Jeff Berlin: “Look at Jaco Pastorius: clearly a genius, but misunderstood”

There is no other bass guitar player like Jeff Berlin. Educated, passionate, uncompromising and someone who has accompanied a stellar cast of artists throughout his career. “I’ve always played with guys who never sat still, it was all around me,” he says. "Michael Brecker never stopped practicing. I was in New York with Steve Gadd and he played and practiced, they all did."

And the importance of practice and study is where some people go wrong when they think about Jaco Pastorius. The myth is that Jaco was self-taught, a natural. The reality is a little more complicated. “Look at Jaco Pastorius," says Jeff. "Clearly a genius, but misunderstood about where his musical ability was developed. He was self-taught, but he also studied with a hundred different guys, and studied composition and different principles of playing. The myth that Jaco burst forth playing like that never happened. He worked hard to become what he became.”

It’s a sentiment that hints at the highly competitive musical environment of the time. “I never had a good groove, because I always wanted to play fast and play a lot of notes – which instantly turned off most people from using me,” he says.

Here’s a great clip of Jeff Berlin and Jaco Pastorius onstage in 1985 at Musician's Institute in Hollywood.

“Once that little light went off in my head, I went to groove, something that I never studied, but simply focussed on, because out of a pragmatic manner I wanted to play and I wanted to work. All I wanted to do was play like Brecker on the bass – which is an impossibility – but if I aimed at it from about 85 or 90 degrees, I probably hit it about 30. That was significant to me, it guided me to get better and better as a bass player.”

Jazz, a mystery to so many rock players, is the key to Jeff Berlin’s perspective on what makes great bass playing, and why learning some theory will benefit all of us. “Frank Zappa was an odd, strange, quirky, brilliant guy: he stopped a rehearsal we were doing once to talk about cheese. You know, what do you say? 

“I read his music and I practised it. I used to go to Steve Vai’s house so he could teach me how to subdivide it – because I never saw anything like it. I found a lot of Frank’s music was written and based on quarter notes. He would play things like 5, 7, 11, 4. How did I know? Because I was academically trained.”

Jeff goes on to name-check several iconic musicians who were his classmates at Berklee in the 1970s. “John Scofield was my classmate, Gary Burton was my teacher. I studied and played with Pat Metheny; Vinnie Colaiuta and Steve Smith were there studying drums. Bill Frisell was there. So what I learned from each of them is something that made me what I am today.”

Find information on all of Jeff Berlin's tour dates and upcoming releases at jeffberlinmusicgroup.com.