Herbie Hancock: 'What I am is a human being. What I do is play music'

Sixty years ago, jazz giant Herbie Hancock's life was changed for ever, when he got wind Miles Davis was looking for him.

Although already a pianist making waves on the jazz scene, and with hit albums to his name, the chance to play in a Davis group was the big time in the early 1960's when the jazz trumpeter was at the peak of his commercial and artistic success.

Hancock's flatmate at the time, fellow jazz musician Donald Byrd, had also heard the rumour that Davis was looking for fresh keyboard talent.

"Donald Byrd, who was a great trumpet player actually, he's the one that found me in Chicago and started my whole career off," Hancock told RNZ's Nick Tipping.

"And he had heard those rumours too that Miles was looking for me. And I wasn't buying any of that. And so, Donald said to me, 'Look, when Miles calls don't tell him you're working with anybody.'

Hancock who was playing regularly with Byrd at the time was reluctant, he said.

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"I said I wouldn't do that to you Donald and Donald said, 'hey man, shut up. If he calls and asks you If you're working with anybody tell him tell him no.'

"And then he walked out of the room. Thirty minutes later, the phone rings. And it was Miles. He said, 'You working with anybody?' I said, 'No.'"

Hancock was duly summonsed to Davis' New York brownstone for a try out.

"Tony Williams [Drums] was there, Ron Carter [Bass] was there, George Coleman [sax] he was there too."

"There was some pieces of music on this piano in his recreation room. And he pointed to something he said, 'try that', I don't even remember what it was, just some music that was there. And he played two or three notes and then he threw his horn on the couch and ran upstairs he told Ron [Carter] he said, 'Ron you take over.'

"Anyway, we started going through these chords … and we started playing. I found out years later, that Miles threw his horn down and ran upstairs from his basement to I think his second floor. And he was listening on an intercom to us playing because he felt like his presence there was kind of intimidating us. He wanted to hear us freely, feeling free."

Davis, the bandmate in real life, was a warmer character than his reputation would have us believe, Hancock said.

"He gave us nothing but love all the time. He'd tell us some funny stories about Charlie Parker or Dizzy [Gillespie] or some other people. And it was great, great to be around him."

Hancock's career spans seven decades and he has won 14 Grammy awards. The composer of 'Cantaloupe Island', 'Chameleon' and his 1980's hit 'Rockit', is jazz royalty.

In his own autobiography Davis said of Hancock: "Herbie was the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I haven't heard anybody yet who has come after him."

Now Hancock is the elder statesman and has mentored generations of jazz musicians.

"That's the only way the music is gonna continue. You have to keep raising successes to carry the music forward into each successive generation. And share ideas, be encouraging to them. Listen to what they have to say and not just dictating to them all the time.

"It's very important to encourage their comfort to able to express themselves. And to be really a part of the conversation about whether it's the music that's being written, or some other kind of situation."

His own band, which he brings to New Zealand in October, is multi-generational.

"I joke about being the youngest man in the band, of course knowing full well I'm absolutely the oldest, and I really look forward to continuing to encourage young people."

His Buddhist faith has been the "umbrella" over his life for 50 years now, he said.

"I was chanting and I was thinking about how my life was doing really well. My career was going fine, I have a great wife and great daughter and I started to realise, wow, to my wife, I'm her husband, and to my daughter, I'm her father. And then I'm also a son and I'm a friend and I'm a husband, and a lot of different aspects besides being a musician.

"The only thing that that holds them all together is the fact that I'm a human being. Not the fact that I'm a musician. And that was a defining moment for me.

"So now if someone asks what are you? I don't say I'm a musician. I say what I am is a human being. What I do is play music."

Herbie Hancock and his band play Auckland's Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre on 8 October, followed by Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington on 9 October.