Remembering the World's Greatest

Jaco Pastorius passed away on Sept. 21, in 1987, just shy of his 36th birthday

(An excerpt from my book, JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius)

When Jaco was finally removed from life support, at 6 pm on September 21, his breathing stopped but his heart continued to beat for three more hours. During the agonizingly long wait, Jack Pastorius relieved the tension with characteristic levity. “Man, I knew Jaco had good rhythm, but this is ridiculous! The encore’s over, get the hook!”

During Jaco’s profoundly sad final moments, Jack cradled his son in his arms and crooned “Watch What Happens,” a tune he had performed on stage with Jaco’s Word of Mouth Big Band on a few memorable occasions: Let someone start believing in you/Let him hold out his hand/Let him touch you and watch what happens

Tracy was holding Jaco’s hand when he was officially pronounced dead at 9:25 pm. Also in Jaco’s room and the surrounding area at the time of his passing were his parents Jack and Stephanie, brothers Rory and Gregory and friends Randy Bernsen and John Sawinski.

Word of Jaco’s death was delivered to me in a 2 am phone call by bassist Jeff Andrews. All around the planet, Jaco’s extended family of friends and fans mourned the passing of “The World’s Greatest Bass Player.”

On September 24, I flew down to Fort Lauderdale to attend Jaco’s funeral. On the night of the wake at the Kalis Funeral Home on Dixie Highway, friends and relatives gathered to say prayers for Jaco. Flowers filled the room. In one corner there was a huge, exotic bouquet sent by Joni Mitchell. Propped up next to the closed casket was an arrangement of red carnations in the shape of a bass guitar, bearing the familiar Jaco slogan, “Who Loves Ya, Babe!”

One by one, mourners filed slowly past the casket. As the priest offered a prayer, a freight train rolled by outside along Dixie Highway, the sound of its lonely whistle filtering into the funeral home and then growing fainter as it sped away along the tracks. I immediately thought of the train whistle intro to “Barbary Coast” from Black Market…my introduction to the sound of Jaco Pastorius’ signature funky, muted bass lines. In that moment, it suddenly struck me. He was really gone! It was almost too much to fathom. As Bobby Economou later put it, “I still can’t picture him lying in his coffin. All that energy — where does it go? I just cannot picture him gone.”

The last one to walk by Jaco’s casket at the wake that night was his father, Jack. He paused for a moment, knelt down and said a prayer. He then banged out a brief conga solo on the coffin lid before saying, “Hey Jaco, we gotta go. Turn out the lights after we leave, OK?”

After the wake, I drove with bassist Jeff Berlin to a local nightclub called La T’s, where a few of Jaco’s musician friends paid tribute to him by jamming. Berlin, keyboardist Scott Brown and steel plans player Othello Molineaux played “All the Things You Are,” then Berlin made a moving speech about his fallen bass comrade before dedicating a stunning solo bass rendition of “Dixie” to Jaco. At the bar, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter sat drinking with Jack Pastorius. They all toasted Jaco’s memory.

Later, Jack got up to sing with the band. During a swinging rendition of “Watch What Happens,” he broke from his normally cool, Sinatra-influenced stage persona and yelled into the microphone, “That guy murdered my son!” Everyone in the place felt his anger.

Between sets, the club DJ played tapes of Jaco’s music. At one point, he cued up the hauntingly beautiful Zawinul ballad “A Remark You Made,” and the sound of Jaco’s fretless bass filled the room like a spiritual presence. Randy Bernsen looked at me and said, “Listen! We’ve still got him! His spirit is still here. It’s in his music! He’ll always be here.”

Jaco’s funeral mass on the morning of September 25 at St. Clement’s Catholic Church — where Jaco had once served as an altar boy — was a profoundly moving affair. Guitarist Bernsen, bassist Dave Wilkerson and drummer Rich Franks performed a gentle acoustic rendition of Jaco’s “Las Olas” during the consecration. During the Holy Communion, a nine-piece horn ensemble directed by Peter Graves played a Larry Warrilow arrangments of Jaco’s “Continuum.” Finally, those nine horns blended together on a lovely version of “Three Views of a Secret” as the pallbearers — Bernsen, Wilkerson, Charles Norkus, Peter Yianilos, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul — led the procession of mourners out of the church.

At Our lady Queen of Martyrs Cemetery in Lauderhill, we all stood in silence, reflecting on Jaco’s enormous talent and overwhelming torment. “Brilliant goods in a damaged package,” is how one mourner put it. As the priest gave his final bless, Jaco’s five-year-old twin sons, Felix and Julius, romped in the grass, oblivious to the somber proceedings; their striking resemblance to Jaco making the scene all the more poignant.

Ute and Othello Molineaux hugged each other as Jaco was lowered into the ground. Pat Metheny remained alone by the gravesite for several minutes, wiping away tears and shaking his head as he stared into the dark, lonesome hole.

After the ceremony, several close friends of the Pastorius family retired to Tracy’s house to reminisce about Jaco while listening to records that Stephanie Pastorius had brought over from her personal archives. Outside on the patio, Zawinul, Peter Erskine and Shorter toasted their fallen comrade with shots of Jack Daniels as they flipped through Erskine’s personal snapshot book from their Weather Report days with Jaco. As “Opus Pocus” played in the background, Zawinul threw back another shot and proclaimed, “He was a fucking genius, that guy!”