When I first interviewed the late Wayne Shorter for Jazzwise a quarter-century ago, he was preoccupied with The Blair Witch Project, a maverick indie movie which at the time rivalled Titanic at the box office, despite the latter having 100 times the budget. This, and the fact that Blair Witch'simprovised ad hoc dialogue, camcorder and 16mm footage amused the composer of ‘Witch Hunt’ – ever on the lookout for realms beyond – while dodging the restrictions of culture brokers he termed “gatekeepers.”

Saint Peter, at the pearly ones, donned a hardhat when Mr Gone beamed up on 2 March this year, or more pertinently – Shorter was a devotee of Soka Gakkai Buddhism for 50 years and he maintained cosmic rhythm in a continuance of karmic energy – hurdling the gates entirely.

Shorter with the score of Iphigenia

With his crowning operatic achievement Iphigenia, Shorter smashed narrowed expectations of the black jazz musician’s oeuvre, yet he’d been stretching norms for decades, pushing extra air through clarinet to mimic trumpet in teenage swing days; testing hard bop boundaries with the ominous, spartan drama of The All Seeing Eye (1965); synaesthetically connecting with fellow visual artist Joni Mitchell; smelting jazz-funk, rock and sonic meteorology with Weather Report… on and on.

The influence assumed, given proximity, of Horace Silver and Benny Golson on his early compositions with Art Blakey’s Messengers, Shorter’s nevertheless startling originality was taken seriously by the Lion and the Wolff (as Shorter dubbed original Blue Note honchos Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff) who facilitated a generous clutch of intriguing releases concurrent with the saxophonist’s legendary tenure with Miles Davis (autumn 1964 to 1970).

Davis, the gatekeeper of hip, leant on Shorter for substantive compositional conceits, the two remoulding form (and time, with the invaluable assistance of Hancock, Carter and Williams) like the clay of Shorter’s childhood art experiments (qv, Live at the Plugged Nickel from 1965).

Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter in 1965

Industry gatekeepers were further nonplussed by the electrified eclecticism of Shorter with Joe Zawinul; yet again with a musical marriage to the evanescent saudade of Milton Nascimento, during the saxophonist’s mellifluous Brazilian dive. Columbia tastemaker Clive Davis initially decried Carlos Santana’s collaboration with Shorter and Miles alumni, yet that too went gold; thence the studio processed confections of Shorter’s late 1980s/90s forays which bagged a first Grammy with High Life (1995) and are populated with overlooked gems, the space-age ‘Forbidden, Plan-It!’ (a riff on one of Shorter’s favorite 1950s sci-fi movies) being an especially notable manifesto.

Mr Weird, in fact an enlightened man of pellucid logic, subsequently plunged headlong into plosive acoustic extemporisation/reinvention with Danilo Pérez/Brian Blade/John Patitucci, poking nominally at the minutiae of his back catalogue with continued projection towards the uncharted. Pianist Pérez, an expansive visionary himself, quickly synched with Shorter’s humanitarianism and feminism, the grander gambit above commercialism.

“He’d say, ‘wake up and dream!’ counseling us to be aware of our surroundings, the planet, our dialogue with the universe,” recalled Pérez, on the phone before a gig at Umbria Jazz Festival in July. “He wouldn’t accept reality as the ultimate reality, he looked to a new world where women had more space and called the shots with social justice issues.” The opera Iphigenia attempts to upend matriarchal myth-making and dispel tropes from the inside, also generating symbiosis between jazz trio and symphonic musicians. Shorter would score innumerable pages of manuscript in ink-pen, often while watching movies or TV. “He’d be composing in front of the latest bad news on CNN,” laughed Pérez, “and say, ‘I’m writing the antidote!’” Pérez and John Patitucci were moved when, at a memorial evening convened by producer Jeff Tang, he presented them with copies of the Iphigenia score with handwritten words of gratitude to his longtime associates, including a prophetic addendum: “There is something else coming down the road, soon.”

Wayner Shorter with Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorious in Weather Report, late 1970s

I called Shorter in the spring of 2022, as America eased out of the pandemic, soliciting quotes for a feature about Perez’s pan-global Panama Jazz Festival. In contrast to the somewhat gnomic and evanescent pronouncements of our first conversation in 1999, and though recently back from a waring dialysis session, Shorter’s cup was full of reminiscence and tangents about current events. What follows is the second installment of a lengthy, colourful chat, the first half published in DownBeat magazine, May 2023. Responses have been edited for clarity and concision.

The final interview

Wayne Shorter: I saw a book written by a French guy [Andre Malraux] called La Condition Humaine. Danilo shares that feeling that there’s something heavier - leave your ego at the door - something more profound, you were born a human before you became a musician, don’t forget.

Michael Jackson: Yes, it’s a broader mission than teaching the world to sing, bettering society through opportunities across the arts and sciences, unlocking possibilities.

