Herbie and Edinburgh
It was a dreary November afternoon in Edinburgh. The apricot sun was low in the sky and cast a thin shadow of light onto the stanks and fag buts in Rose Street. A gaggle of Geordie hags, dressed as bedpan nurses, were marauding through the boozers - cackling and stabbing at sobriety with their white stilettos heels. Prigs and puritans gaped in awe at their debauched matinee, but we wallowed in youth’s flickering flame - a tawdry supernova that floodlit the grey suits shuffling by.
Admittedly, our meek protest against the 9-5 drudgery was not exactly Woodstock; but taking an afternoon off work to go drinking before a gig was a profoundly shallow and enjoyable loaf. Especially when Herbie Hancock was the draw; a rare visit by the maestro to our wind swept shores. Many think that getting soused before a jazz concert is uncouth, and that we should have been nibbling arancini in a cosy Italian restaurant. But we were rock fans who had been converted to jazz by the electricity of Bitches Brew and Head Hunters. Our pre-theatre was a slab of Tennent’s lager.
Cerebral cortex merrily stewed, the stage lights dim; transforming the Usher Hall into an opaque hum of polite expectation. A plaintive African chant swells in the darkness…a punchy drum loop kicks in…Herbie splashes some colour onto an austere canvas. It’s a demure fanfare that weaves and bobs, crashes and burns, before fizzling back into an ambient whisper. Musically, the set is an interesting collage of ambient, jazz and African influences. Sometimes it gels into a mellifluous wave, at other junctures it sounds clumsy and not so cogent. But this is expected, as Hancock has made some swashbuckling musical choices over the years. Some of them prescient, others flawed - for every “Rockit” there has been a “Lite me Up”.
A few songs in and Herbie greets the crowd in a soft, hushed voice: “Emm, great to be back, emm, in Edinburgh, err…beautiful place…lovely castle…you guy’s still haven’t found Nessy yet…ha, ha…emm…” He grabs a plastic bottle from atop his piano and squirts some water onto the stage, before sharing an in-joke with his band. Hmm. His chat is a shamble of awkward pleasantries and cryptic mumbles; he adopts the air of a bashful eccentric. Personality aside, his majestic music is always focused and captivating, a counterpoint to his inter-song rambles.
Than again Herbie is a Buddhist. Perhaps his Nichiren aphorisms body swerved my pickled brain. Maybe next time I should substitute Tennents with skinny lattes. In any case, Herbie Hancock has the right to be capricious and recondite; he is a musical genius, with a 40-year career in his wake - he has played with Miles, played for President Obama and played with our conception of what jazz is and can be.
Herbie Hancock is 70 next year, an old man. But his inexorable march into new musical territories keeps jazz youthful and alive. Like Miles Davis, he doesn’t give a sh*t what critics and peers think of his musical detours. Remember when contemporaries suggested that Sketches of Spain was something other than jazz. Davis replied “It’s music, and I like it”. Wise words indeed.