Bass Departure with Jaco

The very first distressed instruments I can recall are Rory Gallagher's guitar and Jaco Pastorius' bass. In fact, Jaco and his bass adorned an early GP cover before there were any bass magazines. Those were the days when GP had a bass column, written by Jeff Berlin.

This vid is an '84 Jaco performance in Japan. In many ways, Jaco was the Hendrix of bass. The song choice is odd-- the crowd is loving it though and must think he's playing "Jaco the Beautiful", I'm sure Jaco did. He was fond of telling people that he was the greatest bassist in the world. Tough to argue with him though-- cuz besides, ain't a good dog, don't wag his own tail.

Be sure to watch this clip to the very end and notice where the bass goes.