4. Miles DavisBitches Brew

When I was at university, I started listening to jazz. Previously, I only listened to rock things, and especially off of the radio. Russell and I went to the Monterey Jazz Festival up the coast a couple of times and they were really exciting experiences. Miles Davis had already had periods before this with two great quintets, and he was making a kind of acoustic music that was just the best. Nothing has exceeded that musically for me, ever, but when Bitches Brew came out it was a whole other thing. The idea that Miles Davis would morph into a whole other area using electronic instruments and electric pianos and electric guitars, but keeping it within his kind of sensibility, was really striking. I bought the album when it came out in 1970 and I just played it over and over again. You couldn’t slot it into traditional jazz or rock, it was something new, and that music really had a strong appeal to me.

And I try to find people to follow that are always trying to move on, and, obviously, Miles Davis is a strong example of that. There were people that absolutely hated it when he stopped doing purely acoustic music, but they just didn’t really sympathise with his need to continuously morph into something else just for his own musical sense. There are artists that can continue doing one thing all the time and just find new ways of doing that and that’s fine. I’ve got no problem with that, but [Sparks] has to keep finding new ways to keep us excited. We can tell when we’re going through the motions and just doing what we’ve done before with new material. And I think that finding people like Miles Davis that weren’t afraid to alienate critics and even a portion of his audience was a really important thing for us, not just as a statement but also musically. I just really love this album.