I laughed, but I wondered whether Porter would recognize Miles when he actually met him face to face. If he didn’t, it would set me up for Miles to be forever taunting me about being a liar.
Porter and I drove downtown to Miles’ place from my apartment in Harlem. On the way, Porter kept asking me where we were going, but I wouldn’t tell him. When we got to Miles’ place and the valet let us in, Porter ambled into the apartment ahead of me, and there, across the distance of two rooms, standing in full profile in front of the TV set, was Miles. When Porter came in, Miles turned to face him and Porter, adjusting his eyes to the darkness and seeing who it was, started screaming joyfully to me, “Look, Daddy, Miles Davis, Miles Davis!”
A big grin broke across Miles’ face and he ordered Porter to “Come here, boy!” And Porter did, running across the room as fast as his little legs could carry him. He jumped into Miles’ arms shouting, “Miles Davis, Miles Davis!” Miles loved it and from then on Porter had a special place in his heart.
After that, from time to time I would take Porter with me when I was just going to hang out with Miles. On these occasions, Porter became fascinated with Miles’ beautiful red and blue trumpets and would ask him to play them, which Miles did several times. It was a beautiful scene to watch: the legendary trumpeter playing just for the child, with Porter laughing and squealing along with every note Miles played. Miles would be smiling, too, explaining to Porter the different notes he was playing.
As time went on, though, Miles grew tired of Porter asking him to play every time he visited. I could tell this was happening because Miles lost the enthusiasm of his first encounters with my son. One day when Porter and I arrived, the blue and red trumpets were nowhere to be seen. Porter searched all over the apartment for them in vain. Miles and I watched him running frantically from room to room, growing ever more disappointed. Finally, Porter came up to Miles and demanded, “Where are the trumpets?” Miles told him they were in Los Angeles. (They weren’t; they were hidden high up in a closet because Miles didn’t want to play for Porter anymore.)
However, Miles had left his beat-up old trumpet out, and when Porter found it, he asked him to play. At first, Miles refused, saying, “Aw, Porter, I get a lot of money to play this horn. I ain’t got time to play it for you today.” Upon hearing that, Porter broke down instantly and started to cry. Miles looked at me, startled, and then with a disgusted look in his eyes, he got up, got the trumpet, and played a few notes for the boy. Miles was obviously irritated but he went through the motions anyway. Of course, Porter was delighted. But the next time my son came downtown with me there were no trumpets anywhere in sight. When Porter asked about them, Miles said they were all out in Los Angeles and although Porter looked disappointed he seemed to understand. Miles looked at me as if to say, “And don’t you tell him they’re hidden up in my closet, either.” Of course I didn’t, and that was the end of Porter’s private concerts with Miles; but while they lasted, it was beautiful to watch—and hear.
Although he refused to play for him anymore, Miles continued asking after Porter all the time. Once, in 1988 when I took Porter with me out to the house in Malibu, Miles told him, “Make your dad get you a Ferrari instead of that old beat-up Saab he be driving. Now a Ferrari is a real car.”
When he told him this, he smiled at Porter as if they were in on some kind of conspiracy together. I told Porter, “Ask Miles to buy you a Ferrari because he’s rich and can afford it.”
Well, I thought, that was the end of that. But instead of buying Porter a real Ferrari, Miles bought him an expensive red toy Ferrari, an exact replica, which, naturally, Porter completely destroyed in just a few weeks. The boy took it apart piece by piece. First it had no wheels, then the doors went, then the hood. The trunk door was the last to go. When Miles would ask about the toy, I’d tell him how much Porter loved it. I never told him what condition it was in. Not a word. But it was a beautiful toy while it lasted.
at ease among horses
Miles felt at ease not only with children but also with animals, especially horses. I often went with him to the Malibu stables where he kept his horses, just down the road from his home on the Pacific Coast Highway, and watched him ride. He was really at peace with them and treated them with love and tenderness, stroking their muzzles, flanks, and rumps. He would comb their manes, brush their hair, and feed them with such a joyous and serene expression on his face. When he was with them, he was like another person. He trusted animals more than he trusted humans; he told me so on many occasions. And, when I was with him and his horses, I could see that he meant it.
Miles had three horses, if memory serves: Kara, Kind of Blue, and Gemini. Kind of Blue was named after Miles’ tune, and Gemini after his sign; I don’t know where Kara got her name. I went riding with him once; I rode Kind of Blue and he rode Gemini. He wasn’t a great rider but he had a lot of style up in the saddle, trying to look like he was in control. Kind of Blue just tolerated me because I was definitely an amateur, and scared to death. But we rode around at a slow trot for about an hour, with the beautiful mountains of Malibu looming high behind us.
