Music has always been like a curse with me.
I've always felt driven to play it.
It's the first thing in my life,
go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it.
It's always there.
It comes before everything.
Living is an adventure and a challenge.
It wasn't about standing still and becoming safe.
But I've always been the way I am. Been like this all my life.
If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change.
I was born in Alton, Illinois,
a little river town up on the Mississippi River.
My father moved the family to East St. Louis.
East St. Louis and St. Louis were country towns full of country people...
especially the white people from around there,
really country... and racist to the bone.
Miles grew up in a wealthy situation.
His father was a dentist.
He also had a farm and raised cattle and hogs and all of this.
They were the cream of the crop in the city.
He was the second richest guy in the state of Illinois.
Black man.
But during the period that he grew up in, it's still Jim Crow America.
And, so, his wealth, his father's wealth would not have protected him
from segregation and racism in a place like East St. Louis.
On my 13th birthday, my father bought me a new trumpet.
My mother wanted me to have a violin, but my father overruled her.
This caused a big argument between them.
They had been at each other's throats since I was a little kid.
He would hear his mother and father talking and fussing
and so I guess that's what got in his mind as a young boy.
Miles absorbed that. He absorbed all of that...
the anger, that kind of attitude toward women.
I remember my mother picking up things
and throwing them at my father.
He got so mad with her he punched her.
He knocked a couple of teeth right out of her mouth.
It had to affect us somehow...
although I don't really know how.
Miles was considered a genius...
but he was also considered, I guess, weird.
Miles would go into the woods,
listening to the animals or listening to the birds,
and play what he was hearing.
He always had his own way of doing things.
Miles started very early as a member of the trumpet section,
in Eddie Randle's Blue Devils.
Miles is young and small
and can barely fill the suit that he had to wear for these gigs.
While the other guys in Eddie Randle's band were working their day jobs,
this teenager Miles Davis quickly becomes the musical director
for this popular dance band.
♪ I love the rhythm in a riff When the music jumps I get a lift ♪
♪ Body a-do-do do-lo-do Do-lo-do do-lo-do do-lo-do ♪
So, the real pivot point for Miles is when,
during his summer after high school,
he is invited to sit in with the Billy Eckstine band.
♪ When that rhythm's in ya The blues don't have a chance ♪
Both Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie are in that band.
I mean, you've got the laboratory,
the future of modern jazz right there in this big band.
The greatest feeling I ever had in my life, with my clothes on,
was when I first met Diz and Bird.
I was 18 years old.
I decided right then and there I had to be in New York,
on 52nd Street, where the action was.
Walter Cronkite reporting. War years always bring on new fads and tastes
and the strangest taste around
is the excitement generated by the musical noise called jazz.
This strange music has been accused of everything,
including the bad weather and the present decay in morality.
52nd Street was a mecca of jazz clubs.
They had jazz clubs on both sides of the street.
I had never heard no shit like they was playing on 52nd Street.
We would go down there and listen in amazement.
That shit was so good it was scary.
Each little place had a speaker outside
where you could hear what was going on inside.
You could stand outside and hear the music until a doorman...
the clubs had doormen, they would chase you away.
Miles enrolled at Juilliard 'cause he wanted to learn music
and because his mother wanted him to be a trained musician and all that.
He is serious about Juilliard. He's seriously committed to it
and he values what Juilliard might have to offer.
A lot of the old guys thought that if you went to school,
it would make you play like you were white.
If you learned something from theory,
you would lose the feeling in your playing.
I would go to the library and borrow scores
by all those great composers.
I wanted to see what was going on in all of music.
And yet he knows that there's something else going on.
It's not happening at Juilliard.
So, he was to go at Juilliard in the daytime
and at night, he'd be on 52nd Street.
I spent my first week in New York looking for Bird and Dizzy.
Spent all my money and didn't find them.
Then, one night, I heard this voice from behind me say:
"Hey, Miles, I heard you been looking for me."
I turned around and there was Bird.
Bebop musicians were rocket scientists.
You can compare bebop to the Manhattan Project.
And it was developed by some serious sound physicists...
blowing their brains out to push this music as far as they could.
So, Miles stepped into kind of a hotbed of musical research and development.
Bebop was a black music.
It was a music by black musicians,
who wanted to get away from any kind of hint of minstrelsy.
No smiling and laughing and grinning and dancing and shit.
No entertaining, man.
They wanted to be an artist just like Stravinsky...
just like Stravinsky who was just a pure artist.
Miles saw these very elegantly-dressed characters.
The dignity that came with that and the nobility that came with that
and the swagger.
Very soon after Miles starts his Juilliard studies...
Irene arrives, his high school sweetheart,
with their child and with another baby on the way.
All of a sudden, there she was, knocking on my motherfucking door.
My mother had told her to come.
I mean, it seems almost impossible,
what he would have been trying to do at that age.
There's the domestic situation with children.
There's the kind of time required of anyone
who's a serious student at Juilliard,
but there's also the kind of time and commitment that this music will take.
And, at some point, something has to give.
Music was everything.
It was everything.
It was sexual, sensuous.
Everything, power. Everything, humor.
And then... he could not share that.
And, so, somebody had to play second fiddle to that.
One day, the teacher said:
"The blues grew out of the downtrodden suffering of the slaves, of slavery,
and the crying and wailing and all that,
this became the blues of the people in chains."
Miles was in the back in the room somewhere
He raises his hand while she's talking.
And she says: "Yes?"
He said:
"You're a goddamn liar."
And walked out of the room.
Miles, within months, is hanging with Bird.
He's recording with Bird.
He really arrives, like, right away.
Every night, he'd get on the stand with Bird.
Bird would play the head of the tune and just leave him on stage by himself.
He said he threw up every night...
'cause he was just so stressed out and humiliated.
I mean, those cats could wear him out on the horn any night.
But he figured something else out.
He comes up with a style that is truly reflective of who he is,
straight tone, lyricism.
It is him. It is uniquely, organically him.
Miles meets Gil Evans and there's this level of mutual respect
and mutual dedication to the music that will last a lifetime.
I liked the way Gil wrote music and he liked the way I played.
We heard sound in the same way.
By the end of the '40s they're working on a project together.
It's called Birth of the Cool, a nonet,
that would create a kind of melding of modern classical ideas with jazz.
Right now, ladies and gentlemen,
we bring you something new in modern music.
"Impressions in Modern Music"
with the great Miles Davis and his wonderful new organization.
I think the intention was to create a listening music, concert music,
that very deliberately, did not have the drive...
and the funk of 52nd Street on it.
