The “sorry-ass” musician Miles Davis hated with a passion and the trick he played on him
As much of a legend as he may have been, and perhaps one of the rawest talents music has ever seen, Miles Davis was not the sort of person you’d ever want to get on the wrong side of.
The illustrious trumpeter and bandleader was never one to hold back when it came to voicing his true feelings on something, and if that meant he was going to upset people with his scathing opinions on another person in the industry, then so be it.
If you were regarded as being a stain on jazz, or producing music that was beneath the standard that Davis deemed acceptable, you can bet your bottom dollar that he’d make that feeling known. If you were doing something he disapproved of, you’d be the first to know, straight from the horse’s mouth. Make one misstep and you’d be subjected to the wrath of the ‘King of Cool’; a somewhat ironic nickname for a man with such an acid tongue.
However, as much as he may have lashed out at people who were doing things wrong, he also wasn’t immune to going through artistic transitional periods. In the late 1960s, he began to experiment with playing in a fusion style that saw him garner attention outside of his usual jazz circles with predominantly Black audiences, and side-stepping into the rock and roll sphere’s largely white audiences.
This, as a scene, was practically alien to him, and you’d think that being in an unfamiliar setting would perhaps stop someone from running their mouth off around a new set of associates. That being said, this is Davis we’re talking about, and if the urge to speak his mind was offered to him on a plate, he’d make no bones about taking that opportunity. Given this, it didn’t take him long to start making enemies of those he was performing and touring alongside during this period, with one artist in particular receiving the brunt of his ire.
When he found himself on tour with the Steve Miller Band and Neil Young in 1970, while promoting his legendary jazz-rock masterpiece, Bitches Brew, he certainly didn’t hold back from saying exactly what was on his mind, particularly when it came to Miller’s presence on the tour. In his autobiography, Davis recalled his experiences in the most profanity-laden outburst, calling Miller himself a “sorry-ass cat,” among other rather blue insults. “Steve Miller didn’t have shit going for him,” he proclaimed. “So, I’m pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out.”
Instead of sitting on this distaste for Miller, however, Davis chose to exact his revenge on the rock star in the most petulant fashion imaginable. Disgruntled by the fact that he was being forced to play as a support act for someone who was inferior to him both in terms of musical ability and experience on the touring circuit, he thought that he’d get his own back on Miller and promoter Bill Graham by doing what he, and presumably he only, thought was best for the situation.
“I would come late, and he would have to go on first,” Davis recalled of his disruptive antics. “Then, when we got there, we just smoked the motherfucking place, and everybody dug it, including Bill!” While he may claim that Graham thought it was great, Davis would go on to state that it angered him and that he thought Davis showed little respect for his touring partner. And do you think Miles gave a single fuck? Absolutely not.