WS: I met Danilo’s piano teacher in Panama and she was joyful that he plays the way he plays and didn’t have to pursue becoming a classical recital artist. He heard Bird and Dizzy, not just other pianists, was listening to other instrumentalists. I’d tell Danilo, whenever Bud Powell was summoned to play in a place in North New Jersey and he couldn’t make it, he called Walter Davis. I saw the way Davis played piano and I can see that in Danilo too; they didn’t play the same but knew they had information that freed them from asking questions “how do you do this, how do you do that?” “What did you mean by this?” “What did you write down here?” “How should I….?”

MJ: Ineffable somethings…

WS: Miles Davis would check you out if you asked too many questions, just do what you wanna do. Danilo and I talk about how classical pianists played with a lot of sugar. When Frédéric Chopin was playing cafés, his music teacher would say, “there’s a lot of food in what you’re doing, you’re playing and the poison is coming, but you gotta say something, unite the people.” In the library I read a lot of stuff when I got into music, I’d stay in there until closing, on the floor way in back, reading the letters of Chopin, Georges Sand; stuff about Beethoven, the Eroica and how difficult it was. Did you know Beethoven took eight years to start the theme for his Second Symphony? He kept changing it, like Gustav Mahler with the fourth movement of his Second Symphony, Leonard Bernstein talks about that.

Wayne Shorter with John McLaughlin, 1990s

MJ: You were a bookworm who contracted earworms...

WS: The quartet went to a Buddhist library in Japan where they had a small piano that Beethoven taught children on. They had over 50 composers’ piano rolls from Germany. We heard Strauss playing the piano. He made the roll before he died, the keys moved faultlessly and I said, "yeah man, then Strauss didn’t make any mistakes". We listened to another, and I saw tears from Danilo’s eyes. He said, “That was Claude Debussy man, that was Claude!”

MJ: Honour roll, so to speak.

WS: In the Quartet, we’d discuss all kinds of things… a couple times, when people saw us onstage for the first time they’d say, “who’s the leader?” Even though they saw my name ‘Wayne Shorter Quartet’. That happened the last time I played with Miles at that place in Greenwich Village – great place, upstairs, downstairs and down below… Sidney Poitier and the actor that played Lawrence of Arabia came by…

MJ: You mean the Village Gate and perhaps Peter O’Toole?

WS: Yeah, Peter O’Toole, the Village Gate.

MJ: My aunt Heather had a night of flagrante with Peter O’Toole, met him at the Coburg Pub in Leeds, they were checking some jazz.

WS: Haha, really? Well (Poitier and O’Toole) were in the place. Miles booked the evening and got Richard Pryor to do a stand up. Downstairs was [the revue] Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well in Paris, and on the upper floor was Japanese pianist Toshiko Mariano. One night we played someone asked about our band which was Chick Corea, Miles Davis, myself and Jack DeJohnette… the bassist, this is the problem with dialysis, memory lapse… his wife just died, a good man… anyway from the audience came the word “which one is Miles?” Because we didn’t wear suits anymore – I had a Robin Hood costume on with one brown shoe and a black shoe and Chick had two sets of drums on the stage, he had brought his own kit. Jack was wearing some 'McArthur Park' stuff, like a flower child, someone who’d been protesting 24-hours a day eating nothing but grains. Miles was dressed like Jimi Hendrix, haha.

MJ: You didn’t like the idea of a de facto leader in your quartet with Danilo, Brian and John either, did you?

WS: I knew John first (he plays basses on Phantom Navigator, 1987) and Terri Lyne Carrington came to play when she was 19 (she was 21 when she first performed with him at London’s Wag Club). She introduced me to Danilo. I’ve been ill but the group with Brian has had plenty of opportunity to go out as a trio and do things, but Danilo says we’re a family. There’s no ‘somebody is this and somebody else takes care of payroll.’ Miles would say: “Cannonball took care of the payroll, haha, and my horn.” Miles would leave his horn inside the piano and when the club emptied, Cannonball would pack it up, carry it for Miles.

MJ: Cannon took care of a lot of business, he was an A&R man too.

WS: He taught at Florida State University, and his brother Nat did too. Joe Zawinul played with them for quite a while, he had that hit (sings ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’ in a gravelly voice), but Joe also played with Dinah Washington. That’s the stuff me, Brian and Danilo talk about, “How did you and Joe meet?” “What was Dinah Washington like on the bandstand?” I’d say, “She was really something!”

MJ: Miles knew how to delegate and filter, eh?

WS: Miles had a sign outside the doorway of his house that said [in the gruff voice of Davis], “if you have no official business here, don’t ring the (he had all these comic book cuss words, moons and stars etc) - ‘zuddezuddezuddezud’ bell!”

MJ: Your impression of Miles is en pointe.

WS: Like Art Blakey [spot-on gruff Blakey impersonation] said, “If you don’t act right, I’ll knock you into next week!” Blakey was talking to somebody, behind the Apollo theatre onetime and he’s angry. Lee Morgan is standing next to him and I’m thinking, "Hey, I wonder why he’s so angry?" There’s a guy standing way across the street and Lee said, “Hey man, Wayne, Art is shouting to some stranger over there cussing him out, but he’s angry at me!”

