How does one define a mas­ter­piece? Is it per­son­al­ly sub­jec­tive, or it is just anoth­er word we use for sta­tus sym­bols? In an essay on bass play­er Jaco Pas­to­rius’ 1976 self-titled debut album, schol­ar Uri González offers an old­er def­i­n­i­tion: “in the old Euro­pean guild sys­tem, the aspir­ing jour­ney­man was expect­ed to cre­ate a piece of hand­i­craft of the high­est qual­i­ty in order to reach the sta­tus of ‘mas­ter.’ One was then offi­cial­ly allowed to join the guild and to take pupils under tute­lage.”

Pas­to­rius’ debut album cer­ti­fied him as a mas­ter musi­cian; he leapt from “anonymi­ty to jazz star­dom, earn­ing admi­ra­tion both from the aver­age musi­cal­ly une­d­u­cat­ed con­cert-goer to the hippest jazz cat,” and he gained a fol­low­ing among an “ever grow­ing num­ber of adept stu­dents that, still today, study his solos, licks, com­po­si­tions and arrange­ments.” Pas­to­rius’ solo on his ver­sion of the Char­lie Park­er tune  “Don­na Lee,” espe­cial­ly, helped rede­fine the instru­ment by, first, invent­ing the elec­tric bass solo.

The “Don­na Lee” solo, Pat Methe­ny writes,  is “one of the fresh­est looks at how to play on a well trav­eled set of chord changes in recent jazz his­to­ry — not to men­tion that it’s just about the hippest start to a debut album in the his­to­ry of record­ed music.”

Whether you like Jaco Pas­to­rius’ music or not, it’s beyond ques­tion that his play­ing changed musi­cal his­to­ry through a trans­for­ma­tive approach to the instru­ment. In the video at the top, pro­duc­er Rick Beato explains the impor­tance of the “Don­na Lee” solo, an inter­pre­ta­tion of a jazz stan­dard played on a fret­less bass Pas­to­rius made him­self, and cre­at­ing a sound no one had heard before.

Beato’s is a tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion for those with a back­ground in music the­o­ry, and it high­lights just how intim­i­dat­ing Pas­to­rius’ play­ing can be for musi­cians and non-musi­cians alike. But tech­nique, as Her­bie Han­cock not­ed in a blurb on Jaco Pas­to­rius, means lit­tle with­out the musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties that move peo­ple to care, and Pas­to­rius had it in abun­dance. “He had this wide, fat swath of a sound,” wrote one of his most famous col­lab­o­ra­tors, Joni Mitchell, in trib­ute. “He was an inno­va­tor…. He was chang­ing the bot­tom end of the time, and he knew it.”

One of those changes, from “Don­na Lee” to the end of Pas­to­rius’ tumul­tuous life and career in 1987 involved mov­ing the elec­tric bass into a melod­ic role it had not played before. This not only meant leav­ing the low­er root notes, but also craft­ing a bright, round, live­ly tone that for those upper reg­is­ters. “In the Six­ties and Sev­en­ties,” writes Mitchell, “you had this dead, dis­tant bass sound. I didn’t care for it. And the oth­er thing was, I had start­ed to think, ‘Why couldn’t the bass leave the bot­tom some­times and go up and play in the midrange and then return?’” She found the answer to her ques­tions in Jaco.

Hear Pas­to­rius’ orig­i­nal record­ing of “Don­na Lee” fur­ther up, and see a live ver­sion from 1982 above to take in what Mitchell called his “joie de vivre.” The song, which already had a ven­er­a­ble jazz his­to­ry, is now con­sid­ered, González writes, “the quin­tes­sen­tial bass play­ers’ man­i­festo.” Or, as con­ga play­er Don Alias, the only accom­pa­nist dur­ing Pas­to­rius’ famous solo, put it, “every bass play­er I know can now cut ‘Don­na Lee’ thanks to Jaco.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

Leg­endary Stu­dio Musi­cian Car­ol Kaye Presents 150 Free Tips for Prac­tic­ing & Play­ing the Bass

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you had bro­ken up with your col­lege boyfriend and he told you that he writ­ten an 11-minute song about you while on enough LSD to kill a horse, would you want to hear it? Or would you block his num­ber on your phone?

