Herbie Hancock likes gizmos. Perhaps you remember his 1983 MTV hit "Rockit" in which robotic people and legs and bobbing bird heads danced through the mundanity of an apartment to a fusion of electronic notes and the scratching of a deejay. It hardly seemed like the creation of a jazz keyboardist who had once played with Miles Davis.
More like an engineering student, which Hancock was early in his life. "Rockit" was the inspiration of someone who likes to take things apart, see how they work, and re-assemble them in a new form.
"Miles, I consider my first mentor," Hancock says. "He is the one that really got me outside the box. It's actually built into the fiber of jazz to be outside the box." More...
Funny that Herbie still has the knack for creating a stir. Miles got credit for being a visionary with "Bitches Brew", but Herbie was deemed a sellout for "Head Hunters" (Thrust and Sextant were my favorites from that period).
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