Well, it's mainly about trying to create new colors,
in a way, where you widen the palette of jazz.
And I think he was conscious of the fact that to move the music forward,
you've got to go someplace it hasn't gone before.
The heart of European civilization is beating strong again.
Paris is free.
This is the end of four years of Nazi rule in Paris.
Once more, it is The City of Light.
It was a very unique time in France's life. Very.
Because there was this euphoria, this post-war euphoria,
There were two bombs, the atomic bomb and the Liberation.
After the war, France was different, Europe was different
and they needed a new sound to that era.
And that was jazz.
You're now listening to the Tadd Dameron and Miles Davis Quintet.
Here's Miles Davis.
This was my first trip out of the country.
I loved being in Paris and loved the way I was treated.
He said that the food even tasted better in France.
The smell in the air was even more beautiful in Paris.
That moment, for him, was something that was galvanizing.
Music had been my total life.
I was always so into the music.
I never had time for any kind of romance until I met Juliette Gréco.
♪ Sous le ciel de Paris Marchent des amoureux ♪
♪ Mm-mm ♪
The first concert I saw Miles in, I saw him from the side.
And it was extraordinary.
It was really beautiful, aesthetically beautiful. He was beautiful.
My English was bad. It still is, but at this time, it was really, really bad.
But we managed to understand each other.
It was a miracle.
It was what you call a miracle of love.
♪ L'hymne d'un peuple épris De sa vieille cité ♪
Juliette and I used to walk down by the Seine River together,
holding hands and kissing,
looking into each other's eyes and kissing some more.
I cared a lot for Irene,
but I had never felt like this before in my life.
She brings him into a circle
of other artists, of intellectuals, of philosophers,
of, you know, the sort of greatest minds of that time.
Jazz was really seen as the height of artistry at that time
inside of French intellectual and creative circles.
He meets Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre.
He's treated as an equal by some of the most creative giants of the day.
Paris for Miles is kind of opening up of possibility and potential,
the sense that one can be fully oneself
beyond the boundaries of race.
That it isn't something to hold you back.
And, in fact, it might be something that contributes to your ability to ascend.
Paris was where I understood that all white people weren't the same...
that some weren't prejudiced and others were.
It had only been a couple of weeks...
but I was living in an illusion of possibility.
Maybe a miracle had happened.
Sartre asked Miles: "Why don't you marry Gréco?"
And Miles answered: "Because I'm in love with her. I love her."
♪ Dans le printemps de Paris ♪
I was so depressed coming back to this country on the airplane
that I couldn't say nothing all the way back.
I didn't know that shit was going to hit me like that.
♪ Dans le printemps de Paris ♪
Every African-American artist who has spent time abroad
talks about the profound disappointment in coming back to the United States.
You see your country as you knew it but in an even starker light
because you've experienced something different.
It was hard for me to come back
to the bullshit white people put a black person through in this country.
I lost my sense of discipline,
lost my sense of control over my life and started to drift.
Before I knew it, I had a heroin habit...
which meant getting and shooting heroin all the time, all day and all night.
That's all I lived for.
His career is spiraling out of control.
There's no expectation that Miles is going to survive,
let alone is he really going to be a successful musician again.
I had a little club in... I think it was Hartford.
I booked the Symphony Sid All Stars.
And Symphony Sid said: "Don't give Miles any money."
So, Miles came up to me the first night and says:
"George, give me five dollars."
I said: "Miles, come on, man."
"George, give me two dollars."
And I... "Come on, Miles."
"George, give me 50 cents."
And "Hey, man, you know..."
"George, give me a penny."
That's my first meeting with Miles.
We were playing at a club in New York...
and his father came from East St. Louis.
And came to the club and took him off the stage.
He left his horn and everything.
He said: "Come on. You're going back home with me."
I felt like a little boy going with his daddy.
I had never felt like that before and probably haven't felt like that since.
On the way home, I told him I was going to give up dope
and that all I needed was a little rest.
Before I knew it, I was shooting up again,
borrowing money from my father to support my habit.
You could see him moving through the night.
You'd run into him somewhere, didn't even know it was Miles.
He might even have on clothes...
that looked like... made him look like he was homeless.
We wanted him to be Superman...
and it just doesn't work that way.
I really hated to see him go down like that.
But I... I don't want to talk about it.
I went out to my father's farm in Millstadt.
I was sick.
If someone could've guaranteed that I would die in two seconds,
then I would've taken it.
This went on for about seven or eight days.
I couldn't eat.
Then, one day, it was over, just like that.
Over.
I felt better, good, pure.
This young white guy had started a new jazz label called Prestige
and he was looking for me to make a record for him.
I figured there was nowhere for me to go but up.
I was already on the bottom.
We, the Negro citizens, had it not to rise...
-Miss America Contest. -Dodgers go wild.
Emmett Till was taken by...
Amazing new Motoramic Chevrolet...
This afternoon, Disneyland, the world's most fabulous kingdom...
I was in a club in New York and Miles is at the back of the club.
And Miles stopped me coming out of the club.
He said: "Are you going to have a jazz festival up at Newport?"
I said: "Yeah, Miles."
He said: "You can't have a festival without me."
I said: "Miles, you want to be in a festival?"
He says: "You can't have a festival without me."
So, I said: "All right, I'll call your agent."
Newport was like an audition.
Listening in the audience were executives from Columbia Records.
Columbia Records was the Tiffany of labels at the time.
He knew what this meant.
He knew what this meant for him.
So, if he had that opportunity, as he had at Newport,
he was going for it and with a vengeance.
Miles put the bell of his horn right into the microphone...
and changed the whole world of jazz right there
and changed his career right there,
because the beauty of that song and the beauty of Miles's trumpet...
made bebop a music that could be accepted by everybody.
They could now put on Miles's music while they were making love.
It takes a lot of courage to play a ballad.
You know, it's easy to hide with a bunch of notes all over the place.
Look what I can do. Look what I can do.
You know... okay.
Most men are afraid to be vulnerable.
That's what women love the best about a man.
I think Miles, on one hand, he comes out like this,
you know, but then he starts playing and people are like... oh...
You know, he just disarms you.
Miles's sound is unique from the first note.
There's a sense of pleasure, beauty.
There's something very romantic...
but it's romantic without being sentimental.
He's spilling his guts to you...
so directly, you know, to the heart, to your... you know, to your vitals.
I want to feel the way Miles sounds.
Miles had a way of playing
that sounded like a stone skipping across a pond.
