Tag Archives: Miroslav Vitous

Remembering Weather Report’s 1972 Tour with Santana

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So in keeping with my “fifty years ago today” theme, I should have written this post in mid-December. Oops! Still, it’s worth highlighting these unique gigs, even if a month late, so here goes.

In December 1972, the rock group Santana was fresh off a 19-concert, 27-day jaunt across Europe when it returned to the United States for a short tour that kicked off in New Orleans on December 9. At the time, Santana was hugely successful commercially—its previous two albums had hit #1 on the commercial charts—and it had just released its fourth studio album, Caravanserai. That record was a departure from Santana’s previous work, emphasizing improvisation and open-ended structures. In that endeavor, Carlos Santana and his musical partner Michael Shrieve were influenced by “all sorts of funk and jazz stuff,” but especially Miles Davis, Weather Report and Herbie Hancock. So a concert pairing with Weather Report wasn’t completely outlandish even though Weather Report was still essentially an avant garde jazz group at this point. And given that both were signed to Columbia Records, it was probably welcomed by the label.

I have contemporaneous confirmation for four shows: New Orleans; Dallas; Lubbock, Texas; and Tuscon, Arizona. A website visitor remembers a show in San Antonio, Texas, and there may have been one in El Paso as well. They were arranged by Bill Graham, the San Francisco–based promoter who was an early supporter of Santana’s, and who accompanied the troupe on this tour. (Brian Risner remembers him always being first off the airplane and immediately on the pay phones, conducting business.) When Graham asked Santana who he would like to have as the opening act, it took him “less than a second” to say Weather Report.

Santana was especially enamored with Wayne’s playing, and he and other band members would listen to Weather Report’s sets from the side of the stage each night. However, it wasn’t the happiest of tours for Weather Report. They got about 45 minutes of stage time in front of crowds that weren’t there to see them, and the response could be rather rude. Even Carlos found it uncomfortable when people would scream “Santana” while Weather Report was playing, as he related in his autobiography, The Universal Tone. “I wanted to go onstage, grab the mike, and say, ‘Hey, shut the fuck up! This is Weather Report—this is Wayne Shorter. You’re embarrassing me!’” He thought that maybe Santana could open the shows instead, but Graham dissuaded him of that idea, explaining, correctly, that people would leave as soon as Santana was done.

I have one review from these shows (from Tucson) and it confirms the audience’s attitude toward Weather Report.

The unknown and the well-known—that’s what it was at the Community Center Arena last night. Santana and Weather Report. Who has ever heard of Weather Report? Well, now Tucson has. They weren’t well received at all and it’s difficult to say why. I’m sure they won’t be forgotten.

None of Weather Report’s five men spoke a word—not even to introduce their songs, if that’s what you call them.

It was very free-form music, the success of which depends upon how well the musicians can interact with one another spontaneously. All of this added up to a set pervaded with subtle, fleeting, morsels of music followed by tense moments of waiting for them to do it again. I waited gladly, but “boos” could be frequently heard between numbers along with the cheers of the few but vociferous devotees.

Maybe the day will come when teenagers can trust a group with a balding piano player.

After that show, Santana recalled going up to Wayne and finding him “a little cool to me. I could tell that opening for Santana was not his favorite experience.” Nevertheless, Wayne took away some lessons that he recalled 35 years later in a JazzTimes article by George Varga.

There was a big snowstorm [in Lubbock]. And even after the storm let up a little and we went to the venue, we didn’t see any cars in the parking area, just a few buses. Then we went inside and the place was packed! We, as Weather Report guys, kind of realized, “People will get here super-early, even in a snow storm, to hear Santana.” This kind of affectionate crowd, with that degree of dedication, was something we didn’t see in a straight jazz-oriented setting.

Beyond the music, I could see in Carlos’s eyes and even in the attitude of the guys in the band that there was a humanistic approach to almost everything they did and were doing. I noticed that they were not like a band, but like a family. And I just couldn’t help but see this tremendous, reciprocal respect from Carlos to the band and from the band to Carlos. Of course we’d heard about him from Woodstock. But when we signed with Columbia Records, Carlos was the number one record-seller. Where Carlos was a challenge for us was to try to achieve that kind of audience, to gather that kind of audience in those kinds of numbers, to hear what we were doing. Carlos’s fame, audience-wise, ignited our imaginations to see if we could do that our way and accomplish that kind of audience recognition. We considered our music [to be] storytelling and almost very visual.

Another byproduct of this tour was the friendship that developed between Miroslav Vitous and Santana bass player Doug Rauch. The latter introduced Miroslav to former Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico, and the three of them would jam at Errico’s house in the San Francisco Bay Area. This would eventually lead to Errico joining Weather Report in June 1973.

The day after the Tuscon gig, everyone took a charter flight to San Francisco, where Graham gave Weather Report two more gigs at Winterland, opening for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention the first night and B.B. King the second night. The San Francisco crowd seemed more receptive to the band than those of the Santana tour. Philip Elwood, the longtime music writer for the San Francisco Examiner, wrote that Weather Report was “the first new-sounds, or ‘jazz,’ group to have ever gotten a Winterland rock crowd really turned on.” The band turned in “a perfectly beautiful short set. Their ability to indicate rhythmic integrity and use dynamic surprise to perfection made their music exciting while still artistically valid. . . . If you are going to Winterland tonight be sure to hear Weather Report. Incredible.”

