We had been reflecting on Jaco Pastorius’ story before and this account is a harrowing read but John French thought it worth posting and re-visiting . . . and so do I
The bouncer didn't recognise the homeless man at the door. He had no idea he was about to kill one of the greatest musicians who ever lived.
September 12, 1987. 2 AM. A drunk man kicked at the glass door of the Midnight Bottle Club in South Florida.Tangled hair. Filthy clothes. Demanding entry to a members-only establishment.The club manager, Luc Havan, stepped outside. At 25, he was a martial arts expert with years of training. The homeless man before him weighed maybe 140 pounds.What happened in the next few minutes would silence a sound the world had never heard before.But the man kicking that door wasn't just anyone.His name was Jaco Pastorius. And ten years earlier, he had changed music forever.Fort Lauderdale, 1951. Young Jaco grew up with salt air and jazz rhythms. His father was a traveling drummer. His mother was Finnish. Music was the family language.Jaco started on drums, following his dad's path. Then at 13, a football injury crushed his wrist. Surgery saved his hand but ended his drumming dreams.He picked up the bass guitar instead.
What looked like an ending became the most important beginning of his life.By his late teens, Jaco was consumed by jazz. Then around 1970, he did something that would echo through music history.He took a screwdriver and removed every fret from his Fender Jazz Bass.Those metal strips that mark each note? Gone. The smooth fingerboard allowed him to slide between notes like a vocalist. To create vibrato that made the bass weep. To produce sounds no one had imagined possible. He called it his Bass of Doom.
The Florida scene embraced him. He absorbed R&B, funk, soul, Caribbean rhythms. He married Tracy in 1970. They had two children. By 23, he was teaching at the University of Miami.But he wasn't meant to teach. He was meant to set the world on fire.In 1974, destiny arrived in the form of Bobby Colomby from Blood, Sweat & Tears. He met Tracy on a beach. She mentioned her husband was the greatest bass player alive.Colomby was skeptical. But he was also scouting talent. Curiosity won. He went to see Jaco play.
One song changed everything.Colomby offered him a record deal immediately.The 1976 self-titled album exploded onto the scene. Jazz and funk collided with bass playing that defied physics. "Portrait of Tracy" featured Jaco playing completely alone, creating harmonics that sounded like three instruments at once.Two Grammy nominations followed.
That same year, Jaco walked up to Joe Zawinul from the legendary fusion band Weather Report and said:"I'm the greatest bass player in the world."Zawinul laughed him off.But Jaco was relentless. He sent demos. He wrote letters. Finally, Zawinul listened.His world tilted.
Jaco joined Weather Report in 1976. What followed was revolutionary.The 1977 album "Heavy Weather" became a landmark in jazz fusion. The opening track "Birdland" showcased Jaco's bass singing melodic lines that sounded extraterrestrial. Over a million copies sold.Before Jaco, bass players were the foundation. They kept rhythm. They stayed in the background.Jaco made the bass a lead instrument.
He played solos in registers that sounded like guitar. He used harmonics to extend the instrument's range impossibly high. He played chords. He transformed four strings into an entire orchestra.On stage, he was pure electricity. Barefoot and shirtless like a beach kid, leaping across stages, spreading powder on the floor so he could dance. Audiences didn't just hear Jaco. They felt him in their bones.He collaborated with Joni Mitchell, giving her songs a floating dreaminess no one else could create. He played with Pat Metheny. He formed the "Trio of Doom" with guitar legend John McLaughlin.In 1979, he remarried. Twin boys arrived in 1982.Everything was perfect.Until the shadows arrived.
The warning signs had always been there. Jaco's boundless energy. His fearless confidence. Everyone thought it was artistic temperament.It was bipolar disorder.The manic phases—those explosions of creativity and energy—had fueled his genius. But the cycles were accelerating out of control.Drugs and alcohol amplified everything. Fans offered the world's greatest bass player free drinks, free cocaine. He accepted it all.In 1982, during a Japan tour, his behavior terrified his bandmates. He shaved his head. Painted his face. Threw one of his precious bass guitars into Hiroshima Bay.His wife had him hospitalized when he returned.The diagnosis: bipolar disorder with rapid cycling. Manic episodes crashing into depression, faster and faster, like waves destroying a shore.Doctors prescribed lithium. He hated how it dulled his mind and creativity.He stopped taking it.
The descent was swift and merciless.By the mid-1980s, the man who had filled stadiums was sleeping in New York parks. He crashed with friends until they couldn't endure it anymore. He burned every bridge. Pushed away everyone who tried to help.His modified bass guitars—his Bass of Doom instruments—were stolen while he slept in Washington Square Park. Never recovered.In 1986, Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ward held him for eight weeks. The diagnosis was confirmed: severe bipolar disorder, worsening.He briefly tried to stabilize. Returned to Fort Lauderdale near family. For a moment, there were glimpses of the old Jaco. Drinking tea instead of alcohol. Speaking calmly.It didn't last.
September 11, 1987. Jaco jumped onto the stage during a Santana concert in Sunrise, Florida. Security removed him. They didn't recognize one of music's greatest innovators.Hours later, drunk and spiraling, he arrived at the Midnight Bottle Club. The staff refused him entry.He started kicking the door.Luc Havan came outside.What happened next would be disputed in court. Havan claimed he pushed Jaco once. That he fell and hit his head.The medical evidence told a darker story.Multiple facial fractures. A ruptured eye. Teeth driven through lips. The imprint of Havan's ring embedded in his face. Massive internal bleeding.Doctors said those injuries required repeated trauma. Multiple blows from someone trained to fight.
When police arrived, a woman knelt beside Jaco's body, wiping blood from his mouth so he wouldn't drown in it. His long hair spread around his head like a halo, soaked red.She looked up at the officers: "Jaco's hurt."He was rushed to Broward General Medical Center and fell into a coma. For days, hope flickered. Then a brain hemorrhage caused brain death.On September 21, 1987, his family faced an impossible choice. They removed life support.His heart beat for three more hours. Tracy, his first wife and mother of his oldest children, held his hand as he died.Jaco Pastorius was 35 years old.
Luc Havan pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He received twenty-two months and served a fraction of that time.Jaco was buried at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Cemetery in North Lauderdale. His funeral was held at the same church where he'd served as an altar boy.
Today, his legacy lives in every bass player who refuses to accept limits. His children all became musicians. Instruments and parks bear his name.But the man himself—the beach kid from Fort Lauderdale who revolutionized music, who played with joy that made audiences cry, who introduced himself as the greatest bass player in the world and then proved it—was destroyed by an illness he couldn't accept and a society that failed to save him.
His modified bass guitars were never all recovered. But the sound he created echoes through every note that followed.The greatest among us sometimes burn with impossible brightness.And sometimes they burn out while the world watches, unable to stop the flames.
Remember the PastThe Drumbo Club