Or maybe because said boyfriend is Jim Mor­ri­son and the band is the Doors and the song is “The End,” we’ll let it slide, because whether or not you think Jim’s lyrics are super deep or super­cil­ious, the groove is unde­ni­able, four small fur­ry musi­cians gath­ered togeth­er in a stu­dio and groov­ing on a raga, con­jur­ing up East­ern mys­ti­cism with West­ern instru­ments.

In Polyphonic’s explain­er video on “The End,” he pulls apart The Doors’ mag­num opus, the clos­er to its 1967 debut album, ana­lyz­ing the song in real time as it unspools. (There’s a few moments where Poly­phon­ic and Mor­ri­son are vocal­iz­ing at the same time—we rec­om­mend turn­ing on cap­tions).

The girl­friend in ques­tion was Mary Wer­be­low, Morrison’s steady in the ear­ly ‘60s before he chose the path of putting his poet­ry to music. The Werbelow/Morrison cou­ple had to die for the Doors to be born, in a sense, and Mor­ri­son start­ed the lyrics as a good­bye song, a stan­dard pop trope at the time. (There’s a very touch­ing, rare inter­view with Wer­be­low here). But Mor­ri­son took it in anoth­er direc­tion, we could say.

“The End” might be the first musi­cal exam­ple of the Psy­chotron­ic Breakup genre. Defined by Noah Segan and Adam Egypt Mor­timer when talk­ing about film, the Psy­chotron­ic Breakup genre “uses dream imagery, para­nor­mal ideas, or the hor­ror genre to express the emo­tion­al dra­ma of heart­break.” Segan and Mortimer’s def­i­n­i­tion deals only with film, but Mor­ri­son does the same thing with song, a lit­tle over ten years before the films they dis­cuss. “The End” is a breakup song that breaks down the psy­che like LSD, send­ing the injured par­ty back to basics, and into a uni­verse of arche­types. Things are dying. Things are being reborn. There’s a blue bus which is call­ing us, and that is either a ref­er­ence to the Solar Boat in Egypt­ian mythol­o­gy or a ref­er­ence to the San­ta Mon­i­ca bus sys­tem (accord­ing to one wag in the com­ments). Or hey, maybe it is both, because Mor­ri­son is tap­ping into some­thing here, much like James Joyce cre­at­ed lay­ers of myth with­in the quo­tid­i­an. (Mor­ri­son achieves this by walk­ing back­wards into it, how­ev­er.)

Poly­phon­ic gets into the song’s Oedi­pal Cliff Notes sec­tion, describ­ing how it all came flum­ing out of Mor­ri­son on stage, the band hav­ing dragged him to a gig at the Whiskey a Go-Go after he con­sumed “10,000 mikes” (i.e. 10,000 micro­grams, about ten full dos­es) of LSD. A few days lat­er the “kill your teach­ers, kill your par­ents” riff was com­mit­ted to tape, this time also on LSD.

For all its pre­tense the song still works. And though Mor­ri­son nev­er did rec­on­cile with his girl­friend, the song did find its soul mate when Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la used “The End” as the open­ing to Apoc­a­lypse Now, anoth­er work of art that drained the life force from its cre­ator. There are no real cov­er ver­sions of “The End,” and there are no films past Coppola’s that can use it with­out irony. It exists like a totem, to be found and puz­zled over.