He just touched on the waves.
Sometimes he leaves a note out
and I've seen people literally like this...
waiting for that next note.
His sound was so pure and elegant...
and tasty...
musically tasty.
Miles could play one note. I've seen him play one note
and some of these high rollers that came to the club...
these high rollers would come and say:
"That did it for me! That did it for me. I just got my money's worth!"
And they're ready to leave.
Miles would say: "Bam!" They'd say: "Oh, that's it, man."
In February or March 1956,
I had to have a non-cancerous growth on my larynx removed.
It had been bothering me for a while.
I wasn't even supposed to talk for at least ten days.
One week went by, he was in pretty good shape.
The second week, he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
Everybody was "a sack full of motherfuckers".
And that was it.
He got that rasp and it never healed.
At that time, nobody knew that Miles had had an operation
and that his voice had suffered from it.
He came on the stage and began to announce,
in that gravelly voice, what he was going to play for that evening
and I think he got two or three sentences out,
and the audience, a large number of them, began to laugh at him.
Miles turned around and looked at the audience.
He had this very strange look on his face and he left.
I could communicate with the band just by giving them a certain look.
That's what I'm doing when I have my back turned to the audience.
I can't be concerned with talking and bullshitting while I'm playing...
because the music is talking to them when everything's right.
George Avakian, the jazz producer for Columbia Records,
wanted to sign me to an exclusive contract.
I told him that I wanted to go with Columbia
because of all the shit that he offered me.
George Avakian says:
"Here's a list of demands that I would like you to meet.
You got to be clean and you got to have a consistent band."
And the last thing is, he's got to get free of his Prestige contract.
I'll play it and tell you what it is later.
He had a new quintet
with John Coltrane as the tenor saxophone player.
And he took that quintet into the studios of Rudy Van Gelder...
and he called tune, after tune, after tune,
and recorded enough music in a couple of days...
to get rid of his obligation to Prestige.
He basically took the handcuffs off the musicians and said:
"Here, do you. Be you.
I'm just going to let the music live, let it breathe
and let it develop as we feel it."
Miles thought he was just dispatching his obligation
as fast as he could, but in fact they are gems of spontaneous jazz music.
Two marathon sessions, three hours or more of recorded music.
One of the great feats, really, of jazz history.
I first met Miles Davis, I was performing with the Katherine Dunham Company.
It was the introduction to so many different people
that I met at that time in the show business world.
I mean, I was in Paris. I was in Berlin. I was everywhere.
I was told I had the best legs in the business.
Hugh O'Brian wanted to date me.
Rory Calhoun wanted to take me to Las Vegas.
Oh, God, trying to think of all the different gentlemen.
Well, as a dancer, I mean, I was spectacular on that stage
and I guess they just wanted to find out more about me.
I didn't know that much about jazz.
Who I did know about was Johnny Mathis.
♪ Chances are 'cause I wear a silly grin ♪
♪ Chances are you think That I'm in love with you ♪
I was performing at Ciro's and Miles saw the performance.
And he was smitten right away, but so was everybody else.
♪ Chances are... ♪
This was just another chapter
of gentlemen wanting to be with Frances.
♪ Awfully good ♪
Sammy Davis Jr. asked me to join this new play
that he was doing called Mr. Wonderful.
On my way to rehearsal one day, Miles is coming down the street...
and we looked at each other and he looked at me and he said:
"Now that I found you, I'll never let you go."
And what happened was, I moved in with him.
Frances Taylor was really a muse, an inspiration.
She was the most inspirational person he had partnered with,
the one he was with the longest.
She was someone who gave him stability and love at a time when he produced
some of his most groundbreaking and popular work.
He had to go off to Paris and he left me the music.
I fell in love with his sound. It got to me.
And I just played it over and over.
And that was my introduction to his music.
In 1956, when Miles arrived in Europe, we were supposed to have a rehearsal
He had never played with a European rhythm section.
And he didn't say: "Hello." He was not smiling at all.
And without saying one word, he just started to play.
And I follow immediately because we knew his music.
We were fans of his music.
I always asked myself the question of if we had said:
"Excuse me. What are you playing there? We don't know that."
I don't think he would have liked that.
But we played it.
And he said: "All right." And then he... That's all.
That's it. We were engaged.
I love you.
I won't leave you, Julien.
I love you.
Without your voice, I'd be lost in a land of silence.
That's not very daring.
Miles happened to be in Paris at the time when
Louis Malle had finished his movie...
Ascenseur pour L'Echafaud, Elevator To The Gallows.
Malle was very young and was at the beginning of his career.
He wanted also to make different cinema
and change the way of doing films
like having real people in a real setting.
And he approached Miles with the idea:
"Would you be willing to create a jazz soundtrack?"
Before, a musician, for a film,
he come, he ask...
30 person to come
violin... percussion... brass, etcetera,
and: "Three, four. Gentlemen, are you ready? Three, four..."
the man who wrote the music knows exactly how long each sequence takes
two minutes 40... etcetera, etcetera.
Not with Miles.
Miles didn't write any music.
He played the entire music directly along to the screening of the movie.
Just improvising and creating the sound in reaction to the images of the film.
Looking at the image at the same moment as we were playing
was very important because he's Jeanne Moreau.
His music but...
It's Jeanne Moreau suffering.
Very fast we realized that it was something...
I mean, something outstanding we were doing.
That soundtrack made the film famous.
A lot of people, they heard the record first
and then they wanted to see the movie second.
During the recording of Elevator To The Gallows,
Miles experienced a new way of approaching improvisation.
That's something he would develop in the next following years.
So, something started in the recording studio
of Elevator To The Gallows.
Start again, please.
Here we go. 300622981, number two, take one.
Wait, one minute!
I was probably the first one there 'cause I had to set up the drums.
So, I had my drums, set 'em up and waited till everybody else filed in.
He just came in with little notes that he had.
He didn't even have sheet music for that.
And the only thing he'd tell me was, like: "Just swing, you know, just swing."
I didn't write out the music for Kind of Blue, but brought in sketches,
because I wanted a lot of spontaneity in the playing.
I knew that if you've got some great musicians,
they would deal with the situation and play beyond what is there
and above where they think they can.
The first part of "So What"...
Then, Paul would go into the bass saying...
Man, that was the first thing I ever heard from Miles.
Grabbed the record out of my father's collection, put it on.
First thing that catches your ear is Paul Chambers playing that bass line.
We can't even question the sacred texts that we have,
like, you know, I mean, why is the Bible the Bible?
