For jazz fans this is a phenomenal recording from the quintet’s Sweetnighter tour in 1973.
Apparently the gig, at the legendary Lenox Music Inn in Massachusetts, has never been issued or heard before.
A year or two before this I saw Weather Report three times in a week at Ronnie Scott’s and interviewed Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter for Time Out. We were in an Indian restaurant in Soho.
They played three sets a night and had Sunday nights off and that was when Wayne meditated.
The interplay of five musical minds, the level of improvisation, was quite brain-boggling and ear-boggling. I’ve never heard music that was more exciting than that and never will.
Next time in London they played the New Victoria and I went with John Fordham, now The Guardian’s jazz critic. I said the concert “a mindfuck.” I had never used that expression before and have never used it since. I remember Richard Williams said Zawinul played too loud but I can’t remember whether Richard said that to us or wrote it in Melody Maker.
I didn’t see Joe or Wayne that year.
Next time I saw them was in their drsssing room at Hammersmith Odeon. The music had become heavier, riffier, more vulgar, almost stadium jazz. By then Wayne wasn’t into meditation. He was into gin.
Lovely guys and fantastic musicians. Joe, an Austrian, is into football.
Eric Gravatt, who played with them at Ronnie’s, was an amazingly gifted drummer. He went off to be an actor in Hollywood and was never heard of again.