When we rode up one of the trails that climbed the mountain, we could look back and see the sparkling, cold blue water of the Pacific and hear the sound of its power pounding the shore. It was awesome. When I looked at Miles he was smiling peacefully, at ease with himself. I was still scared shitless and this amused Miles to no end; he teased me unmercifully about it later on that evening. Still, the experience remains for me a rare, beautiful moment: Miles and me on horses, the mountains behind, and the sea, in all its power and beauty, making that thundering sound.
miles at work
On our first ride downtown together, in the summer of 1985, Miles had played some tunes for me from the album that would be released in 1986 as Tutu. (It was named after the black South African Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bishop Desmond Tutu.) When the album came out, I liked every tune on it very much. I thought it was a first-rate record, one of the best of Miles’ last studio albums. Tutu was Miles’ first album for Warner’s, but it didn’t feature many musicians from his working band—only Adam Holzman on synthesizer and the bassist Marcus Miller were members of the band. The rest of the musicians were brought in just for the recording date.
A young synthesizer programmer, Jason Miles, whom Miles called “a programming genius,” was brought in to coordinate the computer programming of the music, which kept changing constantly. The way it was done was like this: After the arrangers had gotten the percussion instruments, synthesizers, and electric violin parts down on tape, Miles would come into the studio and play his trumpet over the tape-recorded parts. For Miles, who had always played right alongside the other musicians in his bands, this was a totally new way of working. Recording with his working band had become problematic. Miles said the reason he hadn’t used that band on Tutu was that it was just “too much trouble.” He told me: “The band might not feel good the day of the recording session, or, at least, some people in the band might not feel good. So you’ve got to deal with that. And if one or two musicians don’t feel good that day, then they throw everybody else off. Or they might not feel like playing the style you want or need for the record you’re doing, and that might cause problems. Music, to me, is all about styles; and if somebody can’t do what you ask for and need, then they look at you all funny and feel bad and insecure.
“You’ve got to teach them what you want them to do, show them right there in the studio in front of everybody else. And a lot of musicians can’t take that kind of shit, so they get mad. That holds things up. Doing it the old way, recording like we used to, is just too much trouble and takes too much time. Some people say they miss that spontaneity and spark that comes out of recording with a band right there in the studio. Maybe that’s true; I don’t know. All I know is that the new recording technology makes it easier to do it the way we have been doing it. If a musician is really professional he will give you what you want in terms of per
formance in the studio by playing off and against the band that’s already down on tape. I mean, the motherfucka can hear what is being played, can’t he? And that’s all that is important in ensemble playing; hearing what everyone else is doing—and playing off or against that.”
Tutu was well received by the critics as well as the record-buying public, and it brought Miles a measure of the critical respect that had been missing since his return to the scene. (The album cover, a full-faced black-and-white photo of Miles staring out at the viewer, was plastered all over New York. The picture, taken by Irving Penn, is brooding but beautiful.)
Things were definitely looking up, but Miles was still having problems with his working band. The personnel kept shifting. Musicians kept leaving and returning. His bass player, Marcus Miller, left because he found that he could make more money producing than playing full-time with Miles. He was replaced by a gifted young player from Chicago, Darryl Jones. But Jones left in 1986 to tour with the rock star Sting. John Scofield, Mike Stern, and Robben Ford each played guitar for a while. Darryl Jones came back. Then Marcus Miller sent Miles a tape of a young bass guitarist from Cincinnati, Joseph Foley McCreary. I was at Miles’ Malibu house when the tape arrived.
“Listen to this and tell me what you think of it,” he said in that whispery voice of his one Saturday afternoon right after I arrived to work on the book. He put the tape in the machine and turned up the volume. We were sitting on his terrace looking out at the sunlit, beautiful Pacific when all of a sudden this Jimi Hendrix–like blast came roaring out of the speakers. I was stunned, but I dug it. The playing was very raw but had a compelling beauty and energy.
“Well,” he said, looking at me with his hard, penetrating gaze, “what the fuck do you think?”
“I like it,” I said. “It’s powerful. He can play.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s gonna be my next guitar player. His name is Foley, and he’s gonna be a bad motherfucka.”
I agreed. Foley could play his ass off. The only problem I could see was that Darryl Jones was still in the band. But it all worked itself out later when Darryl decided to leave the band for good, which Miles was already anticipating. Miles was a smart man—most times he was ahead of the game.
touchy subjects
On that day Miles was happy, upbeat, telling jokes. But other times he was a very difficult person to get along with. Some days, when things didn’t go his way, he was irascible, contemptuous, brutally honest, and extremely bad-tempered. For all his fame and money he was also insecure about many things. He was both proud of being black and totally freaked out sometimes by the deep blackness of his skin and by the hair weave he wore.
Miles told me that his hair began falling out in the late 1960s and early 1970s “because of a hair disease.” First, when it was in style, he sometimes wore an Afro wig. Then, as the times and hair styles changed, he began pulling his hair back and covering the bald spots by wearing caps and hats. In the 1980s, he got a hair weave. He was very sensitive about his hair and sometimes if I wanted to scare him I would hold my hands over the top of his head, acting as if I was going to pull his weave out. He would wave his hand over his head frantically as if he were battling a swarm of gnats, smiling nervously and telling me to “knock it off.” He never got really mad because he saw the humor in our playful interchange. Still, I think it annoyed him sometimes because his eyes would sometimes flash hard and he wouldn’t talk to me for a while.