It's the Bible, you know.
I mean, why is Kind of Blue Kind of Blue? It's Kind of Blue.
Like, it just is and it changed the sound of jazz.
The cymbal crash at the start of "So What", I thought I had overdone it.
It sounded louder than it should've been to me.
And it seems to ring forever, but it brings you right into the tune.
It's like you've hit the highway and the rest of the tune just takes off.
On Kind of Blue, what he asked them to do was to think deeper
about what kind of sound can you create.
He said: "I have these few ideas. Let's go."
And this is something that Miles does for the rest of his life.
Kind of Blue doesn't really give away his passion so easily,
but at the same time, once those musicians open up...
they show you how inventive and ingenious they can be
and how incendiary.
Kind of Blue really signified
a different way of thinking about your music
and a different way of playing the music and approaching the music.
And, for Coltrane, that was the door he needed to find his own identity.
Few people hear the potential in the young John Coltrane...
but Miles brought him along and provided Coltrane the space
to become the artist who we would later love and revere.
People that don't even like jazz like that album.
Every decade, there's something. There's new people talking about Kind of Blue.
"That's what started me to listening to jazz music."
You can listen hundreds of times, it always has something new to say.
And that, for me, is the definition of a masterpiece.
I don't think Miles knew that that was gonna be a record
that would sell more records than any record
in the history of the jazz music, you know?
If Miles thought that that was gonna be like that,
he would've asked for the building...
and he would've asked for two Ferraris outside right now.
You know, he would've really went crazy.
If he thought anything like that was happening,
he would've went out of Harlem.
Kind of Blue becomes successful immediately.
He's becoming a popular, mainstream star.
The Columbia deal gets his music into mainstream America like never before.
He elevates himself into music maestro land.
All I ever wanted to do was communicate what I felt through music.
Going with Columbia did mean more money,
but what's wrong with getting paid for what you do and getting paid well?
It was the black man's era
when he wanted to show his pride of what he was and Miles was Exhibit A.
And he would look clean as he could, man.
Miles Davis was the personification of cool...
that mythological hero.
He becomes our black Superman.
When a new Miles album came out, man, we would walk around with the album, man.
See, being into Miles was, in itself, a definition of being hip.
Miles Davis wore slick clothes and drove fast cars
and all the women and everything.
We didn't just want to play with Miles Davis. We wanted to be Miles Davis.
I'd say: "Miles, what are you doing with your children
when you want to take them out with you?"
He said: "I tell 'em to get a taxi."
Miles becomes representative of a kind of cool,
a kind of sophistication, a kind of masculinity.
A kind of black man who takes no shit.
Being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean...
I was all those things and more.
But I was playing the fuck out of my horn and had a great group
so, I didn't get recognition based only on a rebel image.
People were starting to talk about the Miles Davis mystique.
I think the darkness of Miles Davis' skin,
instead of seeing that as a liability, he saw that as an asset.
It was very different from anything that was projected
on television or in movies at that time.
Miles turned that into something cool, something desirable.
I was sharp as a tack every time I went out in public
and so was Frances.
A real black motherfucker like me, with this stunningly beautiful woman.
Man, it was something.
People stopping and looking with their mouths hanging open.
Miles would buy clothes for me,
because I have... everybody knows I had the great legs.
He was chic. I was chic.
And then, of course, getting in and out of a Ferrari.
I mean, we were a hot couple, there's no two ways about it.
Miles and Frances on fire.
As a kid, when I would see them together, it was just like wow.
You know, they dressed to the nines... just clean.
And in love.
It was like a prince and a princess.
I had a friend who was a writer. His name was George Frazier...
and he picked up on a word, which he applied to Miles.
It had to do with the Spanish matadors, the bull fighters.
A lot of guys could kill the bulls.
Some of them were very exciting fighters.
But others would just walk in the ring
and stand there, hold the cape and the bull would charge...
and the audience would just gasp their breath.
That fighter had duende.
And Miles had duende.
Miles was the kind of guy, he had things that he liked.
If he liked you, he liked you. If he didn't like you, he didn't like you.
So, he was just that kind of guy.
You know, if you were on his right side, that's where you were, you know.
And if you were on his wrong side,
that's probably where you stayed, you know?
I was just cold to mostly everyone.
That was the way I protected myself,
by not letting anyone inside of my feelings and emotions.
And, for a long time, it worked for me.
I went to the Village Vanguard where Miles was performing...
and I said: "Mr. Davis, my name is Archie Shepp
and I wonder if you'd let me sit in."
And he said: "Archie who?"
And I said: "Archie Shepp."
He said: "Fuck you. You can't sit in with me."
Miles didn't care.
Miles didn't have to please anybody but Miles.
Miles was not interested.
You know what I mean? He wasn't interested in people...
because he was Miles Davis.
There were all these personality quirks that he had.
He was angry, antisocial...
but oftentimes those insecurities and those demons
are the very things that are the basis of arts,
so, that art becomes a way of healing.
It gave him an opportunity to show a vulnerability
and to show a side of him that, in the real world, he could not show.
We were working at Birdland and...
we got through a set and Miles came upstairs to smoke.
I'm standing there, in front of Birdland, wringing wet,
because it's a hot, steaming, muggy night in August.
I had just walked this pretty white girl named Judy out to get a cab.
This white policeman comes up to me and tells me to move on.
Miles said: "Why? I'm smoking a cigarette.
I'm working downstairs and I'm smoking a cigarette."
And he was standing right by the sign with his name on it.
"M-I-L-E-S... M-I-L-E-S. Miles."
That's me. Who are you?"
Kind of Blue has just come out. He is the talk of the town.
And he is at the top of the marquee, top of his popularity.
The guy said: "I don't care. You just can't stand there."
Miles said: "Well, I'm not moving."
I just looked at his face real straight and hard and I didn't move.
Miles, at that point, was in such good shape
that it was hard for them to actually get a hand on him.
From out of nowhere, this white detective runs in
and, bam, hits me on the head.
I never saw him coming.
I received a telephone call
that I should come down to the police station.
And I saw his face.
It was just terrifying.
I was in tears.
I would've expected this kind of bullshit back in East St. Louis,
but not here in New York City,
which is supposed to be the slickest, hippest city in the world.
It was racial. The whole thing was racial.
The whole city was racist, the whole world, I guess, you know,
so, what is it, you know?
I can't see it being nothing else but that.
It is a reminder that no level of accomplishment,
no level of achievement, no level of financial success,
or recognition, even, for that, actually protects you
from the racial hostilities of the United States.
