Mr. Gone
Set List
1. THE PURSUIT OF THE WOMAN IN THE FEATHERED HAT (ZAWINUL)
| Josef Zawinul: | Keyboards, kalimbas, thumbeki drums, sleigh bells, voice |
| Manolo Badrena: | Solo voice |
| Jaco Pastorius: | Drums, bass, voice |
| Peter Erskine: | Drums, voice |
| Wayne Shorter: | Soprano saxophone, voice |
This tune's title was originally going to be the title of the album. Zawinul described it to Silvert as a sectional piece, "deceptively simple-sounding at first." [DB78b] "Pursuit," "Mr. Gone," and "And Then" were tunes that Zawinul composed in his house in the summer of 1977, and along with "Mr. Gone," were intended to be used on his next solo album. [BMJR78]
2. RIVER PEOPLE (PASTORIUS)
| Jaco Pastorius: | Drums, voice, timpani, bass |
| Wayne Shorter: | Soprano saxophone |
| Josef Zawinul: | Keyboards, ARP and Prophet solo |
This tune was written by Pastorius "when I was bass fishing in the Everglades about four years ago, at sunrise. It just came to me, and I sang it into a cassette." [RS282]
Pastorius told Clive Williamson of the BBC, "I have a tune, 'River People', and I wanted a certain kind of feel, so I decided to play drums on it. We were in a transformation period, I broke my right wrist and we had some time off, and just Joe and I were in the studio. So we did 'River People' that way, building the tune up on the spot. It was all written out, so all Joe had to do was play his parts, and I played mine, and it just all gelled together, and I did some overdubs. In fact, we played the bass parts together 'cause he got this synth sound--sort of a little twang, almost like a little guitar on the top--with my bass rolling on the bottom. So we just played to the click track, and I went back and overdubbed the drums with that, as opposed to 'Teen Town' where I played the drums first, and overdubbed the bass part afterwards." [BBC78]
Urged by Williamson to talk more about "River People," Jaco continued:
'River People' I wrote in the Everglades, where I was bass-fishing four years ago. It's an older tune, about a day with the river people, like they get their feet right in the mud there; so the bass part: I sang the bass part (sings and claps time) 'mm-maa, mm-maa, hmm; mm-maa, mm-maa mm-aa umm', like a lot of people down in the mud at the river, yeah? And then these chords, the way they come in, it sounds like the sunrise - bang! - like this incredible light, and then the whole day passes, and at the end you start roaring, you start having a little fun, like you kind of party out at the end into this New Orleans feeling, y'know? I was in the Everglades fishing, but I was feeling a lot like I was in Louisiana when I wrote the song! It was weird.
I had a bit of a composition I'd started on piano, but I actually got it together when I was fishing out on this boat with a couple of buddies. All day we were just sitting there goofing off, drinking beer and fishing and just having fun. Rainstorms, the whole thing--it's a fun piece of music. Joe takes just the greatest solo at the end, starting off with this trombone-sounding thing, then goes into this organ thing. I like the song! (laughs) [BBC78]
3. YOUNG AND FINE (ZAWINUL)
| Josef Zawinul: | Keyboards, melodica, high hat, voice |
| Steve Gadd: | Drums |
| Jaco Pastorius: | Bass |
| Wayne Shorter: | Tenor saxophone |
| Peter Erskine: | High hat |
"Young and Fine" was sampled and used by the hip-hop band A Tribe Called Quest, on the cut "Butter" on their album The Low End Theory. A lengthy live version was recorded by the band Steps (aka Steps Ahead) in 1980, and can be heard on their album Smokin' in the Pit: Live!.
4. THE ELDERS (SHORTER, ARRANGED BY ZAWINUL)
| Wayne Shorter: | Tenor saxophone |
| Jaco Pastorius: | Bass |
| Josef Zawinul: | Keyboards |
Silvert wrote that this tune "became a trio improvisation in the studio, with Jaco setting up what Wayne calls 'a strumming mandolin-like rhythm--there are three independent melodies. Joe told me he thinks it's the most beautiful thing I've written since we started Weather Report.'" [DB78b]
Jaco described his sound on this track to Bill Milkowski: "There's a sound I get, a percussive kind of sound, almost like a conga. I get it by hitting the strings with my right palm, getting a rhythmic thing going, and then just quickly sliding my palm down the neck, from the bridge down to the nut. It adds some meat in appropriate places. I used that at the end of 'John And Mary' from the Word Of Mouth album. And you can hear it on 'The Elder' [sic] from the Mr. Gone album." [GP84a]
SIDE TWO
5. MR. GONE (ZAWINUL)
| Tony Williams: | Drums |
| Wayne Shorter: | Tenor saxophone |
| Josef Zawinul: | Keyboards, Oberheim bass |
| Jaco Pastorius: | Bass |
For the 1991 CD liner notes, Zawinul told Bill Milkowski, "That funny bass line I came up with on 'Mr. Gone' is something that came to me at home while I was fooling around with different ideas on an 8-track recorder. Actually, that's how most of the material for this album was developed, by improvising on the 8-track and then going back over the tape to find out what worked, writing down note-for-note those parts that interested me and editing them into some kind of coherent song form."
