A Tragic Farewell: the final time Joni Mitchell saw Jaco Pastorius
“There’s this really weird bass player in Florida,” one member of Joni Mitchell‘s rhythm section said to her in 1974. “You’d probably like him”. Mitchell was working with her team on Court and Spark when she unintentionally stumbled across Jaco Pastorius, who seemed to answer her prayers regarding the specific style of bass she wanted to incorporate into her music.
“That’s what I wanted the bass to do,” she remembered, “I wanted it to show off a little more.” Although Pastorius would be officially recruited some two years later, her interest in jazz and infusing elements into her own sound infiltrated Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns but reached its pinnacle in 1976’s Hejira.
With songs like ‘Coyote’, Pastorius contributed to and worked alongside Mitchell’s “classical” and “groove” amalgamation, providing something truly rich and insatiable on the ear. Pastorius and Mitchell would work their magic for four more albums, including the live album Shadows and Light, allowing her to explore her jazzy intrigue to its full potential with the only bassist equipped to do the job.
Despite their seemingly perfect run, however, mental health challenges and drug addiction infiltrated Pastorius’ life in more ways than one, and it began to take a toll not only on his reputation but on the razor-sharp focus he once applied to music. One day, after attending an art opening in Soho, Mitchell spotted a sign outside the club across the street that read: “Jaco Pastorius tonight”. However, when she entered the venue to say hello to her friend, what ensued was somewhat of a shock.
Mitchell explained: “He asked me to jam with him, but he trailed the chord of the microphone over the keyboard so that it got in my way. I’d flip it off while I’m playing, and he’d flip it back on, and he was playing way outside the court. It was not good. Nothing was good about it at all. He was praising me too much and short-sheeting me too much. He was very skitsy. And that was the last I ever saw of him.”
In 1987, Pastorius entered an altercation with martial arts expert Luc Havan after being refused entrance to a club and kicking in a glass door. The violent exchange resulted in him being hospitalised with multiple injuries, including facial fractures and wounds to his left arm, which caused him to fall into a coma. Although some thought he might recover from his injuries, he got a brain haemorrhage a few days later and was taken off life support, passing away at the age of 35.
Knowing the detrimental effects of drug addiction and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s likely, however, that Mitchell remembers her friend and musical partner more as someone who was, at one point, the best in the business, completely untouchable and the only one who understood the various ways to utilise bass-driven jazz sensibilities in contemporary music. Pastorius passed away tragically at a young age, but he remains one of the most impactful figures in the world of electric bass in jazz music. His latter years might have been controversial, but he is best remembered for injecting basslines with profound feeling at a speed that had not been witnessed in the years prior.