Damn, you know, like, there is no way out of this thing.
That incident changed me forever...
made me much more bitter and cynical than I might have been.
He used to flash back. We'd be talking and randomly he'd just go:
"Those f... cops, man."
Right? Just out of nowhere, it'd be completely random.
He'd flash back to that, man.
Man, that stuff don't go away,
just because all of a sudden you got a little success.
That stuff that happens to you when you're young,
that stays with you for the rest of your life.
Miles Ahead was the first collaboration
between Miles Davis and Gil Evans after Miles signs with Columbia Records.
It's one of the reasons why Miles even went over to Columbia Records
because Columbia had the budget
and the wherewithal to make a project like this possible.
Gil and I were something special together musically.
I loved working with Gil because he was so meticulous and creative...
and I trusted his musical arrangements completely.
We worked together at the piano always saying:
"How about this? How about that?"
I was just crazy about his interpretations of the songs, you know.
They just fit in so naturally.
When Miles Ahead comes out, there's this young white female model
on the deck of a sailing ship as the original cover.
This was, I think, meant to evoke the high life, the good life,
and it would allow the album to be marketed
to a broad, that is white audience.
Miles goes up to George Avakian and he says:
"What's that white bitch doing on the cover of my album?"
He becomes aware of his power
as an artist who is generating a tremendous amount of income
for his record label as well, that he has some say in these decisions.
And the next pressing of the same music comes out
under another title, with another cover and Miles Davis himself is on the cover.
Miles Ahead was the first of three wonderful collaborations
with Gil Evans and a 19-piece orchestra.
Two years after Miles Ahead came Porgy and Bess.
And then, two years after that...
I had spent time in Barcelona.
After we would finish our shows,
we'd watch and listen to flamenco music and dance
and I was just taken with that.
I said to Miles: "I want you to really see what I see
and feel what I feel with flamenco music."
He didn't want to go. He didn't want to go, but finally he gave in.
And we'd go to see flamenco music and dance.
When we left the theater...
we went right to the Colony record shop...
and he bought every flamenco album he could.
That was the hardest thing for me to do on Sketches of Spain...
to play the parts on the trumpet where someone was supposed to be singing,
especially when it was ad-libbed.
My voice had to be both joyous and sad in this song
and that was very hard, too.
If you do a song like that three or four times,
you lose that feeling you want to get there.
It seemed to work out all right. Everyone loved that record.
Once there was a princess...
Was the princess you?
And she fell in love.
Was it hard to do?
Oh, it was very easy.
Anyone could see that the prince was charming.
The only one for me.
♪ Someday my prince will come ♪
Miles always loved a strong melody.
He really felt like those melodies would allow him to speak...
saying here's something that you're familiar with.
I'm going to show you how beautiful it can really be.
So, he could take something like
"Someday My Prince Will Come" from a Walt Disney movie...
and he could invest that with amazing feeling and depth.
He said: "I'm playing it for my wife Frances."
And you can feel the love and care in his playing.
"Someday My Prince Will Come"
was the first album cover I was on for Miles.
And he was out of town and I remember going to the shooting
and he was calling every two minutes
to see what I was wearing, how do I look.
He wanted to make sure that I looked perfect...
and, of course, I thought I did.
I put the mole on my little cheek 'cause I thought it had flair.
It was on "Someday My Prince Will Come"
that I started demanding that Columbia use black women on my album covers.
I mean, it was my album and I was Frances's prince.
So, I was able to put Frances on the cover.
He was standing up for the beauty of black women,
you know, and saying: "This beauty here is the beauty that I'm projecting
you know, through this music, through this song."
A major statement to make.
And I'm sure it was just because he thought his wife was hot and fine, too.
Everybody wanted to be in West Side Story.
Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, you know, it was, like, the one.
There were at least, I'd say, 300 girls auditioning.
I got on stage and I stood up there and I snapped my fingers and I went...
I did an Ella Fitzgerald scat.
And Jerome Robbins... they all freaked out.
I was in. I was in.
Around this time, I was drinking more than I had in the past
and I was snorting a lot of cocaine.
That combination can make you real irritable.
Frances was the only woman that I had ever been jealous of.
And being jealous and using drugs and drinking,
she just looked at me like I was crazy, which I was, at the time.
I thought I was sane and on top of the world.
He was a jealous person when it came to me.
He just couldn't handle me being with these people
and getting, you know...
all of this attention.
And that's when he came to the theater and picked me up in his Ferrari and said:
"I want you out of West Side Story.
A woman should be with her man."
I froze.
But I was in love with him and I did as he said.
I quit the show.
He sent for his children
Cheryl and Gregory and little Miles.
What I ended up doing was performing in the kitchen.
I came to New York and Frances got us enrolled in schools
and we started going to school, coming home, doing our homework.
So, it was a big change for her.
I didn't know how to cook or anything. I'd been on the road. I didn't know.
He said to me: "Look, listen. Watch what I'm doing and do it."
So, I learned to cook.
She would be downstairs cooking
and every now and then she would go upstairs and disappear.
And later on, she told me:
"You remember when I used to disappear, go upstairs?"
I said, "Yeah."
She said: "I went upstairs to look at my ballet slippers."
She always seemed to be holding in, uh, certain feelings
about what she could've been doing.
My hip was operated on in April 1965,
and they replaced the hip ball with some bone from my shin...
but it didn't work and so they had to do it again that August.
I was in a lot of pain all the time.
I was starting to drink more than I had in the past
and I was taking pain medication.
And I was starting to use more coke...
I guess, because of the depression.
It was a combination of jealousy, cocaine...
Percodan, Scotch and milk,
that's the combination... that I found out later.
And...
this combination causes you to snap...
which he did.
I was with Miles at Birdland one evening...
and Quincy Jones was there.
When we got home that night...
I just mentioned to Miles that Quincy Jones is handsome.
And before I knew it, I...
It was so fast.
And I saw stars. I was on the floor.
It was the most unbelievable thing that ever happened to me
because I'd never been hit in my life.
That was the first...
and it wasn't going to be the last, unfortunately.
I didn't know at the time that I was close to leaving...
but... that's when it happened.
I can say this right now...
Frances was the best wife that I ever had.
I realized how badly I'd treated her and that it was over.
I know that now and I wish I had known that then.
He was always talking about her.
Even after it was all over, four or five years later...
he would say: "See that suit that girl's wearing?
I bought Frances a suit like that once."
After I left, I heard Miles say that he really screwed up.
