Musical memories

For some unaccountable reason, I have had a Miles Davis track going round my head for the last few days. I got home from work, of which the least said the better today, went and had an hour's work-out at the gym (great for de-stressing and de-angering - is that a word? If not it should be)then came home and looked out the Miles Davis live double album from 1982 - 'We Want Miles' - recorded in New York and Tokyo, and performed at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, in my presence in the late summer of 1982, if my memory serves me correctly. The track I wanted to hear was 'Jean Pierre'. Now a lot of people didn't like this album. It features the wonderful bass guitarist, Marcus Miller, who went on to produce some of Miles' later work, Mike Stern, the guitarist from Blood, Sweat and Tears, Bill Evans (not that one) on soprano sax, Al Foster on drums and the excellent Mino Cinelu on percussion.

I well remember the evening I went to see this band. I had bought tickets for myself, my friend Colin and his girlfriend Rachel to see this much-anticipated gig. At the last moment, Colin and Rachel cancelled, leaving me, for the one and only time in my life, to sell their tickets to a tout outside Hammersmith tube station.
That has got me thinking about Colin now. We met when he asked me for a light in the Windmill pub on Clapham Common one evening. He drove one of the first VW Golf GTI's and we used to cruise around in it thinking we were the bees knees.Well, I thought I was a bees knee anyway! We used to meet for lunch in the Coach and Horses in Soho which was well-known then as the 'home' of Jeffrey Bernard and the Private Eye lunches. Norman Balon was the landlord.

Anyway, back to Miles Davis. It was just awesome to be in about the tenth row back from this living legend who was certainly in my top five of greatest ever and most influential musicians. Miles spoke not a word throughout the evening, but the music was electric in all senses of the word. I have read that Miles used to tell his band just to play what they felt, and I think this was true. One of the great things about jazz is that you could go and see the same band five nights in a row and you would never see the same concert, even if they played the same tunes.

What I love about this album is the fact that the music can be very angry one minute and then it emerges into some wonderful blue sky, like a jet coming through the storm into stillness and beauty. Can't beleive I wrote that - I'm sure none of the critics said that at the time.

'We Want Miles' is the only album that I have ever bought on my way into a concert. I know I had to have it, just like the other twenty or so Miles albums that I have. It still does it for me after a stressful day, after 27 years