Miles To Go: The Lost Years: An Intimate Memoir of Life on the Road with Miles Davis

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[Miles Davis’s band, 1973, was ...] horrifically loud. I was used to playing at high volume in the various bands I'd been with--but this was a whole different story. Miles had a volume pedal on the floor for his trumpet, which he mostly employed to crank up the level when he used the mute. He had a pickup on his mouthpiece and a cord ran from it, through the pedal and into a powerful Acoustic 260 amp with two 15-inch speakers and a treble horn. There was another 260 for the keys, as well as one each for Reggie [guitar] and Balakrishna [electric sitar]. Michael ran his bass through two Acoustic 360 bass amps. When you added the sax, drums, tablas, and congas, all going through the P.A. and also coming through the monitors, the volume on stage was truly awesome. It's no surprise my hearing is shot today, after all those years of ear-shredding decibels.

Besides being loud, the band played at a frenetically fast tempo. The result was a sort of musical assault on the audience. The ones who seemed to really get what was going on were the young white kids, in their late teens and early twenties, the same kids who were into Sly and Hendrix. These were people who loved sound as much as they loved music. They'd get stoned before the concert, then sit there and be floored at what was coming at them. They didn't carry all that baggage from the past. Unlike the middle-aged jazz fans, who were disappointed at not hearing the familar ballads, these young people didn't care about owning the "old" Miles.

excerpt from 'Miles To Go: The Lost Years: An Intimate Memoir of Life on the Road with Miles Davis' pp. 14 (271 words)

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