Listening and Thoughts on We Want Miles
What to make of Miles Davis’s late period?
I want to address the question I’ve seen asked at least once, namely, did Miles Davis “have anything to say” after his return to music, “his powers on the horn greatly diminished?” as I have read in a streaming services blurb about Davis. Or was he just noodling? the writer proposes as the alternative. I think I have developed a reasonable estimate of We Want Miles (1981 concert performance, 1982 release) as it relates to the questions. We Want Miles is one of my favorite Miles Davis albums. It’s a step out of the fusion and hard bop and bebop of the previous decades, into a new way for him to perform. @Ted Gioia just wrote a piece worth reading on cultural stagnation. Miles did not stagnate, as far as I have an opinion on that question.
On We Want Miles, Miles slowed down, but Bitches Brew (named by his wife) and other albums of his later work, pre-funk, were slower as well. The tell-tale rock ‘n roll drumbeat is not present, or at least is not prominent—the bass-drum, snare, bass-drum, snare, of much funk and rock-i-fied jazz. That drumbeat is my cue to choose something else to listen to when I am wanting to listen to jazz. My boundary line for jazz is nearly the same as the boundary line between predictable drums and unpredictable drums. Cocktail bar jazz, even, has a greater degree of unpredictability, when done well, than a rock ‘n roll hit single. It’s a fuzzy line, as lines are in the real world, beyond the rigors of grade-school geometry.
On We Want Miles, the marketing thrust is that this is a live Miles Davis record, and who could pass that up? The music features lots of Miles on the trumpet, but he does not play the prima donna. He steps aside, whether literally or figuratively, to let many flashy examples of virtuosity, particularly Mike Stern on guitar and Bill Evans on soprano sax. Incidentally, it’s the one and only time I’ve heard Bill Evans play (not to be confused with the pianist). Some people can’t mention Miles Davis without objecting to his standing, at times, with his back to the audience. Many people read this, having heard about it, as a sign of contempt for the audience. I have read that Davis was a shy person who wanted to let the spotlight shine not only on him but on his collaborators. Hence, he would try to minimize his presence on stage when he was not playing, and perhaps even when he was playing. Heck, the lead singer of the band Tool, I’ve heard, had such stage fright that he would perform behind a curtain. I haven’t heard anyone curse his name for having done that.
Minutes go by without a note from Davis, on some tracks. But he doesn’t disappoint if one takes him on the terms he offers. He isn’t playing bebop or hard bop solos that burn holes in the air. In a documentary interview, he objected strenuously to having the music he was making late in his career, as “jazz.” “It’s social music,” he said. What is social music? I haven’t heard of it, though Herbie Hancock did a track called “People Music.” What is social music? I let Davis have the authoritative decree and take him at his word: social music is music like “Jean Pierre” on We Want Miles. It’s casually danceable. One can stand and sway in the groove. It’s music like his beautiful interpretation of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” on That’s What Happened. Pianist and Harvard professor Vijay Iyer has covered “Human Nature.” It lends itself to such interpretations. (Now that I’ve started disc one again, I heard some rock ‘n roll bass-drum, snare, bass-drum, snare, passages, but so much is going on percussively that it isn’t the monotony of a hit 1980s guitar-rock song.
A beginner trumpeter, I especially like this album for the purpose of jamming along, trying to nail down his melody in “Jean Pierre,” which is within my limited range. At this point, I’m mostly playing the chromatic scale, trying to reach as high as I can. Jamming with We Want Miles is playtime. And that’s social music, perhaps. If jazz was supposed to be—is supposed to be?—serious music, then I think Miles Davis’s social music is music for playtime. It’s party music. As far as the supposed seriousness of jazz goes, I present, as Exhibit A, the all-time great drummer Art Blakey, who always seemed to play with a smile on his face. And not just a grin, but a huge, Cheshire Cat, toothy, open-mouthed smile. We can be serious about music without insisting one must always be so serious.
It took me many years before I got into this period of Miles’s musical development. I didn’t like it much, for a while. But most of that was before I turned to jazz in desperate earnest. The question, “Did Miles have anything to say?” admits, by its existence as a question, that the answer is Yes. It just seems likely that an earnest asker who believes the answer is No, simply doesn’t like what Miles had to say. And that is not the same as Miles’s saying nothing.
