This version is all about intense energy, it almost reminds me of someone interpreting early Black Sabbath but on trumpet and Fender Rhodes, with the chops of these incredible musicians, such as Chick Corea and the British bass player Dave Holland, at the top of their game. Okay, so now we’re into the more psychedelic period, and the track I’m going to pick is a live version of Bitches Brew, from Live At The Fillmore, merged with The Theme, which is a classical ‘Rhythm Changes’ melody. Testament's Alex Skolnick (Image credit: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns via Getty) It was recorded in 1964, and you can already feel the influence of rock ‘n’ roll on this recording, and so it’s a perfect bridge between ‘classic’ Miles Davis and the later, Hendrix/psychedelic rock-influenced ‘rock’ Miles Davis. This is the last of the more ‘traditional’ period Miles songs I’ll pick, and to me it’s a pivotal point with Miles because he’s taking an early jazz standard and playing it in an early new way: it starts out as a ballad, the way it’s normally played, but then it just evolves into a very energetic, exploratory piece, going to places where no-one else had gone at the time. It’s actually tough to select a best track from this album – the title track is great, and So Near, So Far is beautiful – but I think Joshua is the stand-out.
This band, with George Coleman on saxophone and Victor Feldman on piano, was short-lived – Miles assembled his ‘classic’ quintet with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter soon after – but they just had so much chemistry, right across the album. It’s an up-tempo, high energy piece, and has a little bit of the feel of So What, but in the middle it changes to this very fast waltz, so it’s a very unique tune. In the 1960s, Miles had this terrific output, and several great bands, and this is a track from 1963’s Seven Steps To Heaven. I recently read For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway, which is about the Spanish Civil War, and Sketches of Spain was just the perfect background music for that. Being a guitarist, I had actually heard the original piece first, because it’s considered one of the essential classical guitar recordings, so I already knew the song, but I was very pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Miles had done it too. It’s very beautiful, and even though it’s played by a large modern jazz ensemble in New York, it incorporates the flavour of Spain wonderfully. Concierto de Aranjuez was originally a classical guitar concerto by the composer Rodrigo, and it’s very different from the rest of Miles’ repertoire. The last song on Kind Of Blue, Flamenco Sketches, serves as a bridge to Miles’ next album, which was Sketches of Spain, a collaboration with Gil Evans. Really you should own a lot more, but at least get that one, because it’s crucial. If you only ever own one jazz album, you should own Kind Of Blue. So What hasn’t aged at all, it doesn’t feel like old music, and when you listen to it, it will put you in a difference head space. It was a very ground-breaking recording at the time, because most of the jazz recorded up until this period had common chord progressions, mainly either the ‘Blues’ progression or what’s known as the ’Rhythm Changes’ progression, where chords move frequently, but here the chords were held for much longer periods of time, which had never been done in jazz and which influenced a lot of rock music too. This is the opening track on Kind Of Blue, and the album’s quintessential track. As a heavy metal guitarist playing fast is part of what you do, but Miles certainly had an impact on me in terms of trying to say more with less. His use of space is inspirational: there are plenty of musicians who can play faster than Miles and play more notes, but he could say more with less, and sound more powerful. And Miles really opened up so many doors for me and introduced me to so many other incredible musicians.Īs a listener, Miles has probably inspired me more than any other jazz artist: as a player I might be more influenced by musicians who’ve played with him – initially I was drawn in by guitarists such as Mike Stern and John Scofield and John McLaughlin and keyboard players such as Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea – but in terms of him being an open-minded musician going against expectations, Miles had a great influence. I’d just finished high school and Testament had already recorded our first album and as we were going into our second album I already felt like I needed to expand my musical knowledge and vocabulary: I knew I wasn’t just going to listen to hard rock and heavy metal for the rest of my life.