Birthday Cheers to Billy Cobham

The iconic fusioneer, who recently turned 81, is still killing it after all these years

I can recall an evening at the Milwaukee Arena in 1973 (Friday, May 11, to be exact) when the molecules in my body were rearranged for all-time by witnessing the Mahavishnu Orchestra in concert for the first time. Some friends and I were psyched to see headliner Frank Zappa on his Apostrophe tour, performing riotous tunes like “Cosmik Debris,” “St. Alfonso’s Pancake Breakfast” and “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” backed by a great band featuring George Duke on keyboards, Ruth Underwood on mallet percussion, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin and Ralph Humphrey on drums. So pysched were we to see ol’ FZ doing his snide social commentary while flaunting outrageous guitar chops that we stopped off at Hoppe’s Bar to get shots of flaming aberguts (it’s a Wisconsin thing) before the gig. (I was 18. In Milwaukee, that was legal then). The idea of catching the opening band, an exotic fusion outfit called the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which had just released its second album, Birds of Fire, was purely secondary in our minds.

So there we were, seated inside the Arena, slightly tipsy, awaiting the Grand Wazoo himself, when suddenly the M.O. took the stage. The leader, dressed in all white and brandishing a wild double-neck electric guitar, asked for a moment of silence from the crowd before starting their first song, at which point some bonehead in the back row yelled out in one of those bellowing voices that carries throughout ballparks and concert halls:

BOOOOOOOGEEEEEE!!!!!

Welcome to Milwaukee, Mr. McLaughlin!

Suddenly, the silence was broken when the musclebound drummer, who looked like he spent more time pumping iron in the gym than praciticing paradiddles on the kit, began slamming a massive gong, signaling the intro to “Hope” and the thunderous, high-energy set to come. It was the beginning of my lifelong infatuation with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Mssrs. McLaughlin and Cobham.

The drummer was Panamanian-born, Bed-Stuy-bred Billy Cobham, who was a week shy of his 31st birthday then and just turned 81 last week. And although he had already gained widespread acclaim in the jazz world by then — he had gigged and recorded with the hard bop pioneer Horace Silver following a stint in the Army, appearing on 1968’s Serenade to a Sister, and subsequently appeared on a string of CTI recordings by the likes of George Benson (1968’s Giblet Gravy and 1972’s White Rabbit), Stanley Turrentine (1971’s Salt Song and 1972’s Cherry), Hubert Laws (1972’s Morning Star), Kenny Burrell (1971’s God Bless the Child) and Deodato (1972’s Prelude) — Cobham was relatively unknown to most of the rock fans in attendance at that Mahavishnu Orchestra show in Milwaukee 50 years ago. And yet, his powerful presence on stage, as he whipped up a whirlwind on the kit during their intense, high-energy set, was undeniable.

Those who had probed deeper already knew of Cobham’s appearances on such seminal jazz-rock albums as Larry Coryell’s 1970 Spaces (with John McLaughlin and Chick Corea) and Miles Davis’ groundbreaking Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson, released in 1970 and 1971, respectively. It was Cobham, in fact, who came up with the slamming backbeat alongside John McLaughlin’s slashing proto-punk guitar on the throbbing fusion anthem, “Right Off,” which took up one whole side of Jack Johnson. As John McLaughlin recalled in the liner notes to The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (which I penned):

“Miles went into the control room and began speaking to Teo (Macero, producer of the session). After 15-20 minutes we (the musicians) began to get bored. around that time I began playing a blues structure that I had been working on for Lifetime. It’s a boogie in E, really, with some funny angular chords. We never did end up playing it with Lifetime but it later came out as ‘The Noonward Race’ on the first Mahavishnu Orchestra recording (1971’s The Inner Mounting Flame). In the studio, I started playing it as a kind of shuffle. Michael (bassist Henderson) picked it up quick and then Billy (Cobham) jumped on the wagon and we hit a groove very quickly. And at that moment, Miles ran in the studio with the recording light on. He then went on to play some of the most inspired trumpet I have ever heard. He must have played for about 20 minutes, which I had never seen him do before in the studio. It was a situation where he just walked in and everything was happening already, and he played so fine. It was so spontaneous, such a great moment. That whole record was.”

Even earlier than his association with Miles, Cobham had participated in another seminal fusion band, Dreams, which was formed in 1969 by the songwriting team of guitarist Jeff Kent and bassist Doug Lubahn and included a horn section consisting of trombonist Barry Rogers, a teenaged Michael Brecker and his trumpet playing older brother Randy Brecker, who had played alongside Cobham in Horace Silver’s quintet in 1968.