He also said: "Whoever gets her is a lucky motherfucker."
That's what I heard he said.
Well, he was right.
In the last years that Trane was with my group,
he started playing for himself.
When that happens, the magic is gone out of a band
and people who used to love to play together start not caring any more.
And that's when a band falls apart.
I'd be lying if I said that it didn't make me sad,
because I really loved playing with this band.
And I think it was the best small band of all time...
or at least the best I had heard up until then.
I had always been looking for new things to play,
new challenges for my musical ideas.
Now it was time for something different.
I was working at a place called The Half Note.
Miles had come in during the course of the set
with his black cape and his black hat, looking mysterious.
And he said: "I'm looking for a bass player. Are you interested?"
Well, at the time, the only thing hotter than Miles Davis was the pancake.
My phone rang and I hear this guitar, plung, somebody strumming a guitar.
Then this voice said: "The guitar is a motherfucker, ain't it?"
"Come to my house tomorrow at 1:30." Click.
He never said his name.
He never gave me his address, phone number, nothing.
But Miles called me.
And he sent me a first-class ticket
and sent me to his tailor to get a tuxedo made.
And I flew to California.
Miles, what are you going to play this time?
Somebody else tell me 'cause Miles has laryngitis.
Blues of some kind or other.
All right, once again, the Miles Davis Quintet. Here he is.
Miles's great quintet of the 1960s
created a way of improvising that was totally new,
that allowed this incredible level of democracy to enter into the music.
And anyone could take the music where they wanted to.
He consistently surrounded himself
with young, emerging, unknown voices.
He allowed them to develop their musical identity in that band.
And he continued to just keep regenerating
over and over for the remainder of his career.
At the time I joined Miles's band, I was 23 years old.
Tony Williams, the drummer, was 17 years old.
We were kids... just kids.
Creativity and genius in any kind of artistic expression
don't know nothing about age.
Either you got it or you don't.
And being old is not going to help you get it.
We were looking at it, like every night going to a laboratory.
Miles was the head chemist.
Our job was to mix these components, these changes, this tempo,
into something that explodes safely every night with a bit of danger.
And it happened every night.
Miles wanted us to live on the stage in front of the people,
creating in front of the people.
In other words, don't lean on what you know.
What he was looking for is the stuff that you don't know.
I liked that idea, man. I hate to rehearse.
All the good ideas get shot.
I want to make mistakes on the bandstand and fix them there.
Miles even told us:
"I pay you to practice on the bandstand in front of the people."
I said: "Well, public's not gonna like that."
He said: "I'll take care of the public.
You just play."
Teo, you know I can't play this shit, man.
Yes, you can.
-You're getting there.
You know what I mean? Herbie, can we do it like that?
-We gonna divide it up. -Yeah, that's a good idea.
Six!
Wait a minute, Teo, I don't even know what to play there.
-Don't play that first beat. - Play that, Teo.
Once, he does a take where the horn players all play the melody...
correctly, without any major kind of flub.
That take's going on the record.
I had this book I have with me
that I'd been using when I was in the Army.
I'd wrote stuff down a little bit and he said: "You got any music?"
I said: "Yeah. I got some stuff in this book."
He opened the book and he said: "Let's try this."
- What's this called? - "Footprints"!
"Footprints"?
And then we just... no rehearsal,
just looked at the music, went over it a little bit and then recorded.
And the next time we went to the recording studio,
he would say: "We're gonna record next Wednesday. Bring the book!"
In 1969, historically, a man had walked on the moon...
and the United States is still in this bloody... Vietnam War.
I think Miles sensed the importance of the younger generation,
'cause Miles was always looking forward.
1969 was the year rock and funk were selling like hotcakes.
People were packing stadiums to hear and see stars in person,
and jazz music seemed to be withering on the vine.
We played to a lot of half-empty clubs in 1969.
That told me something.
The music of Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and James Brown...
it made Miles aware that you could play one concert and hit a lot of people.
You could make more money playing one concert for 45 minutes
than you might make playing a week in a club, three sets a night.
One reason he got the electric band
because he had hung out with Sly & the Family Stone.
Sly was telling him how much money he made. Miles said: "What? What?"
So, after that, Miles kind of changed his stuff up.
I started realizing
that most rock musicians didn't know anything about music.
I figured if they could do it,
reach all those people and sell all those records
without really knowing what they were doing,
then I could do it, too, only better.
Miles asked to see me and it was a very, very tense meeting.
And he said these fucking long-haired, white kids
were stealing his music, his riffs.
He was irate and asked to be released from the label.
I said: "Look, I can get you dates
playing with musical artists of a different generation,
playing a different kind of music.
I just know that if you play those dates, something will happen."
Around this time, I had met a beautiful young singer
and songwriter named Betty Mabry.
She was full of new things and surprises and helped point the way I was to go.
Betty Davis was just a very fierce, dynamic sister
who was a part of that whole New York and California rock scene.
She totally changes his sense of what's happening in music.
Betty was a big influence
on my personal life, as well as my musical life.
She also helped me change the way I was dressing.
I went by his house, he had a bunch of funny-looking suits,
and things hanging in his closet, funny-looking shoes, hats and all of that.
I said: "What's going on, man?"
So, he changed up. He went from that to that.
I wanted to change course,
had to change course for me to continue to believe in and love what I was playing.
My interest was in an electronic bass player.
It gave me what I wanted to hear instead of the stand-up bass.
He called me and said: "I want to talk to you." I said okay.
He said: "All you got to do is play like you're playing upright."
I said: "Man, it's not the same."
"The notes are different. The sound is different. The impact is different.
The note length is different. Their placement...
The only thing the same, Miles, is the same fucking notes.
I'm hearing this since I was 18, man.
Why the fuck would I give it up?
To join you? No, man, I'm not going to do that."
He said okay.
So, I put my hat on and got in the wind.
The group broke up when Ron decided to leave for good,
because he didn't want to play electric bass.
Now, I was starting to think about other ways
I could approach the music.
I went into the studio in August of 1969.
Miles had said to be at Columbia Studios at ten o'clock.
I was there at 9:30. The cleaning lady let me in.
I brought in these musical sketches that nobody had seen,
just like I did on Kind of Blue.
I told the musicians that they could do anything they wanted...
play anything they heard, so, that's what they did.
There were four percussion players playing at the same time,
two bassists playing at the same time,
two or three keyboard players playing at the same time, a guitar.
It was a great, massive improvisation.
All he had me bring was a cymbal and a snare drum.
And we went over the first part of Bitches Brew.