Weather Report performed with Santana at least one other time, at the Cleveland Coliseum in 1976. John McLaughlin’s Shakti was also on the bill. (Weather Report and Shakti did a number of joint concerts that year.) Over the years, Wayne and Santana also performed at several benefit concerts and a friendship developed, culminating in them touring together in 1988. Their performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival tour is preserved in CD and DVD form (Live At The 1988 Montreux Jazz Festival by the Carlos Santana–Wayne Shorter Band). And of course, one other Weather Report–related Santana connection is that he played on Weather Report’s final album, This Is This, effectively substituting for Wayne, who had already begun his post–Weather Report career and was unavailable for all but a cameo on that record.

Could John McLaughlin Have Been a Charter Member of Weather Report?

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In my book, Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report, I run down some of the musicians who seem to have been considered for Weather Report—or for whatever band Joe and Wayne were planning for themselves until they hooked up with Miroslav Vitous to form Weather Report.

One name I didn’t include is guitarist John McLaughlin, even though he had stated in a 2017 interview that he declined an offer from Miroslav to join Weather Report because he was intent on forming the Mahavishnu Orchestra. When I asked Miroslav if this jibed with his recollection, he wrote back saying, “Is possible that that happened but now I don’t remember it.”

Last month, in an interview published in JazzTimes, McLaughlin repeated the story with the pretty much the same details. In both cases, McLaughlin recalled how Miles Davis gave him the nudge he needed to establish his own band. It came in 1970, when McLaughlin was a member of the Tony Williams Lifetime. At one point Miles took in a Lifetime gig in Massachusetts (probably in April 1970 when Lifetime performed at a weekend festival at Tufts University). Afterwards, they were chatting backstage.

“I was sitting in the band room with Miles in a club just outside of Boston,” McLaughlin remembered. “We had just finished a gig and I played like shit. I was apologizing to him, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ A few seconds later he said, ‘It’s time you formed your own band.’ That was the last thing I expected to hear from Miles, but he was the most honest person I ever met and I took everything he said so seriously. I thought, ‘If he thinks I can do it, I’m going to do it.’”

Of course, by this time Davis and McLaughlin were well-acquainted, with a history going back to February 1969, when the guitarist famously accompanied Davis in the studio for the In a Silent Way sessions. Though McLaughlin never became a member of Davis’ stage band, he continued to record with the trumpeter throughout 1969 and 1970, most notably for the albums Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson.

Meanwhile, McLaughlin and Miroslav had also become friends and they were frequently part of the same recording sessions. McLaughlin performed on Miroslav’s 1969 album Infinite Search, and both played on Wayne’s album Super Nova, also recorded in 1969. The next year, McLaughlin and Vitous played on Larry Coryell’s album Spaces, and McLaughlin also recorded some experimental tracks with Miroslav that became part of the bassist’s album Purple. Furthermore, McLaughlin, Zawinul and Shorter all knew each other from playing on many of the same Miles Davis sessions, so it wouldn’t have been at all surprising for any of them to reach out to McLaughlin to see if he would be interested in joining their band, or vice versa.

And that’s how McLaughlin remembers it. “I had gotten close with Miroslav Vitous,” he told JazzTimes. “I asked him to join the band [which became the Mahavishnu Orchestra] but he said, ‘We’re making our own group with Wayne [Shorter] and Joe [Zawinul]’—which of course became Weather Report, one of the best bands ever! Miroslav said, ‘We want you in our band, John.’ But I was under orders from Miles to form my own band!” The “orders,” of course, being Davis’ insistence that McLaughlin start his own band.

Though nothing came from each other’s overtures, Miroslav was instrumental in connecting McLaughlin with Jan Hammer. McLaughlin continues the story: “So I asked him about other keyboardists and he said, ‘Jan Hammer. He’s a great pianist.’ I said, ‘I never heard of him.’ Miroslav said, ‘He’s out playing with Sarah Vaughan.’ I thought, ‘If he’s playing with her, he’s no slouch. He’s got to be swinging!'” Miroslav had known Hammer since they were both teenagers in Czechoslovakia, where they formed the Junior Trio with Miroslav’s older brother Alan, who played drums. The group was a bit of a sensation, and both Hammer and Miroslav eventually made their way to the States. McLaughlin wound up hiring Hammer for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, where Hammer established himself as a leading proponent of the Rhodes electric piano and the Moog synthesizer.

Melody Maker, Jan. 19, 1974.
If the idea of John McLaughlin as a charter member of Weather Report doesn’t sound odd enough, how about this: In January 1974 (right after recording Mysterious Traveller), Melody Maker reported “Weather Report’s new album also includes a few keyboard appearances by Jan Hammer, late of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.” Then in April, Melody Maker ran another short item regarding a proposed Weather Report spring tour of Europe that didn’t materialize. It includes this perplexing nugget: “It is also believed that former Mahavishnu Orchestra keyboard player, Jan Hammer, will be joining the band, although at press time this remains unconfirmed.”

Melody Maker, Mar. 2, 1974.
Huh?

Forty-seven years later, it still remains unconfirmed. I actually asked Miroslav about this. His response: “I have never heard about anything like this and believe me I would have known this. Do you really think Joe Zawinul would take a chance to have Jan Hammer come in and play? Joe would never do that.”

I also asked Hammer’s long-time manager Elliot Sears the same question. Jan Hammer “would never even have entertained the thought of performing live with them,” Sears wrote me. “I have no idea how Melody Maker got that impression. Strictly bad reporting based on unsubstantiated rumors.”

So what to make of the Hammer rumor? The best I can come up with is that perhaps, given their long history and friendship, Miroslav and Jan talked about doing something together after Miroslav was ousted from Weather Report at the end of 1973, when the Mahavishnu Orchestra also dissolved. Both were without a regular gig for the first time in years, and it seems likely that they could have talked to each other informally. Perhaps a reporter at Melody Maker got wind of it and misconstrued the details. That said, the idea of anyone other than Zawinul playing keyboards in Weather Report is far-fetched, indeed.