Listen to This: Miles Davis and "Bitches Brew"

With the new sparse backdrop in place along with its stripped down harmonic framework, the band could begin building up. The tune is jam packed with group interplay, complex counter rhythms, textures, and good spirits. Despite the difficulties getting this piece going, it really shows the band at its coziest, with all the soloing and comping feeling in the zone. The slow funk vibe worked especially well for McLaughlin, who is at his feistiest here. For all the chomping, sometimes a bit too reserved, pocket playing he did throughout day one, he finally bust outs with barrages of virtuosic lines interspersed with good ol' gut play.

Miles, too, is in great form. Once the hard funk groove kicks things off, Miles is on top of it, forming an immediate alliance with the rhythm section. Reaching back to his St. Louis honky-tonks, he's all blues here. He takes his time before McLaughlin is called in followed by more virtuosic play by a level headed Shorter. Corea decides to mix things up a little bit when it's his turn by disrupting the hypnotic groove with a frantic chord sequence turning "Voodoo Down" into a frenzy. The percussionists get rattled and respond with a dramatic outburst. Even the bass line gets miffed and joins the cacophony. After enough was enough, the rhythm section brings the groove all the way back down to zero as Davis starts his second solo with a new temperament. He begins with a quiet, creeping, twisted version of the theme, awakening the rhythm section, who bring the groove up a few more decibels. Miles decides to test the waters and commands the final climax of the piece, by launching a shrilling trill, summoning the intensity to rise. His phrasing remains bluesy and slurred, but now he orders the band with his screeching dynamics, similar to Corea's keyboard solo earlier. The eruption is brief as Davis draws back with a long fade away, pulling the rhythm section with. Some seconds later, Davis has another mood swing and initiates a new groove with a series of detached, choppy notes, which inspires a playful syncopated exchange with the rhythm section. Miles briefly reintroduces the main theme as the rhythm section fades out to end the piece.

Day Three -"Spanish Key"

By the last day, things were running smoothly. The band had finished master takes of "Sanctuary," "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down," and "John McLaughlin" along with some alternative takes that Macero and Miles could chew on later. They had also finished all the parts for the title track, which was now ready for post-production. All that was left was "Spanish Key" and "Pharaoh's Dance." "Spanish Key" was the first attempt that morning and was more or less a slam dunk. The piece was already road tested with the "Lost Quintet" and did not see a great amount of revision when Davis entered the studio with it. The band appeared to have some morning stiffness when the early attempts were made. On take one, Miles seems uncomfortable with the rhythm section and flubs a note on the melody. He brings the group to a halt and asks, "Can we break that up more?" They work through some sound tests and a few false starts before they nail two good takes including the master.

"Spanish Key" feels like a road piece. Showing his James Brown swag, Miles loved to use musical cues to incorporate various changes during sets. This carried over to the studio that day, where at least five musical cues are used to signal key changes in "Spanish Key." This was not an easy task for the crew since none of them were identical:

• There is a long scalar passage followed by a keyboard passage which signals the key change to G.
• Miles plays a shorter phrase, heard at 1:37 and on one of the rehearsals during Shorter's solo on August 21 at 6:23.
• There's a cue of Davis playing a higher register fragment of the melody which brings the key to D.
• When Davis performs the opening measure of the melody, the band jumps to the home key of E.
• Finally, there's a jagged run Davis performs at 2:43 that shifts the piece to E, flaring up a Spanish tinge (E Phrygian scale is precedent here).

Everything is made to order here. No section has a specific length, meaning that a musical cue of any kind could come at any time, making "Spanish Key" a tight-rope act.

The piece is a driving, jet black funk. Davis's opening lines aren't anything screeching; he stays quite melodic, and somewhat lurking throughout. The band is content with the groove that's percolating and pretty much leaves Miles to his own business. Things get shaken up in a jiffy when the band modulates to D, Davis begins to react more strongly to the rhythm section, unleashing a halo of shrieking lines, which intensifies the groove further. Maupin's ominous bass clarinet rears its head, initiating a call and response to Miles's spiraling, out-of-control lines. Once Miles has had enough, he announces a musical cue bringing the piece to G, and everything gets back to business as usual as the groove motors on. Corea and McLaughlin are heard trading riffs at one another until the keyboard cue chimes in the next key change bringing Shorter up. Shorter takes his time with this one, blowing through a few key changes, seemingly happy and exploratory with the underlying groove and harmony. His solo unveils a lot of personality throughout—from bluesy, to playful, to somber, to downright esoteric. Davis beckons the next cue, a little more sternly, resulting in another amped up exchange between Corea and McLaughlin followed by the trumpeter's next solo.

