No Beethoven: An Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report

by Peter Erskine

  Maynard was a completely generous bandleader, always featuring his sidemen with great fanfare and pride for each show. Maynard had fun and made sure that his band and audience had fun, too. His trumpet prowess was as much natural talent as it was his study and practice of Yogic breathing techniques, enabling him to do the otherwise impossible on his instrument. Maynard was like Paganini, Horowitz, Enrico Caruso, Art Tatum, Buddy Rich, and the angel Gabriel all rolled into one — with the showbiz touch of Louie Armstrong (or Liberace) to boot! Despite his prowess and his hard work on stage, Maynard always found the time to be the complete gentleman. “Gracious” is the word that comes to mind; Maynard Ferguson was one very gracious human being.

  As mentioned, it was on Maynard’s band that I met Jaco Pastorius, which led to my being invited to join Weather Report. Ironically, Maynard recorded an arrangement of the Weather Report hit tune “Birdland” shortly before my departure. On that same recording (Carnival), we did a cover version of the Earth, Wind & Fire tune ”Fantasy,” and I came up with a beat during the chorus of the tune that I would soon use to good effect with WR on the tune “Black Market” (one of the few signature beats I can lay claim to after all of these years). It was with Maynard where I first encountered and began to learn the how and why of playing to a click track; many thanks to guest studio musician Steve Khan who taught me that the “click track is your friend.” It was also with Maynard where I saw the wondrous effect of a great artist and bandleader in action, where audiences sat with that same look of awe and disbelief on their faces that I felt when I stared at our family’s stereo, listening to the greatest trumpet player this world has ever seen or heard.

  During the two years that I worked for Maynard, he was always kind and welcoming to my parents and friends. Maynard treated every player’s family or girlfriend like honored guests whenever they were brought ’round to meet him. Maynard was also, as stated above, incredibly generous to his sidemen in terms of sharing and shining the spotlight on them. Contrary to some other bandleaders of the time, Maynard always made sure that the guys in his band got their due. Upon hearing the tragic news of Maynard’s passing, I dug out an old videotape of a television appearance the band made in early 1978. After one of the songs we played, Maynard was being interviewed by host Mike Douglas, and he steered one of the questions to provide the opportunity for him to heap praise upon his trumpet section, and use his few seconds of TV bully-pulpit time to promote music education in schools.

  One funny story took place during the midst of the making of his studio album Conquistador. Maynard’s popularity was growing by leaps and bounds, due not only to all of the hard work and time he and the band put in on the road, but by the success of these increasingly “studio” studio albums. In other words, experienced studio musicians were primarily making these records. Naturally this caused some disgruntlement in the band; being on the record was the “cookie” or reward for all of those hours spent on the bus! And some guys were grumbling louder than others. Now, this was all occurring just as I joined the band in mid-1976. But it didn’t help matters when I had coffee one morning in New York City with my old boss Stan Kenton; when he asked me what I was doing in New York, I answered that I had some time off because Maynard was busy in the studio making an album. Stan realized that Maynard’s guys were not making the album, and so he called Maynard up and gave him a hard time about it. So, Maynard is starting to get sick and tired of hearing from his band, and hearing from his old boss, about the fact that studio musicians are making the album.

  Now, a week or two outside of New York, we finish playing this concert at a small university, and while I’m packing up my drums some fan walks up to me and asks me about the new album: “Hey, is the new record going to be you guys or some studio musicians?” And I answered him honestly (but without rancor), “Oh, it’s mostly studio musicians…” and carried on packing away my drums. Apparently, this guy then found Maynard outside the bus and gave him a hard time about it. Maynard had finally had it with all of the grumbling about studio musicians, but he did not suspect it was me (the new guy) who had caused this latest ruckus; he thought it was one of the brass players. As the bus pulled away from the concert hall and headed towards a music fraternity reception, he got on the bus P.A. and asked, “Hey, who told someone that the new album is being made by studio musicians?” Innocently, I immediately raised my hand and said, “Oh, that was me, Maynar….” And before I could finish pronouncing his name he lit into me, the language and emotional tenor almost rivaling that heard on the infamous Buddy Rich cassette tapes. Wow, it was intense. But he eventually started backing off, probably realizing that it was me he was yelling at and not someone else. The tirade wound down meekly, and he signed off on the intercom. This was followed by total silence on the bus for the remainder of the ride to the reception. Needless to say, the party was not much fun, and I began to question whether I was in the right place; maybe I should go back yet again to college!