(But because this is late cap­i­tal­ism and every­thing is ter­ri­ble, Polyphonic’s segue into a spon­sor ad at 11:46 is some­thing won­drous to behold in its per­verse beau­ty. Be warned, my only friend.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Doors’ Ray Man­zarek Walks You Through the Writ­ing of the Band’s Icon­ic Song, “Rid­ers on the Storm”

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

A Young, Clean Cut Jim Mor­ri­son Appears in a 1962 Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­mo Film

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

It was sup­pos­ed­ly “the album that final­ly oblit­er­ates the thin line sep­a­rat­ing arty white pop music and deep black funk,” as David Fricke wrote on the release of Talk­ing Heads’ Speak­ing in Tongues. The praise maybe over­sells music that is more arty white pop than “deep black funk.” But there’s nev­er been any deny­ing the funk­i­ness of Talk­ing Heads, either, just as there’s nev­er been any deny­ing the soul­ful­ness of Tom Jones. Not that they’re musi­cal­ly com­pa­ra­ble artists, but both have incor­po­rat­ed Black musi­cal styles into their own idioms, win­ning respect on either side of the indus­try’s seg­re­gat­ed line for self-aware re-inter­pre­ta­tions of the blues, funk, soul, and R&B, as well as Ghan­ian high life and Niger­ian Afrobeat.

Jones’ late-career rein­ven­tion involved show­ing up on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, cov­er­ing Prince, work­ing with Wyclef Jean, and mak­ing music one might char­ac­ter­ize as gen­er­al­ly good-humored pop that show­cased his still-got-it vocal abil­i­ties. In 1999, he took on Speak­ing in Tongues’ P‑Funk-inspired sin­gle “Burn­ing Down the House” in a cov­er that can be called a slick dance-pop inter­pre­ta­tion of an art-rock re-inter­pre­ta­tion of funk music.

Joined by the Cardi­gans, Jones belts it out with his typ­i­cal swag­ger, while Cardi­gans’ singer Nina Pers­son acts as the “foil” writes Patrick Garvin at Pop Cul­ture Exper­i­ment in a roundup of the song’s many cov­ers: “She sound­ed as monot­o­ne as he sound­ed mani­a­cal. And he sound­ed pret­ty damn mani­a­cal.”

But Jones doesn’t sound mani­a­cal like David Byrne sounds mani­a­cal. The orig­i­nal track came togeth­er from a jam ses­sion, with lyrics impro­vised by Byrne, who shout­ed ran­dom phras­es until he found those that best fit the song, chang­ing the Par­lia­ment-Funkadel­ic audi­ence chant “burn down the house!” into “burn­ing down the house,” a line which could mean any­thing at all. (At one point, he tells NPR, it changed to “Foam Rub­ber, U.S.A.”) Is it a threat? A pan­icked out­cry? A cel­e­bra­tion? A man­ic lamen­ta­tion? In Byrne’s anguished yelps one can nev­er tell.

Jones makes “burn­ing down the house” sound like a come-on, set against the ici­est of tight­ly syn­co­pat­ed arrange­ments, in the most 90s of music videos ever. (Con­trast it with the live ver­sion above, with P‑Funk’s own Bernie Wor­rell on key­boards, from Jonathan Demme’s Stop Mak­ing Sense.) Every cov­er of the song, and there are many, does its own thing. “The one con­sis­tent aspect,” Garvin writes, “is Byrne’s weird lyrics… because they don’t tell a sto­ry in a lin­ear sense, they can take on any vari­ety of mean­ings.”

Accord­ing to Byrne him­self, the song did take on added res­o­nance for him, per­fect­ly in keep­ing with the 90s rebirth of Tom Jones. “I didn’t real­ly know at the time,” he said in 1984, “but to me… it implies ecsta­t­ic rebirth or tran­scend­ing one’s own self…. In clas­sic psy­chol­o­gy, the house is the self. And burn­ing it down is destroy­ing your­self… And the assump­tion is you get reborn, like a Phoenix from the ash­es. See? It’s all there.” Indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When Joni Mitchell released Blue in 1971, she revealed her­self to the world as a poet with a hard-boiled inte­ri­or life. The album, writes Rolling Stone, chal­lenged the image many had of her as an inno­cent flower child. “The West Coast fem­i­nine ide­al” was a role “Mitchell hadn’t asked for and did not want.” Of her writ­ing of the album, she said in a 2013 inter­view, “They bet­ter find out who they’re wor­ship­ping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.”