During his second go around, the interplay between the leader and the rhythm section continues, but now Miles becomes more tyrannical. He tries to muscle out the drowning 4/4 funk beat in the rhythm section with a barrage of triplets, before mellowing out the band with a series of smooth, quiet tones. The rhythm section wants the groove back and starts gaining intensity, but Miles won't let go. He decides to answer back with some heavier jabs and some snarling trills, but this doesn't last long. At around 12:50, Davis begins playing long, lush, tones, followed by a series of more cooling trills, which casts a calming spell on the band. About a minute later, he tosses out another cue, moving the key to G and breathing life into the groove as things begin to draw to a close. Maupin gets last dibs and makes a solo appearance that's surprisingly funky (he's been mostly heard in stalker-mode throughout the record) until Miles makes last call and closes things out.

"Pharaoh's Dance"

Now that things were wrapping up, it was time to finally tackle "Pharaoh's Dance." The frustration that mounted on the first day over it seemed to carry over to the last. The rehearsal begins on a bit of a sour note with Harvey Brooks M.I.A., thus angering Miles. "Where the fuck is Harvey?" he bellows through the studio. But Miles shakes it off and gets the band right to work. After a few false starts, the band gets part one down.

The lore of "Pharaoh's Dance" is in its construction. The piece was recorded in so many small portions (nineteen to be exact) that it had Macero scrambling to label what was happening so he could connect everything together later. Based on his abstract sense of the whole project, Davis has to constantly inform his producer about what's going on. "Hey Teo, we just did one section. Make a note of it 'cause you know Saturday when you look at it, it's gonna look funny...when the bass clarinet makes an entrance Teo. Put that down." Macero wise cracks back, "I know because I won't be here." With a wit that only Miles can deliver, he shoots back, "You're not here today."

The band continues to work exhaustively on a melody that never makes the final cut. Once the idea is dropped, they chew on part one's second exposition. Although a lead sheet from Zawinul exists, much of the rehearsals were done by ear. Holland is overheard teaching the melody line via vocals and bass to McLaughlin and Corea as they try to make sense of Zawinul's challenging piece.

"'Pharaoh's Dance' is about the many slaves, the Egyptian slaves, running around like ants. So I let all the other instruments be teeming around the bass clarinet," explained Zawinul. "Not loud, that's free music to me. Not notes, arpeggios and chords, but an expression of life." Both Miles and Zawinul had the same mindset on how compositions were supposed to be formed—the sum was greater than its parts. Zawinul compared it to painting, where there's a foreground, middle ground, and background. He wasn't looking for everything to be loud and pulsing all at once, but spread out so you can feel the piece rather than hear it. Zawinul, however, thought that Miles overdid it, and was not crazy about the end results. "I liked 'Pharaoh's Dance.' Miles played it very well, but for me it was a little chaotic." Zawinul felt that Miles took over too much and spoiled some of the collective spirit that he conceptualized for the piece. "Everyone contributed a little bit, but he [Miles] knew what he wanted."

Despite the great success the two had together and the friendship they built, Zawinul was turned off by the entire experience. Miles's controlling, bullying ways of working never set right with the keyboardist, and the two drifted apart. Hitching a ride in Miles's Ferrari after Brew, Zawinul was quiet the whole trip. When Miles asked why he was getting the silent treatment, Zawinul was blunt. "I didn't like what we did and what is being done." Along with dismantling his work and its essence, Zawinul thought that Miles took more credit than he deserved. "It was a lot of studio time then. I wrote much of that material, all the bass lines...well, it doesn't matter how it ended up, but basically it was Miles who got most of the credit for the writing, but many of those things came from me." Zawinul wasted no time telling Davis that he was still the sole writer of the music, regardless of Miles's revisions. On August 20, the day before it was officially recorded, Zawinul sent Miles's manager Jack Whittemore a legal document explaining the terms and conditions of "Pharaoh's Dance," which Davis accepted. Unlike with Shorter, the pair's relationship ended on a bitter note when Zawinul passed on Miles's road invitation and quit working with him for good. "Miles said, 'You want to come on the road with me?' and I said, 'I'm not gonna do that man. I want to do my own thing, see what's happening.'" After Brew, both he and Shorter formed Weather Report.

