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An absolutely fantastic read! Definitely worth the time and a true inspiration, even if you’re not a musician. What an amazing man. 🙂
LISTEN: The greatest feeling I ever had in my life – with my clothes on – was when I first heard Diz and Bird back in 1944. I’ve come close to matching the feeling of that night, but I never quite got there. I’m always looking for it, trying to always feel it in through the music I play.
The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit…. I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it….That stove flame is as clear as music is in my mind. I saw that flame and felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too….The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That’s where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started, with that moment….In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame.
Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and I just couldn’t believe someone could be that close to freedom and not take advantage of it.
Bird [Charlie Parker] might have been the spirit of the bebop movement, but Dizzy [Gillespie] was its “head and its hands,” the one who kept it all together.
Then [my father] told me something I will never forget, “Miles, you hear that bird outside your window? He’s a mocking bird. He don’t have a sound of his own. He copies everybody’s sound, and you don’t want to do that. You want to be your own man, have your own sound. That’s what it’s really about. So, don’t be nobody else but yourself.
Music has no periods; music is music.
But you’ve got to have style in whatever you do – writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything. Some styles are slick and creativity and imaginative and innovative and others aren’t.
You don’t learn any of that shit naturally. That’s something somebody teaches you, like when you teach somebody how to play a musical instrument correctly. After you’ve learned how to play your instrument the right way, you can turn around and play it the way you want to, anyway you hear the music and sound and want to play it. But you’ve got to first learn how to be cool and let whatever happens… happen.
Great fighters are testy, just like great artists; they test everybody.
As a musician and as an artist, I have always wanted to reach as many people as I could through my music. And I never been ashamed of that. Because I never thought that the music called “jazz” was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all other dead things that were once considered artistic. I always thought it should reach as many people as it could, like so-called popular music, and why not? I never was one of those people who thought less was better; the fewer who hear you, the better you are, because what you’re doing is just too complex for a lot of people to understand. A lot of jazz musicians say in public that they feel this way, that they would have to compromise their art to reach as many people as they can too… But I always thought that music had no boundaries, no limits to where it could grow and go, no restrictions on its creativity. Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. And I always hated categories. Always. Never thought it had any place in music.
So I never, ever felt bad because a lot of people were beginning to like what I was doing. I never felt that because the music I was playing was becoming popular that meant that my music was less complex than some that wasn’t as popular as mine. Popularity didn’t make my music any less worthy, or great.
All I ever wanted to do was blow my horn and create music and art, communicate what I felt through music.
As long as I could get what I needed from white world on my own terms, without selling myself out to all of those people who would love to exploit me, then I was going to go for what I know is real. When you’re creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain’t the limit.
But you know, music’s just sound anyway.
See, I never thought there was nothing nobody could say about an album of mine. I just wanted everyone to listen to the music, and make up their own mine. I never did like no one writing about what I played on an album, trying to explain what I was trying to do. The music speaks for itself.
I’ve always thought that what a group does together is what makes music happen.
Because to be a musician and stay a great musician you’ve got to always be open to what’s new, what’s happening at the moment. You have to be able to absorb it if you’re going to continue to grow and communicate your music. And creativity and genius in any kind of artistic expression don’t know nothing about age; either you got it or you don’t, and being old is not going to help you get at it.
Music isn’t about standing still and becoming safe.
Great musicians are like great fighters. They have a higher sense of theory going on in their heads. I feel strong creatively now, and I feel I’m getting even stronger.
[Jimi Hendrix] influenced me, and I influenced him, and that’s the way great music is always made. Everybody showing everybody else something and then moving on from there.
A musician’s attitude is the way he plays.
Things take time, you know, you don’t learn something new and do it overnight. It has to get down inside your body, up into your blood before you can do it correctly.
But I was trying not to think about the old days, because in order to stay young I believe a person has to forget the past.
