Bill Milkowski

A jazz-rock phenomenon, the mercurial bassist Jaco Pastorius burst on to the scene in the mid-1970s as a member of Joe Zawinul's band Weather Report. As Bill Milkowski, a close friend of the bassist, explains in his detailed and well-researched biography, JACO, Pastorius's innovative playing brought the bass into the foreground as almost an alternative lead instrument. He soon gained a reputation among both jazz and rock fans which led to gigs with artists like Joni Mitchell, in whose albums HEJIRA and SHADOWS AND LIGHT the bassist played a major part, and fusion guitarist Pat Metheny. But in Pastorius's genius lay the seeds of tragedy: the onset of bipolar disorder, exacerbated by drugs and alcohol, which resulted in several career-derailing onstage incidents. In Milkowski's sympathetic retelling, the trajectory of Pastorius's life becomes one of sickness, recovery, and inevitable descent back into sickness, leading to his ostracism from the music world, homelessness, and his eventual death at 35, at the hands of a club bouncer in his Fort Lauderdale home town. Milkowski's background in jazz writing, coupled with his intimate acquaintance with Pastorius's damaged psyche, makes JACO a heartbreaking account of musical brilliance derailed by madness.

Esta biografía de Jaco Pastorius nos descubre a una figura clave en la renovación de la música de fusión de los últimos años. Estamos ante un músico singular, capaz de tocar batería y piano, además del bajo eléctrico, el instrumento por el que pasará a la historia de la música, ya que es el introductor del instrumento como solista. De naturaleza inestable -era bipolar-, su desorbitado éxito junto al fracaso de su matrimonio, llevo al músico a perder el sentido de la realidad y caer en el delirio propio de su enfermedad hasta que murió en septiembre de 1987 víctima de una paliza a la salida de un bar. Jaco es la única publicación que existe sobre el bajista.