Pat Metheny
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Introduction
Pat Metheny is one of the leading voices in the field of contemporary jazz, and had also made a great success in the fusion genre, written music for film scores and collaborated with most of the great jazz musicians of our time. He is regarded as creme a'la creme amongst musicians, and has a distinguished sound and an unique composition style.
Early Career
Pat Metheny (Patrick Bruce Metheny) was born on August 12, 1954, Lee's Summit, Missouri, U.S.A. (a suburb to Kansas City) He has an elder brother that play's the trumpet, which also Pat did from age 8. He switched to guitar at age 12, and progressed very fast. He states Wes Montgomery as one of his early influences, but horn-players like Ornette Coleman, Joe Henderson, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker was also a source of inspiration. At the age 15 he was already jamming with the top-notch players in Kansas City. Vibraphone-player Gary Burton saw the potential in the talented teenager, and Pat later joined Gary Burton's band.
After graduating from Lee's Summit High School, Pat moved to Florida in order to attend University of Miami. He studied just one semester before he was offered a position as a teacher, which he also took. He was teaching a short period before he was offered a teaching position at Berkeley College of Music. In Miami he also met Jaco Pastorius, whom he played with and became a close friend to until Jaco's death.
In 1974 he joined Gary Burton's band and stayed with him for three years. He replaced Mike Goodrich in the band, but no official records were made with the band. At the same time Pat jammed with Jaco and Gary Burton's drummer Bob Moses, and together with Paul Bley they made Jaco's debut-album just entitled "Jaco". The year after, a new label ECM, offered him to make a solo recording. This led to the milestone "Bright Size Life", which featured Jaco and Bob Moses, that is considered one of the finest jazz albums made in the 70's.
At the same time Pat also met Lyle Mays which he later co-formed Pat Metheny Group with and is his alter-ego in terms of the piano. The next album Pat recorded for ECM (who is best known for their "spacy" recordings) was "Watercolours" with Lyle May's and this album can be seen as the embryo to Pat Metheny Group. On the album Pat play's a lot of acoustic guitar to create an open an interesting sound.
Against the top
The first Pat Metheny Group
In 1978 Pat formed the first version of Pat Metheny Group with Lyle May's, Jaco's bass-protege' Mark Egan and drummer Danny Gottlieb. The debut-album just entitled "Pat Metheny Group" marks a beginning of a new style in the fusion genre, and is more "easy-listening" than "Bright Size Life", which is more for jazz connosieurs. The beats are more latin-like and both pop and folk influences can be heard along with a strong melodic approach. The most famous song from this album is probably "Phase Dance", which every jazz/fusion player at that time covered.
The sound of the first version of Pat Metheny Group is marked by Pat's use of two Eventide delay's and reverb to get an open sound as well as Lyle May's use of Oberheim & Prophet 5 synthesizer's in addition to the piano. Later on both of them started to use the Synclavier - a top-notch synthesizer at that time. Pat used it in conjunction with the first Roland guitar synths, which he still uses.
The follow up to the first album was the success "American Garage" from 1980, reaching #1 on the Billboard Jazz chart and even attended the Pop charts. The first song from the album "Cross the Heartland" has an almost pop-like atmosphere, which a lot of people seemed to like, not just jazz/fusion-musicians. The band then started to tour all over the world on a very tight schedule for the next couple of years.
Parallell Career's
At the same time Pat was working with his band, he had - unbelievable or not - time to make a solo release in 1979 called "New Chataqua", which featured himself on all guitars and basses with no other musicians involved. He was also making a record with the contemporary jazz group 80/81, as well as some touring the same years. The band incoorperated the late Michael Brecker, Dewey Redman and legend drummer Jack de Johnette. With this album Pat proved to the "core" jazz audience that he had'nt got "commercial", which he sometimes got critics for. He was also participating in Joni Mitchell's band on the highly acclaimed "Shadows and Light" -tour playing music by Charles Mingus. Another duo-cooperation with Lyle Mays apart from Pat Metheny Group resulted in the album "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls" from 1981.
Introducing latin music
The band released "Offramp" in 1982 with the introduction of a new line-up, except for Lyle Mays. Steve Rodby was playing the bass and Paul Wertico the drums. Along with the group was also Nana Vasconcelos, who played percussion and sang wordless vocals. The groups sound moved towards latin music which intensified even further when the album "First Circle" from 1984 was released. A double live-album was also released in 1983, containing all Pat's "hits" up til then, and showed Pat using Roland's guitar synth extensively as well as an awesome production.
Hitting Top 40
Pat Metheny/Lyle wrote the music for the movie "the Falcon and the Snowman" in 1985, and his group was playing at the soundtrack. Pat had for a couple of years beeing playing on some soundtracks, and were asked to do the complete soundtrack for this movie, which is a spy story featuring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. David Bowie performed the lead theme as well as getting credits for co-producing the soundtrack. The lead motif "This is not America", reached #32 at Billboard, and #14 in England. The soundtrack added even more importance to Pat's reputation as composer and presented him to an even larger audience.
Further explorations
Switching record company
In 1986 Pat recorded with his older brother Mike Metheny, a skilled Kansas City based trumpeter, an album (Day in -Night out) that reached #18 in the jazz charts. The same year Pat also got a chance to record with one of his role models Ornette Coleman, which produced the critical success "Song X", that has been re-released in this century, digitally mastered containing 6 previously unreleased tracks from the session.
Pat took his ideas about latin music even further on the next album "Still Life (Talking)" (1987), introducing percussionist Armando Marçal. Before the record was made, he switched record company after some disputes with Manfred Eicher (founder of the ECM label) about his artistic freedom. Pat signed a new record deal with Geffen Records, that was a part of Warner Records by that time, which Pat also changed to in 1997. (Pat was a cornerstone in ECM's business, saleswise. Ed. note.)
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The trio tradition
Pat had since the release of "Bright Size Life" always performed/recorded with different trio setup's, a band configuration which he seems to like a lot. Since he during the years has done a lot of teaching, the trio format has also been convenient in these situations. In 1983 he recorded "Rejoicing", which included legendary musicians Billy Higgins (drums) and Charlie Haden (double bass). Pat has on almost all trio recording's played a lot of "standards", which have kept him as a favourite player amongst the jazz connossieurs audience.
Related GMC Lessons
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See also
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