Get real she did, shock­ing the men around her, some of whom she’d writ­ten about can­did­ly, includ­ing Gra­ham Nash, Leonard Cohen, and James Tay­lor, who played on sev­er­al tracks. She wrote about the heart­break of leav­ing her daugh­ter and rewrote the breakup song as a con­fes­sion­al on “Riv­er.” The album’s cul­tur­al impact, 50 years after its release, has much to do with Mitchell as a lone female pro­tag­o­nist in a male-dom­i­nat­ed indus­try. “Along with its roman­tic melan­choly,” Rolling Stone writes, “Blue was the sound of a woman avail­ing her­self of the roman­tic and sex­u­al free­dom that was, until then, an exclu­sive­ly male province in rock.”

We lis­ten to Blue now and hear the voic­es of lat­er gen­er­a­tions of singer-song­writ­ers, from Tra­cy Chap­man and Tori Amos to Phoebe Bridgers, who seized their own pow­er. By the time of Blue’s release, Mitchell had become a pow­er­ful voice of her gen­er­a­tion, pen­ning “Wood­stock” just the year before. “Blue is Mitchell’s first song cycle where­by all the songs inter­re­late in their themes of loss and trans­for­ma­tion,” writes Clas­sic Album Sun­days. “The album reflects the dis­il­lu­sion­ment and dis­en­chant­ment felt by a gen­er­a­tion dur­ing the clos­ing of The Six­ties.”

“It’s a descrip­tion of the times,” Mitchell attests. “There were so many sink­ing but I had to keep think­ing I could make it through the waves. You watched that high of the hip­pie thing descend into drug depres­sion. Right after Wood­stock, then we went through a decade of basic apa­thy where my gen­er­a­tion sucked it’s thumb and then just decid­ed to be greedy and porno­graph­ic.”

As if cap­tur­ing the feel­ings of her own per­son­al loss­es and those of mil­lions of oth­ers weren’t enough, Mitchell’s song­writ­ing and musi­cian­ship on the album are con­sis­tent­ly aston­ish­ing, each word mar­ried to a sus­pend­ed note, an unex­pect­ed chord voic­ing, a preg­nant breath. “My words and music are locked togeth­er,” she says. She proved on Blue that she was a tal­ent to be reck­oned with and nev­er under­es­ti­mat­ed. On the 50th anniver­sary of Blue’s release, Mitchell is releas­ing a five song EP, Blue 50 (Demos & Out­takes), which you can hear above (see track­list below).

1. A Case Of You (Demo) 0:00:00
2. Cal­i­for­nia (Demo) 0:04:00
3. Hunter (Out­take) 0:07:30
4. Riv­er (Out­take with French Horns) 0:10:25
5. Urge For Going (Out­take with Strings) 0:14:27

It’s a doc­u­ment of a dif­fer­ent album, one that might have includ­ed “Hunter” — a coun­try-like strum­mer  — and might have had french horns on “Riv­er,” per­haps the album’s best-known song and one of the most beloved Christ­mas songs of the past 50 years. Look for the next release cel­e­brat­ing a half-cen­tu­ry of Blue on Octo­ber 29th. Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968–1971) “will explore the peri­od lead­ing up to Blue,” notes her offi­cial YouTube, “through near­ly six hours of unre­leased home, stu­dio, and live record­ings.” Or, you could just lis­ten to Blue over and over. It seems to reveal some­thing dif­fer­ent every time.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heart­break, “Riv­er,” Became a Christ­mas Clas­sic

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Watch Joni Mitchell Sing an Immac­u­late Ver­sion of Her Song “Coy­ote,” with Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn & Gor­don Light­foot (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness