Herbie Hancock: "working with people who have newer technologies and newer ideas, and that stimulates my own ideas..."
Herbie Hancock: "working with people who have newer technologies and newer ideas, and that stimulates my own ideas..."
Herbie Hancock is a respected elder statesman of jazz - he turned 79 yesterday - but in 1963 he was just another kid with a gift, hustling for work, when the legendary Miles Davis hired him to play piano on a new album.
The pair had never even performed a gig together but the group Hancock joined, completed by 17-year-old drummer Tony Williams, bassist Ron Carter and genius saxophonist-composer Wayne Shorter, became one of the most-revered in jazz.
Now referred to as Davis' second great quintet (the first being his mid-1950s group), the band played challenging, abstract jazz that swung. Hancock, who performs here in June as the main attraction at this year's Wellington Jazz Festival, provided the slightly skewed harmonic bed upon which the music rested.
As Davis' keyboardist, Hancock was admired but he became properly famous after leaving the group and releasing Head Hunters in 1973. The album flew off shelves in such numbers it was the biggest-selling jazz record up to that point.
What connects the Herbie Hancock of then to the Herbie Hancock of today? One of the key things is his interest in science.
"I consider that part of my DNA," he says on the line from Los Angeles.
The Herbie Hancock album Head Hunters introduced new sounds.
It's the sort of answer you might expect from Hancock, a man who has always been in touch with technology, tinkering with the latest gadgets, searching for new sounds of the kind that can be heard in the squelchy experimentation of Head Hunters and other albums of the 70s and 80s.
Hancock was, after all, the musician who, with the 1983 single Rockit, fused jazz and hip-hop. In the process he scored another massive hit and introduced the previously underground sounds of DJ scratching to a mainstream audience.
Rockit also boasted a distinctive video that appeared regularly on MTV. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Rockit, though, is that more than 20 years into a feted career, it finally earned Hancock his first Grammy award.
He has since added a further 13 (and one Oscar), including Album of the Year for 2007's River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell that became the first jazz record since 1965 to be named the year's best.
Joni is a fine jazz album, if lacking the sense of discovery that once placed Hancock at music's forefront. But even if these days he's less obsessed with innovation, Hancock has for decades remained at the cutting edge through others' work.
Deee-Lite's worldwide 1990 dancefloor smash Groove is in the Heart, for instance, rests on a bassline swiped from Hancock's soundtrack to the movie Blow Up. Madonna is only the most famous of the dozens to have bitten a chunk from Hancock's best-known composition, Watermelon Man. The list of rappers to have sampled tracks from Head Hunters alone is extensive.
Recently, Hancock's again been searching for inspiration by collaborating more directly with the dance music crowd. He appeared on You're Dead! by Flying Lotus, who will return the favour, along with Kendrick Lamar, Thundercat and Snoop Dogg, when Hancock's new album is released "sometime this year".
Hancock says that what he gains by working with much younger artists is youth. Having seen his father become increasingly bewildered by an accelerating world, Hancock's determined to stay engaged.
"Certain things became more difficult for my father to understand as the times and the technology changed. [For me], social media is an example of that; I wasn't born into it, and as much as I love science, it took me a while to get into and I'm only at the outer edge of it. So I'm working with people who have newer technologies and newer ideas, and that stimulates my own ideas, which again get bounced off them and triggers something in them too. I win and they win."
Herbie Hancock (right) and Chick Corea.
The last time he was in New Zealand, Hancock toured not with a group of young turks but Chick Corea, the keyboardist who replaced him in Miles Davis' band. The pair performed with no set list, simply playing whatever moved them in the moment. It's the sort of without-a-net high-wire act that only a few can successfully complete. Is it easy or terrifying?
"If something is easy it means I'm not working hard enough and I should get another job," he laughs. "I like the challenge and it's not the first time I've done that. It doesn't frighten me but it does take courage and a lot of concentration. Mainly, it takes a great deal of letting go."
Lowdown What: Herbie Hancock at Wellington Jazz Festival Where and when: Michael Fowler Centre, Wednesday, June 5