Dumb, insensitive critics have destroyed a lot of good music and musicians who weren’t strong as I was in having the ability to say, “Fuck y’all.”
That’s what I’m doing when I have my back turned to the audience – I can’t be concerned with talking and bullshitting while I’m playing because the music is talking to them when everything’s right.
They wanted me to play with the old guys, but I couldn’t do that because I don’t believe in going back.
It just becomes a routine, so it’s the music that keeps you going. If the music is cool, then everything else gets better and easier to deal with.
[My scars] are like medals to me, badges of honour, the history of my survival, the story of how I kept on getting up from bad shit, terrible adversity and just kept on getting up, doing the best I could. I can see where I would be proud of my scars, because they show me that I didn’t let this shit get me down, that can win if you got the heart and tenacity and soul to keep on trying.
But music isn’t about competition, but about cooperation, doing shit together and fitting in.
The only thing they asked of me is not to be prejudiced against any person and to continue to do what I do, which is contributing to the only worldwide cultural contribution to come out of America – jazz, or as I prefer to call it, black music.
When I hear jazz musicians today playing all those same licks we used to play so long ago, I feel sad for them. I mean it’s like going to bed with a real old person who even smells real old.
I love challenges and new things; they reenergize me. But music has always been healing for me, and spiritual. When I’m playing well and my band is too, then I’m most of a time in a good mood, if my health is good also. I’m still learning everyday.
A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it’s going in short phrases. If you listen, anyone with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the time and the technology that’s available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today is sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate into that into their playing, so that the music they make will be different. New instruments like synthesizers and them other things people play make everything different. Instruments used to be wood, then it was metal, and now it’s hard plastic. I don’t know what it’s going to be in the future but I know it’s going to be something else. The worst musicians don’t hear the music today, so they can’t play it. Only when I started hearing the upper register did I play there. I could only play in the middle to lower registers before because that’s all I heard. It’s the same thing with old musicians trying to play the music today.
Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep on creating they have to be about change. Living is an adventure and challenge.
Music ain’t just about money. It’s about feeling, especially the music we play.
People who don’t like change will find themselves like folk musicians, playing in museums and local as a motherfucker. Because the music and sound has gone international and there ain’t no sense in trying to back into some womb where you once were. A man can’t go back into his mother’s womb.
But as complex as people try to make my music out to be, I like it simple. That’s the way I hear it even if it’s complex to them.
For me, music and life are all about style. Like if you want to look and feel rich, you wear a certain thing, a certain pair of shoes, or shirt, or coat. Styles in music produce a certain kind of feeling in people. If you want someone to feel a certain way, you play a certain styles. That’s all.
To me, great musicians are like great fighters who know self-defence. They have a higher sense of theory going on in their heads
I think the schools should teach kids about jazz or black music. Kids should know that America’s only original cultural contribution is the music our black forefathers brought from Africa which was changed and developed here. African music should be studied as much as European (“classical”) music.
It’s just willpower, believing you can do what you want to do. When I don’t want to do something I say to myself, “Fuck it.” Because you have to do it yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. Other people might try to help, but you’ve got to do it alone most of the time.
Nothing is out of the question the way I live my life. I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning. That’s when it starts – when I wake up and see the first light. Then, I’m grateful, and I can’t wait to wake up, because there’s something to do and try everyday. Everyday I find something creative to do with my life. Music is a blessing and a curse. But I love it, wouldn’t have it no other way.
For me, music is my life, and musicians I have known and loved and grown from have become my family… I feel if you’re going to leave something, leave it to the people who helped you do what you did. If it’s blood relatives, fine, but if it isn’t, I don’t believe in giving it to relatives.
For me, the urgency to create and play music today is worse than when I started. It’s more intense. It’s like a curse. Man, the music I forget now drives me crazy trying to remember it. I’m driven to it – go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It’s always there. And I love that it hasn’t abandoned me; I feel really blessed.
Miles Davis, Miles – The Autobiography
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