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Whether rock or rap, the famous pianist has always followed his curiosity. Today, the ever curious Herbie Hancock celebrates her 80th birthday.
10:51 a.m., April 12, 2020
Herbie Hancock love the rules, so you can break them. “I always like to discover new rules and then break them,” the jazz pianist recently told the British Guardian. “I look around me and see what has become a music convention. And then I think about how I can break it. This is how innovation comes about, which keeps me going.”
Even if Hancock, who turns 80 on Sunday, is often celebrated as the “King of Jazz”; jazz was never enough for him. “I always look for a way to develop myself, to take things apart and put them back together, and not just to do the same thing over and over again. That is my nature. I am very curious about nature, that was when I was a child.”
For more than half a century, the pianist has been one of the most successful jazz composers and performers. At the same time, on his more than 200 albums and countless concerts, he travels to classical music, folklore, rhythm & blues, rock, pop and rap. Ignore the criticism of the purists. “I have to be true to my own beliefs, that’s the only way to respect yourself.” This has already earned him numerous Grammys and even an Oscar. He is currently interested in the virtual reality and music of rapper Kendrick Lamar, for example Hancock recently the “New York Times”.
Advance in 1962
Herbert Jeffrey was born Hancock 1940 in an African American middle class family in Chicago as the son of a grocer and secretary and took piano lessons as a child. Shortly after, he gave concerts and made his breakthrough with his debut album “Takin ‘Off” in 1962. The song “Watermelon Man” published on it is still considered one of the most influential and important jazz pieces in history.
In 1963 he joined the quintet of the legendary Miles Davis. Back then he was “a real jazz snob”, a purist, he remembers Hancock. But since Davis heard it all, Jimi Hendrix, Silver Handyman, Cream, and the Rolling Stones also opened up. Hancock other influences, “because he wanted to be as modern and cool as Miles”. The curious jazz trumpeter Davis is for Hancock The “King of the Fresh”.
I was also terrified of commercials, movies, and television series. Hancock Not back. He composed the music for the action film “A Man Seeing Red” (1974) with Charles Bronson and received an Oscar for the soundtrack of Bertrand Tavernier’s jazz film “Round Midnight” (1986). In the mid-80s, he successfully connected to hip-hop with “Future Shock”. Most recently, he released the album “The Imagine Project” in 2010, based on John Lennon and bringing together stars like Seal, Pink, Anoushka Shankar, Dave Matthews Band and Juanes. He still likes to travel and is a regular guest in Vienna. He had already announced concerts for 2021.
But his curiosity did not always bring him anything good. In the 1990s, she also led him to crack addiction, as the practicing Buddhist admitted in his memoirs. “I wanted to see what everyone was talking about, so I tried. When I inhaled it for the first time, I knew I had made a big mistake,” he told NPR radio. Hancock he tries to hide his addiction, but he slides deeper and deeper. His wife Gudrun Meixner, whom he has married since 1968, and his daughter finally helped him.
After a stay in a rehab clinic. Hancock He has been free of his drug addiction for over 20 years, and can enjoy his life again. “I try to create every moment of my life correctly. And that’s exactly what jazz does.”