MJ: The problem with longevity is you outlive many of your running buddies. Who are you still in contact with? You talk to Sonny?

WS: Rollins? Oh yeah. We were playing at Duke University onetime, and Sonny called and that’s before he had to stop playing. He said [uncanny, pitch-perfect Sonny Rollins impersonation], “you guys gotta keep on doing what you’re doing now.” Haha!

MJ: That’s a bang on impression of Sonny, it’s as though he entered the conversation!

WS: This is a drag about the Russian invasion [of Ukraine], eh?

MJ: Having been in the army, what do you feel should be done? Putin has manoeuvered to make it possible for him to stay in power until 2036, longer than Stalin. He wants to be written up with that record.

WS: I always thought Putin wanted to be Yul Brynner. This is his way of being a movie star.

MJ: Killing people who are essentially the same as you is not to the taste of the average person.

WS: You said something very important. When they talk about racial prejudice, I ask, "Why would a person kill another person who looks like you?" People think they are superior because they look different, but that shows that that’s a lie. A person will do wrong to someone who looks exactly like them, not because they are darker, or Asian-looking, or African, that doctrine instilled in this country some 200 years ago, against the Bible, and had the Bible work for it too. University students question why black kids are still shooting each other, they should ask that question of themselves… We’re not gonna have a perfect world, but a world where most of the people will pull slow ones along, question the reason to kill… Because I’m in poverty? Because you take the second amendment, my right to own a gun and I go hunting? You own a gun you don’t have to think. So this is [renowned architect] Frank Gehry’s concept of 'optimistic chaos', how can we get out of the pandemic – I call it damn panic! Through struggle and chaos, we find the elements for survival. But if everything is apple pie and cream, it’s close-minded, rather self-centered.

MJ: It’s a bit like your Emanon graphic novel, the concept of that and NoName being this force that goes in…

WS: And what you think is ugly you turn it inside out. It’s a good practice to turn every sentence we say inside out, see what happens.

MJ: Rastafarians do that, flip terms, “oppression” becomes “downpression,” “understanding” becomes “overstanding” or “innerstanding.”

WS: The person who’s arguing against you, turn what they say front-to-back – everything falls in a different place. When you say something backwards, there’s discovery in there. How are you? You are how? Not that simple but when you get deeper into it, I never thought of that, you’ve been going against yourself!

MJ: Last time I saw you was backstage at the Chicago Symphony Center. A Tuskegee airman [a group of African- American military pilots and airmen who fought in World War II] was at the concert and you were preoccupied with that.

WS: I know one of the daughters of the Tuskegee airmen, I have a big book she gave me from her father. He’s on the first page, painted giant murals they have in Washington DC, of black pilots who taught the first jet fighters. Frank Gehry has a big piece on a wall that’s from the Eisenhower era, it’s about humanity, all inlaid gold. He had to fight to get it… Jessie Coleman, she got her pilot’s license two years before Amelia Earhart, she’s black and flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, the French Air Force unit escadrille N 124 during the First World War; it was composed largely of American volunteer pilots. It was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolutionary War. Coleman's story is just coming out now, something to think about, not about the black/white thing but what’s been under-covered, denied historically, what everybody can be proud of.

MJ: What do you feel about Black History Month as a concept?

WS: That’s a start. I don’t think it’s a finish. It can be criticised, but I think it’s gonna morph into something more spread-out information-wise, into a history of humanity, where it should be.

MJ: How is Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica, you worked on the music for Iphigenia and jammed round there, right?

WS: Yeah, we were living there for three months, all of us. He invited us, Esperanza Spalding, myself and my wife. That’s the first house he had built for his wife, Berta. Esperanza was upstairs and I was downstairs. It’s a landmark, people stopping by, taking pictures. They protested when he started building that house: “Hey! yada yada..!” But now…

MJ: There’s a link with your perception of works being in constant evolution, since the Gehry Residence, much to the irritation of neighbors, looks as if it’s perennially under construction. Preserving the original 1920 colonial house, he built this optimistic chaos on the outside if you like. It’s kinda like your career, this straight-ahead pedigree, pickled within a stratospheric exterior.

WS: It’s almost like the rehearsal, the phrase I’m thinking of, ‘how do you rehearse the unknown?’ People try and stop the unknown from being rehearsed by filling it up with some old-time bullshit. The fear of the unknown.

MJ: But what of your own canonical works, how will that fit with your opera, when it enters the repertory?

WS: They’re talking about making a record. We have the producer with us, his name is Jeff Tang, he’s American Chinese, he worked 11-14 years with the Metropolitan Opera people and he’s very young. He’s working on a thing that’s coming in, he’s gonna see what’s worth pursuing. We’ll see what we’re gonna do. We’ll be working together with Esperanza on something new, we’re going to keep going. Hey I gotta go!

MJ: Very much appreciate your time and take care of yourself, OK?

WS: You too – and beware of the big bad wolf!

This interview originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe today

The Symphonic Music of Wayne Shorter will be performed as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival on 19 November at the Royal Festival Hall: efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk