Miles in Madrid

A hundred years of Miles Davis — it feels a lot longer

I was surprised to learn that we’ve only just arrived at the centenary of Miles Davis. I saw him in Madrid in November, nearly forty years ago. Even then, he already looked like he had the numbers on the clock.

Strange sartorial choices didn’t help. One of the snappiest dressers in musical history had taken to misguidedly raiding the multi-coloured silk fabrics box.

good & bad polka-dots: go with the suit and lose the comedy glasses, Miles

There was also the contrast with the young musicians he surrounded himself with — by design, he explained in an interview from the same year:

The reason they look so young is I’m so old. Coleman Hawkins told me years ago never to work with anyone my own age

From the start, Miles had always surrounded himself with the Jazz cool kids: from Bird and Dizzie in the 40s, right through to Marcus Miller in his final phase. He often outraged his old fans by embracing what they dismissed as new-fangled: Miller’s metallic funk rhythms being one late example, collaborating with Prince another.

In the 1980s, he returned to touring after a five-year retirement. And in his core international markets (North America, UK, France, Japan, etc.), a Miles gig was still a very hot ticket. The majority of seats would go to admiring musicians & hardcore fans. Others would be broadly familiar with the better-known 1950s material from The Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Milestones and so on.

In Spain, there were far fewer active music enthusiasts. Jazz aficionados were a tiny subset of that minority, even bulked out by young expats. The (more or less) full house at the Palacio de Deportes that night had gathered to be in the presence of a living legend. The majority were a bit hazy when it came to his music, except perhaps his celebrated Sketches of Spain (1960).

And Davis was not going to play to the gallery. There would be no cheery Buenos noches, Madrid call-out at this Festival de Madrid marquee event. The Man With the Horn had been doing stage silence long before Dylan.

Nor would he draw on the celebrated local references in his back catalogue. Lovely Aranjuez is a popular day trip from the capital, but Rodrigo’s Concierto was absent from the night’s musical menu. Ditto for the other Sketches.

That era was ancient history in Miles World: dinosaur time. Tonight’s ‘I know that one!’ moments would mostly come from pop covers: Miles Plays Michael Jackson (and Friends). Other than that, it would be a long evening of unfamiliar album instrumentals—a big ask for the uncommitted.

The Set

The past is a foreign country, but thankfully, we do have YouTube. The Madrid setlist was the one he played in Grand Canaria five days earlier — watch here.

The concert opened with a rare and thrilling treat for old-time Miles fans. In a Silent Way (1969) announced the dawn of Jazz-Fusion, but then disappeared from his regular repertoire.

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The original was a twenty-minute slow burn, performed by one of his greatest all-star line-ups: McLaughlin, Shorter and Zawinul, etc. Now the young turks in his new band gave it a workout in an extended intro.

Then Miles was suddenly there in the spotlight: the shortish Big Dog, complete with trademark half-smile/scowl. We rose as one to hail one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century.

But he wasn’t going to hang about for long. Solo complete, the maestro slipped off stage. A recurring motif, as it would turn out. This time, he was soon back for a virtuosic workout of Interval seguing into Star People.

Both tracks were associated with another former Davis alumnus. Marcus Miller was the key influence on Davis in the Eighties, even if his boss didn’t like to be reminded of this (“Marcus only does what I tell him to do”).

And tonight the bass-led funk grooves predominated, with the maestro providing what a critic described as trumpet ‘whispers’ in response.

Those covers

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Davis did have those five pop standards for the teenagers: Perfect Way (Scritti), Don’t Stop Me Now (Toto), Human Nature (Michael Jackson), Movie Star (Prince) and Time After Time (Cindi Lauper).

I suspect there may have been some squirming in the purist jazz-cat seats. Personally, I liked them all, bar Movie Star from his then new bff, Prince.

The cover of the comparatively obscure Perfect Way by Scritti (Welsh art-school Marxist and indie-band darling) was a particularly pleasing disco groove.

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The covers stood out because we were a bit light on hummable tunes, with Miller-influenced heavy funk to the fore.

This was fine in bursts. A storming Tutu (a Marcus tune famously anchored in a G minor vamp — see a brilliant musical analysis here) pulsated with energy. But too often we were drifting in a sea of moody electro funk (Heavy Metal, Funk Suit).

Miles himself seemed distracted, wandering off stage for longer and longer intervals. Was this just his schtick?

Finally, we got to Tomaas — another tune majoring on minor key harmonies. A downbeat closer to a spectacle, but we rallied to the moment. A sea of waved lighters (no phones yet). After a long(ish) ovation demanding a second encore, the lights went up.

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I travelled home on the Metro, mildly disappointed but with a sense of a bucket list task completed. Meanwhile, a backstage medical crisis was unfolding, as I would not hear until a BBC World Service News broadcast in the early hours.

Exactly what happened at the end of the concert is still a bit fuzzy.

According to the promoter, Miles ‘collapsed in a heap’ en route to his dressing room, terrifying his band. The UPI report stated that the 61-year-old trumpet player was suffering from severe exhaustion and an irregular heartbeat. He was treated by doctors at the scene. They concluded he required rest rather than hospitalisation.

The remaining two concerts were cancelled, as Davis flew back to New York. Wild rumours spread that he had Aids (wrong), pneumonia (correct) and surgery to remove a polyp (correct).

Whispers suggested that the veteran would not be getting up from the canvas. But Miles surprised the world again, coming out swinging in 1989, with live gigs and a new studio album. He also launched a lawsuit against the ex, whom he blamed for the rumours of his imminent demise.

In truth, though, his race was nearly run. That melancholic night in Madrid foreshadowed a premature death in September 1991. It was an honour to have been there.