You can’t just play these clichés that even the commercials don’t use anymore. You have to match these different synthesized sounds. Everybody can see that they don’t do anything - that they’re just comfortable playing the same old thing. I don’t like the word, ya know, because it’s really a disgrace to be labeled a jazz musician because they don’t do anything. I was talking to my drummer about that last night. When you say “jazz,” it always limits a musician. I saw it on HBO and they introduced it as a “jazz video.” You can spend your whole day on things like that. What do you mean how did it come together?ĭid Columbia want you to do it? Did you decide to do it? Did you like doing it? How did the video for “Decoy” come together? I hear it the way I hear all ballads - on the radio, on television. If you followed my musical career, I usually always played ballads that I like. How did you come to add “Time After Time” to the live repertoire? Why that particular song? When did I have the operation? I don’t remember. (Photo by Pool BENAINOUS/RENAULT/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)Įric Snider: The tone on your horn sounds so good now, so improved. Our interview gradually became a conversation, and our discussion covered more than music. Warmth, but he’s witty - often funny - opinionated and open. But soon enough I made a discovery, which will be the only analytical point I make in this introduction. One, two, three, four, five rings before he picked up and croaked a barely audible, “Yeah.” We started out a little slow - as any two strangers are bound to do. Instead, I was given a phone number to call the next morning. The original plan to do a post-show, face-to-face interview never materialized. So even though it wasn’t a condition for doing the interview, we struck a gentleman’s deal that he could speak freely, and I would render our conversation as it happened. He’s a man after all, and he puts his pants on just like you and me - though his pants are probably more stylish. There had to be more to Miles Davis than musician/bandleader/trendsetter/mysterious intimidator. Frankly, I was getting a little tired of reading it. In the music press, his career has been analyzed, scrutinized, chronologized and categorized over the years, and he thinks most of it is “bullshit” anyway.
The feature photo of Miles Davis is by Jeff Sedlik. This article was originally published in the January/February 1985 issue of JAZZIZ Magazine.
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