His skin color was a deeper problem. It’s not that he absolutely hated his color. No, that wasn’t it. But he did talk about how his deep black color always elicited comments, some good and some bad. He used to tell me how sick he was of people talking about it. “Why can’t they just accept it, my color, for what it is?” he once asked me. I didn’t have an answer. He also told me he didn’t want a woman darker than he was. In our book, Miles, he said: “If you ask me what color woman I prefer, I’d have to say I like a woman my mother’s color, or lighter. I don’t know why that is, but that’s the way I am. I think I’ve had one girlfriend who was darker than me and you know that was dark because I’m midnight black myself.”
Many African Americans of Miles’ generation, if they were as dark as he, felt deeply inferior because of the hostile manner in which they were treated. An African-American saying from the times went something like this: “If you’re black, get back; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re white or light, you’re alright.” Many African Americans from Miles’ generation internalized these racist attitudes and turned them into self-hatred. I’m not saying that Miles hated himself, far from it; he seemed to love himself as far as I could see, but he might have been deeply troubled by his dark color, over which he had no control, unlike the music he played and composed.
a bundle of contradictions
As I said, Miles was a very complex person. In some social situations he was absolutely unsure of himself. But he was always totally confident of his musical ability, though not, as some have suggested, arrogant about it. In 1986, he was still in awe of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Duke Ellington, even if he stayed away from listening to their music. He loved James Brown, Prince, and Michael Jackson, and great classical composers, too. He loved barbecue, pig snouts, chili, French pastries, ice cream—in fact, he loved most sweets—and he snuck out to eat these things despite his advanced diabetic condition.
Miles was a bundle of walking, breathing contradictions. He was generous and cheap, stylishly elegant and a “country bumpkin,” naïve about many things and completely shrewd and learned about others. For example, although he drew and painted many hours every week, he knew almost nothing about African-American or African art. He knew few artists’ names, but he could discuss what he liked and disliked about Pablo Picasso’s and Salvador Dalí’s work, at length. He was one of the kindest people I ever met and one of the most infuriating assholes, too.
At times, he was extremely funny; at others, unbelievably mean. He could be so humble one moment, and the next moment (and I do mean the very next moment) he could turn into the most exasperating, most obnoxious bastard you could ever hope to avoid meeting. He always used to say, “Everything’s about timing.” And so it was when it came to Miles—who you got depended on when you caught him and what state of mind he was in. Really.
Miles Davis was a very good actor. When he was with me he was always acting all the time, giving me this and that character—the gangster, the lover, the artist. He had in him a little of Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, and the legendary black Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson. Actually, it wasn’t acting, really. He had some of all these men in his character—he had absorbed them into his very being. He also was always testing me, probing here and there, trying to find weaknesses in my character, in what I believed, trying to see how strong or weak I was. He did this to everyone, and if he found you weak or stupid he would come down hard on you right away and without any mercy. He didn’t suffer what he thought was foolishness lightly, or easily. He could be real “cold” on you if he thought you came off wrong.
When you were with Miles and, in his opinion, you came off wrong, you would suffer one of four things. One, he just might completely ignore you. Two, he might take off his glasses and turn his ray-gun, laser-beam eyes on you as if he were trying to execute you with his stare. Three, he just might curse you out, put you down so hard and in such an unbelievably cruel way that you would never, ever repeat what you had just said or done—at least not in his presence. Four, and only if he liked you, he might play with you the way a cat plays with a cornered mouse. In the first three months that I worked on his book with him, I underwent three fierce put-downs for doing and saying things he didn’t like: for showing up at his Manhattan apartment for an appointment when he was making love; for calling him on the phone when he was doing the same thing; and for asking him what he considered a stupid question. Three baptisms by Miles’ verbal fire.
miles on his mark
While Miles
was endlessly contradictory in his life, most of the time he was completely consistent in the quality of the music he played. When it came to music, he was almost always on the mark, on his mark. He knew what he liked and disliked as soon as he heard it and he seldom wavered once he had made up his mind.
I remember bringing by the music of Kassav for him to listen to one afternoon when he was feeling down. Kassav is a West Indian band whose members are mainly from Guadeloupe and Martinique. They lived in Paris then and were playing a form of Caribbean music called “zouk.” As soon as he heard them, Miles almost jumped out of his skin with excitement, leaping up from the couch he was lying on and yelling, “Who is that and what are they playing?” He snatched the CD cover out of my hand and tried to read the liner notes, but he couldn’t because they were in French. Kassav’s music completely freaked him out, and after borrowing the CD from me and listening to it for three days, he directed Larry Blackmon and Marcus Miller to write something for the album they were working on based on Kassav’s rhythms and feeling. That album eventually turned into Amandla.
Miles was always asking me to bring by music I liked because he said he “trusted” my musical judgment “sometimes.” One day he said he was looking for a saxophonist, so I brought over some records by the World Saxophone Quartet. I thought everyone in this group was great. After he heard the music, he rejected all of it right away, saying, “They can really play but they ain’t doin’ nothin’ new in their individual voices that ain’t been done before. I like all of them but I can’t use none of their individual styles in my band, you know what I mean?”
Miles & Me Page 5
