www.jacop.net
Søren Noah, 2002
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