Jaco Pastorius

The word genius is frequently overused these days… often to the point of being really quite annoying, but to describe Jaco Pastorius as a genius would be the understatement of the century.

If you’re a bass player then chances are you already know all about Jaco… if you are and don’t then you might want to think about choosing another instrument, or giving up altogether.

If you’re not a bass player and haven’t come across Jaco already then I recommend you check his music out as soon as you can – there’s quite a body of work out there but Teen Town by Weather Report’s not a bad place to start, then there’s all the Word of Mouth stuff, his work with Joni Mitchell, the list goes on… pretty much all of it is worth a listen.

Tragically like many other geniuses Jaco also struggled with alcohol and drug addiction dying young at the age of 35 in pretty shitty circumstances… but he crammed a lot in to his 35 years and left a mind blowing legacy.

Much has been written about Jaco as a musician, composer and arranger but not much if anything about the heavy looks he dropped throughout his career… so as well as trawling the world wide web for musical inspiration courtesy of Jaco do yourself a favour and check out the man’s gift for always looking the bomb.