The Dreams lineup was rounded out by guitarist John Abercrombie, keyboardist Don Grolnick and bassist-vocalist Will Lee. Their self-titled 1970 release on Columbia Records was a more adventurous version of popular jazz-rock horn bands of the day like Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago while their 1972 followup album, Imagine My Surprise, succumbed to commercial pressures from the major label.

It was shortly after Imagine My Suprise came out that Cobham left Dreams to form the Mahavishnu Orchestra with McLaughlin, keyboardist Jan Hammer, bassist Rick Laird and violinist Jerry Goodman. As Randy Brecker recalled (in my book Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker): "After Cobham left Dreams, we auditioned like 60 drummers, including Steve Gadd, who had just moved to town from Rochester and was still more of a jazz drummer. But we were looking for someone with some R&B roots in him too. We couldn’t find anyone to play like Billy. He stood alone in inventing that style. In the end, there weren’t enough gigs since the second record didn’t seel well. And we were all busy in the studios anyway, so that was it.”

Cobham and the Mahavishnu Orchestra would go on to record The Inner Mountain Flame on August 14, 1971, then Birds of Fire the following August, then the live Between Nothingness and Eternity (recorded in New York’s Central Park at the Schaefer Music Festival) in August of 1973. Some sessions from June of 1973, recorded at Trident Studios in London, were later discovered and released in 1999 as The Lost Trident Sessions. Cobham played his last gig with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in Detroit on Dec. 23, 1973, before the original members of the band would go their separate ways.

The drummer had already released his groundbreaking Spectrum in October of 1973, then following the split with Mahavishnu he made a series of recordings as a leader that included his old Dreams bandmates the Brecker brothers — Crosswinds and Total Eclipse in 1974, then the live Shabazz (recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival) and London’s Rainbow Theatre) and A Funky Thide of Sings in 1975.

I next saw Cobham in concert at Uihlein Hall in Milwaukee’s Performing Arts Center on March 27, 1976. It was the inaugural tour of his Billy Cobham-George Duke Band, featuring a 24-year-old hotshot guitarist named John Scofield and former Weather Report bassist Alphonso Johnson (Jaco Pastorius had replaced Alphonso in the WR lineup and would make his debut with the group on April 1, 1976 at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan).

I saw Cobham the following year, on Dec. 1, 1977, when he came to Uihlein Hall again, this time with the CBS Jazz All-Stars (Steve Khan on guitar, Tom Scott on saxophone, Alphonso Johnson on bass, Mark Soskin on keyboards), performing new blazing funk-fusion material that would later appear on 1978’s Alivemutherforya.

After moving to New York in 1980, I interviewed Cobham about his participation in Bobby & The Midnites, the band formed by Grateful Dead guitarist-singer Bob Weir that also included bassist Alphonso Johnson.

And here’s my interview with Cobham for a cover story in the April 1984 issue of Downbeat, entitled “Have Drums, Will Travel,” which also hinted at a reunion with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra:

I’ve seen Billy Cobham perform numerous times in different settings since this Downbeat interview was published over 40 years ago. There were memorable gigs like his Spectrum 30 tour in 2003 with Gary Husband on keyboards, Dean Brown on guitar and Lee Sklar on bass (he has subsequently done Spectrum 40 and Spectrum 50 tours!), as well as some very hip jazz trio gigs that he did at the Blue Note with alto saxophonist Donald Harrison and bass great Ron Carter (their swinging, interactive chemistry was documented on three recordings — 2004’s Heroes on Nagel Meyer Records, 2005’s New York Cool: Live at the Blue Note on Half Note Records and 2011’s New York Cool: This Is Jazz, Half Note).

I’m sorry that I missed Cobham's impromptu duo concert with John McLaughlin at the 2010 Montreux Jazz Festival, but I did catch him at the Blue Note in 2019 with his Crossroads Revisited project featuring Randy Brecker, guitarist Fareed Haque, bassist Tim Landers, keyboardist Scott Tibbs and electric bassoon monster Paul Hanson.

Cobham had a six-night run at the Blue Note earlier this year with his new band Time Machine, featuring trumpeter Randy Brecker, bassist Will Lee, keyboardist Oz Ezzeldin, saxophonist Brandon Wilkins and trombonist Marshall Gilkes. At 81, he’s still groovin’ with muscular authority on the kit, slamming with power-precision fills as only Billy Cobham can. And having Big Fun to boot!