  A sleepless night followed, and I wondered what I should do. The next morning was going to be a day off and Maynard would sleep in until noon or so. Imagine my surprise to hear a knocking at my door at 7:30 a.m. and to see a well-dressed Maynard standing there. He began by mocking himself in a jazz-musician-caricature way, alluding to his confused state of mind, etc., when all of a sudden he got deadly earnest and looked me right in the eye and said, “Did I yell at you last night?” I answered, “Uh, yeah.” And he stuck out his hand, saying “I deeply apologize, and I hope that you will forgive me.” MAYNARD FERGUSON got up at 7 o’clock in the morning on a sleep-in day so he could begin MY day with an apology. I knew then that this was a good man, a great man, to work for and learn from. And I enjoyed the remainder of my two-year stay with him, always revering his talent, wit, and graciousness.

  The album Conquistador went on to become a number-one hit for Maynard, thanks to the success of the cover arrangement of the theme from the movie Rocky, “Gonna Fly Now.” Studio drummer Allan Schwartzberg supplied the disco beat for that, but the band enjoyed the ripple effect of the recording’s popularity, playing to packed concert houses and school auditoriums for many years to come.

  The world lost its most astounding trumpeter at 8:00 p.m. on August 23, 2006, when Maynard Ferguson passed away in a Santa Barbara hospital, surrounded by his daughters. The news of Maynard’s death traveled swiftly, reaching the backstage area of the Hollywood Bowl where several Maynard band alumni, myself included, had just concluded a concert in tribute to Maynard’s old boss, Stan Kenton. When my wife came backstage to congratulate me on the success of the concert, she knew right away that something terrible had happened. With tears in my eyes, I relayed the sad news that had reached me only minutes earlier. His passing marks the end of an era: there are no more big band leaders of his generation or stature. We all lost a great artist, and I lost a friend. Maynard was probably the best boss I ever had.

  Quotables

  Elvin Praises Peter

  Citing three cymbal players he admires: (Philly Joe Jones, Roy Haynes, and...) “Peter Erskine, I think, has a real deep, fine quality of touch with the cymbals that I admire, I enjoy... He brings you, makes you highly conscious of the kind of instrument, of the respect that he has for that instrument.”

  Jaco Praises Peter

  On a British radio program he proclaimed: “Unbelievable. This cat can play no more drums than nobody.”

  Joe Zawinul Praises…

  “Peter had the goods. He was a wild, crazy kid, but he had the goods! Peter was great!”

  “Peter plays like an octopus. Peter didn’t have to be broken in. He did like we did. When Wayne joined Miles he never had a rehearsal. When I joined Cannon, the record company just sent all of his albums over and I learned the music.”

  “Peter can really play very loose and relaxed, and being a big band drummer helped us a lot. He had some big band chops. It was one of the best periods. Erskine is a hell of a musician, man.”

  “Jaco was a fant
astic player! And Peter was coming out fresh, paint still on him, fresh and exploring. It was a great, great group! For four people to play ‘live’ like that, I don't think there is too much around today to compare to it. I can say in retrospect — ’cause you never know when you're doing it — that was the height.”

  “8:30 was one of my favorite records that we ever made! I love this record! I think at that point we had reached the height…that ‘live’ tour...every night was an event.”

  “We had finally reached a level of performing that surpassed most bands I've ever heard. Over the years we had always had great bands, but sometimes on stage we had a tendency to play a little bit too long. There was a period in jazz where everybody played real long; I think it was almost an illness. There was a lot of swimming going on. We tried to reduce the swimming somewhat and get more to the point. What we ripped off on the 8:30 album as a quartet, I think, was incredible! The 8:30 tour was actually the best tour Weather Report has ever done.”

