This three CD set is Miles Davis immediately after his 1981 comeback, his final period that ended with his death in 1991. It’s fair to say that there are as many opinions about this particular chapter of his life as there are Miles Davis fans. Most centre on what this music was not – it was not Kind of Blue, Miles Ahead, Birth of the Cool, Porgy and Bess, ESP or Miles Smiles – rather than what it was, music in the context of the times, influenced less by his guitar-heavy bands of the 1970s that were in tune with the rock era, but more by the smoother, electronica– based sounds of mainstream 1980s pop. We get to hear Star People, Decoy and You’re Under Arrest, not through the records themselves, but through the prism of the material that was left, as they say in the movie industry, on the cutting room floor. There are two key tracks on CD 1, outtakes from Star People that are of great interest, ‘Santana’ and ‘Celestial Blues’ where on both the signature sound of his 1980s band takes shape with the loping rhythm and chromatic bass line. CD 2 offers equal insight, with tracks all from You’re Under Arrest. It was here, as his own producer, that Davis embraced popular culture more fully, not just through its sounds, but through its songs – appropriating D Train’s ‘Something’s On Your Mind,’ Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time,’ and Michael Jackson’s ‘Human Nature.’ He also recorded Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ which does not appear on You’re Under Arrest but appears for the first time here, on the That’s What Happened compilation. ‘Time After Time’ (Cyndi Lauper loved Davis’ treatment of her tune) evolved into harmon muted feature for Davis, while Jackson’s ‘Human Nature’ became a kind of Davis anthem that, from the first notes (lifted entire from Jackson’s version), always elicited a roar from the crowd and these tracks, in particular, became every bit a Davis signature for his younger, 1980s audience as ‘Round About Midnight’ was to his 1950s and early 60s followers.

It was the breakthrough with audiences he was after, and by the end of decade, he was a bona fide superstar, lunched at the White House and the only man to have recorded with Charlie Parker and Prince, John Coltrane and Sting.