It's easy to understand Zawinul's antipathy. Davis treated "Pharaoh's Dance" similarly to the way he treated "Sanctuary" and "In a Silent Way"—it was a stomping ground for Miles to do whatever he wanted with it. "Pharaoh's Dance" was originally comprised of two parts. Part one contains a five measure exposition, an eight measure section with a B pedal, a transition measure into a four bar section using a D pedal, and a twelve measure exposition with a B pedal. Part two has two very loosely organized statements, with directions such as "keep developing," "play whenever," "turn statement one in and out with your own free will," and "phrase your own way." It was certainly interpreted loosely by Miles. When all was said and done, many of the sections were omitted and looped in all kinds of ways.

On the track, Davis takes the first solo. His opening phrasing is long and smooth with the rhythm section rolling out a soft red carpet for the leader. The soothing, majestic phrasing is a trademark of Davis's for taming his band. After a studio edit, the rhythm section is heard rumbling things back up. Miles's playing becomes sparse and bitey—a perfect contrast to the straight underlying rock beat. It's almost as if Miles is fighting the beat with his jabbing, syncopated stylings, yet it's just another layer in the thick density of this jam.

After Miles, Maupin takes center stage, wrestling with the deepest reaches of the bass clarinet. His phrasing is confident, as if the solid three days of work added an extra coat of tarnish to his sound. The solo gets stabs from the rhythm section, resulting in some interesting interplay until Zawinul interjects some of part one's first statement, fading Maupin out. Around the 8:30 mark, a rhythmic break occurs and statement one of part two begins. Davis only toys with the first three notes along with a couple of flourishes drowned in echoplex. Thirty seconds later, Davis's next solo is abruptly edited in. The trumpeter is heard weaving through a swarming backdrop of aggressive rhythms. Miles overtakes the backdrop with long, menacing lines with Maupin tagging along. Miles lets Maupin loose about thirty seconds later and he blows out a hail of shrapnel that summons frantic, spirally lines from Corea. Shorter, who seems somewhat inspired by Maupin, checks in with his own caustic solo, followed by a space-laden, amped up solo from McLaughlin, who appears to be channeling Hendrix. Zawinul chimes in with some of part one's theme, bringing down the pulse once again.

About fifteen minutes in, the band comes to a grinding halt and begins a hard, steady vamp in B reminiscent of the titles track's pounding bass along with cacophonous improvising from all angles. Somehow Miles wedges himself up top, delivering the fatal blows of statement two. With his fierce approach and complete disregard of the entire top section, Miles certainly takes liberty with Zawinul's "phrase your own way" instructions.

In "Pharaoh's Dance," as with most of the album, Davis's sound is one with a lot of mileage behind it. His articulation and pronunciation is carved, giving particular detail to all its syllables and nuances, similar to James Brown's characteristic vowel and consonant pronunciations. There is also the sense of a boxer weaving and jabbing that carried over to his band mates. "He would talk about that, 'Ok, now you've got to set this way ....' If you play a phrase, you have to know how to set a guy up," explained DeJohnette. "The same thing with boxing. You set a guy up, you feint with a left hook and then catch him with an overhand or uppercut right. It's in the rhythm." "It's the speed, the in and out, the reaction time, the feinting, the move, the combinations," recalled Dave Liebman while working with Miles shortly after Brew. "We trained to be fast, fast technically, fast thinking, fast hearing, fast reactions, the ability to perceive what was coming." By the end of "Pharaoh's Dance," Miles finds a way to deliver the knock-out blow. Throughout Davis's playing on the track, there is incessant jabbing, a constant touch and dodge. He begins to get the upper hand somewhere in the middle and delivers the onslaught at the very end with the pummeling delivery of the final melody.

Reprinted from Listen to This: Miles Davis and "Bitches Brew" © 2015 S. Victor Svorinich by permission of University Press of Mississippi.

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