Jaco Pastorius died on September 21, 1987.

Guitarist Pat Metheny once wrote that “Jaco Pastorius may well have been the last jazz musician of the 20th century to have made a major impact on the musical world at large. He simply played his ass off, in a way that was totally unprecedented on his instrument, or on any instrument for that matter.”

Died tragically early at only 35.

Actually, I couldn't recall how he died so I looked it up - pretty shocking really, he turned up drunk at a club and got into an altercation with a bouncer, he was hospitalized for multiple facial fractures and damage to his right eye and right arm, and had sustained irreversible brain damage, dying later.

The guy who did it only got 4 months!

It appears that there might be more to the story. Jaco suffered from bipolar disorder in a time before the medicine we have now. I have several students who hold their lives together with the current drugs. Some have told me some really horrific stories about their younger days before these drugs.

There are some accounts that Jaco was having a serious episode of his disorder at the time of the altercation that led to his death. This certainly does not absolve the bouncer, that was a very light sentence. But, if you are not experienced with people who have the disorder it might lead to the conclusion that Jaco was just drunk. Before he went to that night club, Jaco had snuck on stage at a Carlos Santana and was thrown out by security.

This was a musical tragedy, and a health-care tragedy.

-Eric

I remember being knocked out by the sounds on the Weather Report album, "Heavy Weather", way back in '75. Jaco was huge in Weather Report and everything else he played in. What a musical gift he was.

Apparently he had been banned by that club, and broke in, then had an altercation with the bouncer. That might explain the short sentence for the bouncer, his obituary is still on the internet from 1987. What I didn't realize until now looking at some of these websites is he was living in a park penniless when he died.

This site has some neat things about Jaco, run by his second wife Ingrid:
http://www.jacop.net/homepage.html. Focuses mainly on the positive side of his life, good site to check out if you get burned out reading all of the ugly things that have happened to him.

Looks like no one knows whatever happened to his fretless bass. A couple years ago I remember coming across some forum discussing a few people who claim to either have it or know who does. Looks like no one can prove any of those claims, though.

I was lucky enough to see the Heavey Weather tour with Jaco on bass when I was a kid in Boston. Needless to say his playing had a big impact on me as a young bass player/drummer. It's a shame he's gone but he's musical contributions will live on!!

RIP Jaco!

If you go to the bassplayer tv site, you can see, hear that bass. It has been refinished, and is beautiful. However, that bass still has "that" sound... Will Lee, Victor Wooten and Victor Baily play and comment on the instrument.