And then...
You hear Miles's trumpet bouncing against the buildings
at night, three o'clock in the morning.
You know? It sounds like New York is a grand canyon of buildings.
It's this ominous thing.
You know, it's like something getting ready to happen.
Moving like an amoeba that just moved along...
and it did like this and then, like, you know, something would stick out.
But, like, it was like this whole thing just moved like this, together.
I had the jazz station on and the guy was like:
"Oh, my God. The new Miles just came in."
And then he said the name of it.
I was like: "Man, can you even say that on the air?"
He said: "Forget the music. Y'all got to see this cover."
Bitches Brew sold faster than any other album I had ever done,
and sold more copies than any other jazz album in history.
After he did Bitches Brew, he started at the Fillmore East and all of that stuff.
We're in the dressing room and Miles got the check.
He's looking at it and we heard him say: "I feel like a thief."
It was an Indian restaurant on 125th Street.
And we're sitting there, we're eating and we're talking for about two hours.
So, we get up, and as we're walking out...
he says: "So, what do you think?"
I'm like: "First of all, think about what?"
I mean, I'm trying... my brain is into the conversation.
He said: "What do you think about the music?"
And I do this... because, you know, they're playing Indian music.
And Miles, he said: "That's where we're going on the new album, On the Corner."
He said, "I'm gonna mix tablas and sitar, electric sitar with the funk."
The On the Corner album, there's no ambiguity.
We're going for this.
Bap! Boom! Bap!
It just got more intense.
Four, one, two. That's what funk is.
They were just taking off. They were making the Big Bang,
kind of upping the ante every night,
just so gnarly and... and dangerous with it,
in terms of the use of percussion and the use of distortion.
This cosmic jungle music.
That's when we really locked in to Miles
as kind of our Hoodoo-voodoo priest of music.
This is acid music.
People who smoke weed and they go there high
all of a sudden they're straight, you know?
And people who are straight, they're high.
He totally changed everything just by the way he was playing.
Miles's audience was changing because his music was changing...
absorbing what was happening now.
What was happening now. Not ten years ago... now.
I never understood what was so appealing to so many people.
I was trying to figure out what he heard in it. I didn't understand it.
Plus, it didn't sound good.
People who say that,
I just always looked at 'em like: "You're really ignorant
and what drove you to say that is because you're jealous,
because you could never be, or have, or even comprehend
something that is beyond your limited, twisted, crooked mind."
"Damn, Carlos, that's a little harsh."
But it's accurate.
When you listen to that slew of records
you know, he made in rapid succession about '69 through '75,
I mean, you hear the template for hip-hop, for house,
drum and bass, electronica.
Miles was doing all of that in the early '70s.
He's creating new music and kind of disturbing the fabric.
When I was with him he was pretty healthy. He was doing very well...
eating a good healthy diet, keeping his body clean.
Of course, he worked out in the gym every day, pretty much, boxing.
And, so, those things were very important at that time and that was really good.
I knew that Miles was getting back into drugs...
even though he hadn't been doing them around me,
because he was getting paranoid a lot.
He was violent. He was abusive.
I said: "You know, I'm not going to live like this."
In October 1972, I fell asleep at the wheel
and ran my Lamborghini into a divider.
I was laid up for almost three months and when I got home,
I had to walk on crutches for a while, which further fucked up my bad hip.
That was probably the most pivotal moment in his life.
The abject pain that he was in, from awakening to going to sleep...
forced him, and I say "forced him" to use prescription medicine,
cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes,
anything to dull the pain.
He started taking fewer and fewer jobs and tours.
Eventually, there was no band. There was no Miles Davis band.
I was spiritually tired of all the bullshit I'd been going through
all those long years.
I felt artistically drained.
I didn't have anything else to say, musically.
I knew that I needed a rest and so I took one.
I put down the thing I love most in life, my music.
And the more I stayed away,
the deeper I sank into another dark world.
His apartment building was his cave...
and he sequestered himself there.
And there were days, weeks, he wouldn't go out.
When I was 15 or 16,
I would go and stay in New York during that dark period.
I remember it being dark, always dark in the house.
I just remember... you know, cigarettes, beer bottles and cocaine.
I remember going to visit him a couple of times.
It was a dark time for him.
He was... Like, I wasn't...
I was a little bit scared of him.
He was in there by himself, just dealing with pain and not playing.
I know, for him, not playing is... is just like not having water anymore.
I just wanted it to stop.
I wanted the darkness to stop.
It was like a person I never knew.
And I wanted him to get back to... to, uh, you know, to my uncle, my superhero.
I remember going up to Harlem
and there would be a woman in the car with us.
She'd be sitting next to me
and Miles would drive up there and then just say: "Wait."
And he would come out of the building that he was in... very high.
There would be cocaine smudges on his face
you know, and I'd want to say something, but I was too afraid.
He would kind of nudge me over, and he'd say: "You fucked her."
And I'd say: "I didn't fuck her."
And he goes: "We're not leaving till you tell me you fucked her."
He'd shut the car off.
I said: "All right. I fucked her on the hood. Can we go?"
And he goes: "And I thought we were friends."
This is... This is an evening with Miles.
Miles would come around during that time. We would...
He needed money and we'd lend him some money,
which we figured was gone, you know, and...
Whatever the case, we left there one day and I said to Marie...
I said, "I think that's the end. There's no way he can come back from this."
And I said: "But you never can tell."
Around this same time,
Cicely Tyson started coming to see me again.
She had been dropping by throughout all of this,
but now she started coming by more often.
He was in terrifically bad health in those years.
It was thought by many people, he was in such bad shape
that he would never play music again.
He even thought he might never play music again.
Cicely inspires him to see once again
that he has something to offer...
that his creativity... his creative voice, he has not reached his creative peak.
She helped run all those people out of my house.
She kind of protected me and started seeing
that I ate the right things and didn't drink as much.
She helped get me off cocaine.
She would feed me health foods, a lot of vegetables
and a whole lot of juices.
He was running up and down the beach and trying to be a vegetarian...
which was... which was amazing, because he couldn't do it.
Miles would say: "Come by the house. Pick me up, man.
Take me somewhere where they got meat.
Just let me smell the smells and then get me a hot link sandwich."
Miles needed those years to summon up the strength...
to kick drugs, to play again, to handle the public...
to handle the touring, to handle the critics... to live.
From 1975 until early 1980, I didn't pick up my horn.
For over four years I didn't pick it up... once.
In the end, it was almost six years.