Jaco told Williamson: "Yeah, that's the Oberheim bass. That's down to Joe: it's really the main sound. In fact, I don't even play on 'Mr. Gone' until much later in the tune. I just come in as a cushion to the Oberheim bass at the end, it just gives it a little bit of roundness, you know, coming in with the fretless an octave higher, but almost the whole tune is Oberheim bass." [BBC78]
While on tour in 1978, Zawinul explained the difficulty of getting the drum part right to Bill Henderson of Black Music & Jazz Review. "First of all I did the introduction, then I had the bass track on my sequencer--I did it at home on an eight track machine. Then I got Al Mouzon to do the drums. He could not do it. Then I got Sonship [Theus] to do it. It was not right. I got Alex Acuña to do it. It was not right. Jaco tried--Jaco's a very good drummer. He could not do it. Then I played drums. And this stayed for a while, 'cause this was the best. I asked Steve Gadd and he said, 'no Joe, you play it.' 'Cause I mean, it was my tune--and I really played it good. But then I said, let's get Tony Williams to do this. And we flew Tony Williams out. And Tony Williams played it but it didn't take. So we still had my track there. Then, all of a sudden, Tony called and said, 'I'm gonna fly down on my own money. I want to get another shot at this.' And that was it--one take. 'Cause the second time when he came he was so ready to do it, 'cause he really didn't do it right and he knew it." [BMJZ78]
6. PUNK JAZZ (PASTORIUS)
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Jaco once said of this tune, "It's about a kid on the street snapping his fingers and wiping his nose with one hand, a baseball mitt on the other, being belligerent and sticking to his guns." [CW79] Asked by Williamson for his favorite cut on Mr. Gone, Jaco said, "Personally I like 'Punk Jazz' because it's the last piece of music I wrote, and I wrote it specifically for the album, as opposed to 'River People' that I had four years ago. It's a satisfaction thing, like 'I came up with the goods,' so you feel like you did your work and it was done specifically for the album... It's just a really well-orchestrated tune: a lot of work went into it." [BBC78] A little later, Jaco adds, "Like I got this tune, 'Punk Jazz', man, and at the beginning, look out, because this is some stone jazz, and we come in sounding like a symphony, but it's just Joe and me playing. It's unbelievable. Then Tony [drummer Tony Williams] comes in, and he's smoking, and Wayne takes one of the all-time classic soprano saxophone solos. But all that ensemble work is written out and we're grooving, and whatever talking we're doing is within the framework, so we're still completely improvising. I was really proud of Joe because he really got his calligraphy together for this album. (laughs) Usually they just throw you a piece of paper with a couple of marks on it, y'know, and you gotta work it out! This was a lot easier to read this time!" [BBC78] A big band version of "Punk Jazz" can be heard on Jaco's The Birthday Concert album, a live recording of the concert Jaco staged on the occasion of his 30th birthday on December 1, 1981. |
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| Jaco's handwritten score for
"Punk Jazz." Image courtesy Ingrid Pastorius. Click it to display a larger version at her web site. |
7. PINOCCHIO (SHORTER)
| Wayne Shorter: | Tenor saxophone |
| Josef Zawinul: | Acoustic piano, Oberheim synthesizer |
| Jaco Pastorius: | Bass |
| Peter Erskine: | Drums |
A Wayne Shorter tune originally recorded in 1967 by the Miles Davis Quintet for the Nefertiti album. This was Peter Erskine's first recording with the group. In Woodard's retrospective, Erskine recalled, "Whenever I think of the way Tony played that with Miles [on Nefertiti]," Erskine says, "there was so much finesse and it was so slippery. Ours was definitely a harder, electronic version of it. So I was crestfallen when they went in to listen to the way it sounded and said, 'Hey, we're done. Let's just use this.' I was, 'Wait, wait...' And Jaco turned to me and said, 'You have to join the band the same way I did, with the first take.'" [DB01]
Erskine told much the same story to Brian Glasser: "One of the first things we did in the studio was 'Pinocchio,' which was actually just a soundcheck for the engineer--it was the very first thing we put on tape that morning, and I was dismayed during playback because I was playing all over the place, partly just to give the engineer variety. I was certainly a little self-conscious that this would be my take on the great 'Pinocchio'! And then Jaco turned to me and said, 'Let's just use this,' and I was, 'No, no!' And he said, 'Well, you have to join the band the same way I did: first take,' because, of course, his first take was 'Cannonball.' And I said, 'Okay, fair enough.'" [IASW, p. 211]
8. AND THEN (ZAWINUL, LYRICS BY SAM GUEST)
| Josef Zawinul: | Keyboards |
| Wayne Shorter: | Tenor and alto saxophone |
| Jaco Pastorius: | Bass |
| Steve Gadd: | Drums |
| Deniece Williams: | Voice |
| Maurice White: | Vocal |
Zawinul explained the making of this tune to Bill Henderson of Black Music & Jazz Review:
"I was inspired by Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein was on her death bed. She was asked, 'I mean, after all, what is the answer?' And she said 'and then...'
"So when I had this tune I improvised--all my music is improvised--I thought it would be great just to have somebody say, 'And then... What then?' I mean, what is going to be happening, man?!
"And then this guy--who is a genius--I had this melody, I gave him the ideas. He was singer Sam Guest, he's a very good singer. I called him out to my house from Virginia and I told him what lyrics I want. He's a lyricist. I'm not a lyricist but I have the ideas.
"I told him I wanted to say something of that sort, like: 'Man's future is plain to see/Our love for abundance will always be/So blind is he.' I mean, after all, let's not forget. Y'know, just a little moral." [Joe pronounces it "morale."]
Initially, Joe was going to use a singer called Alison Mills, but she turned out to be a Jesus freak and refused to do it, so it was sung by Deniece Williams and Earth, Wind & Fire's Maurice White.