Monday, August 8, 2011

Jaco Pastorius

Jaco, electric bass, genius.  What else is there to say? Actually, I think his music stands for itself but he was quite a mess off-stage.  Apparently he was bipolar and had major issues with drugs and alcohol. Sadly, this legend  was murdered in 1987 by a nightclub bouncer who brutally ejected him from the premises and beat him to death. 


He was homeless and broke for much of his life. I read an interesting comment beneath a YouTube video from a guy whose dad was a dentist that Jaco visited once.  Jaco had no money to get his teeth taken care of so he paid the dentist by giving him a box of unreleased recordings that were lying around in his basement! 


This YouTube video is an excerpt from a DVD called Modern Electric Bass, Jaco Pastorius and it sounds like they had to more or less lock Jaco up in a hotel room for a week so that he could stay sober enough to play and be interviewed.


Jaco Pastorius - The Chicken (late 1970s?)



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