He kept bringing tapes to my office
of a different sounding band, the electronic band.
I said: "I'll pay you $70,000 to do two concerts at Avery Fisher Hall."
He looked at me as if I was crazy. Nobody did that.
And I wrote out a check for $35,000 and gave it to him.
I held my breath.
I bought a brand-new, canary yellow 308 GTSi Ferrari sports coupe,
with a targa top.
I was ready to go back to music.
He bought that car just to show up at that gig.
And yeah, man, you know, I bought a new shirt.
He bought a Ferrari.
Miles was back.
And he had this whole new sound with all the young musicians.
He was seven years out and all of a sudden he came back.
This cat could've stopped completely and said: "I've done enough."
And everybody would've said: "You sure have."
But he wanted to keep going.
It wasn't just a comeback of an artist.
It was a comeback of a human being.
I never saw anybody do that like he did.
Do you still enjoy playing jazz festivals in Europe?
Yes. I love to play in Europe, jazz festivals.
What about Molde? You're arriving late.
I was sick this morning.
Starting with the first tour, we were in a different city,
or a different country, every single day.
Say a show starts at eight o'clock...
we'd get back to the hotel by midnight.
After that, he wants to paint.
He would just pick up whatever writing device he had and start to draw.
When we were on the road, he drew on the plane, he drew in the car.
He drew in the lounge, waiting for the plane.
We get to the gig. He's drawing in the dressing room.
It was literally flowing through his arm, into his hand, onto the paper.
When you make a wrong line,
does it feel with you like the same as in music?
The note next to the one that you think is bad... corrects the one in front.
It was early morning and I was going running.
I was waiting by the elevator and the elevator opened and there he was.
My heart was racing. It was kind of like, um...
like in a movie when you meet the vampire
and you know you're going to die and you don't care.
I looked back and he said: "You better run fast
'cause when I get back I'm going to catch you."
And that was it. We started painting together.
There was just all this interest in everything he was doing,
coming from everywhere.
Miles, what got you into painting?
He was never more in demand.
Who are you guys?
It seems almost as if he forgot who he had been.
It's like a brand-new start for me.
He was on talk shows.
Hello, good evening. This is Miles Davis.
On late night television.
-Miles Davis. -Miles Davis.
-Miles Davis!
He was accepting interviews in every city he played in.
He was a totally different seeming person.
And he was even going out and sitting in with Prince.
He loved Prince. You know, it was destiny that they worked together.
I got a call from Tommy LiPuma,
who was an A&R vice president at Warner Bros.
He said: "Miles Davis just left Columbia and he's coming to Warner Bros."
And I said: "Really? Congratulations!" He said: "Do you have any music?"
As soon as I hung up the phone, that bass line to "Tutu" hit me.
I'm writing a song for somebody if I can see them going...
like grooving to the song, I go, "Okay, this is right for him."
I'm looking across the studio and I'm looking at Miles.
And then he just started playing stuff on the piano for me.
Looking back on it, I realize this dude never recorded like that before,
with headphones, playing to a track with drum machines and all that stuff.
He was, like, into it. He wasn't just like stepping gingerly into it.
He owned it.
Yeah!
At the core, he's just staying that young kid
who came to New York to play the hip music.
You know, he wanted to always have that feeling.
Miles never talked about his old records.
He didn't keep 'em in the house. He didn't have any of 'em.
You know, not one of them and he didn't want them in there.
He wanted only the stuff he was working on.
When I first got in the band, Miles seemed cool.
You know, he was alert and on top of it,
but soon after that, he started looking not so good, you know?
And if you see a concert we did on Saturday Night Live,
you'll see what I'm talking about.
He's just kind of moving and his sound is very fragile, you know?
He was tormented, man, 'cause he couldn't get the tone.
He couldn't get the tone.
Sometimes he would hobble around the stage, but... but...
he was still Miles.
It will be for the first time tonight that Miles Davis and Quincy Jones
will be on the same stage, playing together.
I'd been trying for 15 years, man.
I kept bugging him about it... you know, kept bugging him about it.
And he said: "Okay, motherfucker." You know?
If he never played another note, he doesn't have to
because he has led the way on the cutting edge for the last 50 years.
To see him at 65 years old
trying to recreate his 25-year-old self
was just amazing, man.
My love, my brother,
and one of my favorite musicians and idols, Miles Davis!
Yeah, I loved him, man.
It just makes my soul smile.
There was a tune called "The Pan Piper"...
and I knew that that was a hard piece
and I wasn't sure that he would be able to play that one.
He would never say that.
So, when it was time for us to do it, I remember jumping in.
I remember him telling me: "Listen, if I ever went back to that old stuff,
I'd die."
And I sat there in front of the TV and I was like: "He's sick.
He's sick."
He said: "When God punishes you, it's not that you..."
So sad.
"...it's not that you don't get what you want.
You get everything that you want and there's no time left."
Miles Davis!
Quincy Jones!
Miles went into the hospital, Labor Day weekend of 1991.
We were talking and listening to music...
and I looked at him and he looked funny, like, still.
And then I looked up and a doctor came in to the door
and he walked over and it was just a second.
And I was sitting with his head in my lap...
and the doctor started pounding on him.
And then he beeped something and then another doctor came in
and then a bunch of doctors and nurses came in.
And I was still sitting on the bed and he was blank.
I mean, he was breathing. I knew he didn't die. I mean, I didn't know...
It was horrifying. And they're working on him
and they're pounding him and injecting him
and then they roll us both out like that into the elevator, into the hall.
And they didn't even notice that I was on the bed,
when his head was still next to me.
And, you know, we were surrounded by people.
We're in the elevator and... you know, and they said: "He had a stroke."
Deborah, my ex-wife, called me and she says:
"I think you'd better hold on to something."
I said "What's going on?" She says: "Miles Davis just passed."
And it just felt like, um...
someone hit me with a...
with a jackhammer over the head.
I think Miles was definitely,
without a doubt, the most unique person I've ever known.
He did things totally in a different way than everybody else.
He looked at things differently. He saw things differently.
You have to be true to yourself. I think a lot of that was his philosophy.
How can someone come up with such beautiful music
when you can have that other side?
Sometimes I couldn't take it.
Sometimes it was just perfecto.
I don't regret, I don't forget, but I still love.
I miss him, you know?
I miss him. I dream about him a lot.
He, uh...
What a big presence.
Of course I loved him.
He was like a brother...
who did dumb things and you accepted it.
He was real.
Very real.
There won't be many Mileses again.
That's enough.
I'm through.