  More Joe — no more Mr. Nice Guy

  Manchester, England, November 11, 1980

  Zawinul: “I’m really sorry, man. I apologize if I kept you up last night.”

  Peter: “No, Joe, you didn't keep me up.”

  Zawinul: “Are you sure, man? My room being right next to yours, and I was laughing so hard and making so much fucking noise and all…”

  Peter: “No, didn’t hear a thing. What was so funny?”

  Zawinul: “Well, this band, ___ ___________, was on the television last night, and these motherfuckers just sounded so bad. And ____ ________ ? (Joe mentions the keyboard player by name.) He should be arrested for being black and playing like that.”

  And even more Zawinul quotables

  “I can play more than both those motherfuckers with one hand tied behind my back.”

  “I have the greatest ears in the history of music — greater than Mozart’s.”

  “If you ever play like that motherfucker again, we’ll kill you.”

  “If I hear you play that beat again I will have to kill myself.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if he’s ‘nice’; I asked how does the motherfucker play?”

  photo : Mutsy Erskine

  24. Tokyo, Japan, 1978

  Scene: a record store. Jaco and I have been visiting music stores and album shops with our tour interpreter, Mutsy, who we have stolen from the crew. (Her job was to translate for the crew members, but the band liked her so much we would always ask for her to accompany us whenever we wanted to stray outside of the hotel or concert hall.)

  I notice that the record store has a copy of an album I recorded with Maynard a year before. There’s a fusion production-tune extravaganza that has a lot of drumming on it, and I’m curious to hear it again and excited to play it for Jaco, and so Mutsy is put to the task of “sumimasen”-ing the store personnel and asking them to please play this album on the stereo system in the shop, and to play this specific song. They do this for us, and the music starts over the loudspeakers. All of a sudden, this tune I had been proud of is not sounding so good to me, and the musical seconds tick by like minutes. It doesn’t take too long for Jaco to turn to me impatiently and proclaim, “This has got to be the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Come on, let’s get outta here,” and that was that. Man, these guys didn’t seem to like anything I played for them.

  The only good thing about the excursion that day was that we were in Mutsy’s company. I was getting a crush on her, but had already told her all about my girlfriend back in America, so…no dice, there. But I could not resist her and found myself snapping photos of her when she was working around the band.

  Remarkably, this is the woman who would eventually become my wife, the mother of our two children, partner in all things, and best friend I could ever hope for.

  Here’s Mutsy!

  photo : Peter Erskine

  25. Jaco

  photo: Shigeru Uchiyama

  Weather Report would tour Japan two more times while I was in the band, tours #2 and #3 with Bobby Thomas, Jr. added on percussion, or “hand drums,” as he preferred to call his instrument. Bobby added a tremendous amount of excitement and rhythmic flow to the music.

  By this point in time, Jaco, Joe, and I are hanging out like the Three Musketeers whenever the occasion presents itself, whether in the sauna of the Keio Plaza Hotel, the Chinese restaurant there that featured a terrific noodle soup with chicken (“You see that broth?” Joe pointed out. “It’s clear; that’s the sign of a great fucking soup”), or the “Let’s Bar” after gigs in Tokyo. The three of us generally hung out quite a bit on tour, whereas Bobby and Wayne preferred the privacy of their hotel rooms or going out on their own. Every once in a while we’d all go out for a celebratory dinner after a show (or pair of double shows).

  After a while, we stopped accepting invitations to after-concert receptions or parties at people’s homes because those usually involved a long drive and, once we got there, it would be the three of us standing in a small circle talking about the music, and we figured we could just as easily do that back at the hotel.

  Not that we were anti-social. Jaco used to get up at first light in Japan so he could sit in on one of the baseball games taking place at dawn across the street from the hotel in Tokyo.

  Jaco could make friends (or enemies) anywhere he went.

  Jaco and I were each half the age of Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter when we played together in Weather Report. Joe and Wayne were our elders and mentors, but Jaco had the genius, talent, bravado, and drive to compete with our jazz father figures — especially Joe — as an equal brother. We were family, albeit one with a scorecard. Touring, playing live or in the studio, eating, meeting people — the band ethos was to reign supreme in all matters large and small. Jaco’s flame burned bright during those days that I knew him. And like any kind of fire, it consumed much of the oxygen surrounding it.

  It’s hard to believe that he’s been gone now for twenty-five years. What music he might have created had he lived a longer life! His musical legacy has been served both ill and well since his death, with various albums — many of them bootlegs — being released, the bulk of them following his death consisting of poorly-recorded live gigs at a time when he was sick and not playing anywhere near his best. His ascendency in Weather Report and the time periods before and immediately after the band were when he galvanized the world of music with his talent and his ideas and his audacity.

  One of the more common questions I’m asked during my travels is, “What was it like to play with Jaco?” In a word, it was thrilling. A general rule of thumb in music is that the company we keep on the bandstand or in the recording studio can help propel us to ever-higher heights of musical excellence and understanding. And the experience of being lucky enough to work alongside Jaco provided all of that plus more. Still, as outstanding and important as that association was and remains for me, a quarter century now since his untimely death, I count myself as being blessed to have been able to work with a number of great musicians.

  Jaco Pastorius was certainly the brightest shining star in the constellation of musical personalities that I’ve encountered, bass or otherwise, and he made certain that our collaboration was always fun and challenging. He was a good friend. And his innate and studied sense of time, as well as his rhythmic execution, was the clearest and best articulated imaginable. The fact that Jaco started off as a drummer when he was young, and was an avid and astute listener, gave him an understanding of the beat that few bass players will ever match. The reference to “listening” is an important one. Jaco counted Frank Sinatra as well as Bernard Purdie as his influences; Johann Sebastian Bach and Igor Stravinsky were every bit as important to his education as were bassists Jerry Jemmott, Chuck Rainey, Ron Carter, and James Jamerson. Jaco was well educated, and he was completely instinctive. He was serious, and he was fun. He could play rock-solid rhythms, and he could lyrically “sing” on the bass. Meanwhile, his sixteenth-note execution was unparallele
d. He could play in the style of many of his heroes, and yet he conceived, created, and composed a language on his instrument that was as revolutionary as it was evolutionary. His “Caribbean beat” on the bass consisted of conga drum patterns played on the bass, interjected with lyrical melody lines that somehow never interrupted the groove.

  What was it like to play with Jaco? It was, like, one lucky four-year-plus moment for me. I’m sorry that we cannot enjoy the mighty musical magic that he would have provided had he lived a longer life. Ultimately, the question of “what was it like…?” only makes me miss him all the more — nobody like him before or since.

  I got to do a fair amount of recording with Jaco in addition to the Weather Report albums, most notably in the living room of Jaco’s home in Deerfield Beach, Florida. It was there that we recorded “John and Mary” from his masterpiece album Word of Mouth. With a remote truck parked in the driveway, and steel drum players and percussionists positioned throughout the house, we tracked that song in one take, as I recall. The toughest part of the session was getting everyone indoors — we all wanted to go swimming! A lot of other music was recorded during a memorable few days there; every morning began with a run down to the beach, followed by some fresh grapefruit juice back at his house, and then we would begin to play. Jaco had a strong vision for this album. But his dedication to it would not prevent us from shutting down work each night in time for him to jump into bed next to his wife, Ingrid, and catch Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. The rest of us kind of peered into the room to watch the opening monologue before going to bed, ready for the next morning’s “WHO LOVES YA, BABE? Come on, we’re going to the beach!” at sunrise. Finishing up the album in Los Angeles, it was interesting to see Jaco’s creativity at work, as manifested in such things as his conducting an orchestra, or setting off firecrackers in the studio’s echo chamber, or overdubbing voice